The Mind Performance Health Podcast

Metabolism Myths & Fat Loss Facts

• Michael Pritchatt • Episode 29

Share episode

www.mindperformancehealth.com.au

www.mphnutrition.com

https://www.instagram.com/mindperformancehealthau/

https://www.instagram.com/mphnutritionau/

https://www.instagram.com/michaelpritchatt/

Speaker 1:

Welcome to the my Performance Health Podcast. My name is Michael Pritchard, owner and founder of my Performance Health Personal Training and MPH Nutrition Supplements. Now I am a coach to everyday Australians. I've coached elite bodybuilders, athletes and high performers, and with our team we help clients with their body transformation goals as well as performance goals. Now, one important statistic from the Obesity Hub of Australia is that seven out of 10 Australians adult Australians are obese and overweight, and one out of four kids are obese or overweight. That is the trend that's only increasing up. So the aim of the game of this podcast is to give you motivation, actionable steps that you can take, and also provide an environment where you can actually take action on your health and fitness goals and not become a part of that statistic. So if that sounds interesting to you, please lock in and let's get into today's episode. Today I've got a few notes here that I'm going to cover with some bullet points, and I'm going to be talking about the truth about metabolism and fat loss, but what I'm going to change with the podcast as well is to give a few client shout out wins, because I know a lot of our clients do watch this podcast or listen to this podcast, depending which platform you're listening to and I just want to acknowledge the hard work of our community. So I've got six wins today. I asked the team each Friday in our team meeting to give some wins and I'm going to share some of our client wins. Becca has lost 7% body fat, going from 21 to 14%. Now, to give an idea, she's in the fit or athletic category of body fat. We have healthy body fat ranges. Usually for ladies we see 23 to 25%. Just understanding, now that Becca's at 14%, she's into the fit and athletic range for sure. She's now leaner and stronger. So well done to you, becca. Eunice dropped three kilograms of body fat and gained one and a half kilograms of lean muscle, which is a great example of body recomposition, where we drop body fat but also build lean muscle up. That's how you tone, that's how you shape up the body. So well done, eunice. Sherrod is now under 100 kilos. Well done, sherrod, dropping nine kilos in just six weeks Fantastic work.

Speaker 1:

And Renata went from struggling with a bad back. When I first sat down with Renata in our consult, she couldn't even extend her back. She had a lot of back pain. It was impacting her sleep, impacting her movement for the day. She was very, very restricted when she's running through her workouts with our team on what she could do with exercise routine or exercise selection. Now she's actually lifting 100 kilograms on the hip thrust and when she does her back extension she has no pain. That is a big change to her quality of life. Well done, renata. Credit to your hard work. Suresh achieved his first ever pull-up as well, which is a great sign of relative body strength coming up over time. Fantastic work. Special mentions to our community, but well done to everyone. This is only a small selection of our clients that are achieving results. Well done to our community, working on being better and going against that trend I mentioned at the start.

Speaker 1:

As I touched on today, I want to talk about metabolism, because there are some myths with metabolism. When it comes to fat loss, you may have heard the saying that you may have a broken metabolism or it adapts. But what's actually true? And I'm going to explain what I've seen with clients, what I've seen in the trenches when it comes to metabolism, I'm going to give you some things or some areas that you need to pay attention to that can actually slow down your metabolism, and we've seen that with clients and I'm also giving you some tips in this episode that you can action to speed up your metabolism. Okay, you can influence it. Remember, at the end of the day, it's a chemical reaction, how we process the food we eat into energy, how we burn calories. But how can we speed up that process so you burn more calories, which potentially, if your goal is fat loss, can lead to greater fat loss and faster progress? So I'm going to give you some tips to make that happen in the context of more fat loss. Okay, so first we'll start with understanding. You know, I just touched on it it's the chemical reactions of the body that requires energy and it's how quick those reactions can happen, meaning that that can potentially help boost your metabolism. But what are some things that can slow down those reactions? What's something that can actually slow down your metabolism? Because if you have ignorance, you're not sure, and you may be doing this and then negatively impacting your metabolism at the end of the day, and then just taking a supplement that promotes faster, better metabolism isn't going to cut it, because you need to actually address the causes while also managing symptoms. So, things that can slow down metabolism.

Speaker 1:

I've got three points here. Poor sleep, okay, a lack of sleep. Think about it right when you're sleeping, this is where we produce most of our growth hormone, which is great to help with fat loss. When we're sleeping, this is where we also help regulate our stress hormones. If you have poor quality sleep, you're going to have higher cortisol, higher stress hormones. Your body isn't going to recover as well. And you've got to understand as well the reason we use strength training as the main tool and we focus on building muscle at Mind Performance Health with our methods. It's to help increase your metabolism. The more lean muscle you build which is one of my points here as well the better metabolism you can have, because it costs energy to keep that muscle. I think off the top of my head correct me if I'm wrong it's around 13 calories per, maybe kilo of muscle. I've got to brush up and remember, but my point is it's double the amount, or near the double amount of fat that it takes to keep that muscle in terms of a calorie burn or reaction amount.

Speaker 1:

So it's very important that and sleep as well. If you've got not the best sleep, it's going to impact your muscle growth. So you're doing two things You've got higher stress hormones, which isn't the best for your metabolism. You're going to have higher stress, you're not going to recover the best, but you're also not going to build as much muscle and then, in turn, you're not going to have a boost of metabolism or you're not going to burn as much energy potentially for your processes as what you would with a better quality sleep. So poor sleep is something that you need to address. I'm going to cover some tactics in a second to help you with your sleep, but it's definitely something to be mindful of.

Speaker 1:

The next part is low movement levels. Remember metabolism reactions, energy. If you're sitting all day and living a sedentary lifestyle, you're not burning many calories and unfortunately, it's just how the world is going. We're getting more lazier as a society, or there's more chance, or it's easier and better of an excuse to be lazier than ever. So if you're not moving, you're not going to be burning as many calories. Your body function's just going to be operating at a bare minimum in terms of the fuel it needs. So movement is one of the best things you can do to help your metabolism as well. All right, and actually start burning some calories.

Speaker 1:

The next part is going to be a low-protein diet. Protein, you know. When you digest protein or any macronutrients, there's a cost of energy to actually even digest that macronutrient, to actually digest it. So a low-protein diet is going to do a couple of things. Number one protein burns. So it costs a lot of energy to burn protein when you digest it. But also too obviously, protein helps build muscle. You know that. But also too obviously protein helps build muscle. You know that.

Speaker 1:

And what did I say at the start of the last 10 minutes, five minutes is that if your muscle is less or you're not optimizing your muscle growth, you are not going to have the best metabolism. All right, because it costs a decent amount of energy to retain and keep a muscle. But to grow muscle, obviously you need to stimulate it with training, but you also need to consume protein to help recover and promote muscle growth. So low protein diets. If you value your metabolism. There are times where you may do acute stages of low protein, but majority of the time you want a higher amount of protein in your diet to stay on track. So be aware of these three kind of areas. But the cool thing here is you can actually influence it.

Speaker 1:

So I'm going to give you a few tips here. I'm just looking at my notes. I've got a few bullet points that you can take away and I want to keep this as simple as possible. First one let's cover sleep. Now. If you want a faster metabolism, okay, you need to look at sleep. With sleep, what I usually recommend is seven plus hours of quantity, length of time, and we want as best quality of sleep as possible To help both of those things.

Speaker 1:

Number one no caffeine eight hours before bed. When you have caffeine, it increases your stress hormones. It increases cortisol. That is going to be energy mobilized that can potentially keep you up. Now, yes, you may be one of those people that can drink a coffee before bed and go to bed and go to sleep. It's still doing its thing inside your body. It's still going to raise cortisol. It's still going to play with those stress hormones. I highly don't recommend it. It's a scale. It's not binary do I sleep or not? It's what's the quality of my sleep, okay. So I don't recommend caffeine eight hours before bed to manage stress hormones, and that's one easy tip.

Speaker 1:

Now, when I say caffeine in consultations whether we have clients, you know we get an idea of where their stimulants are coming from. Is it coming from coffee? Is it coming from pre-workouts? Is it coming from teas that contain caffeine? These are all different areas that may have caffeine in it and you need to be aware of it, or different foods or sources that can have caffeine. The other thing is like sugar-free sources, like sugar-free Coca-Cola, sugar-free Pepsi Max. These drinks also contain caffeine. So it's important you actually read the label of foods and understand what you are putting into your body and what that does to your hormones, what it does from a calorie perspective, but also how does it help your fitness goals or not, or does it help your lifestyle goals or not? So, if you value having a faster metabolism and you want faster fat loss progress, pay attention to your sleep quality Other things that may help. Pay attention to your sleep quality Other things that may help. Now, I do recommend you always seek a health practitioner when looking at supplements.

Speaker 1:

Magnesium, specific nighttime blends incorporating things like magnesiums that have sour cherry to raise melatonin production, magnesiums that can help rest. There's specific ones, okay, specific magnesiums that you can get. You can get glycinate, youcinate. There's orotate, threonate. There's all different kinds of magnesium. You specifically want to get a nighttime blend magnesium. There are daytime ones that provide energy as well, but you've got to pick the ones that work best for you. Citrate's another kind. It can be great for digestion as well, but magnesium is one to help recover the body, rest and digest so you can have more of a restful night's sleep.

Speaker 1:

But basically you don't want to do anything that's going to stimulate your mind. That can be like work emails that can be watching on your phone before you sleep. You want to shut off screen time about an hour before bed at minimum. Usually I recommend two hours, but an hour at minimum before going to sleep. So you can actually prep the body for that habit of going to sleep and make sure your bed routine, your room, is geared for sleep. The body's very smart, it's very habitual. So what I usually recommend is an absolute dark room. Limit anything that is outside your control of noises from actually waking you up throughout the night. But you want to make sure your environment is geared up to help you have the best sleep as possible in your bed. Okay, so when you go in there habitually, your body will know yes, it's bedtime, it's not work time, you're not looking at emails or anything like that room is, for sleeping, very important to do.

Speaker 1:

The other part, too we're going to look at is prioritizing a protein rich diet. Now, a lot of clients, when they first join here with our personal training service, they aren't aware of really how much protein they're getting in per day and most of the time we see it is a lower protein diet, higher carbohydrates especially with the sugars and higher fat kind of diet as well. Now, once again, as I touched on before, protein is going to help promote muscle growth. More muscle you have, the better metabolism potential you have as well. So we want to make sure we're getting enough protein in per day. Now, as a range, we can go anywhere from two grams up to three grams per body weight of protein. But as a usual average kind of guide, I would go anywhere from two to 2.5 grams of protein per body weight. So if you're 100 kilos, that would be 200 grams to 250 grams of protein per day.

Speaker 1:

Right of making sure you hit your protein target to promote satiety, hormone production, to help promote muscle growth everything that is going to help you with your metabolism. So make sure you prioritize protein per day, whether that's through vegetarian sources, okay. Whether that's through protein sources. So obviously like your lean meat cuts. Our philosophy here at MPH is super simple. It's going to be foods that are fish gathered, plucked and hunted Fish gathered, plucked and hunted. So you want to make sure most of your protein is coming from lean sources, not just protein bars or any rubbish like that, but you're actually getting it through meat. You can get it through lentils, you can get it through almonds. There are some great sources of protein out there, but you've got to make sure you're actually quantifying it and hitting your targets. Some foods, like I said, will contain a more protein content amount than others. Bikinis for vegetarians and vegans can be useful to help get that up, but ultimately you want to quantify it, no matter what kind of style of diet you're doing. Okay, so 2 to 2.5 grams once again, just to solidify. It builds lean muscle, improves metabolism. Protein also costs a decent amount of energy, a decent amount of calories to burn before it, well, to use for digestion. So protein is going to be a very important area that you need to focus on to improve your body composition and fat loss goals.

Speaker 1:

Now also strength training. Okay, as I touched on, strength training is going to be one of your main tools to help improve lean muscle. Simply, whether you're training at home or you go to a gym, we're going to be looking at how much load you're lifting, how much stress you're putting on your muscles to make sure they adapt and can grow. And you need efficient fuel there being through your nutrition to actually help facilitate the resources there to help promote growth. All right, but you need to grow muscle Strength training, especially if you're doing our kind of methods they're called, like body composition methods, bodybuilding style as well.

Speaker 1:

That's going to promote more muscle growth so that it isn't just about going there and doing random kind of workouts. You need to have method to the madness that is going to promote as best muscle growth as possible to boost your metabolism the best it can. We have clients come to MPH that may only train two days per week. They build a decent amount of muscle in those two days. We specially create their program so they can maximize their result in minimum time, but that's going to promote their metabolism for the days that they're not training and maybe getting their steps in. So if you carefully structure your training, you can get very fast results. But you need to be doing the right stuff to help boost your metabolism because that's going to make you a calorie burning machine. Just doing cardio, walking on the treadmill, things like that isn't going to cut it.

Speaker 1:

I highly recommend you look at strength training and you focus on having a plan where you increase your reps and weight each week to make sure you give a reason for your body actually to grow muscle, which in turn, costs more energy to do and to keep. Okay. So, very important you cooperate strength training, whether it's at home or at a gym. And, very simply, rep ranges Look as a very basic guide, anywhere from like like 6 to 20 reps. You're going to the gym, you're doing, but pushing a close proximity to failure, meaning that you're close to not being able to do that weight for the full rep range is going to be beneficial. And then each week you go into that gym and you try to increase every single time. Okay, but they're kind of some top areas that we help influence metabolism and some top areas you need to be conscious of and you may be looking at yourself being like, oh, I can improve in my sleep or I can improve my strength training efforts or even my protein, but that will influence your progress.

Speaker 1:

Now, one thing as well, is myths. Sometimes I hear clients say, hey, I've got a broken metabolism, or they think that they've been crash dieting for so. Hey, I've got a broken metabolism. Or they think that they've been crash dieting for so long they still got a lot of body fat and their metabolism is the cause for them not seeing progress. Now remember what I just touched on I haven't seen anyone with a broken metabolism. There's always something that that client is doing that's holding them back. Whether it's from a habit perspective with nutrition, whether it's from a stress or sleep perspective, whether it's their training, there's always something that's been slowing their metabolism down. It's never been broken. And then, as soon as we solve that area, they started to see progress with their fat loss goals.

Speaker 1:

Okay. So just be mindful of the stories you tell yourself or excuses at the end of the day that you may make, and then always review what you were doing, what's working, what's not working, and try to improve all areas of what can actually influence your metabolism speed and actually take action on it. Okay, and get rid of those kind of excuses. So that's just a quick takeaway as well for you to be mindful of, because at the end of the day, I want you to get your fat loss goals. I want you to improve your lean muscle mass and have a better quality of life and not have any excuses holding you back. There's always something I believe you can do and control, all right.

Speaker 1:

So, guys, that's a quick takeaway here. If you have any questions, please feel reached to reach out to my team. You can reach out to us on Instagram at mindperformancehealthcomau, or management at mindperformancehealthcomau, and then, if you ever need any assistance with your health and fitness goals, you can book a call going through our website. We have a discovery call you can. We also have a lot of free resources, whether it's this podcast or eBooks, that you can check out as well, and then we have our nutrition or supplement business, mph nutrition. Um, just just helping you perform at your best, all right. So thank you for tuning in, let me know any questions and I hope you have a great.