Sometimes it feels like you're doing everything right when it comes to your metabolism, weight loss, and overall health—but despite your best efforts, nothing seems to be working long-term. Frustrating, right?
Let’s dive into a few sneaky habits that might seem beneficial but could actually be sabotaging your progress without you even realizing it.
Skipping meals and “saving” calories for later. Skipping meals to save up calories for later sets you up for failure. Here’s why: You don’t eat all day, and then end up starving and inevitably eating more than you normally would at a single meal when it’s finally time to eat. When it’s meal time, you’ll probably start eating whatever is in front of you (because you’re super hungry), rather than making balanced choices at the moment.
So, you end up hangry because your blood sugar drops, overeating because you’re starving, unaware of the choices you’re making, because you’re too hungry, and then feeling guilty or over-full because you ate too much.
Instead, eat normally throughout the day, even if you know you’re going out to dinner or to a party later. You can certainly keep things on the lighter side, but stick to your regular PHFC balanced meals (that’s protein, healthy fat, and high fiber carbs) during the day so that when you get to the meal you’ve been waiting for, you can just continue on making conscious choices and eating balanced meals.
Logging serious cardio hours. Don’t get me wrong, cardio is important, but it’s not everything. When you only crush yourself with cardio, you’re missing out on a huge piece of the metabolic puzzle which is strength training. Building muscle is like a little cheat code when it comes to boosting your metabolism. The more muscle you build, the greater your basal metabolic rate (aka, how many calories you burn at rest). The greater your metabolic rate, the more calories you burn just existing during the day. Sounds like a win.
Instead of just doing cardio, start throwing in some heavy lifting days to build muscle, increase your lean body body, and boost your basal metabolic rate.
The “cheat day” mentality. The whole mentality behind cheat days has always felt a little off to me. So, you’re going to eat really well 6 days a week because it’s good for you, and then throw in the towel for an entire day and just go ham on some garbage food? That sounds like the definition of sabotage to me. If you’re looking at eating junk as a reward for being
good” all week, then why would you reward yourself with something that is bad for you?
And believe me, I lived in that cycle for a realllllly long time. And that’s all it was. A vicious cycle where I never actually got anywhere because I was always spinning my wheels and taking 2 steps forward and 1 step back. Every. Single. Week. I was inflamed, frustrated, stuck, and controlled by food. It was miserable.
Here’s how I see it now. This is a deeper issue where you have to work on changing the why behind what you’re doing. Why are you choosing to eat really well most of the time? Why are you choosing to sabotage yourself for a whole day (or days) and put junk in your body? You are in charge of your body and you can do whatever you want. You can eat whatever you want, drink whatever you want, you get to choose, and you have permission to do literally whatever you want.
BUT, that doesn’t mean that everything is good for you. Everything you eat and everything you do has consequences, for better or worse. You have permission to eat a cookie on a Tuesday just as much as you do on a Saturday. Stop living by rules and restrictions, give yourself permission to eat whatever you want, and then trust yourself to make the choice that is going to make you feel good.
It might sound a little scary. It certainly was for me. I thought, surely if I’m allowed to eat whatever I want, I’ll go off the rails. Turns out I didn’t. I actually started listening to my body, what it wanted, when it was hungry, when it was full, and chose to respect myself and follow the path to what made me feel my very best. So while it was a little scary at first, it was also finally very freeing.
And that doesn’t mean you don’t ever get to eat ice cream, or chips, or cookies, or pizza again. It just means you get to choose when you want them and when you don’t and where they fit in your life and on the path to your goals.
Instead of living with the “cheat day” mentality, ask yourself how you want to feel. If you want to feel good, then what do you need to do to feel good? What foods make you feel great? What foods make you feel like garbage? If you truly want to feel good, then the answer to what you need to do is pretty clear. It’s your body, you get to choose. Trust yourself to make the choices that honor your body.
Sacrificing sleep is one big ol’ metabolic sabotage. Your body needs sleep. It needs to rest, reset, recalibrate, and find balance again. And sleep is a very important time for your body to do all of those things. If you’re sacrificing sleep to stay up and watch tv, work, scroll, or get up and do intense fasted workout (check the next section for that one), then it might be time to reassess.
You have a few hormones in your body that are responsible for things like your hunger, fullness, blood sugar, stress levels, and more. Each of these factors impacts your metabolism in a very direct way. As you sacrifice sleep, the hormones responsible for your hunger and fullness (they’re called ghrelin and leptin) can get out of whack, leading to more cravings, especially for carbs, the next day. The less quality sleep you get the more your hormones for regulating your blood sugar (things like insulin and cortisol) can stay elevated, leading to more inflammation, a slower metabolism, and storing more fat.
Instead of skipping sleep, shut off the screens about an hour before bed and aim for a solid 7-9 hours of sleep each night. Prioritize a good wind-down routine to help you fall asleep and stay asleep all night long.
Fasted HIIT workouts. This is another one that sounds like a great idea when it comes to burning calories, slashing fat, and losing weight. Howeverrr, it can actually be doing more harm than good for your metabolism. While high intensity interval training (HIIT) is a great modality for workouts and cardiovascular health, we have to be careful that they don’t become another stress in our stress bucket.
Our nervous systems have 2 modes - fight or flight (stress) mode, and rest and digest (calm) mode. In order for our metabolisms to be working optimally, our bodies have to feel safe. When they don’t, our brain ends up sending the message of “alert, alert, there is a threat, fight, flight, run away, and survive!!) all of the time.
HIIT workouts are, by design, a big stress to our systems. Which is great, sometimes. It’s not great when we’re already maxed out, living in fight or flight mode, and our stress buckets are already overflowing. Then, it just becomes more fuel pouring on our stress fire. Add in sacrificing sleep to get up and do those workouts fasted, and that’s just throwing gasoline on your stress inferno.
When our stress hormones keep pumping out, it leads to inflammation, and likely a slowing down of our metabolism because our bodies feel threatened and want to conserve our energy for our survival.
Instead, make sure you either eat something with some carbs and protein before your workout, or swap out HIIT workouts for a less intense form of exercise if you know you are in a big season of internal and/or external stress.
Negative self talk is a huge metabolic buzzkill. What you think and how you speak to yourself matters big time when it comes to your metabolism for a few reasons.
What you think impacts the state of your nervous system. If you’re living in a perpetual state of stress and negativity in your mind, then your body is going to respond by pumping out stress hormones, keeping your metabolism suppressed, and your inflammation high.
What you think impacts the choices that you make. Are you secretly sabotaging yourself with the food choices that you make because you don’t think you’re capable of truly changing, or you don’t think you deserve to feel good and reach your goals? Maybe deep down inside somewhere you are afraid to really go for it?
Where your mind goes, you follow. What you focus on becomes your reality - if you attach your success and failure to a number on the scale, that is going to dictate how you feel about yourself and the choices that you make every day. That becomes the story in your head.
We make time for what is important to us. If we value our health, we’ll make time to workout. If we value our bodies, we’ll make time to prep food for the week. If we value feeling great, we’ll make time to meditate, journal, and do the inner work. What thoughts are driving your choices?
You get to write the story of your life. You have a say in the state of your nervous system and whether or not your body feels safe. You get to decide your thoughts, the words you say to yourself, and where you put your focus.
Instead of negative self-talk as your motivation, start hyping yourself up. Be your biggest fan, your greatest supporter, and the one who believes in you and what you’re capable of achieving the most. Shift your perspective to the positive, the hopeful expectation of something good, and start manifesting the things you want in this life.
I created a free guide to 5 simple things you can do to optimize your metabolism. You can download that here.
If you are ready to take your mindset and metabolism to the next level, check out Mind Your Metabolism - a 6 week program for the mentally & metabolically burnt out who are ready to take radical responsibility for their health and happiness and feel really good again.