Sheree 0:00
Welcome back to another episode of The Wild and wild collective. This week, we're mixing things up a little bit and we've got our beautiful co host Krista on the hot seat, I am going to be interviewing her all about your metabolic health. This is one of Chris's zones of genius. She has many of these, but I absolutely love picking her brain about all things, energy and metabolism. So you know her by now, without further ado, we're going to dive right into all the juiciness all of the details on how to support your energy and your metabolism. So Krista, tell us a little bit just about metabolic health because I feel like this word metabolism gets thrown around so much and metabolic health and supporting a mitochondria. You know, many of us remember that from our science days at school, the little powerhouse of yourself, like how was that all interrelated? Can you share a little bit on that? Yeah,
Christa 0:54
so yes, mitochondria and metabolism can be confusing to people, it can feel a little bit overwhelming. But it really is quite simple when we kind of break it down. And it is just my passion. I love it. Because without well, let's just start with what is metabolism. Because without that understanding, without a healthy metabolism, we suffer in various ways with fatigue with obesity, hormonal imbalances. So metabolism, most people think about meaning Can I stay skinny and eat a lot of food, or can I not eat a lot of food, right? Like we correlate that with weight. But although part of that is true, really, metabolism is essentially just the way that your body can intake food, drink calories, and convert that into energy through something called the Krebs cycle, which you might remember in science, but we have to be able to intake carbohydrates, we have to be able to take in fats, proteins, and really it goes through one of two cycles, once our body breaks it down and under in our digestion and it gets into our blood system, it really comes down to is it a into a glucose molecule molecule or into a fatty acid molecule, and our body needs to be able to take those molecules then and convert it into ATP. And that creates energy in our body. So if there is a dysfunction in that, and that happens for a variety of reasons, we experienced things like brain fog, fatigue, inability to detoxify, and weight gain, right? So that's kind of metabolism. In a nutshell, it is very different from just do I gain weight? Do I not gain weight? It's how does my body utilize what I'm eating for actual energy?
Sheree 2:29
Explain it so well. And I think it's good to go back to basics and actually define what metabolism is and what metabolic health really is, like you said, being able to utilize that energy. And I know that can be like you said a number of things that can affect our metabolic health and those cycles going in. And so what are some of those things? I know there can be like micronutrient deficiencies, there can be insulin resistance, they can you talk to some of the things that might actually impact your metabolic health. Yes,
Christa 2:57
so there are a variety of things. But I will say it starts with what you're consuming for one thing. So if you are eating a lot of processed foods, meaning it came from a box or a bag, the body has to sift through a lot of that it you know, you increase toxic load on the body, you if you're eating a lot of carbohydrates, and not really balancing it out with proteins that can shift really on a cellular level, how well your body is able to utilize insulin. And well that's kind of we'll get to that here in a minute. But so it starts with what you're eating for one thing, are you eating a balance of healthy foods, and then the way your body is able to actually break down foods in the stomach, the stomach acid also plays a huge role downstream. So if we don't have good strong stomach acid, then you are not able to eat animal protein and really break it down and take it from proteins to amino acids, which really, you know, that requires the digestion that starts in the stomach, right. So stomach acid is a huge player in that also even taking it you know, taking in vegetables, we have to have good strong stomach acid to extract B 12. To extract that we have to have process that requires good strong stomach acids. So that's where it starts as well. And then moving further down the digestive tract. If we have poor gut health, poor absorption because we have what's called leaky gut, maybe that that membrane is thinned out, maybe there's an overgrowth of bad bacteria, it all works synergistically together for vitamins and minerals and amino acids to really be able to proliferate in our body and really be to be absorbed in the body. So if there's got issues downstream, and we have a problem with absorption of these building blocks, we have to have those building blocks to make the we'll have the Krebs cycle turn and if we're missing some of these things, if we're missing some of the amino acids, if we're missing some of these B vitamins that are absolutely essential if we're missing magnesium, all of those are kind of the the hands if you will to turn that wheel to spit out a teepee to put it very, very simply. So if our digestion is poor, then we're not absorbing even if we are eating good foods. So that's something else to look at. Also just the way that we are stressing the mitochondria to say, hey, you know you've got so when I say stress that we talked about hormetic stress, our body actually thrives on having a little bit of stress meaning exercise for some people cold plunges appropriate sauna, for some people, fasting is appropriate. So all of those things create a little bit of stress in the body, to what you know, to simplify it to kind of wake up the mitochondria or, or stimulate them to be better, right? He's dead. So when we put those pieces together and look at your lifestyle, then we can kind of hone in on where's the glitch? What's happening here? And where do we need to begin to create more metabolic health and you know that you're metabolically healthy. If you wake up every day clear thinking energized, you're a woman, your cycles are pretty regular, you're able to you know, you work out regularly, all those things are signals that you're metabolically healthy. If the opposite is true, and you have some dysfunction and chronic fatigue, chronic brain fog, you're sick all of the time, you feel sluggish, those are signals of I might be metabolically unhealthy.
Sheree 6:13
Oh, I love that you define that for people? Because I feel like it's very easy just to sit here and be listening and be like, Oh, well, am I metabolically healthy? Or am I not? And to kind of just trace back to one of the things you started with to answer that question, you mentioned, like, processed foods. And so that kind of gives to the fact that, you know, we should not necessarily be eating as much of that, yes, but also the argument that the calories where the calories come from, are actually more important in a number of instances than exactly how many calories there ah, when it comes to metabolic health, like, would you agree with that to a degree because of how much it can impact your metabolism? Yeah,
Christa 6:56
I mean, quality of food matters. And when we're even talking about macros, quality of your carbohydrates, quality of your fats and proteins matter. So it's not just, you know, because people could say, oh, I'm gonna do keto. And that means they're doing you know, dirty keto keto, right, they're driving through burger joint, and they're just eating the burger without the bun. But the quality of that meat, the quality of the oils that it's cooked with, really is more of a detriment. So it's not just on paper with the macros say, it's more than quality. And so what I mean by that is, when we say protein, you could be looking at plant protein, because you know, let's say there's, there's like I have a protein shake, that's and it's plant protein. Okay, great. So my body is getting some of that, but it doesn't have the same amino acid concentration in that particular protein, as let's say a whey protein shake does that has animal constituents to that protein, that protein, then we'll have higher quality amino acids in terms of what's going to stimulate and turn on muscle production and muscle maintenance, right. So certain amino acids are present in different proteins. And so a good rule of thumb is just to, you know, with with your carbohydrates, you want to focus on complex carbohydrates organic where you can, if you're doing fruits and vegetables, and then with protein, you want to focus on animal protein. I know there's vegetarians out there as well, I mean, you got to do the best that you can do. But animal protein really does give you a higher concentration of the amino acids that are really essential to this Krebs cycle to moving and motivating energy production, ultimately, neurotransmitter production. I mean, there's so many processes that come from there. So yeah, to circle back to that question calories, it matters the quality of the calories because you could have 1200 calories of chocolate bars all day. I mean, my caloric window, but what are your macros broken down to? And then what are the quality of those calories?
Sheree 8:49
Yeah, and I love that you touched on the animal protein. And even when you were mentioning before, the impact that it really has, if you don't have a high quality stomach acid. And you know, I've heard and I've seen the science on this, but a lot of people actually get turned off. And I don't want to digress on a whole side tangent, but a lot of people get turned off meat and animal products, because they're actually lacking that stomach acid production. And they don't have enough seem to break it down. So you know, the thought or the smell or the touch, or even the taste of meat can become a little bit off putting. So that could be even if that is you that could even be assigned like no, you don't necessarily and again, pick, pick whichever suits you and your morals, values and ethics. But that could actually be an underlying sign. You're not having an observing you're not have you don't have enough stomach acid production to break those things down. In other words, your metabolism does need some support, your gut health needs some support. And so why am I talking about this metabolic health? And I know both of us work with a lot of woman in perimenopause and menopause. We've talked about some of the things that can cause like weight gain or metabolism to slow down what are some of the bigger triggers in the deck? demographic, that group of women,
Christa 10:01
this is a really frustrating time period. For a lot of women, I would say 35. And up, sometimes it can start earlier. But when there's fluctuations in the sex hormones, you know, it can be really, really frustrating to say, Oh, I'm eating the same things. And I'm working out the same way, why can't I lose weight and this also can be multifactorial, but I will say that when there is a fluctuation of estrogen, it can affect insulin. So particularly as estrogen is dropping, the cells become less receptive, less open to insulin. And there aren't, you know, there's not a definite reason why, but we do know that there's a trend when estrogen goes down, and insulin resistance tends to rise. And Insulin is a hormone secreted from the pancreas, it's a peptide, and its job is to kind of be the key to stick into the lock of a cell, open the cell door and allow energy glucose fatty acids to go into the cell, right for the cell to then do the work and create ATP when the cell is bombarded. And the key has been used too many times. Particularly if you're eating a high carb diet, that really spikes up a lot of insulin, the cell is like, I've got to protect myself, because too much glucose in the cell is also damaging. So it changes the lock on the key. And so insulin has to get a little bit trickier and maybe change the key shape. And it also requires a lot more. So it's kind of pounding down the door, let's say. So when we that's called insulin resistance. The problem with that is that insulin is a storage hormone. So it's constantly in the business of storing and in the form of fat cells like putting, putting it in the form of triglycerides in the liver, stashing it away in fat cells, it's doing the best that it can to keep blood sugar out of the blood stream, because we don't want that either. It's tightly regulated. So when estrogen starts to decline, and that insulin resistance goes up your audit, you're just in storage mode constantly. And signs that you might be insulin resistant would be I'm hangry like I have to and that means that your body really is not metabolically flexible, meaning when you run out of carbohydrate stores which are easy peasy for the body to use, then the body doesn't really know how to go to fat stores. So you get you get dizzy, you get lightheaded, you feel like you can't think straight, you get irritable, you're just starving, right? Because your body your brain is like I have no fuel. Have a clue Oh, I might be insulin resistant. But the reason this happens kind of in that perimenopausal menopausal phase is not only the hormones, but you also find women get really busy. They're not prioritizing lifting weights, they're not prioritizing moving their body, they might be eating on the run more often they might be you know snacking off their kids high carb, you know, goldfish, they do. A lot of women in this bucket also tend their lifestyle has kind of lended itself to more of a disservice to their body as far as like what you're fueling your body with and how much you're stimulating the muscle, which is a glucose sponge. By the way, if you're not working out regularly, and you become more inactive, let's say you're less active because you were on a soccer team in high school and in college, and now you just don't work out the way you used to. That impacts how your body is able to utilize maybe the same calories, you just aren't burning them as well. Your body's not as efficient at burning fuel. So again, it's multifactorial, but those are some of the main things that I see that drives that that frustrating gain of five to 10 or more pounds during that time period.
Sheree 13:39
Yeah, so what I'm hearing just to recap is is an estrogen dip that will lead into perimenopause and menopause. And so that can create an insulin resistance. And we'll dive into I think you've explained that really well we can dive into that a little bit more. There's also the stress factor, the factor that people might not be eating super wild is the busyness and then the impact that that can have on the adrenals. So like you said, it's very multifactorial, then is the exercise component. So can we touch on the exercise component a little bit? I know both you and I are so passionate about strength training just in our own personal lives, but then getting our clients in amongst this as well because the benefits go far beyond Oh, cool. Like, I might lean out a little bit or yeah, my my body might feel a little bit better, which again, I'm not undermining those as outcomes, but the inner workings of having more muscle as a female and the metabolic benefits Can you can you dive into those
Christa 14:34
and I'll preface this by saying I hear you if you don't love lifting weights like some people are like Team Lifting weights and some people are doing cardio I nap team cardio I feel like oh I just I love it but I have to keep myself in check because I understand the importance of weightlifting so it doesn't come naturally to me to just want to lift weights and but I do it anyway because lifting weights and stimulating the Muscle number one, it can help stabilize some of your sex hormones. So when we're talking about naturally raising testosterone levels, when you lift weights, when you engage that muscle it does, you do produce more testosterone naturally, which is a bonus, because that declines as we, you know, hit our 40s and beyond. And so there's that benefit to it. But insulin resistance, like what I talked about, the receptors are most abundant in our muscle mass. So our mitochondria are more concentrated in muscle tissue and in the brain. So our heart or brain, huge storage, you know, lose a lot of mitochondria there, but also in our skeletal muscle. And so skeletal muscle declines as we age, because our bodies thresholds for building and maintaining muscle mass rises, like we actually require more protein more amino acids than we did when we were in our 20s. So our kids actually don't need near as much protein as we do to build and grow and maintain muscle mass and body tissues, we actually need a lot more protein. But the importance of muscle and skeletal muscle as we're aging is that insulin resistance actually can start there. Like I said, before, muscle is kind of a glucose sponge, I did this experiment wearing a continuous glucose monitor, I had a meal, I saw that it spiked, my blood sugar immediately went on a walk. So my blood sugar spiked to 150 with this particular meal, simple carbs in it and some sugar. And I went on a walk. And by the end of the walk, it was down to 90. So it was really interesting to see how my muscle moving the big muscles of my legs mobilized and moved out that glucose without any more effort from my pancreas, right. So it just absorb that. So it actually that meal required less insulin in my bodies throughout the body. Because the muscle kind of did its job and grabbed it. This is why it's important to move your body after a meal. It doesn't have to be I'm not saying eat a big meal and then go you know, go workout. But in a walk, just a simple 10 minute walk can really help this pattern of so much insulin running around in your body. So it really helps the cells out. So when we are lifting weights, we are stimulating muscle growth, and we're simulating maintenance of muscle, right? Like it's kind of like use it or lose it kind of a thing. You gotta remind your muscles, hey, we need you, when people are trying to lose weight. It's important also for that muscle to shape the body, right, so you don't have so much sagging skin. Muscle mass is also super important for longevity in terms of the ability to have the strength to do activities of daily living as you age. And it becomes harder and harder to build for sure and maintain muscle as you're aging. So definitely the younger you are being committed to lifting weights, the better because it just gets harder to have that. Yeah, just to kind of circle it back to metabolism. Muscle mass is pivotal to insulin resistance and raising it requires more energy to maintain muscle mass. This is why women get frustrated with men because men lose weight so much faster part of it is because they just naturally have a lot more muscle mass, they just sitting there burn a lot more calories because it's expensive to have muscle. Yeah, metabolically. It's expensive, right uses up a lot more energy than fat cells just kind of go up and around hanging out you know, like the couch potatoes that feels just be out and the muscle requires more energy to maintain it. So the more you focus on that and build it and you just do not build muscle with cardio. Like you just don't it cardio has its place, especially zone to where you're kind of keeping your heart rate to where you can be talking those forms of exercise can be really really helpful for a variety of reasons, but you just don't you're not going to build muscle in fact, you can lose muscle by doing long term cardio.
Sheree 18:46
Yeah, I was always been a strength training fan. So it's interesting. I did not know that about you with the cardio. I'm like give me the weights all the weights and if you try and other than walking, it's been a real challenge but I'm getting there.
Christa 18:59
Yeah, there is a team cardio and there is a team weights I mean, give me my peloton give me a peloton ride any day, but I do it. I mean, I do the weights because I understand that and I give myself like okay, you could do 10 minute or 10 minute ride or warmup that way, but then you've got to do the weights that day, you know, so I aim to lift weights at least four times a week eautiful different body parts because it's just so important. So the more you're educated on that, the more you just kind of have to work through that and say, okay, even you know, start where you are, you don't have to be a bodybuilder or you don't have to, you just have to engage those muscles, right? So people listening who are like, Oh, where do we even begin? You can do things very, very simply. I know there's a lot of complicated programs out there, but you type in YouTube, like basic like weightlifting program, and you're gonna do get your basic, you know, bicep curls, your basic tricep extensions. It doesn't have to be complicated. You just have to engage the muscle in a resistance movement. So no,
Sheree 19:59
I will of the end, you've talked about stress and how the hormetic stress the ones with the sauna. And the good kind of stress can impact an exercise and that sort of thing can impact the body. I also know that the opposite of that is true in the sense that too much stress, not the hormetic stress, but too much stress can lead to weight gain. Can you touch on how stress actually impacts the metabolism?
Christa 20:23
Yes. So what it boils down to is our bodies are designed to respond to a stressor. So if you see an emergency Cortisol is released, well, adrenaline, adrenaline is first released from the adrenal glands immediately, right? That signals the liver that signals the body to release stored sugars, because it's like, oh, we need we need fuel quickly, right now to the brain to the muscles, like immediately. And so it stimulates that release of blood sugar indirectly or directly, really from the adrenaline from cortisol. Alright, so our body doesn't know the difference between being really frustrated driving to work, or being really angry at somebody in our family, whatever our body, our brain still sends out the same exact stress signal. So if you are living day in day out with unmanaged perceived stress, you are freakouts like free counselor your jam, right? Every day, your body is putting out releasing stored sugars in your body throughout the day, without you're not even eating but you're just putting it out there, right? That creates insulin resistance that in itself can create this high blood sugar because of the cortisol. So the cortisol rises, blood sugar rises, because that's how our body is designed. And then that requires our insulin to show up. And eventually that cycle can lead to weight gain because of that whole blood sugar, insulin, cortisol Symfony, right. So it's not working in your favor. So managing stress, better managing perceived stress keeps that cortisol from that high release throughout the day, the wonkiness of that and then it keeps your blood sugar more, more stabilized. This is also why you don't want to be especially in perimenopause and the beginning of menopause. You don't want to be doing longer fasting all of the time as a woman because your adrenals are already somewhat stressed. Adrenal glands also make estrogen so when our ovaries are a little stuttery, they're not they're not quite showing up to work the way they used to. The adrenal glands are like what in the actual hell was going on here. And so they feel a little bit stressed by the signals of the estrogen is not the same. So the adrenal glands also put out cortisol when you wake up in the morning, and you decide I'm not going to eat till two o'clock today, but you have caffeine. So caffeine is going to stimulate your adrenals to push out adrenaline cortisol, right? And then just not eating is a stressor to the body, again, that can be good depends on who you are and what your body is going through. But when it's looks like that, when that picture looks like that, you are not going to lose weight with intermittent fasting, because you are stimulating that cortisol through the caffeine through the stress on the body of not eating that compounded with a little bit added stress with your normal life. And with estrogen levels being wonky, you that is a recipe for storage of insulin. Does that make sense? So you're just pushing out that cortisol, which means you're rising blood sugar, which means you're raising insulin, which means you're not moving fat source.
Sheree 23:22
Yeah, no, that all makes total sense. And I think it's something that we almost don't want to admit to ourselves. And I encounter this a lot with clients, as I'm sure you do, too. It's like, oh, what I'm not stressed, or how is this impacting my weight gain? Like, again, to go back to the calorie thing? I'm eating in a calorie deficit? Why is my body not shifting the weight? Like, yes, there's a huge component that if you are in a calorie deficit, you will shift weight, but it is important to where the calories come from. And it also depends on how stressed you are. So if you were to wrap this up with like, your top three tips for people wanting to reignite their metabolism and optimize their metabolic health, like what would those three things be? Yeah,
Christa 24:04
number one, it would be eat enough protein. So start eating real foods and aim for one gram of protein per pound in the US speech pounds. kilo, I don't know we'd have to do a translation for so one gram of protein per pound of ideal body weight. So if you're, you know, if you weigh 180, but your ideal weight is 150. So 150 and you want to get that primarily from if you're not vegetarian, you want to get it primarily from animal protein. Okay, so increasing protein is going to help all of the things it's going to help insulin resistance, it's going to help your satiety. The second thing would be to monitor the type of exercise that you're doing. So increasing the weights really being very conservative with how often do you you do HIIT exercises should only be reserved for maybe once a week for women. It's just not a good stimulus, especially when your adrenals are a bit strong. first. So yeah, eating more protein, increasing weightlifting and then prioritizing sleep and stress management, those two things are kind of in the same bucket. Right? So sleep is super important for the repair. Studies have shown that if you do not sleep enough, you can be more insulin resistant for up to two days. So it's just crazy, your cravings go up and your insulin resistance goes up. So a good quality amount of sleep is super imperative when we're talking about restoring the underlying, you know, the cellular processes in your body. So yeah, those are my top three. And I hope that everybody listening has found this to be helpful and broken down into terms that you can really understand capture and apply to your life. Yeah,
Sheree 25:41
and I think you did such a beautiful job. And if you are listening and you love this one, you love the short snippet episodes where we're really just diving into a specific topic. Let us know if you want us to bring Krista back and dive into this even more because I know you could talk for days on this. Also let us know we love to be able to provide the episodes that you guys are wanting to learn and dive into more. So thank you, Krista. And I know everyone's going to be taking so many notes throughout this
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