Have you ever met someone who can eat whatever they want and they never seem to gain weight? You
probably know someone else on the opposite end who has to be really, really careful. It seems
like if they eat just a little bit too much they gain weight so easily. We often say that the one
person has fast metabolism and that the other person has slow metabolism, but what does that
even mean? Does that even matter? Hey, my name is Lucas. I am a yoga teacher, I'm a nutritional
coach. About 20 years ago when I first got into health and wellness I lost a whole bunch of weight
myself and I started experimenting with raw food, and intermittent fasting, and ketogenic diets,
all kinds of different experiments to try to understand metabolism and most importantly why,
for some people, it's really easy to lose weight and for other people it's a lifelong challenge.
Just a quick disclaimer: I'm not a medical doctor. Please use this for educational purposes only. As
usual, I'll drop a PDF link down below with some reference charts and things that might be helpful
for you to take when you go into your doctor to have a chat. In this video we'll talk about the
myth of fast versus slow metabolism. Number two, we'll talk about what metabolic health really is
from a five point metric standpoint that you can go check with your doctor. And lastly,
perhaps most importantly, we'll talk about the number one thing you should be focused on if
you're interested in weight loss and it's not necessarily metabolism. Let's talk about this
fast versus slow metabolism. Let's imagine we have two friends and their names are Chuck and
Barry. They're both 50 years old, they both weigh 175lbs, they're neighbors, and they live
very similar lifestyles, or so we would think. Chuck gets really frustrated because his friend
Barry never seems to have to worry about what he eats and his weight stays exactly the same,
whereas Chuck it seems like every single day he's struggling just to make healthy choices. The two
of them go out to dinner and they're trying to discuss this and Chuck is really lamenting to
Barry about his frustration, and they both order food. As usual, Chuck he has to be really careful,
if he's not watching out he'll finish the bread basket, he'll order two desserts. Barry
seems to order whatever he wants and here's the thing, often without even thinking about it,
he leaves half his plate uneaten. Sometimes he orders dessert, sometimes he doesn't,
but for sure when he gets home after dinner he doesn't have cravings. Whereas Chuck very often
does. Now the two of them start wearing health trackers, they both get a Fitbit or an Apple
watch, and Chuck is convinced that he has bad metabolism and Barry has good metabolism. So,
over dinner that night they compare watches and they realize their resting heart rate it's
pretty much the same, about 55 beats per minute. They realize that their steps per day are pretty
similar, both of them are doing about 5,000-6,000 steps per day. The one difference that they notice
is that Barry sleeps a lot more than Chuck. Chuck gets about five and a half hours of sleep,
not good. Barry's getting about seven and a half to eight hours of sleep, that's a lot better,
but it still doesn't explain things. Chuck is convinced his metabolism is bad, it's slow,
and then they look around the restaurant and in that restaurant there's another couple of best
friends sitting right next to them and one of them is really big, a clinically obese man, he weighs
over 300lbs. Across the table from him is an anorexic guy, the poor guy probably weighs 130lbs,
looks like a strong wind could tip him over. And then the two of them, Chuck and Barry, they start
discussing metabolism and Barry shares with him that the person in the restaurant with the fastest
metabolism is actually the obese man. Why? Well, that person has more body weight, it takes more
calories to keep that person moving throughout the day, and here's where it gets really tricky.
The thing you need to remember is the person with the slowest metabolism in that entire restaurant
is the anorexic guy, it's the really thin guy. Why? Because he's under fueled, under nourished,
and his body doesn't need much to keep going at all. So now Chuck is really, really frustrated,
because if his metabolism is more or less normal, if his metabolism is pretty similar to Barry's,
why is it that he's hungry all the time? This is the number one question you need to be asking if
you'd like to lose weight. Let's put this dinner party on pause for a moment and let's forget about
fast versus slow metabolism, let's instead think about metabolic health. Metabolic health, from a
clinical perspective, really comes down to five factors that your doctor should be checking with
you at least once a year, if not twice a year. And those five factors, the biggest one, the keystone
of course, is your weight, specifically your visceral fat around your abdomen. This is a very,
very important metric for your metabolic health. Not speed, but metabolic health. And it can very
often lead to these other four factors as well. But weight is a big one. The next one would be
your blood pressure. The next one would be your blood glucose, your ability to manage blood sugar,
your triglyceride levels, and then your lipids, your cholesterol levels. These five clinical
readings, when you go get a checkup, this is what we should be focused on for your metabolic health.
If your metabolic health is off, you're more susceptible to heart disease, to cancer,
to neurodegenerative illnesses, type 2 diabetes, pretty much everything bad in your life. So,
when we think about having a healthy metabolism, it's not about fast or slow, it's really thinking
about metabolic health, these five factors. OK, so what about weight loss? What about Chuck and
Barry? Why is Chuck hungry? Why is Barry full? Let's come back to our dinner party. Here's the
most important question that Chuck asked that most people are not asking - why am I still hungry? Why
do I eat dinner, go home, still have cravings? Why do I walk into the grocery store heading for the
perimeters and end up in the middle aisles, where the cookies, crackers, and biscuits are? And that
really comes down to hunger. If you're looking at weight loss, the number one thing you need to ask
is how can I turn off my hunger signals? How could I be less hungry, right? The reason that Chuck and
Barry eat differently is Barry gets full, Barry feels satiated, Barry doesn't feel the need to
continue, and that's not happening through some sort of willpower or some kind of magical diet,
it's happening internally. OK, so for you, if you're trying to lose weight, that's probably not
happening. There are three reasons that I'd like you to look at that are not really traditional.
Before we get there, I want you to understand that if you have something that is working for you,
meaning bootcamp-style exercise, meaning ketogenic diet, meaning carnivore, meaning vegan,
meal timing, if any of those things do turn off your hunger signals, keep doing those,
stop watching this video. But I'm going to assume that that's not working and you're still finding
yourself with cravings, still finding yourself making bad decisions, and if that's the case there
are a few things that people often don't think about. And the first one comes down to satiety and
when they do isocaloric studies they hire a bunch of college students, and they throw them in a room
for a week, and they feed them bread, and butter, and meat, meaning they feed them carbohydrates,
and fat, and protein. ISOcaloric, so just one thing. What you find consistently in these studies
is that the people who report the highest level of satisfaction, meaning no hunger, are the people
eating protein. Protein fills you up more than anything, but protein is the least common, most
expensive macronutrient everywhere in the world. That means when you go into the grocery store,
you go into the airplane, the restaurant, wherever it is, you'll find a whole lot of carbohydrates,
a decent amount of fat, but very little protein, and it's very expensive. This is the food you want
to be eating to increase your satiety, so you can make better choices. What does this really mean?
Am I talking about an Atkins diet? Am I talking about a high protein diet? No, I'm talking about
a moderate protein diet, which really boils down to about one gram of protein per pound of body
weight. Back to Chuck and Barry, 170lbs, probably about a 170g of protein per day is going to help
Chuck feel more full and that's a big, big deal, because when you're feeling full you make better
choices. You know this. When you go to the grocery store hungry, you end up in the middle. When you
go full, you make better choices along the outside. How would you do this in your life?
Try to eat protein with every meal and you usually want to break up your daily protein into three or
four different meals or snacks. Protein, one gram per pound of body weight if you're trying to lose
weight. The next thing that people rarely talk about is sleep, and again, we come back to Chuck
and Barry when on their trackers, remember they did notice that their sleep was very different,
but why would that matter, right? If Chuck was up earlier, he was probably moving around,
probably burning more calories. Maybe, but there's something else that happens when you've under
slept and what happens is your body responds to that with a fight-or-flight response, with
a sympathetic nervous system overly compensating with excess cortisol, and it also squirts glucose
into your body. So, you might start off the morning feeling wired but tired, nervous energy,
but that blood glucose spike, that peak is often followed by a trough, and where that trough often
happens is 10 or 11 in the morning, mid afternoon - so three or four o'clock in the afternoon, and
then usually after dinner, like nine or 10 o'clock at night, where you get these cravings. And again,
the cravings are often for the cookies, crackers, biscuits, highly processed stuff. People don't
think about this, but in many cases that lack of sleep can lead to a glucose imbalance, which
unfortunately, can lead to hunger cravings. Not really about metabolism directly, but it can be
a really important factor in weight loss. The last one which people don't look at at all is stress.
Mental and emotional stress play a very big role, again in the same peak and valley blood glucose
structure. We come back to Chuck and Barry, the big difference that they hadn't looked at is their
lifestyles. Chuck's job is 14 hours a day, it's high stress and he's doing a lot of day trading,
so he's on the computer making high risks. There are days when he ends the day nearly broke, days
when he's up, but every day is an emotional roller coaster and his body is constantly on edge. Now,
Barry on the other hand is semi-retired, he has a couple of rental properties, he basically
just spends his day mowing lawns and driving around. He's enjoying the second half of life,
whereas Chuck is really, really stressed out. Well, Chuck being stressed out, doesn't all that
nervous energy, that fidgeting burn more calories? Maybe, but that's not what we're talking about.
Our goal is not to burn dirty, our goal is not to rev up your body as much as possible, we want
to find balance. Chuck doesn't have balance. That nervous stress, energy, overwhelming risk factor,
again, leads to these spikes, these peaks, followed by troughs, and blood glucose that
often lead to cravings again 10-11am, 3-4pm in the afternoon, right after dinner, those tend to be
the times when those cravings come in. It doesn't take much to throw off your system and create
more hunger. I hope you found this discussion helpful. When you think about your metabolism,
don't think about speeding it up, don't think about how you can burn more calories in a day,
think about how you can find balance. Make sure that you are measuring these five metabolic health
biomarkers with your doctor and when it comes to weight loss, focus on that number one factor:
How can I make myself less hungry? If I make myself less hungry, whatever diet formula,
pattern, exercise, yes or no that I'm following, that's all going to be a lot easier. Remember to
grab that PDF down below in the description. If you'd like more science-based yoga videos,
hit subscribe down below. If you have experience with boosting up your protein intake or with
different timings of sleep or stress management, I would love to hear from you down in the comments
below. You can find my teaching calendar at yogabody.com and I'll see you in the next video.