Developing Metabolic Health as a Business Leader
Principles and practices for leaders to understand the lifestyle factors that contribute to metabolic health.
To Health Advocates—
Creating a culture of health and positive well-being for the teams we lead requires us to understand what our own role is in this process. An ideal scenario exists when the culture leaders of a company understand the way in which their influence engages other team members. Better yet, if that person is us, then the process of improving well-being and health culture starts with our own self-awareness and journey. By choosing to partake in a process that leads to a healthier version of ourselves, we can lead from the front in showing others how to live a life that prioritizes our health and self-care.
Helping others is, unfortunately, not a linear process, nor is it black and white. One thing we can be certain of, is that impacting this process starts with ourselves. Living a healthy life and having a positive well-being is an ongoing promotion of a lifestyle that better serves the people choosing to come work with us every day. If the people reporting to you see someone burnt out and unhappy, they will, consciously or subconsciously, equate the way we live our life to the cost of success. This is, of course, indirectly detrimental to our teams as many people will choose not to sign up for that punishment.
Why should we even care to burden ourselves with the health of other people? Healthier and happier people lead to better employee retention and more business success. Not to mention, having enough empathy to care about the people we work with everyday is just the right thing to do.
I’ve been fortunate enough to spend my days with business leaders in many sectors, all of whom choose to participate in a process that leads to the healthiest versions of themselves. This process puts them in a position of influence, if they wish, to pass forward healthy living principles and practices that help add value to their own life. When something is valuable to us, we naturally want to pay it forward. This is a basic understanding in developing a positive culture at work.
Below is a breakdown of the fundamental principles that influence our metabolic health. Many of these make up ongoing conversations that I discuss with clients on a week to week basis. Mastering the fundamentals of metabolic health will help deliver sustainable performance over and over again. Why? In the short term, depending whether or not our body burns carbs or fats can have an impact on our stress and mood. In the long term, developing our body’s metabolism to consistently burn fat is a high priority area for living a very long life and obviously maintaining a healthy body weight.
Reading it is one thing, putting it into practice is another (the old saying: simple, not easy). I hope you enjoy and have a great weekend!
Article Summary
We have two main avenues to burn fat: At rest WITH a healthy metabolism, and during low intensity activity. That’s it.
A healthy metabolism at rest is earned via lifestyle factors.
Despite flashy headlines, strength training, HIIT classes, boxing, cycling classes, etc etc do not exercise our ability to use fat as fuel.
Life stress, work stress, all stress - shifts us away from fat burning at rest just as a hard workout would. Chronically living this way must be catered to.
Practices to improve metabolic health
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Having optimal metabolic health is a vital component to a long and healthy life.
5 Facts About Metabolic Health
1 - At rest, our body should burn both fats and carbohydrates— also, a tiny percentage of protein—but the bulk of our resting metabolism is accounted for via carbohydrates and fats. The amount of each varies from person to person, and our ability to impact this is well within our control.
2 - A healthy resting metabolism favors fat as a primary source of fuel. During times of optimal recovery, low stress (physical, emotional, nutritional), great sleep, we swing the pendulum towards this fat burn consistently. During times of low recovery, high stress (physical, emotional, nutritional), and poor sleep we swing the pendulum towards a carbohydrate burn (glycolysis)
3 - Our breathing patterns are directly correlated to which fuel source (carbs or fats) are body is preferring at any given moment. Why? Our respiratory quotient (RQ) is the number used to determine what source of energy our body is using for fuel. It is calculated by the amount of Carbon Dioxide our body is releasing divided by the amount of Oxygen it is consuming. When Carbon Dioxide output exceeds Oxygen input, we are no longer using fat as a fuel source. Hence, this is a small part of the bigger emphasis on breathing exercises or practices that have become popular as of late.
A lot of jargon, but all you need to know, the on-ramp to more efficient breathing that helps with recovery and prioritizing fat as a fuel starts with nasal breathing. At rest and during workouts.
4 - Poor sleep, which is common with people who have high-leverage careers, is one of the most influential components affecting RQ that I see in my practice. When we are under-slept, or lacking quality sleep, our body shifts into glycolysis, simultaneously altering our relationship to Carbon Dioxide and Oxygen. Healthy metabolic function has a foundation that is created by how serious you take your sleep.
5 - The only other method our body has to burn fat is during low intensity exercise. This is defined as 70% or less of our heart rate max during cardiovascular exercise—a key point being cardiovascular exercise— For most people this would be a very strong walk for an extended period of time or a very light jog where you can still easily hold a conversation/ nasal breathe. Again, at rest with a healthy metabolism, and during low intensity exercise are the two main avenues to assure our metabolism includes fats on a day to day basis.
Why is this important to understand as a business leader?
Our bodies perceive stress one way. It initiates the stress response no matter if the stress acting on it is a hard workout, a poor night’s sleep, an early deadline that your company has set, or even the emotional strain of laying off an employee. A default of the stress response is often a shift into glycolysis; which is a waning of a lipid metabolism, and an elevation of a carbohydrate based metabolism.
Business leaders and executives with high leverage work are often toeing the line of dealing with stress at all hours of the day. Our health and fitness routine must cater to this fact. It doesn’t mean going light all the time, it means implementing a plan that helps strengthen our body’s ability to de-stress and recover. It does occasionally mean prioritizing light workouts, and it also means planning your hardest workout days during times of low stress or high recovery.
Below is 5 practical steps you can take to improve your metabolic health.
Principles and Practices to Improve Metabolic health
1 - Prioritizing Sleep - This is the number one practice we have to improve metabolic health function. Making sleep a priority means a number of things: being in bed for 8 hours, eliminating caffeine after 1pm, not eating right before bed, limiting consumption of alcohol, dimming the lights/ screens well before bed, and seeking out morning sunlight first thing each morning. Good metabolic function has a foundation in good quality and quantity of sleep.
2 - Balanced Nutrition - Eating a varied breakdown of macronutrients (carbs, fats, proteins) at each meal helps our body continuously burn both sources of fuels throughout the day and at rest. Learning how to build a plate should be a high priority for anyone looking to get the most out of their nutrition. This Precision Nutrition meal cheat sheet is one of the best resources I have seen on the topic.
Designing our meals with that guide in mind will help simplify a very well-balanced diet for any individual. I would suggest coming back to it whenever you need new ideas or inspiration.
3 - Breath Work - Like previously mentioned, our body’s ability to efficiently pull in oxygen, and expel carbon dioxide is directly correlated to our resting metabolism. Our body requires adaptation over a period of time to excel at this process but the starting points for adaptation are nasal breathing and small consistent breath practice that can be worked at.
When working at intensities of average or below average intensity (this would be most of the time) we should focus on breathing in and out through the nose. Additionally, while we sleep, or at times of rest, we should be nasal breathing as well. Even during resistance training, if we aren’t working at high intensities, we should be focused on breathing in and out through the nose.
Second, a breath practice that can be used to de-stress during the day or put you in right frame of mind before bed is a great way to change the chemistry of your body and help encourage healthy metabolic function. An approachable starting point here is just understanding that healthy nervous system function can be found at 6 breaths per minute. This would be an inhale of 5 seconds followed by an exhale of 5 seconds. Doing this for 3-5 minutes or longer would instantly help combat stress and encourage baseline health of many systems of our body including the nervous system and metabolic function.
The hope would be that practicing those two would result in an adaptation over a period of time that lowers your respiration rate measured in breaths per minute.
4 - Low Intensity Exercise - If our metabolic function is struggling due to stress or other factors, we have a safety net in low intensity cardiovascular exercise. At heart rates equal or below 70% of our max heart and above 55-60% our body will elevate fat burning to provide the energy for the task that is being done. The plus side of doing this on a regular basis is that our body will adapt to burning fat and become more efficient at doing so throughout the rest of the day.
This principle and the practice of prioritizing a consistent cardiovascular routine that addresses this intensity creates a foundation for longevity and healthy metabolic function.
5 - Unstructured Activity - Last but not least, and one I feel is very underrated is piecing together small bouts of activity throughout the day to help raise our baseline metabolism on a regular basis. Unstructured activity would count as activity that falls into everyday life that wouldn’t really be considered a workout as the intensity would be too low. The benefit of doing this is that we burn extra calories throughout the day, and potentially graze the beginning of our low intensity zone, which was roughly defined as a heart rate at 55% of our heart rate max.
Practices for this category would be walking the dog as often as you can, parking further away at stores, walking to work, exiting the subway system early to walk a few extra blocks, and just really doing anything on your feet that increases your total daily step count. This principle is a keystone practice for places in the world that are usually highlighted in blue zone conversations.
Optimal metabolic health requires day in and day out work, which is where the beauty of habits come in. You don’t have to think about all of this everyday, just incorporate a few daily practices like walking the dog longer, preparing a snack in advance of work, or setting a 5 minute timer before bed to work on breathing. Know the principles but live in the practices.
Thank you for reading this, thank you for subscribing, and please have a great weekend!
Health principles featured today
Metabolic health is so vital to our living, that learning and developing this principle impacts every principle.