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The Power of your Metabolism

WHEN YOUR METABOLISM BECOMES STAGNANT

For the same reason that your body is alive and learns, it is important to know that if your metabolism is really a “slow metabolism”, you can experience periods of stagnation in your slimming down.  In other words, it won’t be every week that you lose weight or lower your fat at a rate that keeps you enthusiastic about the results.

When a metabolism is really a “slow metabolism”, the person experiences periods of stagnation where it seems like it doesn’t matter what they do, they simply can’t lose weight for several weeks. This isn’t true for all cases or for everyone, but it certainly could be true for you.  If you find that you aren’t slimming down and you don’t notice positive changes in the reduction of your clothing size or waistline, even after controlling how much refined carbohydrates you eat, and following the other recommendations, this would be the case with your body.  So, you’ve been slimming down for several weeks in a row and suddenly you find yourself stagnant in the process and you stop slimming down.  It is what we call a “stagnation” of the metabolism.

If your metabolism becomes stagnant, don’t despair, there is a way to undo it.  To do so, you must work toward increasing the function of your thyroid gland by increasing your consumption of carbohydrates that are starches (rice, potato, root vegetables, etc.) at selected times throughout your week.  Starches are molecules of simple sugars that the body quickly turns into glucose.  That’s why they make you gain fat very easily if you abuse them.  When your metabolism is “stagnant” it is because your body is convinced that there is a glucose “shortage” and it is trying to “economize”.  The solution is to show your body, a couple of days out of the week, that there is no shortage.  It is convincing it that it must increase the metabolism.

Since the week consists of 7 days and you have breakfast, lunch and dinner every day, you end up having 21 meals every week.  If you provide your body with at least 3 meals a week that have foods that produce a lot of glucose you will be “educating” it that there is no shortage and therefore it should increase the rate of the metabolism.  You achieve this by causing an increase of glucose in at least 3 of the 21 meals you eat in a week.

The idea is to undo the metabolism stagnation by convincing the body to increase the metabolism by showing it that there is no food (glucose) shortage.  The way to do this is by eating a bigger proportion of starches (rice, potato, root vegetables, etc.)

To undo a stagnant metabolism, what I’ve seen that works is to cause a considerable increase of glucose in your blood to reactivate the thyroid gland.  Naturally, you have to do it carefully and never make it a habit because you would end up gaining weight if you kept constant high levels of glucose and insulin in your blood.  The idea is to “wake up or reactivate your thyroid”, knowing that your body has the ability to learn and adapt to what is happening.

The late Dr. Atkins, creator of the famous diet low in carbohydrates that made him popular years ago, had realized this.  The metabolism can become stagnant, if the body feels that the glucose is constantly low, because it interprets is as a situation of a food “shortage” and it feels forced to economize.  Dr. Atkins used to handle this stagnation by recommending that the people whose slimming down process had become stagnant actually abandon their low carbohydrate diet for a full week and later go back on it.  I’ve seen that having only 3 meals high in starches in a week can undo a stagnant metabolism.

To undo a stagnant metabolism you can follow a diet like the one in the table below where 3 of your weekly meals, preferably 3 dinners, would be much higher in starches.  In order to designate “low carbohydrates consumption” in the table, we use the abbreviation “LCC”.

To increase your glucose levels and undo your stagnant metabolism, it is not recommended that you increase your consumption of bread or wheat flour.  This is due to the fact that many of us have bodies that have what is called a “food intolerance” to wheat flour and that is why many people find it necessary to completely eliminate wheat products and flour (bread, pasta, cookies, cake, etc.) to be able to slim down.

There is a reason why it is recommended that your ideal time to increase your starches, so as to increase your glucose and “wake up” your metabolism, be during dinner and not during your breakfast or lunch.  Carbohydrates that are starches cause a quick increase of glucose and this forces your body to produce more insulin.  Insulin causes hunger within a very short time (3-4 hours) of having eaten carbohydrates.  In order to avoid feeling hungry during the day it is better to increase your carbohydrates during your dinner so that the insulin starts to have an effect of creating hunger when you are sleeping.  That way you won’t have to suffer the hunger creating effect of the high production of insulin and you will never feel hungry.

Bodybuilders, whose goal is to develop muscle mass by lifting weights, have discovered that the only diet that works for them is a diet that is low in carbohydrates and high in proteins.  But they have also discovered that without insulin you can’t build muscle. Insulin is a “building” hormone; it helps the body build either fat or muscle depending on what you feed the body. Since the body only produces larger amounts of insulin in response to the consumption of carbohydrates, bodybuilders have learned to have several meals high in carbohydrates from 3 to 5 times a week, to guarantee that their body is producing enough insulin so that their muscles can grow.  So, staying on a diet low in carbohydrates and high in proteins, except for 3 to 5 meals out of the week where they do what is called “carbohydrate loading” isn’t anything more than an increase of carbohydrates to stimulate the creation of more insulin that allows them to build more muscle.

   This same concept is what we use to undo a stagnant metabolism.  With the 3 dinners a week that are high in starchy carbohydrates, we are giving a clear message to our body that it can start “burning” the glucose that it has because there is no glucose shortage.

   If at any moment you find yourself forced by social commitments to have a dinner high in carbohydrates it doesn’t necessarily mean that it is going to make you gain fat.  Understanding how your body and your metabolism work can help you not only to undo your stagnant metabolism, but also to avoid “feeling bad about it” unnecessarily from having “harmed your diet”.

   If at any moment you go over your allotted carbohydrates and feel that you have harmed your 2x1 or 3x1 diet©, you should forgive yourself.  Just think to yourself that you were trying to boost your metabolism by convincing your thyroid gland there isn’t a shortage.  However, don’t use this as a justification for not following your 2x1 or 3x1 diet because it will make you fail in your attempt in increasing your metabolism and slimming down.

   If your metabolism becomes stagnant, use this system to undo it, but if you keep on slimming down week after week, don’t do it if you don’t find it necessary.