How to Fix Your Metabolism After Undereating (Step-by-Step Plan for Women 35+) LEA pt 2

0:00 Welcome back to the Body Recomposition Revolution. This is Robin, your host, and today we are going to talk a little bit more about low energy availability, which is called Lea. Last week I did an episode on Lea and talked about if you are a woman who is working out five to six days per week, if you're eating clean, if you're doing all the things correctly and your body still isn't changing, you are struggling most likely from Lea. And I thought it was really interesting because there's a lot of research on Lea and I feel like it is also not covered and talked about in social media much because our message to women, to society in general is basically just grind it out until you're dead.

0:48 That's honestly the best description of how we are told women should change their bodies and to get stronger. And it's exactly the opposite message that we should be relaying to women, especially women over the age of 35 when our hormones are fluctuating and they are so much more sensitive to the input that we are inflicting upon ourselves. But research states that among women who identify as being active, whatever that means to a woman. So if you're a woman and you identify as being active, it doesn't mean that you're not active because you're less active than me.

1:19 That definition is very open-ended. But if you're a woman who identifies as being active, 50% of those women could be medically diagnosed with Lea. 50%. And just to recap, what is Lea? According to the National Institute of Health on the.gov website, they have This occurs when calorie intake is insufficient to cover both daily living and exercise expenditure, triggering hormonal shifts that prevent fat loss and cause weight gain. This state forces the body into survival mode, leading to metabolic adaptation, high cortisol, stubborn fat storage, and menstrual dysfunction.

2:05 To put it simply, L EA happens when you are not eating enough calories to cover what you're asking your body to do. And when you do that, it triggers these hormonal shifts in your body. For example, you are going to have very high levels of cortisol, your ghrelin, which is your hunger, your hunger hormone. That's going to be an OverDrive at night, hormonal shifts. OK, So when you're not eating enough to cover the activity that you're requesting your body to perform, it lashes out by throwing all your hormones out of whack.

2:43 And when it does that, you will gain weight. You will gain weight. And if you don't gain weight, your body is going to hold on to excess body fat for dear life and it's going to be in the midsection. The reason your body does that is because it is forced into survival mode. So you're saying, hey, we're going to start running 5 miles a day. We're also going to eat 1200 calories. None of that's going to be carbs. We're going to try keto. We're also going to weight lift 2 nights a week. We're going to do all these things and I know I'm going to drop weight immediately if I do that.

3:17 Well, your body says no because I still want to survive. So now I'm going to hoard this belly fat in your midsection because that's the safest place to store it. And I'm actually going to drop your metabolism. So now maybe your BMR, which is your basal metabolic rate, I call it your couch calories, what your body would burn if you just sat on the couch all day. Maybe your BMR was 1500 prior to starving yourself. Well, now your metabolism has adapted and it has adapted downward. It has adapted to being at a constant state of starvation and need.

3:52 And now your BMR is maybe 1100. So you can eat even less food just to maintain at your current state. To reiterate, when you starve yourself, your metabolism drops, it adapts. You can eat less and less food to stay the same size and that is not sustainable. And if you were eating anything less than 1500 calories, no matter what height you are, you are in starvation mode. I promise you that. So here's the question. How do you fix your metabolism? How do you bump your metabolism back up to where it should be or even higher than it ever was?

4:31 Maybe you run a GOP1 and you're kind of feeling this sense of panic like, Oh my gosh, what did I do? Or maybe you've just come to the realization that, wow, I have been starving myself. I know that, and I need to do what I need to do to get my metabolism functioning again. Whatever your realization is, however you got to where you are right now, the positive, the great thing about your body is it adapts. It adapts to the bad things you do and it adapts to the good things you do. So we can fix it.

4:58 We can. Because your body, whatever state it is in right now, it is not broken. It is not. Your metabolism is not damaged beyond repair and your body is just like I said, it's adapted to what you've given it. It's adapted to the lack by hoarding the belly fat. It's adapted to the lack by by eliminating all of your lean muscle that you had built over your life. If you ever intentionally built it or not. You had muscle there, but not anymore because you've starved yourself for so long. So if your goal is to lose fat and you don't want to look skinny fat, you just want to lose fat while maintaining or even building your lean muscle, that is not about forcing.

5:41 Fat loss is not about forcing. Believe me, I tell myself this every day. Thanks. Chill. It's about creating an environment in your body where your body feels safe to just let go of the fat. We don't need it. She's not going to starve us. She's giving us more than we need. We we can get rid of this body fat. We can eliminate it. We don't need to hoard this because we feel safely fueled to complete the tasks she's asking us to do. Now. This phase is not a fat loss phase. This is a primer phase. You might have heard people talk about this phase as a reverse diet, but I like to call it a primer phase.

6:23 I know a lot of trainers, I know a lot of people in the industry who also call it a primer phase because we are priming your body to lose fat. After this phase, we are priming your metabolism to feel again safe, that it can utilize the nutrients you're giving it in the way that it's supposed to. And therefore, when we start taking away the calories during a deficit phase, during the fat loss phase, those two things are the same. When you start taking those calories away with the goal of fat loss, we're not going to plateau.

6:56 We're not going to store the fat in our belly. Your body is going to release the fat during the fat loss phase, whereas before it was not able to because it was in in survival mode. Honestly, when when you think about a car, if you have this car that's a little older, it's, you know, past its prime and it's not running well. The oil is just dirty. You, I don't really know how to explain how a car doesn't run well, but you know how it's just running rough. You have not taken care of it. You have not given it what it needs.

7:25 It's supposed to take Primo gasoline. You're giving it whatever the baseline stuff. I'm sorry, I don't know cars. You have not been taking care of the car. You have been starving the car. You need to now fix the car up. We're going to start giving it premium gasoline. We're never leaving the tank on empty. We're not running it to eat. We are going to be replacing the oil before our oil appointments every three months. I we just, we have to take care of the car so that the car can run efficiently.

7:56 Now I just want to go through the Physiology really quickly of what's actually happening in your body if you have not been giving your body enough food because I think it's really interesting. It's unseen, but it's so impactful. So if you have been under fueling and asking your body to lift weights, to run, to do all the things, number one, your cortisol will stay high. That just means your body's in stress mode. And when your body is in stress mode, it holds on to fat. Physiologically, it will hold on to fat in the midsection.

8:27 That's a fact. And when your cortisol is high, you feel wired. You feel wired, amped up, but also tired. You can't fall asleep at night. You are you were just ready to run, but you can't because it's exhausting just to exist at this point. This is I'm describing my life. I know this personally. You have really big cravings. You have really big cravings because things like your ghrelin, which is a hormone, those increase in that ghrelin is saying you're hungry, you need more food. Your thyroid slows down and you might have heard the term T3, that's your thyroid that drops and that just means your metabolism has down shifted.

9:04 You are burning less calories. You are not going to have fat loss. When your metabolism is down shifting and you have elevated cortisol and your T3 is dropping, your leptin drops, which again is tied in with ghrelin. It makes your hunger grow up, go up. You have no satiety. You just kind of always feel hungry. And the sad thing about this is this is how I have existed the last two years. So I'm not above you here. I am not. I am not preaching at you from a pulpit, if that's the phrase. I am telling you that I am delusional when it comes to how much food my body needs to complete the tasks that I'm asking.

9:41 That I am a trademark L EA case. I am 15,000 steps a day working out five to six to seven days a week. I'm high output, I'm high output, I'm high energy. I go, go, go. And that's the way I was born. It came out of the womb that way. And I came out of the womb delusional because I have been eating 18119 hundred thinking that's a good maintenance number. Not for me, I'm 57. So just to let you know, I have been putting this into practice the last three weeks, and I want you to understand, and I'm saying this to myself in the mirror as well, that weight gain will happen if you have been struggling with Lea.

10:25 But don't worry, it is just glycogen being replenished in your body. It's a lot of fluid retention. Your body's holding on to it. It's not used to all that fuel and it will settle down South. If you are choosing to fix your metabolism, I need you to understand that there is going to be some fluctuations on the scale and those fluctuations predominantly will go upward. There's a small percentage of women who do kind of maintain their weight because their body is like, whoa, now we're going to function really well.

10:58 Maybe you haven't been chronically underfed for however many years. Maybe it was just a period of starvation, a shorter period and you might be one of the few who just maintain weight. But for most of you, please expect a scale increase. And please tell me it's OK because I have, I'm not kidding you. I maybe I'm like 7 lbs heavier, could even be 8. I'd have to really look at my numbers, which I encourage everybody to do, but it has been mentally taxing for me. So I, I haven't looked at the data points.

11:28 I just enter my number in on my app every day and then close my eyes and close it out. So just know this, that if you are on board with fixing your metabolism, with fixing all the physiological things that are happening inside your body, that I just named off the things that are stopping you from having fat loss, you need to understand that you are going to put on some weight. And I'm right here with your girlfriend. I've got dimples in my legs where I haven't had dimples in quite some time. But you know what?

11:57 That's OK, right? That's OK. That's OK, positive note I my butt look it's budding like it looks it looks better than it usually does because it's full of glycogen like I'm I'm nourished finally. I thought I was nourished before, but you know the hair loss, the not sleep everything else on the list should have keyed me in. I'm also lifting heavier. I have more energy and I'm way nicer. I am to my kids. I usually I'm pretty patient because I was a kindergarten teacher for so many years. But you know, I guess I didn't notice how impatient I had become now that my patience has gone up.

12:34 So just know that there are also positives to having this new fuel reintroduced to your body and embrace it because you're a woman. You need, you need, you need to have nutrients flowing through your body. You create life with that thing, whether you have in the past or haven't. Your body is equipped to create life like you need to nourish it, not starve it. So just remember the expectation so that I can prevent some panic you might have. If you do choose to proceed is Emma gain 1 to 5 lbs, but that's intentionally doing it.

13:10 You're not going to sit down and start eating cake at night. You're going to have some sweet potatoes, some rice and it's going to be great because we're going to fill our plate with high quality food. You're going to feel fuller. This part I like. I like going to bed feeling satisfied because for so many years I just went to bed feeling like, can I have some popcorn? Like anything to just dull that feeling of I need more food and I just, I don't know. I brainwashed myself into thinking it was OK when it isn't.

13:40 It is OK when you're in a deficit because you it has to be OK if you want to drop fat, but it's not OK to have that year round. There are phases and seasons for everything and being in a chronic deficit, the entirety of your existence is a phase of delusion and pain that you need to step out of with me. So again, expect to have a little bit of scale fluctuation. Do not abort plan. We are going to proceed intentionally now for the plan. This is this is the step by step approach you're going to take to heal your metabolism so that you can finally drop fat when you've probably plateaued.

14:21 If you are suffering from Lea, if, if you are maybe even gaining fat in your midsection and you're still eating basically nothing. If you're doing all the things to textbook and you are just not seeing any shift, if anything you are not liking the trajectory of your physique at this point. Here's the plan. You are going to increase your calories slowly. Remember, gradually is key here. You're not going to start adding 500 calories a day to what you're eating. You are going to add 100 to 200 calories per day for the week, and we'll just do this every single week.

15:06 We're nudging your metabolism. We're not shocking it. It's not aggressive at all. It's a strategic move. So right now you're going to add 100 to 200 calories. I would even advise just to do 100 to 150 calories so that you're not overwhelmed with the scale fluctuations. I want what's best for your mental health and physical health. And you're going to add this 100 to 200 calories a day every single week for about 8 to 10 weeks. So let's say that you're eating 1400 calories, but you have worked with somebody like me or an online tool or somebody else, and you've determined that your maintenance phase should be about 2200 calories.

15:47 That's where your body needs to be to feel safe enough to drop fat come fat loss phase. So if you've determined what you're eating, which will take some tracking, if you have determined how much you should be eating at a maintenance phase, do that. If you need help, e-mail me now. We're going to do this long stretch of repairing your diet. It's it's 8 to 10 weeks and you need to be OK with that. And it's going to be great. You feel full. I feel fantastic. Feel a little fluffy, but that's OK. So week one to two, you're going to increase from 1400 to 1500 calories a day.

16:24 Week 3 to 4 you're going to go from 15150 to 1700 calories. Week 5 to 6 you're going to go from 1700 to 1850, and so on and so forth all the way to 10 weeks until we get you to 2200 calories. Now remember, we are restoring your metabolism. We are healing it. You have to eat more to do that. You have to eat more to heal your metabolism, to perform at the gym, to perform all the tasks your body is being asked to perform by you. And ironically, the faster you restore your metabolism, and this more strategically you do it, the faster fat loss actually happens.

17:04 When you've enter your fat loss phase, it's so much easier. I should have known because I've actually done it with a nutrition coach when I was doing a figure competition. When I entered a second fat loss phase after reverse dieting, Oh my gosh, it just came right off. OK, so step one of the plan was to do this gradual calorie increase, adding 100 to 200 calories a day for a week and doing that for 8 to 10 weeks, bumping you up from 14 to 2200 calories as your maintenance. That's just an example.

17:35 You'll need to find out your own numbers through an online tool or me or whoever. OK, Step 2, you are going to do what's called anchoring your protein. Anchoring your protein means you are going to put a protein anchor at every single meal. So first determine how many meals you're going to eat throughout the day. I do three meals and then I do one snack on a, you know, in an ideal world where I'm behaving appropriately with my nutrition. So determine how many meals you are going to set for yourself throughout the day.

18:06 I would do 4. Then you are going to anchor around 30 grams of protein in each of those meals. This morning I had a one-on-one with one of my clients who lives abroad and she does a shockingly amazing job keeping up with her things while she is traveling all over the world. Anchoring your protein, I was telling her, is when you whip out your app, whatever app you're using, I like to use macros first. A lot of my clients use my personal app because that has a tracking feature in it. A lot of people use My Fitness Pal or you can just use a pen and paper and you're going to write down 1234.

18:44 Next to each of those numbers, you are going to pick something that is 30, around 30 grams of protein. Now this is just a general rule of thumb because ideally every woman who is trying to most efficiently drop fat and maintain or build muscle at the same time would be eating about 1g of protein per pound of ideal body weight. So let's say this client I'm talking about maybe her ideal goal weight or ideal weight is 140 lbs. OK. To her eating one 40 grams of protein every day is like, whoa, that's unrealistic.

19:18 I told her I eat roughly 170 or 100 sometimes above that. And she was like, wow, how? By anchoring my protein. It's actually super easy 1234, put on a piece of paper, put it in your app and you're just going to put around a 30 to 40 amount of protein at each meal. So chicken breast cooked, 4 to 5 ounces of that is 30 grams of protein. Turkey breast, 5 ounces of that is 30 grams of protein. Lean ground beef, 5 ounces of that is 30 grams of protein. Salmon, 5 ounces of that is 30 grams of protein.

19:49 Shrimp, 5 oz 6 ounces of that is 30 grams of protein. Tilapia, pork tenderloin steak, Basically it's some type of meat, around 5 oz, and you've got yourself a roughly 30 to 35 grams of protein. If you're not into all the meat, which I would say my own diet consists of protein sources being half from meat sources and the other half from eggs and dairy. So egg whites, 1 cup of those is about 30 grams of protein. Whole eggs, Four to five large whole eggs. That's about 30 grams of protein. A cup, a cup and a half of cottage cheese.

20:22 That's about 30 grams of protein. Greek yogurt. I eat that every single day of my life. There's not a day that's gone by in years that I haven't had Greek yogurt, except for when I had the flu. That's about 30 grams of protein for about a cup of that. I don't so much do protein powders, but when I need to, I will. If I'm in a pinch, I'll grab a protein bar. That's roughly 2020 grams, 25 grams of protein. You just pick your foods, you anchor them throughout the day, put that in your app or write it down and know that the rest of it is negotiable as long as you have your protein target hit for the day.

20:57 Because out of all three macro nutrients, protein, carbs and fats, protein is the only macro nutrient that is also an amino acid and it builds your muscle. It is your metabolic gold. It's a signal to your body to burn and build. It's it's really just the foundation of body recomposition is getting enough protein to do so. Step #4 in our metabolism repair phase is lifting. This is a non negotiable. I do not mean orange theory. I do not mean any sort of class no Pilates. I mean do your Pilates, but that's not a non negotiable.

21:35 Lifting is a non negotiable If you want more muscle, which means you want to look toned. That's usually how I hear it articulated to me. I want to look toned. OK, but then you want more muscle. If you want more muscle, you have to signal to your body to keep and build muscle. How do you do that? By telling your body to keep the muscle, which means you're going to signal to the muscle. I need to use you by lifting when you're lifting weights, that signals to your body, oh, we need this. We need this more so than we have now.

22:07 So we're actually going to build this. OK, well she's asking me to do these really happy heavy hip thrusts and your glute muscles are not really capable of performing this task as efficiently as we'd like. So we're going to repair these torn muscles with all the protein she's giving us and we're going to build them up. We have been signaled to do that with the input as being a heavy lifting stimulus. It's a non negotiable you have to lift weights to build muscle. If you're not lifting weights, again, your body has no reason to keep or build muscle.

22:39 Step #4 of this metabolic repair phase. And four or five, don't worry, there's an insight. Step #4 is maintain your current step count. So you should have a ballpark idea of what your steps are. If you don't try to get a Fitbit or an Apple Watch or a Garmin or however you want to do that, look that up, figure that out, and you want to maintain that. You can go into your health settings on your phone and see what your step count averages. If you're not used to looking at that, but you do have a fitness tracker, look that up, find that out and you want to maintain your steps.

23:13 If you're not maintaining your steps, which is just kind of an easy way to burn fat throughout the day, then you're going to put on more body weight than you're probably wanting to do. Another way of describing keeping your steps at maintenance level is NEAT control. So non exercise activity thermogenesis. It's basically your body's movements throughout the day, so you're walking around a lot. My step, don't judge me, but my steps are about 15,000 a day. Yes, I like to move. I'm always walking and running and cleaning and whatever.

23:50 I'm just a mover. And if I let my steps dwindle down, which last winter, I remember thinking, why is the scale creeping up so much? And I went into my health settings and I saw this big downward trajectory in my step count because I guess cardio had fallen out of my routine. And you just be surprised how how quickly that fat kind of creeps on when you drop your daily movement not working out, but just your daily movement. So keep active, keep your steps going. Make sure you're moving after meals.

24:20 You know, we're not trying to pack on the pounds. We are just trying to repair our metabolism. Step 5, hold, just stay here. I know it stinks. It stinks. Force feeding yourself and I will be the first to say that going into a reverse diet or a repair phase is much harder for me than going into a deficit or a fat loss phase. Same thing using those terms interchangeably for the two different phases. Repairing my metabolism IE reverse dieting is much harder for me than a deficit because because of 1,000,000 reasons.

25:01 Most of them are just mental. You know, we a lot of our worth and how we think others perceive us sometimes as is subconsciously connected to how small we are. And even me who coaches women constantly to fill their plate, to take up space, to eat more, to fuel for the task you're asking your body to do so that we can make your body stronger and resilient and have it look the way you want it to look to reflect all of your hard work. I am very, very guilty of not fueling my body enough because it's very taxing on me mentally to have my clothes be tight or see my body looking differently in when I get up and shower.

25:44 You know, it is, it's, it's, that's just being real with you. It is, it is taxing for me, for someone like myself who is always talking about having a healthy body image. I it is something I struggle with when I go into a maintenance phase. But this time around, I do feel like I've got a good grip on it and I'm going to hold as I'm asking you to do. I'm going to hold on and just try to see it through for the whole 8 to 10 weeks now as I am in this phase, this metabolic repair phase, spring is here, summer's here.

26:20 I'm not exactly sure that I'm going to do the whole 8 to 10 weeks, but I did talk to a coach this morning and was just letting him know like, oh, well, I don't know how I feel. And he said, you know, you should start this again, like actually really do the full 8 to 10 weeks, maybe four or five months come fall. So right now I'm going to hold on and do this for a few more weeks, even though it's it's been quite a while already, because I want to give my body, my metabolism just a little bump before the spring and summer.

26:51 So you can do a little mini repair phase, but you're going to get the most bang for your buck if you hold steady and enter this building, this maintenance, this repair, this surplus stage for a longer period of time. So don't sell yourself short, short. Don't cut your results down by skimping out and not being able to handle the mental load of it because I know it's truly a mental load. And there are positive facets that come with this phase as well. Like I enjoy feeling fueled and energetic and honestly just overall happier.

27:25 I I needed to do this. So I will be doing this for a few weeks longer and I hope you join me if you have yourself have identified with struggling on the Lea front, which means low energy availability. And if you want more information about low energy availability and why that may be the culprit as to why you're doing all the things correctly, but your body is holding on to that fat. Look at my episode that was posted just last week right before that. And it talks about women who are doing all the right things but still not able to drop fat.

28:00 And within that episode, in the notes, there is a quiz that I obtained from a database. I was a research database when I was researching that episode. And the quiz is free. It's just, I think a Google Doc. I don't need your e-mail address. If it asks you for it, I'm not going to e-mail you. But I have gotten quite a few emails from that quiz with women just having this eye opening experience as to how much they have inadvertently deprived themselves of actually having the physique they work so hard for because they're not fueling their body to build that physique.

28:36 That was my problem as well. And you wouldn't believe it. Like there's so many common traits among the amongst women who struggle with L EA. We just tend to be very driven kind of perfectionist. We have to dot all our IS and cross our T's. We are ambitious, all wonderful things, but a lot of times we have an all or nothing mindset. So we do it all. And there's, there's just a lot of common personality traits that I mentioned in the episode before that that just seemingly spoke to a lot of women.

29:08 So if you have any questions for me, would you do me a favor and please put them in the Spotify comments section. That tends to be super helpful for women. I get so many, I think I've started requesting this recently. I get so many emails still put them in the Spotify comments. Make a fake screen name or something if you're embarrassed about it. Because as I always say, there is no bad question except for the one unasked. Do us all a favor, ask the question. I'll answer it publicly. Thank you. Thank you so much for tuning in.

29:37 If you need help figuring out your custom macro formulation needs, you can e-mail me [email protected]. You can shoot me Adm on my Instagram, which is RAC RAC Fitness under score. I just recently opened my messages back up, so I will be taking messages or DMS, whatever requests for macro help or custom workout programs. Or if you would like to apply for a coaching position on my squad, the Rack Elite ladies, as we gear up for summer, coming around the corner, about about 10 weeks away.

30:14 So again, ladies, thank you so much for listening. Thank you for doing your body of service and fueling it appropriately. If you want to check out that quiz to see if you might be struggling with Lea, it's in the show notes. It's also on my Instagram. Just check out the pictures and you'll see exactly what I'm talking about. It's AQR code. OK, talk to you next week.