TAKING ACTION: ✅ Questions? Drop them in the comments below! ⬇️ Good morning, and happy Saturday, friends! We’ve been discussing why it might be a good idea to give your metabolism a little love this time of year. The truth is that you must do this if you want to continue progressing. You don’t have to do it right now, necessarily, but you must take dieting breaks sometimes so that your metabolism, hormones, and everything else continue to work in your favor. 👌 If you’ve chosen to focus on maintenance or a build during this season, here are a handful of things you can do to get the most metabolic bang for your buck ⬇️ 🔥 Eat more whole foods, especially protein. Protein has the highest TEF (thermic effect of food) and takes the most energy to digest. This means you burn more calories just by eating more protein! 🔥 Strength training for muscle and doing a small amount of HIIT. 🔥 Move your body throughout the day. The more you move your body through everyday tasks, the better your metabolism works for you. 🔥 Focus on the quality and quantity of your sleep. 🔥 Say “No” to drastic dieting. Forever. Remember, it’s important to consume mostly whole food nutrition and keep your activity level up—and lift heavy since you’re providing your body with more food (more energy!). 💥

“Understanding our relationship to eating cultivates a lot of insights and helps us start living our highest potential.” ~Natasha Pantovic TAKING ACTION: ✅ Comment MINDFUL below if you’re excited about learning more about mindful eating next week! This topic is going to be so beneficial during the holiday season! We’ve had a big week, friends, as we’ve discussed why the holidays are a great time to focus on amping up your metabolism so that it can work most efficiently for you. Your metabolism is responsible for many things, but the reality is that if it doesn’t have enough food (energy) or muscle mass, its role in burning fat is put on the back burner. That’s why utilizing this time (when you most likely will consume more food overall) is great for focusing on maintenance or even a small surplus. If you do it correctly, don’t worry—you won’t gain much fat (if any). With that said, focusing on lifting heavier and building muscle during this time is also an important piece of the puzzle. If you’re going to take advantage of eating more, make sure you’re putting that energy to good use by challenging yourself in the gym. Again, food and muscle tissue are both important when it comes to having an optimal fat-burning metabolism. 💯 As I mentioned earlier in the week, we’re also going to talk about another important topic starting tomorrow—and that’s mindful eating.

TAKING ACTION: ✅Do you struggle with sleep (quality or quantity) during the holiday season? If you want your metabolism to work best for you, I encourage you to make it a priority this season! ✅As always, share your weekly wins below! Let’s celebrate! 🎉 Okay, okay, I know it’s Friday and we’re used to having loads of celebratory fun on Fridays 😉; however, I’d be remiss if I didn’t talk about this subject—how your sleep affects your metabolism. Since the holiday season often brings along late nights and a lack of sleep, it’s something we need to talk about. We’re still going to celebrate—after we talk about sleep and metabolism. 😉 If you’ve been around long enough, you already know that sleep is high on the totem pole when it comes to your ability to burn fat. It’s critical when it comes to your health and fat loss journey, and a lack of sleep negatively affects your metabolism in the following ways: 😴 Your basal metabolic rate is affected by your thyroid hormones. Without getting too science-y 🤓, your thyroid is responsible for hormones that boost metabolic rate. Sleep affects your thyroid and its hormones. In short, poor sleep can lead to poor thyroid health. Poor thyroid health leads to poor metabolism. 😴 A lack of sleep also negatively affects metabolic function by altering the way your body processes glucose. When you’re sleep deprived, it is difficult for your body to regulate blood sugar, which in turn negatively impacts your metabolism. The research regarding metabolism and sleep is ongoing, but what I know for sure is that sleep is of the utmost importance. It affects our hunger/satiety hormones (leptin and ghrelin), as well as our stress hormone (cortisol). All of these impact our ability to burn fat, so at the end of the day, get more sleep this season if you can. 😉 🎉 Friday Fun Fact: Humans are the ONLY mammals willing to delay sleep. All other mammals and animals seem to be a little wiser than us when it comes to honoring sleep. No wonder humans are so stressed!

“I have an enormous metabolism, so I’m lucky.” ~Mads Mikkelsen TAKING ACTION: ✅ After reading today’s post below, let me know your thoughts. Does this encourage you to allot seasons for muscle growth? I found the quote above, and instantly thought, “Yeah, you are lucky.” I immediately stopped my thought in its tracks and thought, “Well, who is this person, and is he really lucky?” I decided to find out for myself, and the reality is that he isn’t lucky. His enormous metabolism, as he calls it, is likely due to his lifestyle. ⬇️ Mads Mikkelsen was a professional dancer for almost a decade. Here are some facts I discovered about Mads’s lifestyle and why his metabolism still works well for him, even at the age of 60: 💥Very high lifetime muscle mass: Classical and contemporary dance training is brutally strength- and power-demanding (hours of jumps, lifts, and holding extreme positions). Dancers develop an unusually high percentage of lean muscle, especially in the legs, core, and back. Muscle is the single biggest determinant of resting metabolic rate (RMR). 💥Superior insulin sensitivity: The combination of high muscle mass + frequent high-intensity training makes dancers extremely insulin-sensitive. Mads has said he still cycles a lot, plays tennis, boxes, and does body-weight workouts—enough to preserve that sensitivity he earned in his younger years. As we discussed yesterday, your metabolic health is dependent on your nutrition—you must fuel your metabolism by eating more during strategic seasons; however, you see here that “muscle is the single biggest determinant of your resting metabolic rate. I think you know what I’m going to say—it’s time to lift heavy, friends. Use this season to fuel your metabolism and build more muscle. If you want a metabolism that still works for you, as it does for Mads, now is the time to get to work! 💪

“While weight loss is important, what's more important is the quality of food you put in your body - food is information that quickly changes your metabolism and genes.” ~Mark Hyman, M.D. TAKING ACTION: ✅How have your results improved since you began eating more whole food nutrition? Do you feel like it responds better than past attempts that were full of processed diet food? Since we’re talking about metabolic health this week, I think the quote above is the perfect quote to kick us off! 💥 “What's more important is the quality of food you put in your body - food is information that quickly changes your metabolism…” And this, friends, is exactly why we focus on the quality of our food in this platform. This is why whole-food nutrition is so important. There is no downside to whole-food nutrition, but did you know that it positively affects your metabolism, as well? Here’s how ⬇️ Whole-food nutrition doesn’t “boost” your metabolism in the mythical “eat whatever you want and stay lean” way that many weight loss programs claim. Instead, it restores normal metabolic function that has been disrupted by processed foods—better insulin sensitivity, higher energy expenditure through TEF and activity, stronger satiety signaling, and reduced inflammation. Tomorrow, we will get into why focusing on ramping up your metabolism is a great goal to have during this time of the year, but in the meantime, know that if you want to improve the way your metabolism works for you, mostly whole-food nutrition is the way to go! 💯 Check out this Minestrone soup recipe, filled with mostly whole foods! It’s a perfect recipe for the cold winter nights! 🫕 Minestrone Soup Recipe - Best Minestrone Soup