No one can take this away. Hello everybody, welcome to another episode of Find Your Model Healthy Official Podcast with us looking to optimize their long-term health and weight goals and understand how their body really works. I am your host, I'm Shmane Linney. I'm a nutritional therapist, integrative health practitioner, erydologist and hormone specialist and I'm very happy to have you back with me for another piece of your day.
I hope everyone's really well and you had a wonderful Halloween. Today's podcast topic is about under eating. Before we get into this, I must remind you that the information in these podcast episodes is for informational purposes only and should not be taken as medical advice. Please consult your health practitioner before making any lifestyle changes.
Now the reason I wanted to do this topic again and by again I mean I covered this topic maybe four years ago so if you go back to my earlier podcast episodes you'll find it. Believe it or not, under eating is not so much of a challenge with me and my clients as it used to be but lately I've had one or two new clients start in September who are under eating a lot and we've had conversations and the mindset there is well I've starved myself in the past and I lost all this weight I'll just do it again and I'm like well no that's not how it works because one health is wealth and you can't just starve yourself to being quote skinny or your ideal weight. You have to consider everything. As I say in all my podcasts there's always context before I give an answer to anyone.
I'm usually asking four or five ten questions before I give them a direct answer even if it's just yes or no answer because I need to understand the whole context of the situation and make sure that I'm advising properly and when it comes to under eating it's important to remember that you're not just trying to let's say it's for weight loss only you're not just trying to lose the weight now like in the next few weeks months you want to keep the weight off forever in the future you don't want to keep your weight on rebounding so with that considered the first thing we most note is that it's always always always easier to lose slow and steady and allow your body to heal and regenerate and your metabolism to start working in your favor and let your body adapt to all these changes that are happening and I mean adapt in a good way I don't mean adapt as in plateau so losing slow and steady is almost better most people don't realize that when you hire a weight loss coach or practitioner like myself I know everybody would like to lose all the weight and hit their goals in three months but the ideal situation is it's going to take a year if not more for you to lose the weight to lose it in a healthy way learn all the tools you need to learn implement all the new habits basically create a new personality and a new lifestyle that's going to be what you forever so you keep the weight off forever like I have and hopefully I continue to keep it off I think I'm doing pretty well it's been a good I don't know 16 years so I'm not doing two guys but losing weight shouldn't be fast it shouldn't be extreme and the body will look differently based on how you lose weight then we see that we don't zampic we see that with a lot of quote diets that cause you to do something extreme and lose weight very fast people not only do they go catabolic and they destroy their hormones they end up looking sickly when I lost my weight I did it not a completely unhealthy weight but it was very fast I lost 165 pounds in a year and a half and the way I described myself back then and luckily I was young enough that I was able to kind of rebound on my skin health and stuff a bit better but I looked like a coat hanger with skin that's what I look like though I didn't have muscle I didn't have like the structure that I should have had that we see in people who lose weight in a healthy way so with that said the ideal loss per week for me at least in my clients is 0.5 to 1.5 pounds a week that is ideal and that with consistent work over time will lead to a massive loss over a couple of months and even a year you lose a pound a week that's 52 pounds a year you lose a pound and a half a week that's going to be closer to 77 pounds a year like that's quite a lot so understanding slow and steady really does win the race is important yes some people will lose faster some people slower it really depends on the amount of work you put in and the consistency but back to our topic at hand it's important to understand the context of under eating on a weight loss journey and this is where we are now so about four years ago I did maybe it's maybe it'll be better than this one I don't know we haven't finished this episode yet but I did do a podcast episode on under eating I advise you go check it out because it is pretty good it's got some different perspectives than what I'm going to cover in this today because of course as practitioners per perspective changes and we learn more and we grow and hopefully we become better but under eating you and this is a hot topic because of the whole weight loss stroke industry that has exploded over the last year or two which literally causes people to under eat under eat is not something I think is a smart idea because of what we're going to cover now and again there's context sometimes under eating might be a good idea if you're sick and your body really needs to do focus on fighting and infection or getting a fever down we could argue that under eating might be good there or maybe you need more calories again it depends on bioinvergilities and the the situation at hand under eating though generally not a good idea because in basic understanding you need to fuel your body to function and I don't mean overeat either but I mean you need to be fueling your body so that all your metabolic functions and everything run the way they are supposed to and the keywords they are being supposed to your body is supposed to return run a certain way so part of that's going to involve you listening to your body and understanding the physical signs symptoms the biomarkers that your body is telling you that it likes something or it doesn't like something and that's going to play a part in understanding if you're under eating or if you're overeating because this really is a balancing act as I'm sure many of you understand balancing healthy lifestyle and that kind of fun lifestyle the rest lifestyle and the exercise movement like everything is a balancing act but not getting in enough calories which are our energy currency so calories are the currency of your body they are the currency of your energy system if you're not getting enough calories you're pretty much you're not buying the energy that you need to function optimally and when we do this on a regular basis it can lead to a number of mental physical hormonal emotional health issues that are more real than people realize so regardless of the weight loss aspect I think at this stage we all agree that there does need to be a calorie deficit to lose weight but that does not translate into you need to starve yourself or under eat you really should work with a practitioner to help you design or plan how that calorie deficit is going to happen in your body and it's important to also separate that calories and nutrition although a lot of our calories come from nutrition they can be separated so calories being the energy currency of our body their nutrition that's where we're making sure that we have all the nutritional requirements to help our metabolism run better like our minerals our nutrients even our external steroid supports like vitamin D for example so you although for weight loss there is a calorie deficit required that doesn't necessarily mean there's a nutrient deficit we never really wanted to pry the body of nutrition in itself so you could still be in a calorie deficit and meeting your nutrient requirements at the same time but one thing excuse me one thing that people seem to forget when they start to I suppose under eat and not eat enough and dare I say starve themselves is the long term implications this is going to have on their system so in the short term if you're not getting enough energy or calories into your body you are going to feel pretty tired a lot of the time you're going to be unable to perform certain tasks and that even includes thinking because thinking uses up like 30 percent of your energy each day you need a lot of energy or calories to think and if you think a lot like I do that's a lot of calories but then you also will find that your workouts and even your walks will suffer and we see in the research that people who are in a very low chronic low calorie state they even without noticing and hopefully you will notice that now that I've drawn attention to it but they don't fidget or move around as much as people who have a lot of energy to and fidgeting is a big contributing factor to our meat our non-essential activity thermogenesis like right now as I'm talking to you my hands are moving I'm swinging my legs my head's kind of moving so that's fidgeting but that's all burning calories and we see in the research that when people under eat a lot that they stop fidgeting which actually decreases their meat or their non-exercise activity thermogenesis a lot and this then slows down metabolism in itself so regardless of not getting calories in you not moving enough because you're exhausted excuse me I'm just getting overhead cold so please pardon my coffee but you're not moving as much as then of course going to slow your metabolism and then I see this with thinking I struggle to even think when I'm low energy and not to hold other rabbit hole we see people that have low energy systems and their metabolism working isn't working optimally those types of people can be more aggressive and defensive and insecure and low confidence there's a whole other rabbit hole to go down there but not getting in enough calories is going to make you feel tired a lot of the time part of that is also connected to your thyroid this is probably the most important piece of this podcast I want you to take away thyroid function and I've said this before I suppose because most people who come to me for help they already have health issues I believe about 80% of the people who come to me for help they do have low thyroid function they do have high blood thyroidism and sometimes those symptoms just scream at me as I'm talking to someone but your thyroid requires a lot of energy the main nutrients for thyroid function I think everybody knows this at this stage we've got iodine we've got protein glucose selenium and lots of minerals like those the main nutrients that the thyroid needs to be optimal when you're under eating not only are you not giving your thyroid those calories or those energy macros that it needs to function and produce thyroid hormone and all the metabolic functions that thyroid contributes to but you're also driving up the stress system in your body when we under eat we increase those stress hormones being a CTH being parathyroid hormone per lactin estrogen yes estrogen is a stress hormone serotonin is a stress hormone and of course our old friends adrenaline and cortisol so when you under eat all these to be brash I'll say bad hormones they increase and then the good hormones decrease so the more you exacerbate this stress system the more everything slows down because stress is one of the main I suppose one of the main damaging biochemical systems the most damaging biochemical system to your thyroid and under eating is a stressor so that's important not only for what I just said but as I was saying to a client recently who was really really under eating believe me I've tried to get a tutor she needs to eat more and come up with a plan but I don't know schedules and whatnot but regardless when you're trying to lose weight again we're not only trying to lose weight we're trying to be healthy as well because we want to keep this weight off in the long time we don't want to mess stuff up while we're trying to lose weight so if you're under eating and you really are exacerbating that stress response and you're slowing down thyroid function what do you think is going to happen when you start eating a lot more quote normal we are going to regain the weight but now you've already damaged your thyroid so you're probably going to regain more but also experience some other issues hair loss low core temperature cold hands feet constipation that's poor skin issues recurring infection respiratory issues systemic inflammation shall I go on menstrual issues fertility issues sleep issues like it just goes and goes like once the thyroid starts to go wonky everything else does so now you start eating normal you have these issues you regain the weight but because you've already damaged your thyroid now you either gain more or you try to lose weight again and it's twice as hard because now your thyroid function is lower than it was originally and this is where we see people yo-yo and then start to go to more extreme and drastic measures over time it's very important that you lose weight in a healthy way like in a smart way where you're not compromising your thyroid and your hormones like really important because you again you want to keep this off your life but you don't want to make things harder for yourself in the future and you really really can so hopefully you guys have kind of absorbed that piece of information now before I move on because calories for food from food they do matter they do matter more than people realize they matter in the context of thyroid and sex hormones or steroid hormones they matter in the context of steroid hormones they matter in the context of mental health hormones if you're under eat we see this time and time again people's mental health just subsides I like if the thyroid we know there's a direct connection between thyroid and mental health if the thyroid starts to function low every time I see mental health issues whether or not they're anxiety or worse which I hate to see but they're real so it's important that you do this the right way don't try to under eat don't start and this is a concern I have with the whole ozempic and weight loss trend now that's going on and I hope to have a separate podcast episode on this soon but I'm really concerned because of how ozempic interacts with the body not just ozempic success and death and occlutide all of them because they drastically cause people to under eat they really are putting the body into a big stress state forget about all the other side effects right now but in the context of metabolism and thyroid I think we're gonna have a big big old mess on our hands in a year or not a couple of months like I really see this being problematic so I'm part of that is what I mentioned earlier as well and I already see this and this very much is connected to under eating and people are already messaging me about losing a lot of hair on these weight loss strokes because hair loss is very very common when you're eating and why is that well part of it is the triage system in your body your body will act in a state of triage whatever nutrients that come into your body or calories they're going to get sequestered to the most important organ or metabolic system first to keep you alive and unfortunately your hair is not actually on the top of that tier so whatever else is left that might go to your hair skin and nails but usually that's not a lot so then we start to see hair loss from malnutrition but hair loss is also caused from excuse me inflammation and stress the follicle can become inflamed again if you under eat and already have a stressful lifetime lifestyle then you're exacerbating that stress response you got a lot going on there and that's going to destroy your thyroid we know the number one cause and this in itself is another rabbit hole the number one cause of hair loss is low thyroid function and a big part of that is attributed to estrogen dominance again another rabbit hole but that's where stress comes in and that's where inflammation comes in when you have a lot of stress you will no doubt have a lot of systemic inflammation inflammation will slow down thyroid function too like those are the top reasons that people experience hair loss it's going to be malnutrition stress which causes low thyroid function and systemic inflammation you need all of these adequate calories and macros protein collagen is huge for our hair minerals huge for hair your hair is mostly made up of protein and minerals i think there is and i've said this before a strong argument to be made which is more important then means our minerals i strongly believe minerals are more important so yes that means salt um but this again super important to recognize if your hair is falling out maybe you're under eating or maybe there's something else going on then we've got changes in hunger cues which a lot of people already have issues in recognizing when they're truly hunger or when they're hunger you're having cravings like true hunger if you've ever experienced true hunger you will know like you almost feel like your stomach is caving in on itself and you want to vomit like i need something now and there was one study done in 2016 following mice for three months they were fed a diet containing 40% fewer calories than usual which is quite a lot but not uncommon the research has found that the levels of the appetite suppressing hormones leptin and IGF one decreased in the mice while hunger signals increased significantly you know they didn't this was mostly mice chow they didn't specifically say what the mice were being fed this could be directly shall we say mitigated with sayin abundance of protein and minerals and making sure that again the pyrrhoid is supported not to sound like a broken record but the title of that study if you want to check it out you'll find it on PubMed um and that's the effects of graded levels of calorie restriction impact of short-term graded calorie restriction on transcript mohmic responses of the hypothalamic hunger and circadian signaling pathways there was another 2021 study so pretty recent examining calorie restrictions in humans found that restricting calories didn't lead to a notable decrease in hunger or appetite but it also didn't lead to increased hunger appetite who had low in people who had low appetites begin with so that shown us it could go either way but again we don't know what those people were eating either so though microbes do count and that comes back to what I said is just because there's calorie restriction doesn't mean there needs to be nutrient restrictions although they go hand in hand they can be separated so what what we we don't necessarily need to rely on the research here as much as we do on what we've experienced ourselves or different case studies what we see in the general population and that is usually that people will restrict restrict restrict they'll have all these issues including sex hormone issues and fertility issues and then when they do eat they struggle to control themselves so it's almost uncontrollable binge eating but we do see the weight come back on usually a lot at least double and part of that is because of the slowdown of thyroid function and that increased action of the stress hormones um we also know that when people under eat they do have issues with fertility the menstrual cycle um most everything like constipation obviously if you're under eating you're going to have issues having bowel movements but why but how well the same reason we're feeling cold all the time cold hands feet nose detoxification issues skin issues all of this and this is what I didn't um didn't mention in the original under eating podcast so do go back and check that out because it'll pair very well with this one all of it comes back to the thyroid another thing we see when people under eat especially in children and adolescents they tend to be smaller um they don't grow as expected or as their their peers do who are eating a good nutritional template um and in younger children you may have heard this referred to as a failure to thrive or delayed growth this is and can be directly brought back to thyroid function we see time and time again that children and adolescents teens young adults who have a good nutritional diet they get a lot of sun exposure and actually I was just speaking to my husband about this I am in florida we were on vacation we see time and time again that they grow better because thyroid is supported I was saying to my husband you know I think I figured out why doctor this is not the new it just came it comes to me when it's ready to in a layman's kind of way but doctor jack rusus has spoken about this before doctor grove burns has spoken with this doctor a peak but sometimes my own thoughts just evolve when I'm pottering around thinking to myself and I said to my husband I think I know why most of the people down here and people that live closer to the equator they're a lot bigger than us and by us us in our land our land we're very small people and it like never shuns their son never shines it just rain and dol and overcast all the time and that directly affects the thyroid your thyroid thrives the metabolic systems thrive all the rote factors thrive with a lot of sun exposure and I believe that's why people in florida and along the equator texas spain even mexico they're generally bigger than us Irish people and even British people because of all the sun exposure and even like small mexicans because mexicans a lot of the time I think are perceived as being small but even the small mexicans are bigger than normal Irish people there is a lot to be said for thyroid function so I suppose all of a sudden this topic that I wanted to cover on under eating it really all just come back to starving the thyroid and depriving the metabolic systems of the calories and the nutrients that they need it doesn't have to be that way but for most people it is that way unless you're working with a practitioner's came up a solid plan for you and you're actually following that plan day in and day out then the thyroid really suffers a lot and that should be everyone's main concern because the thyroid for most people naturally declines as we get older and there's many reasons why that happens but we don't want to speed that up and under eating and yo-yo dieting really does speed that up and that's where we see that impaired growth. Skin issues including acne, boils, eczema, hair loss, bril nails, chronic infections, especially respiratory infections, constipation, feeling cold all the time, cold hand speed, no, with everything I mentioned menstrual issues, heavy bleeding, fertility, the whole lot when we look at the research it all goes back to thyroid function and again if you're starving yourself or under eating now and your thyroid slows down you're going to have a lot on your hands in the future which is again what I think we're going to see with these weight loss drugs and the outcome over the next few months and you really need if you want to like keep albibold and say like your dream body the body you really want you want to keep your goals forever and ever and ever you absolutely need to day in day out support and prioritize thyroid health and function because that's going to help you maintain your not only your weight but all these different health factors including hormones but then it's going to help you keep it off in the long term so really really important I started this episode often like most of my episodes I just talk I don't usually have a transcript or anything but I started this podcast episode off what under eating and it really has just gone mostly into supporting your thyroid and I think that's appropriate because this is a consideration a lot of people have not considered not just for the acute the short term but the long term if you starve yourself you are starving your thyroid you're starving your metabolism and all your metabolic systems and hormones that is going to bite you in the ass so slow and steady really does win the race don't under eat be smart about what you're doing and when we say under eating and I'm really I'm talking about those 500 calorie diet 700 calorie diets one meal a day fasting for several times a day pushing yourself really hard it's it's going to be a problem so make sure that you're fueling your body and I know that sounds very cliche but it's true make sure you're fueling your body especially your protein and minerals for thyroid make sure you're staying hydrated make sure you get your antioxidants make sure you're getting an off-glue coast to support metabolism create your calorie deficit in whatever way you're going to create a but not true starvation maybe you start walking every day maybe you start exercising maybe you stop eating earlier in the day maybe you reduce fat maybe you reduce there's ways to do it but do not starve yourself any another thing and we'll leave it at this you will not see the results you want these two clients that I have have kind of referred to at the beginning of this episode they are not losing weight like my other clients who are eating their solid meals each day and staying on top of their nutrition and their supplements and everything they've pretty much plateaued because the metabolism is like oh my god we're starving we're back in the vomit again and it just slows down it's trying to conserve all the energy they're exhausted going around they're constipated it's conserving energy and they're not losing weight on the scales even though they're under eating and part of that is because this isn't their first rodeo as they say they've done it before and now the body's like oh my god we're back here again okay extra conservation mode anyway hopefully that was insightful for you if you have any questions as always reach out to me you can reach me on facebook instagram email you can email me to my website cenasmetalhealth.com there's a connect with me button at the top of the page I get those emails and I respond pretty fast to them so yeah hopefully you enjoyed this and please share with anyone you think this may be beneficial for because there's a lot of people doing this doing this right now either they're totally under eating or they're on these weight bop strokes but it is happening and they most likely haven't considered this aspect of it so thank you for your time everyone um I will chat to you guys really soon I hope you have a great day and bye bye