How Jenny Lost 13 Pounds While Eating MORE After Dieting Since 7th Grade
Is your metabolism damaged from decades of dieting?
Jenny was sure her body was broken. She started with cabbage soup in 7th grade, and by her late 40s, Atkins and keto had stopped working for her.
(She also tried non-fat foods, the Mediterranean diet, Weight Watchers, Noom, South Beach, intermittent fasting, and OMAD. No surprise, but none of them worked long term.)
I'm sharing Jenny's own voice messages on how she lost 13 pounds of body fat in about 6 months, why the 10 pounds she lost with a previous coach came back within 2 months, and the tracking mistake that finally made one of our lessons click for her.
👉 Learn about our 12-Week Dialed In Fall Challenge starting this Monday:
https://witsandweights.com/challenge
You'll learn:
Why restrictive diets become hard to sustain with adult life
The fear of a broken metabolism and the appeal of GLP-1 drugs
What research shows about metabolic adaptation, weight cycling, and age
The real cost of yo-yo dieting as lost muscle and “skinny fat” body composition
The ONE tracking mistake that shrinks your calorie deficit without you noticing
How to use your own data as evidence
Strength training benefits beyond the scale like stairs, mobility, and comfort
Handling travel, promotions, stress, and imperfect weeks without overcorrecting
If you want fat loss over 40 to stick this time, hit play!
Join our 12-Week Dialed In Fall Challenge, where you'll follow the same exact process as Jenny, with 3 specific goals scored against your own starting point to get you successfully through the holidays so you don't have to "start over" in January. The winner gets 3 months of free coaching and a 2-on-1 private call with me and Coach Carol. It starts Monday, October 12.
https://witsandweights.com/challenge
Timestamps:
0:00 - Why Jenny thought her body was broken
3:20 - Dieting since 7th grade
7:30 - Can decades of dieting damage your metabolism?
10:12 - How she used her own data
11:32 - Why her last coach's results didn't last
14:00 - The tracking lesson that finally clicked
16:24 - Eating more and the problem with "trust the process"
20:20 - Wins that don't show up on the scale
25:59 - Work travel, a promotion, and two puppies
30:20 - Building skills you keep after coaching
31:33 - Jenny's advice if you think your body is broken
Episode Resources:
Join our 12-week challenge that uses the exact same approach Jenny followed: https://witsandweights.com/challenge
Episode 509, on why weight loss challenges fade once the prize is gone
Episode 499, on the skills that keep your results going after a program ends
Episode 501, on menopause weight gain
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Why Jenny thought her body was broken
Philip Pape 0:00
If you've been dieting most of your life and you're starting to believe your body is just broken, this episode is for you. Jenny started dieting in seventh grade, and by her late 40s, she was convinced nothing would work for her anymore. Today you're gonna hear Jenny in her own voice explain how she lost 13 pounds of body fat while eating more than she thought she could, and the tracking mistake that she had to make before one of my lessons finally made sense to her. Because on our last episode, Monday, I talked about why weight loss challenges tend to fade once the incentive has gone away. Well, today you're gonna hear what it looks like when the result actually sticks from one of our members, Jenny. She is a healthcare provider in her late 40s, and she recorded her answers to my questions as voice messages, which I'm playing as exactly as she sent them without any editing, maybe some trimming here and there, but it's basically her voice coming through. She started the program the last week of March. So this is a little over six months ago, at 172 pounds and finished at 159, which is her first time getting into the 150s and longer than she can remember. Remember, we don't care about just weight loss, we care about fat loss and what's going on behind the scenes. But for her, this is also a huge win. She went from a tight size 14 to a size 12 with room to spare. She did it while dealing with endometriosis, IBS, and perimenopause symptoms, which she asked me to mention this so that other women in the same boat uh can hear it. She also calls herself a worry wart whose spirit animal is chicken little. The sky is falling. So keep that in mind when she talks about not freaking out anymore. The belief that I want to look at today is one I hear all the time, especially from those of you working on fat loss who are over 40, where you might be telling yourself, I've been dieting my whole life, and if it ever worked to begin with, it stopped working now. So my metabolism must be damaged. I must be having issues with my body due to hormones or something else that simply make it difficult, if not impossible, to do this. Now, Jenny believed that as well. So, along with her story, I'm gonna share what the research says about metabolic adaptation. Uh, it's mostly good news, spoiler alert, with a few of the caveats along the way. And then stick around to the end because Jenny has a message for anyone who's dieted their whole life and thinks their body is broken. Uh, so I'm gonna give her the last word, believe it or not. First, we're gonna go through Jenny's history and whether decades of dieting can wreck your metabolism in some permanent way. Then we'll get to what changed, including a tracking lesson that took her many months to understand. But this is my favorite part of her answers. And then I'm gonna cover what strength training helped her with far beyond the scale, how she handles it when life gets messy, which, as you'll all hear, it did, uh, and so much more. So let's get into it. Start where Jenny started.
Dieting since 7th grade
Philip Pape 3:20
I asked her what got her dieting so young and what dieting looked like in her 20s, 30s, and 40s.
Jenny 3:27
So back in seventh grade when I first started dieting, it was primarily, well, two things. One, it was just the culture at that time. I'm an 80s baby, so by the time I was in seventh grade, the culture at the time was just rampant with all kinds of dieting, fat-free foods. So it it was just one, it was just something to do because everybody was doing it. And then two, of course, it didn't help that in the Asian culture that I grew up in, I was way too chubby for a little girl. All the other Asian kids around me were very, very skinny, and I was reminded on a regular basis by family members, friends, and just the general Asian culture that I just didn't fit that skinny stereotype. And so I started with the cabbage soup diet in seventh grade. I knew that I had to be skinnier. When I was in my 20s and 30s, dieting was more pointed. I was definitely aware that I was not quote unquote skinny enough. Looking back at those photos, I can't believe I thought that I was overweight. I absolutely was not overweight. So, but what I really dieted on back in my 20s and 30s, I relied heavily on Atkins, which was very successful for me in my 20s and even in my mid-30s. I even tried keto in my late 30s and early 40s, and none of that worked. So, around late 30s, early 40s is when I realized keto wasn't working, Atkins wasn't working. I couldn't stick with any diet consistently, especially with life happening and adulting. The responsibilities, of course, are much different than when we are in our 20s and our 30s. So, with added stress and just life being life, then none of those worked. It was really hard for me to adhere to.
Philip Pape 5:18
So you can hear she started with cabbage soup in seventh grade, which some of you might remember that diet fad. Notice that Atkins worked for her into her mid-30s. I did Atkins myself back in college. So she knew how to lose weight on a strict diet. And then with a career and all the adulting, as we say, she couldn't stick to one anymore, right? We hear that a lot. You couldn't stick to the diets. It was an adherence thing for a variety of reasons, including it being restrictive. Now that is a different problem than just having a broken body. Although Jenny didn't see it that way at the time. So I asked her why she thought her body was wrecked.
Jenny 5:53
Yeah, I did say that I felt like my body was wrecked. And that is genuinely the truth. Before I joined your program, I thought there's no way I'm gonna lose this weight. Everything I've tried in my 20s and 30s is no longer working for me in my 40s. I had just assumed with the health issues that I deal with and possibly in perimenopause that I just was not going to lose weight. Of course, all the media out there, everybody's taking GLP ones, and I'm I'm wondering, will I not be able to get the success and the results I want without taking them? Although I'm very hesitant to take them because I don't want to deal with any of the side effects that my friends have dealt with. The reason why I gave it one more shot is because I just knew I wasn't going to give up trying something different. Every single diet I've tried before was very, very, very restrictive. When you came out with the program Eat More Lift Heavy, I thought, yeah, that sounds amazing. I would love to eat more food. I would love to feel satisfied. I would love to feel full. I knew that meant I'd have to clean up some of the food that I was eating, not all. And even in hindsight, I can say I still had the opportunity plenty enough times to enjoy the food that I absolutely love. They may not be considered quote unquote clean in the nutrition world or in the food world, whatever. But the one thing that I was missing was lifting heavy. And with my medical background, I knew without a shadow of a doubt that that was the missing link. So I had to give it a try.
Can decades of dieting damage your metabolism?
Philip Pape 7:30
So her friends are on GLP once. She has real health issues, she might be in perimenopause, and nothing that used to work is working. So I get why she blamed her body. And a lot of you have told me the same thing, almost word for word. So can decades of dieting damage your metabolism? So I want to explain this in my own words because I've taken a position on this. I want to be fair about it. Your metabolism does adapt when you diet. It totally does. But after a normal diet, the extra slowdown beyond what you'd expect from being smaller, because yes, your metabolism decreases when you decrease in size, is around 50 to 100 calories a day. So that's beyond what you would expect just from your reduction in weight. Katia Martins and her colleagues, we've talked about this study before, found about 54 calories in one trial. And it didn't predict who regained the weight either, which we also learned from the bigger lose biggest loser study. And in their follow-up work, about half of it went away. Half of that adaptation went away once their weight stabilized. All right, so in the end, metabolic adaptation is something that reverses itself, other than that caused by weight loss, which is a good thing because you're smaller on the scale if that was your goal in terms of body fat. Now, I love this next one from the research. There was a trial in post-menopausal women out of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center that compared women by how much they yo-yo dieted. And a history of weight cycling, of yo-yo dieting, did not seem to make it any harder for them to lose weight or improve their body composition. So, isn't that good news? That's really good news. That's the fear that many of you have. And I think it's important to understand that. What about age? Well, Herman Ponser's group measured over 6,400 people with doubly labeled water. This is the gold standard to measure metabolism. And after they accounted for lean mass, which includes your muscle mass, metabolism is stable from the age of 20 to 60. Now, menopause does change things, right? The Swan study found fat gain doubles and lean mass drops around your last period, but the scale doesn't really move. I covered this in episode 501. So the change is more in your body composition, right? You tend to be gaining fat and losing muscle and looking worse and worse in the mirror, let's say, versus something having to do with a broken metabolism, which is good news because you have some control over this, as Jenny is going to talk about. Now, the one real, I'll say trade-off or cost that you probably have from years of dieting is the muscle mass, because you know, every time you diet, it's gonna reduce some muscle and all the weight's gonna come back as fat, and that's gonna add up and accumulate with age. And that's where the age or the time component comes into this. So I would say Jenny's body was adapted, and by her own description, skinny fat, but neither of those is permanent, at least in anything I've seen anecdotally and in the research.
How she used her own data
Philip Pape 10:12
Now, real quick, before we get to our next message, Jenny was in the dialed-in version of Eat More Lift Heavy. And you probably heard about our upcoming fall challenge. It starts Monday, October 12th, the 12-week dialed-in fall challenge. That's exactly what it is, the same experience that Jenny had. And it starts this Monday. So I want to tell you about it real quick. You can go to witsandweights.com slash challenge to learn more and to join. You know, we have limited spots because it's very personalized coaching. It starts Monday, goes through Thanksgiving, goes through Christmas into the new year. You get a personal coach. Carol is awesome. I'm also there rooting you on and providing feedback. And it's the same Carol that you're gonna hear Jenny talk about. She will build you a personal nutrition plan. She'll assign you a training program, she'll review your data, she'll make adjustments with you, she can check your form, all of that stuff. You're gonna pick three specific goals, at least one of them an outcome goal, like waist measurement, a lift, your trend weight, and one or two of them a habit-based goal. And then you are scored against your starting point with a realistic target. Whoever wins is gonna get three months of free coaching plus a private two-on-one call with Carol and me. But honestly, I think the win is the results you're gonna get from going through that process that Jenny talks about today. Spots are limited, go to witsandweights.com slash challenge before Monday. That's witsandweights.com slash challenge.
Why her last coach's results didn't last
Philip Pape 11:32
All right, so if Jenny's body wasn't broken, what was different this time around? Well, before she found us, she worked with another coach for about nine months. She lost 10 pounds, and then she gained it all back within two months. So I asked her what was different this time.
Jenny 11:45
Yes, that is correct. I did work with another coach prior to meeting you and Carol, where I did lose 10 pounds over a period of nine months. But within two months, all of it came back. The best way for me to explain the difference between working with that coach versus working with you and Carol is using the proverb: give a man a fish and you feed him for a day, teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime. With my previous coach, every time I had an issue, I would get a very specific resolution for that problem or a very specific instruction or maybe some advice that may or may not apply. However, under your coaching, your program, and also with Carol's coaching as well, I was actually taught the skills and provided the tools on how to maneuver with various situations in life. The concepts that you taught me and that Carol taught me, I was able to apply very widely. This is the first time in since dieting in the seventh grade. I am in my mid-late 40s. This is the first time I truly have no doubt that I could handle the rest of my weight loss journey and strength training journey on my own.
Philip Pape 13:02
Teach a man to fish is pretty much the design principle of our program. And I talked about why those skills matter back in episode 499, if you want to check that out. Now, I have a financial stake in this. I have always have a conflict of interest when it comes to education and coaching and programs. So always run what I say through that filter. Please do that. Please evaluate the different coaches. This is why I asked Jenny about her previous experiences versus ours, because you ought to have to understand that just having a coach isn't enough. You have to have the right one. Her old coach wasn't necessarily doing anything wrong, but she lost the weight without knowing how. So when the coaching ended, she had nothing to fill the gap and kind of keep it going to sustain those results. Now, the moment that it clicked for her is really my favorite part. Uh, in one lesson, I say that a stall, and I'm talking about lessons in our program, I say that a stall might mean that your calorie deficit is smaller than you think. And it didn't make sense to Jenny at the time. Listen to what she says.
The tracking lesson that finally clicked
Jenny 14:00
Oh, I actually love this question. Was there a moment when it clicked and you looked at your own numbers and knew exactly what was going on without asking anyone? And yes, that is the flip that completely switched for me. And it probably wasn't until maybe the second or maybe the second or third week, final week that this happened for me. Earlier on, you had a lesson talking about the expenditure graph in Macro Factor and what could be possibly causing stalls. And one point that you made was your deficit might be smaller than you think. And I remember just scratching my head thinking, why or how is it possible that my deficit could be smaller than I think? And the reason I thought that is because I was documenting, excuse me, not documenting, I was logging every single morsel of food that I was eating. It was not till I started being less strict and just living, I guess without under such strict parameters, that I started realizing, okay, in a real life scenario where you're not logging every single morsel that you eat, it is very easy to sneak in food, to guesstimate the wrong portions, and therefore take in way more calories than I realized. So what is reality may not reflect in my logging if my logging data is not accurate to a team. And that's when I realized, okay, that's where I might be wrong in understanding what my true deficit is.
Philip Pape 15:48
Now, isn't that great? She learned it by watching her own data. So when she logged every byte, her log matched reality. And when she started estimating or logging everything at night, the log started to drift from reality. And in episode 499, I mentioned a study related to this called the Lichtmann study, where people convinced that they couldn't lose weight under-reported their intake by about 47% while their metabolisms were basically normal. Nobody sees their own eating patterns perfectly, like nobody, myself, nutrition experts, whatever. And Jenny was able to see this in her own behavior.
Eating more and the problem with "trust the process"
Philip Pape 16:24
Then there's the eat more part, right? Which is part of our program name for a reason eat more, live heavy. During her fat loss phase, she was eating around 1,850 calories a day and still losing fat. She is over 2,000 calories at maintenance. And she wrote to me that she could not believe she could eat that much and still burn fat. Cabbage soup and keto, they work really well on paper, but a diet where you could eat enough is absolutely one that you could stick with, isn't it? Like if you compare it to those where you eat less or you eat or you cut out certain foods. And it also, of course, helps you preserve your muscle mass and have enough energy for your lifting, your training, all of that stuff for your recovery. Deficits that are larger than about 500 calories a day on average tend to be a bigger risk for losing your muscle, which is something we're trying to avoid. So there's like a fine window that Jenny was able to navigate. For training, she went from two days a week to four days within about five weeks and was about 80% consistent, which I think is awesome. And I think you need to hear this. Um, I also asked her about uh a particular phrase that she can't stand. So listen to it in her own words.
Jenny 17:33
Yes, that is correct. I have always hated the phrase just trust the process. It didn't make sense to me to say just trust a process when I am not seeing evidence to trust it. So when I was doing Atkins or keto, I was on various Atkins communities or the Atkins community when they did have it at the time, and I was on various keto communities. And the advice I was given over and over from people who did succeed with those programs was just trust the process. I couldn't get on board with that. I'm not a trusting person in the first place. I love evidence, I love seeing facts and working with facts. And I absolutely loved working with all the data that your program provided for me. That was something I can trust. Watching my measurements shrink and watching the scale shrink, watching my strength increase, watching my functional mobility increase, that's all data, that is all objective data that I can trust. Watching my body improve, either one aspect or another, that's the reason I was able to keep being consistent. It was the consistent little wins that made me want to chase more wins. But in other programs, if I'm going weeks and months with seeing no improvement, there is no reason for me to want to keep doing the same thing over and over and over and not getting a result, which to me is absolutely frustrating and a waste of my time. What does it mean to me now that it didn't before? What it means to me now, now I do understand why people use that phrase. I still don't like it, I will not use it. I understand that now because trust the process means if you are consistent, if you have all the right information and all the data, you will be able to objectively see how your body improves through a consistent lifestyle.
Philip Pape 19:40
So I'm totally with her. Trust the process, which I've probably used myself in the past, honestly, asks you to believe without evidence. That's why we often say trust but verify, right? Our chicken little wasn't gonna do that. She trusted the data she could see with her own eyes, that she could observe, that she measured, her trend weight, her waist, her lifts, getting off the floor. And we have studies about self-weighing that back her up. Weighing alone doesn't seem to do much, but weighing plus the skills to act on it tends to improve fat loss. So the scale by itself isn't the magic part, right? It's using the information properly and interpreting it the right way.
Wins that don't show up on the scale
Philip Pape 20:20
All right, let's talk about what doesn't show up on scale, on the scale, which is something we talk about a lot on the show. I asked Jenny for one moment when she noticed a change, and she gave me some really good ones.
Jenny 20:31
Oh, this is a great question. This is exactly the tiny little things and the big things that I would see that just kept pushing me to be more consistent with my strength training, with eating in a manner that really benefited me and helped progress my expenditure. Being able to eat at a baseline over 2,000 calories and not gain weight, continue to gain strength, continue to burn fat. This was amazing for me. Even when the scale did not show a drop, I was noticing, I think around week the fourth or fifth week of strength training, I no longer needed to push off the ground from if I'm sitting on the floor, to push off with both hands and struggle. I should not feel that old at my age, and it was really tough for me to get off the floor. But around week four or five, I noticed I was able to stand up without the use of both of my hands. And I just stood up and I thought, oh my gosh, that's the first time I did that. That was just so exciting. I knew without a shadow of a doubt that I was gaining muscle mass at that moment. And also with Philip and Carol's with both of your knowledge, I was also understanding with that increased muscle mass comes increased expenditure, comes better metabolism, which means more fat burn. It is this cycle that you're constantly going to feed into in order. To benefit the body in so many different ways. I work in an office where I have to climb a flight of stairs. It was pathetic. I would get to the top of the stairs and I would be short of breath. I would have to wait at the top of the stairs for anywhere from a few seconds up to a minute to recover and then I'd start walking to my office. Now I get up the stairs. I might take in one deep breath as I continue to walk to the office. I might not be short of breath at all. And that is not by focusing on cardio, that was actually focusing on strength training. The only quote-unquote cardio I've really done is I tried one time doing your sprinting protocol, which totally kicked my butt and never did it again. But I can see why that would help speed up fat loss. But the biggest thing is just walking and focusing on my neat activities. My arms used to feel like they were in constant contact with my sides because most of my fat was gained through my abdomen. And so as my abdomen started gaining back its feminine shape, which is amazing. I used to always tell people I look like my body just looks like a cylinder shape. But actually gaining back more feminine shape has been phenomenal for me. I really, really enjoyed getting that back. And also being able to put my arms at my side without being in contact constant with my torso was a big win for me. I just felt more comfortable in my skin, not visually, literally physically. I didn't feel like I was stuck in some type of tight, restrictive skin. I feel more ability to move with greater efficiency, less restriction.
Philip Pape 23:38
Getting off the floor without both hands, I really love that. I would take that over any number on the scale for so many of you. Just function is so important. Now, Jenny, you know I'm gonna add some nuance because that's what I do. That early strength is mostly your nervous system learning to use the muscle you already have, with growth in the muscle tissue coming along later or more slowly, at least. Now, muscle does raise your resting metabolism. It's only about six to nine calories per pound per day at rest. So a few pounds is maybe, you know, 12, 15 at most 20 calories. It's not nothing, but the bigger payoff is that you train harder and you move more, like climbing those stairs at work without stopping. And that all adds up to burning even more calories than you think. We've talked about this before. All the cascade of ways that your body, you know, gets into better fitness and shape simply by having more muscle. I also want to be upfront about our tracking tool that we use, because a lot of you, we talk about tracking, what to track. You know, Jenny's five pounds of fat loss, two pounds of muscle gained was calculated in a tracker that we use in our program, which estimates the navy body fat, fat-free mass, things like that from your measurements, like your waist, hip, neck, weight. Things all of you can do on your own for sure. Um, it's great for direction. I always love the trend, and it kept Jenny level headed, right? But there is no method, including our tracker or a bioimpedance scale, even DEXA, that can, I'll say, reliably distinguish a small amount of muscle from, say, water in your lean mass. So that's why the trend is really the important thing here that she was using. Now, what I do trust is when you look at before and after the whole thing, she lost 13 pounds from her trend weight, her waist came down or her size came down from 14 to 12, her waist came down, her lifts went up. All of those pointed in the direction we want to go, which is improved body composition. She also told me she doesn't overeat anymore. She fills up on protein and fiber first. And as she put it, when she feeds her body well, it treats her well in return, which for someone dieting since middle school could be the biggest change of all for her for the rest of her life. Which brings me to the question I told her she could skip if she was not comfortable answering it, which is, but she did. So thank you, Jenny. Here we go. How does she handle a stretch of time that isn't perfect compared to five years ago?
Work travel, a promotion, and two puppies
Jenny 25:59
I think for this question, when a stretch isn't perfect now, how do you handle it compared to how you would have five years ago? Is the biggest mental hurdle I had to overcome. Previously, when I'd be dieting, every single mistake I made, quote unquote mistake, I thought was going to be my downfall. That mental game of if I don't do this perfectly, I'm not going to succeed, is absolutely exhausting. The honest truth is the human body just isn't that black and white. The consistency is important, but there are times where I had to travel for work and I was in meeting after meeting. And then after the meetings are done, I have to go with my boss and the other VPs and go do other social events and networking. It was almost impossible to hit the gym, although I was able to do it a couple of times. But then we're all going out to eat, and although I do my best to order healthy foods, it was impossible to stick with everything I wanted to when I'd be traveling for work purposes. What I learned from that, although that was early on in my time with Eat More Lift Heavy, that trip made me realize, oh my gosh, because of the consistency I was living with in the foundation that I had already built before that trip, my body was able to handle that trip with without a hitch. There were no issues. I got back home, I didn't gain any weight, I went right back to everything that you and Carol were teaching me. And it's like I didn't even miss a day. I I could not believe that I could actually live a flexible life without freaking out about my progress. There was also a time where during my journey with you guys that I have been promoted in my career, which was amazing, but the workload piled on so fast. I don't think I've ever worked so hard in my life as a healthcare provider. And it was a lot of management roles, training roles, public speaking. It was an insane amount of stress. And then my husband and I decided to get two puppies, which was in hindsight a bad idea. But all that did add on to me quite a bit. Even still, I was not once worried that I'm just gonna keep doing what I can during this time. And I really know the knowledge that I have and everything that I've experienced because the past gave me data of how to expect what to expect for a future. I knew that once this stage in my life passed or things calmed down, I could ramp back up to where I wanted to be. I continued to prior prioritize the protein and the fiber. I worked out when I could. Sometimes I couldn't do a full workout. Sometimes I'd just go to the gym, do what I can. It may be half-hearted, but I'd go home and I would have done something. I would have kept up the habit. All that was, it was, it was easy. And now that I am out of that stressful phase, I am right back on track. Very proudly to say I'm right back on track. I didn't have to mentally struggle with the idea of quote, losing any progress. And I didn't. It's it's been fantastic.
Philip Pape 29:13
So Jenny had a promotion, a huge workload, two puppies, which, in her words, not mine, was a bad idea in hindsight. We joke about actually dogs because we were talking about dogs whining and barking while we're trying to record stuff. But she didn't stop. She did half workouts, and that's what she was able to do, which is far better than not working out. She kept her protein and fiber up. She didn't slash calories to make up, quote unquote, for anything, which is, you know, that overcorrection trap we talked back on episode talked about on episode 499. Now, I'm not saying Jenny was perfect, of course not. That's the whole point here. I'm not saying she'll never need a coach again. And she doesn't think so either. We know from research that people who keep some sort of support after a program ends keep off more of their results. But if you have the skills to do it on your own, that goes much farther than if you hadn't had that in the first place. So what I am saying is Jenny can now look at her own data. She has the skills, and then she knows when to ask for help if she needs to level up or optimize or get a little bit of a course correction, which is a far different place from where she started. All right, before I let Jenny have the last word, I do have one
Building skills you keep after coaching
Philip Pape 30:20
more thing. Remember that Jenny used the teach a man to fish line. And I want this to be that for you. I want the rest of 2026 to be a strong end of the year. Maybe you've tried programs before and they didn't stick and you felt like you wasted your money. I totally get that. I want this challenge that we have, the dialed in fall challenge starting Monday, to be your opportunity to change that trajectory for the rest of your life, like Jenny talked about today. So it starts this Monday, it runs 12 weeks through the holidays. That's when most people take a break and start to gain more weight, which then doesn't come off and it builds year after year. You get a personal coach, Carol. You heard about Carol. You get to pick your goals and she's gonna approve them with you so that you can realistically achieve what you can in 12 weeks, right? We're not gonna promise the moon or some big quick fix or some extreme program where you get a result, yay, and then it all comes back, you know, by February or March. And you're gonna build the skills. This is the most important thing, like Jenny did. You're gonna learn the skills to do this on your own. You're not just relying on the coach. That's the point here. And then if you like incentives, if you like prizes, you can win three months of free coaching plus a private call with Carol and me. Spots are limited. Go to witsandweights.com slash challenge. Again, that's witsandweights.com slash challenge.
Jenny's advice if you think your body is broken
Philip Pape 31:33
So I asked Jenny one last question. What would she tell a woman in her late 40s who has dieted her whole life and thinks her body is broken?
Jenny 31:42
For any woman in her late 40s who has dieted her whole life and thinks that her body is just broken, I would challenge her to think more about this and to give her body a lot more grace and to see, truly see how amazing her body really is. If she is a mother, she has literally given life using her body. That power shouldn't be underestimated. Hormones or not, give your body a chance. If you've never tried strength training with a combination of meat, with a combination of the right amount of protein, give it a chance. It won't hurt you and it won't take anything away from you. But the gains that you can get from having that stronger body, the stronger mental stamina, to be able to move with greater flexibility, to have your muscles working behind the scenes constantly to burn fat on your behalf, all of that is worth the effort. And it isn't, in my opinion, it wasn't that much effort. It was quite possibly the most enjoyable health experience I've ever had. To constantly see the little wins was amazing. Still, I constantly see little wins, and I can't wait to see what my life and my body will be in about a couple years as I continue this journey. And I feel very confident I can continue it on my own independently. I can't believe it took just, what was it, 29 weeks for me to get here? That is incredible. And I know without a shadow of a doubt, if I need more help, I know exactly I can turn to Philip and Carol again in my future.
Philip Pape 33:20
Thank you so much, Jenny. Until next time, everyone, keep using your wits, lifting those weights. And remember, even if you've been dieting for decades, your body's adapted, it's not broken, and you can definitely work with adapted. I'm Philip Hape, and I'll talk to you next time here on the Wits and Weights Podcast.
