Hey everyone, it is Becky Williams and I am back with another bonus video for this week. Now, this week is going to be really great because I'm talking about metabolism. Metabolism is such a buzzword everywhere in the health world, but I think a lot of people do not quite understand what metabolism is and how it affects you, specifically with food and just different parts of your body. There's not just one particular thing that's going to make the biggest difference sometimes.

You may have tried one or two things to help your metabolism and it didn't help because it could be a combination of things and I'm going to talk about what those are. You might feel tired or cold or you may have gained weight and your digestion seems just a little bit sluggish. This does happen when you change an eating plan, so from any type of eating plan to another one. For example, whenever I switched from vegan to keto, that was a huge difference in the types of foods that I was eating. My digestion really suffered for it. 

It could be also that your metabolism is slow, but why does this happen and why do metabolic rates slow down when you're changing foods, and just in general? Why does this happen? So, let's talk about what could slow down your metabolism?

Metabolism includes all of the biochemical reactions in your body that use nutrients and oxygen to create energy. That's what metabolism actually is. There's a lot of factors that affect how quickly or how slowly it works, which is called your metabolic rate. That is measured in calories too, by the way. You measure metabolic rate in calories. Don't worry. We know that metabolic rate is much more complicated than just calories in, calories out. In fact, it's so complicated, I'm only going to list a few of the common things that will slow it down. So here are some of the big examples of why it would slow down.

Low thyroid, your history of dieting. So, if you have been dieting up and down, up and down for most of your life, this is definitely part of it. Your size and your body composition, your activity level and your lack of sleep. We'll briefly touch on each of these, but I promise I'm going to give you better advice than just eat less and exercise more. I'm going to give you something more than that. I'm also going to give you a bonus recipe at the end, so make sure you listen all the way to the end. 

So, the first time we talk about is low thyroid hormone. So your thyroid is your master controller of your metabolism. It's the boss, right? When it produces fewer hormones, your metabolism is going to slow down. Your thyroid hormones, which is T3 and T4, tell your cells in your body when to use more energy and when to be more metabolically active. Ideally, it should work to keep your metabolism balanced and just right, but there's several things that affect it and throw it off. Things like autoimmune disease, mineral deficiencies. A lot of times it's iodine or selenium, for example. Here's a tip. Talk with your doctor about having a thyroid hormone panel done. I can give you information here, but I'm not a doctor. I'm not a medical professional. I'm a certified health coach, and so I cannot tell you this is exactly what's going on in your body. You need to be working with your doctor. 

All right, the second thing I'm going to talk about is your history of dieting. When people lose weight, their metabolic rate slows down. This is because your body senses that food may be scarce, and it adapts to try to continue with all the necessary life functions and do it with less food. So while dieting, it can lead to a reduction in the amount of fat that you have. Unfortunately, it can also lead to a reduction in the amount of muscle that you have. As you know, muscle means a faster resting metabolism. More muscle means faster resting metabolism. I will get that sentence right in a second.

All right, here's another tip. Make sure that you're eating enough food to fuel your body without overdoing it. This is something you will hear me say over and over and over and over. Eat. Eat your food. Don't starve yourself. If you're doing keto, if you're doing AIP, if you're doing Paleo, you should not be hungry. All right, I have to get on my soapbox here. 

The next one is your size and your body composition. So in general, larger people have faster metabolic rates. I always thought it was opposite, but it's not. This is because it takes more energy to fuel a larger body than a small one. However, you already know, gaining weight is rarely the best strategy for increasing your metabolism. You wouldn't do that, right? Muscles that actively move and do work need energy. Are you seeing it here? So even muscles that rest burn more calories than fat does. This means the amount of energy that your body uses depends partly on the amount of lean muscle mass that you have. So here's a tip for this one. Do some weight training to increase your muscle mass. 

This is going to lead right into the, I think I'm on number four, one, two, three, yeah, four. All right, so the fourth one is your activity level. Aerobic exercise temporarily increases your metabolic rate. Your muscles also burn fuel to move and they do work and you can tell because you get hotter. All right, so that's how you know that you are getting that metabolic rate up. You're working it, you're making it move. Even little things can add up. So walking just a little bit further than you used to, using a standing desk instead of sitting all day, taking the stairs instead of the elevator, all of these things contribute to your daily activity. That's why we say get movement in every single day, whatever way makes you happy. For me, I've talked about it before, I enjoy going out into the garden and digging up the weeds and making more mounds that I can plant more crops. I like to go out in the garden in the front for all the new flowers that I did and getting them and digging them and moving them around. 

I don't love cleaning out the chicken coop, let's just be honest, but I do enjoy being out there with them. So that is the type of movement that I enjoy. I also like walking around the neighborhood with my 10 month old and her stroller and I'll listen to podcasts while I'm walking. So anything that you can do to get your body temperature up is going to help you with this. 

The last one, this is step number five or tip number five is lack of sleep. There's plenty of research that shows the influence that sleep has on your metabolic rate. The general consensus is to get seven to nine hours of sleep each night. I know sometimes it's not possible, but just get as much as you can. Try to create a routine that allows at least seven hours. So, I will say that I've been guilty, especially during the summertime to not have a bedtime routine. We're eating dinner at eight o'clock, we're out still at eight o'clock and haven't eaten dinner. We'll swing by a fast food place on the way home because we didn't plan. So try to have, even during the summertime, try to have your schedule so that you can have a bedtime routine, that's the same. It also helps with those Circadian Rhythms that we've talked about in a previous video. 

All right, so there are my top five reasons that your metabolism might be slow. So let's get to the fun part, which is the Chocolate Chia Seed Pudding. This is selenium rich, which I talked about before. Nutritional deficiencies could have to do with your metabolic rate being, your metabolism being slow. Okay. So this is going to serve four people. So feel free to share. You're going to do:

• ½ cup of Brazil nuts
• 2 cups of water
• You need a nut bag or several layers of cheesecloth. Don't have to do this, but it makes it better, makes it smoother. 
• ½ cup of chia seeds
• ¼ cup of unsweetened cacao powder
• ½ teaspoon of ground cinnamon
• ¼ teaspoon of sea salt
• 1 Tablespoon of maple syrup. You're doing keto. Maple syrup's going to need to be switched up for something. I bet for this, you could probably use the monk fruit syrup that's on the market. I think it's Lakanto that makes it. So if you are on keto, maybe switch this out because this would be the only ingredient that would not be on plan for you. 

1.  Blend the Brazil nuts and water in a high-speed blender, like a Vitamix, until you get it smooth and creamy. If desired, you can strain it out with a nut bag. I suggest that you do that.

2.  Add the Brazil nut milk and other ingredients into a bowl and whisk it until it's combined. Let it sit for several minutes or overnight until your desired thickness is reached.

3.  Serve it and enjoy it. 

This is really good for breakfast, so a really quick breakfast in the morning if you're not intermittent fasting. You could also make it like a little dessert at the end of the night with some berries or something on top.

So what are you doing to speed up your metabolism? Let us know in the Facebook group. Until then, I'm Becky Williams, and I am so loving these bonus videos. I hope you guys are too. If you are, let us know in the Facebook group. Let us know what you want to hear about next so we can make sure we're supporting you in the best way that we can.

Have a great day. Bye-bye.