We're going to be featuring more questions from our readers in our daily newsletter, starting with today's question about "repairing metabolism" from BioTrust customer, Helen.  Enjoy! Dear Joel & Josh, I feel that through chronic, yo-yo dieting, in addition to my increasing age, that I'm suffering from a sluggish metabolism.  I'm currently trying to lose 20 pounds (again) only this time it's coming off very slowly.  Is there anything that I can do to "repair" any damage that I may have done to my metabolism and get things going again?  I'm a big fan of your company and your products!  Thank you for your time. Helen ------ Response from Joel & Josh: Hi Helen!  Thanks for taking the time to email.  Yes, it's true that chronic dieting, especially yo-yo dieting can do some real damage to your metabolism, but we do have a great "metabolism-repairing" solution to share with you today and it involves increasing something known as "G-flux". If you’ve never heard of G-flux, here’s a simple formula for increasing it:  Eat more; exercise more.  Sounds pretty simple, but let’s take a deeper look. Exercise increases metabolism.  Eating increases metabolism.  The trick is learning to balance the two so that you still create a negative calorie balance. Allow us to explain. Sedentary people (folks who just sit around and don’t exercise) have painfully slow metabolisms.  This is due to many hormonal factors resulting from a lack of exercise along with the fact that these individuals never really “teach” their body to burn additional calories. Likewise, chronic dieters share the same plight.  When you chronically under-eat, metabolism shuts down as a starvation protection mechanism and the oh-so-slow metabolism blues start a-playin’. On the contrary, exercise and eating are metabolism boosters.  That being said, it’s not very likely that eating more by itself will ever do wonders for your fat loss goals. But when you combine eating more with a high caloric burn via exercise you get the best of both worlds. For example, let’s say your basal metabolic rate allows you to burn 2000 calories a day.  Knowing this, you go on a diet and begin eating 1500 calories a day, putting you 500 calories in the hole.  Now, on the surface a 500 calorie deficit would appear to be a good thing, but unfortunately you’ve done your metabolism NO favors here.  In fact, under-eating only decreases metabolism with each passing day as you've experienced. So, “dieting” as we know it is not the method of choice for creating a calorie deficit, especially when trying to repair your metabolism. Now let’s take a similar scenario.  You burn 2000 calories a day, but instead of “dieting” you start eating 300 calories MORE each day and you also burn 800 extra calories through exercise.  The result?  The SAME 500 calorie deficit (2800 calories burned, 2300 calories consumed) but you do so while increasing your metabolism through eating and exercising more. That’s the power of G-flux.  Apply the concept and watch your metabolism skyrocket. Want to know how to increase your metabolism even further with FOOD?  Check out this link we made for you: ==> Exactly what to eat for rapid fatloss (meal by meal) ----- Joel Marion & Josh BezoniFounders, BioTrust Nutrition