Episode 170: Reverse Diet vs. Healing Your Metabolism: What's the Difference?

For women who feel like they're doing everything "right" but the scale keeps climbing, this episode offers a different perspective. Learn why chronic undereating can slow your metabolism, what a healing stage actually looks like, and how it can set you up for sustainable, long-term results.

Check out my (free) workshop, How to Fire Up Your Metabolism in Menopause and Beyond right here: www.MindStrongFitness.com

Transcript

Becoming MindStrong  Episode 170: Reverse Diet vs. Healing Your Metabolism: What's the Difference?

Speaker 1  0:00  
The vast majority of women who work with us, not all of them, but the vast majority, are already doing everything, quote unquote, right. Right, we're eating less, we're moving more, we're eating healthy, and the scale is moving in the opposite direction. It is a capital T true story that we have seen many women, not like an outlier here and there, many women come to us eating 500 calories a day, and gaining weight. The norm we see is usually about 12 to 1400 but there have been quite a few in that 500 700 range. You've heard me say, if you've hung out here before, if you are already eating low calorie and not losing weight, there are literally only two options. The day someone invents option C that actually works long term, I will throw elbows to be at the front of the line. It does not exist right now. Option one is a drug like a GLP one. I zero out of everything on earth recommend. I have tons of podcasts about it. Short version: you're not just losing lean muscle mass, or you're not just losing fat, you're losing lean muscle mass, you're losing bone density. You have to be on it forever. You're overriding your metabolism. Option two is what in our world, in the world of Mindstrong, we call a healing stage. Now today we're going to talk about why I call it a healing stage, and here's what I mean by that. Diet culture calls what we call a healing stage, they call it a reverse diet. So in your Instagram feed, on your Instagram feed, on your Facebook feed, you may hear people talking about this, that if you're already eating low calorie, you need to, the blunt version is, eat more food, but don't just start eating, don't do the seafood diet, we see food, we eat it, you will gain tremendous amounts of weight, some people try it that way, zero out of a billion recommend, the point is, in a slow, controlled listening to your body, listening for feedback way, we need to raise your maintenance, meaning if right now you're eating 500 calories a day and you're gaining weight, the quick and dirty answer is your body thinks 500 calories a day is maintenance. Our job in a slow controlled, so you do not gain massive amounts of weight, way is we have to train your metabolism to be better at burning calories. We need to train it. No, no, 500 calories ain't it anymore. We're going to raise you to a new higher maintenance, so that most important two words in that sentence, so that the old rules of eat less, move more, go back to working. Now, in our world, that process is called a healing stage. In diet culture, that process is called a reverse diet. I am not someone I'm very careful with words. I think words are very powerful, right? The stories we tell ourselves, I can't afford this verse. How can I afford it? These are these are not woo woo rainbows and glitter and unicorns. These are neuroscience. Kind of going down a rabbit hole here, but I think it's important when we say to ourselves I can't do it, our brain stops looking for answers, because you already told you can't do it. If you say, How can I do it right again? This is not sprinkling glitter on a situation, your brain kicks into gear. If you were to study what's going on in your brain, your neurons are firing looking for answers. So I go down that rabbit hole to say words are powerful, so as over the years, years and years ago, as we niche down to only because we only work with perippostmenopausal women, and as we saw time and time and time again that 85 ish percent of the women we work with need this right out of the gate, I'm like I'm not calling it a reverse diet, because in my mind that's not what it is. So, the best way I can describe this is by describing where you will see reverse diets in the diet world most often, and then explaining the difference between why I don't view them as the same thing.

Speaker 1  3:36  
If you've ever known anyone in your life, a friend, a family member, and if you don't, don't worry, because I'm going to explain it to you, but if you have a friend or family member that was a professional bodybuilder, professional bodybuilders are the most common place where you're going to see a reverse diet. So, knowing that most of us here listening to this podcast have no aspirations of being a professional bodybuilder, maybe you do, but you would be an outlier, that's not our typical demographic. I'm going to use that as an example, because again, it's the most common place we see it, and sometimes I think extreme examples give us a clearer visual. If I am a professional bodybuilder, my life is in stages. Here's what I mean by that, and I'm giving you more information than you need, because I think it's really going to drive the point home. If I am in what I call an off season, an off season means I don't have any competitions coming up, I'm not getting on stage anytime soon. My goal in an off season is to put on new muscle, so in that stage of my life as a professional bodybuilder, I am going to purposely eat more food than my body needs, we call that being in a caloric surplus, because if we want to actively put on new muscle, we have to be in a surplus. Now, I want to add a little side note here. A lot of women hear that and get discouraged. It's like, well, I want to put on new muscle, but I want to lose weight. You can't do both at the same time. Most of us don't actually want to do that. My favorite analogy is, if I had a lump of clay, what most of us want to do is, we want to sculpt that clay, we want to sculpt the fat away to show off the muscle. What body builders want to do is add more clay to the lump before they start sculpting. So, a bulking season, a caloric surplus, is adding more clay to the lump, by the way. If you're not fully tracking, plug your ears, fast forward, you don't actually need this part, but it's going to help drive the point home when we get to the reverse diet. I'm giving you the big picture in hopes that we can visualize it. So, in my off season, I don't care about being stage ready, but a lot of bodybuilders call it getting fluffy, which is crazy, because they're still absolutely jacked, but to them they're fluffy, because their abs aren't popping out real quickly. Before we keep going, in this episode we are talking a lot about metabolisms in menopause. In today's episode, so I want to offer you a chance to deepen your knowledge. If you haven't yet checked out my free workshop, How to Fire Up Your Metabolism in Menopause and Beyond, it is one of my go-to favorite pieces of content that I have out here in the interwebs. You can use the link in the show notes below, or go to Mindstrong fitness.com and you'll get a cute little pop-up that'll get you straight into the workshop. Now, let's get back to the show. Another little rabbit hole, by the way, most bodybuilders do not post pictures during this time, so we are led to believe that they are walking around with eight packs all year, every year. They are not, they're just not posting pictures in the off season when they're feeling what they, a lot of them call quote unquote fluffy. Anyway, off season we're consciously in a caloric surplus, eating more calories than we need to build new muscle. Now I book a competition. I know that x number amounts of months from now I need to get on stage in my bikini and get judged by a panel of people. What a life that sounds. That sounds stressful. Now I'm going to go into what we call a caloric deficit. Right at this point a professional bodybuilder has a metabolism that's good at burning calories, so when we go on social media, and every 20 and 30 year old trainer is yelling at us, 'just eat less, move more, that is true with a working metabolism. Most women in menopause do not have that.

Speaker 1  7:13  
We're going to talk about that more when we get to reverse diet healing stage. A professional bodybuilder has been very conscious about living their life in these cycles, so right now their metabolism is good at burning calories. Their hormones are shot to hell because of what they put their body through, but that's a different conversation. So now it is time to get stage ready. We're going to drop into a caloric deficit. We are going to eat less calories than our body needs, so that we can shed the fat and keep the muscle that we just spent all that time building. Here's where we really get our hands in the dirt. When body builders are getting stage ready, you just heard me make a little joke about their hormones being shot to health. That's not really a joke. Leading up to the competition, they're doing a caloric deficit the way that I would with our clients too, so they're kind of aggressive off the start, then it's baby steps, they're not being uber aggressive. The I'm going to call it a problem, because if you talk to any bodybuilders once they've retired, they will tell you their body is a hot mess, hot mess express, and here's why. As we start getting ready, as we start getting closer to stage time, professional bodybuilders get super aggressive with their deficit. I mean, first of all, their training doesn't change, so they'll be in the gym for an hour and a half, two hours a day, weight training the majority of the time, doing some cardio. That doesn't change whether you're in a bulk or a cut, a surplus or a deficit. They are training just as hard, but what happens closer to stage time is they go into a severe caloric deficit. I have had friends who are bodybuilders that are eating 1000 calories a day, training an hour and a half, two hours a day, like the havoc that that wreaks on your body. Holy cow, this is why they're, when they retire, they're just like, "Don't do it. It was terrible. Not everyone says that, but everyone I've known has said that. I digress. They're putting their body into an extreme caloric deficit. It is not good for them. Their only saving grace is that it's temporary, right? The reason that so many of the women that come to us need a longer what we call healing stage is they've been doing that for like 510, 20 years. Bodybuilders, at least, know we're going to dip into that, and we're going to get back out. But for the purposes of this conversation, let's say it's the last.. I don't know, the.. I guess it varies coach to coach and person to person, but let's say the last two weeks leading up to your competition, you're on 1000 calories a day, you get on stage, you get your suit on. By the way, do you know those suits are like five, 600 bucks, the bathing suits for competitions? Crazy. I had no idea. And then I, I lived that world. I had a lot of.. I didn't live that world, but I had a lot of friends in that world, and it was pretty bananas to see. Side note, you get on stage, you get judged by by strangers, they pick your body apart, you get. Your trophy, hopefully. Now you're done with competition season. You maybe do like two to three to four competitions. Now competition season is done. Now we're back into our bulking cycle. What they are not going to do, and I'm going to tie this to regular Jane Smith, because again, most of us are not here to be bodybuilders, but I think this visual, I hope it helps. What they are not going to do is say, "Okay, I've been eating 1000 calories for the past week, the past two weeks. In no world are we going to jump to 1800 calories, 2000 calories. They would gain so much weight, so they're going to go into what they call a reverse diet. They're going to slowly increase food to get their metabolism back to a healthy place. Now, there is a world in which that sounds very much like a healing stage. Here's the difference for me. Number one, when bodybuilders do this, they already have a somewhat healthy metabolism.

Speaker 1  10:57  
They're not healing their metabolism, they're just reversing the extreme diet that they went into, right? They are living on what in our world we call the weight loss cycle, just a modified, more extreme version. So they're not saying, "Oh, my metabolism is kind of shot to heck right now, I need to heal it. They're saying, "Okay, I just extreme dieted for a couple weeks, let me get back to a healthy maintenance to me, that is very different than women who come to us who did not know this stuff, because we're not being taught this stuff in school. They're eating 1200 calories a day for the past decade, and now their metabolism is not good at burning calories, so a healing stage is going to take a lot longer and a lot more intentional work than a quick little reverse diet to get them back to maintenance, that's reason number two. Number one, reason number two, if you've hung out here, you already know I hate the word diet with a passion, and what bodybuilders are doing is dieting, right? When you go into these extreme deficits, again, they're saving graces, they're only doing it for a couple weeks, they call it prep week, leading up to competition. It's still not good for you. I cannot reference this a few times, but I'm going to reiterate it here. I cannot tell you how many friends I've had in that world that when they retire, they've had trouble having kids, they've had to go on all kinds of supplements because their hormones are out of whack. It wreaks havoc on your body, because eating that low calorie is terrible for you. Eating that low calorie and working out that intensely is awful for you. So they are very much extreme dieting, and most of them will be the first to tell you on the other side how terrible it's been. Most of my friends, I'm not saying this is true for everyone, but most of my friends, they warn people, do not go into that world. Like, it's very enticing, it gets addicting, but the havoc it wreaks on the other side, that the juice ain't worth the squeeze. That's what I've heard a million times. Not saying that's true for everyone, but that's my experience, having a lot of friends in that world. So, I say all that to say, what they are doing is very much extreme dieting, so a reverse diet makes sense for both of those reasons. One, number one, they are going into an extreme diet, and they are reversing out of it. In my world, that is a very different conversation than we're having with these women. Number one, we are not dieting, we're learning how to live on this weight loss cycle, right? I'm going to pop in, lose some weight once my metabolism is healthy. I'm going to get back to maintenance. If I haven't hit my goal weight again, I'm going to pop in, lose some weight, go back to maintenance. We have some women who want to go through the bulk, they want to put on more muscle, most don't, they just want to tighten tone, as we spoke about. So we are not in a diet culture where we have to reverse out of our diet. Number two, the bigger one for me is that the women who are coming to us are not like, "Hey, Rachel, I've been eating 1000 calories for the past week or two to get stage ready, can you help me get out of it? My lord, would I have less gray hairs if that were the case? It would be so much easier, they're coming to us saying, "Hey, I've been under eating, or they don't even recognize that, so we're saying it to them, right? Because, again, nobody's being taught this stuff in our 30s, but we're saying to them, "Hey, you've actually been wildly under eating for the past 1020, years, buckle in your patient's belt. We need to get your metabolism better at burning calories. We need to heal your metabolism, so that the older roles of eat less, move more, go back to working on the other side. That is a very different conversation. Now, the good news is, once you have healed your metabolism, once you have a metabolism that's good at burning calories, it is a pop in, pop out kind of deal.

Speaker 1  14:40  
You will never have to go through the healing stage again. Right after a weight loss stage, the climb back to maintenance is not a healing stage. I have past episodes on that. It goes much faster. It is so much simpler. The healing stage is, is the most challenging mentally thing that you will do for your body, because we are literally training your metabolism. Them to be better at burning calories. The massive silver lining is it's a one-time deal. Once we have a healed metabolism, we learn how to keep it healthy for life. We never have to do that again. But for the purpose of today's episode, yes, in theory, on paper, if we were to write down this is the definition of a reverse diet, this is the definition of a healing stage, they would look the same to someone who is only looking at the words on a piece of paper, to me, who understands the power of words, who lives by the power of words. They are two different conversations. The body builders are popping in, popping out. They have a healthy metabolism. Most of the women who come to us do not. Right now, we need to heal it. We need to get it better at burning calories, so that the old rules of eat less, move more, go back to working. Good news, it's one shot deal. Then hands in the air, hallelujah. Have a healthy metabolism for the rest of your life. For more information on Mind Strong Fitness, or to apply for a free one to one strategy session with my incredible all-female team. Visit www dot Mind Strong fitness.com

Transcribed by https://otter.ai