3 Ways to Increase Your Metabolism as an Athlete
Fuel Your Strength
Steph Gaudreau
4.8 • 1.2K Ratings
🗓️ 6 December 2022
⏱️ 28 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
One thing I hear women athletes over 40 complaining about a lot is their metabolism. I promise you that your metabolism is not broken; it may just be adapting in a downward direction based on the inputs you are putting in. While metabolism is complex, there are some simple and practical things you can start to implement today that will help you improve your metabolism as an athletic woman over 40.
If You Want to Increase Your Metabolism as an Athlete, You Should:
- Start with eating more energy, specifically protein intake
- Make muscle building a top priority by focusing on strength training
- Look for opportunities and strategies to build more non-exercise activity into your day
The Success Trifecta
The amount of energy going into your system versus what is going out, or your energy flux, is something we have discussed a lot on this podcast. Maintaining a higher energy flux is a key factor in the successful trifecta of training hard, having enough energy, and providing your body with what it needs to succeed.
Understanding how to get more adaptations out of your training by increasing your energy flux is the best way to see the positive impacts of your training that you are looking for. It doesn't take anything complicated or extreme, just a simple set of behaviors and habits that you can actually implement.
Three Simple Habits for an Imposter Metabolism
If you are tired from your training, bunking your workouts, or don't feel like training for weeks and weeks at a time, it is going to be hard to have the consistency that you need to have positive outcomes in your training. Increasing your energy flux over time will help you spend more energy through movement, exercise better, and improve your digestion, all while simultaneously building muscle.
I wish that I knew these three positive habits that can have a huge benefit on your metabolism and so much more. The positive impacts you will see from eating more protein energy, prioritizing muscle building, and incorporating more non-exercise activity into your day, will get you back into good standing with your metabolism.
How has your metabolism changed over time? Share your thoughts on my easy-to-implement metabolism habits with me in the comments on the episode page.
In This Episode
- Weaving together the threads of the last few episodes and painting a full picture of energy (2:51)
- Understanding energy flux and why slashing your energy intake is not going to give you the results you may think (5:54)
- How to minimize compensations while trying to nourish your body, maintain your energy levels, and train hard (10:22)
- Three practical things that you can focus on as an athletic woman in her 40s and beyond (17:01)
- Why you need to build more non-exercise activity into your daily routine (22:18)
Quotes
“I hear so often from athletic women over 40 who are very concerned about metabolism.” (3:20)
“We never want to lose muscle mass. Muscle mass is so incredibly important, and we know that muscle is an organ of longevity.” (9:21)
“What are the benefits of increasing your energy flux? What that really means is slowly over time increasing the amount that you are eating, and of course, being able to expend then slightly more energy through your training.” (16:02)
“These are really filed under the idea of lifestyle, nutrition and training, and things that we can do to improve our health and wellbeing and focusing on the behaviors themselves. That's what we are really trying to move the needle on here.” (18:04)
“Think about how to actually put some metabolism friendly into play in your life so that you are not stressing about the metabolism, but rather you are thinking about the positive, health-promoting changes that you can make.” (25:48)
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FYS 352: Energy Flux and Fueling for Athletes with Jamie Scott
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Recently, I got a question from a listener, which was how can I improve my metabolism as an athletic woman over the age of 40? |
| 0:08.8 | I thought this was a really great question to address on the podcast, and that's exactly what we're going to be looking at on this episode. |
| 0:16.0 | I'll be sharing my top three strategies that women athletes over 40 really need to know. |
| 0:22.0 | If you're an athletic, 40-something woman who loves lifting weights, challenging yourself, and doing hard shit, the fuel your strength podcast is for you. |
| 0:35.0 | You'll learn how to eat, train, and recover smarter so you build strength and muscle, have more energy, and perform better in and out of the gym. |
| 0:46.0 | I'm strength nutrition strategist and weightlifting coach, Steph Goddrow. The fuel your strength podcast dives into evidence-based strategies for nutrition, training, and recovery, and why once you're approaching your 40s and beyond, you need to do things a little differently than you did in your 20s. |
| 1:04.0 | We're here to challenge the limiting industry narratives about what women can and should do in training and beyond. |
| 1:12.0 | If that sounds good, hit subscribe on your favorite podcast app, and let's go. |
| 1:22.0 | Welcome back to the podcast. Thanks so much for being with me today on this episode. We're going to be diving into metabolism over 40, specifically what athletic women need to know. |
| 1:33.0 | I'm going to be covering three really important concepts. If you could only do three things, it would be these three things I would recommend doing. |
| 1:44.0 | We're going to be talking about what to do in the second part of this podcast. I'm also going to be very briefly touching on the concept of energy flux, and also tying together some of these threads that we've been weaving about energy intake and metabolism. |
| 2:02.0 | Before we head into the episode, as always, if you are like, okay, I've been listening to this. I just need someone to help guide me. I need expert guidance and coaching with a system where all the pieces work together. |
| 2:16.0 | The nutrition works with the training works with the recovery to get me to the goal of building muscle, getting stronger and increasing my energy, and of course performing better in and out of the gym. |
| 2:28.0 | Then I want to invite you to book a call to chat more with us about strength nutrition unlocked and how we can potentially help you. |
| 2:35.0 | So you can do that over at stefgadro.com slash apply to book your call. |
| 2:41.0 | Alright, so we've been weaving together several threads in the last several episodes, painting a picture about things like energy intake, low energy availability, red S. |
| 2:56.0 | We've talked a little bit about energy flux in previous episodes. We've also touched on things like how do you understand total daily energy expenditure and on the very, very surface level, what is metabolism. |
| 3:10.0 | And the reason I'm bringing this up is because I hear so often from athletic women over 40 who are very concerned about metabolism. |
| 3:21.0 | And oftentimes it goes like this, my metabolism is broken or my metabolism isn't working anymore. And we've talked about in previous episodes why that's not an accurate statement. |
| 3:32.0 | And your metabolism is always working. It just may be adapting downward in a downward direction based on the inputs that you're putting in. |
| 3:41.0 | So the reason why I'm bringing this to you is because I want you to understand why energy intake is so important why I'm always prattling on about making sure you're eating enough, especially if you're training really hard. |
| 3:53.0 | And you have goals for gaining or preserving the muscle mass that you have currently. |
... |
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