Strong girl,
Have you always felt like your body doesn’t reflect all of your hard work in the gym? Like you do all the work and don’t see much change? As a Registered Dietitian Nutrition Coach + Trainer, it’s common to see women busting ass in the gym, sometimes obsessing over their diet, AND still not getting results and achieving the body composition they desire.
WHAT GIVES?
The most frequent answer is called Metabolic Adaptation. Chronic dieting and or over-training causes the metabolism to s l o w down, making it harder and harder to get results and maintain results. You probably feel like you’re eating as clean or as little as possible. Feeling kinda miserable. And not really achieving that athletic looking physique.
We were meant to survive, thrive, & reproduce.
Not have shredded abs. Our bodies are trying to survive. And our bodies are amazingly smart and adaptive to keeping us alive.
In my nutrition coaching biz, CWA, we often see active people bust ass + not eat enough food. Oftentimes they have a history of endurance (ultra-runners, marathoners, cyclists, etc), CrossFit, Orange Theory, HIIT, Boot Camps, and often train 5-6x/week with no rest days (yikes)!
And on top of over-training, these people are chronically under-eating. This can be intentional or unintentional. A lot of them have a lifetime history of being serial (yo-yo) dieters. It’s not uncommon to see women eating 1200-1800 calories/day, when they often need to be crushing >2500+ calories/day!
Sometimes these women are GAINING weight despite not eating a lot.
What gives?
.
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Metabolic Adaptation.
.
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What is Metabolic Adaptation:
- The body adapts to less calories consumed.
- You become more efficient with your energy expenditure. ie: You don’t burn as many calories during exercise, non-exercise, and even with the thermic effect of food.
- Our bodies want to feel safe and be in homeostasis. The body is extremely smart, adaptive, efficient, and learns to get by with less fuel.
- When fuel is low, your body will deplete hormones (thyroid + sex hormones).
- You might experience subclinical thyroid levels (where your thyroid isn’t optimal but your doc won’t diagnosis it), PMS symptoms, absence of your menstrual cycle, irregular cycles, low hormone levels, infertility, low libido.
If this is You:
- Hang at a calorie level that reverses symptoms and allows your body to feel safe.
- We suggest you stay at maintenance for as long as it took you to get there BEFORE attempting a Fat Loss Phase.
- Work with a qualified Registered Dietitian or Nutrition Coach that has experience with Reverse Dieting.
- At CWA we work with clients to gradually add calories to get you to calorie/weight maintenance (no gain/loss) + reduced stress to support hormones and biofeedback.
