Fast or slow metabolism

Which is better?

A fast one of course, why would anyone want a slower metabolism?
Let me ask another question; what’s better a sprint or a marathon?
That’s a tough question to answer because it really depends.
I had a client yesterday whose thoughts I had to challenge regarding her metabolism. Most people just assume that everything is slowing down the metabolism. Ideas of our metabolic rate slowing as we age and burning less when we sleep are just par for the course. Any difficulties we have with our health and body are chalked up to a slower metabolism.
Having a faster metabolism is not always a good thing. Just like if you want a fire to burn all night you better put some logs in and not just newspaper. I’ve had to slow people’s metabolism down because it was causing too much instability due to incorrect food choices and meal timing. The less stable you are the less you’re body changes and if it does it’s usually changing in an unfavorable way.
Let’s break down some myths here: Metabolism doesn’t necessarily slow down with age as much as it gets burdened by the accumulated factors of being alive. There’s a reason why they say everything goes downhill around 30 or 40, because by this time in your life you’ve accumulated more crap on your biology than you’ve cleaned house and it’s time to pay the piper so things start catching up with you. Metabolic rate for the most part increases during sleep ,there are a lot of ways this can be affected but the idea that it slows down at night is false.
Let’s look at the sprint and the marathon. Is it good to be fast for a marathon? For the most part no; you want slower sustainable management of energy or you’ll burn out and won’t be able to complete the race. I think it’s pretty obvious why you don’t want to be slow for a sprint.
Your metabolism is a combination of races of varying distances and depending on what your goal is a certain speed will be better than another. For some of you a faster metabolism is not good and others need a speedier one.
A good example I like to use is alcohol. Does alcohol slow your metabolism down or speed it up? Both actually; in the short term it gets metabolized very rapidly because it’s a toxin to the body, so much so that the body will shut down all other processes until it gets rid of it. This “shut down” if significant enough; will slow your metabolism down in the longer term so you get both effects.
Try not to focus on always speeding up your metabolism or thinking that it’s slow all the time when you run into difficulties. What you want is a responsive metabolism, which means the changes you’re wishing to see respond to your efforts which can come from either putting your foot on the gas or pumping the brakes it just depends on the context.