Weight Gain On The Pro Metabolic Diet

Weight gain on the pro metabolic diet is a common challenge many women face but it doesn’t have to be that way. I help women to lose weight while adopting pro metabolic principles. This is a small insight into my experience and the common factors that lead to weight gain on the pro metabolic diet.

I was introduced to Dr Ray Peats work and pro metabolic nutrition in 2021. Immediately, I KNEW it was for me.

I had been restrictive dieting for over 20 years and finally, I decided enough was enough. I was thrilled by the idea that I could eat carbs again, guilt free, especially after almost 10 years of being on and off the keto diet and carnivore diet.

So I went all in. I ate the carbs, I enjoyed the ice cream and I drank the OJ.

Within a few months I gained 4 kilos, and another 2 followed shortly after (just over 6 kilos / 13 pounds total).

Unfortunately for me, weight gain was a necessary part of my healing, but that is not the case for most of the women I work with.

A few years later, my body weight has now returned to where I feel comfortable and I was able to do that without going back to my old, restrictive ways but I did have to move away from a number of the Pro Metabolic principles.

For me, the weight gain was expected. I didn’t love it but I knew it was temporary. However, the other health challenges I experienced with the pro metabolic diet were much worse.

For the first time in my life at the age of 32 I developed cystic acne. It was persistent, aggressive and would flare up every 2 weeks (at ovulation and at the start of my cycle)

I was EXHAUSTED.

I had no energy, motivation or ability to exercise without feeling unwell for several days after.

I seemed to have developed an intolerance or mild allergy to EVERYTHING. I constantly felt puffy, swollen, exhausted, bloated and inflamed.

My hormones were chaotic, I had symptoms of insulin resistance, estrogen dominance, low progesterone and poor thyroid function.

I would have a minimum of 2 migraines per month with several days of headaches in between.

I tried all of the recommended pro metabolic “fixes” like progest-e, niacinamide, thyroid, beef liver, you name it, I did it.

But it didn’t seem to make a difference at all.

If the pro metabolic diet was so good, why did I feel worse now than I did on restrictive plans?

I believe the answer is, the years of restrictive dieting suppressed a majority of these health challenges and the pro metabolic diet allowed them to come to the surface. I do not believe the pro metabolic principles caused health problems but it also did not help me to heal.

Eventually I decided I should stop subscribing to one particular philosophy or “diet” or set of rules and I mentored with other health experts and took away what I felt would work for me and I created my own health protocol, tailored for my unique needs, just like I would do for the women I work with.

Over the next few months, things started to change. I had more energy, I felt less inflamed, my face didn’t look like a swollen balloon every morning, the acne cleared and the migraines became rare.

The pro metabolic diet will always hold a special place in my heart. Kate Deerings book “How To Heal Your Metabolism” helped me to break free from a 20 year cycle of restrictive dieting and Ray Peats teachings helped me to develop a deeper understanding of metabolism and optimal health. They were just some of the key parts of my personal development.

But there were also aspects that weren’t for me, that doesn’t mean they are wrong or bad, they just weren’t the right fit for my body and it’s these same things that lead other women to gain weight and feel worse off when they adopt a pro metabolic approach.

These are the areas of the pro metabolic diet you need to be mindful of if you find yourself gaining weight.

Elimination of Carb Fear

This is a good thing. Every women needs to eliminate her fear of carbs and the pro metabolic diet is what helped me to do that.

Yes it’s true, we can survive without carbs but we will struggle to thrive.

Most women begin to eliminate carbs from their diet because they see evidence that carbs make them gain weight. They often feel bloated after eating carbs, sluggish and some even feel like it triggers an addiction where once they start eating carbs (like bread) they just can’t stop.

And I was one of those women, at the age of 22 I was diagnosed with PCOS and I noticed carbs had a rapid weight gain effect on my body, this is why I ended up on the keto diet for so many years.

If this sounds like you, the solution here is not to eliminate carbs, and going all in like we’re encouraged to do with the pro metabolic diet is not helpful either.

Instead, we need to improve carb tolerance.

To do that we need to look at:

• Nervous System Healing: a stressed nervous system will disrupt the hormones that help you to take carbs and turn them into fuel. A stressed nervous system will also burn through all of the essential minerals needed to improve your carb tolerance. Without these minerals, our metabolism suffers.
• Circadian Rhythm Support: we are over exposed to blue light and deficient in sunlight. As a result, this disrupts the key hormones that control metabolism, appetite, carb tolerance and weight.
• Minerals: without enough of the right minerals, weight loss can feel like an uphill battle and carbs feel like the enemy
• Overall Nutrition: we need to asses how much protein, carbs, fats and fibre you are eating with every meal, and we need to make sure the ratios are correct. We need to make sure you’re eating the right thing at the right time. With pro metabolic nutrition, we tend to over do carbs and fat, and under eat protein and fibre. We’re told we need to snack all day and snack late at night and for some women this is an important part of healing but if it’s done incorrectly it can lead to rapid weight gain.

Elimination of Food Fear

The pro metabolic diet had me eating ice cream and drinking juice, things I had not done for years (unless it was green juice or Halo Top High Protein Ice Cream of course)

I love that the pro metabolic diet helps women to let go of the stigma around eating certain foods but going all in on ice cream, juice, home made marshmallows, rice and all of the other “forbidden” foods is a recipe for rapid weight gain, insulin resistance and metabolic chaos.

Like with point number one, it is important to ease these things into your diet is a gentle, balanced way while also ensuring you are supporting your body to tolerate them well.

Don’t Waste Your Time With Veggies

Just before I was introduced to the Pro Metabolic Diet I was on the Carnivore Diet and this was the first time I was exposed to the concept that veggies aren’t essential or helpful for our health.

While I so desperately wanted this to be true, unfortunately, veggies are essential. Not because they are rich in nutrients but because they are full of fibre.

Fiber might just be the biggest missing piece when it comes to womens health.

Adequate intake of fibre ensures your gall bladder releases an optimal amount of thin bile. Low vegetable intake is associated with gall bladder dysfunction and thick, sludgy bile.

If bile release is impaired, we struggle to detox and eliminate toxins, especially estrogen.

If estrogen accumulates we often feel puffy, inflamed, swollen and emotional. We might get cyclic headaches, have painful or heavy periods and it’s not because estrogen is bad, we just need to keep it in check and make sure it is well balanced with progesterone.

And if you are not eliminating estrogen effectively, no amount of Progest-e will save the day.

There are so many other reasons why we need fibre from a wide variety of fruit and veg but I’ll leave it there for today.

Beef Liver Supplements

The Pro Metabolic Diet taught me all about the benefits of organ meat before it became a health trend.

I’ve seen beef liver capsules help many of the clients I work with. From improving iron status to supporting energy levels, immune function, skin health and more, it really is a great addition.

But for some women, beef liver can create issues. Beef liver is rich in iron and copper. For some women, their bodies can struggle to use these minerals which cause them to accumulate and create other problems.

Yes, minerals are important but we need the right ones, in the right form, at the right time.

Mineral testing like a Hair Tissue Mineral Analysis can help us to pin point exactly what your body needs rather than simply taking supplements because they are trending online.

Conclusion

So that is a short list of the things that I love about the Pro Metabolic diet with a brief explanation on how they can also backfire and if I had my time again, to be honest I wouldn’t change anything, even the suffering was a valuable part of my health journey and it allowed me to experience first hand what a lot of my clients struggle with and i feel that is incredibly valuable as a practitioner.

If you are experiencing weight gain on the pro metabolic diet and you would like to work with an experienced practitioner to optimise your plan for sustainable weight loss and optimal metabolic health, I would love to support you.

Here are 3 ways I can help:

1. Work with me! Book a consultation in person (Evandale, SA) or AUS + NZ wide online via Zoom

2. Listen to the Holistic Weight Loss Podcast

3. Connect with me on Instagram | Pinterest | YouTube | LinkedIn | Facebook