Friday Chat: Why Do I Focus on Metabolic Health?

Your metabolic health is key to living your best life now and in the future.  Learn that it is more than calories in, calories out.  Impact your brain, heart, and whole body comfort by fixing your metabolic health.  

Transcript

(00:00):

Hi everyone. Welcome to your space to explore with me on Fridays, all things regarding metabolic health. On Fridays, I'm going to dive into weight loss, into metabolism, into metabolism as it relates to lung longevity because that is one of the things that I love most and I love it most because it has changed my own life most and is very integral to how I take care of myself. So welcome to the Friday Chat Jolie podcast. I'm Julia. I am your host and I'm the founder of Jolie. Jolie is committed to making optimal food choices and optimal food programs available to as many people as possible for overall wellness, longevity, and feeling your best all the time. So let's dive in. We will start this very first Friday chat with why is metabolism so important? Growing up, I honestly had no idea what metabolism was. To me, metabolism was limited to how fast your body used the food that you ate.
(01:21)
Only when I got older did I realize that metabolism is so much more than that. It is broader, it is deeper, and it is nuanced and it is more impactful. Prior to understanding the impact of metabolism, I only looked at it as calories and calories out, how to lose weight, why is my scale going up? What do I do about it? But it's so much more, so, so much more. So let's break down. What is metabolism? Metabolism is how your body uses food and how your body allocates calories, energy and nutrients. However, it is not simply calories and calories out. If that was the case, weight loss would be so easy. Instead, our metabolism is governed by many, many factors. And let's just start in the gut. Our metabolism is governed by the health of our gut. Our metabolism is influenced by the macronutrients. So how much fat versus protein versus carbohydrate is in our meal Metabolism is also governed by how much we sleep by our hormonal status if we are experiencing imbalance or not.
(02:54)
And this includes your sex hormones, but this also includes the stress cortisol, and this includes your thyroid also. And metabolism is influenced by your body composition, how much fat is there, how much muscle is there, as well as your activity throughout the day. And the other thing that influences metabolism, which we often overlook, is food timing. And whether we've had a non eating or minie windows prior to us consuming the next meal. And so over the next year, we are going to dive into all of that because I want you to know how to reach optimal metabolic health. I want you to know that so that you can have the body composition that you want. But I also want you to know that because our metabolic health affects so many other factors, and honestly, if we knew and we kept in the forefront of our brains how much our metabolic health, our metabolism affects our general health today, tomorrow, and like 10, 20, 30, 40, 50 years from now, we would radically change how we eat.
(04:18)
Our metabolic health affects our brain health. So many people are concerned about their brain for good reason. If you are in the perimenopause menopausal state, you will experience those times where like you can't remember or brain fog or you can't quite reach the idea that you want. That's brain health and that is directly influenced by your metabolism. We also are concerned about dementia and Alzheimer's, especially concerning is that Alzheimer's, some forms of it are being deemed or called diabetes type three by diabetes, meaning that our metabolic health has a huge impact on whether or not we develop Alzheimer's and how quickly it progresses. So we can really protect our brain and really protect our cognition now and long-term by paying attention to our metabolic health. The other area, and this is related to brain health because one of the aspects of declining cognition as we get older that they're looking at is inflammation, which metabolic health influences and also the delivery of resources of nutrients via our cardiovascular system because cardiovascular constriction in the brain over time, obviously acute constriction is in a medical emergency, but the low level constriction that we may not realize is happening over time damages our brain and causes a more overt expression of dementia as well as Alzheimer's.
(06:12)
So our cardiovascular health, when it is in decline, it's basically starving our brain of nutrients, starving our neurons of nutrients. And in case you weren't aware of it, your brain is one of the biggest users of what you're eating. And so when it gets starved, it has big demands. You're going to feel that, know that, see the symptoms of that, and loss of cognition. And so our cardiovascular system is very much related to brain health and is very much affected by our metabolic health. Our metabolic health affects our blood pressure. It affects the cholesterol levels, it affects, rather, we start developing plaques along our arteries. It is a huge influencer on our heart health. Not to mention the elephant in the room, which is belly fat. Belly fat really starts to accelerate for women as they get closer to menopause. And this is due to hormonal changes, which I will tell you are completely preventable.
(07:28)
So what ends up happening is our hormonal changes causes our body to change how it metabolizes or how it uses energy, and particularly how it stores energy, which means that our fat distribution changes statistically. If we do nothing, we don't change our diet. And it doesn't matter if you've had a healthy diet, a less healthy diet if you do nothing. And the one caveat is if your diet is completely dialed in, don't listen to this section. But if you're eating close to the American diet or you're eating a healthy diet, but it includes a fair amount of carbs and or processed foods, and those processed foods can be from whole foods, I will tell you that if we do nothing and we go through menopause, it is likely that we are going to gain 13 pounds and most of that will end up in our abdomen.
(08:30)
The hormonal changes that happen cause our bodies to preferentially store fat in our abdomen and to store visceral fat, which means that which have this very, very toxic form of fat naturally forming in our body, if we don't intervene and we can intervene with food and exercise. But if we don't intervene, then this toxic fat begins to form around our waist. Our waist expands, our pants suddenly don't fit right. And this happens for men too. Yet it happens most dramatically for women. Women kind of fall off of a cliff where men take a slow coast downhill without intervention. So our metabolic health is really important in preventing this deposit of fat in our abdomen. And why this is so important, besides wanting to look good and feel good and not strain our backs and our hips and our joints, is because fat in the abdomen is extraordinarily inflammatory, thus impacting your cardiovascular health, vicious circle here and your brain health.
(09:52)
So these are the reasons why we really want to key into metabolism. We want to look good and feel good in our own skin. That's what I want for you more than anything. And want to live a vital life. We don't want to get old and spend our last years taking medications in and out of hospitals, not being able to move, not being able to think, not being able to take care of ourselves. No, who wants a long life If our quality of life is terrible, we want a long life, but we want to be able to move. We want to be able to take care of ourselves. We don't want to be a burden. We want to be able to engage with our children and grandchildren and those around us. And for that reason, your metabolic health is super important for your brain, your heart, inflammation and movement as well as bone density.
(10:52)
So this is why we are going to spend our Fridays together talking about metabolic health. And one of the things that I aim to do every time I interact with someone is to leave them with something to either think about something that's very actionable, that they can do, something that can change the trajectory of their lives. Because my belief for myself is that action leads. And when you change your action, it creates a ripple effect that changes your mindset, changes your habits, changes how you feel through the day. And so this is what I'm leaving you with today. This is our practice. Sometimes when we're working on something, let's say metabolic health, because this is Friday, it's easy to lose consciousness of that. As we move through our day, so many other things come up. We have work responsibilities, family responsibilities. Hey, it's Friday. We have the weekend ahead of us.
(11:55)
It's so easy to forget. This is something I encourage you to do. And this is something that I have been reminding myself to do more and more frequently because it's the immediate gratification of the think I want is more of a motivator than the long-term goal. And what I try and do is I've tried to bring that long-term goal close. So it is as motivating or at least is a strong contender against the temptation of the moment. And one way that I do this is I think about my older self. I have a desire to live till I'm 104 and I want to be able to run around and chase my grandchildren and take them places and go, go, go, go, go. I want to maintain my life. I want to take care of my garden. I want to live independently, all of those things.
(12:55)
And so every morning I bring to consciousness my older self, my 104 self, and I ask myself, what does she need for me to do today so that my 1 0 4 self has the life that she wants? And your number might be different. Let's say your number is 85. What do I need to do today so that my 85-year-old self can live the way she wants to live? What do I need to do today? Because when we get to that 85-year-old self, guess what, it is too late. So my answer for myself today was, what do I need to do today for my 1 0 4 self? I need to go for a walk. I need to eat more berries because my family has a cold and I'm not getting a cold. And berries are huge antioxidants. I need to eat more berries and I need to drink more water.
(13:58)
So my, that's my focus for today for my 100 and 4-year-old self. I also build my program of how I'm living day to day, my bedtimes, my food habits, my exercise habits based on my 1 0 4 self. And that helps give me clarity. I am a person who, I love marshmallows of all things, and I always find them very tempting and sometimes I have them. But I do say to myself, my 1 0 4 self, what is this sugar going to do to her? And what is this sugar in relationship to? Everything else I've eaten going to do, sometimes it's going to push it over where my sugar load is going to be too toxic, which will incur inflammation and it will harm my 1 0 4 cell. Other times it's like, Hey, my diet has been great for the past few days. I can indulge in this thing and my 1 0 4 self, she'll be quite happy because my 1 0 4 self wants to be vital and happy.
(15:02)
But she also wants to have a joy de vi. She wants to dance, she wants to listen to music, she wants to have fun. So this isn't about stringency or deprivation. This is about really, really setting yourself up to enjoy your best life in this moment right here where we are as well as to enjoy your best life later. And so I leave you with that. Introduce yourself to your 85-year-old, 95-year-old, 100-year-old self. Ask her what does she need? How does she want to live? And then ask yourself, what do I need to do today to get her there? That's it, guys. I will be back next Friday with another Friday chat. I encourage you to catch the Jolie Life Podcast, which is about all things health and wellness, and to visit us at www.thejolielife.com. Leave us comments, connect with us, join our newsletter. Since I was a little girl, I have loved to teach and to share what I am learning. And that's my goal in life, is to teach and to share what I'm learning so that I can feel great and you can feel great. And when you teach something, you learn it twice. Okie doke. Talk to you soon. Bye-Bye.