Microblog: Sometimes You Have to Gain before You Can Lose

THIS IS THE HARDEST SELL.

📖From @CarnivoreCure:
One problem with nutrient-dense healthy eating is weight gain.

🥀Sometimes basal metabolic rate (BMR) will be low from years of undereating. The body has learned to use few calories to survive efficiently.

⚠️Long term undereating will show up as sluggish thyroid, constantly being cold, hair loss and overall lower energy.

So when we start eating a healthier range of calories, we begin to gain weight.

👫🏻Women tend to have a history of calorie restriction, and our hormones are more complex than men’s, women tend to struggle to lose weight more than men do.

How Do We Speed Up the Metabolism?

💤 Getting restful sleep and exercise, drinking ice water and eating spicy foods (nightshades) can speed up the metabolism.

⚖️You can increase caloric intake with light exercise to boost metabolism over time and then start cutting calories and increasing strength-training exercises. Often called reverse-dieting.

➕Essentially, eat excess calories, and then slowly cut to the calories you are recommended to eat.

An example. If you’ve eaten 1200 calories but should be eating 1800, the recommendation is to eat up to 2500 calories daily. Once your body is running at 2500, then you can slowly cut down to 1800 + weight training.

❗️This is never easy to accept as it will initially cause weight gain.

⛑Sometimes I have my clients try 5 days of recommended macronutrients/calories and then 2 non-consecutive days of less added fat and less total calories.

🤫It’s tricking the body to still burn at the higher caloric rate.

🍽Fasting is another option because metabolism increases during extended fasting. In a four-day fasting study they burning 10% higher than when they started.

⚠️If you suffer with severe adrenal issues, hold off on extended fasting.

🔑The key here is to find what works for you but know that any weight gain is temporary (a blip in time). You can choose to undereat long term and suffer slow breakdown of the body or accept a period of weight gain to have a healthy, happy body.

🌷And a happy body can have a happier life.
Know that what you gain can be worth it, especially when healing is taking place.