A few months ago I wrote about the 5 major metabolic factors for losing weight and creating a fat-burning metabolism. This article will reveal the 8 habits that cause the most damage to these important metabolism factors.
A keto diet is one of the fastest and healthiest ways to lose weight quickly.
BUT, remember, no matter what diet you are on, your habits determine whether you are successful or not.
The picture below reveals the main differences between a fat-storing and fat-burning body. The 8 habits in this article cause your body to store fat, so in order to reset your metabolism you’re going to have to make some important changes.
You’ll learn what the habits are and what to do instead.
HARMING HABIT #1: DIETS
Simply put, diets, don’t work.
Most women who start diets either fail at them, causing frustration and loss of motivation or they succeed at short-term weight loss, damage their metabolism, and gain the weight back.
Do any of these scenarios look attractive to you?
Wouldn’t you rather figure out how to eat awesome food, still enjoy any food you want, and never feel guilty or obsess about calories ever again?
That seems like a wonderful alternative.
Stop looking for the short-term solutions to problems (i.e. being overweight) that require long-term healthy habits.
Main Metabolic Parts This Affects: Liver, Adrenals, Muscle, Thyroid, Body
HARMING HABIT #2: “SKIPPING”
If you want to lower your metabolic rate, skip meals and restrict calories.
Consistently skipping meals will lead to a consistently low metabolism, which will lead to consistently gaining fat.
On the flip side, consistently eating real good quality food that keeps your blood sugar and hormones happy will lead to a consistently stable and strong metabolism, which leads to consistently burning fat and maintaining lean muscles.
Remember, you can’t starve a fat cell. Preparation and always being ready no matter what the situation is the key to eating enough food to sustain a healthy metabolic rate and shrink your fat cells.
The key to avoid skipping meals is planning, preparation, and an awesome program.
Main Metabolic Parts This Affects: Liver, Adrenals, Muscle, Thyroid, Body
HARMING HABIT #3: “LOW” EATING
Avoiding carbs completely will lead you straight to a slow and sluggish metabolic rate, which will cause weight gain and make it virtually impossible to lose weight.
Going low-carb for a short period can lead to some weight loss, however, since carbs are your brain and cells primary fuel source, cutting them out completely will slow down your metabolism and decrease performance.
The problem usually isn’t the number of carbs you’re eating, its the type of carbs that you’re eating. Most people eat way too many simple carbohydrates that spike insulin and drive blood sugar through the roof.
Excess insulin, leads to insulin resistance, which occurs when your cells are already full of glucose, causing more and more insulin to be released. Insulin causes the body to store fat and causes accelerated aging, which leads to metabolic syndrome and obesity. Here’s how to avoid the negative effect of insulin.
The best way to approach carbohydrates is focus on eating vegetables, fruits, starches, gluten-free grains, legumes, and only natural sweeteners.
Main Metabolism Parts This Affects: Liver, Adrenals, Muscle, Thyroid, Body
NEVER SKIP MEALS OR FALL INTO THE “LOW” TRAP WITH THE EXACT “METABOLISM MAKEOVER PLAN THOUSANDS OF WOMEN ARE USING TO REVERSE METABOLIC DAMAGE.
HARMING HABIT #4: INACTIVITY
You must move to keep your fat cells from flourishing. Without exercise, there are few fat-releasing lipolytic enzymes to compete with the fat-storing lipogenic enzymes.
Lipolytic enzymes are enzymes that promote fat-burning. Lipolysis means “the release of fat”, so obviously, we want to focus on activities that activate lipolysis.
One of the only factors that consistently influences the lipolytic enzymes for release of fat is regular physical activity, specifically metabolism-stimulating exercise (like this one here.)
Your body is meant to move, to be open, energetic, flexible, and strong. Through the right movement you can move from feeling stiff, old, and overweight to feeling vigorous, healthy, confident, and empowered.
Main Metabolic Parts This Affects: Adrenals, Muscle, Thyroid, Body
HARMING HABIT #5: CORTISOLFUL CARDIO
Extra cardio MIGHT help you burn off a few extra calories here and there, but burning calories does NOT equal and will NEVER equal burning fat. This is a HUGE misconception.
Cardio is exercise and exercise is generally helpful, but not all exercise created equally.
Cardio has two BIG problems:
- It doesn’t build lean muscle. Lean muscle is what is metabolically active AND is what burns your fat throughout the day
- It contributes to higher than normal stress hormone levels (i.e. cortisol)
The best type of exercise to build lean muscle and keep stress hormones low is metabolic resistance training, NOT cardio.
Cardio is fun (for some) and can be beneficial, BUT ultimately should be kept to a minimum.
Cardio is a LONG bout of STRESS. All exercise is technically stress, but cardio is a stress that generally lasts for a longer period of time and it takes much longer to recover from it.
T3 is the active form of thyroid hormone, which is converted from T4 mostly in the liver. During times of stress (long bouts of cardio) T3 production is inhibited. This is mostly a survival mechanism, that is NORMAL when the stress response is immediate as in our being chased by a pitbull example.
During the stress response our bodies (adrenal glands) respond with excreting the hormone cortisol and its primary role is to increase blood sugar concentration.
This in turn increases glucose, which serves as the primary fuel source for cells to produce energy, which is GREAT, in low quantities
But chronic high cortisol will actually INHIBIT your ability to burn fat and lose weight.
The main reason is because excess cortisol is CATABOLIC, or muscle breaking. Whereas metabolic exercise is ANABOLIC, or muscle building.
Main Metabolic Parts This Affects: Adrenals, Muscle, Thyroid, Body
FIND OUT HOW TO SWITCH YOUR BODY FROM AN UNHEALTHY FAT-STORER TO A HEALTHY FAT-BURNER
HARMING HABIT #6: NO “BALANCE”
One of the consistent destructive patterns I find in 9 out of 10 food diaries is lack of macronutrient balance. Most women’s meals are either too high in carbs, too low in protein, too high in the wrong fats, too low in the right fats, or too low in the right carbs.
Aside from detoxifying your metabolism, balancing your 3 main macro-nutrients is the fastest way to kick start your fat-burning metabolism.
Balancing your fats, protein, and carbs with every meal guarantees a stable blood sugar, calm digestion, and regulated hormonal system.
There is NO one-size fits all approach when it comes to diets and eating. We are all very different. However, one thing is for certain, your physiology responds the same way to certain foods and combinations.
I’ll show you to balance your meals for maximum fat burning capability. We’re going to start fine-tuning your food ratio balancing.
Learning how to properly balance your main macronutrients (carbs, proteins, and fats) can be the difference between your meals being “fat-burning meals” or “fat-storing meals.”
I have a very simple formula for balancing your meals, I’ll share with you shortly, but first I’d like to briefly go over why improper meal balancing is destroying your metabolism.
Unfortunately, most people are eating ratios that spike insulin, raise cortisol, overload their digestive systems, and slow down their thyroids.
Here are a few examples of fat-storing, improperly balanced meals:
Breakfast: Toast, bagels, cereal, smoothies, juices, and breakfast sandwiches
Lunches: Sandwiches, subs, salads, wraps, burgers/fries, etc…
Dinners: Pasta dishes, potatoes/sweet potatoes (without a protein), etc…
Snacks: Sweetened coffee drinks, fruit, bars, etc…
The scariest and most troublesome thing about this metabolism killer is that many people would argue the meals listed above are “healthy.”
Nothing could be further from the truth.
Macronutrient ratios can get pretty complicated. And complicated formulas can lead to “paralysis by analysis,” which leads to no action, which always leads to no weight loss results.
Balancing your meals is a very important concept in healthy eating that is often ignored, since it’s hard enough eating healthy.
But if you can eat healthy AND balance your ratios at least 80% of the time, you’re going to propel your weight loss results.
You’ll be regulating your hormones, balancing your blood sugar/insulin levels, and boosting your metabolism so it’s working for you all day long.
Main Metabolism Parts This Affects: Liver, Thyroid, Muscle, Body
HARMING HABIT #7: TOO MANY INFLAMMA-FOODS
Did you know that when it comes to losing fat and weight, the amount of calories in the food that you eat is far LESS important than the quality.
In other words, the QUALITY of your food is superior to the QUANTITY of your food if your goal is weight loss. This especially holds true if you are recovering dieter, fast food eater, and/or ever struggled with eating in any form or fashion.
Dieting is serious business with worse consequences. You MUST clean up your eating to flatten your tummy. If you eat foods that cause you any form of digestive discomfort there it makes it more difficult to engage your core and work your abs during workouts.
It also causes your body to focus on digestion of the crappy foods you just ate, INSTEAD OF helping your get rid of excess fat around your midsection.
When we decide to start losing weight, “inflammation” is rarely the first thing that pops in our heads.
Our thinking immediately goes to:
I need to eat less, watch my calories, start eating low-fat, low-carb, etc…
I need to give up cokes, fast food, candy, etc…
I need to start exercising, doing cardio, get a gym membership, etc…
Diets, fat-burning pills, weight loss supplements, etc…
Unfortunately, 95% of those “things” you THINK you need to do to lose weight, ends up leaving you worse than where you started.
95% of the “healthy” things you start doing to lose fat are killing your metabolism.
Which means you were suffering from inflammation before and these “weight loss tricks” left with you more inflammation and weight gain.
The fastest way to reduce inflammation aside from eating whole, unprocessed foods is avoid the foods that got you into this inflammatory mess in the first place.
The 8 inflammatory foods to avoid include gluten, soy, HFCS, sugar, and unsaturated vegetable oils.
These foods and others contribute to the majority of the inflammation in our society, especially inflammation that leads to stubborn fat.
Main Metabolism Parts This Affects: Liver, Thyroid, Muscle, Body
Take Action Tip: Stop treating your stomach like a garbage can and you won’t stay round like one. Get rid of the processed foods, breads, pastas, refined vegetable oils, soy, fast food, and EVERYTHING you know is bad for you.
MACRO-BALANCING IS THE #1 FAT LOSS STRATEGY I USE IN THe 3-week Ketogenic Diet TO HELP YOU BALANCE YOUR HORMONES AND REVERSE INSULIN RESISTANCE
HARMING HABIT #8: NO STRUCTURE
To get real, long-lasting results, you need to be following a diet that…
a. Is healthy.
b. Is tasty, sustainable, and (somewhat) enjoyable.
c. Helps you hormonally with your insulin, growth hormone, and estrogen levels.
If it’s healthy and it tastes good while also allowing a degree of freedom you’re going to stick with it. It’s this stick-with-it-ness that separates momentary results from a permanent improved body, fat loss, performance, and health.
The following metabolism-focused diet will help you do a few things which I explain in further detail throughout the article and video:
1. Naturally balance your insulin levels, increase your thyroid hormone levels, decrease your cortisol levels, and increase your growth hormone levels.
2. Have more energy.
3. Recover faster from your workouts, helping you burn more fat and build more muscle, and…
4. Help you burn more fat and build more muscle.
The problem with 90% of the diets out there is they are not structured in a sustainable way, so the chances of you actually completing the program or succeeding are slim to none.
I structure my programs with two things in mind: metabolism-focused fat loss eating and exercise programming AND sustainability/flexibility/enjoyability.
Simple, but not easy.
Main Metabolic Parts This Affects: Liver, Thyroid, Body
THE HABIT DIET
The only “diet” you should go on from here on is the “habit diet” which is one that helps you change your habits, instead of forcing you restrict calories, exercise your life away, and leaves you miserable worse off than when you started.
The best way to start changing your habits is to get your mindset right, which is why I provide a mindset guide with ALL of my online programs, because without a strong mindset, it doesn’t matter how awesome a program is, you won’t succeed with it.
The 3-Week Ketogenic Diet is the perfect program to start the New Year off with a solid foundation to transform your body and your health.
To learn more about how to makeover your metabolism using a metabolism and ketogenic focused approach like the women below, click here:
