MetFix offers the solution to chronic disease. It involves constantly varied functional movements executed at high intensity combined with a naturally occurring diet consisting of low or no carbohydrates and no seed oils. MetFix is a metabolic fix that corrects and optimizes metabolic function while improving physical fitness.

Most people think of the word “metabolic” as having something to do with one’s metabolism, which is often incorrectly assumed to mean burning calories.  “Jessica has a fast metabolism, she can eat anything and burns it all instantly,” is a common colloquialism, and one that completely underestimates the power of this essential biological mechanism.

Metabolism Drives Change

The word metabolism comes from the ancient Greek μεταβολή meaning change, it quickly becomes used in medicine and by 1684 it is used in S. Blankaart, Physical Dictionary to mean “a change in time, air or disease.” By 1857, Metabasis, was used as a term for a “change of disease, or of treatment; or from one thing to another, either in the symptoms of a malady, or in the indications for its cure,” from R. G. Mayne, Expository Lexicon Medical Science (1860). From a biochemical perspective, metabolism refers to all the chemical processes that occur within living organisms. It involves breaking down food to release energy and building essential molecules to support life functions.

Metabolism involves two main types of processes: anabolic and catabolic. Anabolic processes build complex molecules from simpler ones, while catabolic processes break down complex molecules into simpler ones. Together, these processes make up all the chemical reactions in living organisms. The balance between anabolism and catabolism determines how the organism maintains its physical structure as well as how much energy it has available.

Historically, there was no confusion over the essential role of metabolism in one’s health and survival. We’ve done a marvelous job divorcing our diet and physical output from our health outcomes in modern times. The metabolic pathways that control hormonal responses dictate health or disease outcomes. What you eat and how you process it are driving forces in how your body manages your hormones.

Any fitness coach hoping to deliver the highest level of service would do well to become familiar with bioenergetics and the endocrine system; the metabolic fix lives with changes to metabolism.  MetFix coaches are like engineers working on human bodies; understanding how they work is critical in predicting the best ways to optimize performance and work capacity.

Energy and Hormones

Bioenergetics is a branch of biochemistry that deals with how living systems manage and use energy. The term originated in 1956 from Nobel laureate Albert Szent-Györgyi. The field expanded with the development of Peter Mitchell’s chemiosmotic hypothesis in 1961, explaining how cells produce adenosine triphosphate (ATP) in the mitochondria. When we eat food, our cells produce energy in the form of ATP in the mitochondria through a set of redox reactions that contribute to reactive oxygen species (ROS) production. Once thought of as a simple by-product of metabolism, mitochondrial ROS are signaling molecules required for diverse cellular functions such as differentiation, proliferation, death, and adaptation to stress. What we feed our mitochondria determines what they tell our cells. What has become increasingly evident is that the mitochondria are not only the powerhouses of the cells, they regulate cellular functions and dictate cell fate.

There is no fast or slow in metabolic health. Our metabolisms are regulatory systems. The human body is miraculous in its ability to compensate, adapt, and address underlying problems. Overall, the body strives to maintain a balance, known as homeostasis. When someone complains of a ‘slow metabolism,’ what they suffer from is an intrinsic metabolic abnormality. This is not the slowing of an engine, it is the result of the wrong inputs.

Insulin’s metabolic control is mediated through reactive oxygen species generation. Reactive oxygen species (ROS) are natural byproducts of producing energy in an oxygen-rich environment. Insulin signaling is intrinsically related to the actions of ROS. Insulin signaling is ROS-dependent: Low concentrations activate insulin signaling (cellular hunger), while high concentrations inhibit insulin signaling (cellular satiety). Saturated fats generate ROS at physiologically appropriate levels leading to cellular satiety. Increasing the consumption of polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFAs), results in decreased generation of ROS and fails to limit insulin signaling at physiological levels. The reason for this has to do with the chemical structure of saturated fatty acids versus PUFAs. The presence of the double bonds in PUFAs undergoing β-oxidation blunts ROS production.  Since the mitochondria integrate the total energy availability in a cell, a failure to generate appropriate levels of ROS can fail to develop resistance to insulin-facilitated nutrient ingress into cells. This disorder in fuel partitioning leads to reduced fat oxidation and trapped energy in adipose tissue, resulting in a compensatory rise in food consumption, a decrease in energy expenditure, or both. In simple terms, getting fat makes you hungry.

Increased and frequent consumption of refined carbohydrates facilitates frequent insulin secretion and insulin signaling activation at the cellular level. Adding high quantities of seed oils to the mix prolongs the insulin signal and allows more time to drive fat into fat tissue without cellular satiety (i.e., shutting down insulin signaling). Obesity results from dysfunction in limiting insulin signaling at cellular levels by an evolutionarily conserved core signaling system–ROS.

Typically, after a carbohydrate-containing meal, glucose enters the bloodstream, insulin rises in response, and most of those carbs are taken up and stored in the muscle (~40-60%) and liver (~10-25%) in the form of glycogen. Most of the remainder is converted into fat in the liver (and the muscle to a lesser extent). It is also used for other physiological functions like antioxidant synthesis, contribution to the synthesis and structure of cell membranes, and biosynthetic processes. While this is going on, insulin also works to divert fat from the bloodstream into the fat cells to be stored (lipogenesis) and at the same time prevents stored fat from being broken down and leaving the cell (lipolysis). Fat is burned in larger proportions at rest and used as a primary fuel source when food isn’t available or when consuming a diet limited in carbohydrates. In general, insulin promotes fat storage and preferential carbohydrate oxidation over fat; when plasma glucose wanes, insulin levels decline and metabolism shifts to releasing and oxidizing fatty acids for fuel. This homeostatic system is controlled by feedback loops that effectively partition molecules toward energy production, storage, and biosynthesis.

If insulin is not signaling at normal physiological levels and the fat tissue is inappropriately sensitive to it, fuel becomes biased from oxidation (fat burning) to storage (fat accumulation). This reduces circulating fuel availability and oxidation while increasing fat mass and our energy needs. This results in increased hunger and decreased energy levels. An intrinsic imbalance where more fuel is partitioned to storage results in adipose tissue expansion. Our fat cells get fatter, and therefore we get fatter. The average American adult gains an average of 1-2 pounds per year over decades before obesity develops. From a short-term perspective, this internal starvation is imperceptibly tiny. This amounts to a miniscule 1-2 grams of excess fat accumulation per day. This has nothing to do with willpower or conscious control and virtually everything to do with what we eat.

This subtle difference in nutrient partitioning paves the way for full-blown metabolic dysfunction. Fat cells have a limited storage capacity, and as they grow bigger and approach their limit, they release more and more fatty acids into the bloodstream that cannot be constrained by insulin. After eating that same carbohydrate-based meal, more fatty acids enter the peripheral cells (the ones with more room) along with the glucose and now there’s excess input into the cells. Systemic insulin resistance develops: a physiological response of the body supplied with fatty acids when it shouldn’t be.

Over time, what began as something unnoticeable becomes something much more destructive. Fat begins accumulating in tissues where it shouldn’t: fatty liver (hepatic steatosis), fatty muscle (myosteatosis), fatty pancreas (pancreatic steatosis), and fatty heart (myocardial steatosis). Excess fat accumulation in these tissues results in organ and homeostatic dysfunction.

When we eat a diet that challenges the basic design of our systems, our bodies compensate as best as they can, until the system itself collapses and we die. The cycle of life is all in pursuit of balance.

The Fix

But it doesn’t have to be this way. If positive changes take place, the body compensates by dropping excess weight, adding muscle, increasing bone density, and increasing blood flow. Soon damage is reversed and the metabolism drives healthy hormonal responses and allows for greater health gains.

Coach Glassman’s methodology is the other piece of the metabolic fix and combined with this diet education makes the foundation of MetFix. In 1998, Greg Glassman defined fitness as a state with measurable outputs (work capacity across broad time and modal domains) that we still hold as the standard for health today (fitness across a lifespan). He was the first to propose a scientifically rigorous definition of health that accounted for quality of life in the form of power output.

In the early 1990s, almost a decade before he founded CrossFit, Glassman codified constantly varied high-intensity functional movements nourished on a diet that limits sugar and carbohydrates as the best method to achieve health. MetFix is continuing this long, successful tradition. The best way to achieve fitness is still through constantly varied functional movements executed at an intensity that promotes increases in work capacity but does not injure or damage the body. The body’s desire for balance can also create stagnation, which is why we vary the workouts.

Glassman wrote in 1998:

“The balance between strength and endurance is difficult to master, yet essential to fitness. Keeping ‘cardio’ to sessions to 30 minutes and universal training, that is, letting your heart rate rise and fall repeatedly during the session, will allow for spectacular training effects without the emaciation and immunocompromise common to endurance athletes.”

Through variation comes positive adaptation. If you perform the same movement patterns in the same ways, progress will stop. If you rotate functional movements in a variety of patterns and routines in short, medium, and long time domains (constantly varied), the progress will be unprecedented. The proof of this is palpably seen in the results on display of millions of athletes who have practiced functional movements at high intensity. We know from our prior knowledge, that the inputs of constantly varied high-intensity functional movements are powerful and when combined with a nourishing diet rich in protein and fats, void of sugar, refined carbohydrates, and seed oils we can predict measurable improvements in health. That is a prediction we have tested repeatedly with great success.

As a framework, this is close to perfect. MetFix’s goal is to improve on the methodology. We explain why it works so well and drill down on nutrition education. We now know that the nutrition piece is essential if the goal is long-term health. We educate our coaches on the foundations of movement efficacy and efficiency and why it is necessary to perform functional movements, build consistency, and remain vigilant about managing intensity. We emphasize the need for safety and controlled intensity. And we ground this knowledge in the logical scientific framework Glassman made famous.

The most common error in personal training and group coaching is not managing intensity properly. Allowing clients to go hard and fast before mastering the basics of mechanics is far too common and quite dangerous. Talk to any athlete who has injured themselves and chances are they ramped up the intensity before they were ready. Keeping athletes from training beyond their threshold is not an easy job, but it is one a vigilant coach knows is a key to successful outcomes. Mastering the basics ensures that the mechanics of movement are the standard, and when the athlete starts to break their form, the intensity must be pulled back. That threshold is imperative. One more rep or round with poor form holds the potential for injury, and an injured client is the failure of the coach as much as it is the athlete. The movements must be mastered before intensity is increased. MetFix’s emphasis on scaling for special populations addresses the need for this.

“The squat, bench press and pull-up are perfect representations [of functional movements to master]. The return on improvising and mastering these movements is unparalleled by any other approach. Abdominal work is vital, and the sit-up is still “king” regardless of what you’ve been told about the crunch. If your weight training routine keeps you in the gym for more than 30-40 minutes you are wasting time and not working out at sufficient intensity. The error of relying on single joint movements and working at insufficient intensity is nearly universal.”

If metabolism is about a constant change in the body, whether from a health state to a disease state, or the inverse: going from a sick body to a healthy, fit body, then a program that ensures the body’s hormonal regulatory system and bioenergetics works optimally would naturally be called MetFix.  We are the change that fixes the body, preventing and reversing chronic disease.

The Care and Feeding of Your Mitochandria

We now know that the mitochondria and endocrine system dictate where you land on the sickness-wellness-fitness continuum. Your endocrine system is dependent upon your bioenergetics and changes how your hormones function. Diseases proliferate when metabolic function is impaired, and health and fitness outcomes thrive when metabolism is optimized.

MetFix is grounded in the science of metabolic health. Our dietary protocol of mostly meat and fat is a strategic design to build and support lean body mass (muscle, bone, and organs). MetFix’s exercise protocol is based on Greg Glassman’s methodology, which has proven effective at increasing work capacity across broad times and modal domains and therefore one’s functionality–the ability to perform functional movements to meet life’s demands.

The double pillars of the low-carbohydrate high-fat diet and constantly varied high-intensity functional movement create the metabolic environment that allows your body to fix itself and thrive–a diet and exercise program that improves health. This is MetFix.