I talk a lot about eating to heal your metabolism.

When we restrict, it slows down our bodies (“metabolism”). Your body is trying to conserve energy and trying to get you to eat. Restriction of any kind will cause you to fixate on food, be hungrier, more tired, and put on weight quicker – to save your life. Those are all signs of a slow metabolism.

The simple, straight-forward, and only way to heal your famine metabolism, is to eat and rest.

Eating (normally a lot) is the natural response to restriction/dieting. It is the only cure. It is what the body is asking for, and indulging it teaches the body that there is no more restriction. It allows the body to put on weight just-in-case of another famine/diet, and encourages the body that it is safe to speed back up to a normal metabolism and slowly get out of conservation mode.

If you let yourself eat, you will eventually heal your metabolism.

Of course, most people who are going on the fuck it diet are anxious to heal their metabolism quickly, and make sure they are “doing it right”. This is because of a deep-seated fear of gaining weight.

So I get lots of questions about how to know whether your metabolism is healed or not.

I tell people to look at common sense and logic here.

If you’d been in a famine, how long do you think it would take to re-feed yourself? A few months? A year? What feels right based on how long you have been restricting?

And how would you know things were back to normal?

Your weight would stabilize in a weight rage right for you (probably higher than you were seeking in your diet days). Your appetite would normalize and become easier to satiate, yet still hungry consistently for ample food, (because that is what is means to be alive and how a normal metabolism works! We need to eat!)

You’ll also have more real energy. More willingness and energy to go for a walk. More of a craving to move your body. Not out of stress or “shoulds” or worry that you’re getting flabby, but because you genuinely want to… move.

Being tired is a big sign that you need to rest. Duh…

But the most important thing for me to remind anyone who is wondering whether their metabolism is healed or not: is that no matter whether it is or not, eating is the answer. 

Eating and resting will heal a stressed or repressed metabolism. And eating will keep a healthy metabolism healthy. Always, the answer is: eat.

To a diet mind, who thought they’d be healthy once they weren’t hungry any more, this is something you have to re-learn. A healthy metabolism is hungry. For food. That will sustain and repair all your organs and muscles etc…

Eating. It’s how humans stay alive, remember?