Why Building Muscle Beats Weight Loss for Body Recomp | Ep 418

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Body recomp, build muscle, and lose fat without wrecking your metabolism. Have you ever wondered why weight loss leaves you smaller but not better? What if muscle, not weight loss, is the real driver of transformation?

I break down why chasing the scale backfires and how building muscle changes everything. Muscle improves metabolism, insulin sensitivity, nutrient partitioning, and how much you can eat while staying lean. I explain why weight loss without strength training often leads to muscle loss, fatigue, and rebound fat gain, especially for men’s health, women’s fitness, and anyone focused on longevity. This is about evidence-based fitness and evidence-based nutrition, not quick fixes.

I also share why strength training over 40 is non-negotiable for health, body positivity, and sustainable results, plus the simple daily habit that surprised me by accelerating muscle-building without more gym time.

If you want real body recomp and a physique that actually looks trained, this episode will reframe how you approach nutrition and fitness. Tune in to learn more.

Today, you’ll learn all about:

0:00 –  Why weight loss fails
1:11 – Muscle vs scale obsession
9:01 – How muscle boosts metabolism
6:34 – Insulin sensitivity explained
17:45 – Why dieting backfires
27:34 – Body recomp done right
30:19 – Protein and training priorities
34:54 – Muscle and longevity
38:01 – The daily habit that accelerates growth

Previous episodes mentioned:

• Ep 362 – Fat Loss WITHOUT a Calorie Deficit? (Body Recomp Explained)

• Ep 384 – Build Muscle WITHOUT Bulking if You Want Lean Gains

Most people chase the number on the scale and end up frustrated when the mirror does not match their effort. The missing link is muscle. Muscle is not just tissue for aesthetics; it is metabolically expensive, improves nutrient partitioning, and acts as your body’s primary sink for glucose. When you focus only on losing weight with low calories and lots of cardio, you often lose lean mass and end up weaker, colder, hungrier, and less resilient. This is why weight loss can be neutral or even negative for body composition, while muscle gain is always positive. By shifting your goal from “weigh less” to “carry more muscle,” you change everything: how much you can eat, how easily you lose fat, how you perform, and how you age.

Muscle’s true power goes beyond a small bump in resting calorie burn. Each pound of muscle stores glycogen, improves insulin sensitivity, and nudges calories toward repair and growth rather than fat storage. This improved nutrient partitioning means the same meal is handled differently in a trained body; carbs refill muscle instead of lingering in the blood or landing in fat cells. More muscle increases training capacity, enabling harder sets, more volume, and better recovery, which further drives adaptation. The result is a virtuous cycle: strength rises, NEAT often increases, energy stabilizes, and fat loss becomes easier at higher calories. You can maintain or even improve body composition at the same weight, which is the essence of body recomposition.

The reason many dieters stall is behavioral: weight loss plans encourage the exact inputs that erode long-term progress. Aggressive deficits, low protein, minimal resistance training, and excessive cardio lower metabolism, elevate hunger, and strip muscle. The comeback weight arrives as fat, leaving you smaller but softer. A smarter approach sets a moderate deficit or aggressive maintenance while prioritizing muscle retention and growth. That means progressive resistance training, enough protein to support muscle protein synthesis, and adequate sleep to recover from training stress. The best part? You do not need to live in the gym; three to four well-structured sessions per week focused on compound lifts, effort, and progression deliver most of the results.

For body recomposition, bias toward building muscle rather than fixating on fat loss. Research and practice show muscle gain is possible at maintenance calories, especially for beginners and those returning to training. Aim for about 0.7 to 1 gram of protein per pound of body weight, push for progressive overload, and fuel training with maintenance or a slight surplus if you want faster gains without unnecessary fat. Track what matters: strength PRs, waist and hip measurements, weekly photos, and how clothes fit. Expect slow scale changes and celebrate shrinkage in inches and growth in performance. With patience over six to nine months, a pound of muscle per month is a strong pace and can dramatically change your shape without dramatic diet swings.

Longevity is the clincher. Sarcopenia predicts poor outcomes more strongly than obesity. More muscle supports better glucose control, bone density, balance, and independence. Stronger people recover from illness and injury faster and maintain a higher quality of life as they age. Muscle is your metabolic retirement plan, compounding with every session. Elevate your daily movement too: a simple 30-minute walk boosts blood flow, reduces cortisol, enhances sleep, and speeds recovery, making your lifting more productive. Build muscle first, and fat loss stops feeling like punishment. You will eat more, move better, and look leaner at the same weight, proving that the scale never tells the full story.

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• Transcript

  Philip Pape: 0:01

  When you focus on losing weight, you get smaller. When you focus on building muscle, you get better. Most people chase the scale. They cut calories, they add cardio, and they try to watch that number drop. But then six months later, they're frustrated because they still don't look like they lived. And their metabolism is worse than when they started. Building muscle completely changes the math. It improves how you partition nutrients, how much you can eat, how easily you lose fat, and how good you look at any weight. Today I'm breaking down why muscle is the primary driver of body recomp. Not despite weight, but regardless of it. You'll learn what actually changes your body composition, why weight loss can backfire, and the exact path to follow if you want to transform how you look and feel. Yet, many of you, most people, obsess over that number, that scale number, like it's the only thing that matters. I'm gonna show you today why building muscle is far more valuable than losing weight for body recomp, for health, for longevity, for metabolism, not because muscle magically melts fat, it doesn't, but because muscle changes every equation in your favor to make all the other stuff so much easier. So if you've been frustrated that all this hard work in the gym, in the kitchen isn't showing in your physique, this episode will help you reframe all of it and stick around to the end, where I'm gonna share one daily habit that accelerates muscle growth without any additional training. And it has nothing to do with supplements or meal timing or any of that. And it even surprised me when I first discovered it. All right, let's start with the obvious problem. The scale measures total body mass. That's it. It is the pull of Earth's gravity on your body. It doesn't distinguish what's inside your fat, your muscle, your water, your glycogen, your bone, all of that. When you lose 10 pounds, the scale said you lost 10 pounds. But if five of those pounds were muscle, you just made your body composition far worse, not better. Now, most traditional weight loss advice ignores this in the interest of admittedly selling a program or selling quick results or selling what the industry has sold for many years, and that thin is somehow better. And the typical advice is simplified in its finest is eat less, move more, create a calorie deficit, just be consistent, all the platitudes we hear all the time. Now, none of that tells you what you're actually losing. Okay. Yeah, you're losing weight on the scale, but in chasing weight loss alone and getting smaller, you won't necessarily get leaner. You won't necessarily get stronger. You're definitely not necessarily getting healthier. Now, the little caveat to that is if you have a lot of weight to lose and the excess body fat or body weight in general is putting you in a state of poor health, almost any form of weight loss is going to be a net positive from where you're at. But it's still even better to focus on doing that while building muscle. Research shows that up to 30 to 60%. It's a big range. You know, I you can cherry pick studies to find all these numbers, but even as little as 25 or 30% of your weight loss on a typical diet is lean mass, muscle. That's not great. Like that's not what we're trying to do. Especially we see this in older populations, you know, women and men over 40, anyone under-eating protein, anyone for sure who is skipping resistance training. In fact, that is the biggest reason this happens. And we see this a lot today on the GLP1 medications when it comes to the whole muscle loss argument. They don't cause the muscle loss, but they cause rapid dieting in people who are not resistance training, which leads to muscle loss. And when you lose muscle, why do I care about this? Why do I talk about this on the show so much? Why are there arguments between muscle and fat? I don't think they're mutually exclusive or muscle and weight loss. I think they both can happen and help each other. But what happens when you lose muscle? It's not good. First, you know, your metabolism is going to be lower. You're going to have poor metabolic health, not just from the calorie deficit, but because you are losing this very expensive, we call it metabolically active tissue. Muscle requires a lot of energy to maintain. If our body had its druthers, it wouldn't try to keep muscle because it costs so much and you're trying to survive. You're trying to store energy. You're trying to store fat. Your body would much rather you sit on the couch and just store fat and live for another day in terms of uh not starving, but it's definitely not the same as living a good life and thriving. So less muscle simply means a lower daily energy expenditure, you're burning fewer calories, and of course, you know down the line how this can make other things harder. The second thing that happens when you lose muscle is of course your strength drops. Now, this sounds, I guess, contradictory in the sense that building muscle requires building strength. Building strength builds muscle. So obviously, when you lose muscle, you lose strength. And conversely, if you drop strength because you're not training, you're gonna lose muscle. Anyway, the point is this affects everything in your life. It affects not only how you train, but even if you don't care about training, which we should have a talk, it's how you move through your life. You become weaker, you become less capable, you become more fragile. And you know what? Other people now, you have to depend now on other people. Do you want that? Especially as we get older. I'm not talking about 25-year-olds. Okay, if you're a little bit less strong or more strong at 25, it's probably not gonna make as big a difference. But when you're 60, 70, 80, that becomes a massive quality of life concern, a health span concern. And that's so, so critical today when we look at what happens with a decline into age, with age-related disease, with, you know, assisted living and frailty and all of that stuff, right? You just become weaker and more fragile, which is definitely not what you want. And then the third thing that happens when you lose muscle is your insulin sensitivity worsens. And I wanted to point this out specifically because muscle is where your body stores glucose. Muscle loves carbs. This is why we talk about the value of eating carbs on this show versus the narrative out there of about low carb and losing weight and all that. Muscles love carbs. When you lose muscle, you lose that carbohydrate storage capacity. And then what happens? Well, that means more of that glucose from the carb stays in your bloodstream or gets stored as fat, which is why we have to distinguish hey, are you sedentary and not lifting? In which case, eating a lot of carbs is not going to help you, or are you lifting weights? Uh, in which case it's fantastic, and it improves your insulin sensitivity, which improves your metabolic health as well, inflammation, all of that. So the question is not, how do I lose weight? The correct question is, how do I change my body composition? All right, that's really what we're trying to do. Now, there are deeper reasons we're doing this. We're not addressing here. That goes to mindset and identity, and maybe I'll touch on it here and there. But at the end of it, you know, when we think mechanistically, are we trying to lose weight? No, we're trying to improve our body composition because of the other things we just mentioned, especially metabolic health and longevity, which a lot of people are get surprised about when we talk about muscle because they're thinking bodybuilding and strength and lifting. They're not thinking the wonderful health results that that gets you, plus the food side, right? What it allows you to eat in terms of flexibility and enjoyment in life, personally. So, weight loss, here's the thing. So they're not mutually exclusive. Weight loss can improve your body composition, but it can also destroy it depending on if you are also losing muscle. Muscle gain always improves your body composition, just period. So that's the first, I guess, insight may or may not be surprising you, but it's it's interesting to think about that way in that weight loss is neutral at best, because even if you are training, you're lifting weights, you're eating protein and holding on to your muscle while you lose weight so that it's fat loss, that's beneficial. That is beneficial. I'm not gonna say it's not, but it's I'll say neutrally beneficial because it's the best you can do in either direction until you add more muscle. Whereas gaining muscle is a net positive by definition. In other words, it shifts the whole equation up. So let's get into some of the details related to the power of muscle here. Most people think muscle boosts metabolism. I hear it all the time. I know coaches talk about it on social media. They're like, yeah, you build more muscle and you burn more calories. Now that's technically true that muscle tissue burns a little bit more at rest than fat. It burns about six to nine calories per pound per day compared to like two for fat. So usually I tell people, okay, assume an extra five calories per pound of muscle, upwards of maybe 10 at the most, but let's say five. So if you add 10 pounds of muscle, you're burning an extra 50 to 100 calories a day. It's not nothing, but it's not the sole reason we do this at all. It's also not the real story, however, because I did an entire episode of this in the past that you do technically burn a lot more calories when you build more muscle beyond just the resting calorie burn from the tissue. The real metabolic benefit is what muscle does as a cascade into your entire metabolic system. This is what makes it really powerful, why I love it so much. First, muscle increases your carbohydrate storage capacity. We've already mentioned this. Every pound of muscle you add gives you more glycogen storage, which means less glucose floating around in your blood or getting shuttled into fat cells. Second, muscle improves insulin sensitivity. Also, something that I've mentioned. When your muscles are active, when they're growing, they pull that glucose out of your bloodstream more efficiently. That lowers your blood sugar, that reduces your insulin spikes. Now, I don't have any problem with blood sugar spikes. Those are natural when you eat carbs, for example, but it levels everything out more. And then along with a good balanced diet with plenty of fiber and protein, it just makes fat loss easier. It reduces energy, crashes, it makes you not have to worry at all about your blood sugars. You shouldn't have to use a continuous glucose monitor at all. Okay. None of my clients do. I don't. You don't need to if you're lifting weights, if you're living a healthy lifestyle. And I'm not talking about the diabetic population, totally different situation. Third, and this is an interesting one, okay? The act of building and having muscle increases your nutrient partitioning. Now, this is just a fancy phrase. We like to throw around these phrases of saying that your body preferentially sends those nutrients that you consume toward muscle growth instead of fat storage. And the more muscle you have, it feeds into this process. The more likely the calories you eat are used to build and repair tissue rather than get stored as fat. And again, stick around to the end because I have an extra tip that is going to accelerate this process massively in a surprising way that you might not realize. Just stick around. It's pretty exciting. All right. Fourth, muscle allows for higher training volume. So again, this is an upward spiral. The more muscle you have, the stronger you have, the more weight you can lift, and the harder you can push in the gym and the more volume and can lift. And it feeds on itself because obviously you need more volume and you need more stimulus to build the muscle, but you also can do more with the muscle. It also means you recover better, you tolerate more work. We call that work capacity. It's kind of like a form of cardiovascular health from your lifting and your muscle. You know, people who have more muscle tend to be just more athletic in general, even if they're not endurance athletes, and they can go longer sessions in the gym. And that means more calories burned as well through training over time. So it all feeds on itself. All right. The fifth thing here about muscle as a powerhouse is it supports your daily movement. When you're stronger, you tend to move more. You tend to want to move more, you have more energy. You take the stairs and see the elevator. Sometimes you even want to show off, right? You're strong. So you're going to help carry the groceries or you're going to lift the water bottles. You know, I've had 65-year-old female clients who tell me stories about, you know, men in their lives who she offered to carry the big thing of water bottles for them. Oh, don't do that. It's too heavy. She's like, What are you talking about? I can lift more than you. Okay. You know, you carry all your grocery bags in one trip, you know, with all the fingers. You know what I'm saying? Like two bags per finger kind of deal. You can play with your kids or grandkids without getting exhausted. Like these are lifestyle things. These are functional things. Okay. Having more muscle and training, it increases your knee in general. In fact, just the training sessions alone are like a form of steps you're getting that other people aren't getting. And that burns more calories every day as well. Okay. So if you add it all together, muscle doesn't just burn a few extra calories of rest. It transforms how your metabolism functions, really, your whole identity. It makes you more athletic. And this is why people with more muscle can eat more food, they can stay leaner, they have better health markers, even at the same body weight as someone with less muscle. And that's really important. I've had clients who have a lot of muscle and they're technically overweight, and they might actually have a decent amount of body fat that they really need to lose for other reasons. And they might even be kind of sedentary other than their lifting sessions. But because they have all that muscle, all their blood markers are better than another person at that same weight just because of the muscle. And that's why I think it has a net positive and shifts the whole equation up. And then body fat is just this extra thing that you may or may not need to shift to put you into the best health of all. All right. So now let's talk about what happens when you chase weight loss without prioritizing muscle. Now, hopefully, if you're listening to this podcast, you understand the value of resistance training. Although I have seen people come into our Facebook group recently or like, I'm having issues with XYZ. I'm trying to eat more nutrients, I'm trying to eat more fiber. What do I do? I'm like, are you lifting weights? Are you resistance training? No, no, I'm not. Like, okay, let's put that in there and you're gonna see everything else shift for the better. If you don't do it, if you don't resistance training, and sometimes I say lift weights and resistance training as interchangeably, as interchangeable, I really mean resistance training, putting mechanical tension or resistance on your skeletal and muscular system. But for many people to do that beyond a few weeks and months means getting some sort of weights or machines involved to get the loads needed to keep progressing. Even if you're 80 years old, you're still gonna have to get some light dumbbells or something at some point to start progressing. If you don't, what happens? Well, you're gonna end up smaller, softer, weaker, hungrier, metabolically compromised, you're gonna have less energy, you're gonna have fewer food choices, and you're going to have a lower quality of life. How can I paint the picture any clearer? Like the issues we have today with obesity, which come from overconsumption of food, are only compounded by the lack of muscle. And when someone starts to prioritize muscle, it accelerates the process of losing that fat and getting better metabolic health, as I've mentioned multiple times on this episode. But even just the idea of losing a bunch of weight on GLP ones and not lifting weights, or just going on an aggressive diet and doing, you know, carnivore or a vegan diet or keto or whatever, low carb, and then you drop a bunch of weight, you drop 20, 30, 40 pounds, but you're not lifting weights, you're gonna fall into this skinny fat trap. You may not like the term skinny fat, but you know what I mean. You lose weight, the scale drops, everyone congratulates you. Maybe that's what you're looking for. Maybe you congratulate yourself and you're proud of yourself, and that's great. It's good to be proud of an accomplishment that you worked at. But when you look in the mirror, you don't see what you want. You don't see muscle definition, you see loose skin, you see a soft, flabby midsection, you see flat shoulders, you see weak arms, you feel terrible, you're tired all the time. If this is triggering you, then good. Because I want to be there with you in the idea that, you know, we need to kick ourselves in the pan sometimes and take advantage of that self-love we have for ourselves to think about the long term and our metabolic health and our function for the rest of our life. And so these are symptoms that you're not doing that, right? Maybe you're cold, you're irritable, your workouts suck, you can't recover, you're constantly hungry, and you're stuck and feel like you're gonna make it worse because if you eat more, you're gonna gain fat right away because you know your metabolism's kind of suppressed and you don't have muscle and you're not lifting. If you keep dieting, though, you're gonna keep losing muscle and feel worse, and you're gonna have to diet on much lower calories. All right. This is the cycle that I think most people experience with traditional weight loss. Tell me if I'm not correct. Like I would love somebody to reach out to me and say, no, you know what, I lost a bunch of weight and I didn't lift weights and it improved everything and I'm better for it. Okay. And again, I think there are corner cases where people had a lot of weight to lose, and losing the weight improved their health dramatically. I'm not talking to those people. I'm talking about once you've dealt with that and you're kind of in the area most of us float in where, yeah, I have 20 or 30 pounds to lose, maybe 40 pounds to lose. That's where the muscle part of the equation is going to make a huge difference in and of itself. Okay. Now, why does this cycle happen with us? Why does this happen in the world to so many people? I think it's because weight loss encourages the exact behaviors that make fat loss harder later. And that is low calories, sometimes low protein because you're not thinking about protein. You're just trying to drop food out of your diet, no resistance training, lots of cardio. Okay, that's going to make fat loss harder later for sure. If that's a surprise to you, we can get into why. You create a big energy deficit and your body adapts by lowering your metabolism. It increases your hunger hormones, and it's going to start breaking down your muscle for energy. It's got a couple of places to grab energy, your fat cells and your muscle. Well, if you're not training, it doesn't need your muscle. Beautiful, expensive tissue. It can just, when I say break down, it's not like it like destroys your muscle. It's just your muscle starts to get smaller and not rebuild. And instead, that energy gets reserved for your body because you're in a deficit, right? You lose weight, but you also lose that tissue that makes fat loss possible and sustainable. You're not just losing fat, you're losing muscle. The research on this is clear. I've mentioned before the biggest loser study is an example of the extreme where contestants lost hundreds of pounds through extreme calorie restriction, through tons and tons of exercise. It looked like torture. But because they also lost so much lean mass, their metabolisms tanked hundreds and hundreds of calories. And then years later, most had regained the weight, but their metabolisms were still suppressed because they lost a ton of muscle. All right. And because they had done it for so long. There was another study that found people who diet without resistance training lose significant muscle mass, even in moderate deficits. I often talk about 500 calories as a reasonable deficit below which you're not going to lose muscle, but that assumes your resistance training. If you're not resistance training, you're still going to lose some muscle mass. And then when you regain the weight, guess what happens? You it becomes comes back mostly as fat or pretty much entirely as fat. So if you lost 20 pounds and 10 of those are muscle, and you gained the 20 pounds back, all 20 pounds are fat. You've just now lost 10 pounds of muscle. And your body composition ends up worse than before you started. This is why I don't. Recommend aggressive weight loss, or there's a protocol I have for rapid fat loss, very specific terms, unless you're doing everything possible to preserve muscle. High protein intake, you know, and it's high by the standards of average society, but it's not high by reasonable standards for what's necessary based on the evidence. But high protein intake, progressive overload with your resistance training, right? Training with good intensity so that you actually build muscle, plenty of recovery, keeping your deficit moderate. If you're going to lose weight, lose it the right way. Do it that way, right? So you're then it's fat loss. Otherwise, you're setting yourself up for failure. Now, before we continue, I want to share something that has been getting incredible feedback from listeners and viewers. If you're realizing that tracking your training, monitoring your biofeedback, staying consistent is a hard thing to do, right? Because life is so crazy and life is so busy. I built my Fitness Lab app for exactly that type of person because that is me. Okay. I use it myself. Fitness Lab is an AI-powered coaching app trained on all my content, all my philosophy. It gives you personalized, evidence-based guidance on your workouts, your nutrition patterns, your recovery, all through what I call conversational coaching. It feels like you are texting your trainer or your nutrition coach. It is not a workout logger generator. It's not a meal planner. It's not a generic food logger. It is much more intelligent than that. It's kind of like that intelligence layer in between what you log and what you do that will adapt to what's happening. It learns your habits, it looks at your biofeedback, it helps you stay on track, which is great. Now, right now through January 2nd, you can get 20% off with our holiday and new year promotion. Go to witsoweights.com slash app and you can learn about the app before you buy it. So I would check that out. Wits and weights.com slash app. Right now, as we end the year, this is the perfect time to set up your system for 2026 to hit the new year strong. Go to Witsaweights.com slash app. All right, let's get back to why building muscle beats weight loss for body recomp, because that's what we care about, right? Not just weight loss. So one of the biggest myths in fitness is that you can't build muscle and lose fat at the same time. We call that body recomposition. Or that building muscle makes you bulky, especially for the women. Oh, well, I don't want to look like that. I don't want to build muscle and look like that. You're not going to. I'm going to say that right now. Or that focusing on muscle means you have to accept higher body fat. Like you have to do these big surpluses. But that's not true either. All right. So these are all myths that I like to burst on a regular basis or bust, whatever the word is. Because building muscle makes fat loss exponentially easier. Okay. It doesn't make fat loss harder, it makes it easier. And it's going to lead to the ability to do both more easily, the ability to get stronger and leaner, not bulky, and the ability to do it without necessarily going into a big surplus. All right. Here's why. First, muscle increases your training capacity. I alluded to this already, but when you're stronger, you can lift heavier weights, you can do more volume, you could push harder in your training sessions and your workouts. That means more calories burn during training, and higher post-exercise energy expenditure, which is a phenomenon that a lot of you may be familiar with from some of the research on high-intensity interval training. Well, you get the same thing when you're training hard with weights, which is awesome. Okay. But yeah, you can get it from sprinting and hit as well. Second is that muscle improves recovery. Okay, cool, right? Like the training of the muscle is a stimulus that can create fatigue and you need to recover from it. But as you build more muscle, you have more recoverability. You have better nutrient delivery, faster tissue repair, greater resilience to training stress, in fact, to stress in general and mental stress, believe it or not. You have uh a better uh mindset when it comes to attacking problems in life. You know how to deal with hardship a little better, and this actually improves your sanity just a bit too, right? And offset some of the other stress in our life. And so you can train more frequently without over-training, the more the better you get at it. Third is that muscle preserves your metabolism during fat loss, which is should be obvious, but a lot of people just don't realize this. Or I shouldn't say it should be obvious. Obviously, you're trying to preserve muscle during fat loss, but people don't realize that when you diet and don't have the muscle, your metabolic rate is probably dropping a little faster, not just from the calorie deficit, but because you're losing lean mass. Whereas when you hold on to the muscle or you've built more muscle, you tend to have a higher metabolic rate during the fat loss phase relative to what it would have been, not to other people, but to your own baseline. And I've seen this in my own life over the last five years. Every time I've gone through a bulking cycle and built more muscle, it's been a little bit easier to do a dieting phase. Is this universal? I don't know that that's necessarily true, but on average, that is true. The fourth thing here is that muscle makes it easier to stay consistent. Why is that? Well, when you're strong, when your training is progressing, you feel great, you have energy, you want to keep going, you're getting PRs. These are mentally intrinsically rewarding. Intrinsic motivation is so far more powerful than anything else, than willpower, discipline, whatever. The word discipline maybe is the outcome of having this kind of motivation, but it's definitely different than willpower. You don't need it. You just need to get progress from your actions, and that will motivate you. Fifth, muscle allows you to eat more food. Come on, we love this. I should have led with this one, guys. You know, because of the metabolic benefits we discussed earlier, better insulin sensitivity, higher nutrient partitioning, greater training capacity. You can maintain or lose fat generally on higher calories when you have more muscle, you eat more carbs, you just eat more food in general and more of the types of food you want to eat. You know, very flexible diet. So if I gave you a concrete example with numbers, you have two people and they both weigh 150 pounds. Person A has 100 pounds of lean mass, and person B has 120 pounds of lean mass. So person B has gained 20 more pounds of muscle through their training. Person B, the person with more lean mass, can eat probably three to 500 calories more per day and maintain the same body fat percentage as person A because they have more muscle driving their metabolism. And the fact that they have more lean mass at the same weight also means they have less fat mass, right? So when both people decide to lose fat, person B can create a deficit on higher calories and can eat more. Person A might have to drop further to see the same rate of fat loss. And you tell me who's gonna be more successful long term. So it just makes it easier, which is also why I have I have episodes coming up, or at least one episode coming up as we get to the new year about why I think building muscle first might be the way to go for a lot of you. So stay tuned for that. Make sure you're following the podcast to get that episode. But who's gonna be more successful? Who's gonna feel better during the process of fat loss itself? And then who's gonna maintain the results after the diet ends? I don't even have to say who it is, right? So if you do want easier fat loss, for many of you, it is gonna be to build muscle first. And uh remember, I've got a surprising daily habit for you at the end of this episode that is going to speed up muscle growth without any extra training. All right, let's keep going. I'm packing a lot into this episode. I want to talk about body recomp specifically. Body recomp is the process of simultaneously gaining muscle and losing fat. It is what some would call the holy grail of physique development because you are improving body composition without changing scale weight. And why that's a holy grail is because people say, okay, I don't need to diet, which nobody likes dieting, and I don't need to gain a bunch of weight that comes along with some fat. I don't want to do that either. I want the sweet spot in the middle. Most people I think are doing it wrong though, okay? They usually focus on losing fat and hope that the muscle follows when they're thinking body recomp. They still have in the back of their mind, like, okay, but I want to lose fat as part of this process. And I think that's backward. I think effective recomp starts with biasing toward muscle building. And, you know, as you're developing that muscle, the fat loss becomes a natural byproduct of all the things we just talked about: the training capacity, better metabolism, nutrient partitioning, muscle protein synthesis, all of that. And the research does support this, where even trained lifters, even trained lifters, yes, can gain muscle at maintenance calories if they're eating enough protein and following progressive overload. And we know this because there are some very jacked, very strong people out there who are big proponents of not having to go into big surpluses. Okay. There is a certain level of surplus that will speed up the process. But if you're looking for a fairly quick process without the extra fat gain, body recomp is totally possible, but it has to be biased toward building muscle, which means biased toward maintenance or slightly above maintenance rather than a slight deficit. Some people will argue with me. Some people say, look, if your goal is really to lose fat and body body recomp is the side effect, then you focus on fat loss. True, true. But if your goal is body recomp itself, including the muscle gain and you want to ensure muscle gain, I think you need those resources coming in. You don't need a big surplus. You, especially if you're beginners, uh a beginner or you're detrained, you're gonna respond really well to that stimulus from the training. And then if you are more of an advanced trainee, it's just a matter of making sure you've got enough of that fuel coming in, you know, at least maintenance or very slight surplus, which is what I call aggressive maintenance. Some people call it lean gaining, but I'm talking about very slight, like 50 to 100 calories at most, maximum, over your current maintenance, where you're not trying to bulk, you're not trying to cut, you're optimizing for, we'll say the highest quality muscle gain with the lowest possible fat gain within that time span so that you don't need to cut off the fat. If you want faster muscle gain, yeah, ramp up that surplus a bit more, get a little fat for the ride, and then cut it off later. But not everybody wants to do that. So the key variables with all of this, kind of to tie it in a bow, are going to be that high protein intake, 0.7 to 1 grams per pound of body weight, progressive resistance training, right? Focused on the big compound movements and progressing in weight reps and/or sets over time, adequate recovery, sleep stress management, deloads if you need them, listening to your body and your fatigue, calorie intake that is at or slightly above maintenance, enough to fuel training and recovery, but not so much that you are gonna have excess fat gain. And that is gonna be the sweet spot for body composition, even when the scale doesn't move. And maybe the scale drifts up slightly, but it's gonna be so slow it shouldn't matter. And it's probably coming because you're gaining muscle. What you should see is that you lose inches around your waist, your clothes fit better. You see muscle definition, you feel stronger, you feel more capable. And then six months later, because this doesn't happen overnight, six months is not that long, guys, with the years and years you've been spinning your wheels. When someone asks you if you lost weight, you can say, Hey, you know what? I didn't. I built muscle and I got leaner, right? That's that's kind of a cool thing to be able to say. Like, I don't want to. People might see it as you lost weight because you look better. And that's what people are expecting, but that's not really what happened, right? You actually built muscle, you got leaner. Um, and that's what body recomp is. So, what should you actually do if you want to prioritize muscle for body recomp? Number one, we mentioned protein. I would achieve this by prioritizing protein in every meal. If you can have protein in every meal, that's gonna be a great start because many of you aren't even doing that. And if you're eating three, four, maybe five times a day, probably three or four, then it's gonna be a great start to getting the muscle or getting the protein that you need. The second thing is related to your training program. I'm gonna suggest that three days a week is plenty for a beginner. For those of you who are a little bit more advanced, four days is usually plenty as well. A lot of you like to train five days, that's fine. But getting your squats, your deads, your presses, maybe some form uh uh, you know, some back movements in there for sure, forms of rows, pull-ups. I don't care if you use barbells. Machines are fine too. You know, I love barbells, of course, because of the progressive objective nature of them, but machines can be very effective as well. As long as you're tracking and aiming to add weight or reps every week. And again, my app, Fitness Lab, can help you do that. It can write you a program or it can help assess your current program. Step three is about the eating side of it. You know, if you're new to training or you're carrying extra body fat, you can eat it maintenance and still build muscle while losing fat, as I mentioned. Um, tracking your food, weighing and measuring your food, identifying how many calories you're actually eating and comparing that to your weight is gonna give you a good idea. Are you roughly where you need to be? Or are you actually losing weight? You don't want to be, because that means you're not resourced enough to build the muscle, and we need to bring those calories up, you know, or do you want to make it where you go into a very slight surplus and really um ramp up that muscle growth without the fat gain? And then, of course, recovery. I mean, we we we can't emphasize enough the power of sleep, of having sufficient sleep, of managing your stress, of managing your fatigue. If your low back is constantly fatigued from your lifting, you've got to look at something. It could be your form, it could be your recovery, it could be your food. We don't want to add to that fatigue. We want to manage it well. And of course, you're gonna track all the right things when it comes to body comp, not just your scale weight. So measurements, photos, strength progression, how your clothes fit, and biofeedback as well. And ultimately, you just want to be patient and strategic about this. Okay. Building muscle takes time. I usually suggest something like six to nine months of building, where if you're gaining a half to a pound of muscle per month, you're probably doing great. I know a lot of you are like, I'm gonna gain 10 pounds in the next six months. As a beginner, maybe over a year, you know, six to 12 pounds of muscle is totally reasonable. You know, men and women, obviously, men can probably gain more absolute uh quantities of muscle because of their weight, but men and women can gain muscle at the same rate, percentage-wise. Just keep that in mind. So if you're a large larger woman, I don't mean large, like big or heavy, I just mean scale weight-wise, you know, let's say you're 160-pound woman versus 120-pound woman, um, you're gonna gain the same rate of muscle as 160-pound man. That's my point. Okay. And that's gonna completely transform your physique. And then, you know, being strategic about all of this and planning it out is gonna really serve you well. Listening to this podcast, you'll get a lot of tips on how to do that. All right. So we talked a lot about physique and performance, but let's just take a quick pit stop here to talk about health and longevity, because muscle mass is one of the strongest predictors of long-term health outcomes. Sarcopenia, which is the loss of muscle mass and muscle function with age, is a stronger predictor of mortality than obesity. People with higher muscle mass have lower risk of cardiovascular disease, have better glucose metabolism and insulin sensitivity, they have stronger bones and lower risk of osteoporosis, greater functional independence as we get older, what we talked about before, lower risk of falls, fractures, frailty, one of the leading causes of death, not proximal causes, but it, or what's the word I'm looking for? It leads to the chain of hospitalization and polypharmacy that ultimately leads in death for many. It's sad to say, but it's true. And of course, having more muscle is better recovery as well from illness and injury. You know, people who are stronger tend to get through sickness faster. You know, they can recover faster from injuries, recover faster from surgeries. So muscle is like that metabolic retirement plan. I think I've used this analogy before. You know, it's it's like those deposits in the bank that compound over time. So it's never too late to start. Start right now. You're not just going to improve how you look. I know a lot of you want to chase that, but really you're setting yourself up for decades of better health, more independence, better quality of life. Especially important for those of us who are already over 40. I'm I'm 45. I started doing this properly, properly as in lifting weights, eating in a flexible way to support my health and training when I was 40, like around turning. I was 39 going on 40. So if you're over 40, and if you build your muscle now in your 40s, your 50s, your 60s, wherever you are, you're gonna create that massive buffer against age-related decline that everyone else experiences. You're gonna be in the elite small percentage of people who others will not have to, or who you who will not have to depend on others when you get when you're 70 years old. You know, maybe when you're 95 or 100, you have to depend on some people for a few things, but you're gonna be among the small percentage with who turn it around, who start to build the muscle back, who avoid the muscle loss, who is going to make the fat loss easier if that's what you want. And you're gonna be far off than your peers at that age. And that's where we want to be. That's why I'm so passionate about this topic. I see it with parents and grandparents. I see it with others who are in the older population, the decline happening with those over here versus those who get into lifting weights and resistance training, even when they're already 70 and they've never done it before, and all of a sudden things start to turn around. It's it's a beautiful thing to see because muscle's not just about aesthetics, is it? Right? It's living that strong, capable, independent life for as long as possible. So here's what we've covered today the scale doesn't measure what matters. Muscle drives your metabolism. Weight loss without muscle is going to backfire, and building muscle makes fat loss exponentially easier. If you take nothing else from this episode, remember this stop chasing weight loss and start building muscle. That is a foundation everything else builds from. Now, before we wrap up, here's the strategy I promised earlier the daily habit that accelerates muscle growth without adding anything else to your training. Before I do, let me tell you about something that can help you implement everything we just discussed. If you're ready to build muscle the right way, if you want personalized coaching that adapts to your schedule, your preferences, and your goals, but without the price of hiring a coach, check out Fitness Lab. It's my AI-powered coaching app. It gives you workout guidance. It can actually write your program for you and adjust based on your biofeedback, insight on your nutrition, feedback on your meals, recovery strategies, movement, sleep, all of it, all through a conversational interface that is really smart, that learns from you and it gets smarter over time. Right now, through January 2nd, you're getting 20% off of their holiday new year promotion. Go to witsandweights.com slash app to learn more, take the two-minute quiz, see if it's right for you before you even buy. Go to wits and weights.com slash app. All right. Here is that muscle building accelerator I promised. Wanna know one of the fastest ways to speed up muscle growth? Add 30 minutes of walking per day. Walking doesn't build muscle directly, obviously, but it enhances recovery, which is where muscle growth happens. Daily walking increases blood flow to your muscles, it clears metabolic waste products, it reduces your cortisol levels, it improves sleep quality. All of these factors amplify your body's response to training. Studies show that people who walk eight to 10,000 steps a day build muscle faster than those who don't, even with identical training programs. The best part is that walking does not interfere with recovery the way that some higher intense forms of cardio do. It is low impact, it's low stress, and it actually speeds up the repair process. So my recommendation is to add a 30 minute walk after lunch or dinner. It will aid you in your digestion, it's going to lower your cortisol, it's going to improve your blood. Sugars, it's gonna improve your sleep onset if done after dinner, and it will set you up for better recovery overnight. So I started walking a lot more back in 2021 after I had back surgery, and I noticed how much it helped with my strength training and my recovery and my overall movement. It also made fat loss easier and eating easier because it improved, increased my expenditure without changing anything else. It helped my joints feel better, it helped my sleep, and of course, it improved body composition. So if you're training really hard but not recovering as well as you'd like, and your steps aren't up there, or you're not taking those daily walks, add the daily walk. If you're already walking a lot, the other hack I have for you is to stand up and walk around for two minutes every 30 minutes during the day. These are the simplest interventions that actually work without adding anything more to your training. All right, until next time. Keep using your wits, lifting those weights. And remember the scale doesn't measure transformation, but muscle does. This is Philip Pape, and I'll talk to you next time. Beer on Wits and Weights.