I have been experimenting with nutrition for over 6 years, ever since I had the desire to get the most out of my yoga practice. I believe I have found the best strategies for my own body. These are some tips to manage your body’s metabolism.
The first step is reading labels. Do it with everything at first, then you can do check-ins. You’ll be surprised to notice how often the chemicals in food change. Everything is a chemical, so don’t get too concerned, but be aware of what you are consuming. This means using Google, probably a lot at first to figure out what you are consuming. This is the true key to dieting.
Once you are aware of what you are eating, you can start to cut out certain chemicals, say hydrogenated oils and preservatives. You can start to look for organic ingredients, which typically are higher quality and less toxic. If you can, go organic with most things, the food has more nutrition and less toxins due to having no exposure to pesticides.
Here are 10 things to consider as you eat during the day:
- Your metabolic rate is set by your endocrine system, your hormone regulation system. Stay cool, not stressed. Stress releases in your day are essential to keeping things running smoothly underneath the hood, endorphins help the body to handle stress and keep you content.
- Your metabolism moves fastest when you wake up in the morning. Ideally, you eat your meals in an upside down pyramid sort of way throughout the day, stopping before 8 at night. Start early, end early. When it gets dark, stop eating, if you can.
- Sweating stimulates toxin excretion and your metabolism. Get enough exercise to stimulate your sympathetic nervous system, but there’s no need to become a marathon runner, or king of the elliptical.
- You are in control of your metabolic rate. There are people with genetic metabolic disorders, but they are about 1 in 1,400. This means that there is likely no genetic reason for obesity.
- Your body has internal clocks and regulators you should know how your body has been programmed to work by your past behavior. Often, people change diets dramatically when trying to lose weight and this, in and of itself, can shock the body into digesting slower. This happens when people decide to “go vegan”. Meet your body where it is, add things slowly to your diet, rather than taking things away at first. The body also seems to really like eating on a schedule, I saw this in France where there are no obesity problems.
- Eat a large breakfast because your metabolism can process the food all day and it gives your body momentum to get started in the morning. Eat within an hour of waking up if you can.
- Keep your parasympathetic nervous system active while exercising to burn fat and use your bodies stores of energy. Yoga is great for this, so is walking, meditation, breathing exercises, etc. Low energy output tasks that don’t require exertion will target the fat tissues for energy.
- There is a protein myth in modern health, that you need more of it than fat and carbohydrates, but in truth you need all three in fairly equal portions for optimal digestion. That means even if you are consuming lots of protein, you need to consume fats and carbs to digest efficiently.
- Don’t cut calories, just sugar. The easiest ways for many people to lose weight are simple. Less sugar. potato chips, and meat.
- Water keeps everything moving, dehydration can lead to stagnation in the metabolism. Electrolytes are key here because they keep the fluids in the body concentrated with energy. The less toxic the fluid content in the body, the easier energy currents can flow though it.
These are just a few tips that I use personally. Balance your food groups. Find new stuff to eat, not the new flavor of cheetos, try a new kind of fruit, even if its nasty, spit that shit out. Try these guidelines out, see how they affect you before doing anything strict. I have found them to be incredibly useful for myself. They are simple, but HARD to execute. Especially water and hydration. Most americans (~75%) are chronically dehydrated, so water consumption throughout the day is a great place to start. I come back to it almost every day.