Metabolic Flexibility: The Missing Link in Long-Term Weight Management

**Jim Hill:** Welcome to “Weight Loss And…”, where we delve into the world of weight loss. I'm Jim Hill.

**Holly Wyatt:** And I'm Holly Wyatt. We're both dedicated to helping you lose weight, keep it off, and living your best life while you're doing it.

**Jim Hill:** Indeed, we now realize successful weight loss combines the science and art of medicine, knowing what to do and why you will do it.

**Holly Wyatt:** Yes, the “And” allows us to talk about all the other stuff that makes your journey so much bigger, better, and exciting.

**Jim Hill:** Ready for the “And” factor?

**Holly Wyatt:** Let's dive in.

**Jim Hill:** Here we go. Welcome to another episode of “Weight Loss And…” I'm Jim Hill, along with my co-host Holly Wyatt. This is a really important topic we're going to talk about today because we talk about how people are successful at losing weight but not keeping it off.

And there are some big things that I think people are doing wrong. And then we're going to talk about one today. We're going to talk about how people eat and in particular, this idea of eating to match your metabolism.

You don't hear a lot about that. We give people advice about what to eat. You can go to a bookstore or the virtual bookstore online and look at diet books and you say, God, dozens, if not hundreds of diet books, and they tell you how to eat. And people go and they choose one thing and it may or may not work. But I think science can tell us there's a better way of sort of deciding what we eat. So that's what we're going to talk about today. What do you think?

**Holly Wyatt:** I like it. I think people don't realize how important it could be to be able to eat to match your metabolism, right? To think about those things as interacting. As we've said before, people always want to think about weight loss, but really, if you could help your body do that to match what you're eating, that would be a huge, huge advantage, a big win.

**Jim Hill:** So let's look at how human physiology develops. So let's go back not dozens or hundreds. Let's go back hundreds of thousands of years when people had to be pretty physically active. I mean, you didn't have Ubers to get around.

There were no screens. You had to expend a lot of energy. So the challenge was not obesity. The challenge was not starving to death.

So I think as humans, we developed all these systems to get us to eat because we had to eat to match a very high level of energy expenditure. Makes sense, right?

**Holly Wyatt:** Right. You had no choice. You didn't move because you were trying to get in exercise minutes or steps like we do today. You moved because you had to survive to get through the day.

**Jim Hill:** And we didn't develop systems to restrict our intake because you didn't want to do it. You ate when food was available. Eating too much wasn't a problem. So we didn't develop these biological pathways or mechanisms to help us restrict our food intake. So fast-forward to today where most people, at least in the US and more and more across the world, are sedentary.

They're not very active. So again, rather than trying to eat to match a high level of metabolism, you're trying to restrict what you eat to match a low level of metabolism. We just don't have the biological systems to do that. And that's why people fail. I mean, Holly, we've got decades of research showing that people who lose weight and then try to eat less to keep it off, don't succeed. They regain it.

**Holly Wyatt:** And it doesn't matter what they're eating. That's the key. Everybody's still always searching for the diet that would work, but it doesn't matter which diet is. You're absolutely right. Lots of data about that.

**Jim Hill:** So essentially, being sedentary leads to what you and I sometimes refer to as a broken metabolism, right?

**Holly Wyatt:** Yes. And that's what everybody thinks they have, right? They come to us and say, my metabolism is broken. And I think that's true in a way, you know. It's broken in the sense that it's not functioning well in our current environment, which is like you're saying, very low energy expenditure. You're not required to move very much. And I see this all the time. What I consider a broken metabolism is when someone comes in and they've been food restricting, they've been very successful at losing weight.

So I would say they're not broken there. They can lose the weight. The metabolism is working. But now, once they want to maintain their weight loss, they can't eat anything. The minute they go and have their favorite food, pizza, birthday cake, the minute that they go out and really eat an unusually large amount of food, but they just don't restrict their calories anymore, they immediately gain weight. It's almost like their metabolism is broken in that phase.

**Jim Hill:** And I think you and I learned that when we first started out, we thought maybe a low resting metabolic rate was a broken metabolism. And we looked and it wasn't there and we thought, well, maybe it isn’t broken. But the more we learned, these people were actually right when they felt like their metabolism wasn't working the way it should.

**Holly Wyatt:** I think what they remembered is like, I can't eat what this other person can eat, that that spouse can eat. I can't ever have pizza or whatever without gaining weight. And so something's wrong with me and that's that broken metabolism, I think.

**Jim Hill:** Now, you know Holly I love talking about energy balance, how you balance your intake and your expenditure. And let's talk a little bit about that and how it may relate to this topic. So day in and day out, I know you and you don't eat the same thing every day and you don't do the same amount of exercise every day. But yet your weight doesn't go up and down from day to day.

So your body has this ability over time to integrate intake and metabolism. It has some flexibility there. And think about that. So during the day, you're sleeping, right? And hopefully, you aren't eating while you're sleeping and your metabolism needs to get fuel from somewhere. So where does it get it from? It gets it from your fat, right? Then you eat and suddenly you turn off fat-burning and start burning carbohydrate. Then you go away from the meal, you start burning fat again, then you exercise. So during the day, you're switching between sources of fuel.

Okay. There's a concept called metabolic flexibility that people totally need to be aware of because this is really, really important. People with high metabolic flexibility have a good ability to switch between fat and carbohydrate as they go from eating to not eating, exercise, no exercise. One of the best analogies that I think here is the idea of a thermostat.

Okay. If your thermostat is real good, you put it on 70, boom, it gets there right away. You put it on 60, it gets there right away. A slower thermostat, it gets there. It's going to take longer to go up and down. In that time, you're going to get temperature and differentials.

If you have a low metabolic flexibility, as you switch constantly during the day, the chances are you're going to air a little bit and that can lead to excess weight gain. This is a really, really important concept.

**Holly Wyatt:** So is it that you air or is it that you're slower to get there?

**Jim Hill:** Yeah, you're slower to get there. And ultimately, that may lead to a little bit of extra storage of energy as fat, whereas people with metabolic flexibility can burn it off. Holly, I think of metabolic flexibility as giving you a little bit more freedom to have fun with your diet. If you're sedentary and you're trying to match a low energy expenditure with a low food intake, you don't have any room for air.

You've got to hit it. If you're metabolically flexible, you have that little bit of extra room. You can have a little bit more fun with your diet without getting the weight gain.

**Holly Wyatt:** And one of the things I think is important to make with that, it's just not about the calories you're burning with physical activity or something. It's more than that. It really is this adjustment that you're talking about, that quick adjustment that gives you that wiggle room or that fun room that you're calling it, some room to have some fun in your diet.

Yeah. So as people are thinking about managing their weight, unfortunately, everybody starts with food intake. And again, food intake is very important. I'm not saying food intake isn't important, but that's maybe not where you should think about starting. You should start by asking, where is your metabolism and what diet is best going to match your metabolism?

**Holly Wyatt:** Yeah. So how do people match their food intake to metabolism?

**Jim Hill:** Let's start with the current situation, which is not the desirable situation. We have what, three-quarters of Americans who are overweight or obese and they're sedentary. So what you have is a metabolism that's number one, you're not burning very many calories because you're inactive and you're not very metabolically flexible. So what do people try to do? They try to restrict calories and they say, oh, if you restrict fat, that's okay. No, you should restrict carbohydrate. At the end of the day, you're playing a losing game because you aren't going to win because you aren't going to be able to match that broken metabolism, low energy expenditure, broken metabolism.

I'll give you a great example, Holly. Right now, carbohydrates are sort of the enemy. Everybody's blaming carbohydrates for everything. Well, if you think about carbohydrates, if you're an athlete, carbohydrates is what you burn as a fuel.

The more you get, the more you burn. If you're not moving and you eat a lot of carbohydrates, you don't really have the ability to store carbohydrates very much. So what you end up doing is converting them as fat or decreasing fat oxidation. So if you have a broken metabolism, you can't handle carbohydrates. If you have a flexible metabolism, you can.

**Holly Wyatt:** You said it and this is important. Even though you can take those carbohydrates as a result of the excess carbohydrates, you will store fat and that's a concept people don't understand sometimes.

**Jim Hill:** And it's totally logical why a low carbohydrate diet, people think it's working in today's environment because you're reducing calories. You don't need carbohydrate. And in the short run, it can keep things from getting worse, but you're playing this losing game.

It's going to get worse and worse and worse. So here, the answer is it's very difficult to match your intake to the broken metabolism that most people have. So the answer is not changing why. The answer is how do you fix your metabolism?

**Holly Wyatt:** Right. And I think one other thing to say is I think one reason why people still concentrate on reducing their intake is it does work to lose the weight. So they've seen it work to get the weight off. What you're saying is then now when you're wanting to maintain, you're wanting that matching, you're wanting that flexibility, now reduction of calories is not going to get you there.

**Jim Hill:** That's a really important point. Metabolic flexibility doesn't really help you with weight loss. Weight loss is driven by negative energy balance. Negative energy balance is produced primarily by eating less. So yes, during the weight loss thing, man, diet is critical.

It's important. You got to eat less. Once you're trying to maintain a weight loss and keep it off, boy, it changes. This is where metabolic flexibility becomes so, so important to the point where I think it's very difficult, if not impossible for most people to keep weight off with their broken metabolism. And I think we have decades of data showing how people succeed in losing weight but fail to keep it off.

**Holly Wyatt:** So what can you do, Jim? So this is, I think this is exactly what most people do. They restrict calories to lose some weight. That works. And then they just stay restricting, trying to do that. And their metabolism is broken. They're right. What do you do in this situation?

**Jim Hill:** Okay, I'm going to give you several things you can do to increase your metabolic flexibility. But the most important, the most important by far is you increase your exercise. And I know we've talked about that before, but I'm going to tell you why that's particularly important in terms of metabolic flexibility. If you increase your exercise, you're going to burn more calories, right? Right away, it gives you a better chance of matching your food intake, because you can eat more without gaining weight. And a lot of people say, oh if I exercise more, I just eat more. No, the research has shown over and over and over.

That's not the case. In fact, for a lot of people, when they start exercising, they eat less exercise helps regulate your appetite. It helps you match your intake to your expenditure. But the other thing that exercise does is it really makes your mitochondria more efficient. Mitochondria, if people don't know what this is, these, this is in your cells, these are think of them as the engines of your cells.

They're the ones that are using energy, driving the activity of your cells, you want good working efficient mitochondria. And so that's a big part of metabolic flexibility. If these mitochondria are working well in your cells, boom, it helps when you switch from fat to carbohydrate for fuel. The other thing that exercise does, and this is part of metabolic flexibility, is increase your body's sensitivity to insulin. So your insulin works better, which keeps your glucose under control. So burning calories, increasing your mitochondria, increasing your insulin sensitivity, improving your appetite. Overall, I mean, if exercise was a drug, it would be the most popular drug ever.

**Holly Wyatt:** That's what I was thinking. It sounds like some of the weight loss drugs. It sounds like some of the medications.

**Jim Hill:** Well, there's, there's an initiative out there called exercise is medicine. And in a way, it does. It does all these things with virtually no side effects. The side effects are minimal. And again, you and I hammer exercise, and I know our listeners are saying, oh my gosh, it's hard. Yeah, there are a lot of things that are hard. But I have to tell you, the benefits of exercise on your metabolism are just amazing. So it helps get you this high metabolic flexibility. And again, metabolic flexibility is going to be one of the most valuable tools you have to avoid gaining weight. Now, there are a couple of other things you can do.

One of the things you and I have, we've actually changed our stance on this. We recommend that people try intermittent fasting. It's not as powerful as exercise, but it seems to help your metabolic flexibility. You know why? Because it's a way of exercising your metabolism.

Think about it. And a typical day here, we just eat all the time. You never get hungry. So your body is never forced to go to your fat stores, to get fuel, because you've always got fuel coming in from the refrigerator or cupboard, right?

**Holly Wyatt:** So you're thinking of exercise is kind of like when your body has to tap into those fat cells for energy. That's kind of the same as it is kind of forcing it to exercise what it's meant to do, really.

**Jim Hill:** Absolutely. Your body is meant to go through these periods where, boom, you have no fuel coming in from the outside, you go and get it from fat. Then you have fuel coming in from the outside, you turn off the fat. So this, take it out, put it in. It's think of like a muscle, exercising your muscle, you're exercising your fat cells.

**Holly Wyatt:** That makes so much sense, because even when I see people like in weight loss, once they get going, it gets going. Same thing in maintenance. It's almost like with this, with metabolic flexibility, you kind of get it going and then the body functions right. You almost have to push it, but it's almost like it gets used to it. It exercises. It's able to do it better, I guess.

**Jim Hill:** I think of this as what are the things you can do to get your body working with you in your weight management goals rather than against you. And the idea of intermittent fasting, you have this period where you don't eat and there are a number of ways to do it. We did a whole episode on intermittent fasting, but it's going through periods where you don't bring in food from the outside, forcing your body to go and get it from your fat cells.

**Holly Wyatt:** Forcing to turn on those fat burners. That's what I like to call them. Turn on those fat burners once and for all. That's what you want. You need to be able to use those suckers.

**Jim Hill:** And losing weight itself can help a little bit. Okay? Not as much as exercise. So we've talked about exercises, the big hammer here. It is the, if you want to increase your metabolic flexibility, man, that's the number one tool you use. Intermittent fasting can help a little bit and weight loss can help a little bit. But this idea, Holly, of things that aren't, shouldn't be driven by food intake, should be driven by your metabolism.

We have it totally wrong. You shouldn't go out and say, oh, somebody says this diet because of this and that. Look at your metabolism. And if you're sedentary and overweight and maybe pre-diabetic, it's going to be so difficult for you to match your food intake to your metabolism. You have to get your metabolism going. And as you do that, you'll find you're in a situation now where your metabolism is driving things and you're pulling your food intake along to match.

**Holly Wyatt:** You're pushing on the activity and therefore your metabolism is functioning better and then the energy intake thing happens more naturally. So I love that. So this to me is good news. This is good because if you think your metabolism is broken, you can fix it. This is something you can do something about.

Physical activity or exercise being the major one. So, Jim, I know we've talked about this, but what's the data because I know everybody's thinking how much? Is there an extreme amount? How much do I have to do to get that flexibility? Is there any science behind the amount of movement?

**Jim Hill:** Yeah, we don't know so much. What we know, let's take the extremes. We've talked about the sedentary, overweight individual, right? With the broken metabolism. Now, let's go to the other end. Look at these elite athletes. These elite athletes are consuming massive amounts of food and they're consuming massive amounts of the things we tell people not to eat. Sugar, fat, etc. Okay?

Because they just have a super metabolism and they have virtually no chronic disease, no diabetes or any of that. Okay? Now, not everybody's going to go out and be an elite athlete.

So most people are going to be in the middle. And what we talk about is there's, it's theoretical, but there's a theoretical level of exercise above which your metabolism functions well. Above which your intake now is pulled along by your metabolism.

Below that, it's called a disrupted state where your food intake and your metabolism aren't related because your energy expenditure is so low due to being sedentary that it's not integrated appropriately with food intake. And so most of these people are in this deregulated zone. So I can't tell you how much, but I do think the data suggests you don't have to become an elite athlete to do it. But you do have to incorporate regular physical activity into your day. Now, the other thing we've talked about, you and I have talked about this over and over and over, if you have been overweight for a period of time and you're trying to keep weight off, you sort of have this metabolic penalty that you have to overcome with exercise. So we talk about if you're maintaining significant weight loss, you probably should shoot for accumulating an hour a day of physical activity. That doesn't mean you have to do it all at once. Over the day, you need to move for about an hour.

Now, that's not hard and fast. Some people are going to find they need to do more and some people are going to find they need to do less. It can be a lot of walking. It can be aerobics.

The main thing is to find something you like that you can do over and over and over. So most of us are going to be in the middle where we have to get our energy expenditure up now that food intake is better matched. But it doesn't mean we can eat anything we want. You look at these elite athletes, they have a lot of flexibility in their diet. The sedentary overweight people have virtually no flexibility.

People in the middle have a little bit. You still have to pay attention to diet so you can't go out and eat anything you want. But you have a better ability, one, because of the high energy expenditure, can take in more calories. Two, because of the metabolic flexibility, you have some leeway with the kinds of food you can put some fun in your diet.

**Holly Wyatt:** What I like about this concept is I think there's a range. Well, there may be a point, but I think there's maybe a range around that point. You can go out and experiment and figure out how flexible you can be within your range.

I think it would be great if eventually everybody's like, this is my flexibility zone. I know what my personal range is and I can maintain my weight and eat in this range. Maybe you have a number. My metabolic flexibility number is 80% or 70% or whatever.

**Jim Hill:** So you raised a good point. Let's talk about how you measure it. So maybe we've convinced people that they want to have more metabolic flexibility. How do you know if you're metabolically flexible or not? And how do you know if you've increased it?

**Holly Wyatt:** First off, you've got to be wanting to maintain your weight. I mean, so many times people are like, well, I'm still wanting to lose weight. When you're losing weight is not when you're testing metabolic flexibility. So I want to be clear about that.

I see that all the time. And we make sure that activity is high. You also want to make sure that activity is high. And then you start adding some foods to your diet and add a little bit.

And I like to start with 80, 20. They've been restricted, but still restrict about 80% of the meals. And 20% of the meals, let's go out and have some fun with.

**Jim Hill:** Holly, I saw an article yesterday about the 80, 20 diet, basically saying eat on plan 80%, off-plan 20%. And I thought that's perfect. If you're metabolically flexible, if you're not metabolically flexible, that's not going to work. The 20% is not going to do it for you.

**Holly Wyatt:** You can be flexible up and down. I see a lot of people who actually have more room. They could eat more calories, but keep it so restricted, that they don't even see that they could actually go up and still maintain. Because I do think there's a little bit of a range that your body is adjusting in.

**Jim Hill:** You can bring people into the lab with very specialized equipment and you can measure metabolic flexibility. But unfortunately, you can't do that in real life. And so the way you do that is with trial and error a little bit.

So again, very, very important. This is not something you do during weight loss. This is something you do if you're trying to keep weight off.

And you do it by trial and error. So if you're smart, you have a plan for keeping weight off, right? And what we've told you before, unless that plan involves a fair amount of exercise, you're not going to be successful.

But let's say it does. Let's say you're getting in, maybe your hour a day of exercise, you've got a diet plan, and you want to see how strictly you need to adhere to that plan. This only works if your exercise is up. And that's where you can do trial and error. Try adding some other things off-plan and see how far you can go. And that's a way that you can detect your own metabolic flexibility.

**Holly Wyatt:** Well, here's how I do it. I mean, we're very strategic about it when I'm working with someone on this. And yes, activities are high, and they're wanting to maintain. We're weighing every single day. There's going to be some fluctuation in that weight. We're going to start with 80, 20 - 80% on plan foods, 20% off. We're going to do that for a couple of weeks, and we're just going to see what the weight is. The weight is going to go up and down. And that's one thing that I think people make a mistake.

They think if they gain two pounds, oh my gosh, it's not working. You have to give it some room to go up and down. You do that for two or three weeks.

If you just kind of gain that same up and down two, three, four, even five pounds, that's just that normal variation. Then we try 70, 30. You can then try 30% off-plan.

So if you want to be really strategic about it, you can. And then even go to 60, 40. And I have people who even make it to 50, 50. But it's kind of figuring out how much play you have. And you know what? 50% of your meals perhaps are a little bit restricted and 50% not. That's pretty dang good, Jim. I mean, you can eat pretty well.

**Jim Hill:** We would have a lot of fun with your life with 50%, not on plan.

**Holly Wyatt:** Absolutely.

**Jim Hill:** And again, this only works if you keep the high metabolic flexibility, which is the exercise. And that's why Holly, during weight loss maintenance, I always say you have three big factors. Right? You have your energy intake. You have your weight. And you have your exercise. Okay. We can measure two of those pretty accurately.

Right? We can measure weight with a scale. There are all kinds of devices that measure your exercise. So I think the best plan to keep weight off is to have your exercise goals, meet your exercise goals, monitor your weight, and adjust your food intake based on your weight. If you're reaching your exercise goals, and your weight stable, you can play around with your food intake. Find out what you can do without gaining weight. But if you start gaining weight and you're keeping the exercise thing, you have to go back and adjust your food intake.

So I think people have it totally wrong. Food intake shouldn't be the first thing we look at. We should look at metabolism. And the best diet for you is not what somebody tells you in a book. The best diet for you is a diet that matches your metabolism.

**Holly Wyatt:** Yeah. And I think the key, I love how you put that. Let's measure weight. Let's make sure we get the activity in. Let's measure weight. And then the thing that we're adjusting is the diet, which is perfect. You've got to know there's some up and down to your weight. Just because you gain a pound or two pounds doesn't mean that it's not working. Actually, I think the metabolic flexibility, you're seeing some of that adjustment. You may go up two or three pounds and the body then is kind of adjusting in the natural flow of it.

So you want to set some kind of guideline. You don't want to gain 10 pounds, right? Then you can say you're actually in weight gain, but you don't want to say, oh my gosh, the minute I gain a pound, it's not working. And say that you're not flexible at that point.

**Jim Hill:** Yeah. And the other thing I guess to point out is people are different. Not everybody's the same. Our genes differ. Our history differs. So when we talk about this hour day of exercise, for some people it might be more.

For some people, it might be less. During maintenance is a time where you can do trial and error. But you do it without gaining a lot of weight. So if you do an hour a day, your weight goes up a little bit. You adjust your diet. You're still going up.

You say I can't do it anymore. Look at adjusting back on your exercise. Again, those three things, monitor your weight, monitor your exercise, and adjust your food intake. The more you can exercise, the better.

And it didn't have to be exactly the same every day. But I got to tell you, I recommend you try to get six or seven days a week of exercise. I try to do it every day. For me, it's just part of my day. I plan it.

It works out well. But you are going to vary. Your weight's going to vary.

It's not going to be the same. And during maintenance, what we find is that everybody sort of has a range of weight. That can be a couple of pounds. It can maybe be up to five pounds. Where you're pretty confident that if you're in that range, it's going to bounce up and down. But most of the successful people have a number that above that, they have to put a strategy into play. If it's up five pounds, that's OK.

But if up six, I know I need to do something. And that's probably on the intake side. Could be a little on the expenditure side. But those three things to adjust, keep your exercise high, maintain your weight, and adjust your food intake. And the exercise gives you the ability maybe not to eat as much as you would like in your dreams, but enough that you're not going to feel deprived all the time. If you're trying to match your intake to a broken metabolism, you're going to feel hungry most of the time. With high metabolic flexibility and high exercise, you aren't going to feel that hungry.

**Holly Wyatt:** You know, so many people have come to me saying, I want a pill to fix my metabolism. Can you give me a medication that would fix my metabolism? And you know really what you're saying is we can fix our metabolism.

This is how you do it, which I think is good, you know. And as you said, there's not a lot of side effects to this medication to getting metabolically flexible this way.

**Jim Hill:** So again, the message here is we're not saying food intake isn't important, but there's a science behind how you choose your diet, and that should be matched to your metabolism. And unless you're getting some regular physical activity, it's almost impossible to eat sufficiently little to match a broken metabolism. You have to fix your metabolism first. So what are the vulnerability questions, Holly? Do you have any?

**Holly Wyatt:** Oh man. Um, well, I don't know, Jim, but do you think you have a more flexible metabolism? I think some people naturally with less physical activity have some flexibility, and then there's some of us who really need that activity to have the flexibility. I will say that I believe that's true. Where do you think you fall in that range?

**Jim Hill:** So I don't think I fall with just naturally having high metabolic flexibility, and I've learned that exercise for me is necessary. I like to eat. I like food and everything, and I couldn't imagine eating sufficiently little to match a sedentary lifestyle.

I think it's perfectly fine to exercise so you can eat more. I enjoy food. I enjoy going out to eat. I generally eat fairly healthy, but you know, I like to indulge every now and then. So I think exercise, for me, is necessary to keep my flexibility to a point where I can enjoy my diet.

**Holly Wyatt:** I want to make one point about what you said because I hear this all the time. What you're saying is true. You're exercising in order to eat, but you're exercising so you can get that metabolic flexibility versus people who go out and eat a bunch of calories and then just try to burn those calories with an episode of exercise, right? Go out there and that does not work. So it's very different.

It's a different concept, and I just want to make sure our listeners understand that. It's not, “I ate a thousand calories. Now I'm going to go out and burn a thousand calories.” That doesn't work. Jim exercises so that he can have that flexibility so that he can maintain and eat more, which is different.

**Jim Hill:** And again, you have to be reasonable about that. Metabolic flexibility doesn't give you the license to go and eat everything you want. You can overdo it, but it gives you the ability to have a little bit of fun without the weight gain. What about you?

**Holly Wyatt:** I definitely have to exercise. My metabolism is not flexible. If I'm sedentary, I will gain weight so fast. I have proven that to myself time and time and time again. I can gain 10 pounds so quickly if I do not have the activity or movement. So it is absolutely required for my metabolism. I think it's really the reason why I was struggling trying to figure out why I thought my metabolism was broken, why things were so different.

That was part of the problem for me. And one of the things that happened is I got into a dance club in high school and that started showing me that, oh my gosh, there's this relationship between me moving and my weight. I didn't completely understand it, but now looking back, I see it. I see what was going on. The times that I was active or when I definitely could eat more and then otherwise I could hardly eat anything.

It really felt like I could eat nothing and I would gain weight. I definitely can see this. That's what I tell myself when I'm going out of moving. Sometimes it's like, you know what? I'm fixing my metabolism. This is how I help myself, help my physiology function like it's meant to and it allows me to have some of that food that I love too.

**Jim Hill:** So the take-home here, again, if you want to lose weight, you got to eat less. What we're talking about doesn't work for weight loss, but if you have reached your weight loss goal or a place where you want to maintain, don't think about diet first. Think about metabolism first.

And I think that's a mistake people make. They think, okay, I'm maintaining weight. What do I eat? Don't think about your food intake. Think about your metabolism. Is my metabolism working optimally? Am I getting enough energy expenditure? Am I metabolically flexible? Then you can match your diet to your metabolism.

And there's a bit of trial and error. If you want to see how flexible you are, try maintaining your exercise, and adjusting your diet. Try eating a little bit more off-plan. But if you start gaining weight, go back. You have to adjust your diet. But think metabolism first, not diet first, if you're going to keep your weight off.

**Holly Wyatt:** I agree. That sounds like a plan for success.

**Jim Hill:** All right. Well, hopefully this has been helpful and we will talk to you next time on Weight Loss And…

**Holly Wyatt:** Bye, everybody.

**Jim Hill:** And that's a wrap for today's episode of Weight Loss And… we hope you enjoy diving into the world of weight loss with us.

**Holly Wyatt:** If you want to stay connected and continue exploring the “Ands” of weight loss, be sure to follow our podcast on your favorite platform.

**Jim Hill:** We'd also love to hear from you. Share your thoughts, questions, or topic suggestions by reaching out at [weightlossand.com](http://weightlossand.com/). Your feedback helps us tailor future episodes to your needs.

**Holly Wyatt:** And remember, the journey doesn't end here. Keep applying the knowledge and strategies you've learned and embrace the power of the “And” in your own weight loss journey.