Do you have a broken metabolism? Probably not. But, it might be slower. Let me show you how to increase your metabolism and lose weight for good.

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Everyone has that friend that can basically eat anything she wants and never gains a single pound because she has a … “fast metabolism.”

Meanwhile, if you so much as glance at a bowl of rice, you automatically gain two inches on your hips. As a result, you’ve probably accused your own metabolism as being broken or damaged. You’ve been cursed to never lose weight again.

It’s cases like these that showcase that everyone has a different metabolism.

You can be the exact same height, weight, age and gender as your sibling, coworker or friend and still have two completely different metabolisms at play.

Which can make this even more frustrating, especially when you’ve been doing all the right things and nothing is happening while your bestie Stacy can eat pizza and donuts all day and never gain weight.

Does this sound familiar?

You’ve been putting maximal effort into your weight loss program. Eating all of the right foods and hitting your calories and protein on a consistent basis while focusing on strength training and being active. Yet, the scale is not budging and you’re not getting any leaner.

The next logical step in this endless cycle of suck is to consult your local health and fitness coach, or Google, where the advice is to cut your calories and add more activity.

Eat less and move more.

It’s the simple sound bytes that can end up driving you into chronic patterns of endless cardio, restrictive dieting and punishingly low calorie diets with little to show for your efforts. And it’s the wrong approach.

There’s more going on here that needs to be explained, and no, it is not necessarily a broken metabolism.

Those words, “broken metabolism,” get thrown around quite a bit, yet it is far less common than the Interwebz would have you believe. It’s time to set the record straight on this to explain exactly what’s going on with your metabolism.

In this article, we’ll break down:

• What is metabolism
• The four major factors that make up metabolism
• How your metabolism is highly adaptive
• Six keys you need to learn how to increase your metabolism and lose weight again

Let’s get into it.

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What is metabolism?

Definition: the chemical processes that occur within a living organism in order to maintain life.

In more simplistic terms: Your metabolism is how the body breaks down foods and processes those foods into energy so you can function properly. It’s the leading factor as to how many calories you can eat in any given day.

When metabolism slows down, it means your body is becoming more efficient at burning calories to maintain proper function. More efficiency is awesome in most cases, not so great for you when you’d like to eat a slice of bread without it packing on extra pounds.

A slower metabolism means fewer calories required before you gain unwanted weight. It also means you’d likely need more activity throughout your day, too. Which is where the whole, “eat less and move more” phrase got started.

Now, before we discuss how to increase your metabolism, it’s important to discuss the many factors that make up your metabolism so we have a better understanding of how to manipulate it going forward.

Four major keys that make up metabolism

BMR (basal metabolic rate) –– I like to call these “coma calories.” BMR is the minimum amount of energy it takes to keep your body actually functioning; this is the energy you burn before any exercise and it accounts for about 70% of the calories you burn on any given day.

When we refer to an individual’s metabolism, it is usually this number that we’re referring to, as it has the largest impact on our metabolic rates as a whole. It’s the BMR that will really dictate how much someone can or can’t eat (whether that’s a goal of losing weight, maintaining or even gaining muscle).

We typically assume that metabolism decreases (or slows down) as we age. However, that slowdown in metabolism is usually just a result of increased fat mass, decreased lean muscle tissue and less daily activity.

This is great news! It means any perceived “stalls” or “plateaus” in your metabolism are preventable as long as you commit to staying on top of your nutrition and exercise.

Likewise, you can actually increase your BMR by improving body composition. The best way to improve body composition is by adding lean muscle mass. And the best way to add lean muscle mass is to commit to a solid and consistent strength training program.

This is why I’m always emphasizing the importance of lifting heavy. For everyone. No matter the age. Cardio simply does not increase muscle mass the way strength training does.

It’s important to note that, yes, genetics are part of the equation to determine your actual BMR. But for most of us, even those of you with similar body compositions, this still only varies by about 200-300 calories. That’s the equivalent of a handful of peanuts, not some earth-shattering smorgasbord of foods and carbs.

NEAT –– these are the calories burned through random, non-exercise related movements; like when you’re fidgeting or tapping your feet or fingers. It takes calories to fuel these movements. And it can account for almost 10-20% of your daily calorie burn. It’s a big reason why it’s so important to find more time in your day for random movement, like walking more or simply taking the stairs.

Activity –– this is purposeful movement in the form of strength training and cardio. While we’ve been programmed to believe that exercise is the biggest factor or weight loss, the simple truth is that purposeful activity might only lead to about 5-10% of the daily calorie burn. In other words: you cannot out-train a bad diet.

Thermic Effect of Food (TEF) –– when you eat that steak and potatoes at your favorite restaurant, the body needs to digest the meal and needs fuel to actual break it all down. So basically, you are in fact burning calories when you are eating calories. This makes up close to 10% of your daily caloric burn.

And actually, the thermic effect of protein is the highest of the major macronutrients, which means it takes more energy to digest and efficiently process proteins once they hit your system.

Protein uses about 20-30% of its energy during digestion; carbs use about 10% and fats use only 0-3%.

It’s a large reason why protein is so celebrated in the weight loss programming. It can make a big difference in burning calories and seeing fantastic results. Simply upping your daily protein target might be all that’s needed to increase your metabolism.

Metabolic Adaptation: Your body is really smart

When you go on a diet in an effort to lose weight, you are aiming to put your body in a caloric deficit. This simply means you are consuming fewer calories than your body is using.

Energy In is less than Energy Out

By manipulating this energy balance, your body has no choice but to utilize existing stores of energy within the body itself (more specifically, any excess fat stores). As a result, you lose weight.

Unfortunately, it’s not always that easy. Because when we eat less food, we have a tendency to move less, too.

You see, as you continue to diet, your body gets really efficient at the fuel sources it’s being given on a daily basis and even more efficient at the movement patterns that you perform consistently.

It’s a big reason why people hit what they perceive to be a “plateau:” Or when you’ve been doing everything seemingly right for a long period of time without any progress.

Oftentimes, we describe this as a stall. And when this “stall” persists, you might have thrown up your hands and declared that your metabolism was broken.

This is not really the case.

Unless you’ve been clinically diagnosed with a metabolic disorder, an autoimmune disorder, low testosterone or thyroid issues, your metabolism is doing just fine. Instead, it’s just adapted to the new normal of lower calories and steady movement.

It’s become more efficient.

In many cases you might have even acknowledged this and then done the next logical thing in the journey to finally break this plateau, you lowered calories even more and upped your movement to break the cycle.

This can work in some instances for short periods of time. But, remember, the body is much smarter than you and it will adapt again.

There’s only so low you can go with your calories and only so much movement you can do in a day to overcome this cycle.

If you’ve been restricting calories for an extended period of time, it may be time to give yourself a psychological break and eat more food in what is commonly referred to as a diet break.

Counterintuitive, I know. But, it could be the biggest factor holding you back from making real progress.

In fact, the vast majority of clients that come to me for one-on-one coaching have been under-eating for an extended period of time. The first step in my programming is then to increase their calories and allow that metabolism to essentially “reset.” I hate using that word, but it’s the best way to describe the process.

We’re letting the metabolism adapt to a new normal of more food so it can become efficient with more fuel. So when we are ready to drop calories again, the body must draw from existing sources to burn energy … and then weight loss begins anew.

These diet breaks should happen every 10-12 weeks during a cutting phase. They should last anywhere from two weeks to as many as a few months, sometimes even a full year if chronic dieting has been a problem.

Here’s the good news about your metabolism

You have control over your daily activity. You have control over the foods that you eat.

In other words, you do have some control over the speed of your metabolism and you can blunt (and even reverse) the effects when it slows down.

The key is to focus on the right kind of movement that burns calories (duh) while still increasing your BMR over time.

The next important note is that your movement shouldn’t be something that provides more stress to the body. When we add more stressors, your body inherently decreases the NEAT activity and you’ll burn fewer calories.

Chronic Cardio Dieters (your friends that spend hours jogging on treadmills as their primary driver of weight loss) unintentionally add stressors to their bodies that lead to increased hunger and promote less movement throughout the day.

As a result, their NEAT calories are drastically reduced and they end up binge-watching more Stranger Things on Netflix instead of getting up and moving around more often.

Six keys you need to learn how to increase your metabolism and lose weight again

Here are my best tactics for increasing your metabolic rate so you can start seeing more results again:

Focus on Strength Training

Lean muscle tissue is the biggest factor in ramping up that BMR for good. When you have more muscle, your body needs more fuel to keep it running optimally.

Aim for 2-3 strength training workouts per week at minimum. It doesn’t have to be some effort to win the next Olympic Powerlifting competition, but you do need to work on a program that promotes progressive overload––sciency shit for just lifting heavy weights with each consecutive workout.

Strength training will always beat cardio in this category.

Increase Daily Activity and NEAT

Sure you might be working out every day with your CrossFit or Orange Theory for an hour each and every day of the week. But, what are you doing with the other 23 hours of your day?

This is the most overlooked factor of the entire weight loss game.

Typically, we assume that because calories are in check and a workout is scheduled, that’s all you need to focus on and weight loss will happen.

But, remember NEAT calories make up as much as 20% of your daily caloric burn. If you find yourself sitting around the house or office when you are outside of the gym, this could be your No. 1 culprit preventing you from seeing long term progress.

Fortunately, the solution is simple. Just get up more.

While we cannot measure how much fidgeting we do on a daily basis, we can measure steps. Walking is my favorite form of cardio to add to any fat loss program and it should be a huge part of your daily activity, too.

My advice here is two-fold:

1. Grab an activity tracker and aim for 10,000 steps per day.
2. Don’t sit around for more than 50-60 minutes at any given time. Set a timer and try to get up and move every single hour of the day for at least a couple of minutes.

These two practices alone can account for an extra 300 calories burned each and every day.

Avoid Chronic Cardio

Excessive cardio is a stressor on the body. On top of already high levels of stress from constant dieting, this is a recipe for additional metabolic adaptation that will slow things down.

It’s important to note that while pounding away on a treadmill, stair master or elliptical for hours every week is not optimal and can hinder your metabolism, walking is totally fine. See the previous point.

Keep in mind that moderate sessions of long-lasting cardio raise the hormones in your body that signal hunger. In other words, you are more prone to get hangry. On top of already dieting and restricting calories, this sounds like no fun.

The best cardio plan is a compliment to a strength building program. It includes a good metabolic-friendly session of intervals about once or twice per week. And then tops it off with tons of walking.

If you enjoy jogging, have a goal for a road race and/or get that runner’s high, then by all means, keep it up. But, it is definitely not needed for weight loss. I explain that in this article.

Eat more protein

Protein has the highest thermic effect of food. It requires more energy (or calories) to digest protein than it does for carbs or fats (by as much as 20-percent).

While protein requirements aren’t nearly as crazy as you see in the magazines and some online sources, it’s still likely more than what you may have been used to eating before jumping into a sustainable fat loss program.

In the past, when you’ve jumped into a weight loss program trying to “tone” or “get lean,” what you really meant is that you wanted to lose fat while preserving muscle. That’s exactly why higher protein is needed.

It repairs broken down muscle tissue, which is 1) totally fine and 2) a normal part of strength training and dieting.

Aim for a minimum of 0.7 grams per pound of bodyweight for a daily protein target.

Yet to really get the benefits of the TEF of protein, you should shoot higher, my darling. In these cases, look for closer to 1.0 grams per pound of GOAL bodyweight.

For example:
Brandon is 160 pounds and wants to lose 20 pounds. He’ll aim for 140 grams of protein per day (160 – 140 = 160).

Brandon might not hit that goal every day. But, as long as he’s pushing his protein intake a bit higher, it’ll pay off in the long run.

Avoid prolonged and excessive dieting and caloric deficits

Don’t take the “If some is good, more is better,” approach to a calorie deficit. Oftentimes, out of pure impatience, you may have just dropped calories to wicked low levels.

This is a recipe for disaster.

The body is highly adaptable and after long term dieting, it will respond by dropping your BMR and random activity (NEAT calories) throughout your day.

This doesn’t mean your metabolism is broken. But, it does mean you’ll need to do some work to essentially speed it back up again.

And the only way to do that is through an increase in calories.

Avoid this by riding the ebbs and flows of a dieting phase. After a good 10-12 weeks of a caloric deficit, jump into a momentum or lifestyle phase by increasing your calories to maintenance calories for a good 2-3 weeks.

This diet break is not a pass to a buffet for an all-out binge of carbs and fats. It’s a strategic increase of calories to the level that will maintain your weight, regulate your hormones and ensure your metabolism doesn’t adapt to a new lower level for longer than it needs.

After the 2-3 weeks of eating at maintenance calories, you can go right back into your dieting plan once again by dropping calories. And when you do drop calories, never shoot for overly restrictive deficits.

I always aim for a nice, manageable deficit of about a 20-30% reduction in calories. For instance, if you maintain your weight at 2100 calories, you’d aim for a deficit at about 1,500-1,700 calories.

Be patient and stop looking for a magic pill

You didn’t gain weight overnight. You cannot lose it overnight.

Weight loss takes time. It’s not an overnight procedure. It takes many more than just six weeks to get a beach bod.

Taking all of the previous factors into consideration, you can start to see how this process would take an extended period of time to sort out for good and lead to a long-term, sustainable weight loss.

Sure, you could hop on some rapid weight loss trend, flush a bunch of water weight out and feel great for a couple of weeks, only to see the weight rebound and leave you right back at the starting line.

That sucks. That’s not what I want for you. And I’m sure that’s not what you want for yourself.

Understand that this shit takes time. It takes consistent effort and patience. But, if you stay in the game and never give up and just fighting, you will eventually see progress.

Let me help you learn how to increase your metabolism so you can finally lose weight again … 

I’m here to help you out. 

If you have any questions, reach out. I answer all of my emails at pete [at] petecataldo [.] com … Hit me up with the subject line “Increase my Metabolism” and I’ll answer any questions you have to make this work for you.

Or you can hit me up anytime on the socialz on Facebook, Twitter or Instagram.

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