Too Fast a Metabolism Accelerates Ageing
March 24, 2008
photo by carf
I remember many years ago watching a training DVD from a well known trainer talking about his approach to weight loss. At one part he shows a picture of a bodybuilder guy in very great shape saying “He can still eat 5000 cal a day and lose fat! Don’t you want that?”. Ummmm…..No actually. It really struck me to start thinking about my own eating habits and realizing that I don’t want to eat all day, I want to have a life outside of working out and food preparation and so did any client that came to me looking for fat loss. Only people who are bodybuilders full time want to eat all day to maintain an unrealistic look that can not be maintained in normal everyday life. My other thing was thinking, can this even be healthy? 5000 cal a day and hours of exercise? Well according to research….it may not be.
The study further strengthens the theory that the faster an animal’s metabolism, the shorter its life, and vice versa, said Mario Pinto, the study’s lead author. The thyroid releases hormones that regulate metabolic rate. “Thyroid hormones are key regulators of metabolism and have been widely implicated to influence longevity,”
from study of Longer Lived Rodent Have Lower Levels of Thyroid Hormone
Of course for those doing IF this makes alot of sense. Many people have noticed that their metabolism may slow down a bit mainly due to the fact that their daily calorie intake is lower than before. There is no loss of muscle, there is an increase in fat loss, they have plenty of energy, and now can survive on less food daily….sounds like a great way to increase longevity. The old days of “You have to eat your breakfast” or “You need to eat 6x a day and eat more food to speed up your metabolism” are really showing no positive impact in long term health. What is the real difference in a slower metabolism if you are still able to eat enough calories to maintain muscle, get enough nutrients (not malnutrition) and still live in calorie deficit that allow you to burn fat all day long without hours of cardio? It is important to note that we are NOT talking about impaired normal thyroid output, 500 cal a day and dropping the metabolism to affect the immune system and other vital functions. We are still getting enough calories in, do not suffer from malnutrition, but still eating much less than 3000-4000 cal a day. If your goal is weight loss long term, there are simple ways to keep your metabolism strong, but not overly active.
- Build and Keep Muscle - Muscle is an active tissue (always wanting things like amino acids and other nutrients) and will require more energy vs fat tissue that sits there and basically does nothing.
- Exercise - Burning calories through physical activity is another way to increase the overall metabolism. Best way is strength training and just living an active lifestyle. Overdoing cardio is NOT a good thing (more on that below)
- Eating Whole Foods - Including all sorts of vegetables and fruits for all the good vitamins, minerals, enzymes and other life giving nutrients. Also eating whole food proteins (along with providing necessary nutrients) will take up more energy to digest fully. (also known as the Thermic Effect of Food)
On the other side of the equation we also can have very low thyroid output or impaired function. This is not healthy. Many people suffer from what is known as hypothyroidism (”Low” thyroid output). Symptoms include fatigue, depression, loss of hair, brittle nails, get sick easily, swollen arms/legs, dry skin, high blood pressure, memory loss, hearing loss, feeling cold, and weight gain. So too low is not good either. We need a healthy thyroid output to support a healthy body, yet not overdo it to accelerate ageing…..so how is this done? By doing the following:
- Do Strength Training - Building active muscles that are Type II (fast twitch) fibers with resistance training to keep your metabolism healthy. (not low) and allow your body to burn fat for the long run. (we have already seen the impact on the effect of Type II muscle fibers and ageing)
- Don’t Eat Excess Calories - CR(calorie restriction) research has already been shown how it increases longevity but now we see how it could do it through the thyroid output. This is NOT starving yourself on too low calories, as that will just bring you into hypothyroid state and make you worse off. This is less calories compared to eating 3000-4000 cal a day (IF anyone?). The goals is to maintain and build muscle, burn fat, get enough nutrients and not compromise your immune system in the process.
- Get Less Caffeine - Caffeine is a stimulant and directly effects the Thyroid. Excess will cause damage and lower the output of the thyroid long term. So keep it to a cup of coffee or less a day (and not the 32oz cups either!)…or switch up to tea which has 10x less caffeine.
- Get Your Vitamins and Minerals - Zinc, Calcium, Magnesium, Iodine, Vit A, D and B have an effect on the thyroid. Make sure you are eating plenty of vegetables and getting some sunshine (best source of Vit D!). Steak and eggs are high in Zinc too.
- Avoid Sugar and Alcohol
- Drink More Water
- Do Not do Excessive Cardio Exercise - More is NOT better. Look at many professional athletes who we think are in great shape, only to die of ageing diseases like heart disease and cancer in their 40s and 50s. Why? Could it be that this is due to the excessive stress of doing hours of exercise that burn and need 5000-8000+cal a day to just maintain performance and muscle? This is not ideal for long term health. So unless you are a professional athlete who makes a living on this, you have a choice on how to exercise. Hence why I believe the push for marathons to “find a cure” do more harm than good. Awareness of a disease or ill health inorder for people to focus on prevention is one thing, using something that does more damage than health to raise money for a “cure” without focus on prevention (which would include NOT doing the event that they want you to partake in) is just blind greed (won’t even get into how little of that money actually goes into research, or if just 10% of that was used in public campain for prevention how it could save millions). Running a 5k once in a while is one thing, running 26 miles and training for it for months and months is not in the best interest of long term health. More is not better and can be shortening our lifespan in the process. Mark from MDA has a great article on the dangers of excess cardio.
So there you have it with the simple take home message, Eat and Exercise the right way to keep a Healthy Thyroid…..but don’t do Excessive Eating and Exercise to shorten our lifespan.
SO now I need to reduce or give up my coffee too?? Getting back on the IF wagon with more regularity now. Would you suggest 5x week? While I did do 7x week back at the end of 2007 and saw great results initially, I think it ceased to be as effective when done on a daily basis–perhaps even slowed my metabolism some!
Sarena - Remember if it does slow down the metabolism slightly (compared to eating all day long), your cal intake is lower….so whether you eat 2500 cal to get a metabolism of 2000 to burn 500….or eat 2000 cal to get a metabolism of 1500 to burn 500…you still burn 500. (that is just a simple example of course). The key is getting to burn extra calories while keeping the metabolism is a “normal” range…not too high to accelerate ageing…not too low to hinder other health/immune functions. Try for 5x a week and then eat more on the weekends. Just in case you are going too low for too long with no “up” days your metabolism can drop more than you want. (which may explain your plateau when trying 7x a week last time…typically an up day is needed every 10-14 days to signal that you are not stuck on a desert island) Adding the refeed day(s) signals to your body that you are not starving. Coffee is your choice…as I do one Americano a day…but long term do I really need it? You could always try lower caffeine based drinks like tea or even expresso or just smaller or less cups. Never said living to be 100 was going to be easy! lol
Thanks MOD. I always do the overfeed thing on weekends and tend to sleep way more than too! My bodies way of saying catch up!! Its kinda intrinsic too. I know I have been way overtraining lately and am now ending that freaking cycle!
Actually Coach Burgener told me a while back he wished half his athletes had as much discipline, nutrition wise, as I do!
Sarena - you can also look up “hypothyroidism” as many people may suffer from it. Eat for a healthy thyroid function…with getting enough vitamins (esp A,D,B) and minerals (potassium, calcium, magnesium). Lots of other factors including lifestyle stresses too. Being wired all day long on caffeine is not a good idea and can actually lead to CNS burnout when it comes to performance factors. It’s a whole body process so need to look at doing everything to keep it healthy.
Thanks for posting on this interesting subject. I’ve always believed a slower metabolism is a major key to longevity. I’m at about 1800 calories/day which for a 5′10″ 155lb male is prob. on the lower end. When arguing with others, I usually make reference to turtles which have slow metabolisms and live very long (150+ years). Also, for example, “an elephant lives about 69 years and a mouse 4 years. Yet the elephant lives a slightly shorter life when measured by a metabolic clock. Indeed, the elephant gets somewhat less than a billion heartbeats and the mouse slightly more”
David - I’ve always believed this too in that it can’t be healthy burning 4000+ cal a day as people usually just exercise more to “be healthy”. Of course there is a personal choice of what people want to do in their life. I may live longer if I never played sports, weighed 30lbs less and just walked around the mountains all day…but it’s not something I want to do. Of course I am not also out daily doing 2 hours of intense cardio activities thinking I am making myself healthy…which in my mind is pretty much the opposite of the real truth. People are getting convinced to do excessive endurance activities every day as a way to health…but is it really worth it? I love to get out a run 400-800 meter intervals…or even an occasional 5k trail run…but it’s cycled and not every day. In the end if a consistent activity takes eating 1000+ additional cal every time to recover from it, then it is not a positive factor in longevity.
Nice post MOD. Y’know, the talk of getting in enough nutrients triggered a thought in my head. I’ve heard before (and this makes sense to me), that the body is looking for nutrients, not calories. Therefore, you see lots of obese people eating junk food and being constantly hungry because the body isn’t receiving the vitamins and minerals it needs, so it keeps the hunger mechanism turned up. On the contrary, I find IF extremely easy when I’m eating nutrient-dense foods like meat and vegetables. Obviously it’s not the whole equation, but it makes sense for it to be part of the equation. Thoughts?
Scott Kustes
Modern Forager
Scott - Good point. As we need amino acids, essential fatty acids, vitamins, minerals, etc for healthy functions. There’s no such thing as “essential” carbs, so why do we think we need so many? So makes sense the higher quality foods you eat, potentially the less you really need for healthy cellular rebuilding and immune function. While our body may be causing a signal to say “Hey I need more Magnesium”…we think “Oh, must be time for ice cream”. Needless to say we lost the user handbook a long time ago and our initial primal signals were made long before all those easily available carbs and fried foods came along. I would say though that for obese people it’s overabundance of fat cells that are doing the signaling that mess with our hormones overall. In the end, we need quality for maximum health as deficiencies usually cause something to go wrong. Meat and veggies (and some fruit) win again! (with some EFAs too….which would already be in leafy green vegetables and in the meat if it was high quality natural grass fed type…funny how it all comes full circle to the basics!)
I have actually noticed the athlete mortality thing - not that I’m ghoulishly devouring the obituaries every day, but sport is a big part of my national culture (New Zealand) and every time I see a feature obit on some former sporting great, he seems to have popped his clogs before 60.
I always assumed that it was just that ex-athletes might think, “Been there, done that” and never do another bit of exercise their whole lives, but your theory sounds more plausible. Maybe a bit of both.
Chainey - I’m sure you get a bit of athletes that bloat up big time because they are no longer training 4 hours a day….but keep the same eating habits. But you are right in seeing some in prime shape that just get diseases associated with ageing such as MS, cancer, and heart diseases. Hard to say, but like an engine in a car….if you only have 100k till the motor dies on you…do you drive it 1000 miles a week or do smaller trips and keep it longer? CR studies already show that less cal can extend life…but it may not make you a great athlete or be able to handle all recovery needs associated with excessive training and multiple games. So there has to be awareness of both factors. Whether it’s thyroid output, metabolic enzyme depletion, free radical overproduction and damage, or just too much wear and tear…it’s definitely a whole body equation with multiple variables.
[...] lean body mass despite low caloric intake. There is an excellent post recently on the IF Life, Too Fast a Metabolism Accelerates Ageing, which covers many of the relevant issues of a slowed [...]
I feel as though I have a fast metabolism because I’m a hardgainer and my body radiates much heat (just ask the GF). But I don’t seem to be aging very quickly because I sometimes get carded for rated R movies and have actually had people in the past year believe I was only 16. I’m 26.
Neil - The wrinkles don’t start showing till at least 30.
Actually I am a so called “hardgainer” as well….but do find it easier now to put on muscle using IF probably due to a slower metabolism…because I don’t want to have to eat 5000cal a day in the process. Enjoy the youth while you can….or put it in a bottle, sell it and make millions!