Slow Metabolism: Signs, Causes, and How to Fix It

Our metabolism is the invisible, magical actor that manages our bodies behind the scenes. It plays a major role in how our body responds to nutrients and training, but instead of seeking to learn more about it, we instead tend to focus on the simple mathematics of calories in and calories out, and training volume.

This is a mistake, because there’s far more at play within your body than can be accounted for with the numbers on nutrition labels, and the digits you accumulate on your treadmill’s calorie tracker. 

So how can you get a sense of what your metabolism is doing for you, and if your metabolism happens to be slow, what can you do about it?

Evaluate your physique

If you’ve fallen off the diet and exercise wagon and you’ve gained a noticeable amount of weight, that’s one thing. However, if you’re noticing gains of unhealthy weight that seem incommensurate with your reasonable diet and solid exercise routine, that can certainly be a sign of a slow metabolism. 

In the same vein, you may feel like your muscle mass is dissipating despite your continued efforts to strength train. That combination of a dramatic weight gain combined with a noticeable loss of muscle is a telltale sign that your metabolism is slowing down, especially if it wasn’t prompted by any modifications to your nutrition or training strategies.

Evaluate your energy level

If you’re feeling incredibly stressed, this can be both a cause of a declining metabolism, or at least a contributor to it. Likewise, fluctuations in your stress level are likely to be influenced by other factors that contribute to a reduced metabolism, like a lack of sleep, or an irregular pattern of food consumption.

When all of these factors coalesce, they tend to have an amplification effect, as one contributes to the other, prompting an overall increase in fatigue, a decline in energy, and possibly even digestive discomfort when you actually do get some food into your system. All of these elements can ultimately add up to a metabolism that has seemingly ground to a halt despite otherwise healthy eating and training practices.

What can you do to fix it?

What you’re ultimately looking to do is create a high-revving metabolism that steadily burns calories as energy throughout the day. One of the easiest ways to do that — which is in stark contrast to the caloric-restriction protocol — is to actually eat more meals throughout the day. 

Eating regular snacks and meals — ideally four before you sit down for dinner in the evening — will send the signal to your body that it doesn’t need to hold onto fat stores for the sake of its own survival, and then start relinquishing stored fat as it steadily burns energy. 

On top of that, if you consume plenty of muscle-replenishing protein, which is a more thermogenically active form of food, you will stoke your metabolism while simultaneously assisting your body with its muscle repair.

The Numbers Aren’t Everything

Your metabolism is your body’s way of acting in what it thinks to be your best interest, even if it thinks it needs to save you from yourself. This means that if you strip away the lion’s share of the calories from your diet in an effort to lose weight, your body is willing to shut down its metabolism to save you from starving, meaning you won’t see the results you would otherwise expect to see.

Your best bet is to work within your metabolism to keep your body running smoothly. That means feeding your body, getting regular sleep, and minimizing stress. That’s the most reliable way to jumpstart a slow metabolism, and set your body along a predictable path.

Takeaways

1. Your metabolism fluctuates based on lifestyle factors and choices.

2. An increase in weight and a loss of muscle tissue are telltale signs of a metabolism that is slowing down.

3. Stress, sleep loss, and other factors not connected with diet and exercise can also disrupt your metabolism.

4. Eating more meals at regular intervals signals to your body that it does not need to store body fat due to stressful circumstances.

5. Protein is a thermogenically active food that can help to boost your metabolism.

6. Factors that slow down metabolism tend to magnify; addressing one can also help you to correct others, resulting in a rapid acceleration to your metabolism in a short time.