How to Heal your Metabolism

Need some answers in your healing journey? Maybe you have heard about Pro Metabolic eating and want to know how to actually apply it in your everyday life. Here are 9 Pro Metabolic principles that have helped me heal my metabolism.

Perhaps how to heal your metabolism would be better phrased how to balance your metabolism. It makes perfect sense to me now, but when starting out on my own healing journey through Pro Metabolic eating, this created some confusion.

Healing seemed to imply a one and down scenario like another fad diet. You heal and you move on. When in reality, Pro Metabolic eating is long term commitment to continually rebalance your metabolism or all your bodies systems as needed through nourishing foods and healthy habits.

This balance looks different for everyone and there may need to be a period of healing from food sensitives or other things. Since we all come from different situations and life circumstances, there is no way to determine how long the healing will take. After sufficient healing has taken place, Pro Metabolic eating also provides a sustainable way to maintain a healthy balance to all your systems or what is called your metabolism.

PM eating provides initial healing, re-balancing to your health, and also holds keys to deeper healing that may need to take place over time. It’s not just a one and done, do this in three months and you’re good to go kind of a thing.

I have chosen to view PM eating as a long-term sustainable way to provide me and my family with nourishing foods that are healing and easy to digest. Although I have reversed my gluten intolerance, sleep better than I have in years, and have so much more energy to serve my family with, I still have health struggles that may not go away or may simply be part of a more long-term healing process.

Don’t get me wrong. I still eat fast food or go out to eat every once in awhile and I still eat whatever is set before me at social gatherings (and without hesitation), but for the most part, I follow these 9 Pro metabolic principles on a daily or weekly basis. These are also the things I turn back to after eating out in order to help clear up my skin and help me feel better.

So without any more rambling, here are the things that I prioritize to heal my metabolism.

Pair carbs with protein.

Carbs or carbohydrates are complex sugars so when your body digests them, they are turned into sugar which causes your blood sugar to go up. In order to keep your blood sugar levels from spiking and then crashing, pair carbs with a protein. The protein will balance it out.

For clarification when I say carbs, I mean things like…

Grains (oats, wheat, rice, etc)
Potatoes
Sweet Potatoes
Cassava Flour
Squash
Desserts
Fruit/Fruit Juice

Some examples of easy to digest protein to pair with carbs are…

Cheese
Milk
Yogurt
Meat
Eggs

Although nuts are proteins, they are harder to digest especially if you can’t get them fresh and prepare them properly. I try to avoid nuts and nut milks most of the time, but I do enjoy them occasionally. They just aren’t the best choice of protein when you are trying to heal or balance out your metabolism.

Eat enough and as often as needed.

When our bodies don’t get enough to eat or enough food to turn into fuel for all the various systems that it runs, this causes unnecessary stress. It easily goes into survival mode or the fight and flight mode.

Maybe you are eating enough, but if your body isn’t getting the nutrients it needs, then it will start pulling them from other places (like your bones or organs) which can cause all kinds of damage to different systems in the long run.

Stress is not entirely bad and we can’t avoid it entirely. There are, however, ways that we can manage stress and ways we can support our bodies when we are stressed. The main way is to eat enough food so that our bodies will have ample energy to endure the stress.

A few good principles to follow to make sure you are getting enough to eat and supporting your body during extra stressful times are….

Eat when you are hungry. Don’t make yourself wait more than 30 minutes to an hour before a mealtime if you know you are hungry and if you can help it especially if you are the one preparing the meal. You body needs energy so if you are starving, eat something or drink a nourishing beverage like bone broth or milk.
Eat as often as you need to. A good rule of thumb is to make sure you have something to eat every 3-4 hours. If you know it is going to be more than 3 hours between meals, plan to have a snack. If you are expecting a little one, it may be closer to 2-3 hours between meals. I find this is true for children as well.
Eat something 30 minutes to an hour after waking up. A cup of OJ, milk, or a small smoothie does the trick for me and gives me enough energy to make a hardy breakfast for my family not long afterwards. Cheese is also a good choice.
Eat a snack 30 minutes to an hour before bedtime if you need to. I usually keep this snack light with some kind of sweet and salty milk drink (like homemade hot chocolate, chocolate milk, bone broth hot chocolate, or a cup of milk with some honey and salt) or milk with a pinch of salt and some fruit if I am especially hungry.

Get good quality sleep.

You probably hear it every where, “You need 8-9 hours of sleep every night.” As a parent, that is not always a reality and yet I find that I am able to flourish with what I can get. The key with sleep is to know what you need and to provide it for yourself as best as you can. Do what you can and don’t worry about the rest.

Don’t stress about sleep if you can’t do anything about it. Be thankful for what you do get and support your body as best as you can throughout the day through restful breaks and nourishing food.

If you struggle with going to sleep, staying asleep, or waking up in the night and not being able to go to back to sleep, try prioritizing a bedtime snack and if you need to, get up and have a bit of milk with some salt. This might help lower your stress hormone and help you feel relaxed enough to go back to sleep.

Move.

In order to help your body get out of the fight or flight mode and lower unnecessary stress, focus on movement rather extensive workout or exercise routines. For me in this season of life, movement looks like regular housekeeping and playing with my children. Sometimes, I fit in some stretches to keep me nimble and maybe go for a walk, but my responsibilities keep me fairly active so I don’t stress over a work out routine.

Also, choose movement that you enjoy. Movement is a good way to reduce stress and encourage joy and is not just to provide a way to be active.

Eat good quality food.

This is probably the biggest area of change when it comes to making a healthy change to your lifestyle. Food can be expensive and also complicated because of all the different labels and ingredients that are in foods.

I have been on a quest to simplify food through cooking from scratch. I have found that prioritizing making our own food from raw ingredients is the best way to avoid harder to digest things like…

seed oils and unsaturated fats
perservatives
pesticides
dyes

It is also the only way that we have been able to afford better quality food.

It is necessary to make the distinction that processed food doesn’t have to be bad for you. To say a food is processed means that it has undergone some kind of preparation or process that has changed it. To wash a vegetable is to process it so we can’t say that all processed food is bad. You can still have the convenience of processed foods and still eat good quality food.

The key is to find processed foods that only contain real ingredients, no chemical preservatives or additives like dyes. If I don’t know what an ingredient is, then I usually just put it back on the shelf.

If you can make things from fresh ingredients (even if you can’t always afford to buy organic), I think that is more nutritious, affordable, and a simple way to avoid harder to digest ingredients.

Save it for Later!

Prioritize roots and fruits over grains.

Grains aren’t bad. They are just harder to digest. If you need some deep healing to your metabolism, it might be best to really limit grains for a season or avoid them most of the time in order to cut your digestion some slack.

Prioritizing roots and fruits over grains helps me feel better, have more energy, and keeps my rosacea from breaking out. I try to do this most of the time so that when we go to family gatherings or my husband wants to treat me to a date, I don’t have to worry about what to eat. My metabolism can handle a little bit every once in awhile.

If you do choose to or have no problem digesting grains, try to stick to the suggested serving size (which you can find by a quick google search or reading the back of packages). Moderation is the key so don’t get too hung up on it.

Cassava flour has been the game changer in limiting grains in my own healing journey especially when it comes to desserts. There is nothing like actual wheat flour when it comes baking, but cassava flour is the closest you will get to a satisfying and delicious substitution. It’s also super easy to work with and can be substituted 1:1 for flour in a lot of recipes without having to add any other ingredients.

Eat fermented foods.

Think…

Cheese
Yogurt
Kefir
Fermented veggies (sauerkraut, fermented carrots, fermented pickles, etc.)
Sourdough

Fermentation is an old fashioned method of preserving foods. They are claimed to provide really good bacteria for you gut which is what you need to heal your metabolism. I don’t know about all the gut and healthy bacteria stuff, but I do know that fermentation breaks down foods which makes it easier to digest which is a huge help to heal your gut and in turn other systems.

You may have heard a lot from Pro Metabolic influencers about how raw veggies and salads should be avoided. This actually created a lot of confusion when I started my healing journey through Pro Metabolic eating. Over time, I have realized that raw veggies like cabbage, cauliflower, broccoli, and leafy greens, for example, are simply harder to digest. That is why they get all the flak.

Fermenting veggies (not all ferment well) and/or cooking them thoroughly really aids your digestion. I make sauerkraut and fermented carrots quite frequently, store them in the fridge, and use them in soups. Some might say that this kills the healthy bacteria, but I am not really focusing on healthy bacteria. I focus more on how to prepare and consume things in the easiest way for me to digest them.

Fermented dairy like cheese, yogurt, and kefir are also super helpful if you are coming from a dairy intolerance. You might find these to be easier to digest than milk. Some also suggest that consuming dairy with with bone broth, gelatin, or collagen may also help in digesting them, like in soups or cheesy baked goods that have broth (like casseroles) or collagen in them.

If you are going to consume flour, sourdough is going to be your best friend. It’s not super complicated to learn and incorporate into your lifestyle. I make sourdough for my family every week even though I am trying to limit or avoid it if possible for deeper healing. Here’s my simple sourdough guide if you want to get started.

Consume bone broth.

Is it any wonder that bone broth is so healing when the stereotypical food for sick people is chicken noodle soup? If your metabolism is struggling, then your gut is probably struggling and there is no better way to heal your gut or go easy on it than consuming broth.

It’s nutritious, super easy to digest, and very hydrating. Easy ways to consume bone broth are…

Soups and stews
Casseroles and other recipes that call for broth
On its own as a nourishing drink
As a replacement for liquids for pasta or potatoes
Using gelatin or collagen in recipes

Buying bone broth can get expensive real quick, but an easy and affordable way to get around this is to make your own broth from leftover bones. I do this every week basically for free because I already buy whole chickens (because its cheaper than buying cuts of organic chicken meat). Here’s my recipe!

I also keep gelatin on hand to substitute bone broth when I have run out of my homemade bone broth. It’s basically dehydrated bone broth and unflavored bouillon powder.

I try to consume bone broth in some form once or twice a day.

Supplement with minerals.

Some minerals can be really hard to get enough of from food. I have much farther to go in this area of my healing journey, but for now, here is how I make sure I am getting minerals from a good source everyday…

Potassium – Potatoes
Calcium – Dairy
Sodium – uniodinized sea salt (I cook with it, but I also add a small pinch to every cup of liquid I drink during the day including milk and juice.)
Magnesium – Cocoa Powder and occasionally a foot soak with epsom salt which is magnesium

I also take beef liver pills which are the only vitamin supplements I currently take and it is high in all kinds of minerals including copper and zinc.

Not to mention all the minerals that I get from bone broth.

Final thoughts!

Pro Metabolic eating has helped me reduce rosacea, heal my gut, reverse a gluten intolerance, have more energy, sleep better, and just feel better overall! Because of this, I have high hopes that it will provide even more healing in the long run. I can’t recommend it enough to anyone who is looking for a solution to any health problems they have.

I do want to state though that I am not a doctor or certified nutritionist. I’m simply a stay at home mom that is trying feel her best so that she can serve her family to the best of her ability. Whatever steps you take with this advice is at your own risk. I cannot prove that any of this will work for you, but after all that Pro Metabolic has helped me in my healing and health journey, I think the risk is worth taking.

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