How to Heal your Metabolism without Lemon Cayenne Juice.

The amount of bad information on Pinterest (and everywhere) blows my mind. Before starting to write this article, I went on Pinterest to see what people were briefly saying about how to heal your metabolism.

I have tried many of these “healthy” metabolism habits and none of them worked long term. I would feel great and thin one day, but bloated and fat the next. This lead to an endless cycle of unhappiness.

Here is some of the information that I see floating around often that is bad advice:

1. Carb/Calorie Cycling
2. Lemon Cayenne Juice
3. More Vegetables
4. Apple Cider Vinegar Shots
5. Lots Cold Water

Many of these metabolism boosting articles are just diet culture in disguise, so please be skeptical of what you read. I expect you to be skeptical of this article too.

First, I want to briefly explain why the above advice doesn’t work to support a healthy metabolism LONG-TERM.

1. Counting Calories

Counting and tracking takes a lot of mental energy. We all have full lives and counting how many carbs/calories you eat to rotate them is unnecessary. If you think about it, we don’t eat the same food every day. Without thinking, you likely eat different amounts of calories. Somedays you eat more and sometimes your meals will have less calories. I believe these mental games continue the guilt of feeling bad for eating more food and the belief that eating less calories/carbs will make you thin. Overall, I don’t think that this is practical advice. The goal should be to have a fast metabolism every single day so you don’t need to “confuse” it.

2. Lemon Cayenne Juice

There is nothing wrong with drinking juice if you enjoy it. The problem is expecting it to be some magic pill that will make you thin. There are plenty of juice cleanses that have you drink this juice to support a “fast” metabolism. The truth is that spicy food does provide heat, but it isn’t going to speed up your metabolism long-term. This is like a one-day thing and it is not practical to chug these expensive drinks for the hopes of staying thin.

3. Eat More Vegetables

Almost every metabolism article provides a list of vegetables to eat to speed up the metabolism. Vegetables by themselves don’t speed up the metabolism and some even slow it down! The truth is you cannot isolate any of this advice without looking at the whole body. Shoving down as many vegetables as possible isn’t helpful advice and can just leave you bloated, sluggish, tired.

4. Apple Cider Vinegar Shots

I used to drink this all the time and I would pour ACV into my water. I developed a food intolerance to apples after that. And I can tell you that this did nothing. Again, this is similar to the Lemon Cayenne Juice….you can’t do one thing in an anti-metabolic environment and expect it to be the “magic” pill.

5. Cold Water

Once again, we need to fix WHY you have a slow metabolism. Not just add things to hopefully speed it up. If you have a slow metabolism, you are likely FREEZING ALL THE TIME. Drinking cold water and not fixing WHY your metabolism is slow won’t help and it will just make you colder than you already are. (and slow down digestion)

There is so much more bad advice that I can go over, but now I want to define what your metabolism does, symptoms of a slow metabolism, and how you can start to heal your metabolism in today’s environment.

What is the Metabolism?

The metabolism is how you utilize food and create it into energy in the body. This process can happen faster/slower depending on your environment and genetics.

Signs of Slow Metabolism:

So many women have a sluggish metabolism (I was one of them) and signs include:

• feeling cold all the time
• low pulse
• poor sleep
• low energy
• tired but wired
• anxiety
• can’t lose weight with diet/exercise
• bloated
• low immunity
• allergies
• cold/dry skin
• brittle falling out hair
• constipation
• missing period
• PMS
• low thyroid

In Ayurveda, they call this VATA energy. This is the energy of air – cold and dry. As you can see from the list, cold and dry perfectly describes these qualities.

To heal the metabolism, you need to move towards the energy of hot and oily. Now you don’t want the other extreme end, but you want to move towards heat if you are VATA as this will help speed up the metabolism.

How to Heal your Metabolism and Create a Pro-Metabolic Environment.

Our current environment does not support a fast metabolism and is a big part of why so many women struggle with these above issues. Here are the foundational elements on how to heal the metabolism.

1. Eliminate Poly-Unsaturated Fats

These fats have been touted as a health food by the government for the last 20-30 years. We have been told that saturated fats cause heart disease and should always be avoided. We drenched our food in canola oil, soybean oil, and vegetable oils. Who didn’t grow up in a house with a large clear plastic bottle of oil?? These oils are used in almost every processed food and our food is cooked in these oils at almost every restaurant. No one uses butter or animal fats for cooking. The problem with these oils is that they are unstable in heat and become oxidized. This oxidization damages our cellular function. And besides the fact that it is damaging, these fats which are found in nuts in seeds specifically SLOW down the metabolism.

For example, a bear in hibernation eats lots of nuts and seeds before winter. This is for the purpose of fattening up and slowing down the metabolism. Hmm…see how this seems to be exactly what is happening to us!! People are struggling so much because our metabolism is slowing down and we are putting on weight. A big reason is because we have filled our diet with these PUFAS.

Goal: Cook your food at home and use saturated fats for cooking. Grass-fed butter, ghee, coconut oil, bacon fat. These are your BEST fats for cooking. Use them daily!!

PUFAS LIST TO AVOID:

• soybean oil
• vegetable oils
• canola oil
• sunflower oil
• nut oil
• nuts
• seeds
• fish
• fish oil

2. Stop Dieting.

Yep, I said it. But as a collective need to re-write the story that we need to be a certain size.  We were taught that to stay a certain size you had to try crazy diets, eat less, and exercise more. We assumed that all of us eat too much and don’t move enough when you could be gaining weight but hardly eating anything. Weight is about health. Stop eating fake “health” foods that don’t satisfy you, just to get your macros. If you want to effortlessly maintain your weight, you need to focus on daily real food nourishment to tell your body it is safe.

3. Your Body Needs Carbs.

The current narrative is that carbs aren’t healthy and we all need to eat less. Most “diets” involve cutting carbs in some way or another. Carbs are needed for a healthy metabolism and energy.  Eating low carb puts your body in a stressed-out state and increases the stress hormones. For a short period of time, you can have a lot of success with losing weight and stress hormones feel good! But long-term this can deplete the body of energy which slows down your thyroid, digestion, liver and depletes your sex hormones. Eating plenty of the right kind of carbs is critical to a thriving metabolism. You have to remember that carbs equal energy and your body needs energy to complete all the functions.  And bonus, carbs make you happy!!

Pro-Metabolic Carbs include:

fruit
carrots
potatoes
squashes
root vegetables
honey
fresh fruit juice
organic dairy
white rice
*sourdough bread

Once you healed your metabolism and digestion, you can test out adding in other gluten-free grains, gluten free bread, legumes, and beans.  These are all great sources of carbs, but it depends on the state of your current health.

4. Drink Bone Broth and Eat Head to Tail.

Protein is key to building up the digestion and metabolism. But we need to eat a variety of protein and not just muscle meats from chicken and beef. Instead we want to add in more of the whole animal as we can. Bone broth is one of the easiest ways to consume nutrients from the other parts of the animal. It is made from bones, cartilage, tendons and other connective tissue from the animal.  Collagen is found here along with minerals like calcium, phosphorus, magnesium, potassium, sodium, and sulfur. It also contains glycine which is one of the amino acids that make up glutathione. (And glutathione is essential to detox the liver). And glycine improves stomach acid secretion which is key because so many of us have low HCL. (stomach acid)

The benefits of bone broth are amazing!! In ancient cultures, they use broth to heal many ailments and it is especially healing for gut health, joints, liver, and hair, skin, and nails.

5. Avoid Gluten and Grains.

Grains have become very heavily processed which is one part of the problem. They contain anti-nutrients which is a natural occurring defense mechanism used to protect themselves. The anti-nutrients bind to calcium, decrease absorption of nutrients, and block enzymes required for digestion. Last, they contain lectins which are known to cause various digestion issues like nausea, bloating, and IBS. Gluten is a binder in grains and should generally be avoided due to the damage it causes to the gut lining. (leaky gut) And because wheat has been heavily processed and used in so many different foods, many of us are intolerant.

Once your gut has healed enough, you may be able to tolerate gluten-free grains like quinoa, buckwheat, and brown rice. For some, avoiding grains long-term may be the best option. Do what works for you.

6. Don’t Be Afraid of Salt.

Not having enough salt in the body, raises your stress levels. When you eat salt, it supports thyroid function. Salt helps relieve constipation and increase HCL levels in the stomach. Salt helps to absorb magnesium. If you want a fast metabolism, you want to eat salt! You want to slowly add in salt if you restrict it. I find that you it is hard to overdo, because your body will tell you if your meal is way too salty.

7. Stop using Supplements as a Weight Loss Cure.

NO SUPPLEMENT will work on its own. I love many supplements, but I don’t expect any to work without including good nutrition, stress management, exercise, and working on my personal happiness. For many years, I used supplements as my medicine to fix me. What I didn’t realize is that I had major leaky gut and bacteria overgrowths that were only getting worse. The supplements covered up these issues and made me feel better for a while. Eventually, I found myself stuck and nothing was working anymore. Today I look back and see I couldn’t avoid the process of doing the full whole body healing.

8. Lift Weights.

Now, when it comes to exercise doing what you love always wins. BUT the most effective exercise if you don’t want to spend much time is to build muscle by lifting weights or using resistance bands. I recommend checking into Mind Pump programs or Jill Fit. I am not an exercise expert and I don’t plan to ever be. Please ignore this advice if you have a very low metabolism and are working on the steps above. Exercise is like the cherry on top. There are tons of great benefits for mental health, building metabolism, detox, and feeling good. BUT if you are sick, stressed out, and not in a mental space to exercise, then put this on hold.

And there you have the 8 simple steps to heal your metabolism without wasting your time on ineffective strategies you find on Pinterest. And if you want to learn more on how to fix your sluggish digestion (and slow metabolism)- you must check out my FREE digestion training. The link is here to watch now!

xoxox
Chelsea J