We already discussed that your metabolism is the engine that runs your entire system — thyroid, hormones, brain, digestion, immune repair, everything.
When it slows down, your body knows. You feel cold, tired, puffy. Your periods go missing or become hell. Your skin breaks out. Your sleep falls apart. You get anxious over nothing.
And while you're chasing hormone tests and buying more supplements, you're doing five things that are quietly dragging your metabolic rate into the ground.
1. Skipping breakfast
Yes — your "intermittent fasting window" is wrecking you.
If you wake up and run on coffee alone, you're forcing your body to rely on stress hormones to function. Cortisol and adrenaline rise to keep your blood sugar stable. Your body literally thinks it's starving — because it is.
You're not fasting. You're running on fumes and pretending it's discipline.
Metabolically active people eat. Especially in the morning. That first meal stabilizes your blood sugar, jumpstarts thyroid activity, and tells your body it's safe. Skip it, and you stay in a catabolic state — breaking down tissue to survive.
2. Living on salads, smoothies, and "clean" cold meals
Raw kale isn't power food — it's digestive stress in a bowl.
Your body doesn't want cold, raw food when it's trying to heal. It wants warmth, ease, and bioavailable nutrients. But most health advice pushes to eat like birds:
- Cold green smoothies
- Raw leafy salads
- Low-fat, no-salt, high-fiber everything
What this actually does: tanks your digestion, bloats your gut, suppresses thyroid, and reduces bile flow.
If your hands and feet are always cold, and your food looks like rabbit feed — we have a problem.
3. Overexercising and under-recovering
Exercise is a stressor. It can build resilience if your system is strong. But when your metabolism is already low, more cardio, HIIT, or strength training without proper fuel is just adding to the fire.
Every time you overtrain and under-eat, you send your body this message:
"I'm not safe. Shut everything down."
You lose your period. Your skin gets worse. Your gut slows. You wonder why your results plateau or reverse.
The stress hormones rise, the thyroid drops, and fat loss stops — no matter how hard you push.
4. PUFAs — the oils you don't realize you're eating
You ditched seed oils, great. But PUFA (polyunsaturated fatty acid) damage runs deeper than "just avoid canola."
PUFAs are hiding in:
- Pork fat
- Store-bought nut butters
- Oat milk and almond milk
- Most protein bars and "health" snacks
PUFAs suppress thyroid, increase inflammation, and damage mitochondria. They're one of the most anti-metabolic substances in your diet and they linger in your tissues for years.
Your metabolic rate is directly tied to how fast your cells can produce energy. PUFAs gum up the works.
5. Cutting sugar and salt — the two things your metabolism actually needs
You've been told sugar is evil and salt is dangerous. That advice is for people with metabolic syndrome (think: obesity, insulin resistance, high blood pressure) — not for people whose systems are collapsing from restriction.
Your liver needs glucose to convert T4 into active T3 thyroid hormone. Your adrenals need salt to regulate aldosterone and blood pressure. Your brain needs both to stay calm.
Cutting them means:
- Low thyroid output
- Higher cortisol
- Anxiety and insomnia
- Cold extremities and dizziness
It's not discipline. It's dysfunction. You're starving the system that's trying to keep you alive.
Your metabolism isn't broken. You're just following the wrong rules.
You don't need to suffer to heal.
You don't need to restrict more to feel better.
You need to understand how energy works — and how to stop making your body feel unsafe.
Most people are doing everything "right" and still falling apart. That's not their fault.
But once you see what's really happening? It becomes your responsibility to fix it.
No one is coming to save you. Start here. Feed your system. Watch what changes.