Tag: Obesity

Understanding Your Metabolic Health

Fundamentally, your metabolic health is about how well your body responds to and processes food. Our metabolism’s job is to convert what we eat and drink into energy to power your body’s functions. When everything is working well, your body has the energy to do a range of amazing things – from breathing to circulating blood to creating and repairing cells to movement and exercise.

Unfortunately, abnormal chemical reactions in your body can disrupt this process. This is called a metabolic disorder, and when it occurs, your body can end up with too much of one thing and not enough of another, resulting in poorer health.

Your unique metabolic health is shaped by some things you cannot control – your age, gender and genes – as well as things that you can, including your gut microbiome, your stress level, mental health, sleep, diet and exercise. It’s a complex mechanism that can be difficult to fine tune for good health.

However, there are positive approaches you can make to maintain and maximize your metabolic health status. First, let’s look a little deeper at metabolic health.

Metabolic Health 101

At its most basic but also most critical level, metabolism sustains the minimal energy required for life, providing constant fuel for essential bodily functions. Think of it as all the systems that our body powers without any thought or action on our part – all the functions essential to life even when we’re resting that still require calories: breathing, digestion, thought, body temperature regulation, blood circulation, cell growth and repair, and hormone level management.

How much energy your body needs to perform these tasks has a name: basal metabolic rate (BMR). BMR is the minimum amount of calories your body needs to function when you’re at rest and not doing anything. Typically, those processes above use 60 to 70 percent of the fuel we consume. Your digestive system uses about 10 percent to process foods and the rest fuels physical movement.

Though there are averages, this mix is unique to individuals. An athlete might consume more calories to fuel movement and the percentages change. Someone who lives a sedentary life may consume fewer calories because they move less.

These adjustments can be frustrating, especially if you struggle with weight. For example, a fast metabolism makes it easy for some people to eat a lot of food and not gain weight. A slow metabolism may make it hard for people to lose weight just by cutting calories.

Since your metabolism naturally regulates itself to meet your body’s demands, this is also why weight loss can stall, slow down or plateau due to significant calorie intake reduction and rapid weight loss decreasing your BMR. The relationship between metabolism and weight is complex.

Things That Affect Your Metabolic Health

Ironically, how much you weigh and how much fat your body has are some of the things that most affect your metabolic health. For example, abdominal fat cells can raise levels of free fatty acids. These are chemicals that can raise the levels of hormones that affect how your body controls blood glucose levels, the basic energy blocks our metabolism creates from food.

For example, if you have too much adiposity in your midsection, your body may not respond well to insulin, which is the key to getting glucose from your bloodstream and into your cells where it can power your body. This is called insulin resistance.
These same free fatty acids can raise your bad LDL cholesterol levels and lower your good cholesterol levels, putting you at risk for heart disease. Insulin resistance can cause hypertension and raise triglyceride levels, which can cause artery walls to harden. 

These extra fatty acids can also cause increased inflammation, which can cause plaque to build up inside your artery walls. This plaque can break off resulting in a heart attack or stroke.

So, high blood sugar, high LDL or bad cholesterol, low HDL or good cholesterol, high triglycerides and hypertension can all be signs of poor metabolic health – any three of this combination is called metabolic syndrome. 

How to Support Your Metabolism and Your Metabolic Health

It may naturally regulate, but that doesn’t mean your metabolic health is just on autopilot. For your metabolism to perform efficiently requires some focus and action on your part. Mainly you need to eat a well-balanced diet that provides all the essential nutrients your body’s complex biological functions and processes need. See my blog post about macronutrients and special diets. https://myhealthyliving.org/2025/06/01/which-diet-is-best/

Eat at regular times and eat the right amount of calories. Your doctor can help you determine your Basal Metabolic Rate and help you calculate how many calories per day is appropriate for your BMR and your activity.

Beyond diet, you need to get enough exercise (resistance and interval training) and sleep — at least seven hours per night. Shorter sleep is associated with more belly fat and metabolic disorders.

You also need to manage your mental health and stress. Though not directly linked to metabolic rate, stress can impact how much we eat and how much (or little we sleep).

If you’re struggling with any of these things, partner with your doctor to assess lifestyle changes and medications that can help turn your metabolic health around.

Now, it’s time for something new. This is my first of (hopefully) many meal preparation vlogs. Let me know what you think below and don’t forget to click the “Subscribe” button on this web page to get notifications every time I post.

Are Sugar-Free Beverages Helping You Lose Weight? Study Says No

We often associate sugary drinks like sodas with the obesity crisis, which has been plaguing the U.S. since late 1970s.

Of course, many variables are involved, but studies suggest that sugar-sweetened beverages are a prime culprit. Regular consumption of sugar-sweetened beverages like sodas, flavored waters, smoothies, sports drinks, specialty coffees, sweet tea and fruit juices have been linked to weight gain and obesity and raise the risk for serious health conditions such as type 2 diabetes, kidney diseases, gout, non-alcoholic fatty liver disease, heart disease, brain aging and tooth decay and cavities, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).    

Sugary drinks have been contributing to health issues for decades. Big Soda has tried capitalizing on these health issues by offering alternative products. For example, Royal Crown Cola’s Diet Rite was introduced in 1958, appealing to Americans who were trying to lower their calories and/or sugar intake. Since then, a wide array of soft drinks and foods are made with artificial sweeteners – an industry that grew into a nearly $5 billion business with about 40 percent of Americans as consumers.

Artificial Sweeteners

The problem is, artificial sweeteners can’t help you manage your weight – at least not long term, according to a study conducted by University of Southern California and published in Nature Metabolism.

There are eight artificial sweeteners approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), according to the Mayo Clinic; they include:

  • Acesulfame potassium – used in Sweet One and Sunett.
  • Advantame.
  • Aspartame – used in NutraSweet and Equal.
  • Neotame – used in Newtame.
  • Saccharin – used in Sweet’N Low.
  • Sucralose- used in Splenda.
  • Luo han guo – used in Monk Fruit in the Raw.
  • Purified stevia leaf extracts – used in Truvia, PureVia, others.

In this new study, researchers only looked at sucralose, a common, all-purpose artificial sweetener used in baked goods, beverages, chewing gum, gelatins, frozen dairy desserts, Diet Coke with Splenda, Diet Pepsi with Splenda, Gatorade’s Propel Water, low-calorie Kool-Aid and Atkins Diet products. Sucralose is considered generally recognized as safe when consumed in moderation. But study results are mixed regarding its long-term effects.

Researchers recruited 75 subjects evenly split between male and female and weight status, i.e., healthy weight, overweight or obese. Participants had three visits. Each visit they had: 

  • Baseline brain scan, blood samples and survey to determine hunger levels
  • 300 ml of plain water, a drink sweetened with 75 grams of sugar and a drink sweetened with sucralose. The sugar- and sucralose-sweetened drinks were the equivalent of 16-ounce can of sugary soda.
  • Follow-up brain scan, blood samples and survey to determine hunger levels several times for the following two hours

Subjects also underwent fMRI scans (or functional MRI). This type of MRI scan shows the most active areas of the brain. This helped researchers understand how regions of the brain communicate with one another.

Although the study was small, researchers were able to document the differences within and between subjects.

When participants drank the sugary drink, their hunger was dampened, and their peripheral glucose levels rose. But when they drank the non-caloric sucralose sweetened drink, activity in their hypothalamus grew by 20 percent compared to the sugary drink. The hypothalamus is the area of the brain that produces hormones that control hunger. Increased blood flow and activity correlates to increased appetite, researchers said. The sucralose sweetened drinks also caused a stronger hypothalamic reaction than plain water.

These effects were more pronounced in obese subjects. Earlier studies saw similar effects in animals.

Should You Give Up Your Diet Drinks?

It depends. How much are you consuming? Studies have found moderate amounts artificial sweeteners safe for healthy adults. They also can help manage weight when used in moderation or on a short-term basis because they help control your caloric and sugar intake.

But realize that researchers have questioned the benefits of artificial sweeteners for years. In fact, the World Health Organization issued an advisory in May 2023 warning consumers that beverages and foods with sugar substitutes is associated with weight gain because they trigger hunger.

Previous studies also link sucralose with insulin resistance and liver inflammation. Moreover, sucralose has been found to cause gut microbiome imbalances by cutting the number of good bacteria by half.

Artificial sweeteners also are much sweeter than sugar – sucralose is 600 times sweeter than sugar – which means they can affect how food and beverages taste. This is why you’re usually better off getting natural sugar from whole foods like fruits whenever possible. My favorite non-sweetened beverage is the lime La Croix sparkling water. Comment your favorite beverage below!

Chakravartti, S.P., Jann, K., Veit, R. et al. Non-caloric sweetener effects on brain appetite regulation in individuals across varying body weights. Nat Metab 7, 574–585 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s42255-025-01227-8