The Metabolic Makeover - Practical Solutions for Fat-loss

Our guest Allie shares her inspiring journey from being an athlete to overcoming personal health challenges and becoming a bodybuilding pro. Discover the factors affecting metabolism and get practical tips for weight loss, including the importance of stress management, sleep, and gut health. Whether you're aiming to shed a few pounds or completely transform your metabolism, this episode has actionable strategies to help you achieve your goals. Tune in for an enlightening discussion on aligning physical, mental, and emotional health for optimal wellness.

00:00 Introduction to Nine to Five Wellness Podcast

00:53 Meet Allie Cass: From Athlete to Health Coach

01:59 Allie's Personal Health Journey

07:05 Overlooked Components in Weight Loss

11:22 The Mind-Body Connection

16:07 Hormones and Weight Loss

19:47 Gut Health and Weight Management

24:28 Practical Tips for Weight Loss

31:08 Conclusion and Contact Information

You can learn more about Allie at

www.facebook.com/alliecasshealth
https://www.linkedin.com/in/allie-cass-11163285/
www.alliecasshealth.com

🌟 🌟 🌟 If you liked this episode and would like to learn more about wellness training and workshops offered by 9 to 5 Wellness, email us at info@aeshathair.com. You can learn more about our programs at: https://toneandstrengthen.com/workshops-trainings/. 🌟 🌟 🌟

My passion is helping organizations create a culture of wellness, and I do this by setting up health programs that prioritize the most important asset they've got – their employees. Cheers to a healthier and happier journey ahead!

🌟 🌟 🌟 You can learn more about ME- the host at https://www.aeshatahir.com

Follow me on IG and LI to learn more

https://www.instagram.com/tone_and_strengthen/

https://www.linkedin.com/in/aeshatahir/

Transcript

 Welcome to the nine to five wellness podcast,  a show about corporate wellness solutions with innovators and forward thinking leaders who are at the forefront of the workplace wellness movement.  I'm your host, Aesha Tahir. 

 Hello and welcome to this episode of nine to five wellness podcast. Today we are going to talk about  factors that affect our metabolism.  We are also going to be sharing some actionable tips and strategies to help you achieve your. goal weight,  whether you're looking to shed a few pounds or undergo a complete metabolic transformation.

This is the episode for you. And today I'm joined by an awesome health coach and a transformation coach, Allie Cass. She's a lifelong athlete turned bodybuilding pro turned functional health and fitness coach who helps. stressed out women, optimize their metabolism, uplevel their mindset and shift from surviving to thriving with over eight years of experience in the fitness industry.

She brings a unique blend of modalities, including fitness. Nutrition and Neuro Linguistic Programming to Address Health at the Physical, Mental and Emotional Level. Welcome to the show, Allie. 

Hi, thank you so much for having me. 

Oh, I'm so glad you're here. And can I just share this with the world? That it's your birthday today? 

Yes, it is. Oh my gosh, happy birthday. Thank you so much. It's so great to spend my birthday here talking about all of the things that I love.  

So awesome. Thanks for joining us on your birthday and talking about this topic. So metabolic makeover, how did you get into it? 

So how I got into it originally, it's so interesting.

Like many of us in the industry, I started out as a client. So as you mentioned, I was a lifelong athlete. I was very into physical fitness growing up, very into competition, sport, all of that. And it wasn't until I went to college and stopped playing sports formally that I realized. How little of education I had on how to essentially take care of myself, you know, physically and now mentally and emotionally  And so I gained weight pretty quickly.

I had very unhealthy habits. I was drinking a lot of alcohol I was eating in a way that wasn't truly nourishing to my body. I started to notice I was fatigued all the time I felt bloated I just felt icky and I remember you know being like 21 years old being the heaviest I'd ever been and just thinking like I am way too young to feel this way.

And the funny thing about that statement is now I know, you know, you can feel amazing and you can be in your best shape at any age. So I think that everybody is too young to feel less than their best, um, at this point in life. But it wasn't until that moment that I started to really reevaluate my own.

Choices in the way that I was living my life now. I didn't have the education I did today So I started doing research. I started seeking out Mentors coaches things like that and at the same time My mom was diagnosed with a terminal form of brain cancer. And so I moved across the country became her primary caregiver along with my father and that really catapulted a This desire or interest into what truly makes somebody healthy. 

My mom was somebody who outwardly seemed very healthy for her entire life. So to get a diagnosis like that was extremely surprising for us. And so honestly, I think was part of my coping mechanism was to just start asking questions and start researching and start trying to understand and make sense of the situation.

Unfortunately, she passed nine months later and I found myself in a place again where I was. tired, depressed, um, you know, just didn't, didn't like the way I felt in my body, didn't like the way I looked, um, and I just felt so lost. So I hired a fitness coach. Finally. Um, she actually talked me into doing bodybuilding, which I thought was a terrifying and awful idea at the time.

However, it really served me. At that point in my life, it gave me something to work towards. It gave me, um, a way to transform my inner and external world. And then it was through that process that I just really fell in love with fitness again, really started falling in love with health and then had that desire to again, explore what does health really mean at a deeper level.

And at this point in life, um, and at this point in my career, I know that. True health is it's so much more than just a workout. It's so much more than just a diet. It's truly aligning that mental, emotional and physical aspect of yourself to be congruent so that you can show up as the best version of yourself in every area of life. 

 I just love your story.  Isn't it awesome? The impact that,  life experiences we have,  watching our parents, you know, grow older or  have diagnoses that you wouldn't expect them to have.  Seems like your mom was someone who took care of herself. 

 It was something that you guys didn't expect, but it changes. You, right. It changes your mind. It changes your mental state.  It's like a wake up call sometimes just for us to see,  are we headed on the same road, right? , and I'm glad that you mentioned that you hired a fitness coach and she talked you into bodybuilding because a lot of. 

Women are like not into it or , they're intimidated by it, say,  and then there are so many myths surrounding it. So, you know, that we believe which are not true.  I'm glad that you embraced it. 

Thank you. Yeah. You know, it's funny because at that point I really, I had just graduated college.

I didn't understand or know at that point that I was so passionate about this industry. So I wasn't consciously. Deciding to pursue this as a career. I just knew that I needed something to get me out of that funk. And I see that with a lot of, a lot of clients and women that come to me, you know, they, they have a family, they have a business, they have a career, whatever it is, but they're still in that funk and they just need something to get them out of it.

And so for me, it really served that purpose of helping me step into something that was uncomfortable, but. To a degree that would help me grow and just give me something to focus on and channel my emotions really at that point in life. Because I had a lot of anger, about losing my mom. I had a lot of sadness.

I had a lot of confusion around what was going on or what had just gone on. And so it gave me an outlet, um, to really. channel that energy in a productive way and not a destructive way through unhealthy coping mechanisms. Um, but yeah, it was certainly never something that was on my radar. , but I'm very grateful because again, I do feel like those things kind of come into your life to serve you when they need to. 

Yes, absolutely. They do. Okay. So let's dive into metabolic makeover and your weight loss programs.  One of the things that you had mentioned in our previous call, which really resonated with me was like, there are some overlooked components, , in traditional health and weight loss programs, which don't serve us well.

So I want to talk about those.  What are those components that we are overlooking?  

Yes. So in my experience, in the kind of traditional weight loss arena, we talk a lot about eating less and moving more. And for a lot of individuals, that is the case. We, you know, we have a lot of sedentary lifestyles.

Most of us work, even in this industry, work behind a computer at a desk for the majority of the day. So there is a component of needing to move our body, needing to have that physical exertion, and then, you know, managing that nutrition. as well, particularly for are eating a very standar high and refined foods, u Um, some of the things that I see that really get overlooked include sleep and recovery stress management and just the overall aspect of nourishment in the process of supporting somebody in a weight loss journey.

So I see this particularly with women and I do work primarily with women. I work with men, but I have more experience with women. So my frame of reference comes more so from that, but women who come to me and they are. undernourished, meaning that they are under eating because they're busy, they're taking care of the kids, they're immediately zooming off to a work meeting.

 And so again, their bodies undernourished. What most people don't realize is that your metabolism actually takes resources to function. So it needs the vitamins, it needs the minerals, it needs the amino acids, it needs those raw building blocks in order to function optimally. So you wouldn't get, you know, a high performance sports car and, you know, try to race it when the gas tank is on empty.

And so your body is very similar to that. So I see that being a very critical component that a lot of people overlook. And then on that same theme of undernourishment, we're oftentimes overstressed and under recovered. So, you know, we have a high stress burden from, again, Um, work, raising a family, um, finances, just the society that we live in perpetuates a lot of this.

And then that lends itself to poor sleep. We don't, you know, a lot of women don't, are not great at prioritizing themselves and their self care. So all of those things combined start to create a catalyst of reactions that make it really difficult from a physiological perspective to effectively lose weight, balance your hormones and just feel.

Yeah. energize and feel like you're functioning at an optimal level. So, you know, I think the traditional narrative from a weight loss perspective of eat less and move more.  At a general level is correct for some individuals, but at a certain point that becomes counterproductive. And I don't think a lot of people, women, especially realize that. 

Absolutely  we are have to nourish our bodies. And for that, it's. It's counterproductive to eat less,  and keep on exercising more, although just like you said, most of the people are sedentary, so they do need more movement, but that's not the point. Like, you know, just moving more wouldn't help or just eating less wouldn't help.

There is a fine balance between the two  where you are eating healthier. And then getting healthy amount of movement  into your day. Sure. And where we want to be careful with the movement is that we don't want to over exert. Yeah, high intensity workouts are really good, three to four times a week.

 We are talking about 20 to 30 minute workouts there.  But beyond that, if you're working out high intensity, either you're like a competitive athlete, you know, that's fine. , if you're not, then  you're gonna burn out and you're burning the candle on both ends, which is Does not help, but you know, like movement throughout the day.

I always say that's a good thing. You know, it increases your neat, which is your non exercise based thermogenic. Um, thermogenesis, which is,  burning energy,  which is not related to workout and food.  

I. Also want to touch upon another aspect, which I believe we overlook, which is the mind body connection.

And I know you talk about it a lot. I'm talking about trauma, repressed and unprocessed emotions  and their connection with health and weight. So, you know, tell us about that. 

Yeah, I love that. I love that you asked this question. This is one of my favorite topics. So there is so much research now that is supporting the idea that stressors and I'm not just talking about, you know, stressors that we encounter in our day to day, but like you mentioned those, those traumas, those things that we carry from childhood, from early adolescence, from early adulthood.

Um, and when we don't. Process those emotions. We don't release them. And we kind of stay in that, that loop, even at a subconscious level, but that has implications physiologically, or it has implications down at the cellular level. And so I see this a lot with women who have autoimmune conditions is a really big one.

Um, and other things where, when I asked them, you know, what did something happen in your life?  You know, a few years prior to this diagnosis or to this thing happening to you and like I've had people say yes, I lost my home in a hurricane or yes, um, I got a divorce and so we see that there is a connection mentally and emotionally to what happens in our lives and then what manifests in our body and I truly believe that in our society we are not alone. 

taught nor encouraged to understand how to feel our emotions properly, how to actually process them, um, and then how to release them. So we carry all of this, I call it baggage, um, because I just picture, you know, carrying a heavy backpack of like rocks. And all of these rocks are the things that we've encountered or experienced throughout our life, um, that we're still carrying and that we haven't released.

And so when we Live in that state where we are carrying these things, it actually triggers to our nervous system to be in a low level fight or flight response, even if we're not actually experiencing, you know, threats or stressors in our day to day environment. And so we know anytime our nervous system is dysregulated, or we're living in that.

More chronic state of stress response that has hormonal implications that down the line make it harder to lose fat, make it harder to increase your energy, make, um, typically sleep will start to be impaired as well. There's other hormone implications that we see start to happen. Um, and so again, for the longest time, you know, the Western world has treated the mind and the body as very separate things when. 

In reality, we know that they're not. And so  one of the biggest things that I have seen for so many women, when they do start to do that inner work, they start to address the things that perhaps they've been suppressing or they've been pushing down or they've been ignoring is they have more energy. They feel lighter.

They're showing up differently. Um, They're again, their nervous system starts to reregulate. So things are starting to come back into balance because I tell clients this all the time, that your body's number one priority is survival. It doesn't care that you want to lose weight. It doesn't care that you want to look good in a bikini.

It doesn't care that, you know, you want to have more energy for your kids. It literally cares about you surviving. And so it will do, and it will adapt however it needs to in order to.  And so when we're giving our body, these signals that were unsafe, even if that safety comes from something that you experienced three, five, 10 years ago, we're still giving it that signal.

So, um, a lot of the work that I do, and that's actually why I am certified as an NLP or neurolinguistic, um,  programming practitioner is to help clients clear out a lot of that mental and emotional baggage so that a, they can show up differently in their life. B, it's not, Giving that same impact at a physiological level. 

 I love it. How you just tied in the mental and physiologic or psychological and physiological connection because.  As you said, if you've gone through a traumatic experience, things change  your neural wiring changes and that leads to also physiological changes to which are  normally factors that we see are high heart rate, high breathing rate, high blood pressure.

And a lot of times people aren't isn't aren't like aware of it. Like they might feel fatigued because they're in that constant fight or flight mode, but they are not aware of the subliminal. Physiological effects that they're experiencing, and those physiologic  effects are going to lead to health issues, including weight gain, weight loss, or having difficulty losing weight.

So I want to talk about hormones. Because I know that. That's also an overlooked factor or at least it was for a very long time. Things are changing. We are doing a lot of research. A lot of research is coming out on , this topic. So how do hormones impact our weight loss efforts? 

That is a great question. I'm thinking, where do I even start with that?  So any, again, anytime the body is out of balance, it's going to make it more challenging to lose weight. I see weight loss being the most successful by product when everything else is working optimally, which is why I'm such a big proponent of addressing health internally.

So when we think of a hormones like our thyroid hormone, so we know there's a really big connection between the thyroid and essentially your. how well or how optimal functioning your metabolism is. Um, anytime that we have reduced output of thyroid hormones, that's going to affect how effectively the metabolism is working.

Meaning how are we burning calories? How are we utilizing that? I mean, I've seen women who have low thyroid output.  Um, who are on, you know, thousand calorie diets and still are having trouble losing weight. Uh, and that's a problem. That's a problem for me as a coach, because I don't want people to be living that way.

Right. And so, um, addressing thyroid is super important, um, when it comes to our sex hormones or our estrogen or progesterone, testosterone.  I always look at those as kind of, you know, downstream hormones, meaning that they are affected by so many different things before they're affected by the thyroid.

They're affected by our insulin, our blood sugar, inflammation levels, all of these things. Um, however, we know that when we have, um, hormones that are alibi. Out of balance, excuse me, particularly like high estrogen, low progesterone, um, any kind of estrogen dominance there. It can make it really difficult for women to lose weight.

And we start to see, um, more storage, especially in, um, the abdominal region, the hips, the thighs, as far as fat storage. And it just makes it so much harder. To essentially lose that weight because we're just fighting that uphill battle or going against that resistance of our body. So again, I think that,  you know, weight loss, we like to simplify it, which is a good thing for some individuals and some people need to address that internal health.

at a deeper level to kind of get that into better balance. So that weight loss happens easier with less resistance and a little bit more effortlessly.  



There are so many hormones that impact our weight loss efforts. Just like you mentioned our sex hormones, , especially cortisol, which is our stress hormone can play a huge role.

If you have high cortisol, you're going to have a hard time losing weight. A hundred percent. And also then there are hunger hormones that we talk about, leptin, ghrelin, and those hormones fluctuate as you lose weight too, which makes it harder to lose weight because your body wants to go to that set point.

And there's a set point theory that. There is a weight that your body wants to maintain. There's a certain number it wants to go to. So if you deviate way far from that number, it's going to just keep on wanting to go back. So it will increase ghrelin, which is your hunger hormone, and then it will decrease leptin,  which is your satiety  hormone. 

So those are a few ways that hormones play a big role. And I just wanted to add to all the wonderful information you shared.  Let's talk a little more about our gut, this is again, another topic that science is really exploring. We are new to the concept of microbiome and how they influence.

Just our health and our body, but we are learning more and more that there's a whole village in our gut, and that impacts almost every cell in our body, including,  our health and weight loss. So  how is our gut influencing our weight gain or  making the weight loss difficult? 

Oh my gosh, so many different ways.

So I will try to keep it simple. But one of the biggest things when it comes to gut is inflammation. So a lot of individuals that have impaired gut health or just do not have optimal gut health, excuse me, will oftentimes start to have inflammation in the GI tract that oftentimes then kind of  inflammation throughout weight loss really, reall it can lead to a host of  or challenges down the li at inflammation, one of t you know, essentially foods that someone either has some sensitivity to, or just super processed again, very standard American diet type of foods, um, that are causing issues in the gut, like intestinal permeability,  um, and other things overgrowth of various, um,  um, non beneficial bacteria, yeast.

Things like that, um, all play a role in our overall gut health, which does again, impact our metabolism and impacts our hormone production. Um, it impacts our ability to lose weight and essentially feel our best, have energy. Um, thyroid hormone is a large percentage of that is converted in the gut, um, to from T4 to T3, which is the medic metabolically active version of thyroid hormone.

Um, again, we have certain gut bacteria that's also responsible for helping us detox, um, as. excuse me, excess estrogen and other sex hormones. So anytime we have an imbalance in the gut, um, it's possible that we are not detoxing those hormones properly. There's a very strong component with the immune system.

We know that about 70 percent of our immune system is housed in the gut. And then of course there's that bi directional relationship between the gut and the brain, more so of which goes from a signaling perspective, goes from the gut up to the brain, not the other way around. So we, I mean, all of those things, I know I just threw a lot of of stuff out there.

But all of those factors show just how important gut health is in the overall context of health and in the context of weight loss. And another thing that I see too,  at a higher level, um, with individuals who have any kind of impaired gut health is when we're not, our digestion is not optimal. We're not going to, again, digest, absorb, and then assimilate the nutrients from our food to our degree.

So you could have an individual who eats extremely healthy. We were talking about undernourishment earlier. Just because you're eating really healthy, if we're not actually digesting and then extracting those nutrients from those foods, we could still be in a state of undernourishment. And again, we talked about the metabolism, needing those vitamins, those minerals, those amino acids, those fatty acids in order to work properly.

So digestion, first and foremost, is huge for the purpose of helping us get what we need. for that metabolism to function properly. And then again, making sure that we're not creating inflammation in the gut or in the body because of what is happening in the gut. Um, and then we have that hormone conversion, detoxification component, and of course that immune regulation component. 

 That's a lot to consider.  However, I feel like It's not that hard to manage your gut health, and I think you would be able to shed more light on it.  If you are eating prebiotic and probiotic rich foods, I mean, in your daily food intake, you should be fine. 

You should be technically fine.  I know antibiotics can, um, play a big role if you're on them. But other than that, just eating healthy food and including a lot of  fiber rich food that helps a lot because that they, those are rich in prebiotics.  I love chia seeds. I love broccoli for that matter.

All the Dark leafy greens are good, so there are a lot of options out there for us 

 as a whole. I mean, I feel like we have been just talking about the obstacles to weight loss, and I want to now start focusing on  tips and strategies on to help the audience  understand how you can overcome these.

How can you. Um, and we can't lose weight despite of all these things actually working against us. So what's the best strategy? Like give us like two to three practical tips that  we can implement like this week or even some of them like today. Yeah. 

What 

do you think? 

I love that. Yeah. So I think one of the things too, I know we talked a lot about the obstacles and kind of the science behind all of this and it can be overwhelming.

And I think that, you know, we talk about busy professionals and how can, you know, how can these. this population, how can we get healthier? How can we lose weight? And so I think for a lot of people, we have this idea that we need to do more. We need to like  losing weight, getting healthy is just going to be this laundry list of things.

And I actually like to approach it from more of a reductive process first. So looking at, you know, what are the things that are currently present in our life or what are the things that we're currently doing that are actually, you know, our own barriers to success and how can we start to kind of remove those or chip away at that so that we can.

Again, remove that roadblock for ourselves because the body wants to heal. The body wants to be healthy. The body wants to be in homeostasis. And so how can we remove any of our own barriers instead of just focusing on more, more, more, because at some level that's really challenging for people, right?

We're busy. We've got a lot going on. And those are time resources or consideration. So I like to tell individuals, you know, take inventory of your own life and your lifestyle. And whether that's on your own with, you know, a family member, a partner, spouse, friend, or a coach, take inventory of the things in your life that you think are roadblocks and commit to just either, you know, removing or replacing one of those things. 

Not everything has to be, you know, a big addition or just adding something to your plate. And so again, that could be maybe we're drinking  alcohol more nights out of the week than we should. Right. Or maybe it's, uh,  again, that, that nutrition, that's not totally supportive to us. How can we replace that or remove things to just start clearing out those barriers that, you know, we are having to weight loss so that it starts to happen easier and natural for us.

So I think that would be the first one is focused on what we can just kind of.  You know, get rid of and, and let out of our life instead of getting overwhelmed with all the things that we should be doing or adding to our life. Um, the second one is sleep and stress management. Those are huge. I can tell you I've had clients who  have radically transformed their body in a month, two months with nothing else other than stress management and getting better sleep, nutrition.

You know, is on point stays the same exercise on point stays the same. So, um, you know, first and foremost, making sure that we have that recovery component. So working on sleep. Whether that's, um, making sleep a priority for a lot of us, we, you know, we might work late at night or we might not have good boundaries with ourselves when it comes to having a good sleep routine.

So, um, sleep is super important again, stress management. And, um, I, I'm not of the mindset that we just get rid of stressors in our life completely because that's not the world that we live in. So I always encourage clients to  try to let go of things that aren't necessary and then just focus on what is in your control.

So if there's a stressor.  If you're a parent and you're like I have kids that's a stressor. I know you can't get rid of them. You don't want to get rid of them, but how can we learn to either manage that stress better or how can we shift our perception around it? So it no longer is something that seems as stressful and it's creating that same response. 

And then third, like you mentioned before more movement, but that can be gentle movement. Um, again, I think it's a fine line, especially for women. Um, And women as we start going through the life cycle and we start aging going more toward menopause We don't necessarily want to be doing a ton of high intensity activities.

So focusing on resistance training and low impact activity like walking, um, you know, yoga, Pilates, those things are really helpful too.  And any little bit counts. So I always tell clients, um, you know, your body is like your bank account or like an investment fund, right? Like you might put a dollar in today.

You might put a dollar in tomorrow and you might not see a lot of growth, but if you continue to put a dollar in for five years, 10 years, you're going to start to see that exponential compounding interest your body's the same way. So even if it's just picking one thing that you can focus on, do that and get really good at it, get really consistent and then pick something else. 

  I love how you just, give the analogy of a bank account because it is your health savings, right? It is going to compound, as you said, like, you know, it's going to have a compounding effect.  It's just little by little, like, you know, maybe you put. pennies into a jar for your bank account.

Same way. You can just be putting pennies into your health account too.  I've, I've been working on a script, uh, on this very topic for my podcast. So I'm so glad you brought it up. I love 

that. Yeah. Everybody loves to talk money. I'm like, let's, you know,  your, your body is the same way. It works.

You're your long term results work the exact same way. And that's another thing, too. I think adopting a long term mindset, you know, we all want the results like yesterday, and that's fine. But also recognizing that it's a long game. And if you just start today, like you are going to look back a month from now, six months from now, a year from now, and you're going to be so grateful that you did not wait. 

I know. That's so true. So true that you have to start somewhere and you know, you start if you start today, you can have a better chance of having that compounded. This is great. Thank you so much for all the tips. And also, I like the fact that you mentioned that. Yeah, you don't have to fill up your plate, right?

You don't have to adopt everything that we talked about. You don't have to start working on your gut health, like in 10 different ways. And you don't have to start looking into like hormonal health in 15 different ways. No, no, no. That's not the point. The point is to educate you, but also to empower you with.

Small tools, small steps, you can take like one small step at a time and go from there and it adds up.  So where can our listeners and viewers find you? 

Yeah. So you can visit my website, www. alicashealth. com or you can find me on Facebook and Instagram at Alicashealth and LinkedIn.  

Oh, great. I'll include these in our show notes.

Allie, thank you so much for being on the show today. Thank you for being on our podcast. And this was amazing. I enjoyed it so much. Thank you so much for having me. It was a pleasure. Thank you. And thank you everyone for joining us. Bye.  

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