All successful “diets” have the same thing in common.
TL;DR: All successful “diets” will be sustainable habits, not short-term fixes. Habits that create a balanced metabolism will keep our BGLs steady, reduce inflammation, and help us reach our fitness goals faster. (about 9 min read)
Metabolic tips for building sustainable habits:
Choose a diet/fitness plan that will keep your BGLs stable.
Build habits that work with YOUR lifestyle, preferences, and goals!
Adjust your simple carb intake to match your activity levels: less movement = less simple carbs.
Burning fat reduces inflammation IF you are not introducing extra stress! Use the “rule of cool” to decide if something actually works for you.
Our most common actions will determine our results. This is true for when we invest in our health as it is for when we invest in other aspects of our life. We have three resources: our time, our money, and our health. We can use one of those resources to compensate for when we’re short on another - like if we’re really busy, we might spend more on prepared food or going out because we have more money than time. Or if we’re really trying to save money for something, we might spend more time preparing food at home because we have more time than money. We might spend some of our health by sleeping less to get something important done, and then later spend money or time on self-care. But what will ultimately determine our outcomes will be what we do most often with our money, time, or health.
If you want to be successful, you make consistent investments over time and avoid “get rich” or “get ripped” quick schemes. That’s it. There are no “get ripped quick” schemes that are successful because those diets or programs or cleanses are not sustainable. Now, that doesn’t mean that all crash courses are useless. We might want a hardcore shock to our system for a relatively short (ie, a month) period of time so we can reset what “normal” feels like when our habits have drifted too far from where we want them to be. This may be something like a “spending freeze” to raise awareness on how many little things we buy that we don’t actually value, or it may be a “30 day challenge” in the kitchen to remind ourselves that we can in fact get 25g of fiber a day, or it may be a “sober month” to raise awareness on how many one-drink-with-dinner’s we are actually drinking.
Investing in our health is just as boring as investing in our finances. Ultimately, we’ll see gains in our fitness when we consistently put in effort, just like we’ll see gains in our finances when we consistently contribute to boring investments that will grow slowly - but reliably - over time. Going all-in on single stocks isn’t a good financial idea and neither is going all-in on some fad diet that looks nothing like your regular life and doesn’t really work with your normal habits. Boring does not equal bad.
All successful diets keep BGLs steady and reduce inflammation. Okay, so you’re ready to build a sustainable practice. Where do you start? What type of diet do you adopt long-term for maximum benefits? This is going to depend on your personal lifestyle, preferences, and goals. But all successful diets will keep blood glucose levels (BGLs) steady and reduce inflammation.
For example, the ketogenic diet (a diet low in carbs and high in fat) will create a situation where your body doesn’t rely on dietary carbs and instead keeps BGLs steady by activating gluconeogenesis (making new glucose) in the liver. This also encourages breaking down fat to release ketone bodies that can be burned for energy instead of glucose, so BGLs don’t dip. The ketone body beta-hydroxybutyrate (BHB) will also reduce inflammation by suppressing the activation of a pro-inflammatory complex in immune cells*. Some people don’t like ketogenic diets because they want to eat more carbs - is there a way to get the same anti-inflammatory benefits without going keto?
Another example is intermittent fasting. When we’re fasting, we’re not taking new glucose in from our diet so our bodies have to make glucose to maintain BGLs. Once we use up our glycogen stores, we’ll activate gluconeogenesis and start burning more fat. The ketone bodies from burning fat will also help lower inflammation. “But, Sarah”, you might be saying to yourself, “I do not want to skip snacks. I am here for the snacks.” Same. I do not want to skip snacks either.
A third example is moving around enough to burn through our glycogen stores. How much you have to move depends on how much glycogen you have stored, but once you use that glycogen up, you will activate gluconeogenesis and start burning more fat. See the trend?
To reduce inflammation, you need YOUR BODY to keep your BGLs stable and not a continuous supply of tiny cookies. Maybe an occasional supply of tiny cookies. That you eat when you know you’re going to move around, so that your muscles will take care of that tiny glucose spike and stop your insulin levels from rising. Yes this is how Teddy Grahams become part of my marathon training. I love graham crackers.
Burning fat reduces inflammation IF you are not introducing extra stress. If you find that you are trying a “sustainable” diet/fitness plan and you (a) feel really tired or light-headed during the day or after work-outs, (b) start taking longer to recover, (c) stop seeing progress in your goals, or (d) are just not having fun because you’re worried about eating the wrong thing at the wrong time, you are introducing extra stress.
If this happens, it’s time to take stock of whether or not your habits are actually sustainable (hint: they’re not). This can be tough for some of us who really really want to be successful and end up putting too much pressure on ourselves. Just like it’s important to have an accountability buddy or coach to help set ourselves up for success, it can be helpful to have a coach help us make sure we aren’t over-doing it, having a bad time, and setting ourselves up for failure.
Use the “rule of cool” to help you build sustainable habits. If we are starting from a place that’s really far from where we want to end up, we’ll need to make incremental changes along the way. This will allow us to build up to our final habits so that the place we end up in is sustainable. Use the “rule of cool” - if you are miserable, that’s not cool. It’s okay to adjust over time. It’s your fitness journey, not your fitness race.
Metabolic tips for building sustainable habits:
Choose a diet/fitness plan that will keep your BGLs stable.
Build habits that work with YOUR lifestyle, preferences, and goals!
Adjust your simple carb intake to match your activity levels: less movement = less simple carbs.
Burning fat reduces inflammation IF you are not introducing extra stress! Use the “rule of cool” to decide if something actually works for you.
*A reminder that ketogenesis (aka ketosis; making ketone bodies) is different than ketoacidosis (making so many ketone bodies that it changes our blood pH and we die).
Youm et al., (2015) The ketone metabolite B-hydroxybutyrate blocks NLRP3 inflammasome-mediated inflammatory disease. Nature Medicine.
Are your headaches coming from dehydration messing with your blood pressure?
TL;DR: Dehydration causes a number of changes that cause, including swelling of the blood vessels in your brain, changes in blood pressure, and stress on your blood vessels. Being thirsty on main is bad for your heart.
Metabolic tips for reducing headaches and stress to blood vessels:
Drink enough water. If this is something you forget to do when the day gets busy, set a timer for 1 hour and drink a glass of water when it goes off. You should have to pee once every 1-2 hrs throughout the day.
Move around for a few minutes every hour - this will help the exchange of fluids between your gut, blood, and lymph and help the water you drink actually hydrate your body.
Avoid drinks with caffeine or sports drinks unless you’re actively sweating.
Proper hydration is an important part of your “nutrition” plan. Dehydration decreases blood volume and slows down how quickly nutrients, including glucose, can get to your different organs.
You are alive because of a well-coordinated dance between nutrients in your body. You remember hearing somewhere along the way that “the mitochondria is the powerhouse of the cell”? (I know what you’re thinking: is this professor about to get deep on the mitochondria? Okay, Sarah, talk nerdy to me.) For now, you just have to remember that the mitochondria makes most of the molecule that carries “energy” around your body (ATP).
Energy is actually made when mitochondria burn molecules as fuel. How does fuel actually get to the mitochondria? It has to get into the cell - the mitochondria can break down molecules (the technical term is “oxidize” because it uses oxygen HOW CREATIVE) that got imported in from the blood. Molecules imported in from the blood can either be used immediately - like when you’re running/cycling/exercising after fasting & your muscles pulling glucose out of the bloodstream to keep you moving. Or they can be stored for use later - like when insulin tells your fat and liver cells to pull glucose out to bring down BGLs when you’re not moving. (Glucose is not the only molecule your mitochondria burn, obvs; we’ll get to some of the other molecules that get oxidized later).
Side note: insulin will tell your muscles and liver to get glucose out of the blood, but it doesn’t have to be stored as fat. Glucose can be stored as glycogen IF your glycogen stores are low. How do you lower your glycogen stores? Guess. Or ask. Or read more later.
So how do molecules that will be burned as fuel get into the cell? Fuel travels through your blood. If your blood is not moving well, your cells aren’t getting the fuel they need to keep you, well, fueled. Does low blood volume, or low fuel levels, contribute to feeling tired? Yes. Lower blood volume also sends a signal to your brain that your blood glucose levels (BGLs) are about to go all out of whack since your body is concerned about the concentration of glucose. The same total number of glucose in a smaller volume = more concentrated. And any changes to the total number of glucose molecules in a smaller volume are going to have a much larger effect on the concentration, which throws your body into a cycle of over-compensating and fishtailing back and forth to try to adjust and maintain proper BGLs.
Dehydration causes lower blood volume = changes in blood pressure that cause headaches. In an effort to make up for the lower blood volume, your brain will release a hormone called vasopressin to try to retain water in your body so you don’t lose more blood volume. Vasopressin also tells your liver to release more glucose into the bloodstream. This is an attempt to counteract the reduced speed of glucose delivery by simply flooding the system - if it’s going to take longer for the glucose to show up, at least there can be more of it when it gets there. This is a short-term solution at best, since the increased BGLs are also stressful to the cells that make up your blood vessels (aka vascular epithelial cells).
Chronic dehydration leads to sustained high BGLs, which interferes with proper blood vessel function. In addition to changes in blood pressure from the hormones your brain releases, blood vessels themselves contribute to your blood pressure. Blood vessels need to be elastic - they expand when the heart pumps blood and they constrict after that rush comes through to help keep pushing the blood around your body. If your heart had to generate all of the force needed to move your blood around, it would break (and sometimes it does if your blood vessels lose elasticity…) Moving our blood around, either by exercise, certain yoga poses, or massage, does a lot to help our heart out.
Changes in the size of our blood vessels is called dilation and sustained high BGLs, or other factors that induce insulin resistance, interfere with the blood vessels’ ability to dilate properly.* This leads to all sorts of problems, including higher risk of cardiovascular disease and atherosclerosis, but the one you feel on a daily basis is headaches and general fatigue.
Seriously, don’t be caught out there acting thirsty.
Metabolic tips for reducing headaches and stress to blood vessels:
Drink enough water. If this is something you forget to do when the day gets busy, set a timer for 1 hour and drink a glass of water when it goes off. You should have to pee once every 1-2 hrs throughout the day.
Move around for a few minutes every hour - this will help the exchange of fluids between your gut, blood, and lymph and help the water you drink actually hydrate your body.
Avoid drinks with caffeine or sports drinks unless you’re actively sweating.
*It’s been known for a while that nitric oxide (NO) is an important vasodilator. Recent work is also shedding light on how insulin resistance in vascular endothelial cells interferes with NO production.
Chen et al., (2008) Nitric Oxide in the vasculature: where does it come from and where does it go? A quantitative perspective. Antioxid-Redox Signal.
Park et al., (2022) Endothelial cells induced progenitors into brown fat to reduce atherosclerosis. Circulation Research.
These “Foundational Five” habits will have the most influence over your health & fitness.
TL;DR: Our daily habits are going to build the foundation of our health and fitness. (about 7 min read)
“Foundation Five” habits for a healthy metabolism:
Get 6.5 - 8 hrs of sleep per night!
Stay hydrated!
Build your nutritional base: get PROTEIN (0.34 - 0.55g protein/lb body weight; ~1g/kg BW) and FIBER (minimum 25g) every day.
Fuel your exercise: eat simple carbs in proportion to the exercise you’re going to do.
Move your blood: exercise and massage both help improve blood flow, nutrient delivery, & immune function. Adjust your movement based on your fitness goals.
We have three resources: our time, our money, and our health. We can use time to get more money or spend money to save ourselves time, and we can put both time and money into our health. But we cannot buy our health back completely. We sometimes sacrifice our health when we’re short on time or money, and we aren’t completely in control of our bodies (genetics, random accidents, prior life experiences we didn't have control over). But we literally wouldn’t be alive here if our bodies stopped working.
It’s important to invest in our health the same way we invest quality time with people we love and we invest money to be financially healthy and stable in the future. Keeping our bodies in good working condition is not something we can do a “cleanse” for and bad habits are not something we can supplement our way out of. “Cleanses” (ie, taking stock of our habits and making adjustments) and supplements definitely have their place - but they are like sprinkles on a cake. They are not the batter. They will not be able to give you the delicious base you are looking for. (note to me: don’t write analogies before lunch…)
The majority of our health and fitness is determined by our daily habits. The good news is that “messing up” on these foundational 5 habits on any one day isn’t going to make a big difference in our overall health. Eat an extra donut in the break room after an important (boring) work meeting? Not a big deal. Stay up late catching up with a friend you haven’t seen in a while? A great use of your time. Make a big stack of pancakes with your kids on the weekend and don’t immediately get up and do jumping jacks? Sounds like a great Saturday.
The better news is that setting good habits as part of your normal routine is going to really be the deciding factor in whether or not your other efforts in the kitchen or at the gym are successful. It does not matter how much cardio you do if you don’t eat enough during the day and then binge right before you go to bed. It does not matter how much you lift if you aren’t getting enough protein or sleep. You can eat the same amount of total calories and do the same amount of work and get totally different results if you ignore your metabolism and work against your body.
The “Foundation Five” habits will help you maintain metabolic balance and reduce stress. Stress = metabolic imbalance, and this leads to feeling crummy in the short term (tiredness, headaches) and disease in the long term (insulin resistance, increased risk of cardiovascular disease, cognitive dysfunction, cancer). We can’t cure disease by diet alone but we can give ourselves the best shot for preventing it, slowing it down, and recovering when things do inevitably happen to us.
Build your nutritional base with protein and fiber. A good rule of thumb to plan your diet around is “greens, beans, berries”. “Greens” are greens (obviously). “Beans” can be actual beans, but this can also be any food that is high in protein + fiber. If you like chicken as your protein, make sure to add something with fiber to your plate like quinoa, nuts, or sweet potatoes. “Berries” are sweet things you can add to your plate, like adding blueberries to greek yogurt. I mention “berries” instead of fruit in general because berries tend to be more nutrient dense and lower in simple carbs than other fruits so they’re a good option to incorporate if you are stuck at your desk at work/in a car or plane while traveling/some other situation you can’t move around and you want to reduce simple carbs.
Eat simple carbs in proportion to the movement you’re doing. Less active = less simple carbs. More active = simple carbs before your activity to fuel your movement, then simple carbs + protein after your activity to fuel your recovery (glycogen, healing, muscle growth).
Simple carbs (which raise your blood glucose levels quickly, so your body sees them as “sugar” even if you don’t think of them as sweets) definitely have a place in our nutrition plan, but if we eat them when we’re not moving or we already have full glycogen stores, then we will store them as fat. When we eat simple carbs too quickly and don’t bring our BGLs down with movement, the biochemistry of how we store excess simple carbs can cause inflammation. So timing when, and how fast, you eat simple carbs has a HUGE impact on your metabolism even if you aren’t eating extra calories.
Move your blood around. Your blood carries all the nutrients your body needs AS WELL AS the signals your different organs use to communicate with each other. Moving your blood also helps your immune system because it increases the exchange of signals and biological molecules between your lymph (the liquid in your body that isn’t in your blood vessels) and your blood. You cannot get rid of biological waste or fight infections without moving things from your lymph into your bloodstream.
If going to the gym or running around town is not your thing, simple bodyweight movements throughout the day, stretching and yoga, and massage can move your blood and help with lymph exchange. This can also be a really helpful thing to remember for times when we have limited mobility. At some point in our lives, we will all deal with limited mobility - maybe we’re recovering from an injury, or have a pre-existing condition, or we’re pregnant. Knowing what our options are for getting our blood moving and making circulation a priority will benefit all of your other health efforts!
“Foundation Five” habits for a healthy metabolism:
Get 6.5 - 8 hrs of sleep per night!
Stay hydrated!
Build your nutritional base: get PROTEIN (0.34 - 0.55g protein/lb body weight; ~1g/kg BW) and FIBER (minimum 25g) every day.
Fuel your exercise: eat simple carbs in proportion to the exercise you’re going to do.
Move your blood: exercise and massage both help improve blood flow, nutrient delivery, & immune function. Adjust your movement based on your fitness goals.
How does dehydration hurt our metabolism and make us tired?
TL;DR: Staying hydrated is an important part of keeping a balanced metabolism and reducing stress (stress = metabolic imbalance). Dehydration causes the liver to put more glucose into the bloodstream, slows down the time it takes for glucose to move through the body, and causes our brains to swell. This leaves us tired and causes headaches. (about 6 min read)
Metabolic tips for staying hydrated to reduce metabolic stress:
Stay hydrated! Your pee shouldn’t be darker than the inside of a lemon.
Drinking liquids that increase cortisol (like too much caffeine) or BGLs (like sugary drinks) will dehydrate you. You may temporarily feel better due to the increased glucose, but this will quickly wear off.
Drink water that’s supplemented with whatever salts you lost in your sweat - but not more than that. If you aren’t sweating, skip the “sports” drinks and go for actual water.
Proper hydration is an important part of your “nutrition” plan. How, you might be asking yourself, can water with literally zero nutrients contribute to balanced nutrition? That’s a good question. Water makes up the majority of our blood volume (and about 55-60% of our total body weight). Being dehydrated reduces the amount of water in our blood and organs, which leads to changes in our metabolism and increased physiological stress.
Dehydration reduces blood volume. Your blood carries all of the nutrition your organs will use. This includes glucose (obviously) as well as fats you’ll use for energy, vitamins and minerals your cells need to function properly, and other metabolites like ketone bodies and other sugars. When you’re dehydrated, your blood is thicker - so even though you have the same amount of all the things in your blood, you have less blood in total. This makes it harder for your heart to pump blood around your body and subsequently slows down the rate of nutrition delivery to your different organs.
Slower blood flow = less glucose getting to your brain and muscles. Since the thicker blood is harder to pump and the reduced volume is messing up the pressurized system of your blood vessels, glucose is getting to your brain slower. However, the reduced blood volume is also increasing the concentration of glucose in your blood - your BGLs increase even if your liver doesn’t put more glucose into the system (which it does, so a double whammy).
This can be hard to visualize, but think about it this way: let’s say your blood is like a carousel with 100 little water animals (100% hydration) that glucose can ride on. Your brain can take a glucose molecule every time a little water animal with a glucose rider passes by. If there are enough water animals on the carousel, then there’s going to be a new glucose rider passing by the brain every time the carousel turns by 1% (1/100). Now, when we get dehydrated, all the glucose riders stay on the carousel but there are fewer water animals to ride. If our blood volume is reduced by 10%*, then we now have 100 glucose riders on just 90 water animals. The carousel has to turn 10% more before a glucose rider will pass by the brain (1.1%, 1/90).
So even though there is the same amount of glucose in the blood, it takes longer and uses more energy to get that glucose to the brain. And we feel tired or have “brain fog”. It also takes longer for enough glucose to get to our muscles when we’re exercising, which leads to decreased performance, feeling more tired, and “heavy limbs”. If you’ve ever felt like you just can’t pick up your legs as much after a long run/hike/bike ride (or the day after a long night out), dehydration is part of the reason why.
Dehydration increases blood glucose concentration AND total glucose in the blood. One way that your body tries to keep enough glucose getting to the brain is for the liver to release more glucose into the bloodstream. So the glucose is not only more concentrated from reduced blood volume, but now it is extra concentrated since there is more total glucose as well.
Dehydration causes your brain to swell. Another adjustment your body makes to help get more glucose to the brain is to “open up” (dilate) the blood vessels in the brain so they can accept more glucose, once the glucose finally flows by. Dilated blood vessels increase pressure inside your head - your brain is literally swelling. The increased pressure leads to headaches, in addition to brain fog. This is one reason why dehydration can be a trigger for migraines.
Salt balance is an important part of hydration. If you are sweating, then most of the problems from dehydration will come from reduced blood volume, losing ions (which you need for your neurons and muscles to fire), and your muscles using glucose faster than you can replenish your BGLs. Staying properly hydrated while exercising (even in the cold!) requires replacing those lost salts and electrolyte supplements may be helpful.
If you aren’t sweating, dehydration is going to increase the concentration of salt in your blood. Increased salt and BGLs are stressful on your blood vessels (more about that later). This stress messes up your blood pressure, can decrease insulin sensitivity, and increase inflammation if it goes on for too long. It’s better to save the sports drinks for hydrating to replace sweat, and just drink water for hydrating when we aren’t sweating.
Metabolic tips for staying hydrated to reduce metabolic stress:
Drink water throughout the day! Your pee shouldn’t be darker than the inside of a lemon.
Drinking liquids that increase cortisol (like too much caffeine) or BGLs (like sugary drinks) will dehydrate you. You may temporarily feel better due to the increased glucose, but this will quickly wear off.
Drink water that’s supplemented with whatever salts you lost in your sweat - but not more than that. If you aren’t sweating, skip the “sports” drinks and go for actual water.
*some studies have shown that blood volume was reduced by 6-13% in runners after marathons.
Well et al., (1982) Hematological changes following a marathon race in male and female runners. Eur J Appl Physiol Occup Physiol.
Maughan et al., (1985) Estimation of plasma volume changes during marathon running. Br J Sports Med.
How does eating before bed hurt our metabolism and increase fat gain?
TL;DR: Our bodies are most insulin-sensitive at night so tissues will store any food we eat very quickly to make sure our BGLs don’t stay elevated. Digestion and sleep also require different core body temperatures, so eating less than 2 hrs before we try to sleep disturbs our sleep, increasing cortisol levels the next day, and setting us up for metabolic imbalance. (about 7 min read)
Metabolic tips for adjusting our meals to our natural sleep-wake cycles:
Finish eating 2-3 hrs before bed to give your core body temperature time to go down after digestion.
Choose meals high in protein + fiber and low in simple carbs since you won’t be exercising while you’re asleep.
Stay hydrated after dinner to reduce the chance of snack cravings before bed.
Sleep is an important part of maintaining metabolic balance. There are various theories on why we sleep to maintain good health, but there is no question that we have to do it and that not sleeping impairs our body’s ability to function properly. One of the important things that happens during sleep is that your body gets time to “clean up” from the work you did the previous day. This includes “resetting” the chemical signals (like insulin, cortisol, and other hormones & signaling molecules) that your body used to properly balance your metabolism yesterday. Today is a new day and your body should start with a blank slate, ready for new signals.
Big meals will increase your core body temperature. There are two important metabolic differences between when we are awake and when we are asleep. When we’re awake, we’re moving around and digesting food. More blood needs to be at our intestines to help us absorb nutrients from the food we ate and to move things along from our stomachs to our guts. Blood is also flowing faster (heart rate is higher) to move the digested food from our guts to our liver where it gets processed and sorted. Our liver then decides what nutrients need to circulate through the bloodstream so that our other organs can function properly and that our muscles have the energy they need to keep us moving.
When we sleep, our core body temperature drops and our blood flows slower (heart rate is lower). One way that our core body temperature drops is by moving more of our blood towards the surface of our skin so that heat can dissipate off of us (if you’ve ever slept in the same bed with another person and they feel WARM, not cold, this is why - the part you can touch feels warm because their skin is letting heat off into the environment. But their heart is cold. I mean, their core is cold.)
Since our blood can’t be two places at once, it is hard for our bodies to digest food AND cool our cores at the same time. This is why eating a big meal before bed can lead to stomach aches and disrupts sleep. Disrupted sleep also leads to increased cortisol the next day (more below).
Your cells are more likely to store what you eat right before bed as fat. Your body is not moving a whole lot while you’re unconscious and paralyzed. Since this happens to us every single night, part of your normal daily cycle (circadian rhythm) is designed to make sure that your blood glucose levels (BGLs) don’t stay too high for too long before bed. Your BGLs will go up after eating; how high they go up depends on how many simple carbs you ate. The two ways your BGLs come back down are (1) your muscles take glucose out of the bloodstream when you move around and (2) insulin tells your other cells (especially fat and liver) to take glucose out of the bloodstream.
If you aren’t moving your muscles, then the job of bringing your BGLs down after a meal is all done by insulin. Our bodies are the most responsive to insulin (“insulin sensitive) at night, so it takes less insulin to get your cells to take glucose out of the bloodstream. Remember that insulin is a growth factor. So whatever glucose is taken out of your blood due to insulin signaling is going to get stored as new cells (healing), glycogen (animal starch), or fat. If you’ve already replaced the cells you need and your glycogen stores are full, you will store the extra glucose as fat.
Poor sleep will increase cortisol levels the next day, creating the “cortisol vs insulin” match-up, and making it harder to control BGLs without exercise. In order for us to go to sleep at night, cortisol levels need to drop throughout the day and be at their lowest before we go to bed. However, if we didn’t get enough sleep the night before, and our bodies have been releasing extra cortisol during the day to help us stay awake, then our cortisol levels won’t fall as low as they should by the time we try to go to sleep the next night. Not a great cycle to get into.
In addition to promoting “wakefulness”, cortisol interferes with insulin signaling, which means your pancreas needs to release more insulin to get your BGLs down to normal levels if you aren’t moving around. Too much insulin = too much glucose being pulled out (aka hypoglycemia), which leads to storing more fat.
So how do we avoid having too much cortisol or glucose in our blood at night? Walking around, or some other light exercise, will help bring BGLs down with less insulin (though this is more effective earlier in the day since our bodies are very insulin-sensitive and ready to STORE GLUCOSE at night). Meals that are lower in simple carbs will also provide less glucose that needs to be stored in the first place. Staying hydrated to reduce glucose and cortisol concentrations also helps our bodies prepare for sleep, so we can start the next day with a rebalanced metabolism.
Metabolic tips for adjusting our meals to our natural sleep-wake cycles:
Finish eating 2-3 hrs before bed to give your core body temperature time to go down after digestion.
Choose meals high in protein + fiber and low in simple carbs since you won’t be exercising while you’re asleep.
Stay hydrated after dinner to reduce the chance of snack cravings before bed.
Why do we crave sugar when we’re sleep deprived (and what can we do about it)?
TL;DR: Sleep deprivation causes results in too much cortisol being in our blood during the day. This helps us stay awake but it also interferes with insulin signaling, causes sugar cravings, and increases fat storage. (about 7 min read)
Metabolic tips to help you “reset” and reduce sugar cravings:
Even though you’re tired, do something active in the morning. This can be as simple as doing 20 jumping jacks, brushing your teeth, then doing 20 more. Getting your blood moving will help get your metabolism back in balance.
Stay hydrated throughout the day to help your kidneys filter out hormones/chemical signals that your body doesn’t need any more. “Cleaning up” your blood reduces stress.
Be aware that your sleepiness is tricking you into feeling hungry for sugar. Keep some high-fiber and/or high-protein snacks on hand to feel full. These foods won’t raise your BGLs quickly, so you will release less insulin and store less glucose as fat.
Your body “cleans house” while you’re sleeping. This includes cleaning up all the chemical and hormone signals it released during the day so you could properly respond to your environment. The house-cleaning is done by specific cells in your immune system called macrophages (macro = big; phage = eater). Macrophages make things better by literally eating their way out of a problem. (Same.) Ideally, your macrophages would go through and clean up while you’re sleeping so you can get a fresh start for the next day, which will have it’s own challenges you need to respond to.
Leftovers in your fridge are good to eat later; leftovers in your body’s hormone/chemical signaling cause you to eat when it’s not good. If macrophages can’t do their job and clean things up, the debris from yesterday gets mixed in with the signals from today and it’s a clutter-fu… mess. It’s a mixed-up mess of yesterday's and today’s signals and your body has a hard time knowing how to respond since it isn’t clear what signals it should be listening to. Messy signals = stress in your body. And stress = metabolic imbalance.
Sleep deprivation increases cortisol levels which interfere with insulin signaling. Cortisol should naturally increase overnight and be at a peak in the morning; this is what wakes you up. It’s normal to have elevated cortisol levels in the morning. In fact, doing things that increase cortisol in the morning - like drinking coffee or exercising - helps us wake up. But when we’re sleep-deprived, cortisol levels stay high all day.
Why is this a problem? If cortisol helps us “wake up” and we feel sleepy, then wouldn’t we want higher cortisol levels on days when we didn’t get enough sleep and need a boost? Well, yes, we could benefit from the increased “wakefulness” that the extra cortisol gives us. But there’s a trade-off: cortisol also interferes with insulin signaling.
Cortisol and insulin are frenemies. We discussed this in the post about how eating simple carbs along with coffee can lead to a bigger “sugar crash” if you don’t move around afterward than you would get if you ate simple carbs without the java or drank coffee without the croissant. Cortisol is a signal that your muscles should start moving, so it tells all your other cells to wait a little bit before taking glucose out of the bloodstream. This gives your muscles a chance to use that glucose for energy first, which also brings down your blood glucose levels (BGLs). However, if you don’t move around after eating, then your muscles don’t help bring down your BGLs and the job of keeping your BGLs from staying high falls all on insulin.
Since cortisol interferes with insulin signaling, your pancreas ends up putting more insulin is put into the bloodstream than it should. Too much insulin leads to too much glucose being pulled out of the blood and BGLs drop below where they should be (aka hypoglycemia). This makes us feel tired and crave sugar.
Insulin is a growth factor. If your body is relying on insulin only - and not the movement of your muscles - to get your BGLs from being too high, you will be storing the simple carbs you eat as glycogen (starch in animal cells) or fat. There is a limit to how much glycogen your body will store. You make room for more glycogen to be stored when you use the glycogen you already have. Glycogen gets used up when you fast, when you move your muscles, or when you eat a low carbohydrate/ketogenic diet.
If you aren’t moving that much, or if you aren’t fasting, and you eat simple carbohydrates, you will store the excess glucose as fat.
Press “reset” by staying hydrated and getting your blood moving. Is there a way we can help “clean up” yesterday’s leftover signals that were left lying around when we didn’t get enough sleep? Staying hydrated, getting our blood moving, and being aware that the sugar cravings are a “typo” in our body’s messages can help subvert the sugar cravings and keep us on track with our fitness and health goals.
If the message is truly a leftover message, your body won’t be producing more of it, so doing things that help your blood filter through your liver and kidneys faster will help your body reset and rebalance. Staying hydrated essentially just drowns the old signals out and helps your kidneys filter them out of your body faster. Exercise will get your blood circulating faster. Being aware that this is happening won’t filter your blood faster but it can help you make informed choices about which snacks you want the day after you didn’t sleep well.
Metabolic tips to help you reset and reduce sugar cravings:
Even though you’re tired, do something active in the morning. This can be as simple as doing 20 jumping jacks, brushing your teeth, then doing 20 more. Getting your blood moving will help get your metabolism back in balance.
Stay hydrated throughout the day to help your kidneys filter out hormones/chemical signals that your body doesn’t need any more. “Cleaning up” your blood reduces stress.
Be aware that your sleepiness is tricking you into feeling hungry for sugar. Keep some high-fiber and/or high-protein snacks on hand to feel full. These foods won’t raise your BGLs quickly, so you will release less insulin and store less glucose as fat.
Does caffeine set you up for a bigger “sugar crash”?
TL;DR: Caffeine causes an increase in blood glucose levels and creates temporary insulin insensitivity for ~1.5 hrs after you drink it. If you add simple carbs and don’t move around, extra insulin will be released and you’ll have a bigger “sugar crash” about 2-3hrs after the coffee + simple carbs. (about 7 min read)
Metabolic tips to prevent that post-caffeine crash:
Move around after drinking coffee; if you can’t, skip sweetening your coffee.
Replace refined flour snacks with high fiber or protein snacks 30 min before and after to avoid an insulin spike that leads to a “sugar crash”.
Drink a lot of water to help your system rebalance more smoothly.
Caffeine “wakes you up” by increasing cortisol levels. Cortisol naturally increases in your body overnight, reaching a peak in your blood around the time you wake up. Then, cortisol (should) decrease throughout the day until it is lowest before you go to bed. One of the ways that caffeine “wakes you up” is because it also causes some cortisol to be released into your blood, similar to what naturally happens when you wake up in the morning.
The other way that caffeine “wakes you up” is by blocking receptors in your brain that normally respond to a “sleepy signal”, adenosine. Adenosine has the opposite cycle in your body as cortisol - it increases during the day until it is the highest before you go to bed. Then, adenosine levels (should) drop overnight until they are lowest when cortisol is highest.
Caffeine doesn’t give you energy but it does increase the amount of fuel in your blood that your muscles can break down into energy. You may have heard cortisol called the “stress hormone”. That’s partially true - as just discussed, the levels of cortisol in the blood naturally increase and decrease over the course of a day (24 hrs). This is part of your natural “circadian rhythm” and it’s also why it’s stressful on your body to have an erratic schedule*.
Cortisol is also released when you exercise or have a “fight or flight” response (hence the “stress hormone” nickname). Since your body is moving or is expected to start, the release of cortisol also causes your liver to release glucose (see the post on what your liver does if you haven’t already) and your fat (adipose) cells to release free fatty acids into your bloodstream so that your muscles have fuel to turn into energy for the movement you’re allegedly doing (cue core memory of being at my desk twitching mid-afternoon after a strong coffee and an endless checklist… that counts as moving, right?)
But what happens when you have extra glucose released into your blood and you don’t move around (all twitching aside)?
Cortisol and insulin are frienemies. They both work to help your body maintain balance as your energy demands change throughout the day. Cortisol makes sure you’re ready to run (literally) and insulin makes sure your blood glucose levels (BGLs) don’t get too high.
So, if they’re on the same team (Team Metabolic Balance), why aren’t they friends? Because they compete with each other. In addition to causing your liver to release glucose, cortisol also tries to block the action of insulin. Remember that insulin is a growth factor that tells your cells to take extra glucose out of the bloodstream and store it. It makes sense that cortisol interferes with insulin - you can’t have your liver putting glucose into the bloodstream (cortisol) at the same time it is taking glucose out of the bloodstream (insulin). So if both cortisol and insulin are in your blood at the same time, one of them has to knock it off and stop doing what it’s doing.
While it’s true that you cannot outrun your problems, your body does make it possible for you to try. Cortisol wins this match-up: it’s really important that your muscles move faster when you need them to. So cortisol blunts insulin’s ability to lower your BGLs. This means your muscles have “first dibs” on the sugar in your bloodstream so they can move without having to worry about all your liver or fat cells pulling the glucose they need away from them.
How does this lead to a “sugar crash”? If you don’t move around when your BGLs go up, cortisol will eventually go away (it takes ~1.5-2 hrs, depending on activity & hydration) and insulin can start to do its job again. However, if your BGLs went up really fast and stayed up for a while, your pancreas (which releases insulin) will notice that the insulin currently in the blood is not doing its job and your BGLs aren’t coming down fast enough. So it thinks “I better turn this up to 11” and puts even more insulin into the blood. When the cortisol wears off, your cells will switch from not listening to the insulin’s message to paying attention to its every word. And the insulin is turned up to 11. So your cells pull as much glucose as they can out of the bloodstream. And your BGLs crash (~2-3 hrs after caffeine), making you feel sleepy (that 3 o’clock feeling is probably hypoglycemia.)
What would cause your BGLs to go up quickly and stay elevated? Two main culprits: (1) adding more glucose to your system when your body couldn’t respond to insulin and (2) not moving around so your muscles (which can pull glucose out of the bloodstream without insulin) couldn’t help lower your BGLs.
Staying hydrated and eating snacks high in fiber + protein helps keep your BGLs stable after caffeine. Staying hydrated makes sure that your system can clear the cortisol quickly. If you were moving around, your blood would pump and the cortisol would get filtered out. Plus, your muscles would bring your BGLs back into balance. If you aren’t moving, staying hydrated will increase your blood volume but not the total glucose in the blood (ie., the glucose will be less concentrated). Your pancreas and liver keep an eye on the glucose concentration and not the total amount, so stay hydrated.
Snacks high in protein and fiber will also help keep your BGLs from getting too high. This means that less insulin will be released, so you’re less likely to have too much insulin in your blood when your cells start responding to it again, and you’re less likely to have that over-reaction that causes hypoglycemia (low BGLs).
Metabolic tips to prevent that post-caffeine crash:
Move around after drinking coffee; if you can’t, skip sweetening your coffee.
Replace refined flour snacks with high fiber or protein snacks 30 min before and after to avoid an insulin spike that leads to a “sugar crash”.
Drink a lot of water to help your system rebalance more smoothly.
*Some jobs demand that we don’t keep consistent schedules; they have also been associated with increased risk of Type 2 Diabetes and cardiovascular disease. This isn’t fatalistic - working the night shift doesn’t mean we will develop a metabolic disease, it means we’re more likely to. Being aware of your risk can help you take actions to balance it out.
What is your liver doing and why do you need to care?
TL;DR: Keep your body happy by keeping your liver happy. Eat colorful veggies and fruits, and eat simple carbohydrates slowly to reduce stress and stay metabolically balanced.
Metabolism tips to keep your liver happy:
Eat veggies and fruits to supply your liver with the vitamins and minerals it needs to function.
Give your liver time to do its job by eating simple carbohydrates slowly.
Watch how much non-nutritious “food” (especially alcohol) you ask your liver to deal with - metabolic stress is one of the biggest hurdles in reaching your health/fitness goals.
Your liver is the “control center” for your metabolism the same way the brain is the “control center” for your thoughts. If the Control Center isn’t functioning properly, the rest of your body isn’t either.
Your liver manages the nutrient levels in your blood (both glucose and fat/cholesterol). It adjusts the levels of glucose, fat, and cholesterol based on (a) what your different organs tell the liver they need and (b) what you’re eating. Every single thing you eat goes through your liver. Your other organs get their fuel for energy from the bloodstream. Since your liver controls what is in the blood, your liver is controlling what the rest of your body gets to eat.
Your liver and pancreas work together to control your blood glucose levels. Blood glucose levels need to stay within a specific range. Your pancreas will release insulin to tell your other body cells to take extra glucose out of the bloodstream when BGLs get too high. Your liver will make glucose and release it back into the bloodstream when BGLs get too low. It’s common to hear that “insulin controls your blood glucose levels” but this isn’t completely true. Insulin + your liver control your blood glucose levels.
If your BGLs aren’t well controlled, your body gets out of balance. This leads to disease. Diabetes is one disease where people don’t have enough insulin to bring their BGLs down (Type I) or they can’t respond properly to the insulin they do have (Type II). It is possible for someone to develop both Type I and Type II diabetes if their BGLs aren’t properly controlled.
Your liver breaks down everything you put in your mouth. There are a lot of things we put in our mouths that are not nutrients. Like Excedrin, for example. And sometimes, whatever else we put in our bodies that led us to take that Excedrin. In small doses, these non-nutrient foods don’t make a big difference. Our liver’s job is to break them down, and as long as our livers are healthy, it will do its job. However, we start to see problems when our livers aren’t feeling so good. This affects the rest of our body.
An unhappy liver leads to inflammation. “Inflammation” means your immune system is acting like there’s a problem to be cleaned up. Usually, when doctors talk about the immune system, they are talking about how it fights infections from bacteria or viruses. Your immune system also plays a really big role in cleaning up the mess from “stressed out” cells that aren’t infected. What stresses your cells out? Metabolic imbalance.
If there is too much inflammation for too long, this also leads to disease. Your immune system loves you and will fight for you. Just like that protective friend who always has your back, no matter what, even if it means starting a bar fight. When your immune system starts a fight against something that is hurting you, and can get rid of that thing, that’s good. If it keeps fighting, or if it can’t get rid of what’s hurting you, things take a turn and now you have a brawl in your own body.
Inflammation makes you feel crappy and tired because it messes up liver function. And your liver is responsible for feeding the rest of your body! So then the rest of your body feels bad! Stressing out your liver is one of the biggest hurdles in reaching your health and fitness goals. Stress can come from too much alcohol (and 5 or more drinks PER WEEK is considered “heavy drinking” - yikes, how did I live through college…). But stress on your liver also comes from eating in a way that is not related to the fuel you need during the day. Stress = metabolic imbalance.
You can make more progress towards your health and fitness goals by keeping your liver happy. Your liver is happiest when it’s not overwhelmed and when it has all the parts it needs to make your cell’s machines function. These “machine parts” are the vitamins and minerals you get from food that become part of your enzymes (enzymes are the proteins that do all the chemical work in your body). You get vitamins and minerals from veggies and fruits.
But what does it mean to not “overwhelm” your liver? You know that episode of “I Love Lucy” where Lucy & Ethel are in the candy factory and the conveyer belt starts running too fast? Everything was fine before the speed got turned up. Then things went to chaos. The same thing happens when we eat simple carbohydrates too fast. Simple carbohydrates almost immediately get broken down into sugar (glucose and fructose) so your liver sees them as sugar.
Slowing down how fast you eat simple carbs gives your liver the time it needs to do its job. When you eat something high in simple carbs, your liver has to process all the new sugar, while also keeping an eye on the sugar that’s already in the blood. Essentially, your liver asks “Where do I put this sugar? Does it go into the blood? Or does it get stored?” If the sugar gets stored, your liver also has to decide if it becomes glycogen (starch in animal cells) or fat. Eating simple carbs slowly gives your liver time to do its job. Eating simple carbs quickly creates the same mess Lucy & Ethel did in the candy factory.
Metabolism tips to keep your liver happy:
Eat veggies and fruits to supply your liver with the vitamins and minerals it needs to function.
Give your liver time to do its job by eating simple carbohydrates slowly.
Watch how much non-nutritious “food” (especially alcohol) you ask your liver to deal with - metabolic stress is one of the biggest hurdles in reaching your health/fitness goals.
Insulin is a growth factor that tells your cells to take extra glucose out of the bloodstream and store it.
TL;DR: Time when you eat simple carbohydrates around when you’re going to move your muscles. More glucose will be used to fuel your movement and less will be stored. For the extra glucose that isn’t used to fuel your movement, more of it will be stored as glycogen and less as fat.
Metabolism tips to help you store less glucose as fat:
Time when you eat simple carbs around when you’ll be moving.
Eat the amount of simple carbs you need to fuel a workout and to store glycogen after a workout.
Choose foods higher in protein, fat, and fiber that won’t raise insulin levels too much to store less glucose as fat.
Understanding how insulin works allows you to make more informed choices about how to eat to reach your health and fitness goals faster. There is a common misconception that insulin “controls” your blood glucose levels. This isn’t entirely true. Insulin brings down your blood glucose levels (BGLs) when they get too high. Obviously controlling the upper end of your BGLs is really important; elevated BGLs over a series of days sets off a chain reaction of metabolic responses that can end with a coma. This is what happens if a patient with diabetes isn’t able to get proper insulin treatment. So insulin is important in making sure your BGLs don’t stay high for long.
However, your body also exerts control at the other end of the spectrum to make sure your BGLs don’t fall too low. There are two main players that raise your BGLs and release glucose back into the blood: (a) the breakdown of glycogen* (glycogenolysis) and (b) the creation of new glucose molecules from other molecules (gluconeogenesis). Both of these things happen mainly in the liver; in fact, monitoring your BGLs and turning on/off glucose production are two of the main functions of your liver (your muscles also break down glycogen, but they use the glucose for energy in that muscle; they don’t put the glucose into the bloodstream for other tissues to use). (*A reminder that glycogen is extra glucose stored as a chain. It’s starch but for animal cells.)
Insulin is a growth factor. Since you will literally die if your BGLs are too high for too long, your body has a real vested interest in making sure this doesn’t happen. And since everyone goes through periods where we aren’t eating during the day (the longest period being when we’re asleep) and other periods where we are moving and using a lot more energy, your body also has to solve a “cash flow” problem on a daily basis. We have to be able to eat food, use some of it for energy semi-immediately, and store the rest of it for use later. Insulin is a growth hormone that tells our cells to “store this glucose for later”. Which is good news for anyone who likes to sleep without running out of fuel and dying after 40 min.
Your cells can store extra glucose as glycogen or as fat. You need a minimum amount of both glycogen and fat. We rarely see diet fads telling us how to lose that stubborn muscle glycogen, so we’re going to just talk about fat right now. Depending on the person and their athletic condition, healthy body fat percentages are roughly 10-15% for men (21%+ body fat is considered overweight for men) and 10-25% for women (31%+ is considered overweight for women). Fat is the main energy source for cardiac muscle, the circulation of fat is just as well-regulated (though not as straightforward) as the circulation of glucose in the blood, and fat is necessary for healing because all new cells have lipid (aka fat) membranes.
Side rant: Fat is not the problem, inflammation is. Without fat that you either eat or make yourself, you don’t get new cells. Your body would fall apart within weeks because you wouldn’t be able to make new blood cells. Or any other type of cell. But imagine if you just ran out of blood in 3 weeks because you couldn’t make new blood cells. Fat is necessary to stay alive.
The type of fat your body stores may be unhealthy if it causes inflammation or is packed around your organs as visceral fat. But fat itself is not the problem. Inflammation is.
To reduce the amount of new fat your body stores, or increase the amount of glycogen, you need to time when you eat simple carbohydrates with when your insulin levels are low. Wait, if you eat simple carbohydrates but have low insulin, doesn’t this mean your BGLs will go up and there won’t be insulin to tell your cells to take the excess glucose out of your bloodstream?! Isn’t this bad?? It would be bad if you didn’t have another way to get extra insulin out of your bloodstream. Here’s where your muscles come in. Cue the Rocky theme song.
Your muscles will take excess glucose out of the bloodstream without insulin when you move them around. There is always a lag between when you eat simple carbohydrates (which are almost immediately broken down into glucose or fructose) and when your pancreas starts putting out insulin to lower your BGLs. There are also times when your body is less responsive to insulin, so it may be in the blood but most of your body cells won’t be able to use it to get glucose out of the bloodstream. However, your muscles don’t need insulin to take glucose out of the blood. So that lag between rising BGLs and the release of insulin gives your muscles “dibs” on grabbing glucose and using it for energy (instead of storage).
Muscle movement also encourages your body to make glycogen instead of fat. Eating simple carbohydrates about 30-60 min before you move around will help keep your body from storing excess glucose because your muscles will pull that glucose for energy. Your muscles will store more simple carbs as glycogen if you eat simple carbs and protein 30-90 min after you work out. This means moving your muscles not only uses glucose for energy so there is less excess glucose to store, but it also promotes storing glucose after a workout as glycogen instead of fat.
Eating simple carbohydrates when you’re not moving encourages your body to make fat, instead of glycogen. First, the obvious: when you don’t move, your body burns less fuel to make energy. So eating simple carbohydrates when you’re not moving really increases the amount of glucose that is going to get stored. Again, storing fat is fine and normal as long as it isn’t excessive and doesn’t cause inflammation. If we do have some excess fat and we would like to not add more, we can think about when we eat simple carbohydrates and time them around our movement.
Metabolism tips to help you store less glucose as fat:
Time when you eat simple carbs around when you’ll be moving.
Eat the amount of simple carbs you need to fuel a workout and to store glycogen after a workout.
Choose foods higher in protein, fat, and fiber that won’t raise insulin levels too much to store less glucose as fat.
How do I know if I’m eating the right amount of calories for my health goals?
The number of calories we eat and the amount of nutrition we are getting to fuel our lives are not the same thing. Calories are a unit of energy that is determined by placing food in a bomb calorimeter - a tiny machine that measures how much heat is given off when you literally blow up the food in a sealed container. Despite how we might feel after bad chili fries, our bodies are not lighting on fire from the inside and we do not obtain nutrients by blowing up food in our intestines.
Nutrition is the combination of energy from macromolecules (protein, fat, carbohydrates) and the vitamins and minerals we need to keep our bodies working. Vitamins and minerals are called “cofactors” by biochemists because they are a factor that cooperates with your enzymes. Your enzymes are the molecular machines that perform all of the chemical reactions in your body; their collective action is your “metabolism”. If a person is not getting enough vitamins and minerals in their diet, they can certainly be undernourished while they consume more calories than they need for energy.
Let me repeat that: A person can be undernourished even while they consume excess calories and gain weight.
Your total calorie count is not the same as your nutrition plan.
We eat for the nutrition, as well as for the experience. Sharing a meal, making a favorite recipe, and enjoying our food are all part of eating. You won’t (and shouldn’t) stick to a meal plan that you don’t enjoy, just as much as you won’t stick to a meal plan that is overly involved or time-consuming and doesn’t fit into your lifestyle.
So how can we make sure our nutrition plan actually feeds all our needs? We have to start with the basics: our diets should have a minimum of 25 grams of fiber (a complex carbohydrate) and 0.34-0.55 grams of protein per pound body weight. The total protein can be adjusted to meet your specific goals. If we build a diet that hits those two points at a minimum, we’ll be getting our required vitamins and minerals for proper enzyme function.
After that, we can adjust the amount of simple carbohydrates around how much physical exertion we do and/or weight gain we want to achieve (don’t gasp, a lot of people have very good reasons for wanting to gain weight - hello, lifters! hello those of us recovering from a condition that caused unwanted/unhealthy weight loss! welcome to your recovery.)
Below is a Nutrition Decision tree that walks through how to put together a fulfilling food plan. The decision tree starts with how to know if you’re eating too many calories - but too little nutrition - since that is what I see with most people who are trying to improve their fitness. The steps you would take to make a plan for gaining weight are exactly the same as the ones you take for losing weight: you still estimate grams of protein and total calories using your goal weight, you still need 25 grams of fiber, you still need to eat delicious foods that you enjoy.
Build a strong foundation first, add adjustments later. This Nutrition Decision tree walks you through the basics. Once you have these down (and maybe you already do! congrats!), you can make adjustments like timing when to eat simple carbohydrates, in addition to how much simple carbs to eat. Please remember that these adjustments will increase your rate of progress but they will not make up for a poor foundation! You can stay hydrated, not eat 3 hrs before bed, and take fish oil supplements until you burp up a Gloucester fisherman, and this will not make up for starting with a poor foundation.
Need help figuring out how to apply the basics to your actual food habits? Have the foundation nailed and want to talk about which adjustments are going to give you the biggest return on your effort investments? Send me an email or make an appointment to level up your metabolism.
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