How To Supercharge Your Metabolism After 40

^{Written by Kris Einboden, GM and Professional Coach at The Six Pack Dad Tribe}

You probably know someone who can eat literally anything and not put on weight. On the flip side, you also probably know someone who seems to gain weight at the drop of a hat. Why this occurs isn’t a mystery, yet most people think it is. I am here today to tell you exactly how to become that person that can literally eat anything and not gain weight.

Contrary to popular belief, those who gain weight easily are typically not genetically doomed with a slow metabolism. In fact, most people’s metabolisms are pretty similar (most guys on average burn around 2,500 cals per day) and remain consistent across their lifetime, until about the age of 65, where everyone’s metabolism naturally starts to drop. Your metabolism isn’t the problem, so what is?

#1: You’re Overeating and Not Realizing It

The first problem is you are overeating and not realizing it. After coaching hundreds of people in person and online over the last few years, one common theme is that people drastically underestimate how much food they are truly eating each day. I can’t count how many times I have had someone say, “I really don’t eat that much.” How can this be? Why is it that someone who is overweight thinks that they aren’t eating that much?

The reason this is so common is that people don’t understand caloric density. You can eat very little in terms of total food volume, but that small amount of food can still be extremely dense in calories. For example, a serving of M&Ms is about 32 pieces for around 150 calories, while a handful of berries might be around 30 calories. The M&Ms are a small amount of food but contain a lot of calories, whereas the berries are a much larger volume of food for far fewer calories.

Now imagine eating your daily calorie needs entirely from M&Ms. It wouldn’t be very difficult, and it wouldn’t require eating a lot of food. Now imagine trying to eat your daily calories entirely from berries. You probably couldn’t do it because you’d have to eat an enormous amount of food. This is how someone can genuinely feel like they aren’t eating very much while still consuming enough calories to gain weight.

Let's look at an example of the average American's diet to see this in action:

Wake up: 300-calorie coffee from Starbucks

10 AM: 250-calorie donut in the office 

12 PM: 850-calorie burger and fries from McDonald's 

3 PM: 200-calorie handful of nuts

 5 PM: 1,000 calories from 3 slices of pizza

 7 PM: 500 calories from a couple handfuls of potato chips 

8 PM: 150-calorie Coke

= 3,250 calories

While this looks like a lot of food on paper, in reality, this would not feel like a lot of food across the course of a day because these foods all have high caloric density but low volume. 

#2: You’re Not Burning Many Calories Each Day

The second problem is you are not burning many calories each day. If you aren’t very active or don’t work out consistently, your buffer zone for preventing fat gain is very small. Calories burnt through activity or exercise give you a cushion to absorb extra calories. If your calorie burn is low, the likelihood that extra calories get stored as body fat is very high.

Now, this isn’t me saying to use exercise as a method to eat more. You do not want to “burn off” extra calories. Flip it on its head: you want extra calories being burned so that, on the off chance you overeat, whether intentionally or unintentionally, it is not stored as body fat.

When it comes to exercise, a mix of both cardio and strength training is best for enhancing the buffer zone. Cardio helps you burn a lot of calories as energy. Strength training does as well, but strength has an extra benefit: it reprioritizes calories towards muscle growth and repair. With strength training, you are giving your body more places to put extra calories other than body fat.

#3: You’re Eating the Wrong Foods

The third problem is you’re eating the wrong foods. Most Americans eat a diet primarily of hyperprocessed foods. Not only are these foods hyperpalatable and calorie-dense, they also lack a significant thermic effect.

The thermic effect is a little-known calorie-burning mechanism. Thermic effect refers to the amount of calories burned digesting food. Processed food requires less energy to digest, whereas whole foods require more, especially lean proteins, which take the most work to digest. By shifting the majority of your calories to foods with a high thermic effect (like protein and high-fiber carb sources like veggies or oats) you can burn additional calories simply through the process of eating and digesting food.

Protein is particularly a hack. Not only does it have a high thermic effect, it is also rarely stored as body fat. So when you eat a high-protein diet, you simply have less potential calories to store as fat. 

Of the other macronutrients, fat is most easily turned into body fat because, chemically, it is not that different compared to body fat. Carbs, on the other hand, must go through multiple steps to be converted into body fat, making it harder and more calorically costly to be stored. This means that if you overeat on fat, you will gain more fat than if you overate on primarily carbohydrates. Thus, a diet that helps you eat a lot while staying lean is therefore one high in whole proteins and whole carbs and modest amounts of healthy fats. 

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The person who seems like they can eat literally anything and never gain weight probably doesn't have some magically high metabolism. They have simply built a lifestyle that allows them to burn more calories, eat more filling foods, and create a larger buffer between what they eat and what their body stores.

And the good news is you can do the same.

You don’t need to spend your life eating chicken and broccoli. You don’t need to eliminate carbs. You don’t need to avoid restaurants or never eat pizza again.

You need a system that allows you to eat the foods you enjoy while still maintaining the habits that keep you lean.

That’s exactly what we help busy professional dads do inside The Six Pack Dad Tribe.

Our 1-on-1 coaching program is designed to help busy dads lose the dad bod, reach 10–15% body fat, and learn how to maintain it without spending their entire life dieting or living in the gym.

If you’re tired of losing weight only to gain it back and start over again, click here to learn more about The Six Pack Dad Tribe and see if our coaching is a fit for you.