How to Boost Your Metabolism & Burn Fat

1. Dr. Andy Galpin

   The science and practice of enhancing human performance for sport, play, and life. Welcome to Perform. I'm Dr. Andy Galpin. I'm a professor, scientist, and the executive director of the Human Performance Center at Parker University. Today's episode, we're going to be talking all about how to boost your metabolism. The reason I chose this is because of all the topics in the entire space of human performance, this probably has the most discussion among pop culture. You see it everywhere. Supplements, diets, magazine covers, boosting metabolism. You speed up your metabolism, is one of the most popular topics yet, because of that, it's also fraught with misinformation, with outright lies. And so how do you understand what's going on? In preparing for this show, I asked a lot of my friends, many of which have PhDs in the field, master's degrees, registered dietitians. I just simply asked them, "Can you speed up your metabolism?"

2. Dr. Andy Galpin

   And I never got a straight answer. Nobody I talked to confidently was able to tell me, "Yes, you can," or "No, you can't." And so I was really excited to do this topic and break that down for everyone, because the reality of it is we have a lot of science here. There are some extremely clear-cut answers about whether or not you can even have a fast or slow metabolism. The reality is you can't. Your metabolic rate and my metabolic rate are not necessarily different. But despite that, there's over a dozen different scientifically documented ways in which you can enhance your metabolism. We have learned very recently, a lot of information about what explains why some people can do things like eat more calories, eat more food, but yet not gain as much weight as you. That is a real phenomenon. Even when all other variables are controlled for, that can happen. But that's not explained by having a faster or slower metabolism.

3. Dr. Andy Galpin

   And so these topics and many more are what I'm going to get into in today's show, and I know that when you leave the episode, you will know much more about how metabolism works, what it really is, and exactly what to do to enhance it if you so please or so would like to do that, and what the true state of the literature says on enhancing, boosting, or speeding up your metabolism. As always, we're going to tackle this problem by covering the three I's, investigate, interpret, and intervene. So by investigate, we'll walk through really quickly how to get this tested or measured. If you're interested in learning more about this, what are some of the high-end ways, the most scientifically supported, all the way down to low or moderately low cost, and all the way down to free, if we can. From there, I will talk about how to interpret those data. So how do you know whether you're slow or fast or high or low, or where it should be based on your age and sex and other factors that are important.

4. Dr. Andy Galpin

   But we're going to spend most of our time on the third I, which is I will cover what we know scientifically about what works and what doesn't work. We'll get into exactly how much it works. So what's the magnitude of effect? How much will it raise my metabolism by, and for how long? After that, we'll talk about the specific details of the protocols, if you will. So what to take, how long, what dosage, what timing, and so on and so forth, in the case of, say, supplements or food. We'll talk about other factors, including, but not limited to things like the temperature, water intake, spicy foods, types of exercise, sleep protocols, and so forth. The reality of it is, we have a lot of different options from the lifestyle, from environmental, from food and supplementation, that give you the ability, potentially, to increase your metabolic rate. We're going to finish the episode by going over what I call a couple of case studies, in which I give some sample combinations of these factors that I have used and do use in the folks I work with to effectively enhance metabolic speed in a long-term, successful, adherent fashion.

5. Dr. Andy Galpin

   So things that are going to be not just giving us a short bump, a short-term effect, but something that is long-lasting and sustainable over time. So to get us started, the first thing we have to talk about is what we're even talking about. These terms, as I open up the show with, are maligned. They're confusing, and that's in large part, and often is the case, just because of simple miscommunication. I'm going to keep it brief. I know in the past, and I love to talk at length about the physiology and what's happening at the cellular level. Not going to do much of that today. But I do need to explain the different parts, because as you'll see the episode unfold, we're going to talk about how each intervention or protocol or thing that you can do influences each area of metabolism. And it's really important that you do something that covers all four of the major areas so that you have the most likelihood of improvement.

6. Dr. Andy Galpin

   So we have to know what those areas are, and then roughly what they mean. I promise, though, I will keep it very brief, and by that I mean it's Galpin style, but it will still be brief for me. Now, some of you might be thinking here, I'm not incredibly interested in fat loss or metabolism. Maybe you're already lean and you're lean no matter what, or you don't work in the area or with clients who care that much about fat loss. So you might be thinking to yourself, "This episode isn't for me. I'm just going to tune out." I'm going to try to caution you against that for a couple of reasons. One, you're going to care about your long-term metabolic health, and this is highly tied to that. And so just because the fact that you're lean now doesn't mean you always will be lean. In addition, if you do want to continue to stay lean, you need to keep this engine revved up as high as possible for as long as possible.

7. Dr. Andy Galpin

   And so we're going to cover exactly how to do that from what we know scientifically in today's discussion. The second thing is what I call the higher delta. So let's imagine a scenario in which you consume and burn exactly 2,000 calories per day. So you're net equal. And at that, you keep the exact same level of muscle and energy and recovery and performance and body fat and so on and so forth. If I could do that exact same thing at 4,000 calories, now I've got much more options. What I mean by that is if I can keep you at the exact same for all those variables at double the caloric load, I've got a greater ability to increase my food intake, which means my micronutrients go up. If I eat double the food, I get double the vitamins and minerals and nutrients and fiber intake. And if I'm staying at the exact same body composition, body mass, that is a huge advantage. Additionally, it now becomes far easier to lose weight if you ever want to do that.

8. Dr. Andy Galpin

   One of the things that makes it really hard for weight loss, if your metabolism is, quote-unquote, "slow," again, think that total input versus output is low, say 2,000, and you want to drop it by, say, 500 calories, you've reduced a significant portion of your caloric intake. You're going to feel that, and you've dropped a quarter of your calories. However, if you're at 4,000 calories turn and burn, and we drop you by 500, now we've only lowered your intake by a small percentage, and so you don't feel that much of a difference. You won't really feel 3,500 calories versus 4,000 calories, but you'll feel 15 versus 2,000, even though in both cases it's exactly 500 calories. And so for a lot of people, there is still a huge interest in understanding and making your overall metabolism function how you want for both the short and long term, regardless of whether or not body composition or body fat is your primary, secondary, or even of slight interest to you right now.

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