5 minute read

Without a healthy metabolism a healthy body cannot exist, and you can’t have a healthy body composition, either.

And to be clear, what I mean by ‘healthy body composition’ is, the healthiest amount of body-fat for your body, personally. I don’t mean skinny, lean, or small.

What is often missed when it comes to food and women, is that nutrient deprivation is a threat to your survival.

So many of us women have spent our whole adult lifetimes on diets, trying to mould our beautiful bodies into one we believe is socially acceptable. You know the one – big boobs, tiny waist, flat stomach, a perfect bum and long, slender arms and legs.

Is that a healthy body composition, though? Probably not, for most of us. But, I would also say that most of us are overweight, because of this constant struggle between calorie deprivation, and over-eating out of sheer frustration that we will never look the way ‘they’ want us too.

We are just one 1200 calorie diet or 8 week program away from such perfection, right!? 

Wrong.

You are already perfect, it’s your job now to believe it.

Stop dieting, and start eating in a way that fuels your body from the inside out. 

Now, if you are someone who never diets, and eats a load of junk food, you will also have an unhealthy metabolism, as it is unfortunately a fact that junk foods impact hormones negatively. They tell our bodies that it is hungry when it’s not, most often even when we are full! When we have excess body fat, this can almost take on a life of its own, with your gut bacteria and hormones so out of whack they will almost beg you to keep on eating. 

Having a healthy body composition is having a healthy body, don’t forget this piece!

So whether you are constantly dieting, or if you have thrown the concept of diet out the window and opted for its opposite – the IDGAF (I-don’t-give-a-fk) attitude, this one’s for you. What we want is a diet (remembering that diet is the word used to describe what a species eats) with high enough calories that it covers what we need on a daily basis, no more, and no less. 

Over time of course there are higher days of food, and lower days, but so long as our diet is relatively healthful, our body intelligence will direct us on how much we need to eat. The only way we can confuse this intelligence is by consuming too much junk food, or by dieting so chronically that our metabolism literally tanks. 

So if you are a chronic dieter, know this; 

• Your body likely has not enough fuel in order to carry out its daily functions
• You are likely not living to your full potential 
• It is likely your body is preparing itself for fat gain, in the hopes that one day you get off this perpetual diet and when you do it can gain so much fat that you can never diet again, and 
• You are probably lacking in vital energy. 

You may have issues with your menstrual cycle, your mood, your sleep and your productivity. You may also have issues conceiving a baby, if this is something you wish to do. Achieving a healthy body composition is the fastest way to make most of your health and wellbeing dreams come true.

Your efforts to lose weight will likely be unsuccessful, because your metabolism has adapted to this chronic dieting to the point where it realises that another diet is a threat to your safety, perceiving it as starvation, and thus will hang on to every last bit of body fat you have. 

If you are in a healthy body fat range, know that your body will not burn this just because you stopped eating. It wants bodyfat, and some of it might actually be there as a result of your perpetual dieting. It may also be there because it is the amount that your body believes is needed for your own personal genetic compostion. 

However, this can be fixed. We do this by eating maintenance calories for a while, tracking the food to ensure this, until we feel good and can eat intuitively in this way. Once balance is re-established, the body can take over, as we were created with hormones that control our weight, keeping it healthy and energy levels abundant enough to enjoy our lives and feel happy.

If you identify this as being you, this is what you want to do; 

1. Track your food for a week. Work out the average calories consumed 
2. Establish your lowest weight as an adult, and multiply this by 2.2 to get your weight in pounds. 
3. Multiply your weight in pounds by 14. This is the lowest amount of calories you should be consuming per day, if you aren’t doing anything. 
4. Multiply your weight in pounds by 16. This is the average amount of food you should be consuming per day if you’re a little active. 
5. Multiply your weight in pounds by 18. This is a good guide for calories consumed on a day where you are intentionally active. 

If you are far below this number, what you want to do is intentionally eat 200 calories per day more than you have been eating. In a few weeks, add another 100 calories, repeating this process until you reach that higher number. If you can’t reach it, this is OK. Everyone is different. It is important to try and reach it though. 

You then want to continue on with these higher calories for the long term, until you feel confident that your desire to diet is gone. One this happens, stop tracking, continuing to eat as you have been. We call this intuitive eating. Assuming you eat a diet high in whole food choices, your hormones should have rebalanced by now and your appetite hormones under control.

If you need food, you will feel hungry. When you’re full, you will feel full. This is the beauty of a healthy metabolism. 

If you have a healthy metabolism you should; 

• Have abundant energy, most of the time
• Not have to rely on caffeine or sugar to get through the day
• Not have the urge to binge-eat all the time 
• Be able to lose weight more easily, if you choose to do this later on
• Feel strong in the gym or your chosen activity 
• Feel happier, less anxious, sleep better
• Have better gut health and digestion

You should also feel less obsessed with food. Food becomes food, not something you have to control or resist or purge out of your system. 

If you want to go through this process in real-time, check out Nourish & Flourish: Nutrition & Flexible Dieting for Women – a program I created to support women in establishing health and balance with food to achieve a healthy body composition in the long term.

I’ve taken hundreds of women through the process over the years and every time it changes their relationship with food for the better.

Jen x