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In this podcast episode I (Pete) talk about different aspects of your metabolism, and how you can influence your hormones with lifestyle habits and routines, and nutritional intake.

I talk a little about Fasting, and why it’s important for your body to know if it is in a ‘fed’ state (anabolic), or in a ‘fasted’ state (catabolic), for your hormones, weightless, energy, longevity, health and performance.

And I try to debunk a few myths around metabolism.

Testing Metabolic Rate (MR) is like testing how much fuel a hybrid car burns versus a diesel car, without knowing any information about how much energy they produced (e.g. horsepower or km’s travelled). 

It is useless to know how much fuel was burned without an output to create the other side of an equation.

However, if we did measure the distance the cars travelled, and they travelled the same distance, we would see that the hybrid car burned less fuel, and produced less emissions (less stress). Therefore it has a “low metabolic rate” in human terms. This is a good thing. A healthy (hybrid) human (that uses fat and other energy pathways) is also more efficient, using less calories and producing less stress in their system.

Hopefully, you can see now that chasing changes in metabolic rate is pointless. 

Now think of an efficient fat burner who eats no carbohydrate. Yes, think of our caveman ancestors during most of their lifetime. They are very healthy, they are very strong, and yet they use a very small amount of calories per day.

When a person is healthy and fat adapted, ATP is produced incredibly efficiently, and even the by-products of the production of ATP are recycled to also become a source of energy.

Less calories are required for energy when you have become a healthy, efficient, and fat burning human.

It’s obvious, evolution would not have created us, or any other living thing, to be pointlessly inefficient and wasteful of calories or energy. Hence why the longer you have been on a natural low carb diet high in nutrients, the more efficient you become. 

Lastly, spending time in the sun makes you more efficient and lowers your “metabolic rate”, because it makes you healthier through production of vitamins and chemicals that aid in energy production. But remember, more efficient energy production means you feel as though you have more energy, and end up doing more, eating less, living a healthier, longer life..

Benefits of Fasting

• Gives your body a rest from digestion which may help remove some unwanted overgrowth of gut bacteria.
• Improves sleep & reduces hormones that are negatively influencing your health, circadian rhythm and metabolism.
• Lowers glycogen stores to force a change in fuel preference for energy.
• Force your body to consume stored fat calories and lower your insulin levels (insulin blocks fat burning).
• Allow hormones to reboot to allow for fat burning while asleep.
• Allows for autophagy, which helps remove old, overstressed and damaged cells, to allow for new, healthier cells to replace them.