5 Things: Weekend in Austin + Metabolism Truths

1. Weekend in Austin

I flew to Austin this weekend for a girl’s trip and it was a blast. A hot and sweaty blast, but a blast nonetheless! I have a really close group of girlfriends from New York, but as of this past May all five of us are no longer in New York, and instead now scattered across the country. One is in Raleigh, one in Nashville and two live in Texas – Dallas and Houston. Even though Texas is hotter than hot this time of year (especially compared to the northeast!) we decided to meet in Austin so two of us didn’t have to buy a plane ticket. I’ve been to Austin once before about five years ago for a short trip so I was excited to go back. Our plan to beat the heat was to be in water or air conditioning 24/7 and that we did.

We ate a lot of Mexican food, relaxed, had a lot of soul giving conversation and stayed up way too late. I flew back late last night and am feeling exhausted, yet refreshed all at the same time….if that makes sense?

2. CEUs finally for new course

I’ve been waiting on CEU approval for what feels like forever for a new course I’m hoping to launch before the summer is over. I’ve had the content ready to go for months, but was waiting on the approval before finishing up the recordings and final touches. This will be a “mini course” compared to my first course for any person in the health care field, or any person in general, who wants to learn about how to bridge the Intuitive Eating and Health at Every Size (HAES) framework with clinical nutrition and medical diagnoses. I gave a simplified version of this presentation last fall but I’ve changed pretty much everything since then – I added more research, practical tools and more case studies so I’m hoping others find it helpful! I think this can be tricky ground to navigate as a clinician. I started my RD career in integrative health and then started learning about IE/HAES about a year later. It took a couple years and a lot of digging into concepts, questioning a lot of things, getting a lot of supervision and reading a lot of research for me to gain footing and feel comfortable and confident – although I’m always learning new things! If you have a medical diagnosis that indicates therapeutic diet changes this could be a wonderful resource for you. If you’re an RD, this will be a learning tool while offering you CEU credit as well. And any and everyone else is welcome!! I get a lot of questions on this topic via email and on Instagram so I’m excited to have a resource for people.

3. What speeds up metabolism and what slows it down? 

I received this question in my email and I also feel like this is a topic that comes up a lot so let’s talk about the science. Let’s clear the air a bit and bring some clarity to what we see often in the media – that you can speed up your metabolism with certain foods or detoxes or diets and that your metabolism really boosts if you build muscle. First, there is very little evidence behind particular foods boosting metabolism. And if they do have the potential, the amount of boosting these foods are doing is negligible. Second, it’s true that muscle is more metabolically active than fat – about 3x more active. But looking at the research, it’s not very significant when it comes to increased energy expenditure. If you build a couple pounds of muscle mass (which is a good bit) you might be increasing your daily energy expenditure by 50ish calories a day. Not that much at all. That’s what the media does, takes a conclusion and completely dramatizes it.

Your organs are metabolic machines accounting for ~70% of your daily energy needs. So most of your energy needs come from simply keeping your organs functioning properly. Physical activity accounts for about 15-25% – which is ANY movement you do during the day (brushing your teeth, cooking, showering etc) in addition to any intentional movement you might do. Both of those types of activity are included in that 15-25%. And then digesting your food is about 10%. That’s doesn’t add up to a perfect 100% because metabolism is not a static thing. I say all that to provide some truth and reality to thoughts that might creep up like, “I can’t eat ____ if I don’t exercise today.” “I don’t need to eat _____ because I didn’t exercise today.” Most of your metabolism is just your body carrying out its basic functions each day!

So what actually helps support a healthy metabolism? Think big picture. It’s not groundbreaking. Think about eating soon after waking, eating consistently throughout the day, and not under eating during the day so you can eat more at night. Our brains and bodies need most of our energy during the day when are physical and cognitive functioning is at it’s peak! That’s not to say we won’t sometimes have our biggest meal at night – of course that will happen sometimes and that’s normal and okay. But nourishing your body with a hearty breakfast, lunch and snacks is what our bodies metabolically prefer. The most important thing – meeting you energy expenditure with energy intake. Under eating and cutting calories is what causes our bodies to slow metabolism – if there isn’t enough energy coming in our bodies are smart and they slow down energy expenditure to account for the decrease in energy intake. This is a major reason why dieting doesn’t work long term. Our bodies like adequate nourishment!

4. Favorite Sunscreen

I had a few people message me asking about what sunscreen I use. I am in no way a skin expert nor am I a beauty blogger or anywhere in between. Lol. I try to put high quality, yet affordable products on my skin. I’m not in a place where I’m willing to pay a lot of money for skincare. I also don’t really care to have flawless skin. I want to care for it the best I can, but I will never have super taught, flawless, glowing, dewy skin and I don’t care to spend a lot of time and energy trying to get there. That’s just me. I also recognize I thankfully don’t have very sensitive skin so my skin typically does well with basic products. I know that isn’t the care for all people, dealing with finicky skin is really hard in many ways and I feel for those that are faced with these challenges. So if you do have more sensitive skin that requires specific products/ingredients don’t listen to me because what I use might not be what is best for you 🙂

I really love the Beauty by Earth brand of sunscreen that I buy from Amazon. I bought it for the first time in the spring of 2017 and the small bottle of face sunscreen lasted me almost a year. Although, if you wear face sunscreen daily it probably won’t last that long. I like to buy this body and face sunscreen bundle. I’ve gotten asked what skin care products I use everyday and you can read this post if you’re interested. Again, I’m just your every day person trying to take care of my skin without things getting super pricey or complicated – so you might prefer other things and that’s okay too!

5. A Good Read

This post by my RD friend Haley called, “What to Do When Someone Else’s Weight Change is Triggering” was such a good read. This gets brought up a lot in conversation with clients. I hope you find it helpful.

Have a great week!