Today, I want to talk about lies.
Specifically, the lies we tell ourselves.
REAL TALK ALERT! Today we’re going to talk about metabolism, but really we’re talking about how our brains work.
Just so we’re working with the same definition: “metabolism” isn’t a muscle or a specific physical “thing” in our body.
Our “metabolism” simply is a blanket term to measure how much energy our body burns on a daily basis keeping us alive and functioning:
- heart pumping
- lungs breathing
- muscles moving
- eyes blinking
- cells regenerating
- literally everything else
That’s all included in the term “metabolism.”
Same page? Cool.
Let’s start with an assumption we all know to be true:
“Our metabolism slows down when we hit our late 20s, and then again in our 40s, and so on.”
This explains why we could eat whatever we wanted in college or early 20s, but now we look at a cookie and it goes straight to our waistline: because our metabolism has gotten slower. Throw in the fact that we might be overweight already and bam, our slow metabolism gets slower, and we’re doomed!
There’s just one problem…
It’s not actually true.
A University of Brighton study tracked thousands of women, across dozens of countries, from 8 days old to 95 years old. Here’s what they discovered using the most rigorous scientific method for accurately measuring their subjects’ metabolisms:
The average metabolism “remains stable in adulthood (20 to 60 years), even during pregnancy; then declines in older [60+] adults.”
Wait a second…
Where We Get the Weight Gain Story Wrong
So, what’s up with the weight we DO gain in our 30s and 40s?
It’s not due to our metabolism slowing down, as we learned in the above study.
It’s a result of thousands and thousands and thousands of tiny decisions – most of which were subconscious – that we’ve made over the past few decades. Environmental influences, friends, more restaurants, more driving, more couch time, more desk time, stress eating, less sleep, and more.
As kids, we didn’t have desk jobs. We also didn’t have money to spend out at expensive restaurants. We certainly didn’t order appetizers.
And as we got older, we simply moved less. Our financial situation changed. Our home life changed. Our diets changed.
Certainly not all at once. But a little bit here, a little bit there.
25 extra calories here, 25 calories there, 50 fewer calories of movement energy per day, etc.
And eventually, we’re heavier than we expect to be.
Not because our metabolism magically slowed down at a certain age…
But because of life!
Which is not a bad thing. Life is meant to be lived!
Hopefully, we enjoyed those extra meals out, or the bites of our kid’s mac and cheese or grilled cheese sandwiches. And yeah, maybe we have kids and more responsibility at work and we have less time to spend at the gym.
That’s the reality in which we live.
The Story of Us
We’re talking about metabolisms today, but I’m doing so in the context of a bigger discussion.
I want to talk about the stories we tell ourselves.
Richard Feynman, theoretical physicist (and incredible bongo player), said it best:
“The first principle is that you must not fool yourself and you are the easiest person to fool.”
Once we stop raging at the cosmos because our metabolisms aren’t the problem, we can see this for what it is:
An opportunity.
When we stop telling ourselves one story and start telling ourselves the truth, we can then decide what we want to do with this information.
The answer might be: “Keep doing what I’m doing!” That’s great, you do you, boo!
Now, if your answer is “I’m trying to get to a healthy weight for my size and want to move better,” that’s great too.
We can now start to have an honest conversation with ourselves, and make informed decisions on what to do next.
I get it. This can be super uncomfortable, and we might not want to “open Pandora’s box” by admitting the truth that our metabolism isn’t the scapegoat we made it out to be.
But we must open Pandora’s Box, because we’re actually trapped inside it.
Once that box is open, we can get to work on adjusting our reality:
We can calculate what our metabolism is for our age and weight, and educate ourselves on how much we’re really eating.
We can get to work on our relationship with emotional eating and food.
We can work on our environment to encourage us to eat fewer calories.
We can be thankful that there’s still hope for us!
And we can start to make changes about how to “eat healthy” without giving up the foods we love.
This is how we start to build learned optimism.
-Steve
PS: Whenever I realize a story I’ve been telling myself isn’t true, it always makes me wonder what OTHER stories aren’t true for me.
What about you?
