Ep 120: The Mental Health Benefits of Strength, Resistance Training, and Walking

Did you know lifting weights and taking regular walks lower stress and build confidence? 

Today, we are exploring the science-backed mental health benefits of our two favorite ways to move: strength training and walking. If you’ve ever felt anxious, depressed, or just mentally foggy, you’ll want to listen all the way through because even I uncovered some surprisingly powerful links here.

There’s incredible research that shows just how much activities like lifting weights and taking regular walks can transform your mood and mental well-being. From lowering stress to building confidence, we’ll examine how strength training and walking can naturally improve mental health. It's not just about getting stronger physically; it's about strengthening your mental fortitude, too.

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Today you’ll learn all about:

[2:38] Five-star reviews of the show
[3:50] The link between exercise and mental health
[5:04] Weightlifting vs. mindfulness
[8:25] Grit and resilience
[11:05] The benefits of lifting weights on mental health
[18:53] The benefits of walking on mental health
[25:37] Takeaways
[29:00] Outro

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• Inspired by Impact podcast (hosted by Carl J. Berryman) – Apple or Spotify

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Transcript

Philip Pape  00:00

Speaking of mental resilience when you push through those tough sets, right when you really want to quit that's the Mental Toughness I'm talking about that forges resilience. Welcome to the Wits & Weights podcast. I'm your host Philip Pape. In this twice a week podcast is dedicated to helping you achieve physical self mastery by getting stronger. Optimizing your nutrition and upgrading your body composition will uncover science backed strategies for movement, metabolism, muscle and mindset with a skeptical eye on the fitness industry, so you can look and feel your absolute best. Let's dive right in Wits &

Philip Pape  00:40

Weights community Welcome to another solo episode of the Wits & Weights podcast. In our last episode reclaiming the joy of running after 60 with Barry coach, we talked about the power of running, Barry shared how reclaiming his love for running in his 60s helped him defy age. And he shared many principles for anyone looking to seize control of their health at any stage of life. Today for Episode 120, the mental health benefits of strength, resistance training and walking, we are exploring the science backed mental health benefits of our two favorite ways to move strength training and walking. If you've ever felt anxious, depressed, or just have some mental fog, you'll want to listen all the way through because even I uncovered some surprisingly powerful links here. There's incredible research that shows just how much activities like lifting weights, and taking regular walks can transform your mood, and mental well being from lowering stress to building confidence, we're going to examine all the ways that strength training and walking can naturally improve your mental health. And one of the reasons I wanted to do this was inspired by Carl Berryman, the host of inspired by impact podcast and Carl, you're always giving me a shout on your show. So I thought I would do the same. Carl is setting up a whole series of podcasts on his show this month in November for men's mental health. And I wanted to link the overall idea of physical health and mental health. We talked about it a lot. But I wanted to dig into some of the science today and show you how incredibly connected the two are even beyond what what you might think. So that's what we're getting into today. I'm very excited for that. Also follow Carl's podcasts inspired by impact. I will be on at least one of the episodes this month in a group format in a multiple guest format. It's gonna be a lot of fun talking about mental health and physical health there as well. So before we get into today's topic, I always like to share one or two five star reviews from this week. And the first is from pistol packin. Mama, great show. I love the episode about getting out of your comfort zone and making small changes that become life changing habits. Excellent information. Thank you, pistol packin Mala. The second is from moleben malevolence, main, some alliteration there, great information. There's a lot of really well thought out and detailed advice each episode very realistic and doable approach to lifting and wellness. I love that he answers listeners questions and give strategies that can be implemented right away. Great job. Okay, thank you again for that as well. I always appreciate reviews, because it lets me know what's resonating. What's not is there anything we can change anything we can improve. So please keep them coming. As always, thank you everyone for listening and supporting the show in any way. You can. Even just sharing the show with others by sending them a link. Just send them a link to the show, it can go a long way to helping us reach more listeners. Alright, let's get into today's episode, the mental health benefits of strength, resistance training and walking. First, of course, if we're going to talk about science back, we want to look at some of the key studies on exercise and mental health. Now a lot of these studies look at different forms of exercise. I wanted to pick the ones that specifically talk about lifting weights and movement or walking particularly. The first study is from 2018, from the University of Vermont, and it found that just 20 minutes of exercise stimulates anti anxiety effects in the brain comparable to medication. Participants had lower anxiety sensitivity scores after short bouts of cardio or weightlifting. And this shows how quickly physical activity can improve mood. So I think that's so powerful every time we find that something natural, can equate or even be superior to medication. That's something we want to pay attention to. It's kind of like walking after a meal and how how it compares to Metformin, the leading type two diabetes medication for controlling blood sugar, it's the same idea. We always want to look for those because these are easy things to implement in our life and they're things that we can do for the rest of our life without having to be on medication. Okay, researchers at Penn State in 2020 He studied adults diagnosed with anxiety and depression. They compare the effects of weightlifting, walking, and mindfulness meditation. Okay, now here we go. Here's here's one of the surprising results. While mindfulness helped in the short term, only weightlifting, reduced depressive symptoms over three months. And again, this highlights strength trainings ability to improve mental health over time. And I suspect I didn't, I didn't really get into a lot of the details on the study. But I suspect it has to do with the lingering positive effects of strength training, physiologically, mentally, the muscle mass you're developing, just the way that your body is now using nutrients, and changing your hormones and all these things in the direction of what you're telling is important, which has been strong and functional. And lo and behold, that also improves your mental state. Awesome. So beyond conditions like anxiety, and depression, there are numerous studies that connect exercise to higher self esteem, higher confidence. And this makes a lot of sense, right? When we accomplish something physical. Like when we master a new lift, when we when we get that heavy back squat, when we hit a PR, we feel more self assured, we've just done something that we've never done before in our entire lives, where we've moved the needle in a positive direction. And we can do it again. And again. And again. That's that's what I love about physical health. It's so visceral, we have control over it, we know that we can control the outcome. And many of you listening may think, oh, no, I can't write like I've tried for years and a habit, chances are just there's a different approach that you might want to take, right that there's a different that what you assumed would cause a certain effect isn't, isn't actually backed by science. So for example, doing lots of cardio to burn fat, we know that that is actually not an effective way to burn fat, but if you assume it is, and then you do it, and then it doesn't happen, that can be deflating. So reach out to me if any of this resonates, but you feel like no, that's not me, right? Because we want we want to nip that in the bud as quickly as possible. Because I think the idea of confidence and self esteem and self assurance from this is one of the most important things that we can get. This also applies to walking. So there's a 2020 study in the Scandinavian Journal of Medicine and Science and sports. And it found that higher step counts were associated with less anxiety and greater confidence. So let's let's dig in one more level deep. Again, this is more focusing on the overall research and then I'll get into these even deeper than this. Let's talk about strength training, right lifting weights, lifting weights and provides incredible benefits for Mental Health First, just the act of training itself releases endorphins. Really this goes for any form of exercise, you've probably heard this you've probably experienced it with running for example. And these endorphins provide instant and instant mood boost, right it's like a natural drug. Endorphins interact with receptors in the brain, they lift your spirits they also dull pain, right? So that's a natural high that we want to go for. Building muscle and strength through progressive overload right progressive lifting gives you a profound sense of accomplishment. I alluded to this already the idea that you can add five pounds and add five pounds again and lift more weight than you ever lived in your entire life. Right seeing your abilities improve naturally builds confidence. And then compound lifts, the big lifts, squats, deadlifts, bench press, they require a level of full body engagement, power, mental focus stability, that is like nothing else. And this forges grit. It forges resilience. And that goes way beyond the gym. And this is why I really love big compound lifts in the four to six rep range. For newer lifters, yes, you can get stronger and bigger on higher rep range. But there's a level of mental fortitude and resilience that you will miss out on. If you don't go for those lower reps. Now, that's not to say long term, you're always gonna be going one to three reps, absolutely not. There's a fine balance between all of this, right, and I don't intend to get into all programming, lifting programming on today's podcast, but it's an important link with mental health. And then we have walking right now walking is a lot simpler than lifting weights, but it still has proven mental payoffs. For example, walking outside, you get exposed to sunlight. Sunlight regulates your serotonin levels. If you're in where I am in the northern hemisphere, during winter, or let's say the southern hemisphere during summer, it can help fight seasonal affective disorder, right where you might get depressive symptoms because of the lack of sunlight. And so getting outside for whatever you can will help sunlight also boosts vitamin D right and vitamin D itself is associated with improved mental health if especially if you're deficient. Stanford researchers found that 90 minute outdoor walks decreased Negative thoughts and anxious feelings compared to shorter urban walks. Now, this is no criticism against anyone who lives in the city. And even if you live in city, many cities have awesome trails nearby or parks or ways to get exposed to nature, even within the city, nature walks, quite literally help clear your head according to the science. Now, I can vouch for that one of the reasons I love living here in the rural part of Northern Connecticut, so we have all these trees and mountains and animals. Yes, we even had bears that come in eat, or jack o lanterns, we have, you know, we have the birds and other critters, and it's just beautiful, right. So if you can find that that can that can be helpful for your mental health. Another study showed that older adults who walked for at least an hour a week had better cognitive function. So regular walking keeps your mind sharp into old age, you kind of get the picture, it's all starting to come together, right. So after reviewing that research, I want to get into some of the top benefits of strength training, and then the top benefits of walking, just in case we didn't already touch on them so far. So we're going to start with strength training, and talk about self confidence. I can't hammer this point home enough lifting, especially challenging weights, weights that push you weights that challenge the weights that take you you know, close to failure, high mechanical tension, high effective reps, heavy loads, whatever definition or training variable you want to use, they require self efficacy and belief in your abilities. And one of the best ways to challenge these beliefs is when you feel like you're not going to be able to get the next rep. And you do it anyway. And I do it anyway. I mean, you try, you may fail the rep. But you can't know that. It's like Schrodinger, his cat, you heard of that quantum theory, like, is the cat dead or alive? Well, you can't know it until you open the box. Similarly, you can't know if you're able to get that next rep until you try. And I'll tell you what, more often than not, when I don't feel like I can get it, I actually still can get it. And so I can't really trust my feeling in that moment. Now I want to I want to distinguish those feelings from like, pain and injury. And those, you know, these are different things, I'm talking about a mental feeling that you can't do it or you feel tired that you can't do it. But then you can't anyway, you're not going to know unless you try it. And then you'll learn more about yourself and your limits. exercising control over your body. This way, builds real confidence, real confidence. And this transfers outside the gym. It really does. People have asked me how do I increase my confidence I say lift weights and join Toastmasters. And that second one is about public speaking. That's, that's more on the business side and presenting and whatnot. But lifting weights, one of the best things you can do for your confidence. When you see those strength, strength gains that come physically once you do that, and they're going to show up physically pretty quickly in the mirror in your physique. They are whether even if you have a lot of weight to lose, they're going to start showing up. It provides a sense of achievement as well, you are self assured that you've accomplished something that takes serious discipline. And I'm happy using that word discipline in the form of mental resilience and developing a practice and having grit and pushing through. Not not going to the extreme all the time, but pushing yourself just to that limit so that you progressively overload physically and mentally. So speaking of mental resilience, when you push through those tough sets, right when you really want to quit, that's the Mental Toughness I'm talking about that forges resilience. And once you do it, you also start to become more consistent with your with your lifting, because you realize that you can do it, you realize that it produces results, you realize that it produces better results and you could have ever had from you know, an endurance based high rep or you know, boot camp style program. And it gives you the ability to stick to a strength program even on days when you don't feel like it because you know how worth it it really is.

Carl Berryman  14:06

Hey there Philip, my brother, thank you so much for the shreds over challenge, I had no idea how much it was going to change my relationship with food, my relationship with food tracking, which had anybody that me any amount of money, I would have told them there's no way I'm ever tracking. And I have to track now I have to because I realize just how critical it is. But most importantly, what the challenge did for my mental health, being able to really focus on what's most important, which isn't the number on the scale, but how I feel about the food that I'm eating and the exercise that I'm doing so fill up the challenge could not have gone any better. And I'm incredibly grateful that was a part of it.

Philip Pape  14:50

And then the last part of strength training is the stress and anxiety the real benefits to to lowering your stress and anxiety. high exertion exercises heavy strength training Write, they actually physically burn through your cortisol, that's your stress hormone, they burn through it. It's kind of like reducing your cortisol through that lifting session, which gives you this soothing anti anxiety effect after training. I don't know if a lot of people you knew that I was reminded of it, I was thinking, Oh, that that's really interesting. It may explain some of the differences with people who work out during the morning versus at night, I don't think it makes a big difference, whatever you're adapted to. But it it helps regulate your cortisol, building strength, may also rewire the anxiety circuits in your brain literally neurologically changes you. Now we know that there's something called neurological adaptation, the physical mind body connection, when you start to learn new lifts, like for example, deadlifts, you've never done it before, you're gonna be clumsy, you're not gonna be very strong. And in those first, let's say, three weeks, four weeks of deadlifting, multiple times a week, your brain starts to rewire itself. To understand that this is a movement pattern that you want to use more often you become more efficient, you're able to move more weight, you might actually not even have more muscle mass, yet, you're simply forming that mind body connection, that that means deadlifting. And picking something heavy is important to you. And this makes your body more capable and functional for it. Well guess what? That ability to rewire your brain has also been shown to rewire the parts of your brain that affect anxiety, literally, and you tend to feel more capable and empowered when you're physically stronger. I was talking to somebody the other day about the definition of anxiety, one of the definitions that I learned from positive psychology is from the concept of flow flow, when you get into a flow state is the idea that you are working on something challenging enough to push you and get you absorbed into it. But not so challenging, that it makes you feel anxious, because you can't quite accomplish it. Right. And sometimes it's a fine line. But I think I think many of us know where that is. And building strength, helps you feel more capable empowered. And I think honestly, I suspect why that is, is it expands your comfort zone, it pushes that limit further out. And when that limits further out, it's harder to get to that anxiety zone. It's amazing. It's incredible. Okay, and then consistent training creates confidence and resilience that helps manage anxiety long term. And guess what happens there? Well, when you're keeping anxiety low over the long term, you become less fazed by the stresses of life, you become that your things bounce off of you, you become more cool headed. Now, I talked to people about this, that I feel like I've always been naturally cool headed, like, high pressure situations, don't bother me that much. And sometimes it annoys people. They're like, why aren't you more upset by this word, you're more emotional. And I don't know if it's just my personality, or some sort of resilience I built up earlier my years or maybe because I have great parents a great household growing up. And I recognize and I'm grateful for that not everyone has that. Where I could fail, fail, fail, and it's okay, my parents were there to pick me back up that could create a sense of that could have kept my anxiety down in my ability to handle stress high. But I think that ability to handle stress, not eliminate stress, because that's not possible. Life is full of stressors, acute stressors, chronic stressors. And we don't always have control over the things that are thrust upon us. But when they are, do you have that larger comfort zone? Do you have that confidence that okay, cool, no big deal. These are solvable problems. These aren't deal breakers. All of this that I'm telling you, is an amazing result of just lifting weights. So So what are you waiting for? Go start lifting weights seriously, start doing that. All right. Now I want to transition over to walking. And the reason I wanted to cover training and walking, those are the two big modes of activity I think everyone can and should do. Right? If you do other things, like if you do running or sports are great, those things also have mental benefits. I'm not getting into those today. And feel free to look up the research on those. But I just want to talk about walking because anybody can walk at any age, you can walk any amount. And I think it's walking is incredible for multiple reasons. But we're going to talk about a few key areas. The first one is depression. Walking, like training, like running like other things does release endorphins. Now, of course, it's going to depend on how how intensely you walk, how briskly how long you walk, it's going to scale to that. But any amount of endorphins are going to boost your mood. And I know this from personal experience on multiple occasions, where especially recently, a couple of weeks ago when I was in a fat loss phase, my energy was low. I had a little bit of apathy in the morning, right? Dare I call it depression? I don't feel I've ever had the symptoms of what someone might call depression, but who knows? I just didn't feel like it. You know, getting into anything, I just kind of wanted to laze around. But I knew I had a lot of work to do that I wanted to do some good things to produce, maybe I had a podcast to make I had meetings, I'd calls all these things. What did I do, I said, let me just go for a walk, I almost had to force myself to walk. But I knew that the walking would help. And immediately it did. As soon as I got outside and got exposed to the sunlight, the fresh air, right the the trees and the movement and moving my hips and getting the blood flowing. Right, I have a hip that probably has a torn labrum for the last few years. And it can bother me sometimes when I walk, it loosens it up, it loosens it up, squatting does as well, by the way, but so that improve my mood for the rest of the day. The other thing is when you combine walks with social interaction, it can magnify that effect. Now we don't all want to walk with other people all the time. Some of us want the solitary experience of walking. But walking with somebody or holding their hand or talking to your spouse, your kids, your friends on a walk can magnify the effect of the field goodness, the endorphins. sunlight exposure I mentioned before, because it raises vitamin D, increased vitamin D levels are linked to lower rates of depression, there is something to be said about that. It probably explains the seasonal affective disorder as well. So keep that in mind. And there was a study that found that unmedicated people with depression, saw mood boosts, after 30 minute outdoor walks four times a week. Now, if we're gonna get somewhere around seven or 8000 steps a day, which is reasonable for a lot of people, and a good place to aim for, at a minimum 30 minute, 30 minute walk every day, we'll get you probably two or 3000 of those steps. And so I would definitely encourage you to take at least one if not two walks every single day. And if you have a history of depression, see if this helps. The next thing with walking is the the way that it clears your mind and boosts your creativity. There's a rhythmic nature of walking. That's like nothing else. Now you can say that running is rhythmic as well. The thing with running is it's so intense, it tends to occupy some of your attention on the running itself. Walking we could do almost automatically well thinking and the rhythmic nature nature of it encourages new ideas and insights, insights start to bubble up effortlessly. Have you ever done that just go for a walk and all of a sudden you start to think about new ideas. Right? I do like to listen to a podcast when I walk. But sometimes I just stop the podcast, I just listened to the breeze, the trees, maybe nothing, maybe Nothing's making a sound. And all of a sudden I'm starting to commune with my thoughts. Many of the great thinkers of the past were known to take long walks to spark creativity and it's something that we've maybe lost in our modern society. The other thing is being immersed in nature away from the electronics allows your mind to truly recharge to engage with nature, you will feel renewed mental clarity. This is a very important aspect of mental health. A study Stanford study found that walking increased creative output by 60% on average.

Philip Pape  23:19

And it's suspected that part of it is simply the blood flow to the brain. Like just just kind of waking up the brain giving it what it needs, right doing something that's a natural human movement. So do not underestimate the power of walking for clear in your mind for boosting creativity. And then the other aspect of walking is related to gratitude. And the again, the I wanted this episode to cover on things that you might not think about and things that even might have surprised me a little bit of the links between these things. So gratitude and walking. Okay, what is he talking about? Well, let's say you go for a walk again in nature. And you notice the beautiful scenery, and the wonders of nature. It might be an animal crossing the street, I saw a bobcat the other day, I see deer white tailed deer. Occasionally we'll see a bear hopefully not too close. I'll see all sorts of birds, squirrels, chipmunks, opossums, or you name it. And it gives you this sense of gratitude. Like I'm almost tearing up here, it gives you a sense of gratitude and wonder about the world. It's a beautiful world out there. How often are you going out and embracing it? Right? And being grateful that you're alive, being grateful, okay, live on this planet. The other thing we can be grateful for is our ability to move. I mean, that is powerful our ability to move, which, in one sense, might make you less likely to criticize yourself. criticize your appearance, criticize your body image because you are a functional, capable human being and time spent walking outdoors may give you some perspective, that life's problems, life's small problems aren't so bad. You gain gratitude from simple joys just from your walk, I mean, give it a shot. That's all I can say. Next time you walk, think about what you're grateful for that is just around you. Okay, so that's that's kind of what I wanted to cover today. I think it's just scratching the surface. I think if you go and you look up research on mental health, and movement, lifting weights, all of this you'll find study after study after study of it just it never ends. It's wonderful. I think we really just scratched the surface of the benefits provided by training provided by walking, but the takeaway is clear. Prioritizing these forms of activity, are going to elevate nearly every aspect of your mental and emotional well being. So in addition to all the other benefits of them that we talked about, right, the physique, and the body fat, body composition, bone density, hormones, etc. You might even argue that the mental and emotional aspect of it is paramount, reduced anxiety, increasing your confidence, reducing depression, increasing your gratitude, they deliver those results for you are getting outside, reducing stress, improving your mood, improving clarity and creativity. So I encourage you to add that to your list of reasons why you choose to lift weights, you choose to walk, you choose to make movement, a cornerstone of your mental health regimen, we're not talking about a huge investment here of your time, to three days a week, to get started of strength training, going for one or two walks a day, these are going to be massive in giving you the mood boosting the stress reduction, reducing effects of those modes of activity. And then your mind and body will thank you. And if you found this incredible information on the link between mental and physical health valuable, share it with a friend. That's all I'm asking. If you know someone struggling with anxiety, depression, or they're just stuck in a rut, send this along to them, it may help it may be exactly what they need to hear in that moment from another friend. And if you personally are not sure where to begin, please reach out to me, you could use the link in my show notes reach me on IG at Wits & Weights, or you can go to wits & weights.com/email, get on my list, you're gonna get a ton of great information like this during the week, and then you can reply to that email any of those emails you get, and you'll have a direct conversation with me, I always reply. I'm a human being that loves to have conversations with folks and just get to know people. So again, if you're not sure where to begin, go to wits & weights.com/email to get on my email list, and then we can have that conversation. In our next episode 121 excellence consistency and getting ripped through nutrition and training with Eric Helms. We are going to get caught up on Dr. Helms his recent exploits in the bodybuilding world. By the way, this is the second time Dr. Holmes is coming on the show. And he is fresh off his WNBA F procard is going to be competing in WNBA of worlds pretty soon, we're going to dive into some of the nuances of nutrition and training from levels of tracking and flexible dieting, to the value of very high protein versus lower and higher carbs to mini cuts. We'll get into training volume autoregulation, whatever else, he has time for that I'm going to pick his brain on, you're going to learn a ton, so make sure to subscribe to the podcast right now in your app. Pause this episode, click follow or subscribe whatever the button says, so that you get notified of all the episodes. You'll also get the bonus episodes that get released throughout the week like quick wits. These are short three to five minute episodes with actionable strategies that may be just what you need to get moving forward that day. So please subscribe to the podcast. As always, stay strong. And I'll talk to you next time here on the Wits & Weights podcast. Thank you for tuning in to another episode of Wits & Weights. If you found value in today's episode, and know someone else who's looking to level up their Wits & Weights, please take a moment to share this episode with them. And make sure to hit the Follow button in your podcast platform right now to catch the next episode. Until then, stay strong

Ep 119: Reclaiming the Joy of Running After 60 with Barry Karch

Have you ever considered running as more than just a form of exercise but as a philosophy for life?

Join me today as I chat with the inspiring Barry Karch, a runner and podcaster who defies age and gravity. Creator of the ‘Running For Your Life’ podcast, Barry motivates people to embrace running at any age. We’ll delve into his perspective on running, a topic we seldom explore, and his insights on strength training and nutrition.

In this episode, we delve into Barry’s transformative journey from running burnout to rejuvenation. In his 40s, Barry was an avid runner, participating in numerous races, including the Boston Marathon. However, after five years of intense training, he experienced burnout and took a 20-year break from racing.

In his 60s, Barry decided to shed the extra weight for a healthier life. Changing his diet, he lost 35 pounds and rediscovered his love for running. This newfound joy led him back to racing, feeling revitalized and whole again. He created his podcast to inspire others of any age to seize control of their health and join him in the race against time.

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Today you’ll learn all about:

[3:25] What running means to Barry
[4:05] Message to people who don't have the same passion for running
[5:00] Burnout in the 40s and losing passion for running
[7:34] Attempts at other forms of exercise during the 20-year hiatus
[9:37] Diet changes and reigniting his love for running
[13:18] Training for running after the hiatus
[15:45] Mindset of excellence and resilience in running and podcasting
[17:14] The benefits of running on cardiac and bone health
[19:37] Secret to maintaining running motivation
[23:53] Importance of scheduling one exciting and scary event each year
[29:37] Impact of running on other life aspects
[31:58] Perception of outrunning Father Time
[32:58] Resources for running
[34:37] The question Barry wished that Philip had asked
[37:15] Where listeners can learn more about Barry and his work
[37:48] Outro

Episode resources:

• Barry's podcast: Running For Your Life podcast

• IG - @barry_s_karch

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Transcript

Barry Karch  00:00

I've had a talk with myself. And I'm like, if you want to live a long and healthy life, it's time to make a change. I can't keep going in this direction. And I always intended to make a change at some point in my life, but I kept waiting for myself to have the strength to do it. I never did. But finally, I guess just the big H come in. And like I need to do something now or screen now or never.

Philip Pape  00:25

Welcome to the Wits & Weights podcast. I'm your host, Philip pape, and this twice a week podcast is dedicated to helping you achieve physical self mastery by getting stronger. Optimizing your nutrition and upgrading your body composition will uncover science backed strategies for movement, metabolism, muscle and mindset with a skeptical eye on the fitness industry, so you can look and feel your absolute best. Let's dive right in. Wits & Weights community Welcome to another episode of the Wits & Weights Podcast. Today I have a very special guest with me. He is a runner, a podcaster and a man who's defied age and gravity. His name is Barry Karcher, and he's the creator and host of running for your life. A podcast that inspires people to take control of their health and start running at any age. He was kind enough to have me on his show to talk about strength training and nutrition. And I wanted to bring his perspective as a runner to this show, since it's a topic I admit we rarely discuss. In this episode, we dive into various transformative journey from burnout to vitality through the power of running very shares how reclaiming his love for running in his 60s became more than a weight loss strategy. It morphed into a philosophy for life. Whether discussing the secret of lasting motivation or how to defy the limitations of age. Various insights offer sound principles for anyone looking to seize control of their health at any stage of life. Very became an avid runner as he approached his 40s he participated in as many as 20 races a year ranging from one mile to marathons and everything in between. He qualified for and ran the Boston Marathon. And after five years of intense training and running, he got burned out, he stopped racing for 20 years. The bad news was that he kept eating like he was running marathons, his weight kept going up and up until he had added 35 pounds. He kept asking himself when he was going to do something about the weight but was never motivated enough to take action. Finally, when he reached his 60s, he got the determination to do something about the weight. He felt like if you wanted to live a long and healthy life, it was now or never. He changed his diet, the weight came off all 35 pounds. And as a side effect, and unexpected thing happened, he started to enjoy running again, really enjoy it much more than when he was younger. He's begun racing again, with great results. He feels rejuvenated, like he found a part of himself that was missing for 20 years. And he created the running for your life podcast to share his joy of running and encourage others to take control of their health and that it's never too late to get fit start to get fit starting to run. His goal is to have his listeners join him in outrunning Father Time. Barry, welcome to the show.

Barry Karch  03:03

Thanks, Phillip. That's quite an introduction. You blow away my podcasts you do much better than I do on the introductions.

Philip Pape  03:11

No, no, we're not. We're not we're not comparing we all have our different styles. This is this is my thing. It's all good. No, I appreciate because I want people to understand who you are, where you come from, and kind of get that background settled. And now what we can do is dive a little bit deeper. What I really want to know right off the bat is what is running mean to you.

Barry Karch  03:31

To me running is youth running as life running is energy as being alive. It's just, it's feeling happy. I love feeling my heartbeat. Hearing my breathing when I'm going out running, I never feel more alive than when I'm running.

Philip Pape  03:49

Alright, so being alive having energy, youth, vitality, all of that, which is interesting, because I also think like, like many forms of training and exercise, whether it's lifting weights, or a sport, we have to enjoy it right? Otherwise, we're not going to stick with it. What would you say to people who don't have the same passion for running yet? When you say look, it's energy, it's life. And they say, it sounds exhausting. What do you tell them? Tell them?

Barry Karch  04:17

Well, you have to start like anything else. You start gradually. You don't need to start running one mile three miles, five miles your first run, you can start very easily comfortable pace even run a minute or two and then walk a minute or two and then run again another minute or two and see how you feel. See if you don't find that you do look forward to going outside. I like running in the morning. Early everyone has different times they like but I love seeing the sunrise. I like seeing the day start. I like hearing the birds chirp and seeing the trees that just there's nothing like it so I would suggest just starting very slow and easy if you've never run before and and do a run walk mixture

Philip Pape  04:59

that's That's good advice. So you've kind of been in love with running, then you lost it, you lost the passion. And then you came came back to you, right? So you had achieved all these feats impressive feats like the Boston Marathon in your 40s. And then you got burned out. So tell us about that.

Barry Karch  05:16

Yeah, entirely different areas of my life. When I didn't run, until, as you mentioned, my later 30s, and I hooked up with a group of friends. And we all train together. And which was good, good and bad. I guess at the same time, it was good, because it's a lot easier to run with other people than being by yourself all the time. So that was good about it, we had great camaraderie. The bad was, we always pushed ourselves so hard in that we never had an easy day or easy run. Every run, we're pushing ourselves to the limits of our abilities, which I learned later on in life is really not the best way to train. A more appropriate way is you should have one or two hard days a week. But the other day should be very easy. effort level about three out of 10. So you're just going very easy, slow jog and enjoying yourself. We never did that. We killed ourselves every day. And so there got to be a point where I just felt like, I couldn't put myself through this anymore. Mentally, physically, it was just getting to be too much and not enjoyable. And I just I was trying to think of a way to tell my friend that I wanted to stop training with him, because we'd done it for five years, and we were pretty good friends. Well, he beat me to the punch kind of one more. And one morning, I showed up for a run. And he told me he said, Barry, I got news for you. I'm moving out of town. So I never told him to tell him I didn't want to do it anymore. So yeah. Oh,

Philip Pape  07:02

yeah, that's such a common theme. I mean, even today, you know, I hear people who get get burned out for one reason or another usually gets to the point where it becomes a chore and it becomes stressful in their body. And they're not recovering whatever it is, whatever form of exercise, maybe you do the spinning all the time, or maybe, maybe lift but you do it seven days a week, and maybe should be doing it three days a week. It's a really important message for people to consider, because we want to separate the running itself from the mode with which you incorporated it. So over the 20 years that you were not running, did you try any other forms of exercise or training and what were they?

Barry Karch  07:41

Yes, after my friend moved out of town, that's when the next phase began the 20 years. I did continue to run. But I always ran. But there was a huge, huge difference. I slowed it down to a jog. I just did very slow, easy jogs. I didn't compete, I did not race for 20 years. I lost all that type of fitness. And I never could really run more than three miles. There's nothing wrong with three miles, except for where I was before, where I was doing the 26.2 marathons. I couldn't I never went more than about three miles anymore. And one time during that period, I decided, You know what, I want to try to run a marathon again. And I enlisted in a training group, I never could get the eight miles and I was totally burned out and could not do it. So I did, I guess you would call it run was more like a slow jog. So the style change the duration of it changed down to three miles. Other things I did I do lift weights too. I continued to lift weights throughout the whole 20 year period. And I still do now not to the extent you do, but I do that. Did I do any other sports really, I did a little bit of swimming. I'm terrible at swimming. But I did a little bit of that just to take away the pounding on the body, the legs. So I would I would do a little cross training there. I did a little bit on the elliptical machine again when I didn't want the pounding on the legs relax, couldn't handle it. That was about it though. That's about what I did.

Philip Pape  09:21

Yeah, you were trying to so it sounds like you're trying to maintain your conditioning, your cardiovascular health things like that with those other modalities as opposed to being competitive anymore at the time.

Barry Karch  09:30

I tried to maintain my health but it did go way down from where I was I wasn't in that peak running condition anymore.

Philip Pape  09:37

Well so then that leads me to what helped you fall in love with running again. I think it was changing your diet correct me if I'm wrong. What was that what it was?

Barry Karch  09:46

Yeah, this was all an accident. I never anticipated running again. I never anticipated having a running podcast. I never anticipated being here on your show. So this is like all like wow, I can't believe I'm doing all this now. I just decided But as you mentioned, I kept putting on more and more and more weight. Every time I went to the doctor, I weighed more and more and more and more, until I was 35 pounds beyond my racing weight, which is quite a bit. And I was always trying to kid myself that yeah, I still look good. I was looking in the mirror, I guess I hold my stomach in and like, I don't look too bad. But I was kind of kidding myself about that. I kept having to buy bigger and bigger and bigger waist sizes on the pants. I went up six sizes on the waist. So I guess I put on quite a bit of weight there. And I have this horrible, sweet tooth. I just love sweets, which shouldn't make things easier for me. I love chocolate. I love ice cream,

Philip Pape  10:43

chocolate and ice cream. Right? They're my two favorites, too. I wonder how many how many people can say that.

Barry Karch  10:48

I know. I'm kind of jealous of people. Every once a while I run into someone that doesn't like chocolate and like I'm kind of jealous of them. Yeah, it's kind of a good thing. But I enjoy eating that stuff more than I cared about the weight. I guess I was just happy the way I was like it putting on weight putting on weight. And I finally when I hit my 60s, I had a talk with myself. And like, if you want to live a long and healthy life, it's time to make a change. I can't keep going in this direction. And I always intended to make a change. At some point in my life, I kept waiting for myself to have the strength to do it. I never did. But finally, I guess just the big age come in. And like I need to do something now or it's me now or never. So I did change my diet. And I went to kind of a strange diet for a runner. But I went to a low carb diet, because runners tend to love the carbs. But I went to a low carb diet because I had done that briefly years ago. And I knew it worked. So I did it. And I stayed on the low carb diet for about a year. It was hard very hard for me. But I took off all the way. So it did. It did work. And you asked how I got back into running. I wasn't intending to get back into racing whatsoever. But then once I took all the weight off, just one day, my wife casually asked me, she says, are you planning to do any races anymore? And I honestly never thought about it. And like I guess I could I guess I could see you know what I could do now because I've been 20 years. And so I signed up for 5k race, which for the listeners who aren't runners as 3.1 miles. And I ran it considerably slower than I ran 20 years ago. But I read the thing, and I guess there's a few benefits on getting old. There's less competition. And so a different class like a different class. And I ended up first place in my age group. So that was really encouraging for me like, wow, I got first in my age group, and I didn't really have the train for it. So I started thinking what can I do next now. And so I decided to do a half marathon, which is 13.1 miles. I did that this past December. And that's my first half marathon in 20 years. And this one I get trained for.

Philip Pape  13:13

So you had hit a wall years ago with like the eight miles because you were so burned out? Yeah. Is it? Was there some sense of recovery overall at time of not running? And now are you doing in a different way that's more sustainable and quote unquote, healthy?

Barry Karch  13:27

entirely different? Yeah, yeah. I used to not be able to run more than three days a week. And that's because I come to find out now I've become friends with a running coach. And I had no coach back, then I come to find out I was running wrong. Back in those days, as I mentioned, I was doing every run was a hard run, which is the mistake. So now, I'm able to run five days a week, which I never did before. Three, my days are very easy. And I try to keep them as I mentioned, around a three out of 10 effort level. And then I have two hard days. One day is what we call a speed run day where I run shorter intervals. But at high intensity and a much higher speed. The purpose of that is to get used to running fast. So when you run a race, like a half marathon or 5k, your race pace is slower than the speed run intervals. So the race pace feels easier. That's the purpose of it to make your race pace feel easy. Makes sense. So I have one day a week as a speed run. And we call it interval runs. And then one day we kind of weekend, I do the long run to gear up for the endurance needed for a half marathon or a marathon. So yeah, that's what I'm doing entirely differently now than I used to do.

Philip Pape  14:54

Yeah, I like that approach because it sounds I mean, from what I understand about running, you know, there's the skill component there's the power Hour and there's a strength, it's kind of like all these different things. And what it sounds like you're doing is managing your fatigue and managing your stress and recovery so that you can continue. It reminds you of like, again, in lifting, you don't want to always test your max constantly test your max, you're gonna get burned out, or eating, you don't want to constantly dieting, you know, you're gonna get burned out. So it's a good principle. And so for people who are interested in running right off the bat listening to this show, don't go don't go crazy, even if you're 25. You know, they'll do a very did when he was back in his 20s 30s or whatever, take take this kind of more measured approach, because the what is what's the phrase like? Not taking shortcuts is actually the faster path, you know, taking the long game is actually the fastest path to success. What did you have to change in your mind to to, I guess, not only lose weight and get back to like your previous health, but get back to the sport? Was it just signing up for the 5k? And you were you were sold? or was there some more reflection that you had to go through?

Barry Karch  16:00

Well, I guess doing the 5k in and ended up coming in first place was like, the big wake up, wow, yes, very motivated, like, wow, I can still do this. And I hadn't really like I said to him really trained for it. So it got me really psyched up. And I felt like, as you mentioned, the intro, I found a long lost part of myself because I, I'm kind of a competitive person, and I enjoy the racing and that environment. And so I just really enjoyed it and decided, You know what I want to see what else I'm capable of. And I don't have I think maybe now at this stage in my life, I'm just thrilled with whatever I can do. Being in my 60s and running, I'm just happy to be able to do it. Because a lot of people can't anymore due to health issues, whatever problems with their back problems with their knees, hip replacements, all kinds of things. So I'm just thankful I can do this. And so I'm just absolutely thrilled with whatever I can do rather than being so dead set on. Time. What What was my pace is I wasn't my early days.

Philip Pape  17:13

Right? So speaking of that, the physical challenges as you age, if somebody were not if somebody had a sedentary lifestyle to this point, and now they're in their 50s, or 60s, would you recommend running as an activity? Or? Or maybe, you know, do something else for a while before you would consider running? What What's your advice there?

Barry Karch  17:33

Well, I would highly recommend running. Again, someone who hasn't run before can start out with a run walk mix. But I highly recommend running for a couple of reasons. I think your most important muscle in your body is probably your heart. So cardio health is super important. I think I like exercising the heart and being very healthy that way. Plus, I believe that running also strengthens the bones. It strengthens the bones a lot from the running. So it does a lot of good for you in your in your health. And now I'm able to get around and do things that the majority people my age and even younger aren't able to do. And it's all thanks to running. So I think it's an important piece. It's not the only piece. The weightlifting as you do is also very important to build muscle mass because you lose out over time also, as you get older. So I think they're both important pieces of the puzzle. But they both have a place.

Philip Pape  18:38

Yeah, no, I would agree that the combination of those two things right resistance training for muscle and then some form of cardio, for cardio health and like you said bone density or bone health and everything.

18:50

Hi, my name is Lisa and I'd like to give big shout out to my nutrition coach Philip pape, with his coaching, I have lost 17 pounds, he helped me identify the reason that I wanted to lose weight, and it's very simple longevity. I want to be healthy, active and independent until the day I die. He introduced me to this wonderful little app called macro factor I got that part of my nutrition figured out along with that is the movement part of nutrition. There's a plan to it and really helped me with that. The other thing he helped me with was knowing that I need to get a lot of steps in so the more steps you have, the higher your expenditure is and the easier it is to lose weight when it's presented to you like he presents it it makes even more sense. And the other thing that he had was a hunger guide and that really helped me so thank you, but

Philip Pape  19:35

how does someone stay motivated because running is one of those things at least in my mind. It can get repetitive, right? It just like almost any form of cardio you can see it as this like putting in the time or there's there's maybe a different way to frame it and a different way to do it that's more enjoyable. So how would you suggest people get motivated and stay motivated to run?

Barry Karch  19:56

Okay, let me I got two questions here. I want To answer, how do you get motivated? And can it not be repetitive? And stay exciting? So, sure, let me start with how do you get motivated? You have to have your big why, why do I want to do this? Why do I want to run? And I'm sure you need the same Phillips for your exercising, because it's very easy just to lay in bed when and say I forget, I'll feel like it today. I'm not going to do it. Or I'm tired. I'm going to take the day off. What difference does it make? You need that big? Why? Why do you want to run? Why do you want to lift weights? For me, I want to live a long and healthy life, I really want to live a long and healthy life. And unlike everybody else, there's some days when I get up in the morning, that I'm less than motivated. I don't particularly feel like running. I'd like to lay in bed longer. But I think about it for just a second. Living a long healthy life is way more important to me the laying in bed for another 30 or 60 minutes. So I'm out of there in a sec. So that's my big why for someone else it could be they want to take some pounds off. They they want to train for a race or they some some other health issue going on that Ronny is going to solve. It could be self confidence could be anything. But whatever it is, you need your big why? Why do you want to do this? And it's going to have to be strong to get you going on the days you don't feel like it. Now, once you do run, how do you stay with it? Is it boring? Is it repetitive? My answer is no. Because it would be if everyone was the same. If I ran the same route every day, the same pace every day. That's boring. Yeah, I agree. But I'm doing different kinds of runs. I'm doing those slow, easy runs, we call them recovery runs, where you can just enjoy yourself and not have to worry about anything, just take it easy. I'm doing some speed work another day to test myself to see how fast I can go what I'm capable of. And then I'm doing a long run to see how far I can go, how strong I can feel for how long plus the runs are all different. I do some of them outside alone. Some of them I do. I use a Nike Run Club training app. And I have a Nike coach in my ear talking to me during the run. Sometimes I'll listen to music. So as I listen to podcasts like yours. Other times I'll be on a treadmill running in a gym. And on the weekends on my long runs, I'm typically running with a local running group. So I'm running with other people. So everyone is different. I enjoy them all.

Philip Pape  22:54

Oh, yeah. And you just gave us the entire list of things that contribute to motivation for different people. I love that. I mean, the first of all, the the Y is definitely important. And I think of it as like, seasons or periodization. Right? Sometimes our y changes, or on any given day, you know, we may have three or four things really driving us but one is the most, you know, the big driver of that of that day. Because when people tell me they want to live a long, healthy life like you did. Sometimes that's not enough in the moment, right? It's not a short enough time kind of inspirational, but when they're like yeah, and I looked at myself in the mirror too. Okay, now I've got a couple different things. But you said you know, having a coach, habit stacking, you know, making it fun with using different variety, both with how you train where you train, what you train with equipment wise, running with a group, big fan of community, so like any of those people listening can can take one or two of those and figure out okay, here's how I can get a little creative and make my workouts more interesting. So thanks. Thanks, Mary. I love that you met you did mention one of the things that can drive people's competition. And I think you said that it helps to schedule at least one of those a year some some event each year that excites you and maybe scares you right maybe it's gonna push you a bit which which also ties in the idea of seasonality and goals and all that why do you recommend having a competition each year? You know what I

Barry Karch  24:17

ran into this concept of a Muskogee from person by the name of Jesse Itzler. He didn't invent this concept, but he's the person who I learned it from. And what it is, is doing one big scary year defining event every year and that makes every year memorable too. So you can say all 2023 was a year I did this 2022 was the year I did that is something that excites you and scares you and challenges you and pushes you outside your comfort zone perhaps. And it doesn't have to be physical by the way. It can be going into business for yourself. It could be starting your own podcast. It could be getting married, it could be any number of things, taking learning to play guitar. It could be anything that's something different for you. But a challenge, something he wants to do and really gets you focus and makes life exciting. So that's the concept that came across from Jesse. And I never heard of it before. And it really intrigued me. Because I've never done that I never thought of it. And this year, I heard of an event, which coincidentally, Jesse is a co founder of, but it's called to nine, zero to nine is completely out of my comfort zone. It's a mountain hiking event. I've never hiked a mountain in my life. I've never hiked a mountain. I felt like I would have a good background for it with the cardio fitness from running and leg strength. But still, I'd never hiked. And so what it is the 29029 where the number comes from is that is the height of Mount Everest 29,029 feet. The goal in this event is to hike up, equip the equivalent of Mount Everest within 36 hours. And it's held in five different locations around the country. I went to Snowbasin Utah for the time I did I did it two months ago now. And on the every mountain is different where they hold it the mountain I was at required 13 a sense. You climb the mountain, you don't have to go down, you take the gondola down, it's all about the ascent, hike up gondola down, hike up gondola down, you got to do it 13 times within 36 hours to achieve a 29,029 foot vertical ascent. So that was my Masotti. For this year, I trained for super hard, they provide you with a 20 week training program. And they provide you with coaching calls. And I found that I really really love structured training. I love having this plan taught me what to do every day. And I found it to a tee. And even so it was still hard. It was still very, very hard.

Philip Pape  27:12

emulsified. Great, though to finish it.

Barry Karch  27:13

It was an awesome feeling to finish it. I was not going to come out of there. All that work. They give you a Red Hat If you complete it. A Red Hat signifies it ever said, but I was not going to come out of there without that Red Hat and I did manage to get it that was your goal right

Philip Pape  27:28

to get it done.

Barry Karch  27:29

I was gonna get that Red Hat No matter what. Yes, absolutely. Miss. Okay. Okay, I

Philip Pape  27:33

love how you expanded this is broader. A Broader View on this than I even expected because I was thinking specifically, like an endurance event each year. And what you're saying is just pick one huge driving challenging goal each year, in any part of your life, which is it's great. I love that. Because now you now you got me thinking, you know, the end of 2023 is rolling around 2024. And it's not necessarily new year's resolution, although I guess you could make it that but it's like, yeah, what do you want to do in that year, that's just different than something you've done before that really pushes you. Now I'm gonna have to come up with something very thank you for the challenge.

Barry Karch  28:09

Absolutely. Yeah. That's gonna be the year of

Philip Pape  28:13

you know. And another thought that comes to mind there is even as you grow each year, right? You you challenge yourself. And there may be, there may be ways that you push yourself within what you're already doing. Like for me lifting, there's always seasons of building muscle, losing fat, whatever. But it almost gets too comfortable even when you're pushing yourself because you're used to how to do it right. Like you'd become good at it to where not not that it's complacent. But it's not what you're saying something that gets you to totally think differently. Reach out to new people get a different training program. Like just That sounds exciting. So I just My passion is coming through because people listening, I think this is a great thing to try. Yeah.

Barry Karch  28:53

And Philip, I heard of an event years ago. I don't know the name of it. But it's a combination of weightlifting and running. And I can't remember what it is when they get something for you to look into to add something new to your knee to your repertoire that you haven't done yet.

Philip Pape  29:08

True. True. True. You know, I do like sprinting I like when you talk about the speed work. I said I would love that day when you talked about tomorrow doing your 60 mile run. I don't know about that. But I had done it before years ago I was training for a half marathon didn't quite get there due to an injury. But yeah, I remember what you're saying I would run in different locations. I'd run along a canal I'd run on a like a flat trail I'd run on the road and it was nice to pair it up. Anyway. One of the other things I'm always curious about people who are passionate about a type of training is how it has helped other things in your life. Like well, how is it running and especially the way you do it now or even the journey you went through from doing it the wrong way in the past to doing it better now helped you others real life?

Barry Karch  29:53

Yeah, good question, Philip. You know, it, it permeates the whole rest of your life. It turns out out, running isn't just about running, I've learned so many life lessons from it, I could go on and on. But basically, to summarize it all, it just provides so much self confidence, it makes me feel good about myself and what I'm able to do and accomplish. And it just gives me confidence in the other aspects of my life. And from work, to just something as simple as feeling like I look better now that I've dropped four to six sizes in the pants again, from what I went up to. But yeah, it's just overall self confidence, sense of accomplishment. That's helped so much and everything.

Philip Pape  30:45

It is amazing how physical feats often have that translation, right? Because there's nothing more, I guess, visceral than doing something with your body and seeing it improve, especially now that you're 20 years older than you are at a different point and healthier. You know, I can I feel the same about, I don't know, squats or you know, something that you're doing. That's hard. You've done it, you've grown now. And now you look in the mirror and say, well, that's not as hard as it used to be there. That's progress. Right? And like you said, it makes you confident in other areas.

Barry Karch  31:15

Exactly, exactly. And you know, in running, there always comes a point where it's gonna get really, really tough, and you're running hard, and you feel like quitting. But I push, I'm able to push through it and complete the run. And that also permeates into the rest of life. Because in work or everyday life, things don't always go easy, right? You run into difficulties, obstacles, sometimes you might want to just give up, but I'm like, No, I'm not a quitter, I'm gonna keep going and push through this and, and get through it. So that's just another thing you learn from from doing. Yes,

Philip Pape  31:49

it's true. And I honestly think very, very few people. A sad, small percentage of people will do that. And the positive side of that is if you're listening to this, if you listen to bear, and you are the type that want to explore and become that that, you know, larger version of yourself, it'll put you in like the 2% of people, you know, that actually do that. So do you feel that you've outgrown Father Time for a while at this point?

Barry Karch  32:16

I do. I would like to think so. I feel like I'm very healthy. I don't have any health elements. I feel like I'm running really good. I'm able to keep up with people younger than me, which always makes me feel really good about it. And most people that I run into actually think they think I'm younger than I actually am. Which also makes me feel good. Yeah. So I think I'm doing okay, for my age.

Philip Pape  32:47

Yeah, I would agree when I first met you, I definitely looked younger than than your age for sure. Which comes with the vitality of staying healthy. What if somebody listening wants to get started running? What are some good resources for them?

Barry Karch  33:03

Well, let's see. I get several. I love the Nike Run app. It's free, you can download it. And there's a bunch of guided runs on there. They're all distances, they have runs for beginners, they have like a five minute run a 10 minute run, they have a one mile run on there. But what's good about it is you have a coach in your ear talking to you while you're running the whole time, it kind of takes your mind off of it. And it gives you a motivation, inspiration. I really liked that. And some of their, some of their guided runs. They also utilize the GPS in your watch so that it knows how far you've gone. And it will, they'll talk to you at the half mile mark, the mile mark and so forth. They know when you reach those points to give you motivation and encouragement. So I've really, really enjoyed using that app. So that would be one I would recommend. Secondly, there's a lot of great running podcasts out there that you can listen to. And those are also good for putting on while you're running because they keep you motivated and determined to listen to other runners talk about things that you're going through yourself. So those are two really good resources, I think to get you going,

Philip Pape  34:26

including of course running for your life. Barry's very own podcast so if you're listening and have any interest at all in running, definitely go follow that subscribe to it right now. And I'm gonna I'm gonna ask you one more question very that I ask all guests, and that is what one question Did you wish I had asked and what is your answer?

Barry Karch  34:45

That's a hard one. I'm going to I'm going to give you the question would be What is your mindset? How do you keep going when your body is telling you to quit, stop. And that's something that I encounter on certainly all my long runs, and probably a lot of my speed runs to. It's like, I can't do this anymore. I don't know if I can, I gotta stop it. But so what do you do when you come to a situation, and for you fill up, I'm sure you're in that same situation, too. I'm not as familiar with weights as you are. But maybe you're there's a certain amount of weight you want to lift or certain numbers that you want to do, and you feel like I can't do anymore. I'm tired. You know, that's it for me. So I have a couple of things go through my mind at those times. Number one is I heard someone say, Remember tomorrow. And what that means is, how are you going to think about yourself tomorrow, if you quit now, I know for me, I am going to feel terrible, I'm going to be really upset at myself. If I stop, I'm going to be very disappointed in my effort. If I don't finish this run, and do what I intended to do. So I think how I'm gonna think about tomorrow, you're gonna have to go through a little short term pain to finish it. But the pain is going to end. And it won't be that long. And you're going to have all that long term satisfaction that you get out of it. Thinking that I did it, I can do this. Yeah, I'm not a quitter. So those are things that go through my mind when the going gets tough.

Philip Pape  36:35

Love it. Remember tomorrow. And what you just said is you learn something about yourself by making that extra push to get through it, right? You mentioned the lifting weights, the equivalent would be the heaviest weight you've ever lifted. Let's say you're going for five reps, and you know, the third set and you've done three and it's just feels impossible. You're not going to know if you can get the next one unless you try it. You've got to push and it's mental, it's physical. It's everything. But remember the person tomorrow looking back and saying, and why didn't you do it? Right? Come on, all you have to do is try you were right there you had the equipment, you are on the road, whatever it is like it just took a few extra seconds of effort. So I love that message. All right, man. Where can listeners learn more about you and your work?

Barry Karch  37:18

Well, of course the running for your life podcast, which is available pretty much anywhere people listen to podcasts, and also on Instagram at Barry. Barry underscore s underscore coach.

Philip Pape  37:34

Barry underscore s underscore coach. Yep. Okay, we're gonna put that in the show notes. Absolutely. It's been a pleasure. This is a lot of the most we've talked about running on the show ever so you've got that place of honor. And I really appreciate you coming on and you know, let's stay in touch Barry. Thanks so much. It was fun. Thank you for tuning in to another episode of Wits & Weights. If you found value in today's episode, and know someone else who's looking to level up there Wits & Weights, please take a moment to share this episode with them. And make sure to hit the Follow button in your podcast platform right now to catch the next episode. Until then, stay strong.

Ep 118: Q&A – Macro Splits, Lean Bulking, Hunger, Muscle Over 40, Aggressive Fat Loss Strategies

What is the most effective macro split for building muscle? Is it necessary to drink electrolyte mix, or is water enough? 

Find out the answers to these questions and more from the free Wits & Weights Facebook community and emails and messages from listeners.

I will tackle your burning questions on the most effective macro splits for muscle building, especially for women in their 40s, and debunk some myths along the way. I discuss the importance of electrolytes versus plain water during workouts and how to navigate hunger when transitioning from maintenance to a bulk. Plus, I get into the specifics of lean bulking and how to set your macros for optimal results.

Then, I am doing a rapid-fire Q&A based on questions from our recent rapid fat loss challenge, covering everything from the impact of high-intensity cardio on muscle growth to the most satiating foods when calories are tight.

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Click here to apply for coaching!
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Today you’ll learn all about:

[2:09] Two five-star reviews for the show
[3:33] What is the most effective macro split for building muscle?
[6:20] Is it necessary to drink electrolyte mix vs. water?
[8:03] What are your thoughts on hunger when transitioning from maintenance into a bulk, when you have reached your calories?
[11:31] Managing hunger and increasing calories for maintenance
[14:03] To transition to lean bulking, do I continue my current maintenance or find my new maintenance and set to gain? What are the macro recommendations?
[16:46] Rapid fire Q&A on the rapid fat loss challenge
[25:54] Outro

Episode resources:

• The Hunger Hacks Guide and Hunger Scale Guide & Diary:
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• Join the Wits & Weights Facebook community

• MacroFactor app – use code WITSANDWEIGHTS to extend your free trial to two weeks

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Transcript

Philip Pape  00:00

Generally most people will perform in progress better with higher carbs. And I would say, especially women over 40 Because of the energy, the reduction in stress relative to your hormone health, and I realized that there is this mythology out there somehow that you know, women in perimenopause or post menopause need to be on a low carb diet, but I don't buy it and nor does the evidence support it. And at the end of the day, see for yourself. Welcome to the Wits & Weights podcast. I'm your host, Philip pape, and this twice a week podcast is dedicated to helping you achieve physical self mastery by getting stronger, optimizing your nutrition and upgrading your body composition. We'll uncover science backed strategies for movement, metabolism, muscle and mindset with a skeptical eye on the fitness industry, so you can look and feel your absolute best. Let's dive right in Wits & Weights community Welcome to another solo episode of the Wits & Weights podcast. In our last episode 117 Starting strength the novice effect and barbell lifts with Cody anino Cody and I talked about the transformative power of barbell training, we covered the principles and benefits of starting strength, some common misconceptions about strength training and the crucial novice effect. We compare different training methods, how barbell training impacts mental health, and how to get your form checked online. Today for episode one, eight tene we're doing a q&a to answer questions from the free Wits & Weights Facebook community and emails and messages from listeners. I will tackle your burning questions on the most effective macro splits for muscle building, especially for women in their 40s and debunk some myths along the way. I discussed the importance of electrolytes versus plain water during workouts and how to navigate hunger when transitioning from maintenance to a bulk. Plus I get into the specifics of lean bulking and how to set your macros for optimal results. Then I'm doing a rapid fire q&a based on questions from our recent Rapid Fat Loss Challenge, covering everything from the impact of high intensity cardio and muscle growth to the most satiating foods when calories are tight. Now each episode I do like to highlight the latest reviews on the show. So here are two short five star reviews from this week. The first one is from the fallible man. Real talk good advice. I appreciate Philips show, it sounds like the same thing I would tell my clients as a certified personal trainer, there's so much trash out there, it's awesome to find the show is such great advice, Phillip shares real, measurable, achievable goals for real people who are looking to change their lives. As always, thank you I appreciate when other coaches and trainers listen to the show and gain value out of it. Because that really means a lot to me. And it helps us all lift up the industry as a whole. The second reviews from three buoys helpful episodes, I enjoy learning about ways to feel better in my body, and appreciate the episode on weight training after 40. Thanks. Again, thank you as well short but sweet. And it means a lot to me. As always, I am grateful and listeners take the time to write a review for the show. I'm always happy to feature them here as well. So if you write a review, please screenshot it and tag me on social media. So I can reshare it for you and give you a shout out on social media but also on the show if you'd like. With that. Let's jump into today's q&a. All right, so first, we have three questions from n z. And again, if you want to send me multiple questions all at once, I'm happy to answer them. So you don't take advantage of that. The first one is, what is the most effective macro split for building muscle. I eat high protein but wondering if the balanced or low carb approach is better for a female in her 40s to build muscle. I'm strength training four days per week. And I walk Thank you love the podcast. All right. So and is obviously doing a lot of things right. She is training. She's moving. And she's concerned, you know, she's eating high protein, and she's concerned about her fat carb split. And this is where I would say, why don't you experiment for yourself, use some biofeedback and other data and see what the right level of carbs is. For you. I could say that for most people, a higher or balanced or a higher level of carbs is going to give you more performance, it's going to help you recover better. It's going to help with your hormones, all the things whether you're male, female, under or over 40 It's generally a more effective approach when you're trying to build muscle for most people. But again, it's going to depend. So assuming you're already getting around a gram per pound of protein. I would start with this balanced approach. Some people will call it high carb, but for me and my clients is just the norm where fats are around 25% of calories and then carbs make up the rest and so when you're at maintenance or when you're bulking that'll be a decent amount of carbs for many people that'll be anywhere from like 200 to 500 grams of carbs somewhere in They're depending on your expenditure, how big you are, and so on. And then what you want to do is assess how those carbs affect your outcomes. Are your lifts going up? How strong do you feel in your sessions? How drained or not? Are you afterward? How sore or not? Are you? How are you sleeping,

Philip Pape  05:18

how's your stress? If you feel great, like if all of these things are going up, and all these things feel wonderful, then you're obviously okay with that level of carbs. And it's probably for you. If something feels off, like your digestion, or you know, your performance, your energy, Something's just not quite right. After you've given a good four to six weeks, then try the higher fat lower carb option, right. So again, if you're using macro factor, you can set that up, when you set up the macro plan, you can tell it to do a low carb or even a Keto level type diet. Now, again, generally most people will perform and progress better with higher carbs. And I would say, especially women over 40, because of the energy, the reduction in stress, relative to your hormone health, and I realized that there is this mythology out there somehow that you know, women in perimenopause or post menopause need to be on a low carb diet. But I don't buy it. And nor does the evidence support it. And at the end of the day, see for yourself what we say what we call n equals one experiment for yourself. So that would be my advice there. And okay, so then her second question, totally different question. Is it necessary to drink electrolyte mix versus water, I generally drink straight up water. But I also don't sweat a ton during strength workouts. So here's my take on this, is it necessary, maybe not like hydrate adequate hydration is going to get you most of the way there. And if you're eating plenty of whole foods, especially fruits, and other fruit foods that are high in electrolytes, then you get you get quite a few from your diet, like this is why I love bananas, especially pre workout, I'd recommend even having said that, if you want to try it out and see if you feel any better or more hydrated. having either a mix powder, or as simple as a fresh, fresh squeezed lemon plus salt in your water, what some people call homemade Gatorade. And do that once a day, before or during or after your workout. You could always do more if you're very active if you're sweating a lot if you're feeling dehydrated, but just make sure you're at least getting the water at least right and that that's not the issue. And also food sources like bananas and other fruit. And once you do, then adding some of these other mixes could be helpful. You know, a subset of electrolytes includes magnesium and I would spike that out separately and say that most people should be supplementing magnesium, which is one of the electrolytes but then in general for electrolytes, you can get powder like Dr. Berg's element, which is the letters element T, or even first form, brand electrolytes. Now I'm an affiliate of first form. So if you want to support me go to first form.com/wits & weights or click the link in my show notes. They also sell electrolytes. Okay? And then her third question is, what are your thoughts on hunger, even when you've reached your calories when transitioning from maintenance into a bulk? Okay, so this is an interesting one, this is hunger, not in a fat loss phase. But hunger while you're in maintenance, and you're getting ready to go into bulk. I had a few times where I've been hungry and know my metabolism is likely continuing to adjust as I gain muscle, should I eat something since I'm not cutting during these times when I'm hungry, if I'm eating at maintenance, but still have hunger in the evening, and even overnight, does that mean that I need to increase calories? Well, it's going to depend on if you just came out of a fat loss phase and then switched to maintenance, there could be some emotional or psychological hunger that's being triggered, because you're eating more calories and probably more frequently. And so just be aware of that. But when you're bulking and I know you're not bulking yet you're maintenance. But when you are bulking you should have much less hunger, and your metabolism will slowly adapt upward. And you can eat more and more. And eventually, most people don't have any issues with hunger, and eventually get kind of sick of eating food when they're on a longer book. But I would still use the fundamental principles of meal planning, prioritizing protein and fiber, being aware of physical versus psychological hunger and so on. No matter what phase you're in, it's always a helpful skill. Now, hunger itself is a pretty complex thing. And before I just assume you need to increase calories, because you're going into a bulk in other words, what you're asking me and should I just start upping my calories now? Well, I mean, if you're not trying to be in a bulking you want to be a maintenance, we'll we'll know you don't want to increase your calories. But it's also good to listen to your body and energy availability, or lack thereof can be a very legitimate reason that your body is saying you're hungry. And so this is why I recommend being on what I call the top side of maintenance, which means aim for maybe 50 calories over your calorie target each day even when you're that maintenance, okay, 50 calories isn't that much, it's almost in the noise. But it gets you to ensure that your body is avoiding being in an accidental deficit. So if you just try to stay at maintenance, but then your body, let's say dips in terms of its, or increases as expenditure, and all of a sudden, you're kind of in a slight surplus, you're not getting all the energy you need, that could cause you to be hungry. But if you overshoot your calories just a little bit while you're maintenance, even though it might result in the tiniest of gains over time or a long time, you'll ensure full energy availability, and that could also mitigate hunger. Also, of course, always be sure that you're covering the basics. Are you eating mostly nutrient dense whole foods like 80% and 80 to 90% of your food choices? Are you targeting at least point eight grams per pound for your protein? If you're around there, you might want to get point nine or 1.0 grams or maybe 1.1 or 1.2 and get some extra satiety that way, without having to increase your calorie you just shift the macro balance a bit. Are you eating enough carbs? Right? Because this could be another indication of sufficient energy and keeping calorie density, lower, just getting enough carbs as opposed to too much fat, right? Because we have too much fat and calorie density could mean that you're not getting as much volume and you're not feeling as full? And then are you staying hydrated and using electrolytes? Just to answer your last question we talked about. And finally you're getting plenty of sleep. So it's all the things right to make sure that you've addressed those before saying that it's a hunger issue. So assuming these are covered, then here's some more advanced things you can look at number one is meal timing, you might want to shift calories more toward your workouts, shift carbs towards your workouts, or add or shift calories toward the low energy times of day, when you would otherwise be tempted to reach for a snack. Maybe this is later in the evening, right before bed, something like that. What do you say, it's really more physiological hunger, because of your habits. And now you're just going to shift calories and kind of satiate that need satisfy that need, and still hit your calories. And then of course, if you want to evaluate whether it's emotional versus physical hunger, I do have a hunger scale guide and diary that you can find at wits & weights.com/free. I also have a hunger hacks Guide, which is a long list of things that you can do to mitigate hunger, whatever phase you're in. And one of those might stick out with you as Oh, you know, I'm not really doing that. But if I did, maybe that would solve the problem. So it's kind of a complex topic, but it doesn't have to be if you're putting all these things in place. And if you're at maintenance ready to transition to a bulk, I would take care of all these other things first, to see that it's, you've mitigated the hunger as much as you can, before considering actually just increasing the calories. But if you're gonna go no surplus anyway, there's no need to wait. Really, so you could do that. So again, if you want to get the hunger hacks guide, or the hunger scale guide and diary, just go to wits & weights.com/free. Hey, this is Philip. And I hope you're enjoying this episode of Wits & Weights, I started Wits, & Weights to help people who want to build muscle lose fat and actually look like they lift. I've noticed that when people improve their strength and physique, they not only look and feel better, they transform other areas of their life, their health, their mental resilience, and their confidence in everything they do. And since you're listening to this podcast, I assume you want the same things the same success, whether you recently started lifting, or you've been at this for a while and want to optimize and reach a new level of success. Either way, my one on one coaching focused on engineering your physique and body composition is for you. If you want expert guidance and want to get results faster, easier, and with fewer frustrations along the way to actually look like you lift, go to wits & weights.com, and click on coaching, or use the link in my show notes to apply today. I'll ask you a few short questions to decide if we're a good fit. And if we are, we'll get you started this week. Now back to the show.

Philip Pape  13:59

Okay, now we have a question from Lin M. Lin says I'm wanting to start lean bulking. So here's another one where someone's transitioning into potential surplus. Okay, a lean bulk is just a very, very slight surplus over time. Do I start at my prior maintenance, or find my new maintenance for a week and then start gaining and she uses macro factor at my recommendation, and so she would set it to gain weight without putting on fat does 25% protein 35% and the resting carbs sound? Right? Okay, so again, do I start at my prior maintenance or find my new maintenance for a week then set to gain? Okay, so the more that I've done this with clients, the more that I lean toward end with myself, the more that I lean toward going to maintenance for a few weeks first, so two to three weeks for it. So you recover straight to your current dynamic maintenance. Whatever your current expenditure is, you recover right to that as soon as you can. knowing that that maintenance was is actually going to go up a bit as you recover, because it's been lowered to metabolic adaptation during your fat loss phase, right. So I would go to maintenance for a few weeks, maybe two to three. And that way, it's not such a huge shock to your system to try to go all the way into a bulk from from a deep fat loss phase, for example, which might have you jumping, you know, 700 900 1200 calories, whatever deficit you were in, and now you're going to a surplus, it would avoid that shock. But it also lets you get through that initial scale weight bump that you're going to get from the extra carbs and the fluid and glycogen that come in, you're gonna get that you kind of get through that allow your body to normalize, get to a true new maintenance allowed to recover. And what I just said didn't answer to your last question or into Ann's question, stay on the top side of maintenance. And that we're not really in a bulky yet, but you're kind of getting there. So to do that, in macro factory, instead of setting it to maintenance, I would set it to gain weight. Okay, two options, either set it to maintenance, like three pounds higher about higher than where you ended the cut, so that it's pushing your calories up toward that instead of holding you back, or I would set it to gain but set the rate of gain to very, very, very, very low, like barely above zero. So again, still you are trying to be at the top side of maintenance. Okay, as for the macros, I don't like percentages of protein, I prefer basing protein on your target weight, like we've talked about point eight to one gram per pound, then about 25 to 30% from fat, I wouldn't necessarily go as high as 35% Unless just That's a fat preference of yours. Because then the rest go to carbs. And I'd like to have a nice solid amount of carbs when going back to maintenance or when going into a book. Okay, now, I'm going to answer 12 questions from the recent shred Tober Fat Loss Challenge. This is a Rapid Fat Loss Challenge I talked about in episode 116. So if you missed it, go check that out. And today I'm going to answer these questions rapid fire style. So really quick answers to really quick questions. Here we go. Does high intensity cardio negatively impact muscle growth during a calorie deficit like the one used in the challenge? All right, there is evidence that doing too much cardio, in addition to training during an aggressive calorie deficit deficit can impair muscle growth and strength, because of all the extra stress the extra demands on your body. So I like to limit cardio. Thank you, Mike Matthews, to no more than half the time spent training. That's a general guideline. Next question, what is the evidence on optimal protein intake for maximizing muscle retention and satiety during aggressive fat loss phases? Very simply, I would aim for one gram per pound, the research shows us that that's a good upper limit. If you really want to play it safe, set it to 1.2 to 1.5. And really push yourself to get a lot of protein and see how it does with your retention of muscle in a deficit. It also enhances your satiety. So two birds with one stone, how accurately can wearables and fitness trackers estimate calorie expenditure? And what are better methods? All right, pretty terribly accurate. So terribly inaccurate, I should say studies show most wearables are inaccurate for estimating calories burned by up to 40 to 80%. So they're useless. A better method is going to be tracking your food intake and your weight changes over time, which you can do very precisely if you use macro factor. Download it use my code Wits & Weights, get an extra free week on your free trial, and you'll never turn back. Let me know how that goes. Let me know if I can help. You're gonna love it. What foods have been shown to be most satiating per calorie. Okay, so this is a good one foods higher and protein, fiber, and water. That's where you're going to look for if they're high in protein, fiber and or water, they're probably going to be the most filling per calorie. So this is lean meats, legumes, vegetables, fruits, potatoes, oats, there's really a lot that fit into those categories, you can still have a sustainable, balanced, delicious diet, focusing on those and that's great during fat loss. How does the order of macronutrients consumed affect blood sugar regulation? Is this important for non diabetics? The order of what you consume really doesn't significantly affect blood sugar and non diabetics. It's really the total meal composition, and your strength training and activity. So if you're, if you're lifting weights, and you're walking, those are the most important things you could do for your blood sugar. And then the meal composition is, is also somewhat important, but not it doesn't matter as much, because again, if you're maintaining some good muscle mass and you're moving, that's all going to use that glycogen in the way the body intended and you're not going to worry about it. What are effective strategies for dining out and eating at social occasions while adhering to a structured diet plan, while planning ahead, being selective with your menu choices, you know, having having a plan in your head for what you're going to do using it apps like macro factor to estimate things or look at databases or restaurant menus. You know, having doing leftovers, I love leftovers, you don't have to eat everything you could take, take some leftover and then heat it up later for lunch, and focusing more on things like the social experience rather than the food itself. All of these are good strategies for dining out and eating social occasions. What is the impact of refeed days during fat loss in terms of physiological and psychological benefits. So just real quick, a refeed days when you jack up the calories by increasing carbs, and you get back up to your maintenance calories for one, you know, one day or two days during fat loss? Well, refeeds have been shown to help restore leptin, glycogen, restore your metabolism a little bit, restore your hormones, just temporarily, though, they're gonna get back to where they were before. But temporarily, they do that. And so as a result, you get a psychological boost. And this is the real important part. They give you this mental break, they replenish your motivation, and they might actually get you some physiological performance boost in the gym the next day. What is the evidence that tracking and logging food intake consistently improves fat loss and body composition? outcomes? This is unequivocal numerous studies show that tracking is linked to greater weight loss and more successful maintained weight loss compared to not tracking it improves awareness and compliance period. There is no issue if you don't have a history of some sort of disordered obsession with tracking. And it's more of a problem that requires medical help. Tracking can only help because of the awareness than not tracking period. How long does it take the body to normalize water weight and glycogen levels after refeed days, this is important because during the challenge, we had two refeed days and each time that happened, the participants would say oh, no, look at this big bump in my weight the next day. Yes, that's to be expected. And then what do you find out two or three days later, for most people, it came right back down to where it was and continued. In reality, it could take anywhere from two to five days for the body to normalize water and glycogen levels after a large increase in carb intake. Again, most people I see a drop back after about two days. But it could take a little bit longer. What are effective strategies for transitioning from an aggressive fat loss phase back to a sustainable nutrition plan? And I do want to take a little exception to that question the way it's worded because an aggressive fat loss phase can still be based on sustainable nutrition principles. But it's a short term extreme of pushing the limits based on those principles that you would not do for very long. So in that sense, it's not something you would sustain forever, but it can be based on sustainable nutrition principles. All right. So that's the question, what are the strategies? Okay, gradually increasing your calories. So not, not reverse dieting, but like going to maintenance and then going to a bulk might be a good strategy, or increasing them in a way that feels good for you and your digestion, maintaining that higher protein intake,

Philip Pape  22:58

that just like you had in fat loss, continuing to keep that continuing to track macros, and then reversing anything that you kind of put on hold during fat loss because calories were tight. And you might have had fewer indulgences and things like that. It's it's okay to reintroduce some of those extra little treats and indulgences, just because it scales with your higher level of calories you've got to work with now, what training adjustments should be made during extreme calorie deficits to maximize muscle retention. All right, the big thing here is to reduce volume while maintaining intensity and frequency. We want to keep the load on the bar high we want to keep the frequency the main thing is we want to get those high number of you know some people call them effective reps. Whether you agree with that model or not. It's it's training hard, you know, within a few reps shy of failure. Similar intensity Do you would when you are not in a fat loss phase, but the volume might come down. So you're going to focus on compound lifts, and you're gonna reduce isolation exercises, you're gonna reduce cardio, to balance everything, give yourself sufficient recovery. And then the last question How can bloodwork biomarkers be used to monitor health during and after aggressive dieting? Alright, so if you're really big into this and you want to get some bloodwork, I would look at typical panel with lipids, blood glucose. And once the other thing I'm thinking of just just the typical planet panel you'd get with your GP, but I might also get testosterone and other hormones leptin, CRP vitamins, even like if you want to look at vitamin deficiency and malnutrition versus not malnutrition, but, you know, insufficiency in aggressive dieting versus when you're back recovered. I think they all can be helpful. So it depends on what your goals are, but those are what I would recommend. Okay, those are all the questions for today. And if you want your question answered in an upcoming q&a episode, the best way to do that is just send me a message on IG at Wits. & Weights or Facebook. You can DM me or you can go to the free Wits & Weights Facebook community and reach me there. Those links are always in the show notes. In our next episode 119 reclaiming the joy of running after 60. With Barry coach, we dive into Barry's transformative journey from burnout to vitality through the power of running. Yes, you heard that right. I know I hardly ever talk about running on the show. Sometimes I give running a bad name. And this guy is going to inspire you if you're interested or do enjoy running. I always say run if you enjoy it, right. It's all about your values and your goals. So he's going to talk all about running, he's going to share how reclaiming his love for running in his 60s became more than a strategy for weight loss it morphed into a philosophy for life. Whether discussing the secret to lasting motivation, or how to defy the limitations of age. Barry's insights offer sound principles for anyone looking to seize control their health at any stage of life. As always, stay strong. And I'll talk to you next time here on the Wits & Weights podcast. Thank you for tuning in to another episode of Wits & Weights. If you found value in today's episode, and know someone else who's looking to level up their Wits & Weights, please take a moment to share this episode with them. And make sure to hit the Follow button in your podcast platform right now to catch the next episode. Until then, stay strong.

Ep 117: Starting Strength, the Novice Effect, and Barbell Lifts with Cody Annino

Do you want to become stronger, healthier, and more resilient?

Do you want to learn how to use the most effective tool for building strength and improving your quality of life?

Today, I am joined by Cody Annino, a Starting Strength Coach based out of Moodus, CT. I reached out to him a few years back when I first learned about Starting Strength for some coaching on my basic lifts. He is why I started squatting and pressing the right way after months of frustration. Everyone can benefit from a technique coach, even for a few sessions.

I invited him on to talk about the transformative power of barbell training. You'll learn the principles and benefits of Starting Strength, some common misconceptions about strength training, and the novice effect. We'll compare different training methods, look at how barbell training impacts mental health, and touch on the future of online versus in-person coaching in the fitness world. Cody is a big believer in the power of strength for lifelong health and resilience, as am I.

Cody owns and operates Annino Strength & Conditioning, a small family-owned black iron gym in central Connecticut. Cody is a Central Connecticut State University graduate who has been working full-time as a professional coach since 2016. He has experience helping people of all ages and ability levels become stronger and healthier through barbell training.

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Click here to apply for coaching!
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Today you’ll learn all about:

[2:17] Journey to becoming a strength coach
[3:21] Barbell training's life-changing impact
[7:42] Introduction to Starting Strength
[9:54] Stress recovery adaptions
[13:21] Criticisms on Starting Strength
[16:40] Commitment to long-term training
[23:36] Addressing strength training misconceptions
[24:57] The "Novice Effect" explained
[29:04] Mental health and barbell training
[31:14] Coaching techniques and program customization
[35:22] Future of online and in-person coaching
[38:47] Where to learn more about Cody and Starting Strength

Episode resources:

• Annino Strength & Conditioning – Cody's  gym, in-person and online coaching services.

• IG - @codyannino

• Starting Strength

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Transcript

Cody Annino  00:00

What we find is that by taking advantage of that novice effect, we can give somebody the most rapid progress that they're going to see in their entire trading career. And anything short of taking full advantage of that is essentially wasting the person's time. You only have so much time to do this stuff. And if we can make an increase, we can make a strength increase, then we should

Philip Pape  00:27

welcome to the Wits & Weights podcast. I'm your host, Philip pape, and this twice a week podcast is dedicated to helping you achieve physical self mastery by getting stronger. Optimizing your nutrition and upgrading your body composition will uncover science backed strategies for movement, metabolism, muscle and mindset with a skeptical eye on the fitness industry, so you can look and feel your absolute best. Let's dive right in Wits & Weights community Welcome to another episode of the Wits & Weights Podcast. Today I'm joined by Cody anino, a starting strength coach based out of MODIS, Connecticut, about an hour south of me, which is why I reached out to him a few years back when I was first learning about starting strength, and I needed some coaching on my basic lifts. He's the reason I started squatting and pressing the right way after months of frustration, and why I'm always saying on the show that everyone would benefit from a technique coach even for a few sessions. I invited him on to talk about the transformative power of barbell training, you'll learn the principles and benefits of starting strength, some common misconceptions about strength training and the crucial novice effect. We'll compare different training methods look at how barbell training impacts mental health, and touch on the future of online versus in person coaching in the fitness world. Cody is a big believer in the power of strength for lifelong health and resilience as am I which is an important message everyone needs to hear. Cody is the owner and operator of a Nino strength and conditioning. A small family owned Black Iron Gym in Central Connecticut. Cody is a Central Connecticut State University graduate and has been working full time as a professional coach since 2016. He has experienced helping people of all ages and ability levels become stronger and healthier through barbell training. Cody man, I really appreciate it. Welcome to the show.

Cody Annino  02:15

Thanks for having me. Happy to be here.

Philip Pape  02:17

So let's get to know you first. Right, you've been a professional coach for since 2016. You run your own gym. We mentioned your starting strength coach, you're also USA Powerlifting. Coach. Yeah, how did strength and lifting become part of your life?

Cody Annino  02:32

Um, you know, so I, I've always been into, you know, training and exercise, like my whole life. You know, probably starting in high school, I ran track cross country, out of high school, you know, I, I was kind of looking for a way to pay for college. So I started working as a personal trainer, and worked at a commercial gym and did that for a long time. I liked that. I started to get into CrossFit had a few issues with that. But yeah, one thing led to another and I just got more and more into the barbell and strength training. And, yeah, it's kind of it was a long process. But that's that's kind of how I got here.

Philip Pape  03:11

Yeah, I get it, man. And it's funny, we it seems like we all find CrossFit at some point in that journey. Before we get away from it. It's funny. Now you're now you're focused on barbell training, I know your powerlifting coaching as well, when did you discover with all the different things you had tried to learn from track to cross country to CrossFit, everything that it was more than it was more than just another way of working out. But it was this new transformational thing, this this thing that could transform your, your health, your strength in your life, when did you make that connection,

Cody Annino  03:38

it developed kind of over time, as I found starting strength and really the way I found starting strength was again, going back to CrossFit. You know, because CrossFit, the one of the things that was lacking in my education up to that point, as a personal trainer, as crossfit coach was my ability to teach people how to do the lifts, and I found starting strength and I used that early on, I found it so that I could teach people how to do lifts like the SNATCH and the power clean. And it was so simple. It was it was you know, very easy to it was very approachable for a lot of people who have never touched a barbell before and just got more and more, you know, excited about it and I'm like wanting to learn more and more about this method. And you know, so then you know, learn about Mark Rippetoe read the book. And yeah, and then as I started using this method with people you start to see the effect that it has on people of all different levels. You know, you got young guys come into the gym, kids they get strong you know, they can they can get a college, you know by by strength training and get better at their sport. And then you can also take older people who we've had people come to the gym, you know with a walker and they're struggling to and they regret they regained their their physical independence through There's strength training. So it's there's a huge benefit to this stuff for a lot of people.

Philip Pape  05:05

Yeah, I mean, one thing you mentioned is very important is that it was simple. And I think that's important to mention. Because if you buy starting strength and you read it, it's very detailed, it can be dry at times, I like it. I like the science and the biomechanics behind it, all the diagrams, but like, the chapter on the squat is, I don't know, 40 pages long. And I actually tell people that as a positive about it, because you actually learn the proper way to squat and why it works. But some people are intimidated, right? barbells seem like this, maybe inaccessible thing, or there's safety, and they're worried that you know, people are gonna be judging them, or they don't have a spotter, all these other reasons people throw out. But you said, it's simple. So emphasize that point for us. Like, why is it simple.

Cody Annino  05:49

So it's simple in the sense that there's only a handful of exercises, training with barbells is simple, it's, it's a basic tool, when someone's trying to start a program, any program, really, I mean, the hardest part is just getting them to come into the gym, you know, and when people walk into like a commercial gym, they can be overwhelmed by how much stuff is in there, there's machines, there's cardio, equipment, there's bands, there's millions of people in there, there's all kinds of that and they don't know where to start. And you know, the barbell is a great place to start. Because strength is kind of the foundation of everything in your day to day, life in the in the barbell is the best tool to develop strength. So it's so the program is very simple that we do, we teach five basic exercises, and we have a method for teaching people to do the exercises. And what we find through experience that they're doing this with lots and lots of people is there's a starting point for everybody. No matter where you are, we can find something that you can do, we can start to somewhere with a barbell. And that might mean using a really light bar though we got you know, 10 pound bars, you might only use your, you might want to use the empty bar, something like that. But there's always a starting point. And that's one of the benefits to kind of work with a coach, we could start you on this journey. And and yeah, and go and go from there.

Philip Pape  07:12

Alright, cool. That broke it down really well, I liked that you said the barbell is, is the best tool for the job. Because I know some people will equivocate on like, well, you can do you know, you could do bodyweight, you could do bands, you could build up and then eventually do dumbbells and barbells. I don't know about you, like, I'm lazy, and I want to be efficient and go right for whatever saves me the most time it gets me the most strength. And that's kind of the principle I use when I explain it to people. And unless they just absolutely have no access whatsoever for some legitimate reason, why not try the barbell. So help us understand you said five movements, break down the key principles, the benefits of starting strength, just kind of like what would be your, you know, sales pitch for why this is an effective program.

Cody Annino  07:55

So I mean, so starting strength, the benefit to it is that it's a systemic approach to barbell training, you know, that we we base on a series of concepts like, you know, we can, I don't know how deep you want to go into, like stress recovery, adaptation, and all that sort of stuff. Yeah, so like the the base exercises would be like the squat, the benchpress, the deadlift, the power clean, and the press. Some people don't do the power to them, depending on their age, or injury history, but there are large compound exercises that are basic human movement patterns, and we're basically just adding load to them. And through those five exercises, you're able to strengthen the entire body. And like you said, it's, it's, it's, it's time efficient, because if you're not someone that has all day to spend in the gym, you can get started with these basic exercises, get a whole lot done, build a lot of muscle, build a lot of strength, and a very short period of time and get on with your with your day and on with your life.

Philip Pape  08:58

Yeah, so this you just listed off Route, some really good principles being it's systemic, right, we actually have something that builds over time, that makes sense. It's logical. It's basic compound lifts, we talked about a lot of this on the show, full human movement patterns, full range of motion, and you're just adding load, which is important because some people, you know, they will make people will make excuses about certain movements, for whatever reason in their history. And when you say, Well, can you can you squat to a box or can you squat down without a bar? If you can, you probably can squat with load. And like you said, it's just adding the load over time, stress recovery adaptation, we can get into that a little bit. I think it's very fundamental to this. I always return to the starting strength ideas at least even if it's not the exact program. I always return to it when things change in my life and I d train or I take an unintentional D load or and recently, I had left rotator cuff surgery so I had to take a break and now I'm getting back to it. Those principles, I come back to them and they always apply. So tell us about stress recovery adaptation.

Cody Annino  10:00

So, you know, stress recovery adaptation is one of those first principles like I talked about before that the method is kind of based on. So it's a base, it's a biological principle. Han Selia is the person I believe, who first kind of discovered this in the 30s. It was, I think it was called, like general adaptation syndrome or something like something to that effect. Basically, the idea is that if you stress an organism, it will adapt to that stress, it will adapt specifically to that stress, assuming it's not too much stress all at once. The one of the common, most basic ways that we explain to people is the idea of of a suntan, right? So if you go out in the sun, you know, you decide that you don't want to be really pale and white, like me, you go out in the sun, I don't know, maybe the first day you do 20 minutes or so out there, then you might get a little bit pink, a little bit red, but then, you know, a day or two later, there'll be slightly more tan. Your body is adapting to the stress of you being out in the sun. And let's say you do that every day, for the week, you go out there for 20 minutes, and then at the end of the week, you're going to be tanner than you were at the start of the week. And this like trick question, we tell people at the seminars like So what happens if you tell yourself okay, if one week I was able to do that with only 20 minutes a day? What if I do that every day for the whole summer? I go out for 20 minutes. And that's it. 20 minutes come back in, I'm gonna be super camp by the end of the summer, right? And the answer, the question is actually, no, you're only going to be tan enough to tolerate 20 minutes of sun exposure. So in order to get more tan, you have to actually spend more time in the sun and build it up progressively over time, right. So that's really basic way of explaining this stress recovery adaptation process in a way that everybody can understand. Likewise, you can overdo it too, right? So if I go out the first day, and I sit out in the sun for three hours, I'm not going to really adapt to that stress, I'm going to get burned. And it's going to be horrible, right? So. So we take that concept, and we apply it to strength training, when you first come into the gym, we find a spot, we find something that you can do something that's tolerable at a weight, that is something that you could learn how to do the technique correctly, but it's not so heavy that it's going to destroy you, it's not going to make you terribly, terribly sore, it's not going to hurt you. And that's different for everybody, you know, you get a 65 year old woman that comes in step might be her bodyweight, it might be a 10 pound 15 pound bar, if you got a young high school kid, he might do 135 155, the first day that he comes in, and that will gradually build that up over time. So we're exposing the body to a little bit more stress, each workout and then you gave yourself enough time to recover between bouts of stress, and we adapt accordingly.

Philip Pape  12:48

That's a beautiful concept. I love the suntan principle. And when you talk about the weight that you start with, like if you're a newbie listening to this, you've never done it before. This is why working with a coach can be really helpful. When I went to see Cody, you know, I'm a man I was in my 30s have a little bit of an ego. And he saw me kind of trying to maybe push a little too much. And he's like, Here, let's dial it back. It's all good. Let's go with the weight that makes sense for you. So that the form is solid, and you can handle it. And then from there, okay, you've got it dialed in. Now you start increasing the load and you know, sky's the limit. So really nice concepts. What what are what are some of the criticisms you hear? Because I know there are a lot and about starting strength that you really want to address.

Cody Annino  13:32

I mean, probably the most pervasive one is that we want everybody to be either there's probably two one is that we're we want everybody to be overweight and drink like a gallon of milk a day. That's a pretty common one. Or another one that people say is, you know, not everybody wants to be a powerlifter or something like that. And we're not powerlifting we're strength training, we're doing exercises that power lifters do. But that doesn't mean that we're training for the sport of powerlifting. powerlifting is a specific sport that we wouldn't you know that some people decide that that's the avenue they want to go but we choose we do these exercises. And yes, there's some overlap to the powerlifting exercise. But we do these exercises, because again, they're basic human movement patterns. The barbell is an extremely ergonomical tool, meaning it's easy to hold on to, it's easy to, you know, put on someone's back. It's incrementally loadable more so than any other tool in the gym. You can I literally have quarter pound plates at the gym, you can go up it really small increments. So, you know that's that whole idea of we want to repower the powerlifters is ridiculous. We just want people to be stronger than they are. Because we know that when people get stronger, they're also healthier. And then like the other one is the we want to reach a gallon of milk a day we want everybody to, you know, the fat. That's a common misconception about starting strength, and it's just not true. If someone is underweight, we're going to tell them that you likely need to eat more calories and put yourself in some sort of surplus so that you can build muscle and continue to add weight to the bar. But you know, the opposite happens for people who maybe come to the gym, and maybe they got a little bit of weight to lose, they start doing the program and they get stronger, they start increasing the, you know, they start eating up more more protein in their diet, they start naturally eating a little bit less sugar, and things like that. And in the process of them doing the program without even thinking about it, they start getting leaner, and that sort of thing.

Philip Pape  15:31

Yeah, it's true. Yeah, it's really true. And I think a lot of those criticisms are either a misunderstanding of the program, or people who didn't follow it, who are like, Hey, this is not working like I thought. Yeah, so it's funny, you mentioned the go mad thing, because back in 2020, when I met you, I was actually running starting strength for the first time and took that a little bit to heart, not the whole gallon, but maybe like a quarter to half gallon of milk a day. And I gained a ton of weight in probably 40 pounds in like four or five months. For me, it was a lot. But it helped me push the numbers up. I mean, it really did. And later I learned, you know, nutrition and protein and like,

Cody Annino  16:11

the gallon of milk works, it works. Just not for everybody.

Philip Pape  16:14

No, and he really even talks about it not being for you know, older people, generally. So all right, so how do you here's another concept about this, I just talked to my client and lifting buddy Tony Perry, he was on the last episode of the show. And one thing he talked about was how you have to, to embrace the grind and, and enjoy the kind of the gritty process of strength training, right, there's a commitment involved. Even though I at the same time, I do see the results speak for themselves and tend to motivate people, how do you get people to commit to that long term process?

Cody Annino  16:50

It can be hard to do that. Because you know, this this, this thing, like we said, it's very simple, but simple is not easy. And it can be hard for a lot of people. And so what tends to happen a lot is people get really excited about the program, because again, it's it's a very simple, very approachable program, we have a really good system to get people doing the lifts correctly, and in a fairly short period of time. And they realize those those really quick adaptations, we call it the novice effect. In the very beginning, they come in in there and they're excited, you know, they did 45 pounds on the first day than they did 50 than they did 55 and 60, and so on. And then all of a sudden, there comes a time where you go to unrack that bar, and then you're like, oh my god, this is this is real, real heavy, I don't know if I can do this. You know, and, and again, that's, that's where some of these, these other benefits of strength training come into effect where it's like, you know, where there's, there's a lot of mental toughness that goes into making yourself do something that you're not sure, if you can actually do it, you're gonna go down into the bottom that squat, and it's scary, you don't know if you're gonna come back up. And some people do really well with that, you know, like, they push themselves and, and then other people. You know, as soon as they get into that, where it's really hard, and you gotta grind, you gotta push through it. Some people just can't do it, you know, and that's where, you know, sometimes people don't want to continue training, that's where they start looking to do other things. And so like, you know, it can be hard as, as a coach to kind of push them through through that. And a lot of times, it's just, it's explaining to them that, you know, one, nothing bad's gonna happen to you, most likely, you're gonna be fine. If you go down to the bottom of squat, and if you don't come back up, so what you're going to learn something about yourself either way, you know, so So yeah, telling people that can be a good strategy, but some people it's just really hard to get them to get them to do it. You know, we, we do have some, some churn in the program when it comes to when people start to reach that point where things get really hard.

Philip Pape  19:01

Yeah, I could see that because they definitely starts to not so much plateau, it's just the increment, incremental increases start to drop a bit even though you can still be making progress. It's interesting. You mentioned getting down into the into the squat. Worst case, you're gonna learn about yourself. Yeah, what what do you what is your answer to someone who's just getting started? And they say, but Coach, what, what do I do if I fail the reps? And it's kind of a trick question. I want to see how you answer but what what do I do when I failed the reps when I don't get all the reps? What What's your answer that question?

Cody Annino  19:35

So well, there's, there's there's different ways to approach that right. So the first is, if you're working with a coach, this should already be taken care of for you. The first is but if you're not working directly with a coach every single day, the first is you got to figure out why you're missing. You know, it's a we use what we call the first three questions. And those first three questions are or how big of jumps are you taking? You know? Are you going up in a reasonable increments? Are you going up five pounds, two and a half pounds? Do you have the right equipment to go up in those small increments, because when you're doing presses, and bench presses, you can't go up five pounds, you might only be able to go up a pound or two. So making sure your jumps are appropriate. You know, sometimes people get stuck real quick, because they're again, they're excited about the program, they liked the rapid progress, and then 1015 20 pounds to the bar every time and then they get stuck. So that's one one issue.

Philip Pape  20:31

Hey, this is Philip. And I hope you're enjoying this episode of Wits & Weights, I started Wits & Weights to help people who want to build muscle lose fat and actually look like they lift. I've noticed that when people improve their strength and physique, they not only look and feel better, they transform other areas of their life, their health, their mental resilience and their confidence in everything they do. And since you're listening to this podcast, I assume you want the same things the same success, whether you recently started lifting, or you've been at this for a while and want to optimize and reach a new level of success. Either way, my one on one coaching focused on engineering your physique and body composition is for you. If you want expert guidance and want to get results faster, easier, and with fewer frustrations along the way to actually look like you lift, go to wits & weights.com, and click on coaching, or use the link in my show notes to apply today, I'll ask you a few short questions to decide if we're a good fit. If we are, we'll get you started this week. Now back to the show.

Cody Annino  21:35

Another issue is they might not be resting long enough, you know, between their between their sets, then, you know, because what when you're first getting started with the program, again, the weights are not super heavy. So you might be able to do two or three minutes between sets. It's not super difficult, you get back onto the bar, and you do all your sets. And it's no big deal. When things start getting heavier, you're going to have to push those rest periods out, right. And then the last one is make sure that you're getting recovered between your sessions are you know, are you eating appropriately? Are you sleeping appropriately, do a lot of light stress, work stress going out, all of those things can interrupt the recovery portion of the stress recovery adaptation cycle. So we want to make sure that those things are in check first right to avoid missing. Then the other things, you know, if you are in a situation where you're going to miss the weight, you again, it comes down to making sure you have proper equipment. So you can use safety pins, most quality, squat stance or squat racks are going to have pins or bars that stick out that you know, if you get into trouble in the bottom, you could set the bar down. That that would be your your option. But again, the best option is to avoid putting yourself in that situation in the first place. Where like what do I do if I miss it's like if the coach is doing his job and you're doing your job of getting recovered between sessions you want keep you out of that position as much as possible.

Philip Pape  22:55

Yeah. And that's where I knew you would go there as a good starting strength coach at the end as it's like, don't miss the reps, I would like set yourself up for success, rather than assuming failure before you even get there. Which I love that because having that mentality and I've kind of carried that with me as well, to this day, when something feels really hard, and you just don't feel great that day. But you've done everything you can just try it like you just don't know, you might see what you're made of when you do that. Yeah, you don't know until you try it. Yeah, it's so true. And sometimes you feel like you've done three, three reps. And the fourth one is impossible. And you get the fourth and the fifth one seems impossible. And you do it. Yeah, it's crazy. Happens all the time, all the time. So when someone comes in to your gym, or what are one of the most common assumptions or misconceptions they might have, are people that are seeking you out already familiar with starting straight, there's a kind of a mix of, of individuals, most of the time No, they're

Cody Annino  23:49

not familiar with, with what starting strength is. And you got all those standard industry fears, you know, that people have when they first come in, especially since majority of our clientele tends to be female, and tends to be a little bit older, in their 40s 50s 60s and, you know, all that usual stuff where they're, they're intimidated of lifting heavy weights, they're afraid they're gonna get too bulky, that sort of thing. So, you know, again, it's all about again, creating a creating an environment where they feel comfortable, they feel like this is safe, and having the right type of equipment to accommodate and meet that person where they are at their current ability level, you know, for sure having light enough weights and that sort of thing.

Philip Pape  24:39

Yeah, for sure. And again, folks listening at least when I went to see Cody, you know, he he made sure we were using the right plates and the right equipment and everything was set up right he asked about my shoes asked about a whole bunch of things just to make sure even my shirt you know you weren't a cotton shirt or is it more slippery shirt like all the all the advice? So somebody coming in that's new, they're gonna Be a novice, they're a newbie. And so they're gonna experience something called the novice effect, which I've talked about enough times on the show, probably. But it's a central concept to starting strength. And you mentioned the stress recovery adaptation model. Why is it so important, especially for those new or de trained to lifting in the house, someone, how can someone make the most out of it.

Cody Annino  25:19

So the novice effect is, it's again, it's that getting back to that stress recovery adaptation cycle, it's a phenomenon where, when you're truly unadapted, to something, you experience rapid progress early on, you know, in the, in the progression of you trying to do this new thing. And then there's a law of diminishing returns, right, we're over time that progress starts to slow down. But the novice effect is that when someone comes into the gym for the first time, we can apply a small dose of stress to them with the barbell, teach them how to do the movements correctly and safely. And then within 48, to 72 hours later, they can come back into the gym, and we can add a little bit more weight to the, to the bar a little bit more weight to whatever it was that they did on that first day. And amazingly enough, they can do it. And then another 48 to 72 hours will elapse. And we can add a little bit more weight to it. And they can do that again. And what we find is that by taking advantage of that novice effect, we can give somebody the most rapid progress that they're going to see in their entire trading career. And anything short of taking full advantage of that is essentially wasting the person's time. You only have so much time to do this stuff. And if we can make an increase, we can make a strength increase, then we should,

Philip Pape  26:49

yeah, what's something you shouldn't be doing? If you're trying to get the most out of it? One that comes to mind as a nutrition coach is you shouldn't be dieting, personally, if you're trying to do that, what what are some of those in your arsenal.

Cody Annino  27:00

So again, so to take true full advantage of it, we recommend that you just do the program, the way it's written in that you're going to squat, bench deadlift press, and do power cleans, and you're going to do those on alternating days, you're gonna do them three days a week, and you're not really going to add a whole bunch of other stuff to it, you're not gonna try to reinvent the wheel, you're not going to do CrossFit, you're not going to try to do Oh, can I do my BJJ? In between? Or can I What should I do on my resume? Should I run all that stuff? Can I do yoga, if you want to get everything you can out of it, you shouldn't do those things. But sometimes people do those things.

Philip Pape  27:41

Something like 3% of people actually follow the program when they looked at the data. But I get it because I have clients all the time. They're like, well, I want to keep running. And I want to keep doing this. And like you can I mean, it's trade offs. It's all trade offs.

Cody Annino  27:53

Exactly. It's all it's all trade offs, you know, some, some people find that, you know, I found too, that if I tell people, If I don't be super restrictive with it and tell them, You can't do this, you can't do that you can't do any of this stuff, you got to just come in here and do this, that sometimes they don't really like that. And that kind of turns them off, and they're less likely to come back to training. So if I tell them, Okay, keep doing that stuff, that's fine. Because in the beginning, the novice effect works. So well, the program works so well, that even if you kind of do it wrong, it still works. So it works so well that they continue to make progress. And then eventually they hit a point where it's like, they're not really getting recovered. And then I can kind of re approach the conversation with again and be like, well, you know, you are running three days a week, or you are doing BJJ, two days a week, maybe cut back on that a little bit. And then we can continue to push these weights up a little bit higher. And then some people like they have the right mentality where you know, they want to keep chasing those numbers. So then they you know, they start to be a little more strict at the program.

Philip Pape  28:46

Yeah. Do you have the data and feedback there to say, look, you're hitting a plateau. Let's, let's remove this, see what happens. All of a sudden, they improve, then they get that intrinsic motivation of okay, maybe I don't want to be running. Right. Right progress. So another topic related to training, especially since we're coming up to men's mental health month, November is not just for men, but how does barbell training improve your mental health?

Cody Annino  29:09

I've seen with several clients over the years that I don't know if I if I know exactly like the scientific explanation for how it improves people's mental health, but you just see it when someone starts getting stronger, they get more confident, a lot about their demeanor and a lot about their personality changes. And again, a lot of it gets back to like, like we talked about with the doing that heavy set of five and you're not sure if you can do that fifth rep but there's something that happens to somebody when they consistently make that decision that I'm going to go down into the bottom of the squat and, and I'm just going to see what happens. You know what I mean? I'm going to try real hard, and I'm gonna I'm gonna I'm gonna I'm gonna give it everything I got. And I'm scared but I'm going to do it anyway. And and there's a again, there's there's a confidence can pull Whether it comes from that, and it's hard to describe it to someone who hasn't done it before, but once you've gone through the process, once you've seen other people go through the process, you can see it's it's clear as day that the effect that this has on people, people's mental health and in a positive way.

Philip Pape  30:17

I yeah, I think it's important to right, you kind of know it when you see it. And in my personal experience that happens at different levels, like it can happen right away in the first few weeks. For somebody who's never trained before, and it just seems like they're gaining massive strength. And then it happens later, when you hit these sticking points. Right? It'd be cool if they can, like, do a brain scan on people like before and after. See, what if that hardship that you know, unlock something like, you know, the grip, brain chemistry or something. But, yeah, I always like to ask that because people underestimate all the benefits of strength training, we focus so much on the strength in the muscle and things like that. And yet this I'm coming in my older years to realize is one of the top reasons people might want to consider this because for whatever reason, their anxiety is rampant depression is rapid, like across the population. And it could just be stress, it could be because you get older, you get obligations and all that. And I just wanted to pick your brain on that. So yeah, that's cool. Yeah. Okay, so what about when you teach somebody to lift because this was an important aspect of my experience with you, I came in having been squatting for like, I don't know, three, four months on starting strength, I read the book, I'm the type of person I read it like three times I had highlighter, I had I had notes, I would practice in my living room, I, my wife would be like, What are you doing down there, and I would watch the videos, and not just starting strength, but barbell logic and some of the others and and did everything I possibly could. And I still didn't really have great for because when I met you, you'd like over 20 Things that you had to fix. It really is a very tactile, technical thing. How do you teach it to your clients? What are the kind of the common cues you use? And is it? How can people at home even if they don't have a coach, and I know that's that you want them to have a coach? You know, figure it out? How can they figure it out?

Cody Annino  32:06

So you know, this might not be the most satisfying answer, but everybody's different, right? So. And what we find, though, sometimes is that the people who have been trying to do this thing, or maybe they did, like, you know, high school, football might be the worst thing ever. But you know, they've lifted weights, so you get guys to come to the gym, they've been lifting, you know, they've done something. And they have the most bad habits. So they're the ones that are often the hardest ones to coach to correct those things, because they've been doing things I don't want to say wrong, but they've been doing them sub optimally for a long time. Whereas you get someone that comes in the door that's maybe even a little skinny little scared of, of lifting weights never done this before, I have no idea what they're doing there, they tend to be pretty easy to coach because they're gonna do whatever you tell them. They don't have all their trust is in you. Yeah, yeah. But so so we have, in starting strength, we have a series of teaching models for all of the lifts, we've distilled down over many years of trial and error working with lots of people, we've kind of distilled down the best way to break these exercises down and explain them to people. And you know, so we have a teaching phase for all of the lifts, where we teach them how to do the exercises. And then the queues, the queues are specific to the teaching model. So queues are reminders for somebody how to do the lifts. Right. So we've already taught them in the teaching model, how to perform the exercise, and then when we're cueing them, the teaching method is what gives them the context for the cues to make sense. So when I say shove your knees out on a squat, I've already taught them in the teaching progression of the squat, why it's important for them to have their knees pushed out why want them to be that way. So when I when they're when they're squatting, and I say knees out, now they have context, they understand what that means. And they can make that adjustment. I see a lot of beginner coaches, or people that are maybe starting strength enthusiast and, and they watch the videos and they want to teach somebody how to squat. And then they'll just be yelling queues at people. They'll be coming up out of the bottom like hips, hips, hips, hips, hips, hips, and like, the person who their teacher doesn't know what that means, you know. So, for people that don't know that the hips cue is to cue what we call hip drive, it's the way you get up out of the bottom squat. But you need that teaching method to explain to somebody, this is how you come out of the bottom of squat. This is called hip drive. And this is the strongest way for you to get yourself up at the bottom of the squat. So when I you know so that later on when they're squatting and I say hips, use your hips, something like that. They know what that means. They can they can kind of go from there. But yeah, that's that's essentially how we teach that to people is we have a teaching method that we use to get them up to speed quit in through experience, you kind of develop cues and to kind of remind them how I have to do the list correctly.

Philip Pape  35:02

That's enlightening to me, I wasn't totally clear on how that works, because I've never worked with the starting train coach, like from the beginning multiple sessions, you know. But the idea that you have, again, you said it's systematic before it is systematic a teaching phase progression, you understand why you're using a certain foot stands, putting your legs this way, whatever. And then the cues are just reminders of that. Okay, so now what if someone I know there are coaches that do online programming? I think you do as well, I do online? Do you? How do you coach someone who's fully remote who's just not in the area, and getting started for the first time remotely?

Cody Annino  35:36

So it's harder, you know, it definitely is. And we tell people upfront, I mean, if you're going to be honest with somebody, you know, you have to tell them that like, look, you know, this online coaching thing, it can work, it can be beneficial, it's definitely better than nothing, but it's not as good as in person coaching. And it just can't be because of the delay. The fact that I can't be there in person and give me real time, feedback, you know, as you're screwing something up, I can fix it in person. So in person is always going to be better. The biggest drawback that I tell people to online coaching, and get back gets back to that learning, the last thing is that it's going to take more time, it's going to take longer because of the inherent delay. So I'll give you an example. Like when I first started coaching people online, you know, somebody would post a post a video, for me, I use an app called True coach. So they'll upload a video to true coach, and there'll be their squat, then I'll take a look at it. And you know, their stance is a little too wide, or it's a little messed up. So then I'll write back to them. Like, hey, you know, good job, but your stance is a little bit too wide, I need you to narrow it up a little bit next time on your next set of squats. So then 4872 hours goes by, they do their next workout, and I check their video, and now they're squatting with like their heels almost touching. You know, my, okay, that's way too narrow. And then I tell them all right, now I need you to widen your stance out again, because it's not quite right. So then, again, a third video comes for them two hours later. And now their stance is too wide, so that we've already wasted about a week's worth of training just together stance, right. But we do get it right, we do fix it. online coaching is great, because we will get your form where it needs to be. But you just got to understand that the limitations are, those are the limitations, it's going to take more time to get it right. As a coach, like, like, you were asking before, you know, you can do this stuff, it's just gonna take a lot longer. There's a lot of trial and error to learn how to do stuff correctly, I tried to I, for the most part, tried to teach myself how to do it correctly in the beginning. And it's just hard. You know, it takes a lot takes a long time, part of what you're paying for with a coach is just, you know, that times daily aspect expertise

Philip Pape  37:45

in that, yeah. So a couple of things you mentioned first, I imagine it's a good learning experience for you as a coach, that whole trial and error back and forth to be like, you know, maybe next time I can give them very precise, like 10 inches, you know, to ruler measure to kind of how you communicate is an interesting thing. The other is that, you know, you reminded me and just for the listener, I've never not had some form of coach along the way like to this day, I'm in a barbell Club, where I can post my video and get form feedback from a very good coach and he Baker who's from the world of starting strength. And I think anybody should do that. Even if it's if it's a budget thing, and you have to do it online, it's a little bit less whatever. It's totally worth it. Or at least getting a refresh. So all right, I know we're running low on time, and we had some technical glitches early. But couple questions left. This is the question I asked every guest. Is there something you wish I had asked you? And what is your answer?

Cody Annino  38:38

I think you covered most of your bases in terms of like, we want to talk about like what what starting strength is and that sort of thing.

Philip Pape  38:45

It's cool. Yeah. And I think you've covered most of it for folks listening who are interested, where can they learn about you, your specific Jim you and your work and anything you want them to kind of look up related to starting strength.

Cody Annino  38:58

So so for me personally, you know, I'm on all the all the social medias, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, or x. And our website is Nino strong.com and anything related to starting strength? You can you can also find me on the starting strength website. But yeah, anything related to starting strength, go to starting strength calm. There's forums 1000s of articles, tons of information, tons of videos.

Philip Pape  39:24

Cool. Did you do have any articles up there by any chance? I don't have any articles. No. Yeah. No, I was just curious. Alright, so we'll put your we'll put all your handles up there. But definitely your website and needle strong.com If you guys go there, you can find out about both local if you're in Buddhist Connecticut area, which is kind of what would you say it's kind of southern not far from i 91. A little

Cody Annino  39:47

to the east. It's it's southeastern Connecticut. Yeah,

Philip Pape  39:51

southeastern Connecticut. And if you're not you can get remote coaching from Cody and man, thank you so much for coming on. It was a blast. Yeah,

Cody Annino  39:57

no problem. Sorry about the technical issues. It's all good. Hey, thanks. Thanks for having me.

Philip Pape  40:03

Thank you for tuning in to another episode of Wits & Weights if you found value in today's episode, and know someone else who's looking to level up their Wits & Weights, please take a moment to share this episode with them. And make sure to hit the Follow button in your podcast platform right now to catch the next episode. Until then, stay strong.

Ep 116: 7 Lessons from My Rapid Fat Loss Micro-Cut (Aggressive Dieting is Not for Everyone!)

Today, I will be going over my recent micro-cut, which was a 14-day rapid fat loss phase, how to set it up, and all of my results, including how well I was able to adhere to the protocol and how I handled nutrition, how all my measurements changed including the fat loss itself, changes in biofeedback, my training, and the results of the group challenge we ran concurrently with my self-experiment, where 7 participants of the Wits & Weights Facebook community did their own fat loss phases along with me following the same protocol.

Then, I’ll talk about some of the limitations and findings of aggressive dieting, and the seven lessons I learned that will help anyone following such a protocol to get through it successfully, mitigate hunger, and hold onto as much muscle as possible.

If you want the exact protocol I followed, click HERE.

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Click here to apply for coaching!
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Today you’ll learn all about:

[2:48] Shoutout to Weight What? Podcast
[4:26] Recent five-star reviews
[6:59] Background and purpose of the micro-cut experiment
[9:32] Preparing for the micro-cut
[15:15] Training during fat loss, and intake targets
[18:37] Initial observations on the serious deficit of the micro-cut
[22:07] Results with flexible refeed days
[25:06] The before and after measurements
[34:17] Decline in biofeedback during the fat loss phase
[37:52] Personal experience and training routine
[39:31] Shredtober 14-day fat loss challenge results
[42:57] Adherence to calorie and protein intake during the challenge
[45:40] Future goals and recommendations for participants
[50:10] Warnings about aggressive dieting
[52:43] The seven lessons and recommendations for the rapid fat loss micro-cut
[56:18] Outro

Episode resources:

• Ep 112: The Perfect Meal Plan

• My Rapid Fat Loss Guide

• Weight What? podcast

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👩‍💻👨‍💻 GET A FREE RESULTS BREAKTHROUGH CALL WITH PHILIP
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Transcript

Philip Pape  00:00

What did participants love the most two things, community and simplicity. They loved the group setting, the accountability, the motivation, it kept everyone going and engaged. And we talked every day. And when people were down on themselves a little bit, we lifted them up. It's awesome. The second thing was simplicity. Several people found that this challenge was easier to adhere to than expected. And that was a huge one because I didn't, you know, I didn't know what was going to happen. But within about four or five days, people were saying, You know what, this isn't so bad.

Philip Pape  00:33

Welcome to the Wits & Weights podcast. I'm your host, Philip pape, and this twice a week podcast is dedicated to helping you achieve physical self mastery by getting stronger. Optimizing your nutrition and upgrading your body composition will uncover science backed strategies for movement, metabolism, muscle and mindset with a skeptical eye on the fitness industry, so you can look and feel your absolute best. Let's dive right in. Wits & Weights community Welcome to another solo episode of the Wits & Weights podcast. In our last episode 115 how Tony lost 15 pounds 8% body fat and built lifelong strength with barbell training, I sat down with my friend, fellow lifter and client Tony to talk about his transformative journey, the intricacies of nutrition and barbell training and the mental hurdles along the way. Tony's insights could radically change your perspective and approach to fitness, nutrition and health. So definitely check that out. Today for episode 116. seven lessons from my Rapid Fat Loss micro cut, it's finally here, I will be going over my recent micro cut, which was a 14 day rapid fat loss phase, how to set it up. And all of my results, including how well I was able to adhere to the protocol, how I handled nutrition how all my measurements changed, including, of course, the fat loss itself, changes in biofeedback, my training and the results of the group challenge that we ran concurrently with myself experiments were seven participants of the Wits & Weights, Facebook community did their own fat loss phases, along with me following the same protocol, and then they shared their results with us. Then I'll talk about some of the limitations and findings of aggressive dieting. And finally, the seven lessons I learned that will help anyone following such a protocol, get through it successfully mitigate hunger and things like that. And of course, hold on to as much muscle as possible. If you want the exact protocol I followed, just click the link in my show notes, or go to wits & weights.com/free, to download it along with lots of other free guides, but look for the free Rapid Fat Loss guide specifically for this episode. Okay, you all know that in addition to producing a podcast, I love listening to them. So going forward, every now and then I'm going to give a shout out to other shows that are aligned with my principles and values. So you can check them out for yourself. So today's shout out is to Leah and KAMNA of the weight what podcast. So that's weight W E IG HT just like Wits & Weights? And then what wha tea with a question mark? Wait, what? I really liked their show because they give weight loss, a nuanced complex treatment just like we do on this show. And I asked them to send me a summary that I can share with my audience. So here we go. Weight Loss sucks. As anyone who's tried to lose weight knows, you think you have it figured out and then suddenly things change and you're back to square one. This process can be so frustrating, and it doesn't take much to fall off the path, the podcast Wait, what does a deep dive about so many things that can impact our weight, and the hosts experiment to find possible solutions and let you know the results of their experiments. Take a listen to WaitWhat today to know that you aren't alone in the struggles and there are solutions that may also work for you. All right, and I'm gonna include a link to that podcast in my show notes as well so you can check them out. What I really love is the idea of trying to understand all the things that impact your weight, and performing self experimentation, which is actually highly relevant to today's topic. So give some love to Leah and camera and subscribe to the wait, what podcast. Okay, before I get into all the fun details about the microcut I wanted to share a couple recent five star reviews which I haven't done in a while so and we're up to I think at now it was last time I did this we were probably around 50 Something so they're really coming in fast and furious. And if you're listening and love the show, one of the best things you can do to support it is to go to apple and leave a five star rating and review because the more reviews we have, the more people will know that it's a good fit for them something that they call social proof. It actually doesn't affect the algorithm or the rankings in full disclosure from what I understand. But it does help people's The Hey others like this show, and here's why. And that's what I'm looking for. So the first review is from cool kid Wyatt. And I think I know exactly who this person is. And if he's listening, he knows I've figured it out. eye opening nutrition advice, I spent 10 years getting nutrition advice from fitness books, read it, and fitness influencers on YouTube, it was fine. But everyone had something different to say. And I felt stuck, not really knowing who to believe or what was right for me. Philips show gives advice that is freeing and empowering, I started feeling a lot more confident about my nutrition and habits after listening to this show, hearing his guests seeing how he can connect all the dots in a simple and logical way. I have more confidence and pride in eating habits now than I have in the past decade. Awesome. I love that review, because it just talks about all the buttons that we that we push here in terms of the confidence and the habits and you know, simple logical, doing things sustainably, right, all of this stuff. So I love that review. The second review is from Rachel Kay Hancock, and the title is balance. This podcast helps you develop healthy habits without demanding you give up your favorite foods and activities. It's more about mindfulness and setting up successful behavioral change toward a better life. I appreciate the host knowledge and expertise. Well thank you so much for that one as well. Because again, hit hit the nail on the head with the sustainability and flexibility, enjoying your favorite foods, mindfulness, behavioral change, that's really what it's all about. Okay, so I could definitely spend a half hour going over reviews, but I'm not going to do that, it is time to dive into seven lessons from my Rapid Fat Loss microcode. Okay, and now I'm actually pulling these from a white paper that I put together, that I actually shared with Dr. Bill Campbell recently, he's gonna give me some feedback. And I'll probably make it available publicly. But if you're interested in you can always reach out. And I'm gonna go over the whole process, how you can set this up the results, all of that. So in October of 2023, I decided to run an aggressive fat loss phase, and I called it a micro cut, as opposed to a mini cut, which tends to be anywhere from like four to 10 weeks long, or standard cut, which is even longer than that. So this was for 14 days. And I wanted to figure out if a very large calorie deficit could be used effectively to induce mostly fat loss. And by mostly fat loss, I mean, avoiding muscle loss as much as possible, and the majority of the weight loss being fat. So as a nutrition coach, I'm also curious whether this approach is feasible for my clients. So what did I do, I recruited 12 volunteers from the Wits & Weights Facebook community to participate and follow along in a challenge format. And the goal wasn't to lose X number of pounds, the goal is to learn about themselves, and also to share their, what they learned as part of, you know, to help with the research to help with this podcast to help you as the listener, learn about their experiences. Now, of the 12 volunteers. And by the way, we had like something like 30 or 40, who actually registered and followed along in some way. But 12 actually signed up to do the challenge directly, and have the 12 seven completed it and then share their final data with their consent with me. So I'm going to go over the exact protocol, my experience, the results of the challenge, and so on, so that you know exactly what you're getting into if you want to try this yourself, and you can replicate it yourself. And as I mentioned earlier, you can get the exact protocol, go to wits & weights.com/free, or click the link in the show notes if you want to do it yourself. Now, the one caveat I do want to mention is that I had left rotator cuff surgery about 12 weeks before starting the protocol. And that affected my training, I had gotten back to normal lifting a few weeks after my surgery, except for my injured arm or my recovering arm. And then I started to build from there with mostly a linear progression. So I'm still kind of doing that. But I am using all my limbs. Now my arm is good. It's about 80 90% range of motion now. But what this means is I was training sub maximally versus my recent one rep max loads, but I'm still applying the principles of progressive overload, mechanical tension and all that to ensure sufficient training stimulus. So if I did this again, in the future, when I'm 100% healthy, the results may have been different. Just a little caveat there. Alright, so first, I want to talk about the setup. All right. I, before you do anything like this, it's good to think about what do you want to track? What kind of data do you want to collect, so you know that it actually worked, and you can learn what you might change in the future. Because later on in the show, I'm going to share the things that I think could be changed or experimented with to maybe make it more effective. So here's what I decided to collect, of course, weight loss data. So scale weight and trendweight trendweight is calculated in macro factor. Macro factor is the app that I use and all my clients and all my challenge participants used to track their food and their weight and their trendweight because it also calculates your expenditure. If you haven't heard macro factor before, I've talked about it a lot on the show, but you can download the app use my code Wits & Weights, all one word Wits & Weights, get an extra free weekend, your free trial, give it a shot, let me know what you think. Anyway, weight loss, scale weight and trendweight. I also have my training logs. So am I maintaining performance with my strength with my progression? I also tracked biofeedback, but I really only did it at the beginning in the end, because I'm pretty much in tune with that on a regular basis anyway. And it's only two weeks long. So the biofeedback would include things like hunger, digestion, sleep, stress, energy, mood, and recovery. And these are good indicators. Because if any of those go, decline, more than you would expect or decline a lot during this challenge, or during this, um, I'm sorry, during this fat loss protocol, it's a potential variable to tweak later on, like if you want to improve and prevent it from declining as much. Another thing I measured was changing body circumference measurements. So for me, that was my neck, waist, chest, biceps and thighs, as another way to tell Okay, how much fat did I lose, and also did I lose any muscle. And then finally, I tracked my change in body composition, based on two things, the US Navy formula, so that's for me, based on my neck and waist, for the ladies, that's neck, waist, and hips. And then I also took some in body scans. Now you say, oh, in body, I thought you didn't agree with body fat measurement devices, I don't I don't like these, I don't think they're very precise. However, the trend can be a lot more reliable, then the value. So I took it anyway. And I use the data, and I kind of averaged it out with the Navy formula to give you a conservative view on my results. And all that's available, if anybody wants to see it. Okay. Demographics, I'm a male, I'm 42 years old, I'm five, nine. Good to know, my starting weight was 180 4.9. And my expenditure when I started, this was 2800 calories. Here's another important point, if you are smaller, if you're a female, you tend to have a lower expenditure, let's say, less than 2000 calories, this is going to be very hard compared to other types of fat loss phases, because you're still going to have to go into a deep deficit. And that deep deficit puts you into a level of calories that makes it so critical that you do meal planning and prioritize things like protein, fiber, etc. And it's just a very fine dance you have to play. And so it's not recommended for everyone. As I said, in the title, it's not for everyone, your expenditure is an important consideration here. So mine's 2800, which is reasonable to drop, even if I drop, you know, 1200 calories, I'm still in the mid 1500s, which is where I'm going to end up for this and as we'll see in a moment, but if you start at like 1500 calories, well, now you're dropping to like 800, which is you're getting into the range where it's a little bit dangerous and unsustainable. Granted, it's only for two weeks. So just keep all that in mind. Okay, so what is the protocol look like? It's based on 14 days on the calendar 12 days of those are in a significant deficit of 45%. And two of those are refeed days, where you come back up to your maintenance calories with mostly carbs. So it's the first four days you're in a deficit of 45%, then day five is a refeed. At maintenance, then the next four days 45%, then day 10 is a refeed of maintenance. And then the final four days you finish out the dieting phase. So that's it. Now, key to this are the macros, we want to keep the protein high. Now for this protocol, the target was one gram per pound. For me, that meant I started at 185, I expected to end at 180. So I just went with the 180 grams, you can do it at your current weight, your target, whatever, it's not going to be much difference because it's a short protocol anyway. And as you'll learn later, it may be more valuable to go with a higher target for protein, but at least that one gram per pound fats, somewhere between 20 and 30% of calories. So for me is was around 23%. And then carbohydrates are your remaining calories. So for me when you take it all together 2800 calorie expenditure 45% deficit I was eating, I was targeting 1500 40 calories on the deficit days, which is pretty low for me, and then back up to 2800 calories on the two refeed days. So if you want to set this up yourself, you're going to start with your current expenditure, your maintenance calories. And you're going to multiply by point five, five to get your calorie intake. Point five, five because you're going to be in a 45% deficit. So what's the opposite of 45% 55%? So multiply by point five, five. That's how much you're going to eat. On the deficit days, all right, then you're gonna set your protein, one gram per pound, based on your body weight, then you're gonna set your fat to 20 to 30% of the calories. And then your carbohydrates are the remaining calories. All this is spelled out in the guide, if you want that

Philip Pape  15:16

your training during fat loss is, in my opinion, continue doing what you're doing, assuming you're already following a program that is sufficiently stressful has progressive overload, and the appropriate load to cause you to get a muscle building signal. Okay, that's the principle of it. For me, personally, what did I do? Well, I was doing a three day per week full body program with three to four compound lifts, and one to two accessory movements. And a lot of the compound lifts were on a linear progression, because as I said, before I was recovering from surgery. So you're talking in one session, I might do safety bar squats, deadlifts, barbell rows, and then maybe some back work and some, you know, accessory like artwork, bicep, tricep work. So five or six movements, usually about 90 minute long sessions, but three days a week. Interestingly, now that I'm back to a slight surplus, I'm I'm now in a four day split. But I didn't want to change anything going to the fat loss phase, I wanted to balance recovery with intensity. Because the key here is to keep the training stimulus high. All right, my step count target was 12,000 steps per day. As you'll see, I came pretty close to that. And then, as I mentioned, what are the things we're going to measure? Right? When do we measure those things, we'll on the first day of the morning of the first day, and then the morning of the day, after the thing is done. You want to take your biofeedback. So that's your hunger, sleep, stress all of that, your body circumference measurements, and then calculate your body fat. So that's the beginning and the end. Every day during the challenge, you're also going to measure your scale weight, you're going to log your food, and then on training days, you're gonna log in training. So that's pretty much it. Okay, so I ran this from October 2 to Sunday. So that's a Monday through Sunday, October 15. And we're going to start with the food side of things here. So I mentioned what my intake targets were. And I'm going to tell you what my actual was, right. So I tracked everything. And I looked at my deficit days, my refeed days and my total average. So on deficit to sell deficit days, I was going for 1540 calories, I ended up at 1548. These are averages for the whole time. So that was pretty close, I was about 1% over, which is more, which is fine, I'm looking for within 5% and you good protein, I aimed for 180 grams, and I actually came in at around 170. So I was a little bit under at 94% of what I intended. So that right there stuck out to me as an opportunity in the future, if I were to do this, again to bump up the protein. All right, my refeed days kind of similar, I aimed for 2800 came in at 2802 On average, so I was pretty locked in on that. And then the protein was actually more than enough on those days at 193. So when you average it all out for the 14 days, here's what you get. My average target was 1720 calories. My actual was 1727 calories. So I was pretty much it rounds out to about 100% adherence, my protein target was 180 grams, my average was 172. So that was 96% of the target. fats and carbs are variable, they don't matter so much. What I did find is that on refeed days, I couldn't quite bump the carbs all the way up to my target, because some fat increased as well. But I think that's okay, as long as you have a nice bump in that those carbs for the refeed. Alright, so I want to dive in a little bit on the nutrition observations that I had from this microcut.

Philip Pape  18:43

Immediately on day one, I noticed that this was a serious deficit. If you go on one of these things, and you jump right away, you might notice that hunger, it's going to be different, you're going to have to plan your meals differently, you might end up cutting out a snack or meal. It's a big change. Right? I was I had been in a slight surplus above 2200 calories, and now I'm eating only 1540. So this required careful meal planning. That's one of my takeaways. It's not one of the seven lessons that I titled the show with that comes at the end. But there are actually a lot of lessons in here. So I could have called it like 27 lessons. Let's see. So even with meal planning, what does meal planning look like? For me? Well, I did a whole episode called the perfect meal plan where it's really very personalized to you and your goals. But for me, this is just what is a Monday through Friday look like? What am I going to eat? What am I going to eat? How many how am I getting my protein? It just kind of think about it and make sure I have the food and in the kitchen in the pantry in the fridge in the pantry. Okay. Now even when I did this, I had a few pre planned events. I had a couple nights out and visiting family that were already planned ahead. Right? If this was a perfect situation, you would have just total routine for two weeks and I think we had one or two challenge members that were in that situation. But life is life right and hey If you can handle this kind of phase, when life has been thrown at you like this, then you can handle anything. And my wife loves to cook for us. And so I never know quite what she's gonna make or in what quantities. But she always has some sort of meat, some sort of starch or green and then some sort of vegetable so and she's, she's cool that I don't like finish my plate, right? I kind of she serves to me, and then I kind of eat what makes sense for what I'm trying to hit for the day. And this is a flexible, sustainable approach. But it did result in a little bit of variance from my overall adherence day to day. But as I said earlier, at the end, at the end of it, I still was pretty close to 100% adherence. And we don't even need to be that precise, just kind of in the ballpark. Right. So I ended up getting the deficit I wanted with proper meal planning protein. Now, protein is the driving macro for muscle preservation, especially when you're in such a large deficit. So I aimed for that one gram per pound, I averaged point nine six gram per pound. And when I was in the deficit protein represented almost 50% of my calories. Whereas on refeed days, it's only like a quarter of your calories. So if I ran this protocol, again, I'd probably set my target to like 1.1 or 1.2 grams per pound, or even higher as a stretch goal or a real goal even to drive more precise meal planning and timing distribution and hit that target and really hold on to all that muscle. Okay, fats. So we all have fats. I mean, I'm a big meat eater. I like dairy. I prefer fattier cuts of meat fish. And I did make some changes, like I had some white fish instead of salmon, I bought some low fat dairy, like cottage cheese instead of full fat. The few incidences of dining out and meals that were not fully in my control, like, again, that lovely wife of mine who cooks resulted in a bit higher fat intake than planned. And I don't think this is a quote unquote, bad thing. It's just one of those preferences of mine that I can better account for. With future protocols like this, like maybe I will deliberately set my fat a little bit higher, knowing that the carbs come down a bit. On refeed days, I deliberately brought the fats up along with the carbs just because of the types of composition of foods I was eating. And I sort of violated the mostly carbs approach, but but not necessarily violating the spirit of a refeed, which is just getting all this extra energy in restoring your, your leptin and restoring your glycogen and all that. Okay. So if it sounds like I'm rationalizing, I'm really not, I'm just suggesting that you don't even have to be perfect, and you can still get great results. Carbs. So carbs were the sacrificial lamb on deficit days. So I went from a building phase where I was eating like 400 grams of carbs a day to now barely over 100 grams. So for me, that was like going to Quito, not quite, but still is a big adjustment. So what I did is I reduced to replace most starches and grains, not all right, because again, sustainability, you can include things in the right amounts. I replaced most of those with fruits or vegetables, mostly green vegetables. And fiber, which is a carb was essential for satiety, right for feeling full. So I added more vegetables to my lunch, my dinner to compensate for the fewer starches and grains with volume. So without increasing calories, and that is key here, right? On the refeed days, I just scaled up my routine carbs, like my morning oatmeal, I added grains and starches back into my Perry workout nutrition, my lunch, my dinner. So it's kind of fun actually, to see the extremes and kind of live those extremes within the two week period and, and play play around with it right and learn how to meal plan a little bit more effectively. Even after all this time that I've been doing it, there's always room for improvement. And going through this process continues to help me empathize with you as the listener who's trying to do this as well as my clients. So overall, for the nutrition, I was able to add here to the plan deficit and the refeed days within about 1% of the target. So energy wise, this was a success, I would say. Now, if I drilled it down into the macros, I was a little bit under on the protein, but still within 5% of the target. If I use the rough rule of thumb of 3500 calories to represent one pound of body mass change, if it crunch all the numbers, I would have expected 4.3 pounds of body mass weight loss. So 4.3 pounds of weight loss based on my intake. All right, and as we're going to talk about in a second, the actual weight loss was around four and a half to five pounds, which is actually really close to that expected value. And I found that all the other challenge participants to admit to a person had a similar result that whatever deficit they were in induced the expected loss, meaning this stuff is scientific. Now granted, that's a small sample size and this is a anecdotal. This is Not even a research study, right? But it's something that I would expect, it's not a surprise. All right, so moving on to the before and after measurements. As I mentioned before, you know, scale away expenditure circumference all these things, I'm just going to highlight a few key ones, I have a lot more detail behind this, but I don't want to bore you to death. If you're listening to this, and I'm losing you, hopefully not, this is interesting stuff. Let's start with weight. Okay, I measure myself on the home scale, and I measure myself with the InBody scale, the InBody scale was a tiny bit more, I was wearing clothes. And it was like point three pounds more. So it could have just been the clothes to be honest, where tolerance and the scales. So I'm gonna go with the home scale weight. When I started, I was 180 4.9 after the microcut 170 9.8. So that's a loss of 5.1 pounds on the scale. Now, since I was using macro factor, I also had my moving average weight called the trend Wait, I started at 180 3.9 ended at 180 1.1, which is a loss of 2.8 pounds. Now in reality, it's somewhere in between, because the full 5.1 pounds probably includes some water loss, and then the 2.8 pounds, because it's a moving average over three weeks, it was too short of duration for that to really update enough. So that's where I said, I think the true weight loss is around four and a half pounds, somewhere around that for four and a half, five pounds, you know, we're never going to be super precise, but that's in the ballpark. Now, interestingly, my expenditure dropped, okay, from 2800 calories to about 2600 calories. So about 200 Calorie drop, I would expect some metabolic adaptation. But I also know that this could this number could be driven by the large fluctuations going on. And I don't know how much to you know, trust it like did it really drop 200 calories, but everyone in the challenge, their expenditure dropped except one person. And so that's kind of to be expected circumference measurements, my waist dropped by 1.4 inches, my neck went down a little by a quarter inch, my chest went down by an inch, and then biceps went down barely like my point two inches and thighs went down by six, so all of them came down. If you lose fat, I would expect waist size to come down. So for me going from almost 34 inch waist to like 32 and a half inch waist in just two weeks. That's pretty cool, right? And a lot of people are looking for a quick fat loss get in get out, no big deal, I can handle the deficit for a short duration. That's really the point of all this is to see if this is effective. So waist measurement is a good indication of that. The fact of my biceps went down a tiny bit and my thighs went down a bit. Maybe that's an indication of fat loss or muscle loss. It's really hard to tell, you know, in the short duration

27:33

Hello, my name is Isaiah Silverado. And I just wanted to say a big, big thank you to Philip pape, for Wits & Weights for creating this challenge and given us the opportunity to expand our comfort zone. And for all the support that he gave us throughout the challenge. He was also there doing it with us and always sharing amazing information support, and given us the courage to do something that probably wouldn't have done by ourselves, and the inspiration to try something different to test our limit. And definitely to improve not only our bodies, but also our mindset when it comes to healthy lifestyles, and what can we do to make ourselves better. So thank you.

Philip Pape  28:31

So body composition I mentioned earlier, I used both the Navy formula and the in body scan. So according to the Navy formula, my body fat decreased by 2.13%. And my lean body mass went up by point six pounds, which I wouldn't quite believe I would expect a drop in lean body mass. So again, that could be this could have to do with fluid changes and the fact that I'm using a tape measure in precision, but there were some at least decrease in body fat, which is important. And we know this because my waist came down the InBody scan said my body fat percentage went down by 1%. And I lost a pound of skeletal muscle mass. I don't think I lost a full pound of muscle mass. And there's also body water loss in there of point two pounds, right. So what I did is I averaged the two together just to be conservative here. If you average them, my body fat came down by 1.6%. That's 3.6 pounds of body fat. And my lean mass came down by point three pounds. So if we're going to do ranges here, we would say okay, I probably lost three or four pounds of fat. And I lost maybe a half a pound to a pound of muscle. And that's anywhere from a three to one to four or five to one ratio. Is that good or bad? I don't know. I think it's not bad. I think it's pretty good. I think on a traditional fat loss phase, you would expect something like two to one, maybe three to one if you're lucky. So on a bridged fat loss phase like this, to get a Three to one or even four to one, I think is a sign of success, I would have loved to lose zero lean mass. And maybe I did, maybe it didn't, it's very hard to tell, I do know that my training started to plateau at the end there. And I lost a rep or two, whether that's us due to body mass or skeletal muscle loss, or a significant drop in energy, because I was just not eating very many calories. Again, it's very hard to tell all of this stuff, which is why we take it all with a grain of salt. And we, you know, we don't assume the extremes, we assume it's somewhere in the middle. And if you're happy with that, kind of in the middle result, then it was successful that that's sort of my take on that. Okay, so I kind of touched on these, but just to review some of the details underneath, you know, body weight, body weight fluctuates dramatically from day to day, I mentioned earlier, the weight, what podcast, the reason I wanted to mention is they talk about that all the time, they're Lea and KAMNA, they talk about how weight changes for lots of different reasons, right, not just from fat accumulation, or loss, changes in fluid, changes in glycogen, inflammation, fat, mass, all these things affect your body mass. And that's why I like to take measurements every day. If you take it every day, you can a observe the large variations that are not due to fat mass changes, right? Because it's impossible to you know, gain or lose a pound every day constantly, unless you're over consuming by 1000s and 1000s of calories every day, or vice versa. So that's the first one and then B, you're able to calculate a moving average based on daily data points, and get this more conservative realistic view of true changes in fat mass. Alright, so I mentioned my weight decreased about four to 5%, four to five pounds. So it may have been anywhere from three to five pounds. We talked about the expenditure, the decrease of 200 calories, you know, indicates rapid metabolic adaptation in some way, whether it's really 200 or 200, or 300, it's still a lot, it's a lot faster than I would get on a normal fat loss phase. So that's something to be aware of. And that's with increasing my step count going into the fat loss phase as well. Okay, we talked about body fat, I think body fat is kind of a controversial thing to measure. In general, I don't always recommend even even caring about it, so to speak, I'd rather you go by how you feel in your clothes, and how you look and how you're performing and all those things, you know, how your clothes fit, and so on. But we all like these numbers. So there's a million ways to measure body fat calipers. bioimpedance scales, DEXA, Bod Pod dunk tank, all of this. And they all are prone to some level of error in terms of the absolute value. However, they tend to be a bit more reliable at indicating the trend when the same machine is used by the same person under similar conditions from one observation to the next. Now personally, I do prefer to use the Navy formula, because it's convenient. It's simple, it's just simple math based on tape measurements. And I've compared its results to other methods in the past even bod pod. And I found that the change is pretty much in parallel with those changes, meaning it's super reliable. So even though I did take the embody scan for this at the request of Dr. Campbell, and I get why he wanted me to do it, because of the ability to measure water change. My inner skepticism led me to also do the tape measurements and use the Navy formula, right just to compare them. And that's why I average the two to be conservative. So I already talked about how maybe I lost some muscle, maybe I didn't and how much I lost is up for debate, but also the last punch of fat, which was the point. So the two things that affect that, for this type of microcut are going to be the protein and your training. So if I eat more protein, or if I had had a closer to maximal intensity in my training, maybe I would have had less muscle loss, right. And that's always something to try out in the future if I ever run something like this again. So overall, I do count this fat loss phase as mostly successful because it did induce a rapid loss in fat that was in line with the expected from the deficit while minimizing muscle loss, right. But if I increase the protein increase the training, maybe more muscle could be preserved. So then this takes us to biofeedback. When you're in a fat loss phase, whether it's a normal one a mini cut or micro cut, it is typical to expect some sort of decline in various measures of biofeedback because your energy availability is declining. And the body is trying to compensate, it starts to become more efficient, it shuts things down, it down regulates your hormones, all of that stuff, you know, you don't have enough glycogen in your system. So now you're gonna get more drained when you go train. And it's good to track this stuff. I track this stuff with my clients weekly, so that we can use that as a data point of how what they're doing and what they're eating affects their body. So I like to measure seven indicators and For this challenge, or for this microcut, I did before the challenge, and I did it after the challenge. So I measured hunger, sleep, stress, energy, mood, digestive recovery. And I'm not going to go through all of them here. But the biggest declines were hunger, energy, and recovery. So with the hunger, I definitely felt it on day one, but it was manageable. And then, as early as day three, I really got more frequent hunger, it was both the physical hunger because you don't have calories coming in. But also, I'll be honest, emotional or psychological hunger, because of number one, I was reducing how often I was eating. So now my body was thinking habitually, like, where's the snack that I'm expecting at 3pm, for example, and that's kind of more of a emotional hunger really, because of the habit. Also, I reduced the amount of indulgences I had. And so some of my cravings weren't being satisfied as much as before. Not completely, though. I didn't eliminate them completely. Because that's, that's always the wrong approach to say, like, just cut everything out. No, no, no, no, no, we don't do that. We say okay, what can we fit in? Or what is kind of similar to our other indulgences, right, like yogurt might be similar to ice cream, maybe you don't want the ice cream, but you can have the older. So hunger went down from a self rated 10 out of 10. Like I had zero hunger before this, because I was in a surplus, I was doing great. And afterward, I would say it was a four, like it really, the hunger really ramped up, especially the final like two or three days, again, physically and psychologically, because I'm anticipating the end of the cut. So that's hunger, energy, and recovery also dropped. So energy went from a nine to a five, and recovery went from an eight to a six. The energy early on, it wasn't affected, right, I think for the first week, plus, everything felt great energy felt good. My training felt fine, didn't feel affected by the last four day deficit block to things I was feeling more apathetic in the morning, like, just not as motivated. And that was unusual for me. I mean, if you listen to this podcast, and you see what kind of, you know, high energy guy I am, I tend to be like that, right? From the time I get up until almost the time I go to bed. I mean, I do get I do drag a little at night, like most of us do. But in this case, I felt apathetic in the morning, which was unusual. And and then I would really dragging in the evening, I mean, really just feeling exhausted.

Philip Pape  37:25

Of course, from the lack of energy, obviously. And what I did, though, is when I felt that way, I would go for a walk. It sounds counterintuitive, right? Because you don't have the energy. So how do you have energy for a walk, but no, walking doesn't take a lot of energy. I went for a walk. And guess what, it improved my mood dramatically. It really did. So walking, I think as an added to antidote to lots of things related to mood anxiety, depressive symptoms of depression, and so on, give it a shot when other things don't seem to be working. And then my recovery also took a hit. As my performance dropped as my glycogen was depleted. And it started to feel like the next training session was I was kind of like, falling behind. If that makes sense. Like, I would start the training session already feeling like I had been training, as opposed to feeling super fresh. So all of these are symptoms to be expected. You know, hunger, especially is an indication something's happening. But we want to find ways to mitigate it as much as possible and deal with it in constructive positive ways so that we can execute our plan as we intent. Having said that, would I do a two week fat loss phase? Again, I'm not sure. I'm really not sure. Some people in the challenge said this was awesome. Like, I didn't feel much hunger, it was fast, it was over with quickly. And they will do it again. Now, I probably if I ate more protein, like a lot more protein, and I was training normally and all that, maybe next time I do it, I wouldn't feel it as much, for example, because we know protein is a really good way to make you full to increase your satiety. And so that one variable right there could make a lot of difference. Okay, so about my training, I mentioned before, I have this consistent three day full body routine. I already told you about the lifts and what's in there, so I'm not gonna repeat that. But I kept that I did those Monday, Wednesday, Friday, both weeks are good. And then I maintained an average step count of 12,637. So my target was 12, I hit 12.6. My range was the low day was 9.6, the high day was 15.4. Again, you don't have to get exactly 12 Every day, just you know, some variation is perfectly fine as long as you average out to what you're intending. Okay, so that was my personal experience. And now I want to talk about the experience from the challenge to see how other people did because it was actually quite similar to my results, which gives you a little bit of comfort in knowing that this is a fairly predictable thing like if you follow the protocol, you're probably gonna get probably going to get similar results knowing that everybody is different. And as I mentioned before, seven participants went all the way through completed it provided their data, which is actually more than I expected. I expected maybe a couple People because it's it's a lot like I asked for a lot of data. And they were committed, they made it happen. We had a, we had a group chat going on where you could ask questions, I could do some coaching, we could send videos, it was a lot of fun, we'll probably do it again. If you like stuff like that, join the Wits, & Weights, community Wits, & Weights on Facebook, we're gonna do stuff like that for sure. Also, my coaching program, I may, I may introduce like a semi private version of coaching that has that similar feel, if you're interested in that reach out to me, because I'm only going to do it if I have enough people interested for right now my focus is mostly one on one. But in a semi private program, I would still probably have a one on one piece to it, or an option for it like different tiers of coaching. So anyway, I'm getting off track, seven participants completed what I call the shred Tober, 14 Day Fat Loss annihilation challenge, you know, nice clickbaity name. All the participants consented to share their data in aggregated anonymized form. And that's what I'm going to use right now. So first, looking at the weight and measurement and expenditure changes, all right, it's not going to be nearly as much details as for my own, we're going to keep a high level here. So for body weight scale weight, the minimum loss was 1.8, the maximum weight loss was 7.2 pounds, the average was 4.2 pounds. More importantly, is the percent, the average percent weight loss was 2.8. So that's pretty good. 2.8% weight loss in just two weeks. Now, if you just do simple math, that means 1.4% a week. If you've listened to me before, you know that we never want to go more than 1% a week of weight loss when we're in a normal fat loss phase. But I've also explained that for this microcut, you're going to end up around 1.2 to 1.4. And guess what the average was 1.4. In reality, awesome. Like the stuff works. Okay, so 2.8% weight loss on average circumference measurements, average waist size drop of 1.4 inches, or about 4% average hips drop decreased. This is women only of about an inch or 2.2%. The expenditure was kind of weird, because the the minimum loss was actually a gain. So one person actually their expenditure went up 76 calories, the biggest loss one person dropped 500 calories. Now, the caveat here is if you hadn't been using macro factor for very long before starting, it may not have calculated your true expenditure yet. And so whatever number it had in there could have been artificially high or low, and therefore the delta at the end was artificially off. So I'm not going to read too much into it. But if you take the average drop in expenditure was 176 calories, or 7%. Mine was 200. So it's kind of in that ballpark, maybe you could expect the same. And if that happens, just know what that means in terms of your your calories. Now, we did not adjust our calories during this fat loss phase, we kept it exactly the same. So it didn't really matter whether it went up or down for your expenditure, like it normally would, over a longer phase where you're adjusting it weekly, or at least with me, you're adjusting it weekly. So that's pretty cool. All right, then, as far as the intake, so I actually split this into two groups, out of the seven people, a few didn't adhere fully like they were actually over on their calories. And and the rest did. So if I were to take just the full adherents group, their average adherence was one to 1.8%. So it was pretty close, right? Their average protein adherence was 98.7%. If I took all the participants average, the adherence was a little high, it was 110 7.7. But the protein was and the protein was a little low 96.1. Interestingly, if you dig into the data, though, even the few people that didn't fully adhere, they still got great results. Which the takeaway again, is you don't have to be perfect, because this is so so large of a deficit, even if you don't quite hit it, you're probably way beyond what you normally would be and you're still gonna get great results. But the main thing is to keep the protein on. Okay. So the last thing about the challenge is, I actually asked some more self reflective questions in the final survey, and then I summarize these and to get you what the themes were of the challenge. So there were four themes that emerged. The first one is that most participants saw noticeable fat loss, especially around the midsection. Great, that's what we're going for. Many participants learned the value of high protein diets and had an increase in their nutritional education in terms of making a calorie deficit more manageable. Awesome. That's what I'm all about. Let's learn. The third theme is improved self confidence. Some people found that discipline from the challenge had a ripple effect on their mental well been, um, I even got a personal video from someone in the challenge thanking me specifically for that, that they did not expect to learn so much about their, their mental state and actually improve them for the better because they found what they were made of, they found what how they can push the limits with support, and what they what they like and what they don't what they can and can't do, and, and actually improve their mental state, which I love. And then the last thing was making progress, most participants said they had met their goals, which weren't always the fat loss it might have been, but it could have also been body recomp staying on target with their macros, you know, getting a Kickstart to further fat loss, whatever. Most people said, yeah, they met what their goal was for the challenge. Now, I also ask them about their next goal. And it's interesting, because it's, it was either up to lean bulk or body recomposition. I do feel like somebody said they wanted to continue fat loss. But I sort of cautioned against it. Because once you've gone through such an aggressive to weak phase, my suggestion is to recover out of it first before you then resume into like a normal fat loss phase. If you want to do a go fast, then go slow approach, I wouldn't go this aggressively or this fast to start because I think you get too much adaptation too quickly, too much of a draining energy, and then you don't give yourself a chance to recover. So that's just my two cents. So some participants wanted to go to a lean bulk, right, they wanted to go back to a slight South calorie surplus. And some people wanted to do some body recomp go back to maintenance. Also, a lot of people wanted to just find a more sustainable rhythm, since they had now learned some really good tools for choosing foods in the extremes. And then carrying those principles into a much less extreme environment that actually makes it really easy.

Philip Pape  46:43

I also asked about their training just to make sure everybody's training the way they want it to. And there are a whole mix of programs. But the recurring theme was progressive overload. And training four to six days was very common. So which makes a lot of sense, because a lot of my community members and clients are already say, late novice or intermediate trainees who are up to like 40 splits or five day power building programs or 60, bodybuilding programs, things like that. And so that's pretty common. I didn't want any newbies who'd never trained doing this challenge. daily steps, the average step count ranged from four to 14 and a half and the group average was 10.1k. So 10,107 steps, and then everyone seemed to be committed to maintaining some level of daily activity, regardless of the step count. What did participants love the most two things, community and simplicity. They loved the group setting, the accountability, the motivation, it kept everyone going and engaged. And we talked every day. And when people were down on themselves a little bit, we lifted them up, it's awesome. The second thing was simplicity, several people found that this challenge was easier to adhere to than expected. And that was a huge one because I didn't, you know, I didn't know it was gonna happen. But within about four or five days, people are saying, You know what, this isn't so bad. Like it's a big deficit. But we've got the support or eat a lot of protein, we're learning to choose foods for satiety, and volume and so on. We're training, wow, this is like the right way to do it, even though it's very fast, abridged way to do it. Okay. So that's the challenge results. I hope that was enlightening in some way to give you some relief to know that this is doable, and it doesn't have to feel extreme. And so, you know, based on my personal anecdotal experience, in myself experiment, based on the experience of the challenge, and all these wonderful people in our community, I think that a rapid fat loss phase can be an effective way to lose fat quickly while preserving muscle mass. Now, now, there are some limitations of this. So before we get to the findings, and my recommendations, the short duration means that large scales, large swings and scale weight for reasons other than body fat can actually have a larger impact on the measurements in that short period than if you were in a longer fat loss phase, right? Like your weight is more sensitive to those. So that's one thing to watch out for. The second thing is body fat measurement is just not precise. I'm not going to beat a dead horse already talked about that. The third is I didn't fully adhere to the protein intake, I was like 4% under. So I might have been had better results. If I had like with my lean mass retention. The next one is that expenditure data may not be quite reflective of reality, because of how rapidly everything was changing. And this the main thing is that this could affect how you calculate your calories and macros coming out of the diet post diet recovery. In that case, I would recommend just going back to what your maintenance was two weeks before initially and then letting it kind of catch up to where your to maintenance is. The other thing is and this is really important. So let's listen to me carefully here. If you're thinking oh, I really want to do this. This protocol can be challenging for people who are not physiologically or mentally prepared to execute it. properly. So before everyone throws their hands up and says, Oh man, this is like rapid dieting. This is Quick Fix crash dieting. Hopefully I've indicated through all this episode that that's not the case. But I do want you to be prepared. These are some things that could happen if you don't execute it properly. Okay? The first is you're gonna get much greater muscle loss. If you don't have enough protein intake, you're going to lose a bunch of muscle when you go this quickly. It's why most fat loss faces are not anywhere near this, you might get micronutrient deficiencies, if you don't choose nutrient dense foods, you're gonna get an energy deficiency. And if you don't do it, right, it could affect your training. It could recap, refractory recovery, and biofeedback more than it would otherwise, you're going to get faster metabolic adaptation, right than typical fat loss phases. So don't look at this as jumpstart, look at this as one and done, get back and recover. You could be prone to binge eating, if the hunger becomes overwhelming. Now, you shouldn't have this if you're training and eating the protein and walking and all that and choosing foods the right way. But if anything is not done correctly, you get the same result that you do in a crash diet where you just get so ravenous that you overeat. Right, and we don't want to do that. Another thing is the temptation to continue past the 14 days, right? Oh, I'm on day 14, it hasn't been so bad. And look at all this weight loss. Let me go another week. And then another week after that, no, don't do that. That's, that's not sustainable at the end of the day. Um, I'm not I mean, I'm not going to discourage personal self experimentation, whatever you want to do. It's your choice. But for this protocol, I would not recommend continuing period. And then the last thing is that the refeed days may not be sufficient. If you don't foetal it fully take advantage of them. So let's say you don't quite eat up to the calories, or you don't really increase the carbs that much. Well, you're not getting the benefit of the refeed day. All right, so not doom and gloom. Here are my recommendations. Well, here are a couple findings. And then my seven lessons that you've all been waiting for, okay? The the very short duration, the 14 days might be an acceptable trade off with the significant calorie deficit. Because the symptoms of biofeedback, right hunger, poor sleep, poor energy, mood recovery, the loss of strength, are either going to be very short lived, like you might not even notice them until toward the end of the two weeks, or minimized altogether, you may not have them at all, like some people didn't experience hunger, right. So that's kind of where this trade off comes in. This phase is not, you know, quote unquote, sustainable in the sense that you could continue it beyond this period without significant muscle loss, but the principles can still be applied. And by pushing the limits like we do here, you can still learn a ton about yourself, which is where I think the value is. Okay, so here are my seven lessons or recommendations for anyone who's following this protocol, you ready? Number one, I would increase protein even further than the one gram per pound, I would aim for 1.2 to 1.5. Just aim for it. If you fall short, you'll fall about where you need to be. And if you hit it, you might find even better results in terms of lean mass retention. So it doesn't hurt to try that number to

Philip Pape  53:08

select all of your foods based on satiety and nutrient density. So when you're doing your meal plan, every time you make a choice, think about its ability to keep you full. So things like protein, things like white potatoes, right? And nutrient density doesn't have a lot of nutrients it fruits, vegetables and so on. The third lesson is to just it's kind of related to what I just said. But it's a very specific recommendation for everybody. Increase your consumption of fibrous vegetables in high volume foods period. Okay, and whether or not that like ties into satiety index or nutrient density, it will, but I want you to just think of every opportunity throughout the day snacks, lunch, dinner to throw in greens, greens, greens, veggies, all the veggies that you love, raw cooked whatever, you know, keep them steamed or roasted with minimal oils, and high volume foods, things with water soups, just like throw those all into your meal plan right from day one, it's going to help a lot. Number four, try shifting the refeed days around your hardest training days. Now in this protocol, the refeed days were fixed to days five and 10. But why not experiment? Maybe you shifted up one day or back one day and see if it aligns better with your training because in my case, it didn't always line up. And I probably could have gotten more use out of a refeed day if it was shifted by one day. So that that's a more advanced thing to try that that's what I would do next time. Number five, get enough sleep please. This is always important. But really look at your calendar and plan out this fat loss phase on it's in a time where you can definitely get the full seven, eight hours of sleep or even more every single day because it's gonna go a long way in terms of your expenditure, your recovery, your energy, how you feel everything and your mental state. Number six, maintain a high training stimulus. Okay, that's That's by default as part of this challenge, but balanced the volume for recovery. So just be aware that if you are training six days a week, or five days a week right now, and you continue that into the fat loss phase, you may have a lot of volume. You may I don't know, I don't know what your program looks like. I mean, if they're 30 minute sessions, you may not but if they're like typical power building sessions, you'd have to cut something out and plan to do that. But still keep the compound lifts and the low rep high intensity stuff in there. Okay. And then number seven, maintain a high step count, no matter what, and I would aim for at least 12,000. If you can get something like 15,000 On average, to increase your energy flux, your metabolic rate and avoid all of the other cardio, it may help even more. Right. So those are my seven lessons. There are probably a lot more with everything else I said today. And again, if you want the Rapid Fat Loss guide, you go to wits & weights.com/free. Okay, so there you have it, everything you could possibly know about doing a rapid fat loss phase or a micro cut, so you can make your own informed decision about whether it's right for you. And again, if you want the exact protocol, just click the link in my show notes will go to wits & weights.com/free, and look for the free Rapid Fat Loss guide. In our next episode 117 Starting strength the novice effect and barbell lifts with Cody anino Cody and I talk about the transformative power of barbell training, you'll learn the principles and benefits of the starting strength program. Very popular one that I followed that I recommend to so many people because it's so effective. You'll learn some common misconceptions about strength training, and the critical, crucial novice effect. We'll compare different training methods look at how barbell training impacts mental health and touch on the future of online versus in person coaching in the fitness world. As always, stay strong. And I'll talk to you next time here on the Wits & Weights podcast. Thank you for tuning in to another episode of Wits & Weights if you found value in today's episode, and know someone else who's looking to level up their Wits & Weights, please take a moment to share this episode with them. And make sure to hit the Follow button in your podcast platform right now to catch the next episode. Until then, stay strong

Ep 115: How Tony Lost 15 Lbs, 8% Body Fat, and Built Lifelong Strength with Barbell Training

Today, I’m sitting down with my friend, fellow lifter, and client, Tony Perri. We first met in Andy Baker’s Barbell Club, where we soon realized our unique personalities complemented and pushed each other to new heights of strength, health, and physique.  In this episode, we’ll discuss his transformative journey, the intricacies of nutrition and barbell training, and the mental hurdles. Tony’s insights, which at this point are at the core of his being, could radically change your perspective and approach to fitness, nutrition, and health.

Tony played various sports throughout his life. In his 30s, he competed in obstacle course races after doing calisthenics for a few years. He realized that functional bodyweight training and occasional competitions provided diminishing returns and little carryover to regular life.  Barbell training became his central training mode due to its incredible carryover and longevity benefits. It boosts his confidence, making him a better spouse, father, and business operator.
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Today you’ll learn all about:

[3:55] Evolution of fitness interests over a decade
[6:14] Decision to embrace barbell training
[8:03] The guiding role of curiosity in life
[10:44] How discipline in the gym translates to life
[16:28] What was and wasn’t learned from a nutritionist
[19:06] Reasoning for not seeking a coach in Starting Strength
[24:07] The balance between making progress and hitting PRs, and being your own worst critic
[31:11] Combining intuitive eating and tracking for nutrition
[38:14] The role of nutrition and sleep in recovery
[42:36] Overcoming mental hurdles during a cut
[45:54] Top three educational takeaways from body composition improvement
[54:28] Mental challenges and breakthroughs in barbell training
[57:22] Unexpected benefits of switching to barbell training
[1:06:50] What question did Tony wish Philip had asked
[1:11:02] How to connect with Tony
[1:12:36] Outro

Episode resources:

• Wits & Weights Facebook community – say hi to Tony

• Baker Barbell Club – Andy Baker’s community that Tony and I are in; recommended for ALL lifters who want effective programming

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Transcript

Tony Perri  00:00

barbell training is not just about the muscles. I can't stand when I even hate saying that because it's about tissues. It's about the tendons, the ligaments. It's about the neurological changes the metabolic change. It's about so many more things than just muscle. And I think I think once I realized that I realized that it was a lot more than just moving load.

Philip Pape  00:24

Welcome to the Wits & Weights podcast. I'm your host, Philip pape, and this twice a week podcast is dedicated to helping you achieve physical self mastery by getting stronger. Optimizing your nutrition and upgrading your body composition will uncover science backed strategies for movement, metabolism, muscle and mindset with a skeptical eye on the fitness industry, so you can look and feel your absolute best. Let's dive right in Wits & Weights community Welcome to another episode of the Wits & Weights Podcast. Today I am sitting down with my friend, fellow lifter and client Tony Perry. We first met in any Baker's barbell Club, where we soon realized our unique personalities complemented and pushed each other to new heights of strength, health and physique. He would constantly tell me how weak I was triggering the deeply competitive nature of me to keep improving my list, and I would shake my head at his revulsion to carbs to the point where eventually we both realized each of us was right. What we have in common is a love for the process and self improvement, a curiosity for learning about ourselves as individuals and in particular men getting older who want to be strong and capable for the rest of our lives. When he finally saw the light and realize he wanted to learn more about nutrition to gain control over his body fat and health. We worked together on what turned out to be a mini cut for six weeks, where he lost 15 pounds of fat four inches in his waist size at 8% body fat, which is a huge improvement in body composition and physique. His blood pressure resting heart rate even came down, he increased his carbs maintain most of his strength during the cut. Most importantly, Tony was extremely curious throughout the process, always asking great questions as we discovered his individual body's response along the way so we can make better adjustments. In this episode, we'll discuss his transformative journey, the intricacies of nutrition and barbell training and the mental hurdles along the way. Tony's insights which at this point are at the core of his being could radically change your perspective and approach to fitness, nutrition and health. A bit about Tony, Tony has been active all his life playing different sports including racquetball tennis, mountain biking, road biking and running. In his 30s. He did a few years of calisthenics, where he competed in obstacle course races before realizing that functional bodyweight training occasional competitions provided diminishing returns and very little carryover to regular life. Once he began barbell training in his late 30s, it became a central mode of training due to its incredible carryover and longevity benefits. Tony packed on muscle and some fat, and learn that his ability to be strong is dependent on his ability to recover, both of which are dependent on the quality of his nutrition and sleep. Since barbell training is a mental activity expressed physically, the challenge to continually drive progress has boosted his confidence, making him a better spouse, father and business operator Tony, my brother, welcome to the big time.

Tony Perri  03:19

Phillip, how are we doing?

Philip Pape  03:21

How's it going? Man? You have to sit there and take it but you know that is the story.

Tony Perri  03:25

Not bad. You're weak bastard. Not bad, not bad.

Philip Pape  03:29

Get stronger every day. No,

Tony Perri  03:31

we're trying you all try you do impress me. Hey, man,

Philip Pape  03:35

we impress each other.

Tony Perri  03:35

So he should compliment you.

Philip Pape  03:37

Yeah, just rankles. You. I know.

Tony Perri  03:39

But you so you do impress me. So.

Philip Pape  03:42

So Tony and I have have a good sense of humor, which I really appreciate. Because, you know, there's a lot of just not gonna use the word but they are out in the world that just don't. Don't. And we try to keep it light. Yeah. All right. So so to start with the personal side, before we dive into the specific experience here with nutrition. You know, I mentioned in the intro, how your interests have evolved over over over about a decade plus, right, you used to do functional training the OCR hours, and you trade differently today. So tell us about that transition

Tony Perri  04:13

in a bit more detail. I did the I did the OCR hours. After I did calisthenics, because it was a lot of fun. Naturally, I'm pretty athletic. So I did very well in that form of training. But the biggest downfall with that I realized was it was external validation. I would go to the gym and I would change up the workout every single day and I would do all sorts of different stuff. And people would say, well, that's cool or this and that and I did improve at certain things. I did great at OCRs. But you mentioned my my perspective evolved and it was really based in realizing that what I was doing a was only fun in the moment and be I did it because I liked the audience. And so there was no satisfaction, the diminishing returns added up really quickly for me. So there was a whole, there was a, there was a really big fitness hole of my life and they didn't really know what that was. So

Philip Pape  05:16

then so really two good things that are right one, the idea that you can have fun, but at the end of the day, it's not really fun, because it's this instant gratification type of fun. Like, that's what it was. Yeah, kind of like, you know, I talked about people say, Well, isn't it hard to do this or that? Like, in the moment? It's hard, the long term, it's fun here, you're talking? Well, at the moment, it's fun, but long term, what are you getting out of it? Right,

Tony Perri  05:37

I trained I did a lot of running for my training. And that's one of the reasons I was so successful in my OCR is I was always top five. I trained as running mostly I would do six miles seven, eight miles, I did a 13 mile, you know, I think it was an eight minute mile, maybe 730 minute mile. But um, that was probably the hardest I worked at that time. But after I after I got to a certain point in running. Again, there was a there was a void in me, I'm like, I don't want to just run and I don't want to flip around. I don't want to work toward one headed. Yeah, pull ups. So there's just a void that was not filled.

Philip Pape  06:14

Alright, so you've got that this void this emotional void? Not necessarily enjoying your training? What was the internal switch or the revelation that led you to embrace Barbie

Tony Perri  06:24

object specific like the objectivity? Well, we all I'm gonna say a general statement. When we strength trained long term we like we do it for the durability, it makes us stronger, we feel more durable, we feel better, all that. I like, the objectivity of barbell training. Once I started to NLP, I was hooked. Because I had data on the improvement or the regression. never recorded myself every single, every set, probably to a fault, because I overthought it but I can see, again, I had that I could see what I was doing. Because in my head, I'm like, I just squatted this, right. And I think I sent you a video a while ago of my squat, like it's 2017. And I looked at the video, and it was terrible, really not depth. Oh, my foot. I wasn't over there was over my mid foot wasn't bracing, right. So from the data point of barbell training, offered me objective data for improvement. And I really latched on to that, because before that point, again, it was very immediate gratification. It was subjective, it was what I wanted to do that day and didn't work. So horrible training, really, that produced the data, no matter how I felt, when I walked into the gym, no matter. You know, when I walked in, or when I walked out, I looked at the paper, and I'm like, Okay, this is this is the progression of the regression. And that was that void that was filled. It was showing me okay, this is, this is actual data of what you're doing. Right? I don't do the workout of the day thing. I don't do the subjectivity of feel like doing this. That doesn't work for me. That was that was the switch, you asked about the switch? That was the switch? Yeah, I

Philip Pape  08:04

can relate to that. Tony is I mean, we probably had very similar experiences where you almost dread the workout of the day, but knowing that you just added five pounds and did it again. And again. Now you're like, Well, I want to go in there. So if I can keep that move it, you know, added a

Tony Perri  08:19

pound added a rep added a set, I shortened the rest times, I switched up these two exercises. And even though, you know, the first exercise was was was second last week, I maintained the load, right? There's all these different ways that you can progress. And that was really key for me, because I had evidence, it was actual objective evidence of progress.

Philip Pape  08:39

Yeah, let you know how much I love data and talk about it all the time. And I think a lot of people conflate data with obsession, whereas in reality, when they start tracking data, they realize it sort of liberates, the uncertainty liberates you from the uncertainty, the ambiguity. And you talk about objectivity. It's the microcosm of that is a single squat or single rep. And I haven't talked about that in a while. So I'm glad you brought that up. The idea that even when we do a squat, our form is done in a way to ensure objectivity from rep to rep. Right. So even consensus microcosm, which you won't get from, I don't know, box chunks, or something.

Tony Perri  09:17

No, no, I mean, even with this is, again, why I record myself to ensure that that consistency, because say you go from 100 pounds, one week to 105 to 110. But you're inching up, up, up, okay? You have evidence that you're not progressing. You're reducing the load, that's a stress stimulus is going down. So you got to maintain all the same parameters, and then progress progress, which is why I'm a big fan of recording. I mean, yeah, different angles. Look at him.

Philip Pape  09:48

Yeah, I mean, that's a good point. It's not just are you progressing but are you regressing and then you can decide what's causing that.

Tony Perri  09:54

You can tell yourself so much and you're you could you could convince yourself of so much record one set. Look at yourself, look at your hips now go from this angle. The bars traveling forward, you may not you may you may think my squat is great. And then you look at his side view the bars traveling forward and it's like, yeah,

Philip Pape  10:11

totally agree. If you're listening to this, do that, like in your next workout, literally record yourself and be your own worst critic, and then feel free to share it with others who might be able to give you exactly the

Tony Perri  10:21

point prove yourself wrong. I look for it. I love it. And it's sometimes the guts me because I'm feeling great about a lift. And I'm like, I have a little bit of doubt. And I'm like, You got to record yourself from this angle. Look for this one thing, ya know, it feels good. You feel like everything's working? Well look at it, because reality is going to tell you. Yeah, reality is going to tell you whether or not it actually you just got to listen. Yeah.

Philip Pape  10:45

Now this this newfound love for the process and objectivity and data. Did it have the reverse effect on you as well of translating into your philosophy or approach to life in general? Like, you know, we can call it discipline but whatever word you want to use? Yeah, yeah. Yeah.

Tony Perri  11:01

Yeah, you know, me at this point a little better than than many people but it barbell training the the not let giving yourself and out and barbell training and being very aggressive and looking for the ugly things and doing the hard work, the grind, the grind, that fit that fit me, it really fit my personality. So from there, that was the that was the athletic void that was filled. And I could be a critical bastard with myself. And I'm I mean, that's why I don't mind being a critical bastard with other people. Because guess what I am that? Yeah, like, so it's like I will, I don't shield myself from any ugly critique, I will look for it. And be you know, and look for those flaws. Because once you find those flaws, I was just explaining to my son this morning, when you're solving the problem, the hardest part is finding the problem. Once you identify the problem, and you can solve it, your most of your work is going to be doing looking and searching for what the problem is. And then you can say, Okay, this is the problem. And this is how we problem solve it. I do that with training all the time. Again, it's a mental activity, expressed physically, I'm very mental about it. It is not a it's not a physical or emotional thing. It's how can I problem solve these things? Look for the flaw. Once I find the flaw, I can fix it. We just talked about it after I was doing my cut. My squat was terrible. And then I figured out who was my leverages that were way. And I've never been in that position before. So I had to think about it. And once I figured that out, other things came together. Just fantastic. Yeah. And I'm already back to where I started.

Philip Pape  12:33

I think it's a principle based approach, because you said you got to do a brand new experience and a new problem that you've never encountered before. But rather than think, okay, there's something wrong with me, or there's something wrong with the process. It was, there's a new problem that just needs a solution. Right? Yeah, absolutely. Which applies to everything about nutrition and everything else.

Tony Perri  12:52

So absolutely. Yeah. I don't assume I know the answer. I'm like, What's the what is it? That's why I I will ask people at the gym are very respectful about it. And you know, as people, I'll seek out your advice, what's your perspective on this? What am I not seeing? Just so I can see it and then move forward? That's it. Yeah. Ego in there. There's no it's

Philip Pape  13:11

curiosity. It's pure curiosity, which is Yeah, so you go curiosity. Yeah, I feel that. Yeah, I feel that. So you mentioned it being a grind. And I know you weren't necessarily saying that in a negative, you were just more of a momentum and persistence perspective, but just explain that to people who may be hesitant about even getting into barbell training they could think is this really hard to say? It's,

Tony Perri  13:32

it's hard to get around the fact that barbell training is hard. I embrace the fact that it's hard. And I actually am one of the people who really liked that grind, though hard, hard work. I like to be in the trenches. I don't like to be, I don't like to have too much of a tailwind. I'd like to be working against something. Because, again, when you're working against something, that's what resists your will. And that's what allows your will to exert itself even harder. When things are not that hard. We're not going to work as hard to overcome them. So I always I like to have the challenge. I like to grind. Sometimes it's more fun than others. But I, it's hard to translate it because a lot of this is my own personality, my own take on it. Some of it is just the fact that barbell training is progressive barbell training is going to be hard. I realize not everybody is going to progressively overload. I see it in the gym all the time. Right. So if someone is interested, let's qualify this as someone who's interested in getting stronger fitter, more durable, resilient, you have to do progressive overload. And you have to do the grind. You have to search embrace those last two, three reps of that stuff that triple the fourth fifth restaurant, the triple you have to embrace that to get the benefit you All right, you may not like it, you may not go toward it like me. But you have to do that if you want to progress with barbell training guy just happened to be one of those psychos who embraces that you got

Philip Pape  15:11

to get the mechanical tension, right? We conversation about that this week. But let's let's just put one more lens on it because is it harder to do that? Or is it harder to not progress and go to the gym over and over and over again and not progress? Like,

Tony Perri  15:25

what do you ladder?

Philip Pape  15:26

Yeah, the last I just want to be clear for people like, it's different types of hard. There's the hard that helps you grow and feel fulfilled? And there's the harder it's just you're stuck, right? Yeah.

Tony Perri  15:36

And that's a good question you just asked, because during my cut, it was very hard for me to switch my training lens from grind to just hold on to whatever muscle you can because the priority was to maintain the deficit. The priority is not to gain mass or set prs. So I had to change my perspective to just do what you can. That's not me. Yeah, except it's not me at all. I had to just I couldn't stand it. But I'm like, this is the right thing for the long term.

Philip Pape  16:04

Yep. It is. It is frustrating. And I know you've you've experimented with it and talk to me this week about the next time you do it, maybe you will try a different mode of training that still holds muscle of maybe gives you a little more of that. That enjoyment of the of the training itself.

Tony Perri  16:18

Yeah. Just again, you doing more of the embracing more mechanical tension through the rep ranges that we talked about? Yeah.

Philip Pape  16:25

All right. So let's dive into let's dive into the nutrition. Right. So going back to your past, and then we'll get to now you had guidance from a nutritionist during your calisthenics days.

Tony Perri  16:34

I did work with a nutritionist. I was I was definitely, I think it was 181 85. But I was untrained. I was sedentary. Right? I was in terrible shape. So she, we didn't track anything. What she did was she she wrote the meals. And basically, she cut out the fat and we ate a very, a lot of Whole Foods. And it was just lean meat, a lot of grains, a lot of grains, it was boring, but the weight flew off. Once I hit 168 She's like we got to stop we got to stop with with the cutting and whatnot. I wasn't strength training, per se. At that point. When I say per se I was doing like sprints in my yard push ups on the picnic table and that kind of stuff. Right? I enjoyed the process. She did individualize it every week, she'd write the meal plan, and then still, how you doing do check ins and then we would change certain things based on the outcome. I learned how to eat cleaner. But that's pretty much it. Just eat whole foods cleaner. I mean, yeah, the grocery bill was ridiculously expensive, because we were putting all sorts of stuff in it. And then it's like, that was that was the long and short of that process. I don't think I learned a lot. Okay. So action. It was an it was a successful from the action standpoint that lost weight, ate better foods. But I didn't learn much. And this is why when, when when I talk to you initially boycott, I'm like, I'm not just interested in cutting weight. I want to actually learn stuff from us. That's why that's exactly why because I learned from that process. Like, I don't want to just succeed. I'm not ins driven. I want the means. Yeah.

Philip Pape  18:25

Yeah. And I think you did. And it's funny because I have clients who are super curious and want to learn from day one and others that they want the results, but then they're surprised that it is really that they develop skills, and they learn a lot. Because I lay us out well you to fire me after six months, you could do this on your own. And yeah, keep working together if you have new new goals and challenges, but meal plans are not the way to go. You know, cutting out foods is not the way to go. I think you are you know that by now.

Tony Perri  18:52

Yeah, you know, understanding, making the informed choice for yourself about where you're going to eat and when you're not going to eat and it's not the end of the day, if you have Oreo cookies. Yeah,

Philip Pape  19:00

ya know, for sure I love like we said already, so drop me to give them in milk. Good stuff. So, okay, so that was your past of nutrition, we're gonna eventually connect that to the present. I do want to tie in the training a little bit more, because you mentioned the starting strength NLP, which is the novice linear progression, which for the listener is a three day Full Body program to get very strong very quickly. You said you didn't seek out a coach at the time you didn't attend a seminar? What was your reasoning for going in alone? And what was that, like?

Tony Perri  19:29

My idea of training from scratch is that if you have if you have some kind of a safety net, you're gonna take it, right. So what I did was I put everything on the table and I said, I am ultimately responsible for learning this. I had the starting strength books, I had the videos, and I accepted that it was not perfect. It was not comprehensive. But I was so new to the sport that I didn't want to expose myself to so many different resources because I didn't have the tools to discriminate. Make between those resources. So I kept it simple, I kept it. I did what I could with the videos in the books, and I just trained on my own through recording myself and critiquing myself to the point where I was satisfied that I had done everything I could in my head to train and figure out and improve. And that's when I that's when I, you know, got Andy Baker, you know, that's why I signed up for this group, because I'm like, I realized that I take in my own brain as far as I could. And I took it really far. I gotta tell you, like, I I bashed myself against this my personality. But there were signs where I'd have a pen and paper and I'm trying to figure it out. Like just solving the puzzle. That's all it was to me. It my NLP took a while because I did a lot of resets, because the my videos showed that my form was terrible. So I reset the weight. Yeah. So that process, it taught me so much because it was so intense. It was just me. I had nobody, it was just me. There's no lifting buddies. Right? It was a great process. It was sloppy, it took long, but at the end of it, I had a lot of confidence, because I'm because I was the one who will, who figured it out, figured out.

Philip Pape  21:16

Yeah, I understand that that process of self experimentation, which you can take to a certain level and but sometimes, right, you want help? So you mentioned Yeah. You mentioned you didn't have the tools to discriminate between the resources. Right? Didn't that didn't? You weren't necessarily you thought it would be just spreading yourself too thin to go and go this all these different directions? Is that what you're getting at?

Tony Perri  21:40

Well, that is a good question. So I realized that the SS crew mainly would rip who's on who's on the videos knew what the heck he was talking about. It's easy to see that because he's simple. He's upfront, he's very objective. He will talk about the simplest thing for 10 minutes and lay out every single part of it. So you know, he's talking about, you know, he knows what he's talking about. So I said, I trust this source. I am not experienced enough to, to meet through all this other stuff to see who else is going to be a positive influence. So I said, for now, I'm just gonna do this one source, not forever. I'm just gonna do this one source until I have a basis. And then I will allow myself to open up doors. This is one thing I've I think people screw up about social media, they, they look up, they just confused themselves. And they distract themselves with all these different resources. And then they wind up where?

Philip Pape  22:39

Yeah, it's a shiny object syndrome.

Tony Perri  22:41

Exactly. That's a shiny object syndrome. And I resisted that. And it worked very well. So it was a great, it was a great idea I had.

Philip Pape  22:50

Yeah, no, it is funny. You say that? Do you remember you remember probably early in starting strength, when you looked at form checks, there were different places to see form checks, right? They had their own community on Facebook, but there was also the Reddit community that they made fun of because it's just every man for himself. There's no moderation whatsoever. And so even in the starting straight Reddit forum, you could get led the wrong direction with a bad form check. You know,

Tony Perri  23:13

I wanted to insulate myself from that because I recognized I didn't have the ability to not see bullshit from good stuff. So I said, I'm only gonna look at search right? Until I grow a little bit and then the door now the door is open. Now I look at all sorts of stuff. Sure. I can be like Idiot, idiot, you know, he's talking about oh, look further into that

Philip Pape  23:32

this and that got the judge rebuilt up now. Yeah. And that nice. judge, judge,

Tony Perri  23:35

judge the hell out and

Philip Pape  23:38

I think you know, you're gonna like, next week, Cody Nino is gonna be on he's, he's like the I think he's the only guy in Connecticut that's starting strength coach, I think there's only one right? And he, he actually helped me for one session, one session that fixed your squat, it's my squat and deadlift and press or know squat, squat and press. Yeah. So you know, but again, you have to know to discriminate, find those resources. Okay, so you and I, we always talk about the value of either there's the people who want to max out all the time, right, like on starting strength in your NLP, that's effectively what you're doing, you're maxing out your three by five, by five, you should set exactly. But then there's, then there's the idea of making progress, which at some point, you hit a wall, right? When you become an intermediate lifter, and you're not always hitting PRs, or you get injured or you have recovery issues, or you go on vacation vacation. So I mean, what is your perspective just for the listener on when when you focus on PRs versus when you would,

Tony Perri  24:35

when you focus? Okay, are you talking about there is are two questions in there.

Philip Pape  24:40

So, what's the value of maxi now versus making progress without necessarily always maxing out? Okay,

Tony Perri  24:46

well maxing out period, if you are, there's no point maxing out if you're if you're a novice. This is pretty common knowledge because every single session, since you can recover so quickly, every single session has a max right? Once you get to a certain point where you recovery takes a longer period of time you maxing out, it does have a certain benefit, because specifically if you're in a percentage based program, because your percentages are based off your one rep max, right? Also, rep max out like one RMS, they're gonna teach you to grind, like to do a 101 RM is completely different skill set than a three RM, you're putting everything on the line for that for that one, Max. And if you're gonna make it a regular process, you have to learn how to program well, because that one Rm is going to drain your nervous system, right? So if you're going to do this is why these random, the random maxing out is so stupid because it drains so many resources, you're not thinking oh, yeah,

Philip Pape  25:43

the Hey, I'm gonna test my deadlift. Today, I'm gonna test my dad. Yeah,

Tony Perri  25:46

if you're gonna max out well, you, you got to think about from now, if you max out your deadlift, your squat and your deadlift are going to be affected. If you're let's say, generally, if you're after 30, I'm going to say 10 to 20 days, it's going to be affected, right, if you're younger, you'll probably be able to recover a little bit faster from that, that's huge. Because if you're in a training cycle, where you're doing weekly training, and you just did one lift, that's going to affect you for 1014 days, guess what your entire your whole training has to change the next couple of weeks, that's a big, that's a big cost to pay. So if you're gonna max out, it does have benefits, it recruits a whole lot of muscle fibers, it gives you a it can give you confidence, it can be very humbling. It tests your form. But it's it's really going to test the rest of your training. So I think you really got to take it seriously. And if not, you're you're just going to be spinning your wheels, you're not going to be setting.

Philip Pape  26:44

Yeah, no, for sure. I think that's one reason we both like Andy's conjugate program, right? Because you rotate through what you're maxing out, which is an innovative concept, because you can't necessarily know intuitively that a back squat versus a front squat. Wouldn't have taxi out the same

Tony Perri  27:01

taxi the same does because yeah, it's cycles, the cycles, the stress, so a max effort front squats, not going to completely drain you for the following weeks max effort box squat, right? Yep, I don't do the conjugate, I do the 852. And I've det I talked to Andy about it because I've really morphed my my programming. I've melted basically conjugate in a five to two. So it allows me to hit higher intensity lifts. So for people that don't know what a five two is, you do an eight rep max for you're working separate first week, second week is five rep max, third week is a two rep max. What I did is I made my twos week, twos slash one week. So if my lifts are really progressing, my body feels great. I'm not just going to go for a two on that twos week, I'll go for a single, right. And it'll be draining. But guess what the following week, it's an eight or eight rep max, cool, load comes down. It's more, it's more of a work capacity thing. So that's how I program deliberately plugin, he is deliberately programming your max effort lifts. Because if you don't use your your strength train is going to be shot. That's how I program the max effort. And it's actually working out pretty well.

Philip Pape  28:11

Yeah, let me ask you that. And then we're going down a programming rabbit hole, which I didn't necessarily intend to. But I think it's awesome, because people are really fascinated about that. For when you do the twos when he on twos week, do you still hit the two at the intended load for two and then go for one,

Tony Perri  28:26

no, one kind

Philip Pape  28:28

of skipped that.

Tony Perri  28:30

Much, because the two the two was the rep max so senior year, which is basically 9592 to 95% of your one rep max, one

Philip Pape  28:40

rep max or it's it's a max for three sets of two.

Tony Perri  28:43

It's the idea as a two two rep max a single. Now, depending upon your training, you can do three sets of that I do not okay, don't respond well to set all right. Again, you have to individualize it. So to answer your first question, I will know if I'm, if I'm going to close to a one rep max attempt instead of a two if the previous week and fives I did. I hit like a seven. Right? So for example, the other week I did, I did on fives week I hit seven, right? So I know that I'm progressing, I might be able to do have the have the strength and progress to do a one RM instead of just the two. If I grinded against that fiber am I only hit four reps, or barely hit the fifth. I'm gonna know that next week. I'm probably just gonna get a two maybe I'm gonna have to drop the load a little bit. See what I'm saying?

Philip Pape  29:36

You're doing a top set on the on each of these that you find you're not doing two or three, you're just doing a top set.

Tony Perri  29:40

Not with squat and deadlift anymore. Can I do one top set and I'll do a 10% Back off 10% Back with a dressing I can do top six through the roof

Philip Pape  29:47

and on your top set sounds like you will push past the programmed reps if you can't. So that's the

Tony Perri  29:53

thing. Yeah, my program is circle load. So again, I don't know I don't have a crystal ball. I don't I didn't know the other day that I was gonna be able to hit seven Yep, I thought I was gonna go for five because the previous cycle five, I did five pounds less and you incrementally increase five pounds each cycle. So I'm like, I'm just gonna go for three, you know, 350 is what I got programs, this is what I'm going to do and that just 1234567 And I'm like, Oh, wow, that's pretty good, right? I didn't I wasn't the hero after that I dropped the load 10% But that told me that the squat is progressing were the twos week might actually become a one week.

Philip Pape  30:28

Yeah, I love it. And and for people listening, like who are confused in any way. Like it took you a long time to get to this point, right? It's yours, like the basics, and then more advanced programming that was still tempt sort of templated then getting into a barbell club where you got feedback and individualized coaching. And now you can kind of tweak yourself. Yeah,

Tony Perri  30:47

trial. It's a it's trial and error, critique yourself, but go easy on yourself. You're not going to get it in one week, or one month or six months. It's gonna take a while to figure out what like, I have my own programming now. Like, yeah, yeah.

Philip Pape  31:01

So there's some parallels to this on the nutrition side, because you and I knew each other for a while, before you reached out for help, specifically, as a client. Early on, you reached out to talk, right? We had like, one of my free calls that I do, and we chatted about your outlook and what you could do, and you're like, Yeah, I'm not ready. You know, I don't need to hire you right now. But I understand where you're going. And for a while, we went back and forth. Like you would share your data with me, I'd say you gotta eat more carbs. You'd say No way. And we go.

Tony Perri  31:30

Yeah, exactly. Yeah. But

Philip Pape  31:33

your experience before I view it as and correct me if I'm wrong, like a form of intuitive eating, right. Your routine allows you to maintain your wheat for for awhile without tracking. And you're eating the whole foods and stuff. Maybe some of that you had learned from the past experience? Yeah. And then I came along, and I said, Hey, maybe maybe more tracking, you get more precision, more objectivity, right? If you're going for a change in your body, that's the key. Yes. Right, if you want to really cut and do it efficiently. So what are your thoughts on all that the intuitive eating stuff side the tracking skills, etc? Yeah,

Tony Perri  32:04

so intuitive eating I think is a skill, like anything else that unbilled I'm big on people acquiring skills, so that you can have independence. That being said, if you don't know much about nutrition, your intuitive eating is only going to be that is only going to be up to that level. Right? So when we say intuitive eating, we act like it's this universal value, like we just I'm just going to eat intuitively and everybody's going to perform the same way. We are not. So I can now since I've, you know worked with you and learn more about macros, and how to balance them. I can eat, I can eat intuitively, right? But the how I eat intuitively has changed, because I am more informed and effective at eating. Right. So in terms of bulking and cutting, I would prefer to be more precise, therefore tracking, I would lean on macro factor to track, right? I still track I'm at maintenance right now I still track but I'm more loose about it, because I have a better understanding of things. So I really think intuitive eating and tracking are they don't have to be at war. They can they can work, they can both be tools that have skills that you can use at different times. And if you have the ability to use, if you have the certain ability to use either one of them, then you're a fuller, more independent person than if you just did one. And that's what when I first started talking to you, yeah, it was I was eating intuitively, but I had a lot of holes. So what's the sense, right, yeah, I want to learn the basics, start tracking, see it, and then I can eat intuitively again, go back to tracking, learn more, and basically, Ratchet my way toward just a better way of nutritional life.

Philip Pape  33:47

Yeah, yeah. I love the way you put it, how it's acquiring skills, you gain independence, and the way you've done it has changed, right? Because people are eating, quote, unquote, intuitively, and it's terrible.

Tony Perri  34:01

Exactly. That again, I hate to compliment you, but I'm really happy with what I learned from you working with. Like, what, specifically carbohydrates, dropped, the fats don't eat too much fat, I eat plenty of protein. And another thing that you really helped me see is food is just energy. It's just energy. Right? And if you approach it from a weekly intake standpoint, rather than daily, you have more flexibility. Like for example, yesterday, I accidentally ate in a deficit, right? I think I was even 10 grams of protein short. No big deal. Yeah. Just eat a little bit more today. Right? It's not a big deal. Yeah, just make up for it. I love that. Yeah. It's not as like the end of the week. You're still eating what you need to eat. You're fine. Yeah,

Philip Pape  34:50

don't stress it. I mean, clients all the time when they check in and it's like, I'm off of my targets. It's like, okay, you know, it's okay. Obviously, if If you're you know, 1000s and 1000s of calories off, that's gonna be a different discussion. But chances are most people are if you're aiming for a target, you're gonna be in the ballpark. That's good enough.

Tony Perri  35:08

Yeah, exactly, yeah. And just nudge yourself in either direction you have you overeat one day, or for a couple couple days, just take it easy the next couple

35:20

to Philippe an awfully for a long time and know how passionate he is about healthy eating, and body strength. And that's why choosing to be my coach. I was no stranger to a dieting and body training. But I've always struggled to do it sustainably really helped me prioritize my goals with evidence based recommendations are not over stressing my body and not feeling like I'm starving. In six months, I lost 45 pounds without drastically changing the foods I enjoy. And now I have a more balanced diet. I weight train consistently. But most importantly, I do it sustainably if a scientifically sound healthy diet and a link strong body is what you're looking for. Really paid Easter guy.

Philip Pape  36:04

Tell us about your thoughts. Okay, so I was out with my family. This was like on a weekend and my wife and daughters, they were like in the bathroom or something. And you had texted me your macro factor? image this is before we were working together. And and you said what? What would the ratios Be or Not the ratio zero? Like what would the macro levels be your opinion? And I said pretty much flip the fats and carbs, right? He was like, way more carbs. And you just besides the way you respond, you're like, That's ridiculous. I don't know what that was. I mean, tell me your thoughts at that time. Why? What were you thinking of what your experience told you that this was this guy's nuts? At the moment?

Tony Perri  36:43

I didn't know how to consume that many carbohydrates without consuming Ultra processed foods. And I remember asking you what do I eat? And you gave me some suggestions. You're like, Well, why potato, sweet potato, rice? And I'm like, looking at myself. And I'm like, Well, I just asked a question. That was a stupid question. But it was good. That asked a stupid question. And I understood that most of my eating thanks to the first nutritionist was all those free foods, greens, I would eat greens and colorful things that don't have a lot of caloric value. I was eating nutritionally dense foods, specifically micronutrient dense foods. But when it came to the carbohydrate, macro, I really wasn't consuming a lot. Yeah. So that's why after you, you know, you're like, You got to flip those numbers. I'm like, How do I do that? And so now I literally just had chicken and rice. I'm getting used to it. I've gotten used to it now. And I love it. Yeah, at the beginning, it was hard. Because I mean, you're switching fats and carbs. It's like your diet is drastically changed.

Philip Pape  37:47

It's true. Because it because teens, and then fats and carbs are often together and processed foods. And it's like what

Tony Perri  37:54

what exactly do you eat? Yeah, and fats can be calorically dense. It's like it just anyway, it was very, it was jarring at first. But I realized that I needed to make a change. And I'm like, this is the guy that helped me make the changes slowly just implemented the changes to now there's less inertia to doing that, actually, there's no inertia to doing that

Philip Pape  38:14

now, to get through that comfort zone and kind of expand that comfort zone to get through exactly for people listening who are like maybe worried about increasing their carbs. And I've definitely had many, this is a very common story to be honest, in terms of going from lower lower to standard or higher carbs. You know, a lot of women that say well, I feel bloated, or I have digestive issues or whatever, there. There is an adaptation period. What was that? Like? If you went through that

Tony Perri  38:37

there was no physical okay should probably just have more energy. What i my i have the same cliche that many people have was probably just I just accepted the ignorance makes me fat. It makes me slow. It makes me gain weight in these we hold water. There you go. After, you know, I just again, they let you influence me. I said, this guy knows what he's talking about. I'm just gonna listen. Do it. Whatever psychological BS I had was just set aside and I just did it physically. It felt fine. Yeah.

Philip Pape  39:06

And it helps. It helps with your energy and recovery.

Tony Perri  39:09

Oh, goodness. Yeah. That's why I'm not rushing to a bulk right? With my diet change. Sticking Oh, seriously, I'm sticking to maintenance. My lips are doing great. My recovery is great, right? Strength is good. Once I get to a certain point of plateauing then I'll just bulk a little bit right the carbs have definitely helped with recovery with energy with pretty much with with everything I think. I think looking back on it, I really misunderstood certain biological feedback I was receiving as to not having enough protein when it was really not having enough carbohydrates. Yeah,

Philip Pape  39:41

yeah, cuz yeah, I remember you asked about like the protein sparing effects of carbs and we went down that rabbit hole of you know the body out you will use protein if it doesn't have enough carbs, and convert that to glucose. It doesn't go straight to your fat people would like to think that but it doesn't. It's going to go and use up some routine which then prevents its availability. for muscle building, so when you gain you know, we know this from keto diets that the people on keto gained like 1/5 the rate of muscle gain of people that aren't, you know,

Tony Perri  40:10

so, because of the protein sparing, yeah, that's it. Great. It's just carbohydrates are the Boogeyman. And hopefully this this BS stopped. Yeah. But like the boogey man for no good reason. Yeah. for no good reason.

Philip Pape  40:22

So speaking of recovery beyond that, right? I know you believe in the value of not only in nutrition, but also sleep and just recovery in general, especially as we get older. To the point where I feel the way you message it is like that almost should be the first thing you think about, before you start programming your lifts in your week, what are your thoughts? That's just my opinion of how it comes across?

Tony Perri  40:43

What should be the first thing? What

Philip Pape  40:45

are your thoughts on recovery in general, basically, especially for people in like the 40s and

Tony Perri  40:48

50s training is sleep and recovery is sleeping nutrition, right? Training is that because, again, you can't put garbage in your vehicle and expect the vehicle to go very far. Right? So I don't think about I don't think about recovery. Because I've mastered certain points of this. I tried to get really good sleep, continuous sleep. And it worked on eating whole foods. Now, specifically, more carbs, right. So that automatically fills in the request that maxes out my ability to recover. And then we have the other stuff like stress and whatnot, which psychological we try to balance that. But that is, that's recovery. I don't do I don't roll around on a foam roller, I don't use the massage gun. I mean, if I have a really, really sore, if I have a not a really bad knot, which doesn't happen very often, I'll take the massage gun to it. But I don't do this, like the what he calls static stretch recovery, and it's eating good foods, I gotta get good food in the body. I got to sleep, let the body rest. And I have to program smart. Meaning I don't go out to the beginning of the conversation. I don't go out max out all the time. I have to cycle the stress. This is all this all produces recovery.

Philip Pape  42:06

Yeah. Yeah, that's a great way to think about I think people you know, when you're younger, you don't think about it because you recover so easily. And you kind of learn the hard way. So if you're listening to this, learn the slightly easier way am I listening to Tony talk about how important that is?

Tony Perri  42:19

It is when you're younger, you can get away with a whole lot of stuff. And a lot of young lifters don't get away with it. They get they get hurt. Yeah. And then they look back. And when they're when they're 50. They're like, Oh, yeah, I wish I wouldn't have done that when I was 22. But you did now so we can do so.

Philip Pape  42:36

During during the cut specifically, I imagined recovery becomes even more important. Yeah,

Tony Perri  42:43

didn't recover. Yeah.

42:44

I didn't talk to him. Yeah,

Tony Perri  42:46

I didn't i Oh, my goodness. Yeah, I see it. I see guys a tangent. I see a lot of other lifters who who want to cut some fat and their progress looks great. And I'm like, You guys are awesome. Me. I was like a shriveled raisin, I was holding on for dear life. I was like, Oh, it was really hard to perform. My recovery, I had to stop. I was doing some running on a number that is outside trail. At that time, and I remember I just said I have to just walk at this point. Yeah. And so I had I had no ability to recover from anything. I was just in mentally it was taxing because I'm like, I felt like kryptonite. Yeah, I just feel so weak, right. But the deficit was just to be maintained. That was the priority. So I maintained the deficit and accepted all those costs. Until I started eating again, and then I recover fine.

Philip Pape  43:33

Yeah. I want to highlight that because you are at the viewer pegged at the upper limit of what we'd recommend for deficit, you were basically going all out at 1% a week. And sometimes it even crept past that, because you were just pretty disciplined. And like you said, you were that was your priority, and we kept the duration. And he was only six weeks, right? Whereas you could go how's that? Right, but now you're doing it for three months? And what's different trade? Right?

Tony Perri  43:58

Yeah. So my expenditure was about, I don't know, 20 903,000 on the cut in my intake was 2000. I have when I've when I dipped below 2000 is when I was like, can't do it. So I was I was sitting about 1000 calorie deficit a day for what six weeks? Yeah. It's big. It's bits. Yeah, it was a lot. It was a lot it is. And that's right around the point that 1000 calories used to be around the trigger point for a lot of people where it starts to go downhill fast, does it? It does. And,

Philip Pape  44:24

you know, we're doing this Rapid Fat Loss Challenge now for two weeks. And like, I have a similar expenditures, you 28 2900 And I mean, in around 1600 calories. So, you know, and I feel it's crazy, but you also have a couple of refeeds in there. But anyway, yeah, again, people listening, it's like, it's not about the quick fix. It's making the trade off between you know, how focused you want to be in the fat loss phase and deal with some of those recovery issues which are just going to happen it's your body saying, Hey, give me more physical I'm gonna release that to give you energy. Exactly versus you know, taking a little bit more lightly and but dragon Now for

Tony Perri  45:00

a while. And that's the thing. I didn't want to drag it out because I already feel like I've wasted enough time doing, you know, other stuff in life. I want to catch it. I want to make gains. Yeah. So I want to do exactly as short as possible. Exactly where as possible cut. Yeah, but that I mean, you made a good point that if you're going to cut, or bulk, or train or do anything, you have to be consistently put in the effort over time. Like, even though I only had a six week cut, I, every single day I took everything, every single meal was very, very serious. stuck with it got to the end goal, right? It's just like training. If you want to build up your bench, it's gonna take a long time. You can't switch goals. Yeah, you got to stick with it. Yeah, you'll get the goal, you'll get the result. What do you think so many kids take peds? Ya know, they don't want to

Philip Pape  45:44

get set up in a cut like yours is a short term, quote unquote, extreme, but a controlled extreme done the right way to get it over? No. So So speaking of your cut, because you talked about learning and education, what did what did you learn, either in general, from nutrition, and specifically from that cut, like, top two or three takeaways?

Tony Perri  46:03

Well about my body, I realized that my body down regulates hunger very quickly. After that first week, I didn't really experience much hunger, to a point where now I'm back on maintenance, I still have to, I don't have much hunger, but a little bit. So I just I learned that my body responds very well to being in deficit, in respect to the goal of cutting fat that, again, strength goes down, energy goes down, but my body says we're going to cut off a lot of fat. So that was a really big learning thing. For me. I also realized how simple it was very hard. But it was simple. Which is exactly one of the tools of understanding that I wanted to get wanted to achieve. It was very, very hard. But now I have so many more tools where I can in the future, you know, say I woke up a little bit over time to get the strength and I realized that I hate myself. I'm gonna cut again. I can just it's not as mystery on how to do it. Yeah. Very simple. It's very, it's very simple. What else did I let's see, what else did I learn? Again, I have a new appreciation for food and that it is just energy. Right? So I talked, I came down with COVID About a week ago, right? And I told you that I dipped into a deficit. And how did I keep get keep from going into the deficit? Oreo cookies? Is it ideal? No. But the point is, food is just energy, and I needed a couple 100 calories to go keep them going into deficit. So I just had some Oreos, and it's funny because people like no, you ate him because you liked him. It's like no, I didn't I did wasn't hungry. Yeah, I made an objective choice. calorie dense based on you know, being energy partiers usually easy to eat with some milk, boom, boom. So in terms of manipulating the energy that comes in, even I even talk about food as energy this point, so boring, but in terms of manipulating certain goals, just look at food as energy. Yeah, instead of food. Because then who is think of food? You can kind of get a little emotional about it? For sure.

Philip Pape  47:58

It's part of our culture. Yeah, it's part of being human.

Tony Perri  48:01

Yeah, yeah. And I still love food, like pretty much everybody. But that's one of the biggest things I learned is I just looked at look at food as energy. Yeah. And choices become a lot easier to make when I look at it just objectively like that.

Philip Pape  48:14

I think that's a healthy mindset, man. Because mindset because your brain is everything in this process. And that, yeah, you really just hit on a very key principle where the Oreos story, right? Because I will I will throw in a pop tart, if I'm like, short on my carbs, and I need the energy and I don't want to go in a deficit, and I'm not that hungry. And that's okay. You know, because it's tailored in my 10 20% and the rest of the total foods. In fact, the fact that you don't make it such an emotional thing and you're doing it for objective reasons, tells you everything else is pretty dialed in from satisfied, you're satisfied with what you're eating.

Tony Perri  48:47

I also, as I said the other day, I also don't sit down with the pack of Oreos. Of course, I say, I'm going to have two servers. I'm gonna have three servings because three servings is 2080 280 calories. My milk is going to be 70 calories, right?

Philip Pape  49:02

portion. A portion of you put it in a bowl, whatever. Yeah,

Tony Perri  49:05

exactly. It's an events I chose the event and that's over. I'm not sitting there blindly watching the film through Instagram rules as they go through like 20 Oreos because then it's like, that's not the goal either. Yeah, no, I

Philip Pape  49:17

love those little tips because we talked about flexible dieting, and intuitive eating but it's not like a free for all with everything single thing you do there. So you still want to have some guidelines and strategies like controlling your food environment, you know, using portions using plates, like all those little things not grazing, having mealtimes having times for your meal and not just like free for all and that doesn't that's not restrictive. That's just having a little bit of self discipline or restraint.

Tony Perri  49:45

Well you're having good having restraint you're making an informed choice on the preferable results. Yeah, right. I don't I don't see it as any more complicated is that you want there is a certain results and then you choose within certain framework. I think when when We lose the loss of discipline is is like the absence of discipline. It's like, well, I don't know what the result is. I just want to be in the moment where it feels good. Yeah,

Philip Pape  50:09

there you go. And many of us have been there many people listening might still be there. So there's there's all there's a better way. I want to ask about hunger, because he said he didn't have too much. Were you hungry years ago when you're working with a nutritionist and losing weight? Yeah. Okay. Yeah.

Tony Perri  50:25

Okay. I was hungry. She said, If you're hungry, eat, you know, there were approved foods, though. So I would only the approved foods. After a while, the hungry did downregulate I didn't really have much of it. Eating became I'm not gonna say a chore. But acumen became more more, more boring. And I knew in the back of my head, I knew that it wasn't sustainable. Yeah. I'm like, like, this is the stuff that we're making my wife and I'll be making us food. And it's like, it's good. But we're not going to be making all this food for the rest of our lives. This is

Philip Pape  51:05

ridiculous. All right. So here's why I asked this. Because if at one point in the past, you were able to get hungry in a deficit, and this time you didn't I know, you said that. You know, my body's good at this. But could it also be your food choice and selection? Could it be protein, and fiber? Which you were pretty good at getting in sufficient

Tony Perri  51:21

amount might be the biggest leading question I've ever heard in my life. You

Philip Pape  51:25

know what I want to say? Don't worry and say what ever comes to your mind?

Tony Perri  51:29

Yeah, of course. Yeah, I'm sure and I have a lot still to learn about satiety and manipulating satiety. Yeah. Whereas if I know if I want to go in a bulk, stay away from certain foods, so increase the hunger, and these are all future lessons for me to master. Yeah, right. I don't know. And I don't expect myself, I don't require myself to No, I only require myself to say, you know, there's more things here for you to learn to look at. I mean,

Philip Pape  51:56

that might be a cool thing to go back and look at the patterns in your food and and compare to the satiety, I mean, you could even use the satiety index. So for those listening like there is an index that was done in a study that's well validated that shows you ranks foods by their level of subtypes of potatoes, white potatoes are the most stations. Yeah, they're very high. Like they, they're like double the next food and has to do with resistant starch apparently, in the white potatoes. If you want I would pretty much guarantee because I saw your food logs, I didn't always see the specific foods you had it, but I would do your macros all the time. Your protein was was up there consistently. And I think you were pretty good at bringing getting fiber because you had a lot of Whole Foods. And right there, those would be the two things people would say keep you full. Even if I didn't have just make mention that for the for the audience, because we talked about objectivity and it makes sense.

Tony Perri  52:46

We want to know why ultimately, yeah, yeah, that makes sense. That's that's a good point. Yeah. And speaking of satiety, I really appreciate rice now because I mean, I just had chicken and rice. I feel great. I'm not like bloated and full Yeah, feel great. If I had bunch of potatoes it would be like, I'm not going to eat for hours. Right? It's they're all serious big things when you have nutritional goals and strength training goals like Israel actually really big things. Well, you know, it makes potatoes easier to eat deep frying them and all that oh,

Philip Pape  53:21

boy girl, makes them easier to eat. And actually, that's physiologically a thing. The fact that there's fat there anything with fat so people don't realize it's like any fat at all you add to anything. Sad is a magical macro that makes you want to eat it. And there's something about that mechanism that you add fat to something you eat it I mean, package. That makes sense. It's a survival.

Tony Perri  53:41

Yeah, because survival evolutionary wise, evolutionary wise, we want to add fat to store energy. Because we may not have food in the wintertime because we're still cavemen, right? We forget that we're still we're not we forget that we're cavemen because we have trucks and houses. But evolution doesn't move so fast to say, Okay, we're not we're out of those environmental conditions anymore. We're going to down regulate this fat necessity. No, we we want that to, you know, to store energy. Yeah, right. Yeah. It's

Philip Pape  54:08

amazing. It's amazing. That's why you start with twice

Tony Perri  54:10

unnatural, unnatural for all you people who want abs. not natural.

Philip Pape  54:17

So funny. It's so funny, but it's true, right? That's why your fat ends up getting pretty low on a cut just naturally, that usually makes it easier to get through calorie wise. Alright, let's get back to training a little bit kind of going back and forth between these. You said earlier that barbell training is a mental activity expressed that physically. Yeah, and you kind of explain what that meant. But can you elaborate on the mental struggles or the barriers that you had to break through in that process?

Tony Perri  54:47

Well, I mean, when I was growing up, I that was never in. instilled full of confidence. Right? So the grind of barbell training really. It filled that void that Been there for a while. So on a personal level, it was like self therapy. But when you're dealing with barbell training is not just about the muscles. And I can't stand when I even hate saying that because it's about tissues. It's about the tendons, the ligaments, it's about the neurological changes, the metabolic change, it's about so many more things than just muscle. And I think I think once I realized that, I realized that it was a lot more than just moving load. Because you've got to, you got to figure out how the load is to be moved and when not to live, move the mode or move the load. Right. And, and the effects of and the effects of moving that load. For example, like I had a, my rotator cuff got a little sore months ago, I don't know doing what, but guess what? That's a Those are, those are tendons. I mean, yeah, you're taught, you know what I'm talking about. And they heal very slowly, the muscles are fine, but the tendon is sore, right? So we have to adjust the training. And that's a mental thing. To not go to figure out how exactly to work around this obstacle strewn in training is a bunch of obstacles, especially after I envy the NLP people that just add five pounds. I can't do that anymore. Even like the Keep it simple. I can't do that. I keep it as simple as I can. But the programming, and the training has gotten pretty complex. And the way we navigate complexity and overcome it and solve those obstacles is the mind, the brain is the only thing that's going to do that we're not going to accidentally figure out how to how to blow past the plateau on our bench or not, you're gonna get stuck. I see it all the time in the gym. People do stupid stuff, because they just left emotionally. Yeah. So when I say liftings, a mentally mental thing expressed physically, it's really, your brain has to be evolved. At first, it's not optional. It has to be fostered or else you will not progress. You're not going to progress anywhere.

Philip Pape  57:00

Yeah, that we just wanted to deep stuff there, which is, which is worth bringing it up because we do talk about here. The health benefits of lifting, right, the bone density, you mentioned tendons, ligaments, hormones are another like a huge hormone. Oh, my God. Exactly. And hormones are just still this mystery to a lot of people. And it's hard to explain it. But mental health, it's definitely we're heading into November, which is I think men's mental health month, I'm about to be collaborating with some folks on that from a strength perspective and talking on some podcasts about how lifting affects your mental health now, you said self therapy, we know there's physiological change that occurs. I don't I'm not educated in all the research yet. I want to be. But did you ever struggle mentally? And this is more of a sensitive topic, but like anxiety, depression, anything like that, that listing helps with?

Tony Perri  57:50

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, data, I think that's pretty common. And I think that's an I don't say that to justify it. I just say that it's lifting, doing hard things. Again, this is why I really like my approach. If you go 100% At hard things, and you require yourself to do the work, you're gonna learn something along the way, you're gonna get some kind of confidence. It's not, you're gonna get knocked on your ass, but you're not gonna get defeated, just because it's hard. And just because you didn't hit whatever goal doesn't mean you're defeated. It just means you hit an obstacle, bounce off it to something else, when we're doing hard things. requite they bring the best out of us. Really doing hard things, bring the best thing, bring the best out of us. And when we're overcoming. When we're experiencing anxiety, anxieties, worry, worry about the future of the unknown future. Well guess what barbell training is in the now it's in the present. And when you overcome the presence, that hypothetical future, it kind of it doesn't mean so because right now you're mastering the now right? So training helps that we have to deal with anxiety, depression is is that feeling, it's really feeling of being low not being able to do anything? Well, training is literally doing something you are you are moving something around. And this is why I encourage people to keep logbooks and your training logs and whatnot, because you'll have objective data. So no matter how you feel, if you're depressed, no matter how you feel about it, you can look at it and say, Well, my squat, okay, that I had just to add a rep from last week. I know that there's improvement there. Right? So I would say the objectivity of training and the requirement of doing something hard, hard things bring up the best, easy things, make us complacent. Just make us accept things and just go with the flow of hard things. They bring out the best of us, they transform us, and it's very transformative training. And we don't if we don't put a cap if we don't predict or try to constrain who we think we're going to be, then we can do amazing things. It's very transferred formative because it's in the moment. It's a hard thing in the moment. Yeah. And it's good for our bodies. It's not like, I always use this example gaming, when you're gaming. Yes, it's gonna be hard. But like, that's really a dopamine dump. Training is not a dopamine dump. It's probably the opposite of it. It's so hard in the moment you are requiring yourself to do something you might not be able to do. Yeah. So it's going to transform you, if you let it. It's going to take you places you may not know. You'll become someone you may not know. Some people that may find that scary. But just leave the unknown open. Just train and see what happens.

Philip Pape  1:00:40

become someone you may not know that you may self identity thing like you're trying to Yeah, identity. I love it.

Tony Perri  1:00:47

Just let it happen. Yeah. Yeah, surround yourself with other people that work hard and just see what happens. You don't have to have certainty of what will happen. And I think that this, the idea of certainty is really destructive. It's like, No, we don't need to, I have no idea what my numbers will be, or what condition I will be in in a year. All's I can control is this moment, right here. This week. This week's programming is only thing that's in my control. Yeah, I'm gonna crush

Philip Pape  1:01:14

it in a crushing COVID.

Tony Perri  1:01:17

You think I wanted to get COVID when I was rocking my program? No, but it was out of my control. Oh, yeah. I didn't want to get here. It's there you go.

Philip Pape  1:01:25

Exactly. It was gonna set you on your ass like you said, but it doesn't. It doesn't stop you from moving forward in some way. Yeah, it's funny you say that? Because? A lot. So for me, I talk about that a lot. But I also experienced it early on when I finally figured this whole thing out. But when others tell me what you just said. So for example, I actually wrote an email about this to my list this morning, a friend of mine earlier this week finally got a rack of barbell. No, he didn't even get his gaming his rack yet. Right? Yeah, just started deadlifting. And he did it in secret. And then he because he was embarrassed maybe from his wife or his wife didn't believe he would go through with it. And literally, he said from like, the first session when he realized he could just do something. And then the next one do a little more, is I just started to get confident. I just started to feel better about myself. Did you go man like it's incredible. It happens to everyone. Exactly. And you will enter you will make progress of some kind. You just will. Man once you get to this, you know, get in an accident get totally guilty. But yeah, it's incredible.

Tony Perri  1:02:26

You will get confidence doing hard things produces confidence, doing easy things. It's going to keep you just insecure and depressed. Ya know your heart, you will find your confidence skyrockets, for

Philip Pape  1:02:38

sure, for sure. And so if you could offer one piece of advice that would make the biggest difference in someone's journey toward this ideal identity of a stronger, healthier person. And maybe something has radically changed your own life that you wish you knew when you were 20. What would it be? And why?

Tony Perri  1:02:59

No, nobody cares about you, or your progress or your look nearly as much as you do. When you're 20 you believe that other people? Do you get the looks. You have the feedback people you get the likes online, we have this idea that that attention is an accurate assessment of how other people's place value on us, we think that other people are carrying us around with them all day long. That's just not true. So my advice would be just accept that, given nobody's walking around with us in their minds and in their hearts every day. And the reason I say that is so that we can look at ourselves and say, Are we acting according to internal validation? or external validation? Because, and I revisit this question frequently, because it's, it's easy to develop an ego again. And when you start to appreciate that other people don't really care, whatever you doing, you can see what I'm doing right now or what it just did. Yeah, that was that was for other people. But it lets you let it go. If you think that other people, if you convince yourself that other people think about you a lot more than they do, you will allow yourself to deceive yourself into doing things for external validation because you think it's so important. It's not Yeah. And that's one thing that my calisthenics taught even though people in the gym, they thought it was looked so cool looking. They didn't care, they just walked away. Right? So I would say internal validation versus external validation, identify the external, get rid of it. Focus on internal because that produces real satisfaction and indefinite fulfillment. It's you being fulfilled, you're not doing it for other people. You know, you want your abs. Make sure you're doing it for you, for sure. And test J Yeah. And, you know, if you want to lift your heavy weights, make sure you're doing it for you. Ask yourself the tough questions. Ask yourself where to look for that external validation in your life and get rid of it. Because then you're really going to become more confident If I agree,

Philip Pape  1:05:01

it actually gets you to take actions on things you might not have otherwise, because you otherwise you think people are judging you, or you're gonna be embarrassed? I mean, my experience with that is, with everything I do with this coaching stuff, every every single step I took was like, What? Are they going to think about me? It doesn't matter, just do it? And what is there? Is there a nuance there, when it comes to doing things to help other people? Knowing that there's also external validation? Do you know what I mean? Like, so? What am I trying to say here? So for example, I will, I will gladly share with the world what a client says about how I helped them, because I'm proud that I help them. Is that is that seeking external validation? Or is that? You know, what do you think of that?

Tony Perri  1:05:51

You're sharing it for who? And for why? That's really a question. It's hard for me to answer that right now. But it's it's it's it's, what are you looking for? What are you searching for? What is the reward you're searching for, if the reward is to, is to open up doors for other people to potentially improve their own lives? I think that's I think that's, that's pretty cool. Because it shows it's not about you. But if the reward is getting the attention upon you, and that, hey, I taught this person this thing, then that's more of your ego getting involved. And that's more external validation, you got. So you got to I think, really, we got to look at the basis of the reward we're seeing and then test ourselves like, Why do I want to reward when we want to reward perfect? And that will help us answer those kinds of questions, because it can get hard to distribute to delineate those kinds of things. Yeah,

Philip Pape  1:06:43

you're a philosophical guy I had asked. You think about this stuff. Yeah. All right. So the magic question that you know, is coming. What question did you wish I had asked, and what is your answer? Oh,

Tony Perri  1:06:55

gosh, yeah, this is hard. Even even you know, it's Kelvin. I would say, Why have I become so critical of what have become so critical of physique? I, I see that it, I think physique, there's a place for physique, I think it's very easy to get lost. Again, this goes exactly with my external validation point. That's probably why I brought it up. I think it's very easy to get lost in the physique train. And if we over subscribe to the external validation, and this is why I, I'm very critical of modern bodybuilding. In terms of the average Joe and the average chain doing bodybuilding, if you're if you're competing, if you're making money. That's one thing. But if you're the average Joe or Jane showing up a couple of times a week, and you're doing the body building, I'm critical of that. So that's probably the that's probably the question that I would that flows through external validation. That's probably the question that I would have. wished you would have asked. Okay, yeah, if you could read my mind. Yeah,

Philip Pape  1:08:00

that's what I asked. You know, that's good. I mean, we have talked about that. The physics side of things. And it's interesting for me, because when I when I talk to people who have goals, you know, true deep goals, to change their identity to be a better role model for their kids to be healthier, whatever, along with that always have some level of physique enhancement. Anyway, I wanted to look better. Yeah, exactly. And I think that's okay. The question is, why are you doing like you said, it's, is it the external validation? Or is it you're just handling to be comfortable, and I see that thing, that person in the

Tony Perri  1:08:30

mirror, you know, and that's the thing about physique too, which I realized is so much different than strength training. Strength training is objective improvement, measurable, objective proven? Well, physique training is based on looking better, which is a belief system to construct to look better. It's true, it's a debt, it's a belief system. So you can ask 10 different people. So that's why I'm critical of it. Because, because if someone says, I will look better, and I'm thinking, according to what, because if you get someone's opinion, you could get five opinions today, and someone like me will be like, I don't think that looks great. That could crush somebody. Yes, not intentionally, but because physique, it's a belief system. And I think if people are honest about that, and accept that, it's just it's a belief. It's very subjective, and it changes, I think people people could be a little bit more calm about the physique, rather than thinking that it's this objective, I'm gonna look better. And it's like, well, you know, that not everybody thinks that right? Yeah, I guess just because I'm objective based with strength training real, but

Philip Pape  1:09:30

it's a valid thing for people to think about. Because there is there's standing there are standards and women face this a lot in society with the object, the body image standards. And there's also the fact that we're focusing on focusing on performance and strength. There are lots of periods where you go through where you're not going to have what somebody would call an ideal physique because you don't want to you want to have the extra fat you want to have the leverages you want to be eating because you're building muscle and you know, you're gonna live a long time that way, and be healthy. But then it's like You know, how do you combine all these things. So kind of keeping kind of combining physique with health with strength and finding that sweet spot where it kind of all works together is a nice place to be if you can get there. You know, I get that people's, a lot of people are very overweight. Right. And we understand that for them. It's a health issue. And of course, they are going to, I think, even objectively have an improved physical appearance once they lose on the way. But again, it is a construct, so yeah, yeah.

Tony Perri  1:10:31

Yeah. All right. Yeah. A lot of people are underweight, too, I think. Oh, yeah. I think that's what that's, yeah. No, I mean, I've seen it in the gym a lot. Yeah. And it's like, I want to gain a little bit. You know,

Philip Pape  1:10:44

I hate it, but I hate it when I see it. And I see that 18 year old boys walking around. I'm like, Man, if only I had a hold of you right now, in your, you know, get your shoulder racing and start listing.

Tony Perri  1:10:55

Begin with, there's that belief system. Yeah. Oh, it looks.

Philip Pape  1:10:59

The Surfer do that. Yeah. Okay, man. Well, where do you want listeners to reach you? Or what resource Do you want them to check out?

Tony Perri  1:11:07

I'm just I'm just average Joe. I don't really. I'm not very present on social media. I mean, I'm an anti Baker's group. But I don't I don't, coach. I don't. You know, I don't think I have much on Instagram. Yeah. But um, I mean, if someone wanted to contact me, they could just contact me through my email. Right. But other than that, just average Joe. Okay. Yeah.

Philip Pape  1:11:33

How about this, we'll put a link to the Facebook group, which you're in. So if people want to come in, they can reach you there. And we'll put a link to Andy's club. I don't mind I love promoting his club. It's fantastic. Yeah, I

Tony Perri  1:11:44

love it. I mean, you're I mean, I'm in your group, too. I love I love you know, dropping into your group, you know? Yeah. And seeing what's there. It's a lot of fun stuff there. It's pretty cool. It is it's like

Philip Pape  1:11:53

it's not a massive group, but it's highly engaged in that and helpful you know, we help each other out which is I constantly say that because I'm not trying to grow into like 10s of 1000s of people I'd rather have people that really care about being there,

Tony Perri  1:12:05

but you're not trendy. Yeah, it's not it's not it's not trends. It's not do this one thing you'll do it's again, it's flexible dieting, which is which is hard to reach people on because people want a product give me products I make change is not is that that

Philip Pape  1:12:20

they've got laser fat removal for that. Alright, just just to put the extreme on it. Okay, so man, this is a lot of fun. We went down some nice rabbit holes and philosophy, metaphysics, you know, training, nutrition, the whole thing. So thanks for coming on.

Tony Perri  1:12:38

It was a lot of fun, man. Thanks, man. So all right, talk soon.

Philip Pape  1:12:44

Thank you for tuning in to another episode of Wits & Weights. If you found value in today's episode, and know someone else who's looking to level up their Wits & Weights. Please take a moment to share this episode with them. And make sure to hit the Follow button in your podcast platform right now to catch the next episode. Until then, stay strong.

Ep 114: Can Rapid Fat Loss (Aggressive Dieting) Be Sustainable?

Today, we are talking about expanding your comfort zone in an entirely achievable AND sustainable way so that what might seem extreme or out of reach today will one day be part of your everyday, ordinary routine. I’ll use my rapid fat loss phase as an example of how this process works.

We just finished a challenge where we had about 30 members of the Wits & Weights Facebook community following along or running the protocol themselves, so I will be using direct quotes from their experience to give you context as to how what seems extreme may not be depending on the foundations you’ve already developed.

__________

Click here to apply for coaching!
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Today you’ll learn all about:

[2:36] Expanding comfort zone for personal growth and self-improvement
[10:16] Expanding your comfort zone through behavioral change
[11:40] Avoiding the extreme zone and setting yourself up for failure
[14:47] Rapid fat loss vs. extreme crash diets
[17:15] Success in the rapid fat loss challenge
[22:05] Expanding comfort zone for sustainable self-improvement
[24:38] Outro

Episode resources:

• My Rapid Fat Loss Guide

• You Can’t Screw This Up by Adam Bornstein

• Ep 104: Fat Loss vs. Weight Loss 

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👩‍💻👨‍💻 Click here to schedule a FREE results breakthrough call with Philip

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Transcript

Philip Pape  00:00

The key here is not to exit your comfort zone. Because you're going to fail. The key is to expand it. This is a balanced approach. This is how we add new and quote unquote healthier habits without abandoning what you know and love. Welcome to the Wits & Weights podcast. I'm your host Philip pape, and this twice a week podcast is dedicated to helping you achieve physical self mastery by getting stronger. Optimizing your nutrition and upgrading your body composition will uncover science backed strategies for movement, metabolism, muscle and mindset with a skeptical eye on the fitness industry, so you can look and feel your absolute best. Let's dive right in Wits & Weights

Philip Pape  00:41

community Welcome to another solo episode of the Wits & Weights podcast. In our last episode number 113 barbell training for physical therapy and injury prevention with John Patricio. We discussed how John marries the worlds of rehab and strength, challenging conventional wisdom while laying down a framework that could drastically change your approach to injury prevention and rehab. You'll learn why strength isn't just about lifting weights, and why barbell training could be your secret weapon against not just injury, but mediocrity. Today for episode 114. Can Rapid Fat Loss, aggressive dieting, be sustainable, we're talking about expanding your comfort zone in a way that is entirely achievable and sustainable. So that what might seem extreme or out of reach today, will one day be part of your everyday ordinary routine. I'll use my Rapid Fat Loss fees as an example of how this process works in real life. Now, we just finished a challenge where we had about 30 members of the Wits & Weights Facebook community following along or running the protocol themselves. So I'll be using direct quotes from their experience give you context as to how what seems extreme may not be depending on the foundations that you've already developed. Okay, let's dive into can Rapid Fat Loss, aggressive dieting, be sustainable. Okay, this is a topic that is often misunderstood. But I think it's crucial for personal growth, it's crucial for self improvement, the idea of expanding your comfort zone. And after having read a specific chapter within a new book called you can't screw this up by Adam Bornstein, a very well known nutrition author, he works with Arnold Schwarzenegger, a bunch of famous people, he gets around. So you probably already know the name. And if not, you'll know it soon enough. But I'll include the link to his book in my show notes. And on this one particular chapter of the book, which is about expanding your comfort zone, he used a very simple model, it's very much like Maslow's hierarchy of needs where until you have a foundation established, it's hard to move up to the next level of the pyramid, at least this was in the hierarchy of needs. In this case, we're talking about comfort. So he uses three circles. And I'm going to get into the model and have you visualize it as part of this podcast episode, because I think it's gonna be really helpful in doing what we're talking about here. But I wanted to quote from his book, and I'm gonna have a couple of quotes in here. The first one has to do with the idea of discomfort. And I think this will resonate with you because I do talk about this quite a bit, maybe with different language, but I think it should resonate, quote, research suggests that even when a challenge requires a lot of effort, mixing in enjoyment, and feeling accomplished is a big part of success. That's because accomplishment leads to more confidence. And that confidence will create consistent behaviors. Once you're consistent, you see better results and have more motivation. And that's when you can take on greater challenges and discomfort, and make even more progress. So to put that whole thing in the nutshell, the themes are if you can take some action, a little action, a micro action, a tiny habit, and get a result, the result makes you feel accomplished, the accomplishment leads to some motivation. And you can spiral that into greater and greater momentum to where the little things that you did that are slightly out of your comfort zone are no longer out of your comfort zone. And that's the premise of what we're talking about today. And so I want you to imagine and this is a diet based on a diagram he actually shows in his book so I'm just shamelessly stealing the idea but hopefully, you know, he understands imitation is a form of flattery and I'm giving him credit where credit is due and the link to his book in my show notes. So definitely go support him. So imagine three concentric circles, okay, the innermost circle represents your comfort zone. The middle one around it is your expanded comfort zone or what he calls your Improvement Zone. And the outermost is the extreme zone. Let's start with the comfort zone. Let's assume that everything you're doing today whether you whether you like it or not, whether you're happy with your habits or not. That's just By the point right now you are where you are right now, even if you know you want to be and can be that the athlete that you want to be. So that inner circle is your comfort zone. And this is where you currently are. It's not about loving or hating your habits. It's really recognizing what feels easy for you right now, what is just something that you do what you do really? Well, you know, the example he says is, if you're used to eating takeout all the time, that's part of your comfort zone. If you're used to sitting around most of the day working and get maybe 3000 steps a day, that's part of your comfort zone. If you're used to eating cereal for breakfast, that's part of your comfort zone. So embrace it, that's true. And that represents a single circle of 100%. Okay, so that's your current reality 100% of the time. Now, if you do one little thing tomorrow, that goes outside of your comfort zone, and it's a small enough thing. So for example, I mentioned eating cereal every day for breakfast. What if you incorporated protein, and fiber in your breakfast, that's it just protein and fiber in your breakfast, and this is outside your comfort zone, because you've never done it before. But it's pretty easy, you would logically start to think about your options, and you'd say, Okay, well, oatmeal is like cereal, but it has protein and fiber, great, I'm gonna have oatmeal, of course, I'm not going to have cereal, too, I'm gonna have oatmeal instead of cereal, maybe I'll have a protein shake or some eggs, but that could be pushing it. So we'll just switch the cereal out for oatmeal. Awesome. Now that oatmeal represents a 5% of your actions, just throwing a number out there. This is that second circle, right, the expanded comfort zone. Now if that expanded comfort zone is 5% of your actions, then the inner comfort zone, your original comfort zone has now shrunk just a bit, hasn't it? It's shrunk to like 95%. Okay. And every day, you have oatmeal instead of cereal, not a big deal. It's easy to do. And now all of a sudden, your comfort zone Blue has popped out a bit. And the original comfort zone plus your expanded comfort zone now becomes your new comfort zone. And that's just if you make one change one at a time, right, we can start applying this to multiple examples. For example, let's say you do sit around all day because you have a desk job, and you get maybe 3000 steps a day. What if you decide I'm going to walk after lunch every day, maybe it's a mile, a mile is reasonable, right a half mile half mile back, maybe it's less, maybe it's more, but a mile is maybe 2000 more steps. So you are saying that I'm going to instead of doing whatever I do now after lunch, maybe that scrolling on social media, I'm gonna go for a one mile walk and for lunch. That's it. That's what I'm gonna do this week, I now pushed out my comfort zone. And that's one thing. Now I'm going to right now I don't exercise. But I am going to start with some bodyweight exercises one day a week. Again, these are little things micro habits, tiny habits, whatever term you want to use that go into your expanded comfort zone. And every time you do them, you are building up this repertoire or this portfolio of habits that you never did before, that are beyond your original comfort zone that cause a little bit of discomfort but not too much. And it leads you to having a smaller and smaller living in your original comfort zone less and less. So I want to read you another quote that's related to this. Quote, if the small circle is your current reality 100% of the time, when you expand your comfort zone, you'll find yourself living in the Improvement Zone 60 to 80% of the time, and your old comfort zone 20 to 40% of the time. This is the goal to gain new healthy habits and behaviors without ever fully abandoning foods that you know and enjoy. It's about enjoying takeout. But adjusting how you order or eating dessert, but limiting how many times a week, end quote. I love that the way that this is expressed because this is exactly what we talk about with flexible dieting, with giving yourself room and space to enjoy the things you enjoyed, and never to stop enjoying those things. And the fact that restrictive diets tell you to do exactly that. They tell you to cut out something and I guarantee one of those some things is something you enjoy. And that creates cognitive dissonance or moral choice, where if you ever choose that thing, you are now denigrating yourself down to the very soul of who you are. Because there's a dissonance there. I would rather you live in a place of quote unquote, comfort. And this is where I love Adams, you know concept the way he phrases it where our comfort zone simply expands more and more over time. Or put another way our Improvement Zone is where we live more of the time and not so much in our comfort zone but it's still within the realm of possibility and I can give you more examples I could say going from soda to diet soda, going from large portions to small portions going from not tracking to tracking As much as I talk a lot on this podcast about, you know, here are the 10 things that you would do in a perfect nutrition plan and fitness plan to get to your goals, you know, track your food, track your macros, your calories, do this, this, this, I never intend for you to just do that overnight. And this idea of expanding your comfort zone is behavioral change, it is what I help clients with, it's how we do it. And here's the cool thing is before I get to the third circle, by the way, is I would actually insert a kind of I'll not, I won't call it a circle, it's like a a sleeve or a comfort jacket around the Improvement Zone, where if I'm working with a client, they now have a support structure in place where their Improvement Zone, that second circle is actually a little bit bigger, they have a buffer, past that Improvement Zone, before they get to the extreme zone, and that's their coach. And that could be your community as well, where we're giving you this, I'll say not permission, but space to kind of push the limit just a little more than that, if you want, knowing that you can fall back, and we will give you that feedback and advice and make adjustments and so on. So if you start with me as a client, you're gonna get that accelerator that multiplier, to expand your comfort zone a little more quickly, is the way I like to think of it. And also to know with confidence, how to expand that comfort zone, and when you can expand it. Okay, so just just to put that in there. So we talked about the comfort zone, we talked about the Improvement Zone. And remember, the Improvement Zone is just adding in other habits that serve you that that push your discomfort that make your comfort zone bigger zone bigger as well, but still having the comfort zone in the middle, right, and still retaining some of those. And it's okay to have both. But if if you go too far out of your comfort zone, you're gonna get into the extreme zone. And this is what leads to stress, anxiety and setting yourself up for failure. This is where you say, I'm going all in on Monday with my diet, I'm going to cut this cut that I'm going to drink more, I'm going to sleep more I'm going to exercise five days a week that you've you've been there, we've all been there, right? And some sometimes I know, from personal experience, the thinking is kind of the cold turkey, right? Like, you know what, I'm just going to do it. If I don't go all in, I'm going to fail because I don't have all the pieces where it's actually quite the opposite. If you try to go all in, you're pushing way past your comfort zone. And then you're just gonna screw it up. Let's just be honest, like we are, that's we're inevitable, it's inevitable inevitably going to happen. Now, I had another thought related to this. I want to chime in here. Oh, yes. I've talked before about how when we add things in, for example, when we add that protein in like we're adding in the oatmeal instead of the cereal, right we're at, we're adding in the protein, so it crowds out the cereal, that concept can apply to anything we're adding in the walk after lunch. So crowds out the sitting and being on social media. And everything you add in is going to naturally display something that just doesn't work anymore. And that's the same concept of of shrinking that comfort zone a bit expanding the Improvement Zone a bit, it's the same idea. So whichever way helps you that's the way to do it. Now going back to the extreme zone, that is what we want to avoid going all in and going to the point where we break. And so this leads me to actually wanting to tie this in to the rapid fat loss phase that I so as I record this episode, I'm about five days in it's it's the weekend, but the

Philip Pape  13:32

the challenge will be over by the time you see this, it'll be just over. So an upcoming episode will actually go into all the results of that and kind of examining what we learned from it almost from a research type approach. Hey, this is Philip and I hope you're enjoying this episode of Wits & Weights, I started Wits & Weights to help people who want to build muscle lose fat and actually look like they lift. I've noticed that when people improve their strength and physique, they not only look and feel better, they transform other areas of their life, their health, their mental resilience and their confidence in everything they do. And since you're listening to this podcast, I assume you want the same things the same success, whether you recently started lifting, or you've been at this for a while and want to optimize and reach a new level of success. Either way, my one on one coaching focused on engineering your physique and body composition is for you. If you want expert guidance and want to get results faster, easier, and with fewer frustrations along the way to actually look like you lift, go to wits & weights.com and click on coaching or use the link in my show notes to apply today. I'll ask you a few short questions to decide if we're a good fit. If we are we'll get you started this week. Now back to the show. Today what I wanted to talk about is the amazing experience that I'm not surprised by but I'm it's validating to see that so many people in the Rapid Fat Loss Challenge that are doing it with Me have had this experience. And here's where I'm going. Here's where I'm going with this. If I just say it with no context whatsoever, rapid fat loss, what do you think? You think you might think, oh, quick fix, it's one of those short term programs, unsustainable. Its its marketing. Its extreme right, you might think of all those things. Now, if you listen to my episode called fat loss versus weight loss, you already know that one distinguishing word there is the word fat loss or the word fat versus weight. So I'm not saying rapid weight loss, I'm saying rapid fat loss. Well, what distinguishes rapid fat loss from an extreme diet or an extreme crash diet? Well, a couple of things. One is that we are training extremely hard, hard as in the way we normally want to train to build muscle to give ourselves the muscle building stimulus. And that means our body is in a, in a acute muscle building priority status, meaning the most important thing is to build muscle and therefore it's going to recruit whatever nutrition it can to do that, well, when you're at maintenance, or in a surplus, it's going to recruit proteins, and carbs for glycogen, and you're going to have all this energy coming in. So you can build muscle, when you're in a deficit, when you're in a dieting phase, for fat loss phase, whatever you wanna call it, you don't have that much energy coming in. So number one, you're giving it that signal. And then number two, you want to keep the protein very high. And by very high, I mean around a gram per pound, which relative to calories, ends up being a significant portion of your calories, the more deep your deficit, the more percentage of calories the protein represent to the point where if you are down to like 1000 calories a day or something like that, your protein might be 90% of your calories, because you've got the essential fat coming in very little carbs, and most of its protein. But here's the cool thing, even when you do that, if you if you have no other stressors on your body, if you have not been dieting before, if you have been training, if you have some muscle, you can still be successful, for a short duration, by giving your body the muscle building signal and the protein that it needs. And I won't go into Dr. Bill Campbell's research in detail here like I did last time. In fact, I think I have a bonus episode that came out about this. But

Philip Pape  17:15

where am I going with this is that I see people in the challenge. You know what, I'm actually going to open the chat right now, I'm not going to share it on my recording. But I want to bring up specific, I want to bring up specific quotes that people say, said, okay, so I actually asked about how things were going. So in this rapid fat loss protocol, we have four days at an extreme deficit, I'll say extreme, I don't even use the term because we're using the extreme to represent the outer circle. And my goal at the end of this is to show you that this may not actually be extreme for these participants, and myself. And this is the point is expanding your comfort zone. So what was once extreme or could be extremely someone else is really just ordinary to you, and your body knows it. And your results show it. So I asked about how things were going in general, I didn't try to lead the question by saying, you know, are you hungry? Although I asked that later, I asked how things were going and I got comments like the hunger that gets kicked in, that kicks in is very short lived. Any lack of energy is refueled by a walk or going to the gym. Not gonna lie, I thought this was gonna be way harder. I like the term comfortably uncomfortable, not too difficult, but also challenging. I'm not hungry, and everything is balanced. To be honest, in terms of hunger, I wouldn't even need a refeed today. But there's one thing I noticed my legs were sore, I train consistently, and there's not a huge difference in stimulus. So maybe this is due to lack of carbs and fats to fully recover. So I shared that quote, because it's a little bit of, hey, I, this is not that hard. I have a little bit of symptoms going on. But it's within the realm of possibility. And this is from someone who's been training for years, who has a bunch of muscle and knows how to track their food. Another quote, to be honest, I was having doubts one day before the challenge, because I promised myself many years ago, I wasn't going to go hungry for losing weight ever again, right, which would be extreme. And I've done many diets in the past with the same amount of calories I'm now in and I was hungry all day, the high protein ratio really makes a difference. And I'm very happy to be doing this challenge. Thank you for creating, I'm grateful to be in the community. And it gave me that push. There are a lot of quotes like that, that basically said, You know what, this isn't even bad. Like I thought, you know, a lot of people were a little bit scared with the rapid fat loss phase that they would feel just ravenously hungry. And the idea of prioritizing protein and fiber satiation training, and then only doing it for four days before you have your first refeed a refeed. Basically filling up your calories to maintenance is enough to show that you can push your comfort zone and still not have it be unachievable or extreme now, if you came to me and you had never tracked food before, you'd never strength train before your metabolism was kind of downregulated from your years of dieting, I'd say hell no this is not free. You This is not the thing for you to be doing this would be so out of your comfort zone, that it would feel like a crash diet, it would be extreme because from day one you'd struggle like, oh, how do I get enough protein? How do I even track this? What do you mean by this much of a deficit, on and on and on. So there's a foundation of knowledge, a foundation of I should say, skills and habits needed before you go to a level that's beyond that, for it not to seem extreme. And that's really the point of this whole thing. Okay. So what do we do about this? What, how is this information valuable? The key here is not to exit your comfort zone, because you're going to fail, the key is to expand it. This is a balanced approach. This is how we add new and, quote unquote, healthier habits. without abandoning what you know, and love, I will always want to eat ice cream, I do it in a fat loss phase, I do it in a circle, it doesn't matter, I love ice cream, I will always want to go out to eat, whether it's a restaurant, whether it's a cafe, whether it's for dessert, at a bar, whatever, I'm always gonna want to do that. And I know I'm going to want to do that. I'm always going to love carbs, I love all the carbs, give me all the carbs. And guess what you can have all those things, it's really, it really comes down to making them fit within your comfort zone, and balance with your Improvement Zone. And the Improvement Zone is where you're always pushing yourself a bit, just a bit. All right. And so we keep things in our diet that we enjoy that prevents the burnout, we do the micro habits that push our comfort zone out into the expanded comfort zone, that's create that creates consistency, because it's pretty easy to stick with small changes that we barely notice, and not doing too many of them at once. So those are kind of the practical tips on expanding your comfort zone, which is a balanced, sustainable approach to self improvement. And so yes, even a rapid fat loss phase that's only two weeks long, that's done by someone who has a foundation that it takes so that the the extreme quote unquote, deficit that you're doing is actually just a little bit out of your comfort zone actually means that it's sustainable. And in fact, the skills that the people participating are learning myself included, they actually just sharpening or refining the skills we already have of, okay, here's, here's really how we dial in the fiber and protein to a to another level. And now when we go back into a normal fat loss phase in the future, that's going to be easily in our comfort zone. And people are going to hit all new heights of body composition or body recomp and physique enhancement. And if people want to go for other more extreme goals in the future, like maybe a longer fat fat loss phase, but a normally aggressive or moderately aggressive rate, for example, they're going to now have even more sharpened skills because of their expanded comfort zone. Okay, it's not about extremes. That's my point. It's really incremental changes you can maintain over the long term. And so the next time you're thinking, I'm going to do all those things, because I need to get in shape, consider just expanding your comfort zone instead. Because the long game is actually the fastest path. The long game is the fastest path. Because the short game of trying to do the shortcut, and go into your expanding comfort zone, it's going to collapse every time you're going to do it over and over and over again, potentially for years. Many people never learn that lesson. You're listening to Wits, & Weights, you're gonna learn that lesson. And you're gonna do the long game, which is actually the fastest path to results. Now, one way to do this to expand your comfort zone is take the teeny tiny step of scheduling a results breakthrough session with me, yes, you'll get some clarity on how to expand that comfort zone. As I said before, it's kind of like an accelerator. It's a multiplier. This is like a free coaching session where I'm just gonna give you some tips with from all my expertise and years of working with people of how to do that, how to make training and nutrition a comfortable, everyday part of your lifestyle, and embrace the athletes inside of you the one that's inside of you right now that just is roaring to come out. So to schedule that call, just click the link in my show notes or go to wits & weights.com and click free call at the top. It'll take no more than 30 minutes. I will not sell you on anything. I'm not going to mention prices, my coaching none of that. It's all about clarity and how you can take concrete steps starting as early as this week, like the day after the day of our call to expand your comfort zone. In our next episode 115 how Tony lost 15 pounds 8% body fat and built lifelong strength with barbell training. We'll discuss my friend, fellow lifter and client Tony, his transformative journey, the intricacies of nutrition and barbell training and the mental hurdles he faced along the way. Tony's insights could radically change your perspective. And I mean totally serious about that even though he might think I'm joking, and your approach to fitness, nutrition and health. As always, stay strong. And I'll talk to you next time here on the Wits & Weights podcast. Thank you for tuning into another episode of Wits & Weights if you found value in today's episode, and know someone else who's looking to level up their Wits & Weights, please take a moment to share this episode with them. And make sure to hit the Follow button in your podcast platform right now to catch the next episode. Until then, stay strong.

Ep 113: Barbell Training for Physical Therapy and Injury Prevention with John Petrizzo

Today,  I welcome John Petrizzo, a physical therapy advisor/coach of mine whom I met in Andy Baker's barbell club. John will debunk common myths about strength, recovery, and mobility. He’ll explain how to merge rehab and strength training to prevent injuries. You’ll learn why strength is a fundamental attribute that affects every aspect of your life, from post-surgery recovery to traditional PT to overall function and performance.

John is a Physical Therapist, Certified Strength and Conditioning Specialist, Starting Strength Coach, and an Associate Professor in the Department of Health and Sport Sciences at Adelphi University. He holds a B.S. in Exercise Science from Hofstra University, where he was a member of the football team and a Doctorate in Physical Therapy from the New York Institute of Technology.

John has worked in the fitness industry since 2006 and has helped many clients achieve their health, fitness, and sports performance goals through barbell training. In 2012, he began competing in powerlifting.

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Today you’ll learn all about:
[2:34] Combining physical therapy and barbell training
[7:46] Benefits of barbell training for the average person
[12:02] Counterintuitive lessons on human strength and mobility
[16:37] General philosophy on post-surgery recovery and linear progression in lifting
[25:58] Importance of strength as the primary physical attribute affecting human performance
[29:18] Limitations of mainstream fitness and PT methods
[33:03] Prescribing barbell training in a rehab setting
[35:12] Patients' reactions to barbell training as part of their rehab
[36:15] Differences between mobility and flexibility
[40:39] How physical therapy knowledge improved an athlete's performance
[45:30] How barbell training influences clinical reasoning in physical therapy
[47:06] Barbell training's role in injury prevention and reducing the recurrence of injuries
[49:17] One question John wished Philip had asked
[52:00] Where listeners can learn more about John
[53:08] Outro

Episode resources:

• Progressive Rehab and Strength - https://www.progressiverehabandstrength.com/ 

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👩‍💻👨‍💻 Click here to schedule a FREE results breakthrough call with Philip

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Transcript

John Petrizzo  00:00

Everything that you do in your daily life, in some part relates back to your ability to generate force, right? So get yourself up out of a chair to go up and down the stairs, right to keep your balance when you're carrying the groceries, all of those things relate back to your ability to produce force and the stronger you are, the more submaximal those tasks become.

Philip Pape  00:23

Welcome to the Wits & Weights podcast. I'm your host Philip pape, and this twice a week podcast is dedicated to helping you achieve physical self mastery by getting stronger. Optimizing your nutrition and upgrading your body composition will uncover science backed strategies for movement, metabolism, muscle and mindset with a skeptical eye on the fitness industry so you can look and feel your absolute best. Let's dive right in. Wits & Weights community Welcome to another episode of the Wits & Weights Podcast. Today I've invited on John Patricio, a physical therapy trainer advisor coach of mine whom I met in Andy Baker's barbell club. And I wanted to bring him on because of his unique combination of physical therapy and barbell training. He and I have had a few conversations leading up to and then after my rotator cuff surgery, where he gave me some great advice helped me accelerate the process of getting back to what I love, which is training, building muscle and being active. And I wanted to dive into some of these principles so you can benefit from his tremendous expertise, John will dismantle some of the more pervasive myths about strength, recovery and mobility. We'll discuss how to merge the worlds of rehab and strength in a framework that could drastically change your approach to injury prevention and rehab. From post surgery recovery to the cautionary advice you often hear in traditional physical therapy. You'll learn why strength isn't just about lifting weights. It's really a fundamental attribute that influences every facet of your life. John Patricio is a physical therapist Certified Strength Conditioning Specialist, starting strength coach and an associate professor in the Department of Health and sports sciences Sciences at Adelphi University. Sorry, man, that's a mouthful. He holds a BS in exercise science from Hofstra University, where he was a member of the football team, and a doctorate in physical therapy from the New York Institute of Technology. John has worked in the fitness industry since 2006, in a variety of roles and settings, and has helped many patients and clients achieve their health fitness and sports performance goals to barbell training. In 2012. John also began competing in powerlifting. John man, it is an honor finally to have you on the show.

John Petrizzo  02:31

Thanks so much for having me. It's a pleasure to be here.

Philip Pape  02:34

So let's let's get to know you a bit. You have this uncommon dual practice that I think it's uncommon, maybe it's not, but it combines physical therapy, and barbell training. So tell us how that came to be and tell us some of your guiding principles behind that.

John Petrizzo  02:48

Sure. So my interest in training started, you know, way back when I was a teenager, played a lot of sports growing up and became interested in lifting specifically to try and improve my performance and athletics, wanting to get bigger and stronger, like a lot of high school guys that play football. And I also played basketball and lacrosse in high school, and wanted to try and continue to play in college. So I saw, you know, weight training is kind of the key to that. And then once I got into college, I had to figure out, you know, what I actually was going to do there academically, and decided on majoring in exercise science, I didn't really know much about it. To be honest, at the time, I just knew that it sounded like it aligned with my interests. And once I graduated, I started working as a personal trainer at a large commercial fitness facility, which I really enjoyed. And finished up college I continued to train and true meaning train myself. And ultimately, I became interested in physical therapy a little bit because there was a PT clinic in the gym that I was training people at, and I just kind of became curious about was that they knew you know, about the body and about rehab and performance that I didn't know. And it kind of piqued my interest and made me want to pursue that. So I ended up applying for grad school for physical therapy and doing that. And, you know, once I was in the program, and certainly I mean, I learned a ton. But I also realized that not a lot of people that were involved in rehab really knew or had a ton of interest in strengthing conditioning, you know, so, so I was a little bit unique from that standpoint, I think it's becoming more common now. But that's really where it started for me, you know, and once I got out and started practicing, it really was about taking the things that I knew about training and strength and conditioning and kind of applying that to a real limitative setting, you know, I wanted to be able to work with people from across the continuum, whether they needed strictly rehabilitation, whether they're looking to improve their sports performance or, you know, get stronger, you know, I wanted to be able to do all of that. And that's really where it started for me.

Philip Pape  05:17

Yeah, and it sounds like it's a, it's a really natural combination of things, because we all experience injuries, surgeries, and issues over the years. And there does seem to be a gap, at least from the lay person's perspective, from both sides from trainers who don't quite understand movement patterns and, and injury and maybe don't even want to go there for liability reasons. And then physical therapists who just from personal experience, very few of them seem to understand lifting, you know, and or it's this attitude of like, well, you know, if they know me, as a lifter that, like, you've got your strength stuff, we're going to focus on the range of motion stuff and like, well, isn't there an overlap there? How comedy, do you think it is becoming? Even though it's still uncommon? Like in any given town in the US, for example, could you find somebody in your radius that is like, a guy like you?

John Petrizzo  06:03

Probably not? I mean, you know, so for me, when I say I feel like it's more common, you know, that's probably a little bit biased, because of the people that I associate with. And you know, that I tend to follow through social media and things like that, which makes it feel like yeah, this is becoming more common. But still, you know, when you think about in your, like, you said, your average PT clinic, you know, outpatient orthopedic PT clinic, you're probably not going to have a PT there that that really understands. Let's say, if you come in as a lifter, right, you're a competitive power lifter, you're an Olympic weightlifter or something like that, probably not going to have somebody there that necessarily understands what you're trying to get back to, you know, and that's unfortunate. But I think that's kind of the reality of the situation. I think, a lot of the people that do have that expertise, tend to they start their own businesses and things like that. They, they don't want to work with insurance, they're out of pocket. You know, what a you know what I mean? I mean, yeah, that's what my wife, she, she ended up doing. And, you know, so you may have some luck, maybe at like a CrossFit facility or something where they have someone there like that, but your typical, like, outpatient orthopedic insurance based clinic? Probably not.

Philip Pape  07:24

Yeah. And it's great that we do have the ability to connect online today, like I did with you. And I wanted to bring you on the show, because I just truly believe in what you're doing and how it can help people. So as people are listening or watching this, you know, John is a guy, you can reach out who may not be local, but to give you some, some direction, at least. So yeah, let's let's touch a little bit on training and rehab and combining the two. You're a big, big believer in barbell training, as am I, and you even compete in powerlifting. There, I guess there's some debate with people still about whether barbell training is beneficial or not for the average person, right, I get questions like, Is it safe? Can you train with barbells? Over the age of x? Right? 450? Whatever? Sure. Just just break it down in simple terms, you know, what's the philosophy behind why you believe in barbell training? Well,

John Petrizzo  08:11

you know, the first thing I would say is, does anybody have to do barbell training? I mean, the answer is obviously no, right? There's nothing that you absolutely have to do, can make plenty of progress in a variety of different ways using resistance training, right? But you know, barbell training, to me, is something that is a lot more accessible to people than they realize. And, you know, the benefit is, just from, in my opinion, the efficiency with which you can train large groups of muscles, right, large amounts of muscle mass, through long ranges of motion, using what we would consider to be fairly normal human movement patterns, like the squat, like the deadlift, which is just picking something up, like the press, you know, and, and those sorts of exercises, they have a ton of carryover to our everyday activities, you know, I think an additional benefit for people is that they incorporate the majority of them incorporate at least some sort of balance component, right? So so you can get a lot of benefit with just a handful of basic exercises or movement patterns. And, and that's what I think the average person doesn't really see, you know, they kind of look at this as that's a body building thing. That's, uh, you know, that's a weightlifter thing, and, you know, I don't need to be doing that and it's, again, you don't need to be doing that but you might find it to be way more beneficial than then you realized and, you know, to me, it's it's really just about finding an appropriate starting point and that's, that's where a coach or someone with experience in this stuff can really make the difference you know, so know knowing sorts of maybe equipment modifications do you need do you need a lighter barbells do you need you know what I mean? Do you need? Do you need to modify the range of motion of the exercises initially, those are the things where a coach can really help someone get off on the right foot and have a positive experience with this stuff. And and then it starts to build on itself over time.

Philip Pape  10:16

Yeah, I agree with everything you said. I mean, there's, there's some things in there, like the fact that it's accessible and safe, I think is lost on some people until you kind of run them through the scenario of increasing your barbells or increasing dumbbells with progressive overload and some of the safety challenges that come with that, or even just practical challenges of, you know, going up in certain increments and the availability of all these dumbbells, like you said, 15 pound bar, empty bar, whatever it takes to start. And then the balance and mobility stability. All of that is can't be overstated, I think for folks. Yeah. Yeah. So

John Petrizzo  10:51

yeah. And I would just say, people that haven't done it, they, they can't really understand what we're talking about. So that's kind of that's kind of the barrier for some people. And I think that's where it becomes an issue from a rehabilitative standpoint with physical therapists, right? So, or even lots of physicians, you know, they're very quick to tell people, no, don't do that, you're gonna hurt your back, you're gonna hurt your knees, you're gonna hurt your shoulders, whatever it is, when in reality, they're just that take that with a grain of salt, because it more than likely, they've never done it themselves. They've never gone through the process of learning how to do those things. And it's really outside of their area of expertise. But they throw those comments out there, because they just make assumptions about it. Right. And that's a hard thing to overcome. Certainly,

Philip Pape  11:40

it is. And I've had three surgeries myself, one of which was a back surgery. And without deadlifting, I'm not sure where I would be, in other words, the positive side of it being able to recover and get strong again, right, right, where oftentimes, you're told well, I'm not even sure you're gonna deadlift. Yeah, of course, things like that. So speaking of those kind of, I guess, counterintuitive, lessons, myths, whatever you want to call them, since you you've been in the game since like, 2006, right, working in physical therapy, and as a strength coach, what is what is one of the biggest or the most maybe counterintuitive lesson about strength and mobility that you've discovered in your years of practice?

John Petrizzo  12:17

Well, I think, again, this is probably something that is counterintuitive to a lot of people, but the two really go hand in hand, right? So you know, if you're, if you're training through a full range of motion, you know, you're squatting to below parallel, you're pressing over your head through your full shoulder range of motion, then you're building strength, and mobility simultaneously, you know, and, and I think that's another misconception people have is like, well, if I, you know, if I lift weights, I'm just gonna get Titan. You know what I mean? Like that, that kind of thinking still persists today, which is kind of crazy. For those of us that are, you know, a little bit more educated about this stuff. But I'm talking about the way like the general public kind of looks at it. Right. And, you know, they don't. And over the years, I've, there been a number of people that have told me, Wow, you know, I can't believe like, how much better I'm moving, how much more flexible I feel, you know, even though flex actual dedicated flexibility training really only makes up a very small part of what they're doing with me. So I think that that's probably the biggest thing. So let's

Philip Pape  13:25

take a very specific example that right, this morning, I did the PEC PEC deck flies for the first time, this was at the end of my workout, because I had left rotator cuff surgery and I'm trying to like work that capsule every way I can and get it stretched out. And I took video of myself and I noticed, you know, the affected arm. The angles are just way off from my good arm still, because it's an even on my head, they feel symmetrical. And the straight started to get looser and looser, even though it wasn't doing stretching. I wasn't using bands, I was just lifting, right? What, uh, I guess, when you think of the physical therapy concept? What's the value between the range of motion isometric and stretching type work versus just say lifting with certain movements that use the same joint? If that makes any sense?

John Petrizzo  14:12

Well, the way that I always kind of describe it to people is that you only get stronger through the range of motion that you're training through, right? So we want to train through the full available range of motion provided it's safe, it's, you know, not painful, right? Those sorts of caveats. Now, with like, specific flexibility work, you're obviously going to get some, you know, specific benefit from that but you don't get the the strength benefits simultaneously right. Now, with the flexibility work, you can you know, maybe work through a further range of motion, right, get to a further endpoint if that's your goal, but then you can with with the resistance training exercises, but, but in reality, you know, the way that I Look at it is if you have the range of motion to do everything that you need to do right in your day to day life, then do you really need to spend a bunch of additional time doing flexibility exercise, just to achieve some kind of arbitrary endpoint that you're trying to get to, you know, and obviously, like, if you're a gymnast or a dancer or something, then you need a different degree of flexibility and mobility than the average person does. But for most people, just doing full range of motion resistance training is going to give them a pretty good flexibility stimulus and, you know, keep their mobility at a, you know, above average sort of level.

Philip Pape  15:44

Yeah, I can definitely vouch for that. So, let's let's talk about post rehab or post surgery recovery, then, because again, I like to throw my personal story in there, because that's how we met and I'm experiencing it right now. After I was cleared to start lifting by my surgeon, I reached out to you for advice. You pointed me to some some rehab movements that could increase range of shoulder range of motion. So again, these weren't, these weren't loaded movements, they were rehab, just what you're saying. There's sometimes we do need those. Yeah. But you also made my day because you said, Hey, can you start benching again, you know, I was like, I honestly had not even thought that that would be possible. And I was almost scared to, you know, there's this fear, right? That like, just gonna tear the tendon again. And so here I am following a linear progression, again, back to getting to bigger loads, without the pain I used to have. So what is your general advice? We can't cover all the types of surgeries, right? What's the general advice and philosophy for recovering from surgery? Understanding everyone's situation is of course unique. Yeah,

John Petrizzo  16:43

so So the first thing I would say is, depending on the surgery, and you just went through this with your rotator cuff, there is going to be a period of time where for a lot of surgeries, you have to protect the surgical site, right. So I typically am not having people back to to doing anything overly aggressive on that surgical site right away. But I do want them to train everything else, as normally as possible, as soon as possible, right, because you want to maintain as high a level of fitness as you can, you don't want to totally de train. So if you have a rotator cuff surgery, and you're in a sling for anywhere from four to six weeks, you know, usually is the timeframe that most people are recommended by their surgeon. Well do as much lower body training as you can train your opposite arm, there's actually research that shows that there's some positive carryover to the affected side, even during periods where it's immobilized, if you're training the opposite limb, so So I definitely encourage people to train everything that they can during that initial recovery phase. And that could be you know, a couple of weeks, in cases where I'm kind of just consulting with somebody remotely like I did with you, I'll be a little bit more conservative than if I'm working with them in person, obviously. So a good kind of frame of reference for most surgical procedures, if there's a repair, right, like they reattached your tendon, right, your rotator cuff tendon, or a reconstruction like an ACL or something like that, I would say like four to six weeks before, you're really going to start to challenge that area, you know, and over the first, those first few weeks, you are going to do you know more kind of traditional rehabilitative stuff to directly for the surgical site. And in the case of the shoulder like you've had, really, initially it's about getting your range of motion back, and a lot of passive stuff because they don't want the surgeons don't want you really forcefully contracting that musculature that that's still healing because the repair is not very strong yet, right? So so that initial phase is really building back the range of motion in most instances, while you're kind of working on everything else that you can, you know, and then after that those first several weeks, then you can start to kind of directly challenge the area that you had surgery on. Right. And again, it'll vary depending on what you what you had done. But the approach that I always take is a linear progression type of approach. And when when you understand the reason why we use it in, you know, strength and conditioning way from from that perspective, it's because you're very far away from your ultimate potential right for strength development when you're first getting started as a novice lifter, so you can make very rapid workout to workout progress for at least several months, typically, right? Well, if you're a lifter that just had surgery, now that area is D trained. So you kind of by default, go back to being a novice to a certain extent right and you can utilize that very simple, linear type of Loading model for several months after surgery usually and you know, you're gonna find a starting point in terms of range of motion and in terms of load that is comfortable for you, right? That's pain is an indicator that you're maybe pushing a little bit too hard, right, you don't want your pain level to be getting worse while you're training. So if you kind of use that as a guide, and you find an appropriate starting point, then it's just about progressing a little bit each session, and you'd be amazed at how fast the progresses you can make,

Philip Pape  20:32

yes, firsthand for those listening. So what John had me try was bench pressing with a limited range of motion. So I used pins in a rack, I came down literally just a few inches below my, you know, taking it out of the rack from the top position, the first time with like an empty bar, and then I would lower the range of motion with an empty bar, then I would add, say 10 pound plates, with the same range of motion, right, and so kind of back and forth, until I got to a full range of motion bench, which felt great, by the way, it almost felt better than doing the, the pin version of it, right, because you get that natural stretch at the bottom. And each time I did it, I noticed that if I if I increase the load too much, you might get a little bit of feedback that maybe this is the gonna cause pain and that you back it off. But as long as you don't have the pain, it's incredible five pounds every time five pounds every time. And within a few weeks, you could go from wherever you were to double where you are potentially, because you're still submaximal relative to your personal original strength that you're at. So just for those listening, it definitely works. And you have to be patient, but you don't have to be so patient that you're not still making good progress.

John Petrizzo  21:43

And I think if you compare that to more typical physical therapy approach, you know, I've been in so many clinics and seen over the years and talk to patients over the years that go in, they have their exercises, they're very isolated exercises, right for this specific area that they had surgery on, the rest of the body kind of gets ignored. And they are not progressed over time, right. So it's kind of like, you start doing your shoulder internal and external rotation, and maybe some, you know, scaption exercises and different things like that with very light loads. And then you know, you're doing your couple sets of 1015 reps, whatever it is, four or five, six weeks later, you're still doing the same stuff, right with the same resistance and, and maybe they feel better. But it's not because of the exercise, right, the exercises and driving any sort of improvement, you're just feeling better, because now you have more time since you had the surgery and air sealing. So I think that there's a big misconception there. Right, I want to use the exercise as a driver of adaptation, right to help you get physically stronger and develop your muscle mass again, as opposed to just waiting around for things to feel better, you know? Yeah,

Philip Pape  23:02

absolutely. barn on for sure. So let me I wasn't gonna ask you this. But I in my gym, I noticed I had my BFR kit that I haven't used in a long time, because I bought it for fun a few years back, do you ever get into that blood flow restriction?

John Petrizzo  23:16

So I have some experience with that I've actually done a little bit of research in that area. And, you know, BFR is not a bad tool. And basically, what the research on VFR will tell you is that you can get a similar type of training effect to a heavier load using lighter loads, right. And the thought processes by partially including the blood flow, it kind of, you know, gives you this different adaptive stimulus. And what I would say is, it can be useful in certain situations, but it's not a necessity. You know, over the years, more recent research regarding resistance training shows that for relatively untrained populations, you can get a lot of benefit with lighter loads, you know, provided you're taking them very close to failure. Right. So BFR is kind of a similar concept. What I would say, in regards to training to failure and BFR, you know, those two approaches, which certainly can be effective, is that they're not for everybody, because they can be really uncomfortable, right? And to me, it's like if, if you're using a protocol that doesn't foster good adherence, right, if a person just as miserable and dreading having to go to the gym, because they know they're going to put this cuff on and it's going to be super uncomfortable to do their resistance stuff with it, then I don't see it as super valuable, but for people that can tolerate that and that enjoy that, you know, then it can be useful, you know, but I don't think it is I don't think it's a necessity by any means.

Philip Pape  24:50

Okay, I mean, the reason it came into my brain was I was like, I was unhappy with the diameter of my left bicep versus my right because of the the what do you Can't atrophied, I guess that occurred. Sure. Like, can I? Besides the just bicep, tricep work that I'm throwing in there? can I enhance that with a little BFR work? Or is it just a little bit more volume of standard lifting? That's going to do it? You know what I mean?

John Petrizzo  25:13

Yeah, and that's the issue. When you look at a lot of resistance training research. It's all done on relatively untrained populations, you know, everyone's very responsive, either, right? Exactly. So they're, so they're relatively untrained. So they're gonna get a really positive response. And, and it makes it a little bit trickier for someone like yourself, who's more highly trained to be able to pull from that research and say, How does this apply to me? You know, so yeah, so I, I would say you can try it, but I don't think it's a necessity. Got it?

Philip Pape  25:45

Curious, I don't think I've ever brought it up on the podcast. So people were curious. Alright, so one principle you've written about, I think in the starting strength website, you've got a few articles up there is just this idea, kind of taking a step back that strength is the most important physical attribute because it affects all other aspects of human performance and well being. So can you elaborate on that just so people understand, we talked a little bit about barbell training, but just strength overall.

John Petrizzo  26:11

Yeah, I mean, that's something certainly that has become more clarified for me over time, especially working as a physical therapist, you know, I think when you're younger, and you know, you're more into athletics, and you know, maybe training for aesthetics and things like that, you don't really understand how important strength is to your everyday life. Now, as a PT, I work with lots of older people, you know, I've had people up into their 90s that I've worked with, and when you see the difference that physical strength can make in their quality of life. It's amazing, you know, I've had people go from wheelchairs to walkers to canes, you know, just because they doubled the strength on the leg press said that they were doing you know, and it's just it, like you said, it has an influence on everything else that we do, you know, we talked about a little bit the the relationship to mobility and flexibility, getting physically stronger will have a positive impact on your endurance, again, certainly more of an impact if you're a relatively untrained and previously sedentary, if we're talking about a high level endurance athlete, that's going to be less the case, but so it just has carryover to everything that we do, every everything that you do in your daily life, in some part relates back to your ability to generate force, right? So get yourself up out of a chair to go up and down the stairs, right to keep your balance when you're carrying the groceries, all of those things relate back to your ability to produce force, and the stronger you are, the more submaximal those tasks become.

Philip Pape  27:53

Yeah, yeah, I mean, it reminds me of like solely John Sullivan's term, you know, the barbell prescription, which is the title of his book, and and that being, strength being the prescription for aging. Yeah, the point where I mean, I would go on, go out and state that you almost can't have to have it in your life if you're going to be, you know, fit for a long time.

28:12

Hi, this is Alan. And I just want to give a shout out to Philip pape, Wits, & Weights, for his nutritional coaching, because coaching is based upon science research, intellect, and wisdom, his coaching is safe, supportive, connecting. And it actually has helped reset my compass in terms of how I direct my health, the action steps I do, and really, really has helped me regain trust and belief in what my body can do and how my body can change.

Philip Pape  28:45

So on the other side of the coin, right, we have the mainstream fitness industry and the mainstream physical therapy industry promoting lots of methods of exercise. They don't always directly produce or increased strength like, well, we have cardio, I mean, cardio, cardio is good for a lot of reasons. But you've got cardio, you've got isolation work, single joint work, the functional movements, the lighter weights, higher reps, bands, and so on. What are the limitations of those? Is there a place for these, you know, people get very overwhelmed with all these ideas, you talk about barbell training, and then all there's all these other things. So how can we clarify it for folks?

John Petrizzo  29:20

Well, I think and the way that I describe this to my students that, you know, again, anything is better than nothing, right? If the choice is functional training, or sitting on the couch, you know, then go ahead, do as much functional training as you want. But if we're talking about you know, efficiency, and if we're talking about maximizing the benefit of the time that you spend exercising, I think that really the traditional strength training, exercises can't be beat from that perspective. The problem with all of those other modalities, if we're talking about functional training or isolation, exercise and things like that, is their ability to be progressed over time? Right? How do you progress a functional exercise? How do you progress an isolation exercise? You know, functional exercises are really more displays of the ability that you already have, right in terms of your balance and that sort of thing, as opposed to developing those characteristics further. And so that's different than if every time you go to the gym, you add five pounds to your deadlift, right, that is developing your strength, the isolation exercises, they're self limited by the fact that they don't involve a lot of muscle mass, right. So their ability to be loaded progressively, is is more limited, right? You can progress on a squat. For years, you can progress on a knee extension for weeks, you know, maybe, but you're gonna hit a wall at some point where you can't do more reps, you can't do more sets, you know, and it just becomes a limiting factor because the amount of muscle mass that you're that you're using, so. So to me, there's kind of a point where all of those other modes of training, at some point are you get more diminished returns than you get with the traditional strength training exercises.

Philip Pape  31:14

I love it. So you clarified it really to I'm gonna, I'm gonna just put words in your mouth, two big principles that I heard there. One is just the time efficiency perspective, right. And I like to call it the lazy persons way. And workouts like barbell training, when I found that I said, Man, I only had to work out three or four days a week for an hour, I don't have to do almost almost anything else, really, and still get a huge amount of results, which is liberating. When I have clients who come in, especially women who are working out seven days a week and running, doing a million things, I say, Well, we're just going to cut out a whole bunch of things. Yeah. And you get the look like really, and they start getting results and the stress goes down and the sleep goes up, you're just, you know, people are floored by that. And then the progressive overload can't be overstated. I'm gonna call it infinite progressive overload is kind of what you imply that there really is no end in sight, when you're using all that muscle mass and those natural patterns. And you're right things like knee extensions, they get tiring after a while, you have to rotate them out, you have to get clever with rep ranges and all this other stuff. But you don't have to do that so much with squats,

John Petrizzo  32:15

right. So so I would say, you know, if you enjoy that stuff, then supplement your basic training with a little bit of that, that's fine, you know, and there's nothing wrong with, you know, having some variety and doing some, you know, some of that stuff if you enjoy it. But, you know, I don't think that they're really good building blocks to like, form the foundation of a good program. Yeah, yeah.

Philip Pape  32:38

And that is a third of what you just mentioned, is it isn't fun, because really, at the end of the day, you do want to stick to something. And he's really good about that. In his program, he understands the practical side of it, you've got, you've got rip over here saying just do the program. Right. And, and then you can kind of add some variety over time. How do you determine when barbell training then is appropriate for or maybe contraindicated for a patient? like physical therapy patient comes in, you're not sure if their history from day one? When would would it be appropriate or not?

John Petrizzo  33:07

Well, I mean, one thing, when I'm dealing with patients, you know, first, I do get a lot of people that come to me because they strength train, right, so so that my perspective is probably a little bit biased. So those people it's a no brainer. I mean, that's what we're gonna do, right? But first selection bias. Yeah, right. Right. But for the average person, you know, one, they have to show a little bit of interest in it, you know, and in my clinic, when they see other people doing it, sometimes they'll start to ask questions about it, they'll say, hey, you know, and they see a 75 year old woman deadlifting. And they're like, Can I do that? And I'm like, Yeah, of course, you can do that. Do you want to learn how to do that? And they're like, yeah, why not? You know what I mean? So, so sometimes it kind of feeds on itself, when they see other people doing it, it makes it less intimidating, and it makes them realize that, hey, you know, I actually can do this stuff, look, that that that kid is doing that that older person is doing that and they look like they're fine, you know, so it makes it less scary for people. But you know, another way that I'll get to it sometimes, you know, if the person maybe is not naturally curious about it, which does happen. But, you know, let's say I start somebody on a leg press, and then I progress them to a bodyweight squat, and then I progress them to a goblet squat. And then I get to the point where I say, Well, you know what, that weight that you're holding? That's actually the same weight as the bar. So why don't we just try to do with the bar and they're like, oh, okay, you know, or if I'm doing like a deadlift pattern, and we're using a kettlebell to start and we kind of progress that to the point where I'm like, hey, you know, that's actually the same weight as this. Why don't we just do this and then they're like, well, if it's the same way, why not, you know, different tools. Yeah, exactly. So So that's almost kind of like a trick them. But that that seems to work pretty well too.

Philip Pape  34:51

for their own good. Well, that's cool. You know, I mean, you you are in a position of trust or authority or whatever you want to look at it where you kind of develop that over time. And that makes a lot of sense. Okay, cool. So do you ever get, you know, weird looks from patients when you recommend or prescribe barbell training? And they're not really sure. They don't really know you? I mean, does that situation come about?

John Petrizzo  35:13

I mean, yeah. And again, like I said, I don't force it on people. Like, if someone is like, listen, I just don't want to do this. I'm not. I've said, okay, you know, we'll, we'll figure something else out. But what I do try and be very upfront about is my rationale for doing things with people, you know, so I always try and explain to them, you know, this is what I want to do. And this is why I think it would be beneficial for you, you know, and if you have a good rapport with the person that you're working with, and they have trust in you, and they, you know, think that you're a competent person. And, you know, you can clearly explain your rationale, then that breaks down a lot of the barriers that people put up to it, you know, for sure. Great. Yeah. So I think just good communication is super important.

Philip Pape  35:55

Yeah, absolutely. And even what you just implied even more deeply than that is the empathy and, you know, meeting somewhere where that understanding people's where they're coming from, right. It's part of coaching, of course, yeah. Okay. So earlier, we talked a little bit about mobility and flexibility, which are sometimes thrown around interchangeably or entertain changeably, or people are confused about the differences. Let's take a squat, for example, just a typical squat, low bar back squat, and someone hasn't had success on their own because of fill in the blank, maybe they say, my hip, hip flexors are tight, right? Or, and they and you know, when you look at them, they're saying their 40s, they're relatively, quote, unquote, fit. And they're just for whatever reason not getting this full range squat. How would you address that situation?

John Petrizzo  36:41

Yeah, so for that sort of thing, a lot of times, it's not necessarily a flexibility limitation now. And when I say flexibility, meaning like a muscular tightness thing, you know, so like, the hamstrings get blamed on a lot of stuff, you know, then my hamstrings are tight, so I can't do this, I can't do that. And in reality, it's usually more about coaching the person through the movement properly, right, and making sure that and making sure that they know where they're supposed to get to, you know, what I mean, showing them, this is where I want you to go, this is how we're going to get there and kind of walking them through that process. Now, sometimes people do truly have a limitation, you know, maybe that's a limitation in their joint mobility, because they have osteoarthritis, or they have some sort of bony anomaly, you know. So those are the types of things that you can't force people through, you know, and that's really super important. You know, I think sometimes we just assume everything is like a flexibility issue. And a lot of times it that's not the limiting factor. If you've coached the person as well as you can, and they're still kind of having trouble, then it might be a joint issue that they're dealing with, you know, rather than like a muscular flexibility issue, but that's probably something that doesn't come up that frequently, you know what I mean? So I would say more often than not, it's just probably the person kind of having a lack of understanding of how they need to get to where you want them to go, you know, and it's more of a coaching thing than a flexibility thing.

Philip Pape  38:18

So let's take a specific scenario, if someone, let's say, someone could sit down to a box that's below parallel, right? Is there any reason they can't do that with load? Like, is there any reason where at some level of load not having progressed there yet, but if they do, they would hit some sort of wall because of mobility slash flexibility?

John Petrizzo  38:40

No, I don't think so. I think that and I start people squatting with boxes all the time, you know, one for someone who's never trained before, it's a little bit of a security blanket, you know, to know that, okay, I'm going to touch this and you know, something is behind me, so they don't feel like they're falling. And especially from a rehab standpoint, it can be really useful in a lot of situations. So, again, it's just about finding the right load for them to start with, and there's no reason why they can't progress from there. And, you know, a lot of times I'll take the box away at a certain point, and then I'll maybe have them do a pause squat, right, so that they really get comfortable in that bottom position before, I'll start to have them actually do you know, the full squat with the stretch reflex and the rebound, and that sort of thing? You know, so, but again, that's a lot of times that progression I'll use from a rehab standpoint.

Philip Pape  39:33

Yeah, no, I think that's important for people to understand. Because I always think in terms of like, what are the excuses we make to ourselves? And how can we get out of that thing? Yeah. So if you can start with this, and then that means you can eventually get to this. So if you can get this that's, that's great. Yeah, it's empowering. Yeah. And

John Petrizzo  39:51

even if it's starting with a limited range of motion, right, so maybe they really can't squat to a box below parallel to start because of pain or weakness, you know? and they can move through that full range of motion, start them with a higher box and then progress them, you know, gradually lower over time, you know, so. So there are all different strategies that you can use, you know, the key is just finding the right starting point for people.

Philip Pape  40:16

Oh, for sure. And if if you have like an elderly mother, for example, who has trouble getting off the couch? Maybe you work with her for with a slightly higher chair than the couch, doing some squats there and then eventually moving your way down? It definitely works. Yes. Yeah. Okay, so kind of on the flip side of this is you have experiencing all experience also working with athletes looking for performance gains? How does your physical therapy knowledge, improve their performance? How does that play into your work with them?

John Petrizzo  40:45

Well, I think it's helpful, really, from the standpoint of avoiding overtraining, and most of the athletes that I work with, their biggest problem is that they're over overtraining, you know, and they're just sore and beat up. And they don't understand why. And it's like, and so the biggest challenge with them, is to get them to take a step back, actually, and do a little bit less and pay a little bit more attention to recovery, that is hard for them psychologically, to say, you know, okay, I'm going to do a little bit less, if they do, typically, we see much better results, right, and they feel better, they perform better, their training goes better, you know what I mean? So that's the biggest thing is trying to get to, in my, from my perspective, is trying to get athletes understand that it's not just your training, it's your ability to recover from your training that is going to dictate how successful you are, you know, and when we're talking about athletes, they have to balance their their weight training, their conditioning work, and their practice, you know, their practice time. And that's the challenging thing, you know, so I think it's, it's really more stressing how important it is to recover in between your sessions.

Philip Pape  42:02

Yeah, and I think that applies to also just older lifters who also are so dedicated to their lifting, like many of us in the club, that you know, you are kind of athletes of a sort, right? We may not be practicing a skill for competition, but we definitely can get beat up. And I'm curious, in your experience, what are the most let's say, the top three parts of the body or type are things that get fatigued and I'm just gonna guess low back and shoulders are on the list? But that's Yeah, yeah, certainly

John Petrizzo  42:29

low back and shoulders. You know, it's funny, when you look at the research related to resistance training injuries, they're really not different than the general population, right? So like the general population, what's the number one type of orthopedic pain is back pain? Well, what's the what's the most common type of injury that lifters experience is typically low back injury, right? So so that's, I try and stress that to people too. It's like, well, you could hurt your back doing anything around your house is just like you can tweak your back. deadlifting. So it's not that that makes the deadlift dangerous, you know, it's not like you would avoid doing stuff in your everyday life. Hopefully, too, because you're worried about tweaking your back. So, but yeah, backs and shoulders. Certainly super common for lifters, hip and knee, maybe a little bit less. So you know, I see more nice stuff with like, my, like high school and college athletes and weekend warrior type people that are doing a lot of additional stuff outside of lifting, you know, but, but certainly backs and shoulders are super common, and, you know, stuff that lifters, you know, elbow tendinitis and, or tendinopathy, just from overuse, and that sort of thing is very common to but in terms of, like, little bit more serious stuff. It's usually backs and shoulders.

Philip Pape  43:47

Makes sense. Oh, yeah. And so speaking of the elbow stuff I used to have, definitely, because of my squat grip, what do they call it? medial epicondylitis. Right? Golf, right? Yes. Although, and I actually I actually follow the pin firing approach and switch to an easy bar for my curls and fix my squat grip. So three training variables, and I changed. Yeah, not sure which one fixed it, but something did. Right. What are your what's your opinion on pin firing? Because I know it's controversial. Yeah. I

John Petrizzo  44:13

mean, it's, it's typically not something that I do with patients just because it's so aggressive, right? And, and, and you know, that you're really going to flare things up in order to, you know, get it to heal. And that's not super appealing to most people. You know, what I what I maybe try it for myself. Yeah, I wouldn't be opposed to doing that. Right. But, but usually what I do is I look at, alright, what is the variable that's probably causing this and how can we address that you know, and like you just said you, you altered three variables. So I always try and do one thing at a time for a rehab standpoint, because then we can kind of assess Okay, so now we've modified your squat grip. Let's do that for a couple of weeks. Use this new grip and see how things start to feel if that's not working. Okay, maybe we need to adjust your grip on your assistant As exercises or whatever the case is, like you did with the EZ curl bar, you know, that's that's a super simple thing. But I try and kind of layer changes in one at a time.

Philip Pape  45:09

Yeah, that makes sense. I'm impatient. That's all. I get it. I mean, when you're doing stuff yourself, you know, it really is sometimes the process of experimentation too, because of course, yeah. All right. So here's another thing wanted to ask about in another one of your articles on starting strength, you talked about how barbell training has enhanced your clinical reasoning and decision making as a physical therapist. So I'm curious about that how to use the principles and methods in terms of diagnosis. And I don't know if you remember that article?

John Petrizzo  45:39

Well, what I would say is that just I think my my background with strength training, just gives me a little bit of a different perspective, when I'm looking at things and I look at how things work together, you know, from a larger scale than in terms of the more isolated approach that we tend to take in physical therapy. So you're recovering from a rotator cuff surgery, you know, the very typical approach is isolated rotator cuff exercise, right. And, in reality, when you're benching and you're pressing, and you're doing rows and pull downs, and those sorts of things, your rotator cuffs going to be very active, right, and you're also getting the additional benefit of training all the other muscles around it, right training through longer ranges of motion, you know, more normal type movement patterns. So So I think that it really just comes from, from having that perspective on things and kind of thinking more about the bigger picture of how all this stuff works together, as opposed to, you know, looking at things from a more isolated perspective.

Philip Pape  46:44

Okay. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. And so in addition to recovery, what about prevention? Right? How does barbell training strength, reduce the risk of injury? I mean, you've alluded to it a little bit how, like, you know, deadlifting doesn't necessarily hurt your back, you can hurt your back anytime. So why not be stronger, but like, be very explicit about it. So people understand how valuable that is?

John Petrizzo  47:05

Well, I mean, what we see from a research standpoint is that people that are stronger, are more resilient to injury, right, you're less likely to, to hurt yourself, if you're physically stronger. So we see that in the research related to athletics and athletes that are prone to like overuse type injuries, you know, if we're talking about athletes with lower extremity, you know, overuse injuries, stress fractures, tendinopathies, things like that. And we break it down into looking at, let's say, their one RM, squat strength, typically, the stronger athletes have a lower incidence of those types of problems, you know, and to me that just kind of carry overs to, to everything, right? So it's just going to make you more physically resilient to the types of issues that, you know, people a lot of times suffer from, because you don't have your that as low of a threshold, right? So the way that I look at a lot of these injuries, it's like, you accumulate these little insults that, you know, maybe become painful at a certain threshold, right? Well, if your thresholds up here, because you're stronger, then those things are less likely to be a problem for you.

Philip Pape  48:15

Yeah, for sure. And I even like to think about when as you get older, and you think of frailty, with older folks, just the ability to fall or not fall at all, because you have better balance. But even if you do to kind of, if you're able to bench, you know, multiple times your body weight, probably supporting yourself in the fall is gonna be a lot easier.

John Petrizzo  48:34

Yeah. I mean, I get asked by older patients all the time, how do I get up from the floor? You know, I'm scared, if I fall, I won't be able to get up. Right. I mean, those are things that if you're stronger, I mean, you don't really have to have that same level of concern, you know. So yeah, I think that it just, it helps with everything. And it's, it's really can't be more simple than that.

Philip Pape  49:00

So we've covered so much. Before we wrap up, there's a question. I do like to ask all guests, not sure if you've listened to any of my other episodes, but it is what one question Did you wish I had asked, and what is your answer?

John Petrizzo  49:12

Hmm. That's, that's a good question. I. Well, I guess one thing that I would say and I don't know how, maybe you would have asked this, but I don't want to give the impression that I'm like, bashing on PT and physical therapy. And there's a lot of different areas within physical therapy, you know, and I deal with like, sports and orthopedic, you know, type issues primarily, you know, sometimes I deal with some neurologic issues and things like that. But you know, you can be a physical therapist in a, in a subacute facility in an acute care facility in a hospital setting. And from that standpoint, you know, it's a totally different type type of approach then than what we do, you know, in a in an outpatient setting. So, you know, I don't want to give the impression that I'm that I'm bashing on physical therapy. I mean, I think that I want the profession to be as good as it possibly can be so that patients get the most benefit from it. And, and that's, that's really where I'm coming from with this stuff.

Philip Pape  50:21

Yeah, and I think my perception or perspective, everything you said is from a positive value added, you know, wanting to help people kind of perspective so I get it, and honestly, if we will all want the profession to improve for everyone. So even if physical therapists hear this, and they're like, oh, that's an interesting idea. Maybe I should learn about barbell training, then we've helped the profession. And I know plenty of physical therapists who take the traditional approach, and they're great people who mean, well, right. And they have great attitudes, oftentimes. And so again, yeah, I agree. There's no need to do that.

John Petrizzo  50:52

They're still helping people. And, and one, one last thing I would add, because I do get contacted sometimes by, you know, young, like, Pts that are just starting out or student physical therapists, and they asked me, they say, Oh, I, you know, I want to get into this, I want to do strengthing auditioning and stuff. And they asked me, What do I need to do? And I always tell them, you have to train yourself first, right? So there are a lot of people that, you know, they like the idea of what we're talking about. But if you're not training yourself, if you haven't gone through the process of getting yourself stronger, and figuring out these little programming issues, and you know how to perform the exercises efficiently, yourself, you're not going to be able to translate it to other people, you know, so you have to train yourself if you want to get good at this stuff. And that definitely for coaching, or you know, from a PT standpoint, yeah, I agree. And as

Philip Pape  51:44

a nutrition coach, same thing, I would not want to help people with that unless I've gone through myself. And everybody listening to this show is interested in this. And hopefully everybody wants to do that, regardless of therapy tea or not, that they want to get stronger and do the things we're talking about today. So where can listeners learn more about you and your work, John?

John Petrizzo  52:02

Well, like you said, my full time job I teach at a Delphi University, which I love doing, I do work out clinic seeing patients part time, few days a week on Long Island here in New York, but probably for people that aren't in my area. Best way to get in touch with me would be through my wife's business, which is progressive rehab in strength. My wife is also a PT high very high level power lifter much more so than I ever have been. And strength coach in her business. We work with people remotely, you know, all around the world. So that would be the best way to get in touch with me.

Philip Pape  52:39

Okay, and that's progressive, rehabbing strength.com Yes, you got okay, we'll put that in the show notes. And this was a lot of fun. We covered a lot and I know that listeners is going to get to learn a lot hopefully shatter some of the misconceptions they might have had and really want to get out there and hit the gym and get strong. So thanks again man for coming on.

John Petrizzo  52:56

No problem. Thanks so much for having me. I enjoyed it.

Philip Pape  53:00

Thank you for tuning in to another episode of Wits & Weights. If you found value in today's episode, and know someone else who's looking to level up their Wits & Weights. Please take a moment to share this episode with them. And make sure to hit the Follow button in your podcast platform right now to catch the next episode. Until then, stay strong.

Ep 112: The Perfect Meal Plan

Today, we will unlock your physique's full potential without being a slave to restriction! I’ll explain why those one-size-fits-all diet plans are holding you back, and arm you with the science-backed strategies you need to customize your own “perfect” meal plan, a dynamic and flexible meal plan, that balances your energy needs, macros and micros, fuels your workout performance, and supports your metabolism.

And it’s not just about food. You’ll learn psychological tactics that will keep you adhering to your plan, smashing those plateaus, and tasting the freedom of flexible dieting. If you're tired of feeling stuck in a meal-planning box and want to turbocharge your journey to your ideal physique without restriction, save this episode as your game plan. Most importantly, listen all the way through because there is so much gold here in terms of strategies plus the exact step-by-step method I like to use to construct the perfect meal plan.
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Click here to apply for coaching!
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Today you’ll learn all about:
[2:33] The template mean plan
[5:18] The importance of personalized nutrition
[8:56] Psychological strategies for crafting your perfect meal plan
[10:35] The classic 80/20 principle
[13:17] Default meals as an emergency strategy
[16:26] Batch cooking as an act of self-care
[19:31] Shifting the perception of food as fuel, not a reward.
[21:47] Utilizing social accountability
[22:35] Documenting dietary variables
[23:13] The one more rule, and overcoming decision fatigue
[28:01] Using your app as a meal planner
[29:34] Setting calorie needs, macros and micros
[35:54] Simplifying food choices and measuring portion sizes
[38:17] Map out your meals, including indulgences
[43:47] Listen to your body's signals for dietary adjustments
[47:14] Outro

Episode resources:

• Ep 110: Macros Aren’t Enough – Flexible Dieting vs. IIFYM 

• https://www.witsandweights.com/email – reply to the welcome email and ask for the FREE guides from episode 110

• MacroFactor app – use code WITSANDWEIGHTS to extend your free trial to two weeks (and support me and this show!)

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Transcript

Philip Pape  00:00

documenting things like other variables, other dietary variables, maybe it's hunger. Maybe it's your emotions, mediate your sleep and stress and journaling them in conjunction with your meal plan so that it informs your meal plan. It improves your mindset and your awareness so you can make the choices you want for next week. Simple as that. That way you know that the meal plan you came up with is or is not aligned with the goals. Welcome to the Wits & Weights podcast. I'm your host Philip pape, and this twice a week podcast is dedicated to helping you achieve physical self mastery by getting stronger. Optimizing your nutrition and upgrading your body composition will uncover science backed strategies for movement, metabolism, muscle and mindset with a skeptical eye on the fitness industry so you can look and feel your absolute best. Let's dive right in. Wits & Weights

Philip Pape  00:54

community Welcome to another solo episode of the Wits & Weights podcast. In our last episode 111 The anti diet athlete mindset with Sherry Cheban Sherry and I challenged your conventional wisdom on dating and fitness. As we looked at why diets fail the nuances of transformation versus results and how you can transform your identity into that of an athlete. Today for episode 112 the perfect meal plan, we are going to unlock your physiques full potential without being a slave to restriction. I'll explain why those one size fits all diet plans are holding you back and arm you with a science back strategies you need to customize your own perfect meal plan. A dynamic and flexible meal plan that balances your energy needs macros, micros, fuels your workout performance, and supports your metabolism. And of course, it's not just about food, you'll learn psychological tactics that will keep you adhering to your plan, smashing those plateaus and tasting the freedom that comes with flexible dieting. If you're tired of feeling stuck in a meal planning box and want to turbocharge your journey to your ideal physique, without the restriction, save this episode as your game plan. Most importantly, listen all the way through because there is so much gold here in terms of strategies, plus the exact step by step method I like to use to construct the perfect meal plans. So there's a lot in this episode. With that, let's get into the topic, the perfect meal plan. First, we have the one size fits all meal plan when someone says, Hey, do you provide meal plans in your coaching? Or can I see a meal plan or an existing client might even ask for a meal plan. What they're asking for is a list of meals or snacks with specific foods or potentially recipes, organized by the throughout your day that potentially have calories and macros listed that meet a certain plan, certainly plan for calories and macros. This is what I call the one size fits all meal plan or the template meal plan. And this is the epitome of a singular, rigid method that supposedly can meet the needs of everyone. But we know in fact, research shows quite the opposite both for dieting, for training, and really for anything in life where we're trying to be consistent, and hit a goal and make progress that a one size fits all, where you have rules, good and bad. And restriction is going to cause the opposite of what we intend it's going to cause you to stick to it may be for a month or two is what the research shows in terms of the meal plans. And then you're gonna fall off the wagon, because there is a wagon and we don't like wagons. But that's a wagon. And so I think the research has shown that no matter what diet you follow, in a 12 month period, the first two months, people stick to it, maybe 60 70% of the time, they get to their goal, which oftentimes is weight loss. And then the rest of the year, they pretty much do what they were doing before and if anything they might set start to gain a little bit of weight back. So we know that this idea of a meal plan is going to backfire. From the research. There is plenty of emerging emerging evidence that suggests that anything we do should be individualized based on your individual factors and lifestyle, whether that's your age, your activity level, your metabolic rate, your food preferences, okay? It's something that's very important, but we often throw that out the window when we're saying, hey, just give me a planet. Just give me a diet, right? Yeah, but what if you like pizza and the diet says you can't have pizza right there. We're going to run into a brick wall. And there are plenty of experts out there and plenty of research that shows the importance of personalized nutrition is where it's at and that's where we're at on the show. I mean, you know this even the title, the perfect meal plan. I'm sure it piqued your curiosity and you said what is this guy doing another click Beatty title? Let's see what this is all about. But by the end of this show, you are going to have the perfect meal plan for you. That is where I'm going with this. There There's also this common obsession with macros. And I talked all about this on my last solo episode, which was about flexible dieting, versus If It Fits Your Macros, and it causes us to neglect other things. So you should definitely go check that out. I think it's Episode 110, called macros aren't enough, listen all the way through to get all of the nuances. But when we talk about a meal plan, are we talking about calories and macros? No, we should also be talking about optimal health optimal performance. You're trying to get physique goals, you're trying to work out you want energy on and on and on and on. And the list goes on, it's very difficult to encapsulate that on a piece of paper with a table that says, here's what you eat, unless, again, you have a nutritionist or dietitian, who you're paying to exactly understand what you're going through what you need, and then giving you a meal plan. But even that is is bound to fail. Because it's a restrictive approach. It's a rigid approach. The other thing is you are going to have a different metabolic requirement, and thus calorie requirement that somebody else and different macro needs, right. So even the same meal plan calories, let's say a 2500 calorie meal plan is not going to be as effective for one person versus another because it doesn't account for the individual macro needs. And let's just face it, we know this, I've talked about it many times that your individual expenditure changes on a daily basis. And so in reality, we are adjusting our macro targets and our calorie targets each week. Meal Plans are not very resilient to that. They're also some nutritional timing assumptions. When we have meal plans, the fact that a meal plan assumes a certain number of meals, certain meal frequency certain meal timing. First of all, we know that meal timing is somewhat important. It's not as important as the basics, energy macros, even micros. And, but it is somewhat important depending on how much you care about your performance and your workouts and so on. Here's the thing from day to day your life changes, things happen, the nutritional timing needs to be flexible enough to account for that. So timing in a templated, one size fits all meal plan becomes another barrier to adherence is my point, it becomes another thing where if you don't quite hit it, what do you do? Right? And what if you miss a piece of a meal or a piece of a snack? Where does it go in the day you've you've just succumbed to the all or nothing thinking, which is exactly what we try to avoid what we do avoid here. There's also food quality, right? A meal plan doesn't always account for that. I mean, to be fair, I get that if somebody is giving you a meal plan, and they're an expert, you know, they've probably including lots of Whole Foods in there. But that brings up another challenge of what if you don't want all Whole Foods and you want a little bit of, you know, some of the something a little indulgence here or there, you want some flexibility to substitute something out, it really doesn't account for the the quality quantity indulgence part of that without sacrificing something along the way. And then meal plans don't let you learn. It's like giving somebody a fish instead of teaching them to fish, right learning to track and adjust and become intuitive over time. Because I think ultimately true Intuitive Eating is within your grasp. But most people fail to go through the initial process of developing the intuition. And a meal plan is just another way to say here's the answer, maybe. And it's not even close to the real answer, instead of teaching you the skills, right. And I always like to say that with my clients, it really isn't about coaching. It's about teaching skills. Coaching is just part of the process, but the skills are what you take for life. And then finally, no matter how effective the meal plan might seem, it is just not sustainable is really like any diet, if it's not dynamic, then is not sustainable period. Okay, so that's kind of my diatribe to just to get things started. And I could just end the podcast right there and say, Okay, so the answer is there is no perfect meal plan. And it really has to be customized. But I don't think that's very helpful. And that's probably not why you're tuning in, I've actually broken this podcast into three segments. That was the first segment. Now I want to talk about a whole bunch of psychological strategies. And this list was a lot of fun to put together because I've been thinking a lot about this topic lately, posting on it, listening to other podcasts, doing research, and at the risk of overwhelming you. I want to give you some things to think about in the mindset department that have nothing to do with food. I mean, food is involved, but they're not like food choice. So that if one of these really resonates with you and you hadn't considered it before, I've just added something in your repertoire that you can use when constructing your meal plan because the last part of the podcast please stick around is going to be step by step how do you do it? Right How do I do it on my clients do it and so on. So psychological strategies for success with meal planning. Here we go. The first one is surrounding consistency. Okay, consistency is King regular meal timing. That is having a routine every day the same types of meals. Mainly the timing of the meals is what I'm talking about has been shown to increase metabolism. and regulate your hunger signals, the idea that you eat roughly the same time every day, just like when you go to sleep the same time every night, is now aligned to your circadian rhythm. And that gives your body a sense of relief, that it doesn't have to fear scarcity or a lack of food. And therefore it kind of relaxes on its conservation of energy, therefore burning more calories. So you don't just eat the same food every day necessarily. But if you keep your meal timing consistent, it can help. So that's the first one. And all of this is going to come into play when you put together your meal plan, because you're going to think, Okay, how do I make it adhere to some of these strategies? The second one is the classic 8020 principle, the Pareto Principle, right? If you can select 80%, whole nutrient dense foods, and leave 20%, or you can do 9010, but 8020 20% of indulgences, that is going to go a long way toward a sustainable planet just is, it just is because the first thing that happens when you go on a restrictive diet is you cut things out, and guaranteed one or more of those things are things you like, and there's something just wrong with that.

Philip Pape  11:09

Just as a human if you tell me I can't do something, oh, boy. I'm already hitting resistance right from day one. So 8020 is always a great philosophy and a lot of things 80% whole nutrient dense foods 20% indulgences, I will let you decide what that is, depending on what would fit your goals. Okay, for me, the indulgences might include ice cream, you've heard me say that many times before. It might include more calorie dense foods like pizza, a lot of the stuff that many of us like to have as indulgences, maybe french fries are an indulgence for you, whatever. So the 8020 principle, the next one is your emotional inventory. So listening to your emotions, this is kind of a mindfulness thing. But listening to your emotional state, when you're going to eat right before you eat, while you're eating after you eat. And this has to do with differentiating between emotional and physical hunger. Now I do have I have a whole guide on this, it's not very long guide, it explains this, it gives you a scale. And it gives you a little journal that you can use. Many of my clients have found it super helpful. I've given it away many times. So if you want it, definitely sign up for my email list, and then reach out by email, reply to my first email and say, Hey, Philip, you mentioned this hunger guide this hunger scale, and I want it. So let me have it, and I'll give it to you. So the idea here is that hunger is a complicated thing. It is driven by hormonal signals, but it's also tied to our emotions. And so when you're going to eat, being aware of your emotional state when you eat, and potentially documenting and journaling it so that you know whether it's physical or emotional, right, psychological can be very helpful when you decide how to construct your meal plan. Because for example, you might find that later in the afternoon is when you are at most risk of emotional eating of binge eating. And instead of trying to hammer away the problem, you can accommodate the fact that you get hungry that time, and maybe shift some of your calories to that point. Right, that that's just one approach. The next strategy is, I'll call it planning for perfection, but preparing for reality. I've always been conflicted with this idea, but I still stick to it. And that is, we never are going to be perfect. We're human beings. But we can strive for perfection any given day. And I don't think there's anything wrong with that. I don't think there's anything wrong with going for 10 out of 10 every day, knowing that we might hit nine out of 10, five out of 10, one out of 10 something more than zero and you know what, some days you might have a zero in might happen. It's okay. Don't beat yourself up have some self compassion. But if you have some quality default meals, right, these are like your perfect meals. And I'm sorry, you have you have your perfect plan. But then you have some some quality default meals that you can always fall back on, they may not be in your meal plan. But if the day goes off, like if it goes off plan, you have this little library of a few different meals that can fit in on a given moment, kind of as an emergency so that you don't have to make the choice in the moment or succumb to your motions, kind of tied to the last one. Right? So plan for perfection prepare for reality, always think life is going to happen no matter what, in fact, is the norm rather than the exception. And I don't know if you hear my girls playing their instruments, but you might okay and if you do consider it part of the background music. Okay, so where was I going with this? Yes, always have default meals available. Now these default meals could be for example, a small dish of casein powder with almond milk that you put in the freezer as like an ice cream substitute for when you get a sweet tooth late at night, for example, right? And this is just the idea that if emotions get the best of you, you still have a an emotionless strategy to fall back on. Okay, next one is a goal oriented did mindfulness, right. And what this is, is, each meal is contributing toward something it should be, it should be contributing toward some goal, you have your physique goals, your performance goals, it should be aligned with your existence, your identity as an athlete, like we talked about with Sherry Cheban when she was on, right. And so as you construct your meal plan, and even as you're eating, being aware of how this is contributing to those goals, will improve not only your relationship with food, but your ability to plan for your meals, right. And this is kind of a general principle, but a specific application of that principle would be your workout nutrition. Like for me, I work out early in the morning, right now, three days a week, sometimes it's four, or five or six, depending on what phase I'm in. It's three days a week. So I know on those mornings, I'm planning in a banana and a protein shake early in the morning. Super simple, basic ingredients, it meets my needs. And it contributes to me having energy during that workout session. And I know it works for me and I had to get to that over time, right? Sometimes I tried it completely fasted, I realized no, I don't have energy doing that. Sometimes I tried eating more food, like maybe oatmeal, now the fiber and that causes it to digest too slowly, and I don't have a lot of time before I work out. So that doesn't work. Too much food in my stomach, etc, etc. Right? These are all goal oriented. They're not emotional, or just a I'm just eating to eat. Now, that's not to say that food can't be delicious. I'm okay, if these are these are not mutually exclusive things. Okay, next thing, I really love this one, I want you to think of batch cooking. Okay, meal prep, like on the weekend, when you just batch cook some proteins or carbs or something, I want you to think of that as self care as an act of self care rather than a chore. It's an act of self care why? Because you are eliminating a ton of stress from the week, you're eliminating emotional decision making from the week, and you're creating something that's going to perfectly fit into your meal plan, it's gonna be ready to go, it's gonna be super easy to execute. It's almost like you had a workout plan for the week. And you've actually got all your sets done. And now you just have to kind of log them as you go. Because honestly, eating is not hard as hard as lifting. Right? Okay, so think of batch cooking and self care. Now the act itself of the batch cooking, of course, itself can be a fun thing you can do with your family, you can put on some music, you can have your favorite beverage or snack as you're doing whatever, I don't care, watch the football game, you know, make itself an act of self care. But I'm just saying that the stress you reduce from doing it is also a gift to yourself during the week, I got a lot more for you where this is coming from. So please stick around. This is an epic episode. I don't know if I meant it to be but it will be. The next one is the growth mindset. You might know Carol Dweck, she's the author of oh, boy, is it grit? Oh, man, this is terrible. I can't think of the book. But it's really the fixed versus the growth mindset. To me, every failure in life is an opportunity for growth, everything. So your dietary and food planning mishaps are all opportunities for growth, meaning if you are thinking in a personalized meal planning context, that gives you the opportunity then to try it out. See what you learn. If it doesn't work, great, that's information, learn from it, revise, you can't do that with a fixed meal plan you just can't. So this is the beauty of making your own meal plan. And using that as an opportunity to learn about yourself. Okay. The next strategy is visualization. All right. We know visualization is a motivational tool in different contexts. And I like to use it as well or suggests that you might want to use it by visualizing a successful week, visualizing a successful meal successful day, successful week, and how that all contributes to the goal oriented motivation you had before, right? Because at the end of the day, training, your nutrition, your sleep, all of these things, we want to plan them out. Like we want to think ahead, in our logic with our logical brain, you know, on the weekend, how's this week gonna look. And therefore, a successful week backs into how I want to construct my meals and where I put them and so on. It's kind of a fun process because you're, you're looking at your future self a week from now who's looking back and say, Damn, you did a great job. Coming up with that plan, because it was so easy to follow. I didn't have to think emotion didn't come into it. It had foods I loved the timing worked out. It supported my training. It supported the things I wanted to do with my family, the social events, all that stuff. So that's, that's another good tool. The next one is always important when we talk about food and that is the perception that Food is fuel it's not a reward. Even though food can be delicious. You can anticipate it if you have like a refeed day or a day where you've shifted calories for some fun event. Those can still be fun, enjoyable, rewarding experiences, but not specifically because of the food food is not something you withhold from yourself. Food is something you give to yourself to nourish you and your goals and your values. And because of that, when you do the meal planning, you can then not think of it as Oh, I'm going to save up for a cheat day. So much as on any given day, I want to support my goals. And here's how I'm going to do it within the whole context of the week. And I keep saying a week, because a week is a good timeline. For a meal plan, I wouldn't go beyond that if, if the subsequent week is going to be similar, great, you can reuse the meal plan. And in fact, what you'll find is that in reality, if you're using an app like macro factor, you're going to do a lot of copy and paste because you get into a routine where your meal plan is really just your normal routine. And therefore you could just copy to the future, and not really even have to think about it as much or plan for it as much because you've already experienced the meal plan multiple times anyway, Food is fuel, not reward. Okay, the next thing is, think about the pre emptive strikes, that you want to account for in your week. And what this is, is, for example, a high protein snack before a situation that would tempt you. Like if you know, there will be emotionally charged situations during your week, or situations where you there might be alcohol involved, or there might be a lot of other people involved where you get distracted. And these are normally the situations where you might over eat, bam, put your meal plan to work for you by shifting what happens before that point to minimize the chance of doing what you don't intend to do. And that could be something like having a lot of protein an hour before that event. So now you're not as hungry. It could be shifting calories, whatever, but be pre emptive. That's the way I like to think of it. That's an element of planning. Okay, the next one is social accountability. And this is simply recruiting your spouse, friend, family member, community member, coach, whoever is on your side and support your goals. And sharing your meal planning goals with them sharing ideas, maybe asking them for ideas, maybe they also use macro factor like you and you can share recipes, right, that's perfectly easy to do, you can take you can take a meal that you like to eat, turn it into a recipe and share it say Hey, this is what I like, for my lunch while I'm in fat loss. Right? And so just like with anything else, the act of meal planning can be a social experience to enhance your commitment. Okay, the next one is Carl's gonna love this Carl Berryman, if you're listening, you're gonna love this. And this is daily or weekly journaling associated with your meal planning. And this is this goes back to what I talked about during the flexible dieting versus If It Fits Your Macros episode of documenting things, like other variables, other dietary variables, maybe it's hunger, maybe it's your emotions, mediate your sleep and stress and journaling them in conjunction with your meal plan. So that it informs your meal plan, it improves your mindset and your awareness so that you can make the choices you want for next week. Simple as that, that way you know that the meal plan you came up with is or is not aligned with the goals we talked about earlier. So that's journaling. The next one is called the one more rule. This is kind of the tiny habits of meal planning, incremental changes. If this is your very first week doing it, how successful do you think you're going to be if you if you literally just plan the whole week out. And it's completely different than anything you've ever done? It's gonna be tough, even though you've planned it out, it's still going to be tough to to meet that you're not setting yourself up for the best success in my opinion, I would add one or two things the first week, one or two things the next week, and so on, for example, adding extra vegetables to your existing meals like continuing to eat similar to what you were, but adding a vegetable adding a protein. And again, I'm always a fan of adding in adding and adding and adding in which then crowds out what you don't want and what is not aligned with your goals. So you can do the same thing with meal planning first week, just just take what you would normally eat and add in here and there strategically, and continue to build week after week. The next one is decision fatigue, you probably familiar with this concept, the idea of paralysis by analysis that you have so many choices that you can't even make a single choice. And so when it comes to meal planning, I am not a big fan of big fancy recipes, even though I have recipe guides if you want them. I am not a fan of using that for meal planning. I would rather you have a very limited set of food choices. And then you just mix and match. I mean really limited. It could be as simple as two meats that you batch Cook, one that you use for lunch, one to use for dinner, two carbs, and then several vegetables, right, like two to two. That goes for lunch and dinner the first week just keep it really simple, almost boring. Sure. Right. And if it's too boring, mix it up. That's totally up to you. But if you have enough combination if you have enough foods even if it's a short At least they'll make a lot of different permutations right? A lot of different combinations. Hey, this is Philip. And I hope you're enjoying this episode of Wits & Weights, I started Wits & Weights to help people who want to build muscle lose fat and actually look like they lift. I've noticed that when people improve their strength and physique, they not only look and feel better, they transformed other areas of their life, their health, their mental resilience and their confidence in everything they do. And since you're listening to this podcast, I assume you want the same things the same success, whether you recently started lifting, or you've been at this for a while and want to optimize and reach a new level of success. Either way, my one on one coaching focused on engineering your physique, and body composition is for you. If you want expert guidance and want to get results faster, easier, and with fewer frustrations along the way to actually look like you lift, go to wits & weights.com, and click on coaching, or use the link in my show notes to apply today, I'll ask you a few short questions to decide if we're a good fit. And if we are, we'll get you started this week. Now back to the show.

Philip Pape  26:07

So again, I do have a guide to help you with meal planning that I give to my clients. And again, sign up for my email list wits & weights.com/email, and then reply to me and say hi, I want I want the guide for selecting food. And it's got proteins, fats, carbs, fruits and vegetables, a short list with all the information about them. So you can easily mix and match from very commonly available foods. And then it does have sample meal plans. Again, I say that with caution, because they're just ideas of how you can put things together. But decision fatigue is important. So keep the choices limited at first and start to get more complex over time. Okay, the next one is I think this is the last one on my list of strategies is habit stacking or anchoring your habits. So this is pairing your new habits with existing routines. And this could be not just the act of meal planning itself. Although of course, if you want to like turn on your favorite music or podcast while you're coming up with your first meal plan, that's fine. This is more, making sure that the meals and the timing of the meals align with your schedule such that not that you're eating and doing something else at the same time. Because that's not always recommended. But you're guaranteed are almost guaranteed to actually eat those meals. Because one of the problems I see early on with clients is they actually struggled to eat all the meals, even if we haven't planned in there. And part of the problem is you're not planning for success, you're not anchoring the meals to your lifestyle, right and pairing those habits with what you already do. And so it could be a matter of, for example, anchoring them around your workout, that's a nice solid one, it could be anchoring in around a walk. So like you know that you eat and then you walk, it could be anchored around the habit that you normally have where you go to the vending machine and get a candy bar, it could be in that slot, instead write that, okay, I'm gonna have my protein snack, a lot of ways to do this. The one other thing I actually forgot to add to my notes, but I'm going to mention it is if you're using a food logging app, for example, macro factor makes it very easy to do use the app as your meal planner, use your app as the meal planner, it doesn't mean you have to map out your entire week. But you can map out what looks like a successful day. extremely common strategy that I propose to clients all the time who's who tell me hey, you know, I really am struggling to get the protein, and I see it in their data. And again, when you work with me, it is not about 100% adherence at all, there's a lot of flexibility because I would rather learn who you are and your patterns, then beat you on the head for not hitting a number. That's not the point. The point is to learn about you and find out how we make things more successful over time. So using macro factor and saying okay, well, you need 150 grams of protein, and you're regularly getting 100. Let's map out tomorrow, while you're in a logical, cool headed state today, and figure out where to make that happen. Conversely, let's look at your food logs for the last few days and see why we couldn't quite get there. Where's the opportunity to add in a little little more protein, or add an extra meal or alter your food choices, right? A lot of different ways to skin a cat. So those are the strategies and I'm going on What 30 minutes now for the episode. And now we're gonna get to the final piece, which is the steps to create your personal dynamic meal plan which that is the perfect meal plan a dynamic personalized one for you. Alright, so this is this is very prescriptive, very simple. And you may not need all the steps, but here we go. Step one is you have to know your calorie needs. So if you're using an app like macro factor, which calculates your expenditure, you'll know what that is on a weekly basis. I'm not going to go into that on detail on this podcast. But whether you're using an estimate a calculator or an app that calculates it for you've got to have some ballpark of where you're going to start. What are you actually eating? And those calorie needs are going to be based on your calories that you burn every day. That's your maintenance calories, your total calories burn, and then you're going You're going to add or remove calories for your goal, whether you're trying to build muscle, or lose fat. And really, those are the two directions we go on this show, right? We're not talking about endurance training or anything like that we're talking about strength building muscle, improving your body composition. So if you are going into a fat loss phase, and you know, you want to lose a pound per week, and that comes out to a 500 calorie deficit a day, and your metabolism is 2500 calories a day, then your calorie needs 2000 very simple concept, but just I wanted to put it out there. That's one of the more important dietary variables when you come up with a meal plan because of course, you want to meet your calorie needs for your goals. All right, then we go one step down into macros. Okay, now we have our calorie needs, we want to set our protein, fats, carbs, I'll just repeat the general guidelines that I like for that. For protein, we're going to go with around point eight to one gram per pound of your target bodyweight. So if your target body weight is 180, we're talking 150 to 180 grams of protein. I like to do fats next. I know some people go with carbs next, but I like to do fat. Next, because all of us listening here are building muscle. So we want to have carbs, like a decent amount of carbs left, if we can, it's not always possible, we're in fat loss, for example, for fat, I would anchor it at 30% of your calories. Right? So if you're going to consume 2000 calories, 30% of that is what 600 calories, and then you divide 600 times nine, I'm actually trying to pull up a calculator right now and do that. And that will be 67 grams of fat, and then the rest goes to carbs. So that's a super basic rule of thumb. Now, how might that very well, if you're in a fat loss phase, you might want a little more protein. Or if you're in a muscle building phase, you could deal with up to a little less, if you've come from a Keto background, you'd like to get a lot of higher fat foods, you can up the fat a bit and reduce the carbs or vice versa, a lot of ways to skin it. Okay, I'll stop there and keep going. So next we have micronutrients. So here's where we start to deviate from the traditional meal plan. So the normal meal plan, thinks about calories, macros, and then listing foods by meals. That's basically it. You know, there's some timing aspect to it, maybe. But we're gonna go deeper than that, because the next thing we care about is micros. And if you go back to the strategies, I talked about 8020 80%, nutrient dense foods 20%. Other, you're gonna get there, you're gonna get pretty close to what you need. So if 80% or more of your foods are whole nutrient dense foods, you're going to have foods rich in essential vitamins, minerals, fiber. So fiber is not a micronutrient. It's a subset of carbohydrates. But I really think it's important to spike it out and think about the number and aim to hit that number. But again, you don't have to have a giant spreadsheet or anything. If you go the 8020 rule, you're probably going to be covered or pretty close to it. Because most people are like the opposite. They're like 60, or 70%, processed foods and like 30 or 40% Whole Foods. So if you're just doubling your whole foods, through proper meal planning for you for your goals, because why do we want nutrient dense foods, we want micronutrients, we want to mitigate hunger, we want to feel full, we want to feel great, we want to support our goals, we want to be healthy, and so on. So incorporating the 8020 is an early step in the macro planning process, because it already gets you to think of as you're going through, okay, I'm going to think I'm gonna think Whole Foods first, first, first first, but then my 10 or 20%? Where are those gonna go? Where's my pizza? Where's my ice cream? Where are they? Where's my glass of wine, whatever, where's that gonna go? Like, actually plan it in. That's the goal, to plan it in, and then enjoy them and not think of them as a reward, but just part of your plan. Okay, the next step is, and maybe you could have done this earlier, doesn't matter. I want you to list out all the things you like, all the things you like within each category. So the very simple way to do this is list your proteins, fats, and carbs. Now you can say well, but you know, beans are both protein and carbs or nuts are like mostly fat with some protein. Just put, the more they're dominant. So like beans, I'm beans are the weird one, I might put them under carbs to be honest, because when you really need a protein, it's not as dense as say meats, dairy, eggs, and so on. Right? Plants have plenty of protein, but they also have plenty of other stuff. And you know, same thing with grains like oats, I'm going to put that on a carbs even though they have some protein. So you kind of list them out. And guess what just put on the list of things you like don't put the things you don't like. Now if you're trying to be adventurous and you're trying to open up your palate, and like I had to do with my not had to do but I chose to too early in my marriage when my wife was like him. You are so picky. I ate hardly anything, but I was willing to try and together we incorporated more foods and I found out that I could like vegetables more and more rituals and there's certain things I just don't like, like I don't like to meet those, so I wouldn't put them on my list. And then mushrooms are like a like, I might put them on there because I know they're, they're good food to have in there. And I'm okay with them. So put the things you'd like the most put some of the things you want to try to incorporate maybe categorize them in that way, the things you just absolutely don't like, don't want to eat and don't even want to try it, hey, leave them off list. And then you can have another list or two of indulgences that don't really fit into protein, fats, carbs, like if pizza is on your list. I mean, what is that that's a lot of fat, a lot of carbs, maybe some protein, a bunch of oil, right? It's very calorie dense. So it's kind of in its own category of indulgences. So there you go, you've got your little menu to choose from. And again, I have a guide, where I can give you that has basic list like of those fruits and vegetables might be in their own category. For example, don't make it complicated, but just come up with the list that you need to choose your fruits from. That's it come up with that, before you go to the next step. The next thing is, you definitely are going to want to have a way to measure your food if you're tracking your food to that level. So if you're tracking it to the gram level, having your food scale, and I kind of throw this in here just to make sure you're prepared. So when you get to the meal planning, or the execution part, you know, if you're planning out 100 grams of potatoes, how are you going to know you ate 100 grams of potatoes right? Now, you could use quantities like one medium potato and stuff like that. But I'm really a big fan of just normalizing everything, just making it all grams weighing your food doing that for a while until this becomes intuitive. Because if you're using a meal plan, it's because you don't quite have that intuition yet. And I get it right, because that's where we all start from, you don't have that yet. And so we want to be very precise, I prefer more precision to less. You don't have to do it that way. But just be aware that you want to be prepared for it for controlling the the portion measurement, especially initially. Okay. Okay. Next on your meal plan checklist is the frequency and timing that aligns with your lifestyle and metabolic needs. And that could include workout nutrition. So this is pretty straightforward. For most people. There are routine days and not so routine days. And for most people that's weekdays versus weekends, or training days, versus non training days, or some combination, right training days, non training days, weekends, and oh, by the way, I love to go out partying every Saturday night. And so that's its own little day, fight, whatever it takes each of those days is its use has its own unique plan. Makes sense, right? We're not gonna have one plan that we do every day, even though I would say that that is ideal. In reality, you're not going to do it. Just admit it to yourself, right now, you're not going to do it, you might do it for two weeks, you're not gonna keep doing it. Why? Because that's restrictive. That's rigidity. That is what we're trying to avoid. Okay? A plan that works on a day that it's easy to execute. The plan is not restrictive. It's just having a plan, but a plan that you're trying to force into a day where it won't be easy to meet the plan. And you know, that is restrictive. That's the difference. Okay? So I'm very passionate about this stuff, as you can tell, because there's so much BS out there. But meal frequency and timing, what does this look like? Take a typical day, let's say a non training day, that's in the middle of the week. And very simply map out your meals. That's it, map out your meals, and your snacks, your indulgences, everything, like put it all in there. It might be breakfast, lunch, mid afternoon snack around the time that you don't really get hungry. And then dinner, and maybe a dessert or pre bed snack if that's what you want or need for your goals. And then do the same for your training days is the same for the weekend. And what and then put it all together, put it all together for seven days. And that's going to tell you a lot of information because does it fit? And by fit I mean calories macros, right? Let alone all the other stuff which which is driving your decision of what foods to pick, but calories and macros are they fitting. And so that's why I like to look at the whole week because your training day may have more food than your non training day, if you want to do it that way. I don't recommend that initially, I'd rather just keep it pretty consistent. And then you can shift things around from that. But you may decide right now that No, on the weekends, I'm gonna have more calories. So I'm going to make that happen in my plan. Fine. That's your natural lifestyle. Okay, so meal timing and frequency set that up, plan it out for the whole week. I kind of alluded to this already. But the next thing I would do is to pre schedule all of your indulgences so that you can adjust the other things around it. So once you've got your typical day, and I kind of miss telling you this, but when you plan out your normal day, you don't have to have indulgences in the default meal plan, let's say but then you'll realize Hi, where do I want indulgences. And you may decide I'm going to instead of having a dessert every day like I do now maybe I'll have one three times a week or I'll have it only on the weekends. And I'm going to plan that in that way. And then I know to come in, and there we go. So pre plan your indulgences make it work. Another way to do that is just leaving open spot of probably fats and carbs, let's be honest, most indulgences are fats and carbs, and leave it open spot, I would do this sometimes during a fat loss phase, when it starts to get a little hairy there. At the end, I get lean, and the calories are somewhat low, I might reserve say, 200 calories at 8pm. If I go to bed at like 930, or 10, for a little bit of protein and some carbs. And I know I just said fats and carbs. But for me that was like protein pudding, for example. And I would do that just in case, because I knew that, hey, I might get hungry, I didn't always take advantage of it, I would sometimes accommodate earlier in the day and maybe have a bigger dinner and just not have it. Or I would end up with less calories for the day, which was fine as well, since I was in fat loss, it generally worked out. Okay, then you are going to take those days that you just planned, and make sure that you have the right lifestyle factors accounted for. So this would be for example, variety, right? I don't want you to eat the same thing every day, if that's not going to be enjoyable for you. But you may have the same breakfast every day, you maybe even have the same lunch every day for the week. And then next week, you switch up the lunch, like the way I do it, I've been eating the same breakfast for years, my lunch tends to be similar during the week, and then the next week, I might switch it up like I might have a different meat, I might go from chicken thighs all this week to lean ground beef all next week, as an example. So the idea here is not just to have a fixed plan for the week, but options for yourself. And so what this might look like is some different example days. So for your routine day, in the middle of the week, you might have a couple of versions of that. And you just kind of rotate back and forth. Okay, now, this might all seem overwhelming. I'm not saying that you have to have all of this written down per se. It's more of being conscious of it. And it could be just the next day, it could be the two days ahead that you do that. Just just putting that out there. Okay, flexibility. Okay. Now, once you've got all that, guess what Next, it's time to execute. So the first step to executing is shopping, right? You create a shopping list based on the sample days, you think about whether you want to do some meal prep, some batch cooking, if it's convenient, if it helps you with your self care and reducing stress. And then you go and buy the groceries. Simple, right? Then you're going to log everything in execute. So you're going to, you know, meal prep if you have to, but if not, or if you chose to. But if not, you know you wake up in the morning, you've got this plan ready to follow whether you've whether you've pre documented it, or it's mental or whatever works for you, again, flexibility, and you just start to execute it, and you start to log it. And at the end of the week, guess what you have, you have super valuable information on actual versus expected feedback. That's the feedback loop actual versus expected. So anything that you missed, you reevaluate. You say, Why did I miss it?

Philip Pape  42:56

Is it okay that I missed it? Do I need to switch something up? Is it tied to psychological hunger? Is it tied to something that came up in my life? And how could I better accommodate that in the future, and on and on and on, it's all a detective game, let's say, it's, at least, you know, I enjoy this, you can hear it in my voice with my clients, and they come in and they check in for the week, and they're a little bit discouraged. You know, my checking back to them will always be positive, because I know that that discouragement comes from the fact that they disappointed themselves and didn't quite meet their plan. And for me, I look at it as Oh, now we have this amazing information that we can grow from growth mindset, you're going to be even better this week, and the week after the week after you're just going to constantly grow. And this is this is awesome, this is an opportunity. And so I love having all that information logged, because then it's easy to see what's going on. Okay, the next thing, I don't want to forget this in all of this detail. But please do listen to your body all the time, and pay attention to your body's responses. And then let that also serve as information for the meal, even if you're not writing it down. If you constantly get digestive issues, and you can tie it to what you ate. Come on, that's that's telling you the information right there, stop eating that, like stop eating that thing. And make a change, maybe it's less of that, a different version of that, cutting it out altogether, switching to something else, whatever, that's your body telling you what you want to do. Okay. And then all of this is an ongoing process. So I would say not only do you make adjustments potentially every week, but as the weeks go on you and you become more attuned to your body and you get into a routine, it almost becomes easier to adjust at that point. Because you can pick out where changes cause outcomes, you know, right? Like if you all of a sudden start to experience something, and you've only changed this one thing in your meal this week. You know, that could be the culprit, right? It gives you it gives you more sensitivity to your own body and to your meals with that awareness. Okay, this is a lot like I said, it's it's a lot. So now you have the answer. You have the answer the perfect meal plan, which is sent Believe the one that works for you. And so now you're equipped with multiple ways to get there multiple strategies, step by step approach. Hopefully I didn't miss anything. If I did, please reach out to me. But I think that'll get you going quite a way along the road to success if you need some help putting one together. Okay, again, I do not do meal plans. I do not give people meal plans. However, if you join my email list, and then you reply to let me know that you listen to the show, right, Episode 112. And you want my free guide to creating your own meal plan, I will send you a guide that gives you a list of foods that gives you sample meal plans for inspiration only. And it gives you foods sorted by protein density, meaning all the types of foods for steak, for example, sorted by which ones have more, the most versus the least protein, which really helps because when you're in fat loss, for example, and you're trying to play this little Tetris game of keeping the protein high, but the calories low and enough carbs for energy. It can be difficult, but I find that starting with very high protein density usually makes the rest of the equation fall in line pretty easily. So that's why I provide that in there. If you want it go to wits, & weights.com/email, join my list and then just reply to my email. I answer everyone, I'm a human being I love conversation. So do that. Go to the link in my show notes or go to wits. & weights.com/email. All right. In our next episode 113 barbell training for physical therapy and injury prevention with John Patricio Oh, this is an awesome one. John is a physical therapy consultant throughout my rehab journey, and he's just a master at combining barbell training with rehab. You don't find that too often in the industry, and he's going to teach you a lot. We discuss how he marries those two worlds. We're going to challenge conventional wisdom. As always, we're going to give you a framework that could drastically change your approach to injury prevention and rehab. It did for me, you'll learn why strength isn't just about lifting weights and why barbell training could be your secret weapon against not just injury, but mediocrity. Please subscribe or follow the podcast right now in your podcast app, please pause or go into the app whether it's Apple podcasts overcast, whatever, Spotify, click either follow or subscribe, whatever they call it, and you'll get notified and automatically download new episodes. It also helps me it helps the ranking of the show, the more subscribers there are, so don't just download willy nilly actually subscribe and that will help others find the show. As always, stay strong. And I'll talk to you next time here on the Wits & Weights podcast. Thank you for tuning in to another episode of Wits & Weights. If you found value in today's episode, and know someone else who's looking to level up their Wits & Weights. Please take a moment to share this episode with them. And make sure to hit the Follow button in your podcast platform right now to catch the next episode. Until then, stay strong

Ep 111: The Anti-Diet Athlete Mindset to Release Weight Naturally with Sherry Shaban

Joining me today is Sherry Shaban, an extraordinary fitness and life coach who’s battled back from the brink of paralysis to transform her body and her entire outlook on life. We met when she recently had me on her podcast, Fall In Love with Fitness, so I’m excited to talk to her again today.

Sherry will challenge your conventional wisdom on dieting and fitness as we examine why diets fail and what you can do differently. We are unpacking the nuances of ‘transformation’ versus ‘results’ and how to move from a life of limitations to endless possibilities. From the role of intuitive eating to overcoming chronic pain to the habits that define successful “athletes” in all walks of life, this is a holistic conversation about optimizing your performance from the inside out.

Sherry Shaban is an osteopath and an anti-diet health and life coach from Montreal, Qc. She is the founder of the Fall in Love with Fitness Podcast, the HIIT Decks™ App, and Make Peace with Food™, the leaders in an Anti-Diet approach that rewires the brain’s relationship with food to release bodyweight struggles forever naturally.

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Today you’ll learn all about:
[3:23] How adversities shaped Sherry's life and mindset
[6:54] What it means to be an athlete
[11:33] The impact of identifying as an athlete
[14:15] The difference between transformation and results
[19:24] Working toward a short-term result
[22:37] Why diets fail and alternatives
[28:33] Busting a dieting myth
[32:05] Switching to intuitive eating
[37:24] Diet restrictions
[39:27] Differentiating emotional and physical hunger
[50:25] Transformation and focusing on food that serves us
[56:30] Aligning to your needs and extracting habits
[54:10] Protection mode
[58:14] The question Sherry wished Philip had asked
[1:00:25] Where to learn more about Sherry
[1:01:01] Outro 

Episode resources:

• Website:  www.sherryshaban.com 

• IG - @sherryshabanfitness

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👩‍💻👨‍💻 Click here to schedule a FREE results breakthrough call with Philip

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Transcript

Sherry Shaban  00:00

Really the key is to tune into what works for you. If something doesn't feel right if you're forcing yourself like you said self when you're forcing yourself through diet and exercise and you're really going against your desire, that's where we can start to create all of these self sabotaging patterns in the brain where we start to do self sabotaging behavior. And so what we need to just release is this idea that there's this one way to eat because what works for you Phillip may not work for me and what works for me may not work for you. And the goal is to really just find what works the best for each person, individual and just follow that.

Philip Pape  00:35

Welcome to the Wits & Weights podcast. I'm your host Philip pape, and this twice a week podcast is dedicated to helping you achieve physical self mastery by getting stronger. Optimizing your nutrition and upgrading your body composition will uncover science backed strategies for movement, metabolism, muscle and mindset with a skeptical eye on the fitness industry so you can look and feel your absolute best. Let's dive right in. Wits & Weights community Welcome to another episode of the Wits & Weights podcast. Joining me today is Sherry Cheban, an extraordinary fitness and life coach who's battled back from the brink of paralysis to transform not only her body, but her entire outlook on life. She and I met when she recently had me on her podcast fall in love with fitness. So I'm very excited to talk to her again. Today, Sherry will challenge your conventional wisdom on dieting and fitness as we look at why diets fail and what you can do differently. We're unpacking the nuances of transformation versus results, how you can move from a life of limitations to one of endless possibilities. From the role of intuitive eating to overcoming chronic pain to the habits that define successful athletes in all walks of life. This is a holistic conversation about optimizing your performance from the inside out. Sherry Cheban is an osteopath and an anti diet health and life coach from Montreal, Quebec. She's the founder of the fall in love with fitness podcast, her new hit decks app which is out now and make peace with food. The leaders in an anti diet approach that rewires the brain's relationship with food to naturally release body weight struggles forever. With over 23 years of experience in the fitness industry. Sherry is a renowned expert in the most challenging weight loss cases and has helped 1000s of people worldwide transform their health and fitness using her revolutionary method to rewire the brain release self sabotaging limiting beliefs and patterns and fall in love with fitness so that weight loss becomes easy, predictable and enjoyable. For the first few years of being a gym owner, Sherry felt like a phony she was frustrated with herself disappointed and angry for being a victim of her circumstances, unable to demonstrate a single squat. But her turning point toward recovery came from understanding that one of the central elements to transformation is to let go of debilitating and self limiting thoughts and to begin to rewrite a new story. With over 20 years of experience in her specialty. Sherry has dedicated her life to helping 1000s of people transform their athletic identity to become who they are meant to be. Sherry, it is so good to see you again.

Sherry Shaban  03:09

Thank you so much, Philip, what a beautiful intro. I don't even know how to follow that.

Philip Pape  03:13

Oh, you'll have no problem following and sharing your you're a pro. And I know that listeners have been looking forward to learning about this, especially the whole anti diet discussion that we're going to get into. But let's just learn about you a little bit. You've battled these life altering setbacks, the near paralyzing accident, and then you turn them into stepping stones for something greater. So how have these adversities sharpened Your mindset is really what I care about how much to sharpen your mindset, not just for fitness, but life as a whole.

Sherry Shaban  03:44

So good, so good. So really how we do anything is how we do everything. And I also have to say that when we look back at a story like mine, or any story of anyone who is quote, unquote, successful, whatever that means, it always looks like it was so easy. And it came so naturally. And there were no struggles and the roads opened up and the sun was shining and all of these things. But really, what we don't see is the pain. What we don't see is the self deprecating thoughts. We don't see the disappointment. We don't see the embarrassments. We don't really see the struggle. And so the first thing that I want to say is that it's a process, and it's a journey, and I still have my days. And what's fun about that is knowing that I'm always a work in progress. Because I mean, if we reach that final, complete, perfect image of ourselves, what's the point of continuing to work on ourselves. And so it's this constant work in progress. But really, again, it's it's really understanding that the way that we are in one part of our life is how we actually show up in all the other areas of our life. And the first thing that happened when I finally embraced my story, and I decided that I'm no longer a victim, because my thoughts Phillip was always around. Well, if that didn't happen, then this would have happened. If it wasn't for that, then I would have that and it's this constant feeling of lack of scarcity around what is possible. But the more meant that we actually look back at these hard challenging moments of our lives. And instead of thinking, well that happen to me, we start thinking this happened. For me, there was a higher purpose of that there was a reason why this happened. All of a sudden, everything started to make sense. And everything started to align. And essentially, what it did for me on a personal level was making me realize that I can do anything that I can accomplish anything. And so I've had the financial struggles. But because I was able to overcome this part of my life, I had the faith knowing that I could overcome financial struggles. I've had relationship struggles, but again, you overcome this part of your life, and you realize you can overcome anything. And in 2019, I lost my mom, which was the most devastating experience of my life, way worse than everything that happened on my back, because I knew I'd overcome just tragic thing in my teens, that I was actually able to also overcome that. And so you realize that just gives you strength and power. So that was on a personal level. But on a professional level, I just became relatable to people, because we all have a struggle, right. And I think even you, Phillip, as a coach, everyone looks up to you everyone admires you, everybody's always coming to you for advice, and you're kind of the know it all, or the person that really inspires others to create momentum. And so when people start to hear that, you've also gone through your struggles, and you have the story, you automatically become relatable. And when you become relatable, you can connect with the person, you can reach them, and then you can also help guide them through their own story.

Philip Pape  06:27

It's so true, that is relatable and even the idea of having humility, and coming to the realization of with wisdom of time, right? Because I know I don't know about you in my 20s. If I wasn't known at all, that's the only side of me, I would let you see right. Now you know that it's like, let's get vulnerable, because people really relate to that. And like you said, we don't always see the struggle. But how we do like what you said, how we do anything, is how we do everything. So think about that. This is this is awesome. So one of your specialties, one of your superpowers, now that you've gone through all this is the idea of redefining our identity, which is kind of what you were talking about. And specifically thinking of yourself as an athlete in the physical fitness realm, which I love, I hear more of that kind of messaging in the space, you probably do as well. And I think we should definitely embrace it. You call everyone an athlete? So I want you to break that down for us? What is the shift the psychological advantage, if you will, that happens when someone starts to have that identity.

Sherry Shaban  07:25

So get, I think, first we have to address just the most powerful force of the human psyche, before we even get into that, because the most powerful force that we have is how we define ourselves our self image essentially. And so what happens is when we decide who we are, through our self talk through our language through the image that we have of ourselves, what we start to subconsciously or unconsciously do is just prove that to be correct, we try to validate that all day long. So if in my mind, I wake up in the morning, and my first thoughts are a girl, so I'm so fat, I'm disgusting, I hate myself, I'm so slow, like, what is this all What a shitty day it's going to be or what I'm so exhausted. And then these are all the words that are coming to me, well, then throughout the rest of the day, I'm going to support that my actions will support that unknowingly. And so when we come down to that concept, and then we take the athletic identity and start to apply it, first, we want to understand what is the athletic identity. And so we have again, this image that an athlete is a person who's paid millions of dollars a year to be on TV and to play their sport at a very, very high level. But that's not really what it is. Because when we dive deep into what that really means, we understand that an athlete is actually a mindset. And a mindset is just a collection of beliefs. That's really what it is. And so an athlete doesn't show up to practice or doesn't commit to their sport, because they're so focused on how much they weigh. Unless, of course, they're trying to classify in a particular weight category, then that's another conversation. But the reason what that they don't show up has has, it has nothing to do with their physical body. It has everything though, to do with their performance. And so they show up to their practices, or they honor their values and their rituals, not because they need to release weight or because they want to change their physical appearance. But instead, it's it's because of what they're able to do with their bodies. And so that starts to shift why we show up because if exercise is a means to release weight, it's a punishment, if exercise is, is a means to change my physical body because I don't like how I look, then it's always a punishment for what I think of myself. And so when we step into the athletic mindset, we no longer are focused around exercise just for the burning of calories or what my weight will be at the end of the month. And the same thing applies for nutrition nutrition will no longer be focused on restrictions and caloric deficit just because I want to look a certain way but instead, the focus will be how can I feel my workouts better? How can I recover faster? How can I optimize my sleep? How can I continue to show up, I'm going to decide to turn down social events the night before the game. And it's going to be easy for me to do that, because I am committed to my values, it doesn't feel restrictive. And so when we embrace that athletic identity, it's no longer a restriction. It's no longer I can't do these things. It's more I don't do these things, because it's not who I am. And what I want to create in my life is so incredibly important to me. So purposeful, and so meaningful, that there is no other way. I don't commit to these things. Because I'm trying to do these things. I commit to these things, because I'm being these things, it's actually who I am.

Philip Pape  10:38

Because I'm being these things, I love that there's a sense of empowerment and relief, almost, there's a, you're getting rid of cognitive dissonance, right, because so many of us, myself included, went through years of forcing ourselves to do things for some out calm, not realizing that a maybe it wasn't that outcome we were really going for. And P we weren't doing the things that were aligned with those and our values. So fortunately, there's more of this in the industry, but not enough. And so people like you coming on the shows and talking about this as important because I want people to realize that if they can take, Sherry's approach of abundance, right of performance of fuel of being your best, and then letting your choices because that's what they are, right? Their choices, drive that and create your identity, all these other things also become easier whether it is physique, and everything else, it doesn't matter. I love that. So do you think this label, just the label of athlete itself is is a game changer for people who've never considered sports or even physical activity as part of their life, like even from day one.

Sherry Shaban  11:45

So that absolutely and again, coming back to what we were saying earlier about how we do anything is how we do everything. It's so incredibly important. And, you know, I've seen so many transformations happen, the moment people embrace this concept, the moment they go from, I can't do this, I'm not able to do that to suddenly feeling the sense of certainty, because that's really what it means. It's not just about the collection of all these actions that we're doing. But the moment you embrace that athletic identity, your mind starts to shift, your thoughts start to shift that that faith that you have in yourself, that confidence starts to shift. And if you've ever heard any big, famous athlete, let's say on Netflix, I think there's, there's a Conor McGregor documentary there. I think there's a Michael Jordan documentary, they're just too I can watch them over and over. But I watch them over and over. And I have this obsession, even the Arnold documentary obsession about it, because there's a pattern there, there's a pattern. And once you identify the pattern, then you realize I can apply that to myself, too. And here's the pattern, Philip, is that they don't doubt themselves. They don't say, Well, maybe today I might I think I probably could. And maybe this week, I might work out a couple times, or no, it's I am, I am going to do this. I am the best. I am relentless. And even after they fail, or even after they have a bad game. They don't give up. Right? And we can look at Olympic athletes, they trained for four years to compete for 10 seconds. And what do they train for? They train for the gold. But what happens when they get the silver or the bronze, they don't give up, they go back home and start trading for the gold again. And so that's the mindset. The mindset is just around that resilience in the faith. And we can all step into it. The moment we detach this idea, this image of an athlete being this high level competitor that is professionally playing for the their sport, because really, there's a recreational athlete. Also, there's a part time athlete also. And we all have this capacity within us to harness this energy of being the athlete.

Philip Pape  13:43

Yeah, that's awesome. I was thinking about the Arnold thing where he's like, I envisioned myself winning Mr. Olympia, I envisioned myself as a Hollywood superstar. Like it was happening, it was going to happen, right? And they don't doubt themselves. You said resilience and faith. It's funny, because since the time you and I talked, I also, honestly, thanks to you and a few others, like Steph Gaudreau, in the industry, who's very much thinking like that have been using the term client athlete with my clients, right? So like, you know, I kind of throw it in here and there in the past, and now it's like, no, no, you guys are athletes, then you're right. It creates a different mindset completely. So you talked about it early on, like results, how the result we want isn't always the result we're really going for, for example, if it's not really physique, it's something else. And you also mentioned the word transformation. So drill down into the difference the subtle difference that makes one superior to the other that is transformation versus mere results.

Sherry Shaban  14:35

Right. Oh, so good. So good. Yeah, results can be measured, right results can be temporary result is just this change, and transformation. I like to really look at it as a caterpillar becoming a butterfly. But there are two different things. There's the same thing. It comes from the same place but it's it just as a brand new being and so transformation is this end result that doesn't Really and although it is this end result that continues to stay in motion, where I no longer have the set of belief systems that I had in the past, I now have a different level of thinking, I have exchanged that my old emotions with a brand new level of emotions and a higher vibration emotions. And so the transformation really is this emergence of the butterfly where it thinks differently, it behaves differently, it acts differently, almost everything around it is different. And I use the word different. But really what we're doing is we're just actually becoming that highest version of ourselves, because really, you are coming home to who you're always meant to be.

Philip Pape  15:39

So this metamorphosis because I love the caterpillar butterfly thing. I think you alluded you mentioned, it's it's a continual process, right? Like a result is an endpoint, a short term endpoint, the transformation never ends, does it? Like you said, we until the day we die, it never ends. Is that right?

Sherry Shaban  15:54

Right. 100% under percent, and it's just like brushing our teeth, right? I don't brush my teeth, or get my teeth clean, just that one time I go to see the dentist that year, or I don't just clean my house once. But it's this this constant work. And the thing about this constant work because we have this this thing in our brain where we think that progress is supposed to be linear, or we think that work is supposed to be linear. And it's not because that constant work means that I am accepting all of the things happening in my life as I continue in this journey of transformation, which means there will be losses, there will be difficult moments, there will be injuries, there will be things that come out of nowhere that I didn't expect them to be. And can I be more flexible, can I be more adaptable with the things that happened, because that's what transformation is, if I can change my mind, which means I can change my belief systems, which means I can change the way I think and therefore all my emotions that come along with that, than the way that I can handle situations look very, very different than my old self, which was very limited maybe in the way that it thought about certain things. And the way that it reacted to certain things will be very different than how I react to things now. And so yes, transformation is this constant work in progress, the work never ends. But the beautiful part about that is there is a flow and we aligned with the flow of life, which is ebbs and flows, which is really great things happening. And then And then really painful things happening to us at the same time. And regardless of what's going on in my life, regardless of my environment, whether I live in Montreal, or I'm on the moon, or I'm traveling or people come in and out of my life, my rituals don't change. And so that's one thing when we want to ask ourselves, have I really transformed, maybe we can look deeper into ourselves and ask ourselves, Is my transformation dependent on my environment? Or is it truly from within because I think we saw this in the pandemic. And I saw this at my gym, too. I had people that would come in, I mean, really religiously for years. And they were so like, keen on their health and fitness, they did not miss a single workout. But then the pandemic happened, the gyms disappeared. And so did that tie with all of those behaviors are those rituals. And so if I'm dependent on a gym for my transformation, then is that really coming from within? Because what would happen if that gym closed down? What would happen if the trainer changed? What would happen if things in the gym change? And then I no longer can connect? What does that mean, for me? Does that mean that I still continue to honor who I am, and honor the important values in my life around my health? Or does that mean that also changes. And so that's also another way that we can look at transformation is that I'm really driven by my own desire to become that reflection of my highest self, and that has nothing to do with anyone around me. And at the same time, I can match the ebb and flow of life.

Philip Pape  18:39

Yeah, what I hear you're saying is, we really don't have an excuse to be a victim, because that's what you alluded to before. Because the exception to the rule is when things are routine and perfect. It's rare, right? People expect, okay, I have a plan. And I'm just gonna do that plan every day. Day two, something happens day three, something happens. And you're so off the so called track, right? Like people use the track or the wagon, which doesn't exist, which doesn't exist, it doesn't exist. It's an ISA, like it's as Broad Avenue that you're just meandering through life, or so think of Bruce Lee's you know, water analogy. He said, I don't know exactly how it goes. But he's like, be like water where you just kind of shape yourself around everything, but you keep moving forward. Okay, so what about then somebody might say, well, what if I am in the short term, still trying to achieve some results, right? Like, like an athlete will try to win games or, you know, trying to get a new maximum on their squat or whatever? Maybe it is fat loss. I don't I don't care a result. How can you align that or fit that within the idea of transformation?

Sherry Shaban  19:43

Yeah, transformation will be the sum of all results where the results could even maybe be going in the opposite direction, right. And so that's also the other thing, I could be training so hard for something I'm training for this race day, and all of a sudden race day comes and I didn't even come close to peering, but that's still a result and so If we're so focused on a result, or focused on a positive outcome where success is attached to that positive outcome, or joy is attached to that positive outcome, that's when we have a problem. Because then our emotions are going to yo yo and roller coaster along with that outcome. And so I've had horrible results before, right. But that doesn't drive me away from my transformation, because it's kind of like looking at all the small battles in a war. There are many small battles, you win some, you lose some, but ultimately, there's still this ongoing nature around it. And so the moment that we can embrace that and understand why it's a bad training day, that's cool. That's fine. Or I was expected this today, but it didn't happen. That's okay, that I still have faith. And that's the thing is, when we harness the energy of transformation, and we're not just focusing on results, what we're also doing is harnessing patience, and harnessing faith, and integrity. And so I can become patient when things don't go my way. If I'm doing all the things if I'm eating in a way that serves me, and I am training, and I'm following my entire program, and maybe the results don't reflect that. If I can harness that energy of patience, then I know that it's only a matter of time, where things will finally align in the way that I hope and expect them to

Philip Pape  21:14

know that that's a beautiful image there. Sure. I like how you said that. Because there are a lot of people are not lazy, right? They're working hard. Yeah. And they are taking action. And somehow it's not getting them where they want to be. But they are if like they're working with you. And they're they're understanding the psychology of their identity and trying to shape their identity. You kind of take that in stride and learn from that. I mean, you just triggered me with multiple times in my life where I just completely failed. Like last year, I did a speech contest, and I blanked out for like minutes. And it was horrible in the moment, but afterward, I'm like, Wow, I'm glad I went through that. Because do you know how much I'm gonna be able to change? Or I just had surgery since the last time we talked? And it's like, yeah, I gotta find a way to train right Wednesday's training day. I don't care. It's training. But I'm sure people can definitely relate to what you're saying. So let's talk about the D word. Yeah, okay. Let's talk about the D word. Because I think that will fit nicely into the context of all of this, because, at least for me, when I think dieting, I think several different things. So let me just tell you what I think are the top, I think multiple definitions. One, I think a calorie deficit, right. Another is, I think, restricting foods or trying to follow rules for a diet. Another thing I think of is maybe how we eat a dietary pattern. And another is trying to get a result like right, trying to lose fat weight, whatever. Or the other way even build muscle. So define what you mean by dieting. So we're on the same page. And then let's talk about why dieting in that context fails. And what's more effective.

Sherry Shaban  22:45

So good, you've really great questions. So I like what you said, Because kind of everything that you said was true. Okay, so I'm actually so behind everything that you said. And so when when we're looking at our goals, first and foremost, there's nothing wrong with wanting to release weight, there's nothing wrong with it. There's nothing wrong with wanting to change your physical body, there's nothing wrong with wanting to be the highest version of yourself or become stronger or have more endurance. So all of those things are amazing. And now when we look at that, and then we ask ourselves, okay, well, then what's wrong with dieting? Well, here's the thing kind of coming back to where we were talking about when it comes to mindset. It's very different Celebified come into a party and you say, hey, Sherry, do you want to drink? Do you want to drink? And I say to you know, Phillip, sorry, I can't, I can't I can't have a drink. Versus No, Philip. Sorry, I don't drink. Now, it almost sounds the same, because in both ways, I'm declining your offer. But when I say I can't do something, what I'm actually implying is that there is a desire, and what I'm doing is going against that natural desire. But when I say I don't do something that now reflects who I am, that's part of my personality. And it's true. I don't drink so I don't have a hard time turning down alcohol because I don't drink. And I don't know if you know what poutine is, but I'm from Montreal and poutine if anyone's listening and doesn't know what it is, it is this thing. This this dish of of French fries, I think swimming and gravy with like, kurtal cheese on top. I've never had it in my life, and I never will. And it's not because and people. I'm gonna I'm gonna call up your house and force. Everybody you know. And the reason why I haven't I've never tried it was not because I was restricting or dieting, but because nothing about it appealed to me. And so the word diet that is negative that where it is talking about a restriction, that's the one that can become harmful if we don't readjust the mindset around it because what happens in the brain when we deny ourselves so something against that desire when we prevent ourselves from happening, having it what we end up doing is actually building this reward system with the hormone dopamine. And so when I want chocolate cake, but I'm on a diet, and I can't have chocolate cake, and all I think about is a chocolate cake, because that's true, by the way, Philip, I love chocolate cake, that would be a restriction for me. And so what ends up happening is it builds this reward system in my brain. So then the moment that I have chocolate cake, I get this insane flush of dopamine. And now my desire for chocolate cake has increased tenfold. And now I want that chocolate cake even more than I ever did. And that's where we can start to see patterns of binge eating, and out of control eating, which is not uncommon around athletes, or fitness competitors or people in the bodybuilding world, because that's exactly what happens. So what's different than around wiring and rewiring the brain is to have that thing not even be a part of something that you desire. So if I don't even desire it, then I'm not restricting. And so the danger of restriction then comes from this reward system that is built up. And now the other thing about dieting, too, is that there are a million diets out there. And we just have to ask ourselves, well, why is it that we live in North America, where food is abundant, where science and information is abundant? Where diets are abundant? And yet we are the one struggling with weight and health the most? Like why is that? Yes, absolutely. We have fast food and we have processed foods and we have all this other stuff. But is that really the issue? Or is the issue that we're so focused on weight and on body image, and told from a very, very young age that we should look a certain way. And that's generally the people that I work with. And actually they started dieting, something like when they were eight, nine, even 12 years old, already started dieting. And when you get in from get into one diet, and then move on to the next, what you actually start doing is becoming very confused around food because this diet says that we shouldn't have carbs, this diet says that we should have carbs This one says we shouldn't have meat, this one says we should have meat. This one says eat breakfast. First thing you do when you wake up, this one says don't eat and you should fast. And by the way, all backed by science all legitimate. There's there's enough scientific data to prove that each and every single one is correct. And so what we've done is create these restrictions for these massive reward systems in our brain and at the same time confused ourselves like crazy around what information is correct that we no longer intuitively recognize the cues that our body's constantly giving us to be hungry, or when we're satisfied, and we're full or when we're missing something. But now everything is thought processes first, before we take action, I have to think about what I want to eat, does it fit in my macros that I eat enough calories? Or should I get more protein, there's more thought involved versus intuitive. Calling upon the signal that's already actually telling me what it is that my body needs

Philip Pape  27:47

at the moment. It's very interesting, because you and I agree on 99.99% of stuff. We really do. And just I love the way that you explain that in the context of the reward system and the binge eating. And the fact that there is science, I'll say cherry picked to support this or it's incomplete, if you will, right. Because the psychological aspect you're talking about, I'm sure there's science on that, as in fact, I know there is I know they've studied rigid dieting versus more flexible dieting, for example. And it comes down to adherence, often, more often than not, and that is also science. So the question is what you know, what do you believe? Right? That's the crux of what you're getting to is that people are either misinformed or just overwhelmed with the information. So what is the biggest of those myths about dieting that you wish would just finally fall on its face and go away? Because there's so many?

Sherry Shaban  28:42

Yeah, I think it's probably that there is one way we're supposed to eat. And I think that's the issue really, is that we're on this journey, this lifelong journey to find the secret, what is the secret to weight loss, like, and then we see this everywhere, right? This this is like a major attention grab 10 secrets to weight loss, right? And so we're looking for this, we're looking for this magic pill. But the truth is, if you just take a couple steps back and from a third person perspective, you just ask yourself, Okay, well, how can this be logical because if I looked at the evolution of the world and the evolution of man on every single content and every single type of environment, I would see that here, these people lived off of whale blubber and meat, that makes sense. And over here, maybe people lived more off of the land and ate plants because there wasn't anything available to them. And so when you start to see that we've actually evolved eating a lot of different things, essentially eating what the land gave us, then none of these diets really make sense. There's, we don't talk about carbs anymore or fats anymore. We can also go to Italy and to Greece, where they eat a lot of carbs. And we can find many Blue Zones there. People living over 100 years old and very happy. So clearly, it's not about the potatoes either. But really the key is to tune into what works for you. If something doesn't feel right if you're forcing yourself like you set up on your fortune. yourself through diet and exercise and you're really going against your desire. That's where we can start to create all of these self sabotaging patterns in the brain where we start to do self sabotaging behavior. And so what we need to just release is this idea that there's this one way to eat because what works for you Phillip may not work for me and what works for me may not work for you. And the goal is to really just find what works the best for each person, individual. And just follow that and have this become this massive science experiment. And by the way, this, this doesn't mean eat a dozen donuts for breakfast and see what happens and then go to McDonald's for lunch and see what happens. That's not what it means. Because I think if we ate doughnuts all day long for days and processed foods, our body will would rebel if it wasn't off limits for us our body be like, okay, dude, just everything else. Right?

Philip Pape  30:50

Yeah, yeah. And I was thinking of like, just a catchy phrase, right? You know, If It Fits Your Macros, if it fits your body, right? Like, if you had to, like, just simplify it to, okay, there's not one way to eat. But if there's one way to state this, it would be if it serves you, or like if it works with you. Yeah, exactly. So, which is which is very similar to what a lot of what I say even though I do get caught in the trap of using numbers and things like with carbs, and protein targets and stuff, so maybe we could explore some of that

31:20

out to Philippe and hopefully for a long time, and know how passionate he is about healthy eating, and love his strength. And that's why choosing to be my coach, I was no stranger to a dieting and body training. But I've always struggled to do it sustainably, Philip helped me prioritize my goals with evidence based recommendations, or not over stressing my body and not feeling like I'm starving. In six months, I lost 45 pounds without drastically changing the foods I enjoy. Now I have a more balanced diet, I weight train consistently, or most importantly, I do it sustainably if a scientifically sound healthy diet and a Langstrom body is what you're looking for. Philip Pape is your guy.

Philip Pape  32:05

I want to talk more about intuitive eating, which I guess I guess it does run counter to the typical diet culture, right? Even though people heard the term, define intuitive eating and be and I asked this because there's the in my opinion, the example you just gave about eating as much donuts or McDonald's as you want. In version of intuitive eating. Yes, I've seen that. Right. Which is like, just listen to your body. But without any training or education or any any feedback or experimentation. And therefore you're not, you can't really trust what your body's telling you necessarily. Versus you've got to somehow go through a process to kind of get out of the typical and get into this more transformative mindset. So tell us about because I want to know, like, if I wanted to become an intuitive eater, right away, what were the steps look like?

Sherry Shaban  32:50

So good. I think you said something so so important, because you said how do I go from eating all of these things, and then just suddenly listening to my body? Right. So that's actually step number one. And there is a place for tracking, by the way. So I want to also add in here that I'm not anti tracking, because it always has its place, especially when we're trying to understand what we don't know. Like, we don't know what we don't know, Philip. So if I've been, you know, I've been raised in this environment where, you know, my mom fed me box foods, she did her best, let's say she fed me box foods her whole life. And we had microwave dinners, and she was working three jobs. And she was a single mom, and she just really really did her best. By the time I become a teenager or maybe a young adult, I don't really know enough about nutrition because I've just haven't been exposed to it. So for step number one is just just to learn the basics and not to get so caught up in the minutia, or the details of every little thing and feel that we're doing things good or bad, or I'm doing it right or wrong. And so that's where we start again, that's that slippery path where we start to develop that self sabotaging behavior. So first things first is just to get comfortable with the information, it may actually be new information for some people to learn that juice is not really serving us or there's so much sugar and juice compared to eating the fruit straight up. Or maybe all of those health products that are claiming to be health products and marketed to us as health products are actually not that healthy for us. And they don't actually differ very much from chocolate bars.

Philip Pape  34:17

Let me there. So let's take the juice example. Let's say let's say pure fresh squeezed orange juice versus an orange, right? How do you communicate that and explain it to a client or somebody educationally? Do you? Do you make it more of an objective comparison? Or do you put a little bit of judgment on it kind of I heard that a little bit in there of because it has so much sugar in it has so this it's not so great for you. And even the word great is a little bit of a label and I'm just call it calling you out on your own thing because I know you're aware of that. How do you do that? How do you communicate that?

Sherry Shaban  34:46

So it's really understanding the basics of what the body actually needs. And what we can do is we can maybe rewind 100 or 150 years to really see how we ate and so we don't know what the body needs eats any more, because the majority of the food that is available to us is actually food like substances not really food. It's like the kind of kind of a version of food but really didn't come from a tree

Philip Pape  35:10

pre digested. Together. Yeah,

Sherry Shaban  35:13

absolutely. And so it kind of has to start, there's just this basic understanding of how the body works, the hormones in the body, what the body needs to build itself. And then from there, you can start to reverse engineer as to what the food would look like.

Philip Pape  35:25

Okay, go ahead. No, no, okay. No, no, that's perfect. I love that of like, understanding. Okay, well, Orange has fiber, and fiber helps with this. And this, this physiological, and maybe that's why we want to eat an orange rather than drinking orange.

Sherry Shaban  35:37

Right, right. Okay. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. And then, and then from there, we can start to get into the intuitive signaling because my body can't intuitively signal for certain things, when the majority of what I'm eating is not real food, all of that all those chemicals interfere with the signals. So of course, like I bypass my hunger signals, or my fullness signals. And so there's, there's this level of first just understanding Well, what is what is the food that fuels us the best? What is the food that serves us the best, it's not saying it's good or bad, because maybe a piece of cake can serve you too. But what is the food that serves as the best and what is the food that we are actually meant to eat? And now that's kind of coming back to diets. And what kind of brings all diets together is most of the time most diets focus on eating real foods. Maybe this side will tell you reduce the amount of fats here or take out the fast completely while this diet tells you takeout carbs. But what they both are kind of saying that sounds similar is eat from the land, eat food that is actually real that comes from nature. And so if we start there, we can then start to become more in tune with the natural signals of the body, and not the signals coming from the other chemicals or the other unnatural substances that we're putting in our body.

Philip Pape  36:54

Let me ask you this, because you mentioned chocolate cake earlier. Yeah. How does? How do you put that in the context? And I'm getting kind of nitpicky just because I know Yeah, please do this. You've got this element. Yeah. You're, you know, at a birthday party, your grandma made the chocolate cake. She used a cake mix and some sort of oil, you don't know what it is. And you said you love chocolate cake. And I do too. I love chocolate, everything. It may not be optimal for your physiology. Right? Perhaps I don't tell good based on everything. You just said how would you I don't want to say justify it, because it's really just your choice. But for a potential client who's like struggling, okay, well, what do I do here? What I do here? What do you mean? Like, can I never enjoy this stuff? How would you answer that?

Sherry Shaban  37:36

Ah, so good. Yeah, have the damn cake. Right. It's about having the cake because you restricting yourself from having the cake is actually a greater problem and more harmful to your body than actually having the cake. That's if you desire to have the cake. Now I could have come to that party and I saw the cake and like actually don't want to have a piece. That's not a restriction. But if I wanted a piece, and I'm watching everybody else have a piece and I really wish I could have a piece but I can't have a piece because, well, all these things in the sky, and I'm off sugar, and I'm off carbs. And that's very different. Because what ends up happening now is I'm building up that reward system. And so the other thing too, is about quantity, right? So there's a very big difference between having a whole cake or six pieces of cake versus having a piece of cake. And we need to get to that place because I actually like to see my body as this temple, where if I give it sugar, it can handle it. Now, that doesn't mean I need to use it and give it more sugar than it possibly needs in one day or even in one city. Again, that becomes the harm. And that's where we start to see this ease.

Philip Pape  38:43

Yeah, yeah, I love that. What was I going to ask? I got so into what you're saying that I was gonna ask something about that relate to the quantity, the quantity Yeah, it's so true. Because when you do your step two of developing intuitive signaling, right with your satiety signals that and you start to I guess, desensitize yourself to the the overly flavored processed foods we have you'll find that like you don't want that big of a piece of cake. It's kind of a rebel repels you would you still want to be you wouldn't be polite, there are so social implications and all that and there's also the fact that delicious to some extent, but you know, if you have this bigger piece of cake, it's not gonna feel so great the next day, so I love that level of balance. And then so we talked about signaling and hunger. How do you differentiate how does someone learn to differentiate where hunger is real physical hunger versus emotional hunger for example?

Sherry Shaban  39:36

Ah, so good so good. All right. So let's let's go through emotional hunger first, because this is a really important one and it's interesting football say that the when I when I was sharing in the beginning that I really help people overcome emotional eating or binge eating. What I've actually noticed is that those who've been struggling with their health or their weight the longest, it wasn't because they Have a discipline problem. It's not because they didn't have the best meal plan, it wasn't because they found they didn't find the right diet, it was none of those things, in fact, that had nothing to do with food, but had everything to do with the inability to sit in an emotion with not having the tools to be able to manage an uncomfortable emotion when it comes up. And so the way that it looks like when we emotionally eat or when we binge eat or boredom, ie boredom, also being another emotion that we're uncomfortable sitting in, what that looks like, generally is it starts with a trigger. So the trigger is something that is provoked by one of the senses. So either I saw something that triggered me or I heard something, or I smelled something, or I tasted something, or I remembered something, and even the memory of something is generated by one of our five senses. And so there's a trigger. And now the trigger gave me this emotion. So I have this uncomfortable emotion. And I don't know what to do with it. So maybe it was the end of the week. And I had a really, really long week. And then on Friday night, in the afternoon, as I was checking out of work, my boss came up to me and told me how disappointed he was in my performance all week. And I really bombed that meeting, and I need to prepare better. So now, I come home Friday night, that was my trigger. Now I'm feeling like, Man, I'm such a loser. Like, I tried my best this week. And I it's never enough, no matter what I do is not enough. I'm gonna get fired. And now I've got this uncomfortable emotion. I don't know how to sit in it. And so what I want to do is numb it. I self medicate. And one of the things that we use for self medication is food. Sometimes we can use drugs, sometimes we can use alcohol, sometimes we can shop sometimes we can gamble, sometimes we can turn to sex, it's all the same. It's a dopamine hit. And so it gives me a temporary relief. And then after that temporary relief, all of a sudden, I start to feel guilty, I start to feel ashamed, I start I start to feel disappointed in myself, because I said this week, I was going to work really hard with my trainer. And I was not going to eat any sugar. But here I am, I'm having sugar. And now that I'm already here, well, I may as well just finish the whole box of Oreos since I've already finished one row. And I'm going to start my diet again on Monday. And so that's an example of a cycle. And so emotional hunger can be identified when there's a trigger that made us feel a certain way. And now, of course, I'm saying all these things that I'm giving you step by step flow, however, what's really happening is on the subconscious level, so I'm actually not aware of this. But in order for us to become aware, we just have to first know that this is happening. So how do I do that? Well, I'm about to eat something. And maybe before I start eating, I can ask myself, why do I want to eat this? And it could be then a very simple answer, like, Man, I'm bored. I'm nothing else to do. Or I'm really excited, I'm celebrating or I'm really sad. And so we just come back to that emotion. And then again, reverse engineer, well, what triggered that emotion? Why did I feel that way? Someone say something like what happened that made me feel this way. Right. And then we understand that the reason why we're eating is emotional. And so when a person has an emotional eating pattern, there, they are aware of it, because they noticed that no matter what the circumstance is whether that the circumstance, give them a positive emotion or negative emotion, what they start to recognize is this inability to handle stressful situations in their environment or in their lives without resorting to food. And oftentimes, it's also attached to another substance, it could be marijuana, it could also be alcohol.

Philip Pape  43:36

It's really important, I think, like you said, to create awareness, really around everything. So I love that idea. And I'm sure again, this is where methods versus principles, there's probably many ways to create that awareness, like you said, Ask yourself, maybe a diary, all sorts of ways to do that. But I also want to point out to the listener, that what you mentioned very early in the podcast about having the identity of an athlete, I think, personally, that also changes this because as you start to find positive ways to channel the reason you eat, it kind of crowds out or takes away from the desire need to eat emotionally, I've seen that, you know, it's like these physical changes where you don't necessarily have to go to a psychiatrist and diagnose this, you can do some practical things and get there. That's just what I've seen. I do I know, we only have like, 10 more minutes. So and I have like a bunch of questions that I'm not going to get through as usual. I want to jump to the aesthetics and the physique part, because the listener might be thinking, you know, are there mixed signals or not? And I know there aren't, but I want to, like address that with you. So the first question is the million dollar question is how do you have a six pack and defy these traditional norms of dieting and excessive exercise that everybody thinks they need to do?

Sherry Shaban  44:47

Alright, so yes, so so it's so interesting. I'm actually really happy that you brought that up because there's this fine balance that we want to have between the two concepts, right, because to your point, you can go on Instagram by the way if you hashtag into it. Eating on Instagram, please don't listen to what's being said like really go to to a resource such as a book, or a person who's really like a psychologist or a nutritionist who's who's doing this work, because there's a lot of these videos that people intuitive eating donuts and intuitively eating their pizza. And that's one intuitively eating that is actually promoting you to eat foods that don't serve you. So to answer your question, Philip, yes, I'm I'm resting 16 17% body fat. This is this is without adding effort. I don't eat certain foods. And I don't, it's not because it's a restriction kind of what we said in the beginning, it was more around aligning my values. And so the first things first is really identifying what it is that you want to create in your life. That is the number one thing what is it that I want to create? What is that vision of my life? Because if I ask somebody that question, and it's actually the first question, I ask anyone who starts to work with me, I asked him, What is it that you want? Like, what are your goals, now that they do fill up, they list all the things they don't want, they talk about all the things they don't want to do. And actually, most people are not very clear as to what it is that they want. And so the first thing is getting crystal clear around what it is that you want that you want, not what other people expect you to want, but what it is that you want. So that starts there. And then if let's say my goal is, let's say my goal is to release 30 pounds, if that is my goal, instead of focusing on the doing, which now gets into the diet mindset, because if you tell me Sherry, okay, your goal is to lose 30 pounds will fill up, I'm going to do anything, anything it'll take, I can even chop up a limb to make that happen, because that's my goal is to lose 30 pounds. So instead of focusing on the doing, what do I have to do to release my 30 pounds, instead, we come back to the being, who do I have to be to be that person who's 30 pounds lighter. And now that starts to look a lot different, because now I can find a set of values, I can find the personality type of this person, I can find a list of habits that they do in their day. And now what that starts to look like is something that is measurable and something that I can start to incorporate in my day to day life, I can actually schedule that stuff in. So if I had no idea what it would be like if to be a person who's 30 pounds lighter, I would maybe find a mentor, I would find somebody and I would model them. What are they doing? What time are they waking up? What are they having for breakfast? What are they eating? Where are they drinking? How much movement are they doing? How are they thinking, how are they behaving, and look at their diet. And in this sense of the word diet is not just what they're consuming through their mouth, which is beverage and food. But it's also who they're talking to. It's the conversations that they're listening to. It is the news that they're watching on social media, that is all diet. And so once I have the set of values and the set of habits, I can then start to schedule them in. And so when you asked me well, how do you have a six pack, but you're also anti diet, I'm so focused on me the being, which is I love to train, I train maybe twice a day one is usually outside. So it looks like the 75 hard but apparently I've been 75 Harding for like the longest time. And that workout outside sometimes can be a look with my dogs. Sometimes it can be a run, sometimes I could cycle and then I'll do some sort of resistance training. And why do I do resistance training? Well, I do resistance training because there was a time in my life where I relied on other people to bring me to the bathroom or to shower me. But I do resistance training. Because it's so important. For me, it's one of my core values, that I'm able to do everything for myself and be completely independent up until my very final days. And so now, as I'm focusing on all these values that are important to me, which is eating the foods that served me because if I eat sugar, I feel my back. If I eat processed foods, I feel my back. So I'm focusing on foods that make me feel good. I'm focusing on Exercise and Movement that makes me feel good. And as a side effect that the body follows. Because really, the body, our physical body is an outward reflection of our internal environment, whatever is going on inside mind, body, spirit, whatever is going on inside. That is what the body will reflect.

Philip Pape  49:04

Yeah, I couldn't agree more when when you see people align more with their body and their values and what you said, your your diet, and that's why the word is so confusing because it can be used in five different ways. Right? But you kind of your lifestyle is what you're alluding to, and you're being then sometimes these things naturally happen. What I do wonder is somebody who let's say, gets into that situation where they're dialing everything in there. They're serving themselves and being an athlete. They're training like they want they're moving like they want they eat in a way that feels great. How is that? What's the difference between being at maintenance doing that versus you still have some weight to release? What's the process? You take clients through on that because there's a little bit of maybe discomfort that you need from being in a deficit to lose weight? Maybe not. I want to hear I want to hear your take on this because it's like, if you just be like that, aren't you going to more or less maintain your weight? or not because of body composition or other physiological changes going on.

Sherry Shaban  50:04

super interesting. So I think I actually want to just dive a little bit deeper into this question. So what I think I'm understanding from you is, well, what would happen then if suddenly a person puts on weight and they and they're no longer in maintenance phases? That what you're asking?

Philip Pape  50:20

It was a very terribly worded question. Very simply, if somebody, let's say somebody has, they feel like they, they're not the body that they want to have, you know, physically they want to, they want to look more like you, Sherry, and they, they're doing all the things that are, are great for their lifestyle, and it feels great in their training and doing all the things they're eating well. And that's good enough to sort of help them maintain their weight. But now they actually want to lose weight. So to me, again, I think more in terms of well, you have to have some sort of release of energy in your body, which is going to cause a little bit of hunger and things along the way. How do you make that happen?

Sherry Shaban  50:55

Oh, so good. Okay. Yes. All right. So the calorie deficit. So there's, there's sort of four components that we want to look at to have a transformation and coming back to what that definition of transformation was in the beginning, which was that result that is a completely completely different embodiment? And then what we first started with, so yes, there there is this changing around the nutrition that needs to happen? Right, and the changing around the nutrition? I think we already talked about how it's important to really focus on the foods that serve us not only because we know that they serve us, but also in terms of how we feel. Now, any calorie deficit that happens for too long as you know, the body starts to backfire. And so if there's a calorie deficit, we just really need to identify what that means. Because Am I deficit in what I'm currently eating and consuming, or am I in a deficit, but it's actually how much I need to sustain my body weight, there's a very, very big difference. So if let's say right now, sitting here, I need 2000 calories to maintain my body weight. If I am eating 3000 calories of food, and I am in deficit of 1000 calories, I'm still eating enough to maintain my body weight and maintain more importantly, the energy that my body is requiring. If I go below that, that's where we start to see detrimental effects. Specifically, that's where we start to see reducing the metabolic rate. We're starting now to tap into lean body mass. And as we know, we have other effects that happen there. And so that's the number one thing is just to really understand what this calorie deficit is. Because when we say we want to release weight, what are we really trying to release? Is it numbers on the scale? Or are we trying to release body fat because then the approach is very different. So we want to get specific around that. Let's not keep saying I want to lose weight, or I want to lose 10 pounds, I could make someone lose 10 pounds of fat. Now that looks very different. And my approach will be very different. So that's the first game.

Philip Pape  52:51

Okay. Yeah, my last episode was called fat loss versus weight loss and exactly the same thing. But yeah, what I was what I was getting more was like, once everybody's dialed in everything, and they still want to lose the fat. Do you? How do you have them go into a deficit? Do you have them listen to their body and just kind of reduced quantities? Or are they actually tracking calories, even though it's intuitive,

Sherry Shaban  53:09

so interesting. Okay. So I talked about the nervous system being in either a protection mode or safety mode. And now this is really where all of the magic happens. Because everything that we're talking about right now, Phillip is controllable factors, which is I can control the amount of water I consume, the exercise I consume, what I eat, what I don't eat, theoretically, I can control all these things. But what I actually can't control is the effect that my body is having on that food, unless I understand what's going on on a nervous system level. So we have the central nervous system. And we have the autonomic nervous system, the central nervous system is a spinal cord and nerves, and that is responsible for active movement or voluntary movement, then we have the autonomic nervous system, which is the nervous system that governs all of the other functions of the body that are on autopilot. And now that's heart rate. That's blood pressure, that swallowing that's blinking, that's, that's the creation of hormones, and so on and so forth. And so when we are when we are naturally at rest, or when we're feeling joyful, we actually are in what we call safety mode. Safety mode is also known as rest and digest. And during that mode, the body doesn't have this tendency to or need to store extra extra fat or excess fat or excess energy. And so when we are in a space where it's just becoming so confusing as to why is it that I'm not releasing weight, I'm doing all the things I've reached this the stagnant point I can't break free from it and I'm just don't understand do I need to get into more of a calorie deficit? Well, we can actually start look at instead is where's the nervous system? Because if I'm in protection mode, which is fight or flight, my body's actually going to favor me to hold on stored energy. So I know that I'm in protection mode when I'm always under stress when I'm feeling super angry or my emotions are in You're and anxiety and fear and depression and worry and all of these emotions, the more I'm in those emotions, the more I'm in that protection mode. And now my body's not working with me, it's working against me. So all this the safe to answer your question is when a person gets that point where they're, they've stagnated, they're not seeing any more release of weight, instead of going to cut more calorie deficit as a solution. Let's see where the nervous system is up. Because if I'm living in a space where I'm constantly stressed, and I'm constantly in fight or flight, then I'm constantly also favoring stored energy. But if I'm, if I'm able to get my body into safety mode, where it's relaxed, where it doesn't feel that there's a danger, or a direct threat of scarcity in the environment, my body doesn't have that need to hold on to stored energy. And so we work with the nervous system in order to shift it into a place where it can actually naturally release that way.

Philip Pape  55:51

You know, it's beautiful that we use different language for the same thing, Sherry, I love that like it totally, it's amazing. I'm glad we have this conversation today. Because it's, it's taught me a lot to about where, where you're coming from, and kind of the intuitive eating perspective, but the idea of releasing, of stress on the body with the nervous system, I almost think of it as the opposite of that, or not the opposite. But the other side of the same thing is, you're increasing your expenditure by reducing stress on the body. So therefore, you're able to be in a bigger deficit than you thought you would be at kind of a natural setpoint with all your other activities. Yeah, I was, I was just curious, I was trying to get it like, okay, the very first time somebody wants to release weight, do you put them in a deficit? But I think what you're saying is, by aligning everything to your needs, the body's going to kind of shift toward accept point anyway, you're kind of going to naturally be in a deficit until you're getting to your normal kind of setpoint of body fat. So beautiful. Yeah, that have I have that right. I didn't like Miss.

Sherry Shaban  56:48

No, it's, it's spot on. And it's so interesting, because you and I were doing the same work. And we're approaching it very differently. And I think what's so beautiful about that, as it resonates with different people, and so a person who comes let's say, to see me, I will put them on a calorie deficit or even have them know it's on a calorie deficit, we start with what is the highest version of yourself? What are the values tell me what the driving emotions are of that person, tell me what their habits are. And tell me what that what their character is like. And once we know what that is, we can then extract habits, those habits, now we start to stack them. So it's called habit stacking, where now we apply the rule of addition before subtraction. So I'll have them add more water before they stop drinking juice or coffee, I'll have them add more vegetables before they stop doing this. And actually, what they end up doing is changing all of their nutrition, but they don't they don't track it. They don't say I'm on a calorie deficit or watching my carbs. They just end up being that person through all of the small little actions that through applying all the small habits, they transform into that butterfly without it being this okay, checklist. I did my workout today, I did this today. Instead, what we do slowly start to add on those habits. And now it's irreversible. And now you're a brand new person, and it's impossible to ever go back. Wonderful.

Philip Pape  58:03

Yeah. And some of that full brings us full circle to to add him in the things that serve you and it sort of crowds the other stuff out and it becomes part of your life. I want to ask this question, because I asked him all guests, cherry, and that is what one question Did you wish I had asked? And what is your answer? Whoa, hmm.

Sherry Shaban  58:26

They I think I would have loved that you asked maybe more about the importance of spirituality in this whole entire process.

Philip Pape  58:34

Okay, tell me about that.

Sherry Shaban  58:39

We are so caught up in the matrix. And the matrix is the three dimensional world where we are so focused on action reaction. But oftentimes we forget that we are, we are not just our body. And we're not just our mind. And we're not just our emotion, but we are the witness of all of these things. And the moment we can tap into the witness where we are witnessing the things happening in our body, and we're witnessing the emotions, we're witnessing the thoughts and not engaging them, we create this separation. And through this separation, we're then able to identify what that highest version of ourself is, and realize that everything around us that we're experiencing is just an experience. And we're not so stuck into our day to day problems, we start to understand that living and thinking the present moment means peace and stillness. And when we are fixated on thoughts in the past, or things that happened to us in the past, that brings up the emotions of sadness and loss and regret and remorse. But when we're focused also on the thoughts of the future, that's where we feel stress and anxiety and feeling like there's this uncertainty and fear ultimately. And so when we're in that place where we can operate from that consciousness from really understanding that the party is the body is something we experience and the thoughts are something we experience and the emotions are something experience. Then actually transformation becomes so easy And you realize from that place that you can actually create anything that you possibly want.

Philip Pape  1:00:05

I can enhance that in any way that is so gorgeous. And I would love I would love to dive into that again in the future because that is so good. I, you and I think differently in certain ways, but we're also both deep and philosophical about things. So I wouldn't even have asked about spirituality and yet, I totally get it. So and I'm sure the listener does as well. So thank you so much for sharing all of this. Where can listeners learn more about you and your work?

Sherry Shaban  1:00:31

Thank you so much. You're really great Philip and I love this conversation every single second of it and I have a feeling we'll do more of these in the future either on my iPad podcast or yours, so if anybody wanted to reach out they can find me on Instagram at Sherry Shaban fitness or check out my website also Sherry shaban.com

Philip Pape  1:00:49

Perfect I will put your IG and website in the show notes so people can find you, Sherry again, this was a pleasure. I loved it. I mean some some of these interviews just go by so fast. I wish we had another hour. We'll definitely connect again and I hope you have a beautiful weekend.

Sherry Shaban  1:01:03

Thank you so much Philip. Be blessed.

Philip Pape  1:01:07

Thank you for tuning in to another episode of Wits & Weights. If you found value in today's episode, and know someone else who's looking to level up their Wits & Weights, please take a moment to share this episode with them. And make sure to hit the Follow button in your podcast platform right now to catch the next episode. Until then, stay strong.

Ep 110: Macros Aren’t Enough – Flexible Dieting vs. IIFYM

Today, the battle between Flexible Dieting and If It Fits Your Macros (or IIFYM) is on. You’ll discover why the freedom to eat your favorite foods and only tracking macros isn't enough to achieve real, life-changing health. I will compare the glaring differences between flexible dieting and IIFYM so you can fuel your body for peak performance, physique, and longevity and make friends with foods that serve you and your values.

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Click here to apply for coaching!
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Today you’ll learn all about:

[1:44] What is IIFYM
[5:01] Personal experience with tracking macros
[7:00] Importance of fiber and its health benefits
[8:50] Transitioning to the flexible dieting approach
[10:57] Quote about flexible dieting from Alan Argon's book
[12:02] Different approaches to tracking and precision in flexible dieting
[16:47] Tracking fiber for improved health and fat loss
[18:25] Setting a maximum for saturated fat intake and tracking micronutrients
[19:24] Tracking workout nutrition and biofeedback
[21:52] The impact of meal timing and food choices on digestion
[24:10] The importance of sustainable and flexible dieting approach
[25:14] How do you do flexible dieting?
[31:01] Free 30-minute breakthrough session to achieve your fitness goals
[32:47] Outro

Episode resources:

• Ep 80: Flexible Dieting, Evidence-Based Nutrition, and Protein Strategies with Alan Aragon

• Ep 59: Why You Should Track Your Food

• Book: Flexible Dieting (Alan Aragon)

• MacroFactor app – use code WITSANDWEIGHTS to extend your free trial to two weeks (and support me and this show!)

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Transcript

Philip Pape  00:00

I FIM is really about hitting your macros no matter what you eat. Whereas flexible dieting is about selecting foods to serve your lifestyle, your goals, your values for multiple dietary variables that may include macros, but also many other things that support how you feel and perform. Welcome to the Wits & Weights podcast. I'm your host Philip pape, and this twice a week podcast is dedicated to helping you achieve physical self mastery by getting stronger. Optimizing your nutrition and upgrading your body composition will uncover science backed strategies for movement, metabolism, muscle and mindset with a skeptical eye on the fitness industry so you can look and feel your absolute best. Let's dive right in. Wits & Weights community Welcome to another solo episode of the Wits & Weights podcast in our last episode 109 lifting weights at any age on a platform of strength with Andrew Romeo, Andrew and I talked about the concept of a platform of strength, making fitness fun, and lots of other topics related to lifting weights at any age. Today for episode 110. Macros aren't enough flexible dieting versus IFYM. The battle is on between flexible dieting, and if it fits your macros or ifitm, you'll discover why the freedom to eat your favorite foods, and only tracking macros isn't enough to achieve real life changing health. I will compare the glaring differences between flexible dieting and ifitm. So you can fuel your body for peak performance, physique and longevity, and make friends with your food foods that serve you and your values. So let's jump into the topic. Macros aren't enough flexible dieting versus i f ly app. So let me just define I FIM If It Fits Your Macros. It's an eating style that focuses solely on meeting your daily macro targets. And the concept originated in the online bodybuilding and fitness forums around the late 2000s and early 2000 10s. Alan Aragon has shared this story I think it's even written about in his book flexible dieting, and it was initially presented as a rebellion against at the time were the traditional restrictive bodybuilding bro diet, right, chicken, rice and broccoli, a very limited range of foods. And the idea behind ifitm was simple like, like many approaches like many diets, in fact, as long as you meet your macro targets for the day, your macronutrient targets, the specific foods you eat don't matter. And in fact, they took it to an extreme of really don't matter at all. And the concept gained traction right because it allowed for a more flexible eating style. With Ay ay ay fim. You could technically eat fast food desert, any other kind of food, quote unquote unhealthy whatever term you want to use junk food, etc. Fast food doesn't matter. I already mentioned that as long as it fit within the calculated macros for the day proteins, fats, and carbs. And I think the reason it became a meme or a seine was that people would ask questions on these forums like, Hey, can I eat pizza on my diet? And they would say, Well, I FIM right. If it's your macros, you can you know, you can eat anything If It Fits Your Macros. And social media, of course amplified this like it always does. With fitness influencers, bloggers adopting the method showing off their indulgent food choices while they have this lean physique, the six pack whatever. And you still see this today. In fact, there seems to be a resurgence on social media about are with nutritionists and dietitians who are obviously paid by the big food companies to plug their stuff not only as if it's okay to eat within a flexible diet, but they actually push it to the point where they say this is a healthy source of nutrition, which is probably a bridge too far. And we're going to scratch all of that today and get to a truly flexible approach is where I want to take you that aligns with you. And while I FIM has been criticized for lacking in other things like you don't think about nutritional quality, you don't think about density or fullness or anything. It still remains very popular. And oftentimes interchange is interchanged with the term flexible dieting because of the psychological benefits. So if you for example, we're used to eating restrictive diets, let's say keto carnivore, something like that, where you've cut a bunch of food out foods out and now you you have the mindset of well, I can really eat anything. But now I'm tracking my calories and macros macros, so I'm going to make it fit. That's actually a nice step along the way along the spectrum I'll say toward where you eventually want to be and it probably has more psychological alignment than the yo yo dieting that you get for On restrictive diets, so I'm not totally bashing the idea as a foundation, but it's not everything. It's in fact, it's not, I'm not anywhere close to everything. And I want to get into these today. So and here's why I slightly defend ifitm at the beginning is because I went through that process myself, when I was first tracking. Well, I first I tried to track multiple times in my life. And the first few times didn't really take but when I finally started tracking using macro factor, and actually got feedback on my metabolism, and then I knew how to adjust my macros each week, I really wasn't thinking too much beyond macros. And yet that took me 80% of the way to where I needed to be until I hit my first fat loss phase. And I realized that you really want to think about more than macros, if you're going to stick with the phase if you're going to be adherent if you're going to be successful. And if you're going to have a bunch of other things regarding your health and energy and performance met and satisfied by what you are eating. So it was a nice stepping stone toward discovering all of that for me. And so I thank it for that. But it's not enough and that's what I want to get to get into today. And here's why. If It Fits Your Macros overlooks a lot of things it overlooks micronutrients, your vitamins, your mineral minerals, it overlooks fiber, it overlooks saturated fat, it overlooks even hydration, like there's things that aren't aren't even technically foods so to speak, that it doesn't really consider it has nothing to do with meal timing, or,

Philip Pape  06:41

you know, supporting your training and activity and all these other things. So we're gonna get into micros, for example, directly affect your training, your recovery, your recovery, your immune system, your overall well being. And right off the bat, if you're simply picking foods because they meet your macros and nothing else you're going to have a deficiency there. Studies have indicated that if you only focus on macros, you're probably because if you've come from a traditional Western diet, you're probably gonna have a diet low in fiber, and essential nutrients like potassium, vitamin D, omega three fatty acids, there was a study in the Journal of the International Society of sports nutrition that argued that while macronutrient targets could be met with diets largely consisting of processed foods, this is going to lead to deficiencies in fiber, and other essential nutrients. And I think that was actually helped a helms article from 2014 helms at all. So right off the bat, we can see one of the disadvantages of only thinking about macros, fiber, in particular, I'm a huge advocate of putting that way up there at the same level of your other macros even though it's a subset of carbs. Because it plays such a crucial role in your digestive health, it helps control blood sugar, it's been linked to lower levels of LDL cholesterol. A lack of fiber can give you digestive issues, higher risk of heart disease, poor poor blood sugar control, and so on. And I just like it for satiety as well when you're in a fat loss phase, and it is associated with more nutrient dense Whole Foods. Similarly, if you have too much sodium, too much saturated fat, which is what is found in processed foods that still can quote unquote, fit your macros, like you could probably eat pizza every day all day and fit your macros with with the right combinations of ingredients. But it's gonna have a lot of salts can have a lot of saturated fat. So we all sorts of things is going to wreak havoc on your system and probably not aligned with your health. And of course, those have been linked to things like cardiovascular disease, hypertension, and other metabolic issues. So I am a big fan of changing your mindset toward one of flexibility and toward the idea of macros and calories as a as the first variables the first set of variables. But then we want to start to include more dietary variables. So that's the phrase I'm going to use and grow that approach into full flexible dieting. So I'm using the term flexible dieting from here on out to define what we mean when when you take a macros approach, and then you add the other 10 things on top of it or variables on top of it that we really need to align with our goals. And this is why we track things like energy, digestion, your progress in your training, right and so on, like multiple things regarding biofeedback, regarding our activity, and start tweaking those variables, those dietary variables based on individual rather than this one size fits all approach. Right? Some people already plenty of fiber, for example, others have very little fiber, so somebody who's not eating very much, I'm going to want to track that as a dietary variable. Pretty early on. If I was working with a client, and we were tracking their food, I'm going to be looking at fiber I'm going to look at saturated fat just out of curiosity if nothing else, but if I noticed that it's far below what we need. Ah that It's a great clue as to what kind of food choices and quality they are selecting. And now we can go through the education process of, well, let's increase the fiber, because here are the benefits. And here are the types of foods I have a lot of fiber, right vegetables, fruits, whole grains, etc, let's start to add those in. Right, we're not, we're not trying to cut things out, we're gonna add those in. And as we add them in, it's going to take the place of some of the other things in your diet, which may be processed foods, or may just be foods that just have less fiber, maybe reading a ton of protein, and you want to back down on the protein and actually increase the fiber for example. That's, that's unusual, but could be. And so we're what we're going for here is we don't want new nutritional imbalances. We don't want health issues. And so early on, if we start to think of other dietary variable variables, it will start to guide our food selection. Now, I wanted to give you a quote from the book, flexible dieting by Alan Aragon. Alan was on the show, I don't have the episode off top my head, but you can look that up. And I will have a link to his book in the show notes. Because I highly recommend everyone pick up a copy. It's super easy read. It's not very long at all. And it can be used as a good reference guide. If you ever run into a question like, Oh, what do I do for fiber? What do I do for carbs? What if I'm an endurance athlete, right? What about building muscle? What about seed oils and red meat and eggs, all of those things are addressed in there. And so I'm gonna read a quote from that book that I think is insightful here. Or I guess it defines flexible dieting. Quote, flexible dieting involves individualizing the degree of dietary flexibility or rigidity, it also individualizes the precision of tracking and accountability. So right there, I'm gonna stop the quote before I continue. Already, you can see flexible dieting is not about macros. It's about you defining what level of flexibility or rigidity you want for yourself. And the level of tracking and accountability building you want for yourself very important because some people confuse this or even my coaching approach with being all about macros. And it really isn't. If you are working with me as a client, we are going to have a fairly high level of precision from tracking and accountability so that we both have data to work from as quickly as possible and get to your results as quickly as possible. But you don't have to do it that way, especially if the approach itself is repelling to you. Or if the approach itself prevents you from adhering to your plan. Okay, so right there, I wanted to stop the quote, and I'm going to continue reading the quote, some folks can sustain the practice of gram tracking just fine, and some even enjoy it. Although in my observations, they're in the minority. So perhaps I'm in that minority. Some folks would rather track portions of each food group as in the traditional exchange system used by dieticians. Other approaches include tracking just protein and total calories, or just protein. There's also the option to not track anything at all in the formal sense. Rather, you just maintain an awareness of your requirements for the least amount of dietary variables that still allows progress or maintenance of progress. This option involves developing your awareness of hunger and satiety cues, flexible dieting, encompasses all of these approaches and quote, so as we can see, this method goes beyond macros to consider your personal overall dietary pattern, your requirements to get the results you want, and the right level of tracking and precision to get there. And this is why if you want to do for example, what I'm doing, or maybe at the time, this episode comes out in the middle of it, we're done with it, and aggressive fat loss phase, get it over and done in two weeks, I have to have an extreme level of tracking and precision to make sure I do that successfully on a short timeframe with such a large deficit. But if you're trying to just limit maintenance and get some body composition, you could track very little you could track just protein, or not even track at all and just use portions and know that, hey, I'm eating four times a day, and I have protein every time. And I'm going to eat in a way until I feel full. And I'll eat mostly Whole Foods, so it's easier to get the hunger signals. And then I will just track my weight every few days or once a week or once a month. And as long as my weight is in the ballpark of what it was last time. I know I'm maintaining my weight. And I'm going to train hard and get somebody recomp. Right, that is an approach. But then if you came to me and said, Hey, Philip, I've been doing that, but now I want to I need to lose 20 pounds of excess body fat to get leaner now that I've built muscle, can I just take this very imprecise tracking approach and I'm gonna say it's very hard to do, it's very hard to do, you can definitely induce some release of fat or some fat loss with a non tracking approach, but it's going to probably take longer and have plateaus along the way that you could have avoided with more tracking. Okay, so this method does go beyond macros. And it comes down to which dietary variables that you want to track which is where my provocative title macros aren't enough comes from. And I'm going to give you a list of other things that you may also want to track. And by tracking these things, you can then select foods that support meeting these variables, if that makes any sense. And I think I talked about this on another episode of What was that it was about, like the different things that we can track, I think it was about I forget the name of the episode, but it was like, what are all the things that we can track for progress. And this is a subset of those things. And if you track these, and by track, I mean, you have some sort of target a minimum or maximum, and you're trying to hit it most days or get close, because by doing so, it will result in XYZ, like it results in improved health results, improved digestion, and so on. Hey, this is Philip. And I hope you're enjoying this episode of Wits & Weights, I started Wits, & Weights to help people who want to build muscle lose fat and actually look like the lift. I've noticed that when people improve their strength and physique, they not only look and feel better, they transform other areas of their life, their health, their mental resilience and their confidence in everything they do. And since you're listening to this podcast, I assume you want the same things the same success, whether you've recently started lifting, or you've been at this for a while and want to optimize and reach a new level of success. Either way, my one on one coaching focused on engineering your physique and body composition is for you. If you want expert guidance and want to get results faster, easier, and with fewer frustrations along the way to actually look like you lift, go to wits & weights.com, and click on coaching, or use the link in my show notes to apply today, I'll ask you a few short questions to decide if we're a good fit. If we are, we'll get you started this week. Now back to the show.

Philip Pape  16:49

So I'm gonna go down the list. The first one is fiber. Again, I think fiber is super important. It's almost like its own macro, the general recommendations are going to be 14 grams per 1000 calories consumed. So if you consume 2000 calories, you're looking at, you're aiming to get 28 grams. Now if you use macro factor, again, if you don't use macro factor, download it today, try it out, use my code, Wits &, Weights all one word, you get a free trial, that way to try it out. Macro factor has a micronutrient explorer where you can track some of these with targets. So fiber, you can see is every food or every meal that I'm logging, helping me toward my fiber goal. And what's nice about that is at the end of the day, or the end of the week, you can look back and say what did i What did I hit right and I'll do this for a client will look I'll look at their fiber data, say you know, you're getting like 10 grams of fiber a day, that's that's quite lower than we want to be. We're not ready for a fat loss phase yet until we address that, because in my opinion, you have to have a decent mount of fiber to make fat loss a lot easier for multiple reasons satiety food, food selection, calorie, calorie, low calorie density, right. And also, you kind of get a free, how do I put this, every gram of fiber has fewer calories than a gram of another type of carb. And yet we log them as as grams of carbs. And so the actual calories consumed are going to be less, which may even make it easier to stay in a deficit without quite realizing it, if that makes sense. So fiber is one right there, because then it leads you to select foods and increase your fiber. And I mentioned those before, those are the classics, vegetables, fruits, whole grains, those are the big ones. So fiber is number one, the next one is saturated fat, and saturated fat is more of a maximum, we want to keep it at around 10% of our calories or less. Or put another way, about a third of our fat intake or less. And again, if you use a macro factor, we'll have that for you. And saturated fat. When you have when you consume too much of it, it could tell me that your dietary pattern is full of too many processed foods, for example. Or maybe you're just adding too much butter and oil, you no butter to your food. It doesn't mean any of those things are bad. Of course we love eggs, we love butter, they're perfectly fine Whole Foods, natural foods. It's just a matter of quantities and ratios and dietary pattern. micronutrients. So the next thing so vitamins and minerals are excellent to track because again, if you're looking to get enough iron, selenium, potassium, calcium, whatever that will lead you select foods and try to consume them within your lifestyle to get them rather than relying on supplementation. And generally that leads to more whole food diet as well. The next thing I like to track is my workout nutrition. Now, how you track this I mean the way I track it as simply make sure that I'm planning my pre and post workout meals on the days that I train. And for me, it just becomes a routine where I do the same thing every time so I can copy and paste in my app. And there we go. But my point is when you eat your proteins and carbs is going to be important for a lot of people, especially when you train really hard and you're worried about your energy recovery and building muscle. And so meal prepping and planning for that is As part of your flexible dieting strategy, right, not just hit your macros, it's, well, I need to hit certain macros proteins and carbs at certain times of day. And I want to do it in a way where it doesn't mess with my digestion, right eating things at the right time. So it's not too soon or too far away from my workouts and so on. The The next one is energy levels. So this is where we're starting to get into more biofeedback, if you can track biofeedback, say, on a weekly basis, which is usually good enough, some people like to do it daily. But again, going back to Allegan, Aragon's definition, the level of precise precision is up to you. The level of tracking is up to you. But I think biofeedback once a week is pretty good. Because you can look back on the week and see, you know, what my energy this week was pretty poor, like, it's just not good, as good as it is normally. And then you can diagnose that say, Well, why is that? Did I have a bunch of extra life stress? Did I not sleep enough now? And then you can go through the list? Okay, maybe I slept enough. Maybe I don't have any more stress. Why was my energy down? Oh, it looks like I didn't quite hit my carbs this week. And so I want to make sure that at least for my training days, or, you know, recovery days, whatever, I have enough carbs, or maybe I want to shift my carbs around. And so that gives you a clue beyond just pure macros as to why you might be lacking energy, maybe you don't have enough fat, right? Maybe you don't have enough fat, and you're hitting your fat target. But the target itself may need to be increased. So this gives you information. So that's energy. The next one is recovery. I'm going to say that's kind of related recovery is more do you feel sore? The day of your workouts? Do you feel like fatigued or not when you go into train? Again, all those are affected by what you're eating when you're eating it, the ratio of your macros. The next one is sleep quality, similar thing, right? Are you eating too late in the day eating? Or at night? Are you drinking caffeine too late? Are you eating things that are messing up with your digestion? The next item is digestion. Digestion is huge for a lot of people, are you feeling bloated? This could be a matter of timing a matter of food choice, often it is a matter of food choice. It's either an intolerance, or more likely, it's just foods that have a bunch of ingredients that don't sit well with you, which in my personal experience tend to be more processed foods or foods from a restaurant, they just have extra stuff in there. You know, I don't, it's again, it's no one ingredient is good or bad. But I mean, if you've got a ton of oil in a dish, and you're not used to drenching your food and oil that could cause digestive issues, right. Or if you're trying to do some sort of intermittent fasting protocol, and you're eating too much at one time. Or if your work schedule is so hectic, you forget to eat, and you cram all your food into two meals, and cause digestive issues that tells you something about meal timing, food choice, when to eat, and so on. And then the other one is hunger, I mean, definitely track hunger, and fat loss, this is going to be huge. But hunger is going to tell you along with fiber, can you make different food choices that mitigate hunger. And that could be the actual foods themselves, like having more protein or having more low calorie density foods, like vegetables, like high volume fruits, like vegetables, Susan, soups and broths. Like maybe eating harder, less processed foods rather than more soft processed foods, a whole long list of things that have nothing to do with macros, and everything to do with hunger and letting you stick to the deficit and get through it without feeling miserable, right, because when we want to release some weight, we're gonna have to go in a deficit. And our body's going to tell us that it's working with hunger signals, but you can still mitigate those by, you know, eating frequently enough throughout the day, or lowering the frequency. Believe it or not, for some people, eating five or six times a day actually causes ongoing hunger because the the meals are not big enough to meet it to satisfy the hunger and so you constantly feel hungry. Whereas if you put it down to say, three meals, or even to during a fairly aggressive fat loss phase, you might find that that actually helps with hunger because now your body gets full when you eat. And then when you're not eating, it's not expecting to eat. So all of that feedback helps you with your flexible dieting approach. So essentially, anything that you care about with respect to your lifestyle, your goals, and your values, is the essence of sustainability, and flexibility. Hence the term flexible dieting so that you can achieve any of these short term results in the context of your long term, never ending lifestyle transformation. So here's the verdict. Okay, when we lay all the facts on the table, it's it's pretty obvious that If It Fits Your Macros is very simplistic, incomplete approach. Whereas flexible dieting is a more balanced, sustainable, health conscious approach that aligns with everything you're doing, and it goes beyond macros. It's, it emphasizes a holistic dietary pattern, right? And so for me, that is the clear winner for anyone who's serious about their physique. For anyone who's serious about their overall well being, that's approach to take. But I'm, I'm happy to have kind of dived in today to flexible dieting beyond the idea of just some calorie macro targets because it really goes far beyond that. Now the question is going to be how do you do flexible dieting in this approach that I'm talking about? Because No, it isn't just track calories and macros, but it is tracking the variables that you care about. So it could be a very minimal set of tracking or it could be very high precision tracking. It's up to you. So step one is to determine what those are what targets do you care most about calories, macros, just one of the macros like protein, fiber, saturated fat, micronutrients, your biofeedback, all of those are the targets, your training progress, they're all part of your nutrition plan. Right. And this is why when people sign on with one on one coaching for me, they realize it's not just about food, the food is almost the after thought of all the other lifestyle changes that we make for the better, right for the awareness for the self awareness and, and sustainability. But then you get to decide what targets you want. So that's number one. Then number two, guess what, you track those, you simply track those variables for the calories and macros and food and fiber and micros and all that you use a food logger, like macro factor, right? What that that one app will let you track all of that stuff. And then the rest of it like biofeedback, or you're training, you're gonna use a journal, a log, a note app on your phone, maybe even put notes right in the in macro factor, which has the ability to do that every day. So you can put the notes right there. Or you could put it all in one app. With my clients, we use an app special coaching app where they can log these things. And then they can journal their progress when they check in for the week. So if you wanted to do that for yourself, you can reach out to me in fact, I'm happy to share some of the details that I asked my clients for, and give you an idea of that, so that you can do it yourself. So that's number two. So number one, what dietary variables do you want to track number two, go ahead and track those. Number three, choose foods to support those goals. Okay, this is where we start to close the feedback loop. Now good rule of thumb just to get started is 80% whole nutrient dense foods like lean meats, fruits, vegetables, seeds, nuts, whole grains, and then 10 to 20%, whatever the heck else you choose, and or want to enjoy your indulgences. Some people have more propensity to want indulgences, or have a sweet tooth, and so on and others, right. I've had clients who just eat all Whole Foods, that's just the way they are. I personally eat way more whole food to indulgences now than I used to. But I still love certain things like ice cream, I love ice cream. And I like chocolate, right? There's just things. But I don't have an emotional attachment to these things like I used to, it's more of just, I enjoy them, they taste good. I like the texture, and so on. And so I always seek out good quality versions of those even when they happen. Now, that's not to say that I'm not going to eat something out of a box or a bag occasionally, or more often than you would think. Of course it fits in there. It fits not only the macros, but it fits my overall goals because 80 90% of what I'm eating is more than sufficient to check off all the other boxes, right, and that's the flexible approach. So that's number three, choose foods to support those goals. Number four, monitor your results along the way, and adjust. So you're tracking your variables, you're choosing foods that support them. Now, the key thing is to see what happens to those. If anything is off where you intend if the fiber is below your target, or the saturated fats above your target, or your hunger is too high, or your training, progress is stagnating, and so on and so forth. That's giving you a clue that perhaps your food choice, your food timing, supplementation, all of that needs to be tweaked somewhere, it may not be the only reason it may there are other factors that play like lack of sleep, you know, ineffective training, programming and so on. But this is part of the data. And then number five, work with a coach if you want to vastly accelerate the process, or at least join our free Wits & Weights, Facebook community, okay, I couldn't help myself this one, because I do know it is so effective, to be in a community and to work with others, especially to work with a coach to just get those results as fast as possible that they will help you and by they I mean, it could be an expert that you know who's a friend of yours, it could be a coach already working with a coach that you hire, or a free community that you join or a paid community, whatever, where everyone is supporting everyone and you can ask you a question and say, Hey, these are my goals, what should I track? You know, what kind of foods can I eat to support those etcetera, how can I track them and so on. Alright, so to recap, determine the targets you care about, track them to Foods to support reaching those targets, monitor results along the way and adjust and then work with a coach and or community to Accelerate Your Progress. There you have it. Pretty simple right? flexible dieting is like the wiser, more experienced sibling of If It Fits Your Macros, I FIM and they are definitely not not the same thing at all i FIM is just a tiny piece, a tiny piece of that foundation that leads you to this flexible approach. I FIM is really about hitting your macros no matter what you eat. Whereas flexible dieting, is about selecting foods to serve your lifestyle, your goals, your values for multiple dietary variables that may include macros, but also many other things that support how you feel and perform. Okay, so we've talked a lot today about how making choices designed around you can dramatically accelerate your progress toward your physique goals. I don't remember who said this, but it goes like this information is just potential power. What you really need is tailored strategies that apply specifically to you and your unique situation. And that's why I'm inviting you to a completely free 30 minute results breakthrough session. And I always like to make one thing clear, this is not a sales call, this is about you are going to dig deep into what you've been doing. What's been holding you back and sketch out a roadmap for where you need to go. Next, we will get to the bottom of what's actually going on all the stuff we just talked about today really understand you no fluff, no nonsense, you know, straight up steps 123. How do we get from here to there? Because the truth is everybody's body does respond very differently. And the only way to know that what will work for you is to get to those details. So if you're serious about breaking through your plateaus, maybe you're a seasoned lifter, or you're just getting started this this breakthrough session, I do these free calls, and I do them every week, there's always space in my calendar, this is your opportunity to fast track that process. Again, that was step five of our five steps earlier. All you've got to do to claim this is hit the link in the show notes. Pick a time and let's get the ball rolling, no pitch no catch just 30 minutes that could potentially change the way that you approach your health and physique forever. All right, in our next episode 111 111 The anti diet athlete mindset with Sherry Cheban Sherry and I challenge your conventional wisdom on dieting and fitness as we look at why diets fail, the nuances of transformation versus results and how you can transform your identity into that of an athlete. After all, we are all athletes if we think like one If you got value from this episode, make sure to rate review and share it with someone who needs to hear this and as always, stay strong. And I'll talk to you next time here on the Wits & Weights podcast.

Philip Pape  32:59

Thank you for tuning in to another episode of Wits & Weights. If you found value in today's episode, and know someone else who's looking to level up their Wits & Weights, please take a moment to share this episode with them. And make sure to hit the Follow button in your podcast platform right now to catch the next episode. Until then, stay strong

Ep 109: High-Performance Training Built on a Platform of Strength with Andrew Romeo

Today is a very special episode because I am joined by Andrew Romeo, a long-time coach of mine and a friend and fellow entrepreneur. He owns Romeo Athletics here in Connecticut, the gym that I joined 12 years ago, where I started training and came to understand what strength was all about. So, I have him to thank for introducing me to the world of lifting.

We'll discuss how to make fitness a part of your identity, balance family, career, and life, and make strength training work for you at any age. From his "platform of strength" to making training entertaining to bloodwork and supplements, Andrew will revolutionize your health and wellness mindset.

Andrew Romeo has always loved helping people reach their health and fitness goals. He developed and managed Romeo Athletics, Northern Connecticut's premier personal training and group fitness center in Enfield and Avon. He offers personalized training and mentoring. Andrew exemplifies integrity, self-improvement, and excellence, and goes the extra mile to help others succeed.

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Click here to apply for coaching!
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Today you’ll learn all about:

[2:15] Gym, family, and personal life
[3:42] Balancing roles as a father, husband, entrepreneur, and coach
[5:41] Andrew's core values and principles
[7:25] Realizing fitness as an identity, not just a habit
[10:22] Relationship with fitness over the years
[15:05] Effective approach to get started
[18:03] Making fitness enjoyable for adults and kids
[24:02] Concept of "platform of strength" in training
[26:22] Adapting training styles for different life stages and fitness levels
[28:45] Common mistakes in strength training
[32:57] Common questions or misconceptions from gym newcomers
[36:53] Importance of blood work and supplements in a fitness plan
[42:15] How to schedule a wellness consult with Ethos
[45:20] Plans for Romeo Athletics
[47:19] One question Andrew wished Philip had asked
[53:02] Learn more about Andrew and Romeo Athletics
[53:33] Outro

Episode resources:

• Ethos’s Wellness program - bloodwork, peptides, hormones -  ethosmedicalaesthetics.com

• Romeo Athletics (CT) - romeoathletics.fitness

👉👉👉 Click here to apply for coaching!

👩‍💻👨‍💻 Click here to schedule a FREE results breakthrough call with Philip

The FREE metabolism assessment is available! Click here to take the assessment and find out how high your energy flux is with a free report and strategy.
Take the assessment here!

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Transcript

Andrew Romeo  00:00

No one's ever said, Man, I'm just too strong. I gotta get weaker. Man, I wish I wasn't that strong. Like, no strength is always a strength, like strength is markville strength is never a weakness. What are those like? So that's what I mean by a platform of strength and everything can be built from that. And I truly do believe that.

Philip Pape  00:18

Welcome to the Wits & Weights podcast. I'm your host Philip pape, and this twice a week podcast is dedicated to helping you achieve physical self mastery by getting stronger. Optimizing your nutrition and upgrading your body composition will uncover science backed strategies for movement, metabolism, muscle and mindset with a skeptical eye on the fitness industry, so you can look and feel your absolute best. Let's dive right in Wits & Weights community Welcome to another episode of the Wits & Weights Podcast. Today is a very special one because I'm joined by Andrew Romeo, who's a longtime coach of mine as well as a friend and fellow entrepreneur. He owns Romeo athletics here in Connecticut, the gym that I joined 12 years ago, when I first touched a barbell I first learned the big lifts, I came to understand what strength was all about. So I have him to thank for introducing me to the world of lifting, which is saying a lot. If you've ever wondered how to make fitness a core part of your identity, how to balance the demanding roles of family work and life or how to make strength training work for you at any age. We've got you covered today from Andrews concept of a platform of strength to making fitness fun to the use of bloodwork and supplements and it'll change the way you think about health and fitness. Andrew Romeo's a man with a lifelong passion for fitness and helping people achieve their health and wellness goals. A husband and father first and foremost, he is the founder and CEO of Romeo athletics, the premier personal training and group fitness facility in Northern Connecticut now with locations in both Enfield and Avon. He's an entrepreneur who provides training and mentorship that works for each individual. And in my opinion, Andrew embodies an ethos of high integrity, self improvement and excellence. And he's always willing to go the extra mile to bring people up and help them succeed. Andrew man, I can't believe that I haven't had you on the show before but there's no time like the present.

Andrew Romeo  02:10

100% I'm happy to be here. Thank you for having me, Philip. I appreciate

Philip Pape  02:13

ya, man. This is gonna be a lot of fun. We haven't caught up in a while. So just you know what's been going on with the gym, the wife, the kids with ethos life in general.

Andrew Romeo  02:22

Yeah, I mean, life is busy. School is kicked back off, which is great because now the kids can go to school and they're not home all day, which is awesome. More of more for Kate, my wife and myself. gyms are busy. I'm between both gyms. Every day, I'm I'm done an Avon Monday, Wednesday, Friday. That's where most of my training happens up and field Tuesday, Thursdays, I don't have too big of a role there anymore. Don't get me wrong, I'm still involved with a lot of stuff. I just don't coach that many people,

Philip Pape  02:53

the big guy hands growing business. You know, it is it is what it is. And

Andrew Romeo  02:57

then as you mentioned, we have another business, ethos, medical selects and wellness. So that's also an Avon, too. So we've got a lot going on. It's it's all good stuff. It's fun. And to your point in the intro, which I appreciate the intro. It's very nice. Thank you. I'm always lifting. I'm always I'm always in the gym, I tried to live, breathe and eat what I preach. So it's I'm always in there.

Philip Pape  03:18

Yeah, I mean, for the listener, I don't know. When I when I met Andrew right from the beginning, he's the kind of guy that just is unassuming about things you go in. He's like all about lifting just to supernatural. He gets clients in the door. And before you know, they sign up, they're not even thinking about it, because they're like this guy knows he's talking about and I just want to get fit. So I was there right early on. And when you were, you know, in that small box, and then he started to expand. So So anyway, I wanted to paint a picture of the listener for who you are. We talked about your role as a father and husband, right? We also know you're busy with the the extra location now. So how do you balance those roles, I mean, being an entrepreneur, being a coach all of it.

Andrew Romeo  03:58

So it's interesting, because people talk about like a life work balance. And unfortunately, being an entrepreneur, I don't really believe in life, work balance, it all just kind of like weaves together all of the times. I've been really, really fortunate with my life. When we started the gyms when he joined. My wife was a high school English teacher, and she could kind of like float the bills while I grew the gym. And then we got to a point where she could come into the gym, and we could do it together. So her and I work together daily. And then in addition to that my kids are in the gym daily. So it's a really cool way for my kids to grow up where they view fitness, they view strength. It's just kind of like part of what we do. It's just who we are. We're not I'm not doing it just to be big and strong and stuff like that. It's, hey, we lift weights, because that's kind of what what's expected. It's fun. It's something that like, you can get some mental clarity from makes you feel better. And that's really the model that I try to portray to them. But like workwise I mean, I'm always working dude. I mean I'm sure you're similar, where it's the middle of the night you have thoughts going off, you're taking notes. And I embrace it. I like that also, like, I wouldn't have it any other way.

Philip Pape  05:08

I love that answer, right? Because it's true. A lot of people would say, Well, you know, I have to schedule it in, or I have to keep this in this separate, or I have to make sure I focus on this, and then this, and you're like, look, it's just all my life like it is life. A lot of us saw that during the pandemic, right, we started working from home, people have office jobs, and now it started ticking like intertwine with your family a little bit. Like, wait a minute, it's kind of nice to be able to, like, take them to an appointment or this anatomy of the workday, but still get my work done. That 100% it's more natural, you know. So, so that's cool. I mean, you're a Super Down to Earth guy, and yet are able to handle all of these, you're always willing to help people. So what would you say, are your core values and principles behind, you know, giving you this opportunity, I guess, that you have now to change people's lives and also your own kids in the process?

Andrew Romeo  05:53

Sure. I mean, the biggest one is integrity, all the way through and through, it's I practice what I preach, I'm never going to suggest someone do something that I wouldn't do. And then hard work and dedication, like everything in life, if you work hard, you're dedicated, and you act of integrity, those three things are going to carry you through and a lot of good stuff is gonna come from that. And like, to your point of when you're introducing the people feel that people see that. And that's how people trust you, where you're, I'm not trying to take people's money just to take their money. I'm trying to help them. Yes, I need to get paid. But like, I'm honestly, I want to see everybody win. I mean, you talked about the abundance or scarcity mindsets, I am so far on the abundant side of anybody that's near me in my circle, I just want you to win. I just want us all to win.

Philip Pape  06:39

Yeah, I love that integrity. I mean, I. So again, for the listener, I can walk into your facility. And if we have to figure out a problem, it's not this long, drawn out discussion. It's like, let's go to the whiteboard and just figure it out. Let's just do it. And then and then trust people that they'll get the job done, which I can definitely relate to and people listening to because people always ask what is the what is the magic to consistency? It's like, Just do it. Get the result? And he's tend to motivate yourself that way.

Andrew Romeo  07:07

Yeah, I agree. And there is no magic to like motivation, right? And consistency like and all that, like, we get into the gym when you get into the gym. I'm fortunate I work in gyms, I get to lift weights all the time. It's just part of my life. But like, as you said, just show up and do it.

Philip Pape  07:22

Yeah, well, so speaking of that, that is part of your life. At some point, it had to start right and, and become a habit or routine. And maybe it was just super natural for you when you were young. But tell us how that happened. And how people who maybe aren't fit into fitness right now can get that same sense of identity, because I'm a big fan now of like saying like, we're all athletes, we can all be athletes, we just have to take on that identity and then let our actions serve that. So what do you think?

Andrew Romeo  07:46

So I'll start on the second side first, because it's easier than how I started. So the second side is really finding like your Why? Why do you want to like, hey, I want to lose all this weight. Why do you want to lose that weight because that's what your motivating factor is going to be. And that's what you can start identifying as, and like, you don't need to be a rock star to get started. Like there's like start where you're gonna start. And that's okay. Hey, I can't walk 50 feet without taking a break. Okay, we're gonna walk 45 feet, and then tomorrow, 47 and 50. And whatever it is, start wherever you're gonna start. Don't be intimidated because everybody comes into the gym. And they think people are watching them. They think people are judging them. They think people like no one cares. Honestly, most of the time people aren't watching, you don't even notice. But if they are, at least in my facility, they're supportive. And they're like, that's great. Good for you. Thank you for like doing this for yourself. For me, where my identity identity with fitness and strength training came from. I've been in gyms Dude, my whole life really has been like I was the weirdo where we would go to like, whatever the version of target was 30 years ago. And I want those dumbbells and apparently they want dumbbells. So I've been in and out of gym since I've been literally like lifting weights, and I've been 12. And I pretty much haven't stopped the variations of what I've done has changed, which is a natural progression. Everything from bodybuilding, to powerlifting, to Olympic lifting to CrossFit to functional training, like it's all blended together and which is great because it just built my my toolbox of tools I can pull from and use. But I identified as physical fitness was something that I enjoyed from a small age. I've always enjoyed training, I've always recognized that the harder I work, the better I do. And I don't mind putting in the work to get the result I want.

Philip Pape  09:42

Yeah, yeah. And your kids are gonna see like right off the bat, they're going to be in that culture, which is really nice. Like, I'm glad that my daughters can see that I work out and in a way that it's an enjoyable thing that this forced thing you know, just to quote unquote lose weight or sweat it off or whatever. And I remember coming into your gym the first time I think I had tried and Other CrossFit gym earlier in the week, and it was too far away. And I like I think I puked. And I passed out on the bed right that first time and then I came to your place. And you had a little bit of a more of like, let's really understand where you are now let's not just throw you into a crazy wide. Yeah. And I don't know what I squatted or the first day but I'm sure it was probably the empty bar. So it doesn't matter. It's got to start right. So how is your relationship with fitness evolve? You mentioned all the different things and how they blend it together. Do you have you left things behind? have you incorporated just a new perspective on those like CrossFit, for example, is a big one that I always think about because it's really changed over the years. Like what are your big priorities now? What have you maybe focus less on now as well?

Andrew Romeo  10:42

Cool. So what I focus on now is I have two mandatory lifting days a week, I have a mandatory lower body day and a mandatory upper body day, I got to get them. It doesn't matter what day of the week it happens. They got to happen. And when I say that, it's the big list. So I'm squatting, I'm pulling, I'm benching I'm pressing, I'm doing pull ups, chin ups, RDL and all that fun stuff. What hormonally big muscle groups energy expenditure and metabolism. Super important. That's what I do. Do I lift other days a week? Sure. I might lift three, four days a week. The other days are more exhilarate days. So maybe I'm hitting more shoulders or back or fun things like that. My cardio kind of comes in the form of jujitsu. I roll jujitsu three days a week. So that's my cardio, things that I have left in the past. I don't really so I don't Olympic lifts anymore. It doesn't serve me. It doesn't deliver. It's highly technical. And I had a lot of injuries that came from it. I enjoyed the sport of it. I was relatively good at it. It's pretty strong. But you got to put a lot of time and dedication I was training for three hours of clip and so much of it is skill development. How am I going to snatch out like so. time and place it was great. I learned a lot. I still carry some of that I just got done training a high school kid, high school athlete and I teach one of the first movements he did today was a full clean, so he cleaned that he dead lifted. The clean surfaces almost a warmup first dead so he's got some power, so I'm gonna explosiveness then we move into his deadlift. Other movements like so I probably haven't crossed that in myself personally since 2012. It just, I here's here's my deal. I don't like quantifying success when you compare it to other people. Hey, you beat me by five seconds. That would eat me up. And I did God dammit. How did he beat me by five seconds? It has nothing to do your your performance has nothing to do with me. Why am I comparing? So after a while it starts like wearing down at you we're fitness isn't the competition. Fitness isn't about anybody else other than yourself. And when you start comparing yourself to other people, you're gonna burn out it's not gonna last Plus, there's a lot of other things with CrossFit. I didn't like but I mean, there's just a lot of dangerous aspects of movements that I don't think are necessarily necessary. You don't need to be snatching high speeds repeatedly. You don't need to be climbing ropes if you want to. That's cool. Go do it. I appreciate all movement. I just personally moved away from that. Yeah. If that's someone's thing, they're like, I love it. This is what I do. Good for you. The same way I feel about walking. I love to walk great. I mean, is it gonna be everything you need? No. Can you do better? Yes, but is it better than nothing 100%. So like, that's kind of where I've fallen into that. Other things are left behind honestly, like I pretty much 100% Trap bar deadlift at this point, puts me in a better position, My back feels better. I haven't knock on wood rec see this? I haven't I haven't heard my back in years since I trap our deadlift. I have more of an in between squat between high bar low bar. Whereas one of US Olympic lifter, a high bar I hurt I hurt more often high bar I put more pressure on my knees, more pressure on my lower back. I move that bar to a low bar kind of Campbell. It's more hammies glutes less pressure on my back less pressure on my knees. Typically I bench using the Kabuki bar. That's here's real grit. So I feel better. I feel I

Philip Pape  14:05

am multi grip. Yeah, sure. Yeah.

Andrew Romeo  14:07

Like that bar was my shoulders and better positions. You got to remember, as I said, I've been lifting since I've been 1238 match my joints got a lot of wear and tear on it. I might be strong, but like I gotta I gotta be selective of what I do.

Philip Pape  14:21

I think everything you just said it's like the master class in how people want to think about as they age, preventing injury evolving with your body, right? Because I haven't been in nearly as long as you but I had the age factor being 42 and I just had rotator cuff surgery. And before I had that though, I'd moved to the neutral grip bench and I and you start listening to your body more and more right as Yes. And don't let anyone tell you that this is the one right thing even though the trap bar I know there's like for example the starting strength community there's there's a whole like hardline against it. And you know, the rest of us are kind of like more in this. Okay, that's a little bit dogmatic. Let's start Let's do what works for you. And you're right. I've seen it be successful with with for a ton of people. So if if you had to, you said two days or you're like heavy lifting days, if you had to break down the simplest, I'll call it efficient, maybe or effective way that most people getting started would make the best use of their time. Right? If they don't know what they like yet. It's not for you know, competitions, not anything. It's just for general health and fitness. What would be the most effective approach? Principle wise, you don't have to give exact programming?

Andrew Romeo  15:31

No, absolutely. I'm so certain Thanks. That's a good job. It's linear progression. Yeah, I mean, so and she said, you said your start, right. So you are a novice athlete, you do not need to do anything fancy. If you do fancy things, you're actually just shortchanging your results. It's a basic linear progression, you're gonna squat, you're gonna deadlift, you are going to do pull ups or your variation or pull down. You're gonna do chin ups or chin pull down, you're gonna bench you're going to shoulder press. Anybody throw some stuff in at the end, but it's every week, just stepping up, stepping, stepping up, until that progression no longer works. For some people, it might be 10 weeks, some people might be 20 weeks. But if you've never done a basic linear progression, you should I don't care what your training age is. Go back and do it. Because you're gonna get all that little strength out from where you started. Most of the time, it's five. I mean, having people do three sets of five. So when you talk about that, Hey, okay, what's that? That's myofibrillar hypertrophy. Big word, little myofibrillar is and your muscles are getting thicker, you're getting stronger. It's amazing, right? And then after you've done that, like so typically, people that I've worked with for a while they've gone through the linear progressions will do a periodized approach of sarcoplasmic, hypertrophy, neuroma, then myofibrillar hypertrophy. And then you go into neuromuscular efficiency. For people that don't know what I'm saying, we're getting you big, we're getting you strong. And then we're testing your nervous system to see how strong you are. And then we rinse and repeat it over and over and over again.

Philip Pape  17:05

It's fun. Yeah, exactly.

Andrew Romeo  17:07

And like, a lot, I know you've done a lot of weight gains, weight cuts, weight gains, then you start Mimic, like mirroring that in with your face of lifting. And Amazing things happen, right? You get really, really strong or you get really, really cut up. It's all fun stuff. I went to high level for

Philip Pape  17:27

No, no, no, no listener loves that. I mean, we sometimes get in way more detail than that. Maybe, maybe I shouldn't, but sometimes we do. So yeah. So periodization, we talked about that in nutrition, like you mentioned. And you're basically saying the same for lifting that keep it super simple. Increase the load initially. And then eventually, you can add more of the fun stuff. And you don't even need to work out that many days a week, right? Three,

Andrew Romeo  17:49

three days a week, three days a week is all you need. Like, like, that's a big misconception, right? And aw morning, like you. And this is kind of weird, but you only get stronger while you're rest. You got to earn your rest, but you only get stronger while you rest.

Philip Pape  18:03

Right? So now, what about making it fun for people, right, because that's the other aspect I know is big for you, especially when you want people to stick with it, your trainer, you know, you've got the the interests of both helping people get stronger, but also wanting to see them succeed and not just leave after a week or two. And you also like helping children to with their movement. I mean, even my kids did your couple of your classes, and they had a lot of fun. So we don't want something to be something we feel like we have to do. How do you make this fun and effective for people? A lot of the training we do

Andrew Romeo  18:35

now is semi private training or private training. And I think the fun or stickiness that comes from what we do is interpersonal connections. The trust factor, hey, I know what you're doing. I know where we need to be. I know how we need to do it. And then the fact of like, working professional, anybody that's listening, when you come in, you don't have to think anymore. I got you don't worry. Like I know your weight progressions. I know the movements we need to be doing today. And like also, how are you feeling? Are you tired? Are you hung over? Are you whatever you're at, I will take care of that. And make sure that today's workout is the best workout we can have. So that's kind of on the adult side, what we do on the kids side? Well, we play games, we have fun. We we try to make it more fun because honestly, that's how it should be for kids. Unless, if you aren't like the kid that I was training as a high school athlete, he has a set goal. He's on a linear progression. We're making sure that he's getting stronger for his upcoming sports season. Fun isn't as new. His fun is results every week and it's linear progression, etc itself get better. That's his fun. So it's all about kind of what stage of a lifter you're at what you're looking to get out of it. And I am running another session of the homeschool PE right now. Right I got I think I have 12 kids in it. It's great. And like they work really hard, as you saw, they're working hard, but they're with friends. They're having fun. They're joking. I try to keep it light hearted. I don't force anybody to do anything. If you don't want to do it, no problem. You don't have to do it like and there's no judgment passed. I'm not going to judge you for that. That's okay. So that's kind of, like a little bit more low key laid back. But I think in the long run of things, that's how we should like there's no need like people could this stereotype about gyms that it's like meatheads and super Blair and death metal, and we're screaming at people, that is not it. That is not what we do.

Philip Pape  20:35

Unless you want that there are other gyms for that. There are gyms for that. And like,

Andrew Romeo  20:39

some people do seek that out, but it's not the majority of the population. So

Philip Pape  20:43

it's, you know, you get a lot of great answers. And what it tells me is that there's not a one size fits all right, like everybody's waited, they stick with something or find motivation differs, it might be in a group are in a semi private situation where you have the community, it might be the one on one where they need that personal understanding from you as the coach, or what you said, like the trust factor and knowing their knowing their physiology and how they respond in their lives and everything. It might be people working from home, who just need guidance on programming, or they need guidance on whatever, there's a million ways, but at the end of the day, you hit the nail on the head when you said results. Because I imagine if you had people coming in you did all those things. And they weren't making progress, they will still stick around, right?

Andrew Romeo  21:23

Yes. No matter what you have to deliver on whether they're

Philip Pape  21:27

Yeah, yeah. Who was it? Somebody mentioned to me how, you know, they go to the gym every every day, and they're just not enjoying it. I said, Well, what are you doing? He's like, Well, this is my routine, like, Well, tell me about the routine. Tell me about the load, you know? Well, it's the same weights every Oh, okay, I got it. I got it. I got you're not making any progress. So it's just this boring, repetitive thing for you. Alright. Yeah. notching the weight up a little, and see if you start to enjoy it more. When you get exactly,

Andrew Romeo  21:49

yeah. Give yourself a little bit of a struggle for it. Yeah.

Philip Pape  21:53

Yeah. That's such a great point, you work for it. You may not look forward to it beforehand, but you get in the gym and you do it. And you find out it's a lot of fun when you when you get that

Andrew Romeo  22:02

squat. Absolutely 100%. I agree. And in

Philip Pape  22:06

a gym like yours, you know, like you said, it's not competitive. It's everybody's kind of supporting each other no matter where you are. And I get that feeling of seeing somebody coming in for the first time. And I'm just so excited for them because I know what's ahead in their lives. And I just, I don't care if it's an empty bar, I'm like, look at you doing that, you know, my mom's squatting with just to a chair to get stronger now is exciting me, you know what I mean? Because she's gonna get stronger. So

Andrew Romeo  22:32

that's awesome. That's awesome that you're moving. You got to do something like that. Because that's like, huge for longevity.

Philip Pape  22:37

Yeah, and yeah, you mentioned that earlier about why this is so important, just for everything in your life. So what do I say I always get go off on tangents wrong. So let me see what kind of questions I have for you. What about you mentioned the kids, so there's more of the athlete, teenagers, right? Who, who, it's not necessarily fun for the sake of fun, it's more the progress and competing, which then makes it fun. Let's say a kid came in and a parent wanted a certain outcome and the kid wasn't into it. Do you ever get that kind of situation? And then they, there's a way that you approach it and embrace it? Yeah. So I had something similar in

Andrew Romeo  23:13

the past where the kid the parent can pretty much like drag the kid in as a he needs to be more active. And you're the person that making the act? Yep. So in those situations, it's going through trying to find like exercises, the kid doesn't mind doing having fun with it. And again, like, I'm never gonna yell at anybody. Like, that's just not who I am. I mean, you, I've coached you plenty of times, I am not the in your face, yell at you, I'm going to talk to you, I'm going to have a conversation with you. I'm going to encourage you to work harder and do things. And most of the time kids respond pretty well to that. But honestly, like, if I was training somebody and the kid was like, I started crying, or I don't want to do this. I'm going to talk to your parent and being like, I'm sorry, I'm not the person for you. Because I'm not gonna force your kid to do this. This is just not aligning with who I am. Yeah,

Philip Pape  23:59

I was just curious about that. Go. Yeah. All right. So as we as we got ready for this interview, you mentioned a term I hadn't heard you use it before. But you called about you talked about building a platform of strength, a platform of strength, that can be universally applied to sports, life health, through different stages, different styles of training. Now, we often talk about strength as a foundation for everything else like it's the foundation of fitness. And maybe that's what you mean. So I'm intrigued with platform of strength is tell us what that's about.

Andrew Romeo  24:28

That's foundational strength platform was shaped very similar. I think my personal opinion, lifting weights is going to help pretty much any aspect of your life if you want to be stronger, you want to live a long time you want a better quality of life great those are the physical sides. You want to be more mentally want to be happier. You want to be sharper, like mentally acute. You want to other cognitive benefits lifting weights is going to help so I mean, yes I own gyms I've been in gyms my whole life. I believe in weightlifting, so I have a bias. But that platform of strength if you are strong, only, like no one's ever I've said this before, you've probably heard me say this. No one's ever said, Man, I'm just too strong, I gotta get weaker. And I wish I wasn't that strong. Like, no strength is always a strength, like strength is markville strength is never a weakness. What are those like? So that's what I mean by a platform of strength, and everything can be built from that. And I truly do believe that

Philip Pape  25:26

I did to man and and the funny thing is, you, yes, you have a bias because you're a trainer, but you're also totally invested this I can tell for the rest of your life, because you know how effective it is. And it's just completely aligned with how you help people. And I've gotten into that just from my personal transformation, and now wanting to help others because I see this above everything else. Make it supersedes everything else in your life, because anything you want to do, gets improved by having a stronger, thinner body, right?

Andrew Romeo  25:56

100% I mean, you gotta live in this thing for the rest of your life, you might as well take care of it.

Philip Pape  26:02

Absolutely great. And live several extra decades hopefully with you know, with all that strength to deadlift to your trap, bar deadlifting when you're 95. So I hope so, for sure, man. So one of the most common questions I always get is, you know, how do you train IE, fill in the blank after 40? Or after 50? There's always these cut offs. And I'm like, I'm 42 I'm not that old. Right? So how do you adapt training styles to based on someone stage in their life based on their fitness level? How should their mind set expectations, all these things involved when it comes to strength training as they age, like, what are the extra factors that come into play?

Andrew Romeo  26:38

Okay, so as you get older, your training volume is probably gonna drop, you're gonna need to recover more. Weight progressions probably won't move up as quickly, we're going to take less risks, because injuries take a lot longer to recover from a big thing that people miss is that, hey, whatever you do in the gym should be making you better outside of the gym. So if you're getting hurt lifting weights, we did something wrong.

26:58

That's a Philippe an awfully for a long time. I don't know how passionate he is about healthy eating, and body strength. And that's why choosing to be my coach. I was no stranger to a dieting and body training. But I've always struggled to do it sustainably really helped me prioritize my goals with evidence based recommendations, or not over stressing my body and not feeling like I'm starving. In six months, I lost 45 pounds without drastically changing the foods I enjoy. But now I have a more balanced diet, I weight train consistently. And most importantly, I do it sustainably if a scientifically sound healthy diet and a link strong body is what you're looking for. Philip Pape is your guy.

Andrew Romeo  27:43

I'm just a lot more cautious when I'm working with athletes that are aging. I mean, we're all aging. It's just I mean, we all were teenagers at 1.2. And you're a lot more resilient. Also, when I'm working with older people, we take in a lot more considerations of their limitations, how your knees how's your hips, you talked about your shoulder or your shoulders? What's it what's our range of motions look like? So as a coach, there's way more of a checklist that I have to go down of just watching everything you're doing. Have you had surgeries in the past? Do you have any metabolic diseases? Do you have any other crazy things that I need to be aware of that you have this nerve issue or whatever it is? And then I have to build something around that that's gonna fit you the best?

Philip Pape  28:26

Yeah, I like how straightforward you answer that question. Really, it does come down to recovery, right, and injury and rehab and all that stuff. It's so true. And I think a lot of people who are getting into it for the first time in their, say, 30s like I did, you just you just want to be aware of that and be smart about it, but not use it as an excuse so much, you still want to push hard and train hard. But man does those CrossFit days especially you really beat me up and and I know it's different than training, strength training.

Andrew Romeo  28:56

I was gonna say a big thing with that. So another thing that a lot of people make the mistake of is they want to copy someone else's program. Hey, I saw so and so do this. So I'm going to do it be like Well, what's your training age versus their training age? What's your training restrictions versus nurture? Like, like you used to hear this a lot in the Olympic weightlifting I'm gonna do this Bulgarian, whatever program to turn up Bulgarian here, not one of the top 1% athletes of that country and you're not probably taking a lot of steroids. So that program is probably not going to fit your best. But go do it if you want to like it's, it's just don't. Do you need something that's built for you. Don't just copy someone to copy because you saw someone doing hip thrusts and now that's the thing you're doing.

Philip Pape  29:40

Yeah, that's a great point. Yeah. And going back to what you said earlier, just starting with a simple progression, cuts out all that complication. Anyway. So we talked about recovery. We talked about training as you age keeping it simple, not copying other people's programs, especially because you're probably not taking peds and not from Bulgaria. So what is is like what is one or two of the biggest mistakes people do make when it comes to strength training? And maybe that's again, something you're able to address when you're there as a trainer. Ego.

Andrew Romeo  30:12

Ego is the number one thing, right? I saw this 17 year old lifting that and I'm 35. So I can affect to me that 17 year olds been lifting for five years, and it's pretty advanced. And this is day one for you. Like, you are the number one thing that gets people all the time that's injuries come from,

Philip Pape  30:29

is that mostly men, though? Yes, mostly men,

Andrew Romeo  30:32

mostly. And I will say for my teenage athletes and kids, girls listen way better than boys, like girls are like, I will do what you said how you said it, I will move how you said, or boys are like I'm gonna put more weight on, because I want to put more juice, here we go. So that would be number one would definitely be ego. Number two, I would say is just not sticking with it long enough. Hey, I did this for three months, and I didn't get the results I want. Okay, like, I don't know what you want. Like this is a lifelong journey. Like it takes a long time to put on muscle and really build sighs I've been working on this forever. I mean, you probably when you join the gym, I probably weighed about 175 pounds. So think 12 years later, I sit around like 225 or so that's 12 years of lifting weights, like that's in seriously lifting weights and eating and like pushing and like, yes, it doesn't have to take that long. But like, it takes a while guys, nothing's going to happen in one month, two months, three months, it's going to be life changing. Maybe it'd be life changing.

Philip Pape  31:41

And I think they say the average genetic limit for males something like 40 or 45 pounds over like six or seven years of like injury free hard lifting in your metabolic peak. You know what I mean? Like, you started Fortunately, you started when you were at, you know, the testosterone in your 20s. So you got that benefit. That's That's why also the nutrition man. I mean, you talk about not sticking with long enough. I mean, if you're, if you're lifting for three months, and constantly trying to diet that's also gonna hold you back.

Andrew Romeo  32:08

Yeah, exactly. So I mean, nutrition is your jam. And you can clearly understand, hey, I'm trying to lose weight. Most of the time, it's really hard to gain muscle while you're doing that. That's, I'm trying to gain muscle. But I haven't put on all this fat. I don't know what's happening. Yeah, that happens to that's where we have that periodization of like, bulk, bulk, bulk, couple bulk cut. And yet, they're shortcuts. I could talk to you about shortcuts with that. But then you start talking about hormones and peptides and stuff. So you start I mean, that's the supplement game where you can, you can get different results really quickly. With legal thing. It's not illegal by any means. It's just a different different take on it.

Philip Pape  32:50

And ya know what, I'll we'll get into that in a second. For sure. Actually, I'll be just one more question about training. And then I want to get into work and stuff. When people come to you for the first time, I imagine just like I see it on the nutrition side, all sorts of misconceptions, questions that are like, oh, man, you know, I know they've been watching some influencer, right, of course, that they bring you what are the real common ones? You hear a lot?

Andrew Romeo  33:14

I hear a lot about the kids stuff. I mean, everybody asked me, Is it okay for kids to lift weights? That's when you talk about youth training? That's the number one question. And the way I answer that is, I teach movement patterns. As long as we keep the weights under control, and the movement patterns are correct. No one will get hurt. We don't really start to increase weights until kids hit puberty. Because then as you just said, they have all of the hormones and then they get these crazy results here. Wow. That's amazing. I wish I could I wish I could progress that

Philip Pape  33:46

and what ages are those? Generally? I mean, I know puberty can range but gender from boys and girls,

Andrew Romeo  33:50

any typically you're getting 1314 year olds where I start, like, cool. Let's get that linear progression going. Let's start tacking on weights. Let's start moving this, this and everybody's different. Some people will be younger, some people, some boys are 1617. And like they're just kind of late to puberty. They're late bloomers. Okay, no problem. We'll get there when we get there. I mean, you can see it, you can see like, Hey, you can tell when someone doesn't have those hormones. But because those weights don't change. It's always hard. Like I'm getting better my movement patterns are getting better, but the weights aren't getting better. And then they all of a sudden start getting a bit more testosterone in their system and more growth hormone in their system and all of a sudden, wow, coach. I mean, really show up. Yeah, look at that.

Philip Pape  34:33

We always had that elixir.

Andrew Romeo  34:36

Right. So that's one of the biggest common ones and then all everybody comes in they first thing they want to talk about rightfully so is all of their injuries and all the reasons why they can't do the things and mine is you can do the things. It's just a matter of how we're going to do them and the progressions that we take and like, I mean, you've been in the weight world long enough. There's 10 different variations of a squat. I can Pull out. I mean, and there's not one right answer. And okay, your knee hurts. I'm gonna have you sweat like this, okay, you're back. I'm gonna have you squat like this, okay? Your shoulder hurts. I'm gonna have you squat, like, you know, like, there's so many variations. And that's why people if you have serious concerns, talk to a professional, like, talk to someone that knows what they're talking about, and they'll find you the right answer.

Philip Pape  35:19

That's the way to do it. And let me tell you, you have four limbs. So if you could use one of those, you can do something.

Andrew Romeo  35:27

I've been watching your training to felt that you've been putting it up where you're recovering from your shoulder thing and exactly what you're doing. Hey, if I can't use my left arm, I'll use my right arm. Yeah, somehow my left arm is recovering. There's there's science to show that works.

Philip Pape  35:40

That's right. The cross training effect. Yeah, I want to do a podcast on that. That's actually good idea. Yeah, I was doing one arm deadlifts for a while too, which are their own little, but I was glad I could use two arms again, because then the load goes way up. Absolutely, absolutely. Ya know, so those are really good ones, right? Is it safe for the kids to lift? I think that that is a long held myth of like, you know, it's gonna stunt their growth and all these ridiculous things. And I don't want to one of the best examples people say is, well think about farmers, kids, you know, like, from the time they're little, they're slinging hay bales. And they're doing all sorts of weightlifting, naturally. They're not stunted are they? They're nice and big and strong.

Andrew Romeo  36:14

I mean, anybody that's ever had a little kid that jumps off of their couch or jumps off of something, and they land really hard, the amount of force that just went through their knees, hips back, is 1000 times that of what they're going to be squat. Like, they're okay. I promise. Okay.

Philip Pape  36:30

Yeah, and then not making the excuses. When you come at the beginning of, well, I can't do all this because of my shoulder. There's a way there's always a way.

Andrew Romeo  36:37

Just talk through the person. Yeah, explain what you have, and then be open to where they want to bring. Yep. Always seek

Philip Pape  36:43

out. Yeah, seek out an expert for any of this stuff. The older you get, the more of these risks you have. They're not excuses, but you definitely need to have good counsel. Good. Good information. Right. So that's. So an interesting area that you're more involved in now is with ethos medical in Avon is using bloodwork right? Working with a medical professional who can customize supplements, hormone treatments, really anything that kind of fills the gap. That's why I like to think that fills the gap once our nutrition and lifestyle are where they need to be because we don't want to use these shortcuts. What is the importance of bloodwork and supplements as part of a fitness plan? How can people use those talk to us about it.

Andrew Romeo  37:21

So the biggest thing with the blood bloodwork part, it's like getting like a diagnostic for your car, you're getting to see how everything's functioning it like so for a guy how's your testosterone looking? What are all the other level I mean, even basic bloodwork for health purposes of cholesterol, blood lipids, all those things are all really important for guys that are coming to a supporting what are your PSA levels looking like for prostate stuff like these are important things to know. And a lot of times your general practitioner is just glossing over it, seeing if anything pops and moving forward. And I'm like, so talking about testosterone, right? Like the average range is like 300 to 1000.

Philip Pape  38:00

And if you're anywhere in there, you know, quote unquote, normal.

Andrew Romeo  38:04

You're normal, you're good. I am happy to be transparent and share my numbers. My numbers. Testosterone number before supplementing was at 240. It was at 240 and it was there for years. I do I eat well. I exercise, I get sunlight, I go for walks, I sleep, I do all the things and I was still literally clinically low. Okay, so I got my bloodwork done, I Kristen, who runs ethos, we work together and we came up with a plan so what I do is I get my bloodwork done every eight weeks I am taking supplements through her one of them being TRT which is testosterone and I last bloodwork I got done my testosterone was at 980 You want to talk about like lifestyle changes of like how much happier I feel how much more energy I feel and nevermind strength gains strength gains and muscle gains like it makes a big difference.

Philip Pape  39:02

I think I need to get my blood checked

Andrew Romeo  39:05

it's a game changer. It really is

Philip Pape  39:07

yeah What about so for men it's pretty straightforward with the TRT the free test and all that for women. So I've learned a lot about this or nutrition now with with the progesterone the DHEA and testosterone estrogen. A lot of I understand a lot of that stuff is it's difficult to measure through bloodwork and you need like urine and saliva and other types of tests you do they do that as well you guys do that? So that's I'm gonna completely forget to grill you about all that. Okay.

Andrew Romeo  39:35

i Yes, I am involved with ethos, but she's really the person so like any any lesson I can talk about my own personal experience, but higher level stuff, I gotta I gotta defer to her. Yeah, so

Philip Pape  39:46

what would you recommend for just the average person both men and women to do if their fitness and nutrition or fitness and nutrition aren't quite where they need to be? Can they still pursue the bloodwork and supplements kind of in parallel with What's the thought there?

Andrew Romeo  40:01

I would say yes. Only Yes. Should you dial in your food? Yeah. Should you dial in your your exercise? Yes. But checking to see what's going on under the bloodwork one might motivate you a little bit more, when you really get a big picture. Hope man, I didn't know I was in this poor of health. Or maybe, hey, I'm actually in pretty decent health. So what it could serve as a motivated effector. And to if you're is like lowest iOS and testosterone, it's really hard to get results. And you if you're new to this, you might find it really frustrating. And you might feel like you're beating your head against this wall over and over again, we're getting your levels regulated, is going to put you into a place where you're getting the results that you shouldn't be getting, because your hormones are regulated. And that's where like, I don't compete in any sports anymore. It's not like I'm being drug tested for this stuff. And even if I was like, Hey, listen, I'm clinically low. Like, I'm bringing myself to level playing field at this point.

Philip Pape  40:58

I agree, man, that what I've learned about TRT is just that we are as a population of men, and this is a problem for women to just, like you said, clinically lower than we need to be. And oftentimes, it's not even clinically low. It's just you might even have symptoms, right? Even if you're at like three something. percent. Yeah. And the doctor is like, that's normal. Because I've heard both both sides of the coin of like, if you have symptoms, and the bloodwork doesn't show it, the symptoms are important. If you don't have symptoms, but you're clinically low, that's important as well, right? So everybody's going to need some form of replacement, probably at some age for the rest of their life, I would think.

Andrew Romeo  41:34

And there's always this like big stigma with dudes for testosterone. But how many people do you know ladies that are on a thyroid monitor? Guess what? They're on that? They're on that hormone med for the rest of their lives? Because the biggest thing I hear about testosterone? I don't want to get started because I'm have to be on it forever. Yeah. I mean, it's a hormone that you're lacking with your dad. It just is what it is. I mean, again, just speaking from my personal experience, if there was going to be I mean, I guess the number one supplement that I recommend is creatine because I believe everyone under the sun should be using creatine. But if you really want the most effective supplement, it'd be testosterone. Yeah. At least from my personal experience.

Philip Pape  42:17

Yeah. And what for so it ethos, what does that look like? You just do you make an appointment? Do How does that work? To get your

Andrew Romeo  42:24

go online, go to our website, ethos, medical esthetics.com, right. So go to our website, and just go through and schedule a wellness consult. So all you're gonna do is you're gonna sit down with Kristen, she's a PA

Philip Pape  42:40

for local, it's not local. So it just seems to be in the Connecticut area. Yeah, that's so

Andrew Romeo  42:45

if you want to do peptides, you could do this. Online, you can't get to sastra. But you can do peptides. And peptides can do magical things as well. Like anything from immune system stuff to Muscle Gaining stuff. And you don't need to do it in person console for peptides just for hormones. I'm actually the state regulations and things like that. And I do take peptides as well. Again, I can't really dive too much on the science side of that, I'd have to defer to Kristen for that. But there's peptides that can do magical stuff. So like you want to talk about like rehabbing your shoulder. I know people that have used peptides and cut down the recovery period, because their body now is producing more growth hormone. And now it's healing faster. And that's where there's some science and some some stuff that is now available to people that wasn't previously that can really change how quickly you can get results. And also, what do you need it for? Are you sick all the time, it's winter COVID is coming around whatever it may be, okay, look at some of these answers. Or someone like yourself, I just had surgery, I want to get back to play faster. Okay, we can look at these things. And again, talk to a medical professional. We're a private practice. So we listen a little bit more, and we don't use insurance. So we can take our time and really work with somebody versus going to a primary care and you have 10 minutes. And as long as you're not dying. Get out.

Philip Pape  44:08

I have little to no faith in in PCPs anymore. Just so you know, you're preaching to the choir on that, like I've met very few that are worth anything to I'm sorry to say and if you're listening, and you are and you're a good one, then then great. We need more out there. Especially for women's health care. I feel like there's this gaslighting everywhere all the time. And I don't know what it is. Maybe it's just what they learned in medical school. And that's all they know. And they they open the root cause book and it's like you have this, this is the answer and then move on. But hormones is still kind of in its in its nascent period here. We had Dr. Rand McLaren and you know Dr. Rand McLean, he's pretty big peptides and and TRT is out of California, a perfect early episode. He also talked about peptides as well and I get it they're proteins, right? They're just proteins. But they a lot of them can do interesting things. So we're definitely gonna throw that in the show notes so they can check it out. Is Is there any scenario where somebody needs intervention beyond lifestyle? beyond what you've already talked about the TRT, any other supplementation I guess, is what I'm getting at

Andrew Romeo  45:11

me, you probably see me say this all the time, eat more protein, use that as yourself and lift weights.

Philip Pape  45:21

Call man, what's next for Romeo athletics.

Andrew Romeo  45:25

So Avon, I mean, the Avon location right now the goal is to grow Avon as much as we can help as many people here as we can. And if it just gets to the point where I can launch another one, I'll do it. But I mean, our goal is, as has always been, I personally enjoy working with people in person. So we are in person coaching facility. It's either private or semi private. For the most part, we offer a couple of group classes here and there. But for the most part, it's semi private and private training. And that's where we are, that's what we do. And my goal is to help as many people as we can help. And really, I really, like I don't know, if you've seen this at least, I really like how many ladies are coming in and saying like, I feel like I just need to lift weight awesome. Like something has changed in the world where people are like, recognizing, like lifting weights is important. And it's amazing. And it's awesome. And it makes me really excited. Because I have fought this fight for so long of being like I promise you won't get bulky. I promise you're not gonna get crazy biceps and from lift, like, prompt, like, unless you really want to,

Philip Pape  46:29

but like, Yeah, cuz it's hard to say it's hard for us to do a bulky,

Andrew Romeo  46:36

like, I have lifted weights for for ever, and to get big and bulky is impossible. Unless you

Philip Pape  46:42

take a lot of drugs. Yeah, no, you're right, man. It's true. I mean, I haven't been in the business very long. But even I see plenty of women saying like, how do I build muscle? How do I build my and it's a great, it's a great thing, blah, how do I feel? How do I build muscle and strength instead of cutting a night and let's build muscle? Well, I

Andrew Romeo  46:56

think they're also getting to people are getting Hey, muscle is also increasing my metabolism. So then in turn, I'm gonna lose more fat, and I can eat more stuff and get away with stuff now. Like, I mean, my basic thing left he protein.

Philip Pape  47:12

That's it. We're gonna Well, I do have to ask one more question that I asked about yesterday, and I can leave you off the hook with this, and it sometimes throws people off. But what is a question you wish I had asked? And what is your answer?

Andrew Romeo  47:23

Question I wish you would ask. I don't know. I mean it professional, personal. I mean, you could ask anything about lifting weights? What's your favorite lift? What's this? What's that? Or on the family side or anything on that said, I'm an open book, dude. As you know, you can ask me anything.

Philip Pape  47:40

It's more for you to tell me what you wish I'd asked. But that's the let's go with a lifting. Let's go the lifting question. Yeah, so you talked about your routine. Now, what does that look like in terms of like loads and progression scheme?

Andrew Romeo  47:57

Like loads, you want specific numbers? Like squatting? I probably squat weekly. No, and like low fours. Sometimes I'll push it up a little bit. My best squat ever was in the mid fives like 550.

Philip Pape  48:15

Points. Yeah. Yeah, it's

Andrew Romeo  48:16

this point, it's too heavy. Just walking that out on your back. It's just a lot of spinal compression. There's a lot that comes with that, that people don't realize when you start pushing those weights up like you feel it like your knees, feel it your hips, feel it, your back feels it, even if you have all the musculature to support it. I haven't really tried not to squat with belts and some just recently because like, I'm getting strong, and like, I can live decent amount of weights. I don't need to really belts for that. I really liked the Kabuki, benching bar. It makes it harder, but like interested, I really like it and then exhibited an

Philip Pape  48:51

angle perfectly. Okay, so

Andrew Romeo  48:53

go for a walk. Let's see how the thing works. Right. I'll show you guys get a little tour of the gym.

Philip Pape  49:00

Yeah. For the people on audio. We're walking through the facility. It's a couple give it Yeah. Okay. So it's kind of like a curved bar with multiple neutral angles. There we go. So slight angles. Yeah.

Andrew Romeo  49:14

Yeah. So you get that like neutral grip with a slight angle. And then it like, it makes you go a little bit deeper. So a big fan of that. I really liked the fact of that. But I'm sorry, I flipped your question. No, no, no.

Philip Pape  49:30

You're the only one that let do that to me. No, just kidding. No, that's cool. People are always interested in this stuff. Man, what are they gonna say that? Oh, you know, years ago, you had me squatting with the now this is in the CrossFit days, but we were doing like I guess you were like rack squats. You'd call them to kind of overload before doing the main squats. You still do stuff like that for your squat?

Andrew Romeo  49:51

Um, me personally not as much. I'll probably end up doing I don't know if you if you do squat Tober or not. So Exercise fitness company called sore necks. Their major fitness player they run a free program every October called squat Tober. Um, you squat five days a week and they definitely bring in a bunch of different squatting patterns. If I was focused on driving my squat number up, yeah, I would do rack squats. I would take shit from the bottom. We've hit different depths. I actually biggest honestly, one of the exercises that not a lot of people know about but I really liked for getting your squat number up. Hatfield squat. Are you familiar? The Hatfield squat? So I know what it is. Yep. So Hatfield squat, think safety squat bar. So I use the Kabuki one, so it just sits on your shoulders, I don't even have to hold it. So it just sits there, walk it out, you have handles you're holding on to squat down, drive up holding on to those handles, typically, you can overload that. So think it's an overloaded eccentric. by a good margin man, like I've squatted over 600 views and a Hatfield squat.

Philip Pape  50:53

So that's interesting. Oh, hold on. Now I'm really curious, because I've been using safety bar exclusively because of my shoulder because I can't get the grip around for the normal squat. You're saying you could load a lot more by just holding the rack in front of you do you have to have special handles.

Andrew Romeo  51:07

I put Kayson because I'm holding here, but you can hold the rack here just like that. And you can sell it because now on your way up, you're getting a little bit of your lat pull yourself up. So you can get an overload or do centric on that. And your squat will go through the roof.

Philip Pape  51:22

How does that feel? Back? Awesome. Okay, all good. Now, you just gave me something new to try. Oh, man.

Andrew Romeo  51:28

That is like one of my favorite like, non normal squatting things. Because everybody when people look at squatting, they're always like, Oh, it wasn't below parallel this or that. And being like, Listen, man, the below parallel thing came from powerlifting. That's where that came from. Because they had this sort of standard to measure success by I don't care if you squat below parallel, and I want you to squat to where your best movement pattern is. Does your knee hurt? Does your hip hurt? Does your back hurt? This is you can't judge it because my hands are holding on to something. But check it out. See what you think. And so every safety squat bar is different if yours doesn't hit that right angle, swing up to the gym, because my so I have the Kabuki one where it can adjust. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, the transformer bar up there. So you can come in, adjust the transformer bar, come check it out and see what you think.

Philip Pape  52:18

Cool, man, I'm gonna try that out. So that does that make it more quad dominant when you do that.

Andrew Romeo  52:24

Because you'll sit back into your hammock, same thing sit back and your picture, but rather than the Barbie hips, or the belt behind your hips, it's on your shoulders.

Philip Pape  52:35

I like that idea. Because this typical safety squat bar movement is slightly more like a front squat, right? It's a little more quad dominant, so that to get his more in the back, like the low bar that I love and miss right now. So

Andrew Romeo  52:46

I've been very, I've been very fortunate that I've pretty much always choose that Kabuki bar. So I don't even know what like a traditional safety squat bar feels like because I'm always adjusting angles and playing with things. So I've just been fortunate in that regard.

Philip Pape  53:02

Cool, man. Well, this has been a fun conversation all sorts of different directions. I hope the listener got a lot out of it. I know they did. Yeah, I know they did, man. And the last question of course, where do you want people to find you?

Andrew Romeo  53:14

Find me at Romeo athletic stuff, fitness, ethos, med medical esthetics.com instagram romeo.aj or Romeo athletics or Romeo athletics at Avon, I got a million.

Philip Pape  53:27

I'll keep it simple in the show notes. Like one.

Andrew Romeo  53:31

Google me. You'll find me there.

Philip Pape  53:33

All right, Andrew, Romeo, man, it's always been a pleasure. It's awesome to be in your circle and know you. And it was a fun conversation. So thanks for coming on the show. Thanks for having me. I'm

Andrew Romeo  53:43

always super proud to see your progressions. Man. You've done some big things and it's awesome to see you help so many people.

Philip Pape  53:48

Yeah, man. It's all it started with you to be honest. So we're all just paying it forward, which is what we want to do. I love thanks for coming on. Of course. Thank you for tuning in to another episode of Wits & Weights. If you found value in today's episode, and know someone else who's looking to level up their Wits & Weights. Please take a moment to share this episode with them. And make sure to hit the Follow button in your podcast platform right now to catch the next episode. Until then, stay strong.

Ep 108: How to Build Muscle Without Getting Fat

Today, we are re-examining the science of building muscle without accumulating unnecessary fat. Based on a new study that just came out this year, we will find the sweet spot between the “you gotta eat big to get big” dreamer bulk crowd and the “maingain/gaintain” crowd, so you have the optimal caloric surplus for muscle gain.

I’ll share my experience with these various muscle-building ranges, re-emphasize the role of strength training and protein, and discuss practical takeaways to set up your effective bulking strategy. This episode gives you a nuanced approach to lean muscle gains to help you achieve a muscular and lean physique without the extra fat.

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Click here to apply for coaching!
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Today you’ll learn all about:

[2:27] Personal experience with the dreamer bulk approach
[5:55] Finding the optimal calorie surplus for muscle gain
[9:23] Study on the effect of small and large energy surpluses
[11:53] The importance of a moderate calorie surplus for strength gains
[14:03] Key points on the Helms study
[19:30] Gains with aggressive surplus
[23:01] Adjusting body fat gain based on the rate of build
[25:27] Setting targets and rates for a muscle-building phase
[33:23] Outro

Episode resources:

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• Email Philip: philip@witsandweights.com

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Transcript

Philip Pape  00:00

But I'm going to start at the extreme right side of the curve, what we call a dreamer bulk or also called the seafood diet, you see the food and you eat it. And this is what I would say I did for my first successful bulk meaning successful that I was able to build a lot of muscle. Not so successful and that I also gained a ton of fat in the process. But it was really the first time I was ever doing it that way, the first time I was ever intentionally eating to gain weight in my entire life. Welcome to the Wits & Weights podcast. I'm your host, Philip pape, and this twice a week podcast is dedicated to helping you achieve physical self mastery by getting stronger. Optimizing your nutrition and upgrading your body composition will uncover science backed strategies for movement, metabolism, muscle and mindset with a skeptical eye on the fitness industry, so you can look and feel your absolute best. Let's dive right in. Wits &

Philip Pape  00:58

Weights community Welcome to another solo episode of the Wits & Weights podcast. In our last episode 107 The secrets of zero injury running while optimizing body composition with Louise Valentine, Louise and I discussed some new and exciting strategies and considerations for female and endurance athletes, in particular, women 35 and beyond who love to run and want to improve their body composition. So go check that episode out. Today for episode 108. How to Build Muscle without getting fat. We are reexamining the science of building muscle without accumulating unnecessary body fat. And there's a new study that just came out this year. Literally last month, we're going to find the sweet spot between the you gotta eat big to get big dreamer bulk crowd and the main gains slash gain teen crowd so that you have that optimal caloric surplus for muscle gain. I'll share some of my personal experience with these various ranges, these muscle building ranges and of course, re emphasize the role of things like strength training and protein, and discuss practical takeaways to set up your own effective bulking strategy. This episode gives you that nuanced approach to lean muscle gains so that you can achieve a muscular and lean physique without the extra fat. That's the whole point of this. So let's jump into today's topic, how to build muscle without getting fat. And I want to start talking about my personal experience with this first so that I can tie it into the evidence. And keeping in mind that everyone's individual experience is going to vary. And in fact, a lot of this data no matter how good it gets, is representative of the population and not necessarily any one individual. So always keep that in mind. But I'm going to start at the extreme right side of the curve, what we call a dreamer bulk or also called the seafood diet, you see the food and you eat it. And this is what I would say I did for my first successful bulk meaning successful that I was able to build a lot of muscle not so successful, and that I also gained a ton of fat in the process. But it was really the first time I was ever doing it that way, the first time I was ever intentionally eating to gain weight in my entire life. This was back in the 2020 timeframe. And I had been introduced to starting strength for example, which famously talks about the Go med diet the gallon of milk a day. And to be fair to them they that's geared toward younger males in their 20s who are quote unquote hard gainers and just need to gain a bunch of weight. Nonetheless, I took those ideas to heart at the time, because I didn't really know what I was doing on the nutrition side. But I was lifting with progressive overload, I was using the compound lifts, I was working out three or four days a week. And I just started eating everything I started drinking milk, putting milk in my protein shakes, we're talking whole milk, eating anything processed otherwise didn't matter. And developing some not so great habits on the food side. But nonetheless, seeing the results on my lifts on my gains and so on. Now, one of the cool things about gaining weight is that in addition to the anabolic effect of gaining weight for building muscle, you will also find an improvement in your leverages for building muscle. And I was reminded of this a couple times this week, once by my client and friend Tony, who is going to be on the show soon actually where he talked about how the levers change after he went through his successful six week cut with us working together and how they started to change as a as he got off of that and started to gain weight again. And I also heard about it on on a it might have been the starting strength podcast, I'm not sure talking about the angle between the muscles and the bone. When they insert based on how much mass you have. We don't have to get into all the science. The point is your levers change and you're able to actually move more weight as you get heavier. So I was getting the benefit of that during my bulk back in 2020. And I was actually gaining quite a bit of strength. I mean, I, I doubled or tripled my big lifts from what they had been before. And so that is one approach. The problem is I gained probably 40 to 50 pounds overall, and it wasn't almost, maybe maybe 10 to 15 pounds of it was muscle, which is awesome, right? Like in your first, you know, six to 12 months as a male to gain that much muscle is what you're going for women, it's going to be potentially a little bit less. And the problem is now sitting sitting with this extra body fat, which expressed itself in my physique, right. So that was that was my experience with a dreamer bulk. So less, do you think that just eating more builds more muscle, it's not true, the amount of muscle you can gain will top off at a certain point. And all that you're gonna gain after that is fat. So that's part of this equation. Now let's go to the other extreme, which is the idea of trying to build muscle while not gaining any fat at all, by maintaining your weight, or maybe being in the tiniest, tiniest surplus, you know of like, of like 50 calories a day or something, which is barely a surplus, your body hardly knows it. And you might gain weight over a long period of time, but it look like you're hardly gaining weight. Some people call this Lean training or main gaining, or I think gain training, I don't know, there's a whole bunch of words for it. And I would say that there are special circumstances like brand new lifters where you can get a ton of benefit and some body composition going on at maintenance. And I highly, highly recommend doing that. If you have a little bit of weight to lose when you start that process, so that you're not, you don't have to face that fear of gaining more weight just to build muscle when you already feel like you're a bit overweight, it's more of a psychological thing. But if you want to build muscle as effectively as you can, and you only stay at maintenance, you're barely giving your body that anabolic environment to build the muscle. And so it's going to take a lot longer. And the idea here is we know we need a calorie surplus to build muscle. But the question is how much is too much? How much is too much. And the typical range that I that I've talked about often and I still stick to and I think is still supported by the newer evidence we're gonna talk about today is around point one to point two 5% of your body weight per week. But we're gonna give it some more nuance, we're going to talk about how the new science or the new research by Dr. Eric Helms, maybe also just supports that or gives us some more ranges to work with, depending on your training age. And you'll come out of this with maybe even more clarity on what might make sense for you as an individual. Okay, so let's talk about the basics first, right, a calorie surplus is definitely needed to grow your muscles for hypertrophy, for strength, all of that. But it has to be finely balanced. We just talked about the range of the point one 2.25%, which for some people might seem actually too slow, right? Like the point 1%. If you're, let's say 200 pounds, what does that come out to be? Point two pounds a week, or less than a pound a month. And I actually had any Morgan on my show a while back. And he was talking about a ballpark of two to three pounds a month. For males, he worked primarily with males who were probably around anywhere from like 160 to 190, kind of the average height average weight, gaining two to three pounds, which is more more in the 1.23% range. Or not, I'm sorry, you have to scratch that more in the point 4% range, a month or a week, point 4% range a week to get that two to three, I'm sorry, I'm throwing all these numbers at you, it's not going to matter, we're gonna come out to very clear recommendations in a moment here. So you can make quick gains by eating in this upper range, but you're also going to gain fat, whereas the Lean gains are not the Lean gains, the lean training might not build enough muscle. And so we want to lean gain, right? We want to be kind of in that sweet spot of lean, gaining maximize your muscle, minimize your fat. So there is a new study that came out. And this is what kind of what I want to get to and what drove me to create this podcast episode and revisit this. A new study came out in August 2023 by Dr. Eric helms at all by the way, Eric was on the show as well and we'd love to have him on again off to reach out. But the study was effective small and large energy surpluses on strength, muscle and skin fold thickness. So just think about just look at the title effect of small and large surpluses. So we're talking either, you know, very, very lean to no gain versus a larger gain on strength, muscle and fat. So skinfold thickness is a way to measure body fat. And there were three diet conditions in the study maintenance, a moderate surplus, which was a 5% calorie surplus, or a large surplus, which was a 15% calorie surplus. And they wanted to see the different impacts of calorie intake on muscle and fat gain. But they were also measuring like, one RM, I think it was back squat strength, we're not gonna get into all the strength results that they found, I think the general consensus is, it didn't make a huge amount of difference, relative to the fat gain difference. And that's really the goal of what I'm trying to get at today. But I'm gonna give you an example of if you were, let's say 180 pounds, we're just gonna take 180 pound person with a 2800 calorie maintenance. So the maintenance calories are 2800 180 pound person, this is actually kind of similar to what I am right now, I probably have a maintenance around 3001 85 right now. So 180 pounds, 20 100 calories maintenance. If you were in the moderate group, you would be in a surplus of 140 calories a day, which would equate to about point two eight pounds gained a week. So if you do the math, that's like a pound a month or a little over a pound a month. So pretty lean, pretty small surplus. If you are in the large group, again, 180 pounds 2800 calorie maintenance, you would be eating 420 calories surplus a day, which equates to point eight, four pounds a week, which is over, which is over three pounds a month. And again, going back to the when I mentioned any more than the two to three pounds a month, you can see we're both under the either way under that at around one, or kind of at that top range or a little bit above it a bit over three. Again, for a 180 pound person in this calorie range, you might weigh more or less and you might burn more or fewer calories, it's gonna be very individual. So the results on the strength gains and body composition showed that the moderate rather than the large surplus, or the maintenance was most effective for strength gains and improved body composition. And I'm going to share a few quotes. The first quote is going to be from the Eric Trexler review of the study recently published in the mass research review. And he said quote, for beginners, a rate of weight gain above point two 5% per week is likely defensible, assuming they're in a hurry and wanting to maximize their rate of muscle gain, okay, above point two 5% per week. Now that's normally the upper range we're talking about. And he's saying you know, if you're a newer trainer, and you really want to just make this happen pretty quickly, which a lot of us you know, we want the results quickly. Or maybe there's a there's a scheduled reason for this or what have you. above point two 5% is defensible. For most experienced trainees a more moderate pace of point one 2.25% per week is probably more appropriate, particularly if they're wanting to avoid a disproportionate degree of fat gain. Again, this is from Eric's quote. For people who are extremely advanced and legitimately close to their personal genetic limit for muscularity, then their rate of weight gain should be quite slow. So he's kind of separated into three groups, beginners, or early intermediates, intermediate or advanced trainees and very advanced trainees, I'm guessing most people listening to this show are in the first or second group, I would consider myself in the second group, a lot of you are in the first probably some of you are in the third group as well, which I love to have you listening to this because it's all applicable. But I'm gearing this toward the general lifestyle lifter person who wants to improve their physique, their body composition, we continue to see evidence that the point one 2.25% is probably kind of an average range. And if you have some advanced training if you have some training under your belt, but point two, five above point two 5% per week, may be a better number to shoot for if you're more on the beginner to early intermediate side. Okay, now switching to the study itself, the home study homes, homes at all, a whole bunch of researchers on the paper. He said, I'm going to share the three key points from the study and then the quote from the conclusions, okay, and I definitely encourage you to go look at the study itself if you want to get all the nuances because there are some limitations here. It was done during COVID. They had some people drop out. There's a whole bunch of limitations that we always have to consider when it comes to these things. But here we go the key points number one, when assigning intended energy surplus sizes of five to 15%, faster rates of body mass gain primarily serve to increase the rate that fat mass accumulates, rather than increasing rates of hypertrophy or strength gain. So that's really important. So the five to 15% range, which was the moderate to the large group. Mainly what he's saying is, the faster you go, the more fat you're gonna gain without any extra strength or muscle gain very important. Key Point number two. It is possible however, that faster rates of body mass gain could enhance hypertrophy to some degree, if a sufficient training stimulus is provided, ah, so this is really interesting, because he's not really distinguishing training age, he's just saying that, in general, maybe you could go faster, but you really have to have a solid training stimulus, very effective programming, sufficient intensity with your lifts sufficient volume for you, where you're actually getting the growth that you intend. Otherwise, it's sort of going to waste isn't it and that's where the extra fat mass comes in your body wants to partition those nutrients for the purpose that you're telling it you need it for. And that's where the muscle building signal comes in.

Philip Pape  15:50

Hey, this is Philip. And I hope you're enjoying this episode of Wits & Weights, I started Wits & Weights to help people who want to build muscle lose fat and actually look like they lift. I've noticed that when people improve their strength and physique, they not only look and feel better, they transform other areas of their life, their health, their mental resilience and their confidence in everything they do. And since you're listening to this podcast, I assume you want the same things the same success, whether you recently started lifting, or you've been at this for a while and want to optimize and reach a new level of success. Either way, my one on one coaching focused on engineering your physique and body composition is for you. If you want expert guidance and want to get results faster, easier, and with fewer frustrations along the way to actually look like you lift, go to wits & weights.com, and click on coaching, or use the link in my show notes to apply today, I'll ask you a few short questions to decide if we're a good fit. If we are, we'll get you started this week. Now back to the show.

Philip Pape  16:53

Key Point number three, while further work is needed if a sufficient training stimulus is provided, the rate of body mass gain that will best support hypertrophy is likely individual rates may be influenced by prior training experience, hereditary factors which influence one's potential maximum rate of muscle gain, and other variables, sleep stress, etc. Now, doesn't that sound familiar? Isn't that what we talk about all the time on this show that there are so many factors that affect your expenditure, your ability to build muscle, your personal results. And it really comes down to figuring out what that is for you by giving you the shot by experimenting. And these this evidence we talk about on the show is simply a starting point, it gets you in the ballpark, knowing that it could go swing in either direction, sometimes, quite severely if you are an outlier. If you are an over under responder, for example, he even mentioned the head of hereditary factors, it's true, some of us just have better genetic dice roll of the dice. And some of us less it's not an excuse, it's just we have to understand what it gives us in terms of these these ranges. Okay. And then finally, in the paper itself, the conclusion state quote, ultimately, we recommend conservative energy surpluses scaled to your training experience of so here the surpluses, they recommend of five to 20% over maintenance energy, or rates of weight gain of point 252 point 5% of body mass per week, scaled to training experience such that more advanced trainees consume smaller surpluses and gain weight more slowly. Okay, so so far, we're hearing a consistent message that if you have more training under your belt, you're simply not going to be able to gain muscle as quickly there's diminishing returns, the more muscle you've already built. And that means you don't want to have as large of a surplus because you're gonna gain more fat than a newer trainee. As far as the ratio of fat to muscle. Okay, what does this mean for your personal muscle building or bulking strategy? It seems that all of this evidence continues to support a gain of around, I'm gonna say point two to point 3% of body mass per week. Okay, I think Trexler mentioned that range in there as well, I think it's a good range, it gets you sort of on the top side of that point, one 2.25, it pushes it kind of on the top side of that pushes you a little past that upper range, and gives you that sweet spot of point, two 2.3% of body mass per week as a generalizable sweet spot for gaining muscle without gaining too much fat. Because again, an aggressive surplus beyond this will lead to quicker or may lead to just slightly quicker muscle gains, but you're going to accumulate fat and at some point, it's just going to be mostly fat, right? So you kind of you want to hang around that and not get too impatient. Knowing that it takes time to build muscle, it's easier to it's way easier timewise to cut fat, psychologically, it's a different story. But timewise it's way easier. So you kind of have to balance the two, you could say, I'm gonna go a little bit more aggressive, because I'm just not sure. And I want to see how my body responds, and I'm gonna train really hard and see what happens. And then I'm willing to take the risk that it's going to take a bit longer to just cut the fat later, and that's fine. That's your choice to do. Or if you know, you're not an over responder, or you've already been training, or let's say you're a woman, and women just tend to build muscle slower than men, you may say, You know what, I really don't want to be in that aggressive bulking phase range, I'm going to stick around a quarter percent, you know, point 3% body mass per week. And I think that's a great number, I really do. I've often recommended to newer male lifters to go around point three 5.4% on the upper end, and I've done that myself with pretty good results. And that's just so I that's for me, so I ensure that I gain as much muscle as I can, knowing that I might gain a lot extra fat. But for others, I would say keep it around point two 5%, you're golden. Again, as a starting point. Now, there is a massive role of strength training alongside your nutrition that we just alluded to, when Dr. Helms mentioned, the training stimulus is the training stimulus. And it's important to this whole thing, it's a very crucial role. All of this that I'm talking about assumes you are lifting properly. And the best way to know this is with information and what information do I like I'll give you I'll give you a few different things. First, your lifts are going up in some way your your volume, but primarily your intensity intensity, meaning the weight on the bar or the dumbbells or what have you are going up so that either weight on the bar and or reps are going up and or sets or a combination of these based on your programming. And you feel like you are getting stronger and you are performing more and it's not totally over fatiguing you and causing recovery issues. Assuming you're including proper D loads and such as needed, you should be able to see this progress pretty consistently. The second thing is I like to take body circumference measurements both during Fat Loss and Muscle Gain. And when you're building muscle, two important measurements are your biceps and your thighs, your bicep and thigh circumference. So also possibly your neck circumference which which may go up during fat loss or during muscle building phase as well. All of these can tell you yes, I'm building muscle. Now you these are going to go up with fat gain as well. And that's where the improvement in your leverages come into play. But you you definitely want to see them going up. You don't want to see them flatlining. And then you also want to see that your waist circumference whether you take a simple kind of belly button waist circumference, or you do the the three, you know, naval inch or two above the Naval Institute below the navel kind of measurement, whatever, whatever you're doing that it is going to slightly increase over time because you're gaining fat but we don't want it to increase too much. That's kind of the the toggle or what am I trying to say that's the the limiter that you want to see, that tells you that you're not really gaining fat too quickly. Okay, you're going to gain it, but not too quickly. Now, I've said it before, you can't rely on any form of body fat measurement for accuracy. But if you use something like the Navy formula, which for men requires neck and waist for women requires neck, waist and hips, okay, not not thighs, hips, like all around to the peak of your, your but basically your hips. The trend of that can tell you how quickly you're packing on body fat. And I've seen this for me in the past when I've done in a more aggressive build where I'm like at point 4% versus a more lean gain at like point one or, or so I will see that the fat gain slows down when I'm going at a slower rate, which is great. It's it's validating what you're doing. So those are the things your lifts are going up your bicep thigh, neck, waist or hip circumference, circumference, and then your weight also are your waist circumference is going up and not by a lot. Okay, so the practical takeaways here. How do you do a muscle building phase? Let's just recap the whole thing based on the data. All right, number one, you have to find your maintenance calories. Now if you've never tracked your food before, if you've never done this before, I'm going to recommend listening to some of my other episodes where we talk about tracking your food, where we talk about what do you do first you build you lose Do you maintain? There's a few in there. I'm going to try to link to them in the show notes. But they're easy to find if you go look at the back history of the show. But you want to find your maintenance calories and know that your maintenance calories are not fixed. They change daily. And in my opinion, the best way to find that out is to use macro factor. That's an app called macro factor all one word downloaded if you're a new user that's never used it before. Use my code Wits & Weights all one word all spelled out Wits & Weights to get an extra week on your free trial. Use it try it out you're going to be really excited about how it works because unlike Like the other apps like My Fitness Pal, and so on, it's not just a logger, it actually feeds you back information that helps you modify your intake each week, because it calculates your metabolism, it calculates your maintenance calories based on your food and your weight. It's, it's really awesome. Okay, so rather than trying to do a bunch of spreadsheets, or definitely don't use a calculator online, because that's not going to be anywhere close to your real maintenance, it can be off by 400 calories in either direction. Use macro factor, find your maintenance, log food for about three weeks, you'll log your weight every day. And you'll have a pretty good number to start from. So do that first, and then you want to set your target and set your rate. Okay, so how do you set your target, the way I like to do it is, I don't like to just pick a number out of the sky, I like to pick a duration, and based on the rate set the target. So I've said this before on the show. And if you haven't heard this before, it takes time to build muscle. And so you want to spend time building muscle for multiple reasons. One reason is because you want to get that win of actually seeing a meaningful change in your physique. And the other is just the sheer time that it takes, okay, versus fat loss. So I would assume six to nine months of building or bulking or improvement, whatever term you want to use six to nine months. So we're gonna assume that you're 180 pounds, right. And let's say you want to build for six months. And it's a good time of year, right? Because it's what almost this episode's coming out almost October. So November, December, January, February, March, April, that takes you all through the holidays and winter. And then you could do a cut or mini cut going into summer. Maybe it's tiny bit later than you would normally want but it's in the ballpark. So assume six months. Now let's go with the rate we talked about before the new sweet spot rate that I mentioned, from all of this evidence, point to 2.3% a week. So if you pick a number in there, it comes out to around a half a pound a week, if you weigh 180 pounds. So I always like round numbers just easier to think about easier to follow, it doesn't have to be down to a decimal half a pound a week. All right, so half a pound a week, for six months, and a few extra weeks beyond that gets you 15 pounds. Again, rounding up. So we're gonna go from 180 to 195 pounds in six months, right. And that's six months, maybe you want to go for nine months, that's fine, too, maybe you want to build for a year. So our target rate is gonna be our target weight is going to be 195 pounds, our target rate of gain is going to be point five pounds a week, which is around a quarter percent or so maybe it's like point two 7%. But again, we're rounding and then what you're going to do is just set your targets for calories based on that. So a half pound a week is going to be about 250 calories a day surplus. Okay, nice round number. And then every week, you're going to adjust that based on what is happening to your body. And again, the best way to know this would be to use something like macro factor, which will tell you hey, your expenditure has gone a little bit up or gone a little bit down this week. Therefore, we're going to adjust the calories up or down to keep you on that rate of gain, because we don't want to go too fast and build and lose fat. But we also don't want to go too slow and start to stall out. Okay, so this is all based on what's happening to your body. Now, as you go through a building phase, if you're going half pound a week, you will overall your metabolism should increase. You know unless your activity level just goes way down. Like if you go from 15,000 steps a day down to 3000. And it kind of offsets the building. You know, if everything else stays the same, your expenditure should be going up. This is like the opposite of not the opposite. It's metabolic adaptation, but in the opposite direction as what happens during fat loss when your body adapts. So you're going to have to eat more and more food over time. Most people don't really complain about this. But if you're you know a bigger person who has to eat a lot of calories, you know, eventually it can become a little bit tedious just like fat loss does, right psychology. So what do we what do we set for our targets? Well, if you're using macro factor, it's going to give you appropriate targets based on the evidence. And but if you're doing this by hand, we're gonna go back to the simple rules of thumb protein, point eight to one gram per pound of your target bodyweight. Well, if your target body weight is 195 pounds, we're gonna shoot for 160 to 195 grams of protein fat, I like to peg it at about 30% of calories. You could go as low as 20%. Either way that 20 to 30% leaves plenty of room for carbs for the rest of your calories. So don't overdo it with protein and not leave enough room for carbs. Don't overdo it with fat like at the Keto range where you're up at 50 60%. I mean you can but it is going to then eat into your carbs and limit your ability to build muscle because carbs are muscle sparing they give you energy to give you recovery. They allow you to lift more and we know from the evidence that a standard higher carb diet or average carb diet is going to be more effective for muscle building than a Keto style diet. And then finally, we have meal timing, just very simple rule of thumb, four to five meals a day to have protein is probably what you're going to need at a higher calorie level to get your surplus in four to five, four to five feedings of protein a day, and then some protein and carbs around your workouts. Okay, this is totally up to you. I know some people like fasted training. I think in general, for most people, you're going to, you're going to progress more and get that bigger stimulus if you are fed when you train. Another reason to do that, going back to what Dr. Tom said about the training stimulus being very important. So some protein some carbs around your workouts before after, you know I've given more specific recommendations in the past, but I'm just generalizing here that you want to be fed for your workouts. Okay, so there you have it, a moderate calorie surplus of point two to point 3% balanced set of macros sufficient protein, sufficient carbs, targeted high stimulus, effective strength training with progressive overload, these are all the keys to unlock muscle gains without gaining excessive fat. And as with any physique engineering strategy, the principles as you can tell are straightforward. They really are, they're pretty simple. And the challenge is going to be in applying them being consistent, putting in the reps, and probably most importantly, making adjustments for you your results and your lifestyle. So if you prefer a faster rate, and you're comfortable with the extra possible fat gain, just in case that you're an over responder, or if you know you are, then give it a shot, like experiment with an N equals one experiment with yourself. Worst case, it will confirm that you gained a little too much fat, because you're measuring all the things right you're measuring your circumference and how you feel and all this and that you all you'd have to do is a slightly longer or more aggressive cut to lean back out. Best case, though, that you're gonna find that this is perhaps your sweet spot. So it lets you find that number more efficiently than just just picking the same number every time from what a podcaster tells you. Okay, in our next episode 109 High Performance Training built on a platform of strength with Andrew Roamio. I'm bringing on my longtime coach Andrew to chat about how to make fitness a core part of your identity, how to balance the demanding roles of family work in life, and how to make strength training work for you at any age. Last thing, I didn't want to forget this if you want to build muscle and are not sure how to start. Or if you want help following the process they laid out in this episode. Just reach out to me I'm a human being I will have a conversation with you not selling anything. Literally just hey, reach out. This is what's going on. Cool. Great to meet you. Based on your question, maybe check this out. Here's a video here's a guy here's an episode or I'll give you a straight up answer on what to do for your situation. To do that, just send an email to Philip at wits. & weights.com Phillip at wits & weights.com

Philip Pape  33:12

My name is Juan L. Just make sure to spell it right Phillip at wits & weights.com And you could also find links to contact me there and other ways in the shownotes. As always, stay strong. And I'll talk to you next time here on the Wits & Weights podcast. Thank you for tuning in to another episode of Wits & Weights if you found value in today's episode, and know someone else who's looking to level up their Wits & Weights, please take a moment to share this episode with them. And make sure to hit the Follow button in your podcast platform right now to catch the next episode. Until then stay strong

Ep 107: The Secrets to Zero-Injury Running While Improving Body Composition with Louise Valentine

I'm excited to welcome back Louise Valentine, my first interview guest who I didn't already know personally, way back in Episode 26, to catch up on her incredible accomplishments and discuss new and exciting strategies and considerations for female endurance athletes, especially women 35 and beyond.  She empowers them by dispelling industry stereotypes and reaching a zero-injury rate.

For background, Louise Valentine is a best-selling author, published researcher, and award-winning sports medicine, exercise science, holistic health, and performance expert. She is the 2023 American College of Sports Medicine Practitioner of the Year. Her website, BreakingThroughWellness.com, helps active women 35 and older manage hormone shifts and improve health, body composition, and running with less stress!

Louise's courses and coaching are for you if you can't stand hormones affecting your health, fitness, or endurance performance.

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Click here to apply for coaching!
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Today you’ll learn all about:

[3:19] Earning the ACSM Practitioner of the Year Award
[5:10] Contributions to a new sports medicine textbook
[6:38] Strategies for active women with excess weight and hormonal changes
[8:34] Energy-first approach and aligning running goals with physique goals
[10:15] Strategic calorie reduction
[11:51] Client results
[12:47] Addressing myths in female-specific exercise strategy for women 35+
[17:49] Understanding hormonal changes and taking control of health
[22:29] Science-based training and injury prevention for 35+  female runners
[27:19] Dynamic functional lifting
[30:08] Strategic layout for body composition and performance
[31:25] Gut health struggles and the importance of nourishment
[36:37] The importance of lifting heavy for female endurance athletes
[41:05] The question Louise wished Philip had asked
[41:50] Where to learn more about Louise
[42:50] Outro

Episode resources:

• Free blog articles, videos, mini-courses & a 4-month 1:1 learning experience at BreakingThroughWellness.com

• Ep 26: Sustainable Fitness, Physiology, Fat Loss, and Running at Any Age with Louise Valentine

👉👉👉 Click here to apply for coaching!

👩‍💻👨‍💻 Click here to schedule a FREE results breakthrough call with Philip

The FREE metabolism assessment is available! Click here to take the assessment and find out how high your energy flux is with a free report and strategy.
Take the assessment here!

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Transcript

Louise Valentine  00:00

A lot of times, you know, we come in with both goals, I want to run my best and I want to lose weight. So we can work in strategic weight loss days, but strength training. I always say strength training is more important than you running. Why? Because running you're going to do it. The strength training is your testosterone, your ability to build muscle and your metabolism. The way you keep weight off is by having muscle your metabolic powerhouse.

Philip Pape  00:27

Welcome to the Wits & Weights podcast. I'm your host Philip pape, and this twice a week podcast is dedicated to helping you achieve physical self mastery by getting stronger, optimizing your nutrition and upgrading your body composition. We'll uncover science backed strategies for movement, metabolism, muscle and mindset with a skeptical eye on the fitness industry so you can look and feel your absolute best. Let's dive right in Wits & Weights community Welcome to another episode of the Wits & Weights Podcast. Today I am super excited to welcome back Louise Valentine, who was my very first interview guests who I didn't already know personally, way back on episode 26 Almost a year ago. So it's an honor to have her join me again to get caught up on her incredible accomplishments in the last year and some new and exciting strategies and considerations for female endurance athletes, in particular women 35 and beyond who love to run, and maybe juggling multiple goals to lose weight lean out while still enjoying their sport, from debunking myths in the industry to achieve any zero injury rate. Louise's here to dispel the misinformation and empower female endurance athletes. If you're ready to challenge everything you thought you knew about women's health and fitness in the context of endurance sports, you'll want to listen all the way through to learn exactly what to do to excel at all your goals without injury as you age. To catch you up on who she is. Louise Valentine is a best selling author, published researcher and award winning expert across the sports medicine, Exercise Science, holistic health and performance fields. She owns breaking through wellness.com, where she empowers active women aged 35 and beyond to mitigate hormone changes and maximize health, body composition and running with less stress. If you can't stand hormones wreaking havoc on your health, fitness or endurance performance, and are ready to understand simple ways to quickly restore energy, improve body composition, and or run your best. Louise's courses and coaching are for you. As the 2023, American College of Sports Medicine Practitioner of the year. Congratulations, Louise is leading the way in helping us simplify and apply the best female age 35 Plus specific strategies to unlock your best with less stress. Luis, it's great to have you back. How are you doing?

Louise Valentine  02:46

Thank you. Yeah, it's awesome. Congratulations on your success throughout the past year or two. It's amazing to see this community of grown amazing listeners interested in the nitty gritty science and feeling their best.

Philip Pape  02:58

For sure. For sure. We were joking before I recorded how when you were on, I was still recording out of a closet on a TV tray. But nonetheless, the passion was there. We had a great conversation. I you know, it kind of went by in a blur for me at the time, because I was so nervous back then. And now you know, we've grown into our respective areas. So it's been about a year since we spoke. And in that time, you've accomplished a lot You've earned this ACM s practitioner of the Year award. Tell us about that. And tell us what you did to earn that honor.

Louise Valentine  03:28

Yeah, it was, you know, I sort of felt like I was taking a leap when I submitted my application, you know, looking at last year's winner, it was the head of the obesity Institute, effective weight management in Greece, I believe. So I was looking at all of these top performers across the world and wondering, you know, do I fit into this, this award position, and, you know, just shared my story as a military spouse, this dynamic career that I've had, as well as my personal story, overcoming osteoporosis, hormone challenges, and really looking across the spectrum of health, fitness, athletic performance, holistic health, and blending these strategies. All throughout my career, whether I was helping pro athletes are now women, just like me feeling stuck with these small changes and wondering, wow, I worked out really hard. I still want to feel my best this vibrant, strong fit self. I don't want to lose this. In fact, I've walked kicking, screaming and running, trying to feel my very best, despite all these hormonal changes. So it's such such a thrill to win.

Philip Pape  04:35

Yeah, and it's it definitely is inspirational. We talked about your story last time, but even the thought of being able to pursue multiple goals and get multiple results at the same time because there is a concept or principle of periodization of, you know, exclusive gold is going after one at a time and how you can't have this at the same time as you have this and we've seen that mold broken in a few areas. For example, power lifters used to always be big You know, fat, guys, right? And now you see that they they're leaner, they can be healthier while still competing. And so in your area, you work with women with hormones with endurance. So another thing that you've been doing is working on a textbook or contributing toward a new textbook based on cutting edge science. It's with other weight loss experts for sports medicine for fitness professionals. Can you share with us any the secrets that you're including that the fitness industry hasn't heard yet? Speaking of breaking the mold?

Louise Valentine  05:29

So you know, this is, you know, again, looking at the act of woman, and we might assume someone who is struggling with excess weight is not active. But what about those women who are active, they're trying their hardest, they're dialing in their nutrition, and they're still not seeing results. So I share in particular a case study of a client that I worked with who was living with excess weight and trying to run ultra marathons and lose the weight at the same time. So what did that look like? If you're a fitness professional, and you're working with someone who's so dedicated to their running, yet, they still want to, you know, protect their metabolism, they want to see body composition changes? How do you do it, and then in particular, those hormonal changes, H 35. And beyond, we've got a heck of a hard time ahead of us. So I share insights into the journey and practical takeaways for professionals so that they can, you know, when when they have these ambitious, active women living with excess weight, let's be effective. And let's strategize so it's specific to their life and provides best results.

Philip Pape  06:36

So let's peel peel that back a little bit specific. What's one thing that everybody assumes is the case, and that you can't have this at this at the same time, with that type of woman, a woman who's very active, has the excess weight, but she's gotten to the point where there's some things conspiring against her whether it's hormones or something else. And she wants to have all the things right. What is one thing that you face on a regular basis you want to dispel here?

Louise Valentine  07:00

So I think it's the excessive calorie reduction that we see. And it's just, you know, diet culture tells us that we need to be low calorie, we log into My Fitness Pal, we see, oh, my gosh, if I'm eating over 1200 calories, I'm, I'm failing. And in this instance, we have to remember and use the lens that you are an active female, my goodness, you are a calorie burning machine. And when you go to low calorie, it is extremely counterproductive. Your body will fight that weight loss, like, like no other. So to your point about periodization. You know, if there's, you know, coming to the understanding, we can try things, but sometimes we might need to off cycle from something like an ultra marathon, can we do a half marathon instead? And maybe focus on some strength building, restoring some metabolic damage, in particular, when you're coming from a very low calorie past?

Philip Pape  07:51

Okay, that's great. I'm glad you said that. Because the listener needs to hear it over and over again, especially directly from women, because I'm not a woman. But I do tell women this all the time, you know, out of compassion that we generally want to eat more, you know, that's like the bane of many of our issues, and men too. But you and I were talking about how even over the last year, some of your, I guess, the audience you're addressing has become more and more clear. And I also on the podcast, if you you know, you were listening over time, you'd realize it's more toward an energy energy first approach of like, increasing that stack, increasing the metabolism, not trying to lose weight. And at the end of the day, when you want the physique or you want the weight loss, it's actually going to come pretty easily, without all the stress without all the negatives. So I love that you're saying that. Is there? What about on the running side specifically, is there are there things that are fighting against each other, when it comes to the energy needs? And the running in the context of say physique? Because you said that is an important goal? People want what? What would you say? Is there anything competing there? Is there a way to make them alive?

Louise Valentine  08:54

Yeah, absolutely. You know, avoiding things like fasted training, we need to have that hormone and the hormone balance and metabolism on fire. So being very strategic, no fasted training, absolutely not no carb restriction. We are looking at protein timing, we're looking at pre intra and post workout fueling, we are not taking calories away from that, going into the sessions field. And in a very strategic way, looking at that person's life, other stress levels of other levels of toxins they're exposed to stress could be environmental, it can be dietary. So there's so many components into protecting the hormones and the metabolism first and foremost, to your point of energy first, because without hormones without energy without a metabolism. You're not building muscle, you're not leaning out, you're not running your best you're gonna be injured, bloated and gaining weight.

Philip Pape  09:51

Absolutely 100% So love it no carb restriction, void facet tree, all the things I'm constantly getting questions about, like, but fasted training works really well really does it? Let's take the whole context and experiment with a little bit more energy here. So because you work with athletes who want to perform well in ultra marathons, endurance, sports, triathlons, and again, the conflicting goal thing, what about where does say fat loss fit in? And again, we're not talking about calorie restriction, per se. But at some point, there's a dedicated, hopefully short duration, as easy as we can make it minimal hunger kind of situation where you still lose the excess body fat if you need to. What does that look like?

Louise Valentine  10:32

Absolutely, it seems very strategic strength training. So looking at working with those hormonal changes, making sure you're lifting heavy enough. Because if you're doing all the lightweights in the world, you're not going to be seeing those body composition changes, ensuring it's very specific to the individual's goals. So it's we're seeing those body physique changes, as well as injury prevention, because you still want to get the strong runner to, but then also just looking at ensuring that all pieces of the puzzle are together, so you have the nutrition day to day, and then the strategic calorie reduction in small doses, so that it doesn't impact hormones, recovery and performance, to say that you would never have a day where you don't feel your best is a lie. We look at all the different strategies though, like even the carbohydrates cycling, the super low calorie, all the different diet trends out there. They're working against us in this particular circumstance. It's actually exacerbating things like our progression towards perimenopause. That was my exact story. I hit early menopause in my 20s. And it was like, What? Are you kidding me? At Illumina runners, they're running their way to perimenopause when they're trying to have all of these competing goals.

Philip Pape  11:49

So when you apply this to a client, what what kind of results have you been most proud of that you've seen? And probably learned from as you put these pieces of the puzzle together?

Louise Valentine  11:59

It's been absolutely amazing, because my academy that I have for the women that it coaches call it that is Breakthrough Academy is literally been built from listening to clients, and what is getting the best results. So I went in with so many assumptions as a professional. And the best takeaways have come from real, real women. So looking at ensuring that they have the nutrition, lifestyle and training strategies, they're just so critical.

Philip Pape  12:31

Yeah, it makes sense. And listening to clients. That's kind of like where I know, you put out a lot of content on social media. And if I were to guess probably almost every single one of those is based on a question you've had to answer for a client, right? Yes. Yeah. That's where it comes from. So what are the what are the hot trending topics right now? Is female specific exercise strategy? Right? And even I get the daily question, you know, but how do I train if I'm a woman over 40? And it's always, you know, it's always a specific age cut off, and that I'm a woman, you know, and I don't mean to be cynical at all, because there are differences between men and women. There's differences with age. But there's a lot of misinformation and confusion out there, right to the point where almost people get a defeatist attitude, when they come in, come in asking this question, and you want to really lift them up and give them the hope that there's plenty that they can actually do to empower themselves. So what are the common myths and mistakes you see in this area? Right? And then how do you educate our listener and the clients and empower them to break through break through, break through the noise and find out what works best for them?

Louise Valentine  13:34

Yeah, I just think it's incredibly overcomplicated. And we've looked at things like the optimization of lab work as an example. So we might see individuals who just come in, they're like, Louise, what, what labs Should I ask my provider for? What should we look into as a testing kit and review all of my labs. And you know, you could spend all the money in the world on a salivary cortisol test? What's it going to tell you? You're stressed, particularly in the morning, we could have pulled you out. If you look at your lab work, it is a point in time it is simply blood work is but a day. So I mean, then you can get expensive and get into Spectracell you can look into the nutritional composition of your cells to see how actually absorbing a lot of money. And we just get in the weeds of this optimization without taking the step back to look at are you doing the simple day to day things that matter most. And when the women that I coach come into my program, they're like, it's so simple. Because you're simple with the things that matter most you're consistent. You drive incredible results. But getting caught up in all the weeds of the science. I'm a scientist telling you don't get in the weeds of the science I did for way too long. I've done all the things I started in the NFL, I was all into the hyperbaric chambers and biotherapy and give me the rep you know anything I'll take this supplement that and No it did nothing except put me in complete hormone damage. And of osteoporosis that hypothyroidism, gut health disturbances, pre cancer, you name it. So I have been the train wreck where a lot of your listeners might feel like they are. But I can stand here as hope and living proof that you don't have to live like that. And at any age, both myself and my clients all the way through each, I think 56, this oldest woman has gone through my academy, reversing bone health, reversing Hormonal Health, and it's simple whole food. It's nothing crazy.

Philip Pape  15:29

It's true, it really comes down to like this really short checklist, you could just, you could just, of course, we know things are simple, not easy. Just give them the sheet and say do all these things. But we know. It's not just that right. I agree that we overcomplicate things to the point where like in the evidence based space, we have to start pulling out scientific papers and citations and all these other things. And you know, I love doing that personally. But the person I'm talking to just just wants to understand what to do. And the way you put it with it kind of being in alignment with your body. I guess you didn't say that explicitly. But that's what I'm getting from it. Where if there's anything that's off anything that's like forcing you in a direction, it doesn't feel right. Calorie restriction, does that right? Energy restriction does that where you just feel like, Can I really live this way? That Something's off? And I think what you're talking about is once you understand those simple things and put them in place, the work where do people get hung up, though? Like if, if everyone on this call or everyone on this podcast, if I said Louise, tell us a 10 things we have to do, and it's perfect. And they're not going to do what why is that? And what? What's the gap

Louise Valentine  16:34

and finding what's specific to their goals, their bodies needs and their lifestyle. So what is so ironic about what you just said is women in my program go through five initial weeks of learning. At the end, you get a checklist, it's called the 535 checklists. But what is so critical to your point is, I used to just do a couple of sessions I used to do, I know because we need to get you to practice this in every single day life. When it doesn't work. You come back to me 20 years in the field, I have got so many strategies we can pull from it is not one size fits all and anyone who tells you that it is that is a line of BS, they are too close minded, you need to find that outside of the box thinker that will help you fit it into your life. So working with froze all the way through and feeling completely burned out in broken chronic disease diagnoses, Olympians, I decided the spectrum we need the same exact thing customized to us or body.

Philip Pape  17:34

Yeah, for sure. What's the what's the classic phrase like their methods are many principles are few or something like the principles or the checklists, but how you get there for each individual is going to change drastically. And some may apply more than than to others. So speaking of women with the hormones, you mentioned that and now we can talk about maybe physiology, there's changes that definitely happen that affect your health, your fitness, your performance, I'm gonna say in the ways that healthcare fitness industries, maybe gaslight in some cases, or they put their hands up and they say, Oh, well, you're just getting older. That's how it is. I've seen that the women in my life and you mentioned the signs of perimenopause, I'm guessing some people put up their heads. I'm just gonna guess that some doctors did that. It kind of pisses me off, even though I'm a guy, right? Because I've seen firsthand how it affects people and it makes them think like, there's no hope. So how can women understand exactly what's happening in their bodies based on this age related process? And then take control over their health?

Louise Valentine  18:35

Absolutely. And that's again, where I think we're just so in the weeds with the science, let's simplify it. What is happening, age 35, for most women, is when hormones start to decrease estrogen, progesterone, and testosterone. So let's make that the underlying theory of women, right? Even an I have seen women even with estrogen dominance, maybe breast cancer, or some other thing or PCOS, but it comes down to this idea that we need to support our hormones, we need to help the hormonal balance of our body. How do we do that? It's something that I refer to as a stress tipping point. There's many factors that go into that. In the past, we used to assume that a woman had, you know, something like low bone density, Hormonal Health disturbances, problems with their period that that was called the female athlete triad. Well, part of the reason why I am a leader in the field now is because we're rethinking that, you know, been compared to the founder of that is leading the way in the field, but it's really rethinking has gut health plan to that. How does your day to day stress management stress meaning exposure to things that you eat in terms of ingredients and influence Hormonal Health and gut health? Looking at day to day stress and how you manage it, and then this is the game changer stress of exercise. So many active women don't realize that To exercise strategies need to change, or your Hormonal Health, you will be essentially draining it and expediting your way to perimenopause. And that's where you go to the provider like I did. And they said, Well, you just hit menopause early. I don't accept that. This is not okay. And with the fact that people think that this is okay, genetically, we might be mildly predisposed. But we also have control over our genes and how they express themselves. So taking that action, finding the providers who are leading the way who do have the strategies from the nutrition, lifestyle and exercise management side, put it all together, your hormonal health can be just fine.

Philip Pape  20:40

Awesome. Yeah. And that's empowering. I like how you mentioned epigenetics in there that we can change our genetics, we can change our it's effectively a way of changing our DNA to simplify it, right. But I think of that in terms of strength training, right? Why is it possible to build a bunch of muscle that you've never had before? And just a few months? Isn't that kind of an adaptation? Well, you can do the same with your hormones right.

21:01

Before my coaching session with Philip, I was really struggling with staying consistent with my nutrition, Phillip really showed me the importance of being consistent day to day, he also helped me see that it's not a bad thing to take a rest day, he really helps me get in that more positive headspace of a rest day being something really good for me. I've been doing this for a month now. And I'm finally starting to see some progress and my numbers. And I'm really excited about that. And I just appreciate so much the help that Philip has given me. He's always willing to answer questions to offer resources that are totally free, and very, very helpful. So I just want to say how much I appreciate that. Thanks, Phillip.

Philip Pape  21:47

The stress tipping point, really nice way to put it, because when you mentioned stress a lot of times and you just leave it at that. I don't know if you've seen this. It's kind of this nebulous thing, right? Well, stress, okay, life stress, my work my family. And you're saying it goes far beyond that. It's all the things that place a load of stress on our body, gut health, right, the things you eat, I think that's great. Even alcohol, like I've learned a lot myself lately about the effect of alcohol on hormones, even though we can talk about you know, enjoying in moderation and tracking and all that. What about the stress load it brings you and an exercise of course, with the again, especially you'd see it's in your realm with the endurance because you want to support that, but not let it be a stressor. So actually, I do have a question about that. How? So someone who is doing ultra marathons, which are we're talking 100 Miles generally, right?

22:37

Yeah, I have some of my also run Yeah.

Philip Pape  22:41

I have to put in a lot of miles in their training, I imagine. And then event itself, but not even just not even counting the event, just training wise. How does that How do you prevent that from being more stressor than it needs to be?

Louise Valentine  22:51

Yes, and this is where, you know, this training plan is essential, a science based training plan that works with female physiology. And this is again, where there's not a lot in the field where we're accommodating for Hormonal Health. So again, another reason why you know, winning awards in the industry right now. And leading the way is thinking through less is more. And how do you train for an ultra as a woman in perimenopause in your late 40s without draining your bone health. And the way to phrase it too, is that endurance exercise is hormone draining by nature. The reason why we have a taper week before a race is to restore hormones. So essentially, you are draining your hormones the entire time, you're training as a byproduct of what you want to happen in your physiology and getting those training adaptations. So we need to be really strategic not to do that too much. So we're really rethinking the training plan, we we really rethink it in terms of days per week, adding more rest and recovery. When you go strong, you go strong, you could still pee are women in their 50s are getting faster in my program. I like you were talking about those results. That is something that I'm incredibly proud of. And I'm talking sports medicine, physicians, occupational therapists, physical therapists, and they're like, I just don't want to end up like my patients. Can you help? Like that is powerful. That is powerful to hear you say that? And then look what you're doing now taking charge of your health, like, blows my mind. I'm just so proud of the women that I coach, you could tell,

Philip Pape  24:24

of course, yeah. And then I'm sure they they love being able to have that clarity, the clarity that you can control what happens your body, even if you intentionally put it through a little bit of stress, which you have to train for these endurance events. I like how you put it kind of draining your hormones, and it's a deliberate thing because you're trying to get some other result. But then you're allowing it to recover, which which is kind of like the acute stressor of fat loss phase, right? Or even just the daily acute stressors like when we train lifting weights or whatever we are, we're stressing our body but in the long run, you get a benefit out of it, and then recover. So that's pretty cool. So most of your clients are runners and injuries are concerned And as well for people, you said you had a 0%, injury injury rate for the women 35. And over that's, I think that's impressive. I want you to put it in context of like, what the normal statistics are. And then I think we're where people are getting it wrong. A lot of times where athletes become more injury prone with age, and not using the right strategies for it, like you said, Take control of your health and knowing your physiology. So what kind of injury prevention strategies do you use talk, talk talk about that.

Louise Valentine  25:29

It's both from a nutritional perspective, as well as the strength training. And I would say, actually, to the science based training plan, so again, that less is more training, very strategic, not overloading the body. And then we're looking at running specific strength and conditioning. So we need to think through why runners get injured in the first place, less quad dominant athlete, we are really looking at the posterior chain or the back of their body strengthening. If you have a trainer as a runner, who's telling you to do endless squats, run, you do not need and less squats as a runner, in fact, you're going to just, you know, contribute to that stretched hamstring That's weak. And the quads that are super tight, you're running, when you start, you're running in this hunched over posture, you know, shoulders turned, hips are already turned forward, you're already in a terrible stride and looking at something like patellar, tendonitis, IT band syndrome or back pain, upper back pain. And so the strength and conditioning is incredibly simple, but it is strategic. And I do combine both elements of body composition change, because every runner still wants to look good to say that they don't is we're doing a disservice to runners by saying that they can't change their body composition, personally, as a runner who wants to do that? Yeah, of course, I'm looking at the injury prevention to very strategic, I know you love the deadlift. I do too.

Philip Pape  26:56

Yeah, right, posterior work, I love it. So I want to dig in a little bit on the simple but strategic strength and conditioning, squats, and then backward. So it makes sense to me having a strong core and back for anything, anything in life, honestly, including, like we sit all day, and that's not good for that. And it kind of like in my mind, you know, complements the front side of the body as well and kind of gives you that stable base. But well, what is it about squat? So I've heard people who are kind of late lay people who don't really understand running, say, well, it's you know, it's all about the strength to weight ratio, and you need as much power as possible. So of course, you want to have nice big strong legs, maybe for sprinters, but we're talking about endurance sports, right? Is there a difference there that I just assumed? And then what do you do for that power? That ratio if it is even relevant?

Louise Valentine  27:44

Yeah, I think we're we're getting power is just in functional lifting exercises. So looking at things like kettlebell swings, getting the glutes but here's the thing, when we're looking at recreational runners in particular, a lot of them have never been, first of all rehab, the when we're women, the core. So we've looked at pelvic floor and core health, ensure we're not doing anything to exacerbate you know, the diastasis recti die or the, you know, the separation of the abs that happens in pregnancy, most of the time, that's not really healed in the first place. So that core being strong, starting with basic deadlifts, I'm not talking about anything complicated, no single leg, because again, if your core is unstable, you had a baby, you're kicking your SI joint out of alignment every time you do a single leg deadlift. In this the first thing, I went to physical therapy, and that's the first thing they put me through a single dead

Philip Pape  28:35

like deadly collateral stuff, don't they? Yeah,

Louise Valentine  28:38

and I was just well, okay, so my history would not allow for this to be a great exercise. So, you know, it's like great education and a good relationship with a provider that you can benefit from there. But again, it's we're looking at Dynamic functional lifting to be a strong human, you know, things like bicep curl, and overhead press, let's not separate those, let's just keep them together. Be time efficient against fits into real life too, and not overwhelming. So meeting the person where they're at first and foremost, running specific, and then looking at their injury history to

Philip Pape  29:13

okay, and you mentioned the quad dominant nature of this what so what kind of leg work do you do just just as an example.

Louise Valentine  29:19

So I would look at deadlifting I would look at doing some clam exercises hip ridges, and doing hip or just lift some weights they have a counter pressure so glutes actually fire. What else do we do? We would do? Single leg exercises for core in particular, maybe even some getting the that neuromuscular pattern. So getting the just switch, single leg stance again, but that's not super weighted when we have these core concerns

Philip Pape  29:52

potential. Sure understood. And again, you're touching on the idea that you have to make some trade offs, right. We have to make trade offs depending on our goal. If you want to fit into In sports in there, and body composition and injury prevention, they all have to work and nothing's going to be like extremely dominant. So let's, let's look at that a little bit. So you mentioned body composition. How do you fit that in? Does it kind of is a more of a natural thing where you say, Look, if we get the nutrition dialed in, and we are working out anyway, for our training, you're probably gonna get pretty pretty much the physique you want or is there specific periods where you focus on that?

Louise Valentine  30:25

Yes. So with endurance athlete, or I mean, even a recreational runner, sometimes we say endurance athlete and recreational runners don't thinking that applies to them. But I'm talking about recreational runners. We're looking at a strategic layout of their next couple months. So okay, do we have a race coming up? Let's focus on performance there. Okay, do you have an injury currently, let's focus on rehabilitation. First and foremost, let's go into body composition. A lot of times, you know, we come in with both goals, I want to run my best and I want to lose weight. So we can work in strategic weight loss days, but strength training, I always say strength training is more important than your running. Why? Because running, you're gonna do it. The strength training is your testosterone, your ability to build muscle, your metabolism, the way you keep weight off, is by having muscle, your metabolic powerhouse. So I

Philip Pape  31:21

couldn't agree with you more. So what was I going to say about that? It lost me because I have questions. But I really like to go on off on these tangents. But now I can't remember what I was gonna ask. I'll just continue. You know, you talked you mentioned yet osteoporosis at 33. And I, as you know that your story is kind of why you do this, like your mission. Right? How did you start down this path? When we talk about the things you used to do while you're training fasted? I think you've mentioned like too much caffeine and under fueling gut, health, all that. Tell us more about that.

Louise Valentine  31:56

Yeah, you know, it really clicked for me when I believe it was one of the press releases that came out for American college sports medicine that said the least Valentine can see for the peri menopausal endurance athlete, what's coming for them that they don't even know is coming for them. I've lived through it all. I've reversed it. And some women look at me and they're like, Oh, you're young. And I'm like, but I've lived through the perimenopause, a woman's nightmare. You don't want cancer, you don't want osteoporosis. You don't want to gain weight. You want to look, feel and perform your best. You don't want to injuries. Been there done that all the wrong things, though. Now here on the other side, it's it's nice to have this mission to ensure that women don't end up like me, and then teaching them the simple strategies to prevent it because it's so incredibly simplistic. But we do need to, to your point that gut health, that is honestly one of the root causes of why I ended up with osteoporosis as immunocompromised youth where I had way too many probiotics. I was eating well, I was doing all the things. But if your gut health is not there, it doesn't matter how well you eat, your body will not absorb it. So

Philip Pape  33:07

yeah, you said too many probiotics. So how did you how did you discover that?

Louise Valentine  33:11

Too many? Not probiotics. Antibiotics?

Philip Pape  33:17

No, it makes sense. Okay, I was gonna say it's good right to have. Yeah, yeah. To me antibiotics. Okay. Yeah, I mean, go a little bit more into gut health, like, how much? How much of that do you get into, again, the science of it, even though we know at the end of the day that we're not trying to overwhelm people with science so much is like, what do we do about it? Yes.

Louise Valentine  33:35

And this was one where my diagnosis was one that we don't really study much in the US. So I had to go into like the Chinese Science, and pretty much figure out my own gut health and what was wrong with me and how to restore it. I was told I would have cancer in four years. And instead, I reversed the condition with a nutrition and lifestyle approach. So if your doctor ever tells you something's impossible, just know, do your research first and foremost, but I did. I did not have good gut health my entire life, and it manifested in the oddest of ways. And I do see a lot of women and even some of the men that I coach, having a lot of these gut health struggles, it's these weird symptoms. It's like I tested allergic to the world. I'm allergic to everything. Or I psoriasis, where the seasonal allergies, I had weird nerve pain, I can't lose weight no matter how hard I try. So I do have gut health education and my program, because I'd be remiss if I didn't teach women how to protect their gut health to its health and performance starts in the gut.

Philip Pape  34:39

Yeah, and I think a lot of there's confusion on that topic because it is so new, like you said, there wasn't really even a western medicine reference recently, and it's just starting to make waves. Okay, what about you meant Okay, so you've talked about weight loss a few times and I'm, I'm bringing this up more with guests and the what do you think of the phrase weight loss so I use the phrase Fat Loss more often now, and maybe it's semantics. But what do you think of that given, given the general perception people have of weight loss as an energy restriction and all the other things we talked about?

Louise Valentine  35:11

Yeah. So in terms of weight loss itself, I think that, you know, it's hard because I automatically I think we think of dieting and restriction. And that is where it's nourishing our body, I just wish it was nourishing your body. And I've also seen the language in over, over nourished individual as gaining weight. And I would say, No, that's an undernourished individual because their body does not have the nutrition, if they're eating much of, you know, processed foods as well. So sometimes, though, the language is very interesting, and, you know, even looking at hormonal changes, they can be mitigated, and I don't even think people realize that, it's just like hormonal changes that just happen in our body, they just happen, we can take control of them, and they don't have to happen as fast as they say they,

Philip Pape  36:05

they have to. That's a very good principle you just alluded to, because you can extend that to everything else in our body assume that nothing is fixed. Assume that nothing at all, nothing is fixed, you know, your strength and muscle, your capability to run races and power. Your hormones just assume nothing is epigenetics. You mentioned it before, till the day you die, right? Like just if you're 75, and just getting started, you know, I'm not saying everything applies, if certain things right when you go through menopause or whatnot. But I think that's a good principle. What is the industry missing out on when it comes to female endurance athletes? Like what are other coaches and nutrition experts? not acknowledging or talking about? Or maybe they're perpetuating the commonly held myths, which is a very common thing. What do you say to that?

Louise Valentine  36:54

I would say there's two and one is the strength and conditioning side, to say that runners can do bodyweight exercises and protect themselves from injury 35 and beyond. It's not how our physiology works, we need in particular, to overload the muscles with heavier weights, for lack of estrogen, it's decreasing. It impacts our body's ability to use carbs and protein to build the muscle. So we have to get the nutrition side, right, that we need to lift heavy. And it's amazing when I have women who are these Yogi's, and they're trying so hard to do bar and all of these physical therapy exercises, and they never get anywhere, seeing body composition changes, or preventing injury, because they're not lifting heavy enough, they start simplistically and having enough and their body changes, they're running up hills with ease, their injury free, shoulder pain goes away, hip pain goes play. You know, that's just one of my clients stories. You know, it's like,

Philip Pape  37:52

it's true, it is so true to all those that many people find it counterintuitive, like, oh, I have knee issues. So I don't squat. Well, maybe if you squat, you'll help your knee. You know, we kind of know this. I mean, I've had sort of a hip labrum tear for a couple of years. But when I squat, it feels great. So it's one of the weird things. How when you talk about lifting heavy, because that's always music to my ears. What does that mean? And let's be very specific, if someone's listening, and they're not doing that yet. And they just want to start working out tomorrow. And they want to just randomly go into the gym and try something to kind of get a feel for that. What would you suggest? Yeah, I

Louise Valentine  38:29

would say start with an exercise that you're comfortable with, you have good form. So if you're not with a certified into professional who can help you ensure that your form is correct, start with an exercise you're comfortable with and have good form, lifting heavy enough, in particular female 35. And over is looking at 10 reps or less, in my personal experience, and her science, and some of the women female specific science out there, that's a great place to aim for. What does that mean? It means that by the time you get to that 10th rep, you cannot lift another you maybe you can get one more, but if you can get 1314 15 I call that essentially physical therapy, exercise, you are getting a beautiful range of motion, which is great, but you're not going to build lean muscle or prevent injuries very effectively. Also, I would rather have you pick up a weight and get five great reps than get 15. So let that sink in. And not only that, how much shorter does your workout become? Yes. workout for 15 to 20 minutes, and actually this great changes in my body. It's people It's explosive people's mind, like your life is gonna change for forever. You're you're lifting more efficiently.

Philip Pape  39:42

Oh my gosh, you save time longer rest periods. It's I always call it the lazy persons way to get fit is lifting. Well, it's so funny because I'm doing physical therapy for my shoulder and it's all 15 reps, five second holds and it's like, not that it's torture. I'm glad I'm doing it because I It's a lot isometrics. But I'm like, if I had to do this with weights regularly, I can see why people would give up, you know, like people give up on their gym routines, because they're doing a lot of reps. So what you just said is a good point, if you're only doing six reps, eight reps, 10, whatever, they're really hard, you're gonna get that great feel not necessarily a pump, you don't always chase that you don't always choose soreness, but just like, feel like you put some strong weights around. It's empowering. And it takes us time. So why not?

Louise Valentine  40:25

That feeling that you're strong. Like, you know, that's what we need to feel 35. And over, we need to remember how incredibly strong we are, how incredibly athletic we are, we can do that at any age. And the fact that people tell us that we can't that is the story of burned out bloated and broken. We're, we need to rewrite it.

Philip Pape  40:45

For sure you can be strong in it. I don't care if you're you know, 65 and never lifted weight. Go do it. Louise is talking about with a move that you're comfortable with that you can have good form. And if you're not comfortable, and that's okay, find somebody that can help you get comfortable. A lot of options out there, including Louise. And I do want to ask this question. I don't know if I had this in the list back when we first met, but it's the one I always ask. And that is, is there a question you wish I had asked? And what is your answer?

Louise Valentine  41:12

I think the best question that no one's asking, as Ken and are women endurance athletes, putting the pedal to the metal and exacerbating pre menopausal symptoms, having hit them earlier than it should. And I think if we continue to train, as we have in the past, if we continue to have these hard, high volume training cycles for runners, you will, and I know because that's my story. So now I'm rewriting it. I'm helping other women rewrite it and it doesn't have to be complicated. So if you're looking for that simplistic side ScienceBase cutting edge, that is where my zone of genius is in this world.

Philip Pape  41:54

I love it. So yeah, if you the what worked in the past what people think worked in the past isn't what's going to work. The cutting edge simple strategies that Louise teaches will definitely work in. I totally believe it because it's proof is in the pudding in her actions and accolades. Where can people learn more about you, Louise,

Louise Valentine  42:12

you can find me breaking through wellness.com I've got a blog videos, newsletter tips, free resources, and a great community of women that I do coach as well as other, you know, mini horses and offers so I just encourage women to start getting informed and find the practitioner that resonates with you. Maybe it's not me, maybe it's Dr. Stacey Sims, other leaders in the field. Go get yourself educated, find what works best for you, and then own it. You know, don't let anybody else tell you that. There's only one way there's many ways,

Philip Pape  42:43

many ways own it. And if they're listening to this podcast, they definitely want to get educated. So I put those links in the show notes so the listeners can find you Louise, it's great to have you back on again. I learned a lot as always, and I'm sure the listener did as well and they have some great information to run with. So to run with. Yes. So thank you so much. Thank you for tuning in to another episode of Wits & Weights. If you found value in today's episode, and know someone else who's looking to level up their Wits & Weights, please take a moment to share this episode with them. And make sure to hit the Follow button in your podcast platform right now to catch the next episode. Until then, stay strong.

Ep 106: Eating Out While Staying Lean (Even During Fat Loss)

Today, we are diving into a topic that affects everyone. We all know that sticking to your nutrition goals is not something we do in a lab, it’s a battle fought in our everyday lives. And one thing that will always exist in our lives is eating out. Whether it's a business dinner, a social gathering, or a trip, dining out can feel like an overwhelming potential roadblock in the middle of your otherwise day-to-day routine.

But what if I told you that you don't have to choose between enjoying a meal out and engineering that ideal physique you're working so hard for? You can develop a few helpful skills to master the art and science of eating out without missing a beat.

We're talking planning, tracking, real-time decision-making, and even some tricks you've probably never considered. I am arming you with practical strategies, and you'll wonder how you ever dined out without them. By the end of this episode, you'll have a toolkit that will make eating out enjoyable and aligned with your goals.

So, if you're ready to take control of your dining experiences and fuel your performance, both inside and outside the gym, then tune in to today’s topic.

__________

Click here to apply for coaching!
__________

Today you’ll learn all about:

[3:11] Planning ahead
[4:30] Research the restaurant or menu ahead of time
[7:00] Pre-log your meal
[15:30] Strategies for making decisions in real-time dining scenarios
[18:32] Business dinner
[19:59] Navigating social gatherings
[22:45] Tips for travel
[24:12] Creative hacks
[27:58] Key takeaways
[31:52] Outro

Episode resources:

• Ep 93: Ditch Alcohol for a Physically and Mentally Healthier Life with Karolina Rzadkowolska

• Ep 20: How to Stay On Track with Meals, Fat Loss, and Fitness No Matter Where You Are

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Transcript

Philip Pape  00:00

Imagine you walk into any restaurant, you scan the menu, or maybe you did so ahead of time. And you know exactly what you're going to choose to fuel your performance and fuel your physique goals. No longer is it just a reactive, emotional decision. It's a planned part of your personal strategy. And that is the power that you now have your hands. Welcome to the Wits & Weights podcast. I'm your host, Philip pape, and this twice a week podcast is dedicated to helping you achieve physical self mastery by getting stronger, optimizing your nutrition and upgrading your body composition. We'll uncover science backed strategies for movement, metabolism, muscle and mindset with a skeptical eye on the fitness industry, so you can look and feel your absolute best. Let's dive right in. Wits & Weights

Philip Pape  00:49

community Welcome to another solo episode of the Wits & Weights podcast in our last episode 105 Strength, power and vitality for women at any age with Cheryl I love I love. Cheryl and I discussed the art of movement, the challenges faced by women and fitness and actions you can take to enhance vitality and build confidence No matter your age, or where you're starting from, including some self defense strategies. Go check that out episode 105. If you missed it today for episode 106 Eating out while staying lean. Even during fat loss, we're diving into a topic that affects everyone myself included. We all know that sticking to your nutrition goals is not something that we do in a controlled metabolic lab. It's a battle that we fight every day in our lives. And one thing that will always exist in our lives is eating out. Whether it's a business dinner, a social gathering, you're just going out on the weekends, you're just on the road, dining out can feel like an overwhelming potential roadblock in the middle of your otherwise day to day routine. But what if I told you that you don't have to choose between enjoying a meal out and engineering that ideal physique that you're working so hard for? What if I said that you can develop a few helpful skills to master the art and science of eating out without missing a beat, because after all, eating out and living your life is more the norm than the exception. And so if we think that way, and kind of ditch that all or nothing, and have strategies in our back pocket, we can be successful all the time, forever. Now we're talking about planning, tracking, real time decision making, and even a few little tricks I have at the end of the podcast that you want to stick around for that maybe you haven't heard of. I'm arming you with some strategies that are so effective, that you're going to wander out, wonder how you ever dined out without them. And then by the end of this episode, you'll have a toolkit that will make eating out not just enjoyable, but also aligned with your goals. So we can definitely have your cake and eat it too, literally and metaphorically. So if you're ready to take control of your dining experiences and fuel your performance, both inside and outside the gym, let's dive into today's topic, eating out while staying lean, even during fat loss. So we know the importance of this because this is part of our everyday life and living a lifestyle that is aligned with our goals and not thinking in terms of things having to be exactly the same way every day, but rather how do we adapt to the real life situations that come into our lives? So I want to start with planning ahead. In other words, thinking about the fact that these things will occur no matter what kind of like, you know, I don't know, if you celebrate Christmas, it happens every year on December 25, no matter what. And to be surprised that you didn't budget for some gifts, is really on you, because you knew it was coming. So we know that dining out is going to happen unless you live in a cave again. So the role of planning is to avoid these impulsive, emotionally driven choices that tend to be less nutritious or healthy or what have you, less aligned with our goals, right. That's the role of planning. There are also psychological benefits of planning ahead. Some people think the gut reaction to planning is oh, that sounds like work. But it actually reduces your what's called decision fatigue, right, the need to make a decision in the moment actually gives you clarity, and reduces your stress, right? It reduces the stress associated with eating out because now you have a plan at any one time. And you're able to execute on it without really thinking about it. So one way to do this is to research ahead of time, where you're going and what's available. So for a restaurant, this would be using a restaurants website, or their app, you know, to look for nutritional information if it's a chain restaurant that oftentimes by law, or just it's a matter of course of business, they'll have these up on their website. If it's a more local restaurant, oftentimes they won't have that, but they will at least have their menu. So you can go and look on their menu and start to browse ahead of time. Think about the options that you want. things that are associated with your macro targets with your goals with, you know, protein rich food, maybe lower oils and sugars and fats, kind of the hidden fats, but still things that you would definitely enjoy. And very common thing here is just think about what you would eat at home. And now, how would you construct that? And now how would you construct it from a menu in a restaurant. Now, granted, you're going to a restaurant because it's a special occasion. Even if it is a once a week week thing, it's still special, right? And you're probably doing it to enjoy company and go out and have a different environment and so on. And you can still choose foods that are similar to what you would eat at home, even though prepared by someone else, maybe, maybe they're a better cook than you maybe different seasonings and so on. So we're talking things like lean meats and vegetables and things that where you can see the ingredients, and so on. So it's really up to you to do that. But definitely look at it ahead of time, if you can. And then to go along with this, let's say you don't have access to the menu, or you don't have time to look at the menu or whatever. Or you don't even know where you're going, for example, you know, somebody else is taking you there, you can set what's called a you can set for yourself what's called a personal food plan. Okay, this is not a meal plan, not a meal plan where you have, this is what you eat, when and how much. But a food plan is more your guidelines, I hate to say the word rules, because rules always imply rigidity. But these are your own personal rules for yourself. So you still have 100% of the power, and agency. So setting your guidelines for the food choices. When you can't see the menu ahead of time, like we just talked about prioritizing lean protein, and vegetables, or deciding how many drinks you're going to enjoy what type or what types of desserts or appetizers, you can get as broad or specific as you want, you can get as detailed or not as you want whatever works for you. And this could be in your head, this could be on an index card, you know, in your pocket, this could be in your phone in a note app, or reminder what happened. super flexible, okay. The other thing you can do ahead of time, is log your meal ahead of time either as a planning mechanism, or because that's exactly what you're gonna get. And so what I mean is, a planning mechanism could be, you know, generally what kind of restaurant you're going to, and what you want to eat. So you go ahead and you pre log it, you know, maybe Today's Friday, and tomorrow, Saturday, you're gonna go out on Saturday, you go ahead and log it in your app. Now, again, I use macro factor, I highly recommend it. If you're going to use it, I'll include a link in the show notes with my code to get to an extra free week, my code is Wits & Weights. So you go download macro factor from the App Store, and use my code Wits & Weights, and it's a great meal planning tool, because you can log the meal, you can see what the impact is on your macros and calories. And then you can then you have a few choices to make, you can either adjust what you're going to have at the restaurant, because it's just too far off of what you want. Or you can plan the rest of your day ahead of time, or even today or this week leading up to that day, so that the whole week works out the way you want it to. And one way to do this is what we call calorie banking. And that is just earlier in the day, or even earlier in the week, just making sure that you are hitting maybe a little bit more tight, tighter calorie target. So this is especially the case if you're at maintenance or in fat loss, where you're trying not to exceed a certain number of calories each week, because you're trying to induce a certain change in your body mass and your fat mass over time. If let's say your daily calorie goal is 1800, you might say okay, I'm going to aim for about 1600 each day for five days leading up to this special event, and I'm gonna sort of bank 1000 calories for the week. To add to that day, that's perfectly fine, right? It's just shifting calories, you're not doing it in an obsessive way, like down to the ground down to the down to the calories really just being smart and planning ahead, making it all work. Alright, so that's everything, those are things you can do ahead of time. The second thing you can do is tracking. Alright, so we're going to talk about how to track all this stuff, because I get a lot of concerned questions, both from clients, and really anybody listening who says, Well, I'm gonna go on a trip for the weekend, I have no idea if I can track and this and that. And it's understandable that you don't want to take your scale at your party scale or your food scale on a trip, right? We don't want to be seen as weird or that person who's doing that. If you want to do that, if it makes sense to do that. That's your choice, right? But let's say you don't. All right, so we're talking about flexible dieting here, right? The idea of fitting various foods that you enjoy into your macros and calorie goals as well as your other goals like digestion, hunger, how it makes you feel performance training, and so on. Right? It's not just about macros. In fact, I'm gonna talk about that in a future episode where we compare flexible dieting to If It Fits Your Macros, so stay tuned for that. But the idea here is that we want to at least log the meat To the restaurant in some way, that's within about 30%. Accurate, believe it or not, yeah, 30% is sufficient to get useful data when compared to not tracking at all. So that's a nice wide tolerance fact is very consistent with the idea of flexibility. In that even our login has some flexibility built in. So the if you're using macro factor, for example, the way I would do this is first you can search for either the exact item at that restaurant, like if it's a chain restaurant, you can search the chains name, and then the food item, and you'll probably find it you'll find both the like combination dishes, or like named dishes they have in the menu, you might also find their side dishes and kind of construct it together. And that makes it pretty easy. And then you can just log the amount you expect to have. And I always like to add a little bit of buffer or a little bit of extra calories. So what I'll do is let's say you go to Chipotle, and you get a protein bowl log it is like 1.2, or 1.25, just to account for the fact that they're not going to dish it the exact same way each time. And so I want to be conservative, that's during fat loss. Now, if you're trying to gain weight, maybe you just log one, and then be okay with it if it's overestimated, because you're trying to get more calories anyway. So that's one way. Another way is if you go into a restaurant where it's not in the database, you can still search for similar foods. So if it's going to be a sirloin steak, just look for sirloin steak. Now here, I like to add extra fat in the form of usually just a butter or extra virgin olive oil doesn't really matter. But just throw in a few extra tablespoons in there probably, you know, an extra 100 to 200 calories worth of fat just in case, they're dumping that stuff in there. And, of course, when you get your food, I mean, I've had dishes where it was like, obvious that the oil is just oozing out of every, every inch of the dish. And I definitely padded that fat number when I logged it. So just be aware of those things. Which is also why I like to choose things that don't have a lot of hidden ingredients, things that you can just see, you know, steamed vegetables and, and dry rubbed meats and things like that. And the other thing is you could do is if the restaurant has nutritional info, but the input, the actual dish isn't in the database, you can do a custom food based on that info, or based on the whole meal or whatever, right, like some restaurants will have, let's say a steak dish, and then all the possible sides. And I'll give you all the macros and calories in a big chart, you could just quickly log that as a quick add or as a custom food in your database. So I'm making it sound a little complicated, but it really isn't, once you do it, really it's no different than logging it at home. And the idea here is you're not going to be weighing in on a food scale. If you can weigh in on a food scale, and you're that's part of what you're doing. Of course, it gives you a little more accuracy. But I'm not suggesting to do that when you go out. And then the other thing is eyeballing your portions. So when you log it, if it isn't a standard, like the protein bullet Chipotle, where it's a protein bowl, and it just has everything in there. If you're if you're, if you're logging separate ingredients of the dish, you can

Philip Pape  13:11

Oh, first of all overestimate a little bit, but I like to log everything in grams. From the day I start tracking, and I ask my clients to do this too early on, I say, look, try, try to log everything in grams, food, beverages, whatever. Meat, you know, don't definitely don't use tablespoons and cups, because those are definitely not accurate. But even pounds and ounces, I would, instead of that use grams, so that you're thinking in grams all the time. And it's a normalized unit of measurement. So when you see on a plate, I've got some steak and potatoes and asparagus, okay, that's like 150 grams of that 100 grams of that 125 grams that you know, again, within 30% is fine. And that's what you can estimate it in your head. Now, when you track it, it could be it could be right then in there, but most people don't want to whip out their phone in front of company, you know, that's rude, and track in front of them. So you can quickly take a photo of it, which takes like two seconds. And then later on, you can log it or just look at it and just know what you got and remember it and do it later on. Get we're trying to get within 30% for my clients, sometimes we play a guessing game where they'll take a picture, they'll send it to me later along with their guests for how they logged it with calories macros, and then I independently will guess and we'll see see where they meet because this kind of trains you to get used to what something looks like. Hey, this is Philip and I hope you're enjoying this episode of Wits & Weights, I started Wits & Weights to help people who want to build muscle lose fat and actually look like they lift. I've noticed that when people improve their strength and physique, they not only look and feel better, they transform other areas of their life, their health, their mental resilience and their confidence in everything they do. And since you're listening to this podcast, I assume you want the same things the same success, whether you recently started lifting, or you've been at this for a while and want to optimize and reach a new level of success, either way more one on one coaching focused on engineering your physique and body composition is for you. If you want expert guidance and want to get results faster, easier, and with fewer frustrations along the way to actually look like you lift, go to wits & weights.com and click on coaching, or use the link in my show notes to apply today, I'll ask you a few short questions to decide if we're a good fit. If we are, we'll get you started this week. Now back to the show.

Philip Pape  15:30

So we talked about planning ahead, we talked about tracking. Now what about if you did have to make decisions in real time, let's say you didn't, you couldn't plan ahead for whatever reason, or you didn't plan ahead, and you want to make decisions in real time. Remember, we are trying to reduce decision fatigue by planning ahead. But planning ahead also includes having guidelines and kind of knowing what you're going to pick no matter where you're at. That also reduces decision fatigue. So one thing to do is get used to the way things are described in menus. So looking at certain key words like creamy fried glaze, right, you can kind of tell, based on standard key words, it's going to have a lot of extra fat and sugar in there. Now, again, your choice to have those things. Absolutely. And if that's what you want, and you're gonna go enjoy it. Again, flexible dieting totally gives you that option. And it's just making sure that you track it that way. But if you're looking to get more food and a lower calorie density, for what's on your plate, you definitely could avoid some of those things and get more food and not over exceed your calories, for example. And so that's where you would look for grilled, steamed, baked, right? It's pretty straightforward. But it's good to just be reminded of that, because our eyes can get bigger than our stomachs when we're hungry. And we were like, Oh, look at this, the fried seafood dish. I mean, I love it as much as the next person, person, you know, the fried everything. But it really does add up. So you just want to make sure it fits with your goals. The other thing is tell the waiter the server what you want, right, you can ask for sauces and dressings on the side, you can substitute sides, right, I know the fries are great with a steak, but maybe you want some other vegetable rice and grilled zucchini or whatever they have available. Or maybe mashed potatoes instead of French fries, you know, to get more food for the calories, or a side salad for example, right, it's up to you, you're the you're the you're the customer. And then eating mindfully is another way to kind of stretch your calorie budget when you're eating because you will potentially have leftovers that way, or you'll at least feel full before you get to dessert, for example, things like that. So in the moment, that also helps with the later on decision making during the meal. So you kind of think about the whole thing from appetizers and drinks, to the main meal to the desserts, and just kind of your strategy for how you're going to navigate through it. But also enjoy yourself at the same time. And now if we look at the next section I want to talk about is different scenarios, I'm just going to cover three big ones, I'm sure you can come up with some on your own. If there's a specific scenario I didn't cover and you're still unsure of what to do, definitely always reach out to me here or in our Facebook, Facebook community, you know, Wits, & Weights free Facebook community, and just post your question like, Hey, I'm going to go be doing this. You didn't really cover the details on that in the podcast, what should I do? So the first category is going to be business dinners. Very common a lot of my clients, the very busy demanding lifestyles, you know, they work they may be travel and so on. So a business dinner. And of course, you could extrapolate this to really any dinner out you know, even if it's with your family or for a party. And here's where you don't want to be whipping out your phone to log a bunch of stuff right and appear rude, you could do the quick photo or just log it later. And then alcohol I think it's important here to consider your alcohol strategy where you can either opt for lower calorie options like some hard liquors, but a little bit of it like like vodka or red wine or light beer, you know, something like that, or just decide that you're gonna have alcohol free or a diet soda or something. Now of course always make sure to log it but um, I know when I when I'm at like a business dinner you know, I'm gonna be careful with alcohol because I want to have my faculties fully there together, you know, maybe with your friends or family, it's less of a concern. Now I've been talking a lot lately lately to get off on a tangent about going alcohol free personally because I had surgery about nine weeks ago and I initially couldn't have alcohol because of that. And then I talked to an alcohol expert on I think was episode 93 of the show. Karolina of Jessica Polska and kind of decided to drink alcohol free beer. And I've been doing that ever since and loving it. You know? So think about options like that. Another category is going to be just any social gathering like a party. Right. And one of the things I like to do here is social gatherings tend to have formats that are different than just a regular dinner, you tend to have either like a buffet or a bunch of snacks, right, or a bunch of courses just coming out one after the other. There's alcohol flowing, there's a lot of chatting, and maybe dancing and all sorts of things going on, you're just like, caught up in all the revelry, which is great, right? That's what life's all about. But it's definitely easy to kind of eat a lot more than you expected. And a lot of things that aren't exactly what fit your goals for your macros and other things. So one, one nice thing I like to do is to pre pre eat or preload protein earlier in the day, for a couple reasons. One, it can curb hunger, you know, if you have protein. And then two, these gatherings are often full of foods that have very little to no protein, protein yet tends to be expensive, right and harder to prepare for some of these things is much easier for them to make, you know fried dishes, appetizers, hors d'oeuvres, those kinds of things, you know, yeah, you might might see a cheese and meat plate there or something like that. But you're generally not going to have like big, big things of like steak and chicken and pork, you might I mean, that's awesome if you do, but just assume you're not and preload with protein earlier in the day. And so what you can do is for breakfast and lunch, for example, have a decent amount of your protein for the day in those meals, along with some vegetables to fill you up. But to keep the calories low. The other strategy at these gatherings if it's like a buffet style, or, you know, just just tables of stuff is Apply to apply the art of planning or the art and science of planning in the moment. Meaning, rather than just jumping right in, take your time, scan everything, right, just look at everything, don't get overwhelmed, just start from the left to right, go and look at everything available. And then take your food guidelines that you developed earlier. And go ahead and fill your plate with the things that are important to you. And I mean fill it because I don't want you to leave room for other things and say, wow, I've got room on my plate. So I might as well go get get the brownie over here. And you know, the cookies over here and so on, scan everything, and then fill like half your plate with vegetables, right? Maybe a quarter with protein, and then the rest was in the other quarter with carbs, something like that. Right and or you can start with a protein, again, protein, vegetables, and a little bit of carbs and do that and really fill it up with the things that you enjoy. I'd rather you have like a decent amount of those things to fill you up that also serve your goals, and then you're not so hungry for the other stuff, but you still eat a decent amount. Okay, so that those are some basic strategies for social gatherings. And in travel, I mean, I did a whole episode on travel quite a while back, it's 20 something I think long time ago about how to handle that. The very basics I'm going to touch on here is packing things to go packing things for your trip, like your protein powder, protein bars, meat sticks, or jerky, your shake bottle like just to get have an easy protein option. If there's just nothing there, right, you could always just have have a whey protein, shake a scoop or two and top off your protein and get like 3040 grams of protein, right? They're very easy. organ meat sticks. I like the first form, meat sticks. And they're the protein bars as well make sure it's the kind of protein bars that won't melt, right, because some of them have like a chocolate coating. And those can get all nasty and sticky. If it's hot, or even in the plane, you never know if you're flying, but the temperature changes. So pick something that's more hearty than that. And then you can. The other thing I like is if you're staying at a hotel, if there's one or two meals a day that you can make somewhat of a just routine, kind of like you're at home or you can just cook them yourself. That's a nice way to blunt the effects of the other part of the day, which is probably going out or doing these big parties or what have you. So there's a lot more tips I have if in the last episode on this again, I don't have the number off the top my head and I want to continue getting through to today's episode. But if I can remember to do that, I will put that in the show notes for you. Alright, the last thing are just a few little creative hacks that come to mind. I'm sure you can come up with more. But I'm gonna give you three today just to keep it simple. The first one is called the half plate trick. And all this is is when you first order your food at the restaurant immediately asked for a TO GO Box. You might You might have heard this technique before but as for TO GO Box and pack half the food in the toolbox. So I don't know let's say you're going to Olive Garden. You know, you've been convinced to go to Olive Garden and pretty much everything they have. There's pasta dishes now. I'm sure there's some leaner, leaner options you can get if you want but hey, I like chicken alfredo as much as the next person and maybe that's what I'm going to order knowing that it's probably, you know, a 2000 Calorie dish probably I don't know all that fatty Korean Even while the pasta, but it's delicious. So I'm going to ask for a box, I'm going to throw half of it in the box. And now my plate is still got a decent amount of, you know food mass in there. And I'm going to act like hey, I'm just eating the whole thing today, I'm just going for it and I'm eating the whole thing. But really, it's only half of what you ordered, right? You could do that with the bread, even, you could just put like, if you were going to have a second bread stick, put that bread stick in the TO GO Box and so on. That's one trick. The second trick is just a lottery trick, right drinking a full glass of water before your meal arrives. Very simple thing. But we get caught up in our conversations. And sometimes your glass just sits there all the whole time, right and it's like, pretty much full, go ahead and gulp down that water right away. So that it fills up your stomach a little bit reduces the satiety signal, or increase the satiety signal. And maybe you will not feel like just devouring everything that's put in front of you or going for the appetizers and so on. And then the third trick is just the mindfulness trick of putting your fork down between bites. And I like this trick because it doesn't require all the hate to say like whoo, mindfulness stuff that we all struggle with. And I personally, like have tried all the mindfulness things of, you know, listening to my food as I chew it, turning everything off this. But look, you're out at a restaurant with other people and you're talking, you're distracted. So you can't do that. But guess what, you can just put the fork down after a bite, and then pick it back up. Just like when you cut meat, instead of cutting with the right and then putting it in your mouth and your left. Do it like what do they call it American style, where I think that's what it's called, where you cut it, put the fork, put the knife down on the plate, swap forks, the fork to the other hand, and then eat, it just adds a little more time and causes you more mindfully what does this do, it allows you time to digest to enjoy and stretch the food out. And then your body sort of catches up, despite all the distracting things going on, and conversations and fun that you're having. So that perhaps you aren't tempted, let's say to eat way more than you otherwise planned. Alright, so those are the the key strategies, I'm sure there are many more. I know. In fact, there are many more that I've shared with clients over the, you know, the time that I've been coaching, but I wanted to give you some basic hard hitters that are really easy to implement, that can have a big impact on your success when you eat out. And I definitely encourage you to take one or two of these and apply it to your next experience. You know, you don't have to do the whole thing. Just go back look at the timestamps jumped to the thing that you want to re review or review and apply it in your real life. You know, this weekend, for example, this episode comes out on a Tuesday. So you've got a few days to plan, you could do the calorie banking. Or you can look at the menu, right? There's all these strategies. So we're talking about planning, being flexible, reducing decision fatigue, using tricks to kind of trick your mind into being more mindful when you're eating. And we talked about different scenarios. And the key takeaways are preparation, personalizing it to you and being mindful. So now imagine you walk into any restaurant, you scan the menu, or maybe you did so ahead of time. And you know exactly what you're going to choose to fuel your performance and fuel your physique goals. No longer is it just a reactive emotional decision. It's a planned part of your personal strategy. And that is the power that you now have in your hands. And I can't wait to hear how you implement them. So I want you to go out there dine smartly, and share your experiences by reaching out to me again, you can reach me and a whole bunch of places Instagram at Wits & Weights is one another is in the Wits, & Weights, Facebook community, all these links are always in my show notes whenever you need to find them. And again, these are the kinds of strategies I help clients with every day. Now they're going to be much more highly tailored for the individual. If if a client has a specific thing that is tripping them up, I'm going to attack that with them. We're going to creatively come up with a solution but the principles are the same. Planning ahead making it work for

Philip Pape  29:03

you be mindful. So the last thing I want to mention, this is I don't think I've mentioned this on the podcast. But if I haven't, I'm I remiss on, you're missing out. And I'm remiss on not having done it. But every week, I send at least three emails a week, sometimes four or five, to my email list with these kinds of strategies. And they're things that you may not find on the podcast, right? They're things that come to my mind sometimes that that morning, and I have an epiphany or something that I recently have to client with. It's very specific, and he's gonna be helpful, or just gently reminding you of the general principles of progressive overload, flexible dieting, intuitive eating, you know, talking about forms of training, all these things that you're not going to necessarily find on the podcast. And if you want those, it's easy to get on my list. You just go to wits. & weights.com/email, that's it. wits & weights.com/email Or, again, you can click the link in the show notes that says Get Phillips emails here. Okay, so again, you can go to wits & weights.com/email, or click the link in the show notes that says Get Phillips emails here. And in our next episode 107 The secrets of zero injury running while optimizing body composition with Louise Valentine. So Louise is going to return to the show, she was one of my earliest interview guests. She was in fact, the first interview guests that I didn't know prior to her coming on my show. And she's going to share some exciting strategies and considerations for female endurance athletes. So I usually don't work with endurance athletes myself, and I'm happy to have you guys learn about what Louise can do for endurance athletes who also care about body composition, who want to be competitive, right, who want endurance to be kind of their primary mode of training. You know, again, here on this show, our primary mode of training is usually strength training, resistance training. And Louise talks to women, particularly women 35 And over who love to run, and maybe juggling multiple goals to lose weight and lean out while still enjoying their sport. So if you're interested in both running and achieving your physique goals, check out our next episode 107. To get notified of those new episodes, and help others find the show. Just follow or subscribe in your favorite podcast app. Do it right now I want you to pause and make sure you've clicked the little toggle to follow or subscribe whatever it says in your app right now, because otherwise you you just will miss out on the next episode. And this is what also one of the best ways you can support the show, because the more people that are subscribers or followers, the higher it gets ranked so people can find it. And again, you will have to manually download individual episodes. So just click follow or subscribe in your app please. That's very helpful. As always, stay strong. And I'll talk to you next time here on the Wits & Weights podcast. Thank you for tuning in to another episode of Wits & Weights. If you found value in today's episode, and know someone else who's looking to level up their Wits & Weights, please take a moment to share this episode with them. And make sure to hit the Follow button in your podcast platform right now to catch the next episode. Until then, stay strong

Ep 105: Strength, Power, and Vitality for Women at Any Age with Cheryl Ilov

Today, I am speaking with Cheryl Ilov, a dynamic force who challenges the misconceptions of aging, fitness, and the power of the female spirit. She is a physical therapist, martial artist, dancer, and author.  With over 20 years of experience in private practice, she has helped thousands of clients recover from pain and injuries by integrating the science of physical therapy with the art of movement.

Cheryl is also a second-degree black belt in an ancient Japanese martial art called Ninpo Tai Jutsu, which she began training at 47. She is the author of two books: “Forever Fit and Flexible: Feeling Fabulous at Fifty and Beyond,” and “The Reluctant Ninja: How A Middle-Aged Princess Became A Warrior Queen.” She hosts The FemiNinja Project podcast, which is about overcoming obstacles, personal empowerment, restoring human dignity, and alternative health and healing.

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Click here to apply for coaching!
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Today you’ll learn all about:

[2:40] Cheryl's passion for self-mastery
[7:15] Misconceptions about aging, fitness, and being a woman
[10:43] Definition and significance of the somatic movement
[13:27] Your perspective on vitality
[17:14] Top 3 recommendations for enhancing vitality
[22:44] Starting martial arts training at 47
[29:05] Your unique challenges as the only woman in your martial arts class
[35:09] Breaking gender barriers in martial arts
[41:39] Comparison of Ninpo Tai Jutsu with other martial arts forms
[44:30] Overcoming intimidation for women in martial arts
[49:45] Practical application of martial arts in real-life threats
[54:37] Safety and empowerment techniques for women
[59:59] One question Cheryl wished Philip had asked
[1:01:01] Where to learn more about Cheryl
[1:02:37] Outro

Episode resources:

• Website: cherylilov.com

• LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/cherylilovvitalityconsultant 

• Podcast: The FemiNinja Podcast 

• Books: Forever Fit and Flexible: Feeling Fabulous at Fifty and Beyond and The Reluctant Ninja: How A Middle-Aged Princess Became A Warrior Queen

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Transcript

Cheryl Ilov  00:00

We talk a lot about training our spirit. So it's not just training, you know this even with what you do in the fitness industry, it's not just physical. You know, you're actually strengthening and growing your entire being. And especially as a martial artist that's really really important to us and I could feel my spirit starting to rise, I could feel my spirit getting stronger.

Philip Pape  00:25

Welcome to the Wits & Weights podcast. I'm your host, Philip pape, and this twice a week podcast is dedicated to helping you achieve physical self mastery by getting stronger. Optimizing your nutrition and upgrading your body composition will uncover science backed strategies for movement, metabolism, muscle and mindset with a skeptical eye on the fitness industry so you can look and feel your absolute best. Let's dive right in. Wits & Weights community Welcome to another episode of the Wits & Weights Podcast. Today I'm speaking with Cheryl I love a dynamic force who challenges the misconceptions of aging fitness and the power of the female spirit from her starting martial arts at 47. eventually becoming a black belt to her unique perspective on somatic movement and its integral role in vitality. Cheryl integrates the worlds of dance martial arts and physical therapy, we will explore the art of movement, the challenges faced by women in fitness and actions you can take to enhance vitality and build confidence No matter your age, or where you're starting from. Cheryl is an author, speaker, physical therapist, martial artists dancer and former chronic pain patient. With over 20 years experience as a physical therapist in private practice. She has helped 1000s of clients recover from pain and injuries by integrating the science of physical therapy with the art of movement. Cheryl firmly believes that our body has an incredible capacity to heal itself, and that everyone can enjoy vibrant health and vitality at every stage of life. She's also a second degree black belt in an ancient Japanese art called Ninpo Tai Jutsu. From her own experience of beginning training at the tender age of 47 and becoming her teacher's first female Black Belt. 10 years later, she discovered that there's an incredible amount of strength and power in each and every one of us just waiting to be unleashed. Cheryl is the author of two books, one titled forever fit and flexible, feeling fabulous at 50 and beyond. And the reluctant ninja how a middle aged Princess became a warrior queen. She's also the host of the feminine Joy project podcast, which is about overcoming obstacles, personal empowerment, restoring human dignity, and alternative health and healing healing. Cheryl, it is so good to finally meet you and have you on the show.

Cheryl Ilov  02:37

I thank you, Philip, it is an honor to be here. I really appreciate it.

Philip Pape  02:41

So you've got quite the background. We were talking about that before we started. And we're going to dive into some of that it. This is a time when people are always seeking shortcuts, right? This is a time when people get complacent as they age, this is what I see at least. And here you are you dive into martial arts at the age of 47. You're a dancer, physical therapist, you talk about unleashing strength and power. One term that I've often used on this show is is self mastery, specifically physical self mastery, but even in general, and it's something that I really admire about you and your story. So what is the driving force behind your passion for this mastery?

Cheryl Ilov  03:17

Oh, wow, what a great question. Honestly, Phillip, I think what it is, is my incomparable stubbornness, and my resilience or not my resilience, but my resistance to accepting the status quo. You know, as we mature, some people might call it age, but I say we mature. As we mature, we start to hear things like well, you're never going to be able to do this again. Or you have to be careful. You know, I just spoke with a retired orthopedic surgeon yesterday for my podcast, and talking about, you know, like bone density, bone loss and the fear that comes along with aging, because we're told that all of these horrible things are going to happen to us. And it's not necessarily true. Because what we believe is what we become. And if we hear that those labels when you're getting older, you're getting frail, you're you're gonna lose bone density, you won't be able to do these things. Eventually, we believe that and what we believe is what we become. So I think it's really important for us, as we get older to flip the script and kind of look at what do we want our life to be like, over the next 510 years, you know, project ourselves see ourselves as in our 60s 70s 80s. And that, to me really kind of lights a fire underneath me, especially because I've been told so many times about the things that I wouldn't be able to do. I was a chronic pain patient when I was in my mid 30s. I went through another really difficult time when I was in my 40s and both times I had people almost I felt like they were patting me on the head and saying Don't you worry it's going to be okay and we are going to take care of you. And that was just what I needed to hear here because I don't want anybody taking care of me. And I don't want anybody telling me what I can and cannot do.

Philip Pape  05:07

That stubborn streak is relatable to me at the very at the very least, it's funny, my wife and I both have that sometimes they say opposites, opposites attract, but we're actually very similar. So it kind of butt heads in that way. But it's always fun. Because you're right. It's like why, why do we need to accept where we are? Why can't we do what is physically possible, mentally possible. And many of us, we don't discover that, until we have some of that wisdom of as you said, maturity age, whatever it is, that we may have been afraid in our 20s, or people been telling us things for years. And at some point, you just listened to it because you don't know any better, perhaps. And then the wisdom starts to reveal itself as you try things right. And as you take that action, so I love that idea of just doing it and saying forget what these people say. The other thing is Cheryl, right. Outliers tend to be the ones that that make progress. I don't know about you. Have you found that that just, you know, the status quo is where the complacency lies, and that outliers are the ones that are kind of changing the world.

Cheryl Ilov  06:07

Absolutely, and the ability to go out of your comfort zone. And there's a reason why we don't like to go out of our comfort zone, because it's pretty uncomfortable. So we do like what's known. And we do like to kind of stay in the status quo. But I think along with the incomparable stubbornness comes that once and the wisdom as we get older, it's, it's the adversity, you know, we all have a lot of issues and obstacles in our life and challenges, and how we deal with those adversities. And come out through it on the other end, is basically how we are setting ourselves up for the rest of our lives. Yeah,

Philip Pape  06:47

for sure. And part of that adversity, for many of us comes in the physical world, right with when it comes to fitness and health. And I always argue that health is the most important thing you have, because it enables everything else in your life, no matter how important all those other things are. So we focus on getting stronger. We talked about movement, nutrition mindset on this podcast, and then cultivating that agency to constantly improve to bust through the status quo. So I want to set some context here in your journey to feeling fabulous at 50. Right? What are the most commonly spouted misconceptions you that you alluded to that do hold people back about aging and fitness? And feel free to add being a woman to the mix?

Cheryl Ilov  07:30

Okay, well, you know, I think being a woman is not that much different, I guess, then, you know, men go through the same experiences as well, just maybe in a different way, but that we are being told that, you know, the experts, the from media, from the health experts, of what to expect, when we're aging, and again, using air quotes, that of course, we're going to be losing our bone density. So we have to be really careful, you know, it's natural to start losing your balance, you know, you're going to need these medications. You know, all of these things that we have to do, it's almost like it's a prescribed course of action that is inevitable,

Philip Pape  08:10

inevitable. Yes.

Cheryl Ilov  08:12

That's not true. And as you said, in my introduction, I am a former chronic pain patient. And that happened when I was in my mid 30s. And I was a chronic pain patient for two and a half years. And I was a medical professional. At that point. I was not a physical therapist, I was a respiratory therapist. So I was doing everything that I was supposed to do, according to the western medicine model. You know, I went to all the PT appointments, I took the medications I did the stupid exercises and stretches that the PTS gave me, went to all the doctors appointment, my life was just a mess. It was horrible. And you know, I'm sure I was depressed back then I couldn't even identify it. I was in too much physical pain. But after two and a half years, I finally realized, Hey, I'm not only not getting better, I'm getting worse. And this regimen that I was following, I think was keeping me in that pain spasm cycle that I couldn't get out of. So it wasn't until one of my doctors told me that I would never be able to do my laundry in my grocery shopping all in the same day. Because the arthritis in my spine was so severe, I would end up being bedridden that it was just like whoa, wait a minute, you don't understand I'm planning on going back to ballet class. And she actually laughed in my face and said wait a minute, you don't understand you are a chronic pain patient you will always be a chronic pain patient. You will never have the life you wanted or the life you had before. Even if you couldn't go back to ballet. You can't do that. You're way too old. And she knew that one of my goals was to go to physical therapy school, get my master's degree and she says you can forget about PT school because you are way too damaged. You are way too broken. And even if you could do the work, which you can't, you are way too old. I was 36

Philip Pape  09:57

that that is unbelievable. And you mentioned and all of those things like bone balance, no bone density and balance and medications being inevitable. And it's almost like the cause and effect are flipped, right? Like, these things get that way, probably because we're not doing the things that we should be doing and could be doing. And now we want to do those things. And the medical establishment is kind of stuck in there, what I call sick, sick care mode, rather than healthcare mode. So that so that that's fascinating. And being a physical therapist, I'm going through left shoulder therapy as well. And you kind of see those messages, even in that industry where don't do too much like don't take it too fast, you know, take it easy. And here I am wanting to train and get stronger. And you got to have the right to the right mix. So let's segue into the somatic movement, because I want to understand more about that. I think about it in your book, which is up behind you, forever flexible. My personal association with that is like the mind body connection, at least in the context of strength training, but maybe that's a narrow slice of what you mean. So what is somatic movement? And why is it important? Well,

Cheryl Ilov  11:04

absolutely, it is the mind body connection, and the somatic movement, it's like taking that mind body connection and really fine tuning it and taking it to a much deeper level. As well as being a physical therapist. I'm also something called a Feldenkrais practitioner. And it's a it's a four year training program. And it is basically a very highly sophisticated form of neuromuscular reeducation, based on the scientific principles of neuroplasticity, that our brain and our nervous system and our bodies, our mindset can change, all during the course of our lifetime, that we are incredibly malleable beings, starting with our nervous system in our brain. And the funny thing is, Phillip, you're gonna love this when I was in physical therapy school, we were taught and that wasn't really that long ago, I graduated in 96. We're taught in all of our neurology classes that this incredible miracle of nature's want to call it this neuroplasticity disappears at the age of 14 that has that point. You know, we're so hard wired that we can't change anything. And how depressing is that you want to think about it. But of course now neuroscience has finally caught up with you know, the idea that yes, this neuroplasticity, not only is with us forever, as long as we have a pulse, but it's incredibly powerful. And that we can use this power of neuroplasticity to change our lives and to keep us going in the right direction until the day we take our last breath.

Philip Pape  12:31

It's an empowering thing, right? Like you said to to better your agents. It's like when when some when I get the question, well, I'm over 50, how can I start strength training? Like I'm over 50 It's like this block of once you hit a number or even 40. I mean, I'm 42. And I'm like, I'm not old, come on, you hear that, like, I'm a woman over 40 Is it is XYZ possible. And it's like, you know, you can be 75 and you can lift a barbell and deadlift for the first time, it doesn't matter. And that's why I love your story. Because you're going to talk a little bit about it doesn't matter, it doesn't matter. The bringing the brain into us is really fascinating because the idea of adaptation. Beyond something like evolution, right? We often think of like species and things like that, but in real life in your life as as a biological creature that you can change so many things about your body, with your mind and change your mind itself is really fascinating. So I want to talk about vitality, in that context thriving and kind of link it all together. What is your perspective on that? Right? You talk about this at every stage of life? That's what we're talking about? And what is the most important component for that vitality? You know, if you had to choose just one? Well, first

Cheryl Ilov  13:44

of all, I love the fact that you brought the biology into it, because we can change our biology. And it has even been proven that we can change our DNA. So but that's another long story. But it all does start with your mindset. And that's, I think, where the vitality comes from, as well. Again, we've all had a lot of really terrible things happen in our life journey. Life isn't meant to be easy. I wish it were but it's not. And it's how we deal with a lot of those adversities. I think that really has a lot to do with Vitality. If I look back at some of the horrible things that have happened to me in my life, you know, I could be incredibly angry, I could be bitter. But you don't want to do that, because it's really bad for your complexion. So you know, ladies, don't be bitter. It ages you very quickly. But if you could look at some of those things that have happened to you along the way and kind of flip the script and say, you know, okay, it was really terrible that that happened. And I really struggled mightily as I was going through it, but look at where I am now. And look at where all the opportunities come from those adversities. So to me, that's what vitality is. It's a positive energy. It's a sense of you know what, life really is amazing and it does provide it so many wonderful opportunities, even thinking of look back at the pandemic, that was horrible, really horrible. But look at all the positive things. Well, the few positive things that did come out of that is that we didn't become a lot more connected, you know, through the internet because we have no choice. So now, you know, there's a lot more telemarketing or not telemarketing telemedicine, you know, the podcasting community has just exploded, I get to talk to you, I met you through another podcasting connection. In a couple of weeks, I'm going to be talking to a woman in Israel. It's just amazing how many wonderful things have opened up? Yes, as a baby boomer, I'm here to say the technology is terrifying when you're learning it for the first time. But like everything, you know, change is inevitable. You can either fight the change, or you can go along with it and figure it out.

Philip Pape  15:51

Yeah, right. It's like a like a, like a ship on a wave. You know, a lot of what you're saying reminds me of positive psychology. I remember reading something, how the vast majority of people have positive thoughts, right, even though we out loud, don't necessarily talk that way. In social media. And, for example, cancer patients will often think about how other cancer patients had it worse than them in whatever way that they're going through treatment, and therefore it by comparison, makes things seem better. So you kind of alluded to that of like, bad things happen. They're going to happen. They have happened. And where are you now? And this is the future. And you know, we're always looking forward to what's going to come from that. It's like the question, what would you tell your younger self to change? And, like, often the right answer is nothing, right? Because you won't, you wouldn't have gone through those experiences. So I'm just, you'll find that when I ask questions, share, I go off on tangents and just start talking and thinking out loud, because I love this. The philosophy of all of this.

Cheryl Ilov  16:53

Actually, I love tangential conversation.

Philip Pape  16:56

Good, good, good. Yeah, so vitality in the context of it, starting with your mindset, because again, neuroplasticity, and the physical manifestation of what we think otherwise, we can't do it, right, we can't get healthy, fit, eat better, whatever it is, martial arts without starting there. So if we're going to get very specific and actionable about it, right, so people have something to walk away with, what would you say are, say three things a listener can do to improve their vitality in that context?

Cheryl Ilov  17:26

Okay, well, starting off right now, I would say, three things, turn off your turn off the TV, and the radio, don't listen to the messages that we are receiving, you know, through a lot of the advertisement, because it's just, it's gonna mess with your mind, don't let anybody else influenced you. Second thing is go outside. Even if it's hot, even if it's cold, even if it's raining, take the time just to go outside, be in nature, have some time with yourself and really have that, that moment where you can access your inner being your inner child, if you will, you know, your your deepest thoughts, your desires, you can't do that when you're distracted by, you know, the barking dogs, which of course, we both love, or the television or the radio, you need to do that in absolute silence. When I say absolute silence, I'm not talking about you can hear the birds singing, you can hear the wind in the trees. Those are the things that really help clear your mind. A lot of people will say meditate, I can't say meditate, because I can't do it myself, I would be there

Philip Pape  18:33

to there. I have

Cheryl Ilov  18:36

failed meditation miserably. And I've had so many people, the meditation gurus that have had a lot of them on my podcast, you know, you're doing it wrong. And you know, let me help you, I will help you do it the right way. So I hear that and I say, Huh, one more thing in my life that I'm doing wrong. No, thank you.

Philip Pape  18:55

I don't want to do that. It's an added stressor. Right.

Cheryl Ilov  18:59

So what I do is I will do some movement patterns, I'll do what we call key home, practice, just some martial arts movement patterns, then I can clear my mind, that works for me. So for your listeners, find something that really resonates with you and does work for you. Whether it's, you know, a walking meditation, whether it's just sitting outside and silence, just find what works for you. And that is incredibly powerful. Because that way you can get rid of all the junk, all the stuff that's in the back of your head, you know of what you're hearing those subliminal messages from the media, from other people from the experts, and really figure out what you want for yourself and what you need for yourself at that moment in time.

Philip Pape  19:44

This is really great advice. I mean that let's break these down. The first one about not just turning things off. I mean, I would add social media to the mix. Right? Absolutely. Which I know you were implying that too but just even think news like I used to be a news junkie. And the only news I look at now is like the local paper just to kind of get the headlines. And so my daughters are aware of, you know, I've got two young daughters, they wouldn't even be aware of what's going on. But beyond that, it's just a bombardment of, of trash. It's just like, terribly mixed messages. And not not even mixed. They're highly biased messages, right? Like you said, they're trying to sell you something, fitness industry IgE, all that same thing. So getting away from it is a great idea. You know, go lift weights, go for a walk, or whatever. And then the other thing of having time with yourself, I also, I will tell people, hey, breathwork and meditation are two options to reduce stress, but I don't do them. So you know, I lift weights to reduce stress, I go for a walk to reduce stress, I will walk around the house and just start talking and getting my thoughts out of my brain to do you're talking about of like, unloading things off my mind. So all great advice, I think people going outside and just getting their steps and getting their son is part of the whole beauty of what we have as humans here on the earth. So

Cheryl Ilov  21:07

and I do want to add something else to that, because you gave me a great visual, when you're talking about listening to the news and all that trash just being thrown at you. And it is it's like all of these little torpedoes in a being launched at you. And I got this image of what we do at the dojo, one of the first things we learn as a new martial art student is to evade an attack how to get out of the way. And it's, you know, quite simple. If somebody's going to punch you, and you see it coming, you just step out of the way. And all of that negative energy goes past you, and the person actually goes right into the wall or off a proverbial cliff or whatever all of that negative energy goes back into them. So that's the same thing with the messages that we're getting not only from, you know, the media, social media, maybe even society and our friends and even family messages that they might be telling us that you just get out of the way, just move and just kind of like, you know, duck, you know, bait and switch, whatever, just get out of the way and pay no attention to it. Because words have a lot more power than we think they do.

Philip Pape  22:10

Yeah, yeah, I'm often accused of being too nice a guy when it comes to not taking the bait and kind of jumping into an argument because in the fitness world, there's all the all the camps and all the misconceptions and myths thrown around. And often it's with an attempt to sell something and some people some people's style is to go after that, or even post videos of like, here's why so and so is wrong, and I just don't do that. And I don't even engage and I like that. What you said kind of validates probably why I do that is just to let it brush by you. Just I don't need to waste my time on it. Yeah, okay. So like, I want to talk about the black belt stuff in the mental jujitsu, this this ancient Japanese martial art, I do want to understand what's involved like, what what do you compare it to, but you started training in 47, you got the black belt, 10 years later, you're getting higher levels of that. So you were, I guess, 57 at that point. Most of my clients, probably a lot of people listening are between 30 and 60. On this podcast, I'm guessing. And I've seen, I alluded to before, I've seen the power of somebody who's like 55, they never lifted in their life. And then they start and they start getting these winds of like, Hey, I'm stronger, hey, I can do this thing in my life I haven't been able to do before, not even the building muscle part, which then starts to come as well, and their physique improves and everything else. So I'm on board with your philosophy 100%. The listener still wants to know What were you thinking? When you started martial arts at 47

Cheryl Ilov  23:34

I was thinking I had lost my frickin mind. Pretty much. I did not go willingly. I'll be perfectly honest. Martial arts was never in my on my radar. It was not in my DNA. This is not anything that I would ever in my entire life thought that I would be interested in doing. And my father was a black belt in karate. I have four sisters. So as a father of five girls, you could well imagine since you'd have to. He wanted us to learn a few techniques. And he would always try and get us to go to the gym with him to work out and it was like, too icky. No, you know, that sounded disgusting. And no, none of us took him up on it. I was more of a fussy girl ballet tutus, tiaras, you know, pointe shoes. That's that was my thing. And I met my sensei. He was my acupuncturist, before he became my sensei. I don't know if you've heard this story on any of my other shows, but I'm sure

Philip Pape  24:29

I have but the the audience may not have. Okay.

Cheryl Ilov  24:31

So it's a really interesting story. One of my clients, I needed a new acupuncturist and one of my clients recommended this guy, and she was really picky. So I thought, well, she likes him that he must be okay. So the very first time I went to him and he started putting needles in my legs, he got a very faraway look on his face. And he said to me, you know, with your legs and my coaching, I could teach you how to kill with these things. And I'm thinking all Right, who thinks like this, let alone says it out loud. And I'm laying there on the table going, I think maybe I need to go. But I was literally stuck. I was pinned to the table. I had needles all over me. So unless I wanted to, or try

Philip Pape  25:13

to relax, right, like what was kind of trying to, but he's telling you how you can kill me. Okay.

Cheryl Ilov  25:20

That's my legs. And you know, I mean, I was really shocked and horrified. Well, he did have a martial arts school right next to his clinic. It was like a little duplex. And finally I said, well, thanks a lot. But no, I'll just save my killer legs for ballet class. And I almost thought about not going back to him. But there's something about him I really liked. And you know, I felt so much better after the acupuncture, acupuncture treatment, so I thought I'll stick with him for a while. Well, what he did not know is right before I met him, I had a really traumatic experience. And as traumas go, a lot of times when you know, you try and get help, and you try and report it, a lot of times, you know, people just don't listen. So that's basically what happened to me. So I just stuffed the trauma deep down inside, pasted a big smile on my face and pretended everything was fine. Well, it really wasn't. And mark in the meantime, that was my acupuncturist kept trying to get me to take classes with him. And I'm like, No, this No. So about a year later, the trauma came spewing out. And he was the first person I went to, because I don't know why. But I knew intuitively that he would listen to me and he wouldn't judge me. And he would believe me, which of course he did. So he started treating me for PTSD with needles and Chinese herbs. And she got Sue, which was lovely. And then his campaign to get me on the mat went into high gear. And he kept saying there was such a healing power in martial arts, Cheryl, you need to do this, blah, blah, blah. And I kept looking at him saying, I don't understand how hanging out in a smelly Dojo with a bunch of sweaty men whose goal is to attack me is going to make me feel any better. I'm sorry, I'm just not making this connection. So he never gave up talk about incomparable stubbornness is about three, it took him three years. And after three years, I finally said, you know, he wore me down. I said, Okay, I will take a few classes just to prove to you how much I'm gonna hate it. And then I'll quit. Now,

Philip Pape  27:15

did was he doing this to everyone like this? Was this a sales pitch? Or did he see something in you? Maybe in hindsight, you learned this that where he kept persisting?

Cheryl Ilov  27:24

Well, I don't think a lot of people ask me that. That's a great question. Because when people find out that I ended up being his first female black belt, you know, in 20 years of teaching, he never had a female achieve that high of a rank. You know, people say, Oh, he saw something in you. He saw that inner warrior, he saw this. And I said, No, that's not true. He saw a person who was really suffering, he saw somebody who was struggling. And we had developed a really warm friendship. And he just sincerely sincerely wanted to help me. He had no idea, you know, that I was going to rise up through the ranks the way I did, I had no idea. My goal was to teach him that, you know, he couldn't tell me what to do, because I was going to hate this, this martial art thing. But no, it was just truly amazing. And I'm very grateful to him, you know, to this day, and like I said, I'm getting ready to test for another belt level. And it's been 20 years since I walked into that dojo.

Philip Pape  28:24

Well, I mean, tell us more about that experience, right, because your perspective as a woman, the only woman there in the class, people listening to the show, I mean, we do talk a lot about the, you know, empowering people, men and women, but especially the traditional avatar, I guess, in the fitness world is, you know, a lot of movement. Dhoni, you know, a lot of restriction, you know, lightweights you can't build muscle, you can't be strong. It's this and that. I don't know a lot of is shifted, and hopefully shows like this and others have shifted about your strength is important performance, fueling, building, right abundance, not worrying so much about whatever the ideal body image is, as how do you feel great and empowered yourself? And that's going to give you the image you want. So tell us about your perspective?

Cheryl Ilov  29:08

Well, as far as you mean, being the only woman walking into class,

Philip Pape  29:11

yeah, you're in the fitness world, in general, in the class, all of that, yeah, we will start

Cheryl Ilov  29:17

with a dojo, because that was really weird. You know, I knew I would see a lot of marks students going in and out when I was waiting for my treatment sessions. So I would see the guys they all seemed very nice. And you know, they'd see me through the glass and a lot of them would either smile or wave and some of them would even bow in my direction on going on. That's kind of corny. But so I knew, you know, these guys going in and out. And when Mark, when I finally said, started thinking about maybe taking some classes, I said, you know, I'm really worried about being the only woman in class and he goes, Oh, don't you worry. I have plenty of female students, and some of them are even higher ranking and they would love to take you under their wing and teach you the art of the ninja, and what it's like To be a female ninja and blah, blah, blah, and I'm going, Okay, well, maybe this will work out. But I didn't realize that I never saw any of these women coming in and out of the dojo. So you know, okay, I don't know why I believed him. And when it came time for me to take, I signed up for classes and I said, Okay, I'm going to try this. And he says, Don't worry, there'll be you know, somebody, another woman in class. Well, my first class, not only was there no other woman in class, there was no other woman with like in a three or four mile radius.

Cheryl Ilov  31:16

So there was me with all of these guys, I had just come straight from ballet class, my hair was still in a bun. And I'm looking going, this isn't going to work out so well. And I felt so out of place, and so incredibly uncomfortable. Talk about getting out of your comfort zone. But of course, the men were very gracious, you know, they greeted me, they showed me where the woman's dressing room was, which did not go hand at all to myself. And as awkward as it was, you know, I managed to stay through the whole class. And I even got the opportunity to kick a black belt, which I tried not to, because I'm like, No, I'm not in this for the long run. I don't want to kick you. I've never kicked anybody before. And this black belt is saying, Come on, kick me, you can do it. You can do it. And I could tell he thought I was really adorable. And I'm like, I've never kicked anybody in my life. And I'm not about to start now. And he's up twirling my ponytails. I'm talking to him. And then I says, besides, I don't want to hurt you. And that's when I really thought, you know, he thought I was just absolutely priceless. And he got this big smile on his face. And he said, Don't worry, it's okay. I can take care of myself and you can't hurt me. And I'm like, okay, and then I'm looking like where his belt was located. And I'm looking like in that direction, kind of south of the belt, if you know what I mean. And I says, I don't want to get you in the sensitive parts. And he nodded, and he says, I don't want that either. Just make sure that you aim above the belt. Just kick me you'll be fine. And I'm like, okay, so I didn't know how to kick. So what did I do? I did what I knew. I pulled my right leg up. And I pointed my toes and I drove my point of foot right through his abdomen as if I was dancing and doing a grunt attack. Again, I did what I knew, well, apparently I could hurt him. Because he actually flew backwards and landed on his butt. And Mark, my sensei now have walked over. And he was just looking and Wescott up and said, Wow, that was pretty good. Where did you learn how to kick like that. And Mark was standing next to me. And he looked down at me. And he said, How many years of ballet and at that point, it was only 27. So I said 27. And he's talking about

Philip Pape  33:38

on toe and everything formal. Okay,

Cheryl Ilov  33:42

feet, legs, killer legs. And he looked at the black belt. And he said, Don't let the package fool you. She's a lot stronger than she looks. And it was like, boom, mental head smacking moment. I realized at that moment, I was stronger than I look. And I also realized, and I think is really is very important for the audience to hear, especially for those women out there, that we have life skills, that we can carry on into a lot of different situations that we don't even realize, who knew that the ability to do a grunge day could basically maybe even save my life someday. I had no idea.

Philip Pape  34:24

Transferable life skills, that this is good, because it reminds me of so when I have a new client, one of the questions I asked him are what are your strengths? Like? What are your strengths that we can build from and oftentimes it's a mental strength, right? Or it's a personality kind of strength, but it reminds me of that because what you're saying is, you know, you didn't karate or not karate, the martial arts was brand new to you. But you had effectively worked for years on things that would carry over, right. Similarly, people listening probably have strengths that they are not aware of, or haven't exercised as much and you going into a new venture is the exact place they can exercise those skills. And it's one, you know, it's one less thing to learn one less thing on the learning curve. I think it's a great message. And I'm wondering like, what is that? You know, how can people discover that? Like, do you have any ideas on how can someone discover that? Was it one of these things where you just just try things just just be open to anything? And you never know?

Cheryl Ilov  35:21

Well, you just said it. Yeah. And that is to get out of your comfort zone. Because like I said, I was way out of my comfort zone. And for those of your listeners, who are thinking, Well, you know, I haven't gotten off the couch, or I haven't been exercising. I have a really dear friend who does not exercise. She hates exercise. And she was telling me about it one time on the phone. And she says, Well, I just don't exercise and blah, blah, blah. And I says, Wait a minute, didn't you tell me that you and John went out dancing last night? And she says, Oh, yeah, well, you know, country swing and line dancing, blah, blah, blah. And they danced nonstop for four hours. I'm like, Ronnie, that's exercise. You know, moving is exercise any kind of movement. And for those people who are still maybe a little skeptical, you know how to move. You know how to exercise, you know how to play because you did that when you were a baby, when you were a child? You know, you go back to using like, the environment is your playground. And not worry about am I doing this right? Am I doing it wrong? Just when we were kids, we didn't worry about that. We just moved.

Philip Pape  36:30

It's true. Yeah. But play play should never end no matter how old you are. It's I mean, having kids I definitely see that, you know, when they want me to play with that my, the answer should be yes. As much as it can be, you know, when I'm when I'm not like just like slammed with work or something. Oh, that that's really good. Because what something else came to mind. If I can still have it in my brain. You were talking about movement and dance? Yeah, I guess, two things come to mind. One is the idea that if you can do things that you're already doing in some extent, but but shift shift that in a new direction, it's much lower friction, right, much less resistance to doing something else. The other thing is trying things you've never done before, despite thinking you will, quote unquote, won't like them. Give yourself a chance, because you really don't know until weeks months, and it depends on what we're talking about. But even when you talk about exercise, it's like, if you've never done it before, try it. And then if if you do it right, and you get results that they actually cause you to like it, that like creating that feedback loop. So is that what you found that? I guess how long did you resistance last getting into martial arts before it was like, Oh, I actually love this.

Cheryl Ilov  37:43

Boy, that's a really great, great, great question. But I want to go back to the play. Because you know, when that is really an important part of my martial arts training, and that might sound like really crazy. But just when you're playing, that's the best way to learn. And it takes a lot of pressure off of you. So even when it you know, for those of you who might want to try you know, you know, a dance class or something, be okay with being really bad at it. And be okay with making mistakes. Because that's how we learn is by making mistakes. And whatever you do do it in the spirit of playfulness. And that's the one thing that even on my very first day of that that class even before I kicked Wes in the in the gut, that I was very, I was impressed by how well first I thought it was really stupid. All of the bow wing and the cloud, you know, some of the ritual buying in and stuff. I thought God these people are grownups, I can't believe they're doing this. I'm so silly. But after that all after all of the formal re in how much everybody laughed, and seem to be having a good time, even though they were beating the crap out of each other, which made me incredibly nervous. But they were really having fun. And that's a big part of our training is that we play. So after that first class, I giggled the entire way home. I had no idea why I was giggling. I do know that I had not giggled in a very long time. But there was something about it. I just felt like somebody had lifted a weight off of me. And I felt younger than I had in a very long time. And it wasn't until I but I still wasn't all in. Okay, let's be clear about that. I still wasn't all in this was a temporary gig for me. I was just gonna take maybe a month of classes and then quit because I didn't want it to interfere interfere with my ballet schedule. So I was shocked when I found myself writing a check for the next month's tuition because I thought man, I should be you know, check it out by now. Well, at the end of the third month. While I was still training, one of the guys came up to me and said you need to test for your yellow belt. And I said, Oh no, you don't understand. I don't want to yellow belt. I'm never going to test. I'm just in it to learn a few things. I'm going to quit pretty soon. So there's no reason for me to test. And so this guy badgered me until finally, it was like, just to get an A Shut up. I tested for my yellow belt. And I mean, it was terrifying. I mean, I almost passed out. I was so nervous. It was just absolutely, I'm sure it was an absolute mess. But I passed. And so I got my yellow belt. And I again, I giggled the entire way home, I'm looking at this stupid yellow belt. And it was just like, why am I giggling? Why is this cuz I don't really care. You know, I mean, I don't want this belt. But it was just such an amazing experience. The next day, when I went to the dojo, I couldn't even come out of the dressing room, because I tied my belt. And every time I looked at it, I burst into giggles, it was just I figured at that point, I was kind of liking it, but I still probably wouldn't stay much longer. Three months later, the same guy badges me into going for my second degree yellow belt. You know, you are way too obsessed with all this testing, one or two, just lighten up a little bit. So finally, I tested for my second degree yellow belt. Well, three months later, I got the idea to test for my orange belt. Nobody had to talk me into it. Didn't have to badger me to do it. It was my idea when I realized I know all this material. And at that point, I realized I was all in. However, I never expected to go all the way to Black Belt. Never. Right?

Philip Pape  41:34

That's I'm sure the questions that come to the listeners mind are like, well, if if you kind of found a silly on the way, and these were resistant to doing the testing, why did you keep going from one to the next? Was there something deeper that was like, you know, driving you toward excellence, even though you didn't quite accept the rituals? You know, what I'm getting at? Like, what? Yeah, because he wants to know, like, what, what is the secret? You know, if they have a thing that they want to achieve? Maybe it's some simple thing for their health, maybe it's a workouts whatever? Where does that momentum start to overtake the friction? And what gets you there?

Cheryl Ilov  42:12

Boy, that is a great question. And I'm thinking that momentum and the friction Boy, that describes me to a tee, I really honestly believe what kept me going was the fact that I didn't want a black belt. I didn't care about climbing up the ranks. I cared about living to see another day, or get through another class for the first two years. And a lot of people don't know this. But the first two years that I was taking classes, I would sit in my car and have to talk myself into going into the dojo. And by that time, I knew the guys really well, we were friends. They were we had a wonderful time training. But there was always in the back of my mind, what if something goes terribly wrong today. And I would just kind of force myself once I crossed that doorway. So this is another important message for the listeners. Sometimes you just have to walk through the door. Once I would walk through the door, and I was in the dojo, the smelly dojo, I knew I was okay. And I just wanted to be better at the art, not because I wanted to be a great martial artist. But I wanted to understand the movement patterns better, I started to become really fascinated with the history and the philosophy of the art itself. It's an ancient Japanese martial arts. And so there is an awful lot of, you know, the history and the philosophy in there. As well as the Spirit, we talk a lot about training our spirit. So it's not just training, you know, this, even with what you do, in the fitness industry, it's not just physical, you know, you're actually strengthening and growing your entire being. And especially as a martial artist, that's really, really important to us, and I could feel my spirit starting to rise, I could feel my spirit getting stronger. And you know, it just there were days when, even like today, it's like, I don't think I want to go to class today. But 1130 is going to come along and I'll be driving to the dojo. And sometimes you just have to do it. Sometimes you just have to take that first step. And once you're there, you know, it'll change your whole perspective for your whole day. It can change your entire week. You can change your life.

Philip Pape  44:31

I think what you're saying is really important, because you've been doing this for so long, and yet still there is that thought of am I really going to walk in today, right? And I think people can relate to that because we all want it to be this perfect thing where once you fall in love with the process that it takes no willpower and you just do it and you're on autopilot. And we know that's not the case. I know. I love working out go to the gym. I have a gym at home. And yeah, there's always something about it. Like if it's squat day, I'm just like no Because, but but at the same time, there's so many things pushing you. And, and I know you say it's like forcing yourself, you just have to do it. But I also see that there is a lot of momentum, you mentioned, the knowledge that you are gaining the understanding the movement patterns, you are fascinated by all these different things, the mastery of the material, the history of philosophy, the art, the spirit. So there were enough things where you're like, This is just a fun, you know, part of my life, that if one piece of it is a little bit hard, that's okay, because the rest of it is just, it wouldn't be worth it to skip out on all of that. And so that kind of like, you know, when you set the balance there of momentum versus friction, you've kind of tilted it, which is answering the question that I asked what,

Cheryl Ilov  45:41

right, well, okay, but that this was really haven't touched on this. But the other thing is, the guys once I learned how to communicate with them, because the other was I was 47. I haven't had male friends since college. And you know, ballet class, yeah, there's a few men in class, but it's a completely different energy. And none of them were interested in trying to attack me. And, you know, they're just, it was a completely different energy. I mean, it's not that these guys were so macho, but they were, you know, they were all American men, and, you know, with families and everything. And it's like, I don't even know how to talk to these guys. And eventually, you know, we got to be really good. They didn't know how to talk to me, either. Because the women that would come into the dojo along the way, were a lot less girly than me, you know, they were really wanted to kick butt and all that stuff. And they wanted to be black belts. And it was like, I'm just here for, you know, short term. And, you know, I had to excuse myself and step off the mat. So I could fix my lipstick and my hair. And they're like, No, and, you know, they would try and attack me. And I would just run screaming off the mat going, No, don't don't touch me. And they're like, what was this creature? You don't? Exactly, but it was probably once I got that second degree yellow belt, and they started realizing it started taking me more seriously. And, you know, I can hardly blame them because I didn't take my own self seriously. But they started to help me and give me little hints and tips about how to use my feminine wiles to be able to train better. They also started whispering this word as they passed me Khun Ichi. And I'm like, Well, that sounds kind of dirty. What is that, and it's actually the female warrior. Okay. And so they were playing off of my feminine femininity, and my feminine wiles to help make me a better martial artist. And I have to tell you, this, it's really kind of funny. Of course, you know, I said, I have five or four sisters, you know, three girl cousins ballet class for over, you know, now for 40 years. So all of this feminine energy around me, didn't know how to talk to men. And the first time one of them called me to see if I wanted to meet him, you know, off class time to do some training. And you know, so it's like, okay, and after he says, Okay, see you then and he hung up. And I'm holding the phone going, Oh, my goodness, I had no idea that you could carry on a complete conversation in 30 seconds, with a few mono syllables, grunts and a See you at the end of it. And it was like a choir of angels began to sing because I thought this is so liberating. Where's the drama. And it was just like, wow, the way that men communicate is so different and uncomplicated than the way women communicate. That just opened up a whole new world for me.

Philip Pape  48:44

That is true, we're simpletons

Cheryl Ilov  48:50

tend to be very direct. And it's really funny because even in my second book, The Ninja book, under acknowledgments, I acknowledge the many magnificent men in my life because I would not be here doing what I do right now. And having, you know, the, the background that I have, without their help, I will admit, some of them were kind of jerks along the way, but that was okay. But most of them were incredible and really helped me get to where I am.

Philip Pape  49:14

You make a good point that men and women can learn a lot just from the other gender, I mean, that right there in life, there's so much you could learn about I mean, for me being married, learning about empathy and listening and so many skills that I you know, identified with myself as being terrible to build so it's true. You know, I'm curious about the martial arts itself though. I do want to ask about that because just I have it on my list because I want to understand how how practical are these martial arts and to real life situations like maybe you get this question all the time, but if you don't, if somebody came up to you on the street threatened, you pulled the gun something like that, like what, what is this mark style effective as a defense mechanism is

Cheryl Ilov  49:57

very much so very effective. I have never had to use it in that type of a real life situation. But I use the skills and the energy every single day. And I think that's one of the reasons why I'm not a target. And even, you know, sensei had told me one time, he says, you know, you develop an aura, you know, like an energy field around you. And people, no, predators are looking for an easy target. And if they see somebody who looks like an empowered person, they're going to move on and go to somebody else. If anybody ever pulled a gun on me, I pray to God, that never happens. I have no idea what I would do. But I do have some confidence that I would pull something out to save myself. You know, and even, you know, we practice break falls, you know, every class, we have a series of falls and rolls and tumbling, which, you know, I didn't realize that when I first signed up, and that was a big shock. Because getting on the floor, something I did not do well, I'm pretty good at it now. And I even had a spectacular fall. That was, when was that it was New Year's Day. And I'd gone to the dojo. And as I was walking out, you know, the sun had there was it had iced over there was black ice, and I didn't know it. So I was carrying a bunch of stuff in my arms. And one minute, I was just stepping, you know, on the cement. And the next minute, I knew I was on the ground. And I actually had flown up in the air. And, you know, when I hit, it was like, Damn, what happened here, and I looked and all my stuff was scattered around me in a circle, my notebook, my water bottle, my keys, my katana pages flew out of my notebook, I hit that hard. And, you know, the men came running out to see if I was okay, because they heard it and saw it. And I just looked at them. The first thing I said was, did you see my break fall? Because it must have been really spectacular. I was not hurt at all. Wow. I mean, you know,

Philip Pape  52:00

instinctually, you know, I

Cheryl Ilov  52:02

think too, I didn't even think about it. I just intuitively did a break fall. And I always wondered, would I be able to pull it out? I don't want to be challenged like that again anytime soon. And you know what I thought even as I was driving home, man, you know, a little bit of a trauma reaction shaking. And I'm like, No, you know, nothing terrible happened. And I thought maybe I should take an Advil or two, just prophylactically and it was like no, see what you felt like in the morning. And I felt fantastic. I felt great.

Philip Pape  52:28

Now you mentioned tumbling is our grappling like, like BJJ or anything like that.

Cheryl Ilov  52:34

We do do some floor work. But our skill set is basically in standing our philosophy is we never want to get we never want to be on the floor. Because there's always going to be somebody who is far more skilled than we are at the grappling the BJJ mixed martial arts, there's a lot of that our goal is to be able to go home. Okay,

Philip Pape  52:54

so how would you how would you compare it to that and maybe like Krav Maga or boxing, right, which are often touted as like, very strong ways to defend yourself to

Cheryl Ilov  53:03

Yeah, crop. That's great. That's a great, yeah, if you really want to kick ass take names, you know, and really do kill stuff. crops. You want to go home with somebody's DNA underneath your fingernails? Or, you know, yeah, I took a craft class one time, it was a woman's group. And I was invited. And I thought I really don't want to do this. You know, to be a team player, I went along with it. And gosh, they're probably 30 Women in class and one of the women said to the instructors, female instructors, what is the difference between this and some other martial arts? And they looked at each other, and one of them said, it's all martial and no art. Got it? And it actually came out of Israel, and they were trained. Or a secret. Yeah, yeah, to be able to fight without weapons and to be able to kill without weapons. I mean, if you really want to get down and dirty and crop is great for that. It didn't appeal to me because maybe with a ballet background, I'm a little bit more, you know, artistic. And one thing I love about our art, it's very sneaky. Okay? It's not. I mean, if you would look at me walking down the street, you wouldn't think Hey, she's really martial artists, you wouldn't think that right? And that's part of the ninja disguise. Okay,

Philip Pape  54:27

I'm gonna have to look I haven't looked researched and I want to look up some videos or maybe if you have something you want to send me of yourself doing that. I would love to see that. What so if you had to women who are listening to want to know how to protect themselves or increase their confidence or all the things that you gain from this, any any strategies for them, you know, besides just doing exactly what you did, but some everyone's going to have a different thing that works for them.

Cheryl Ilov  54:50

Right? Not everybody is going to want to spend 20 years in a smelly Dojo with a bunch of sweating and getting punched and smacked around and I can totally understand that I wasn't so excited about it, myself at first. But if I just want to list a couple of things, because they're really, really important to me, every time I see a woman doing this, it breaks my heart, please put your cell phone down, there is no text, there is no call, there is nothing that is so important that that phone should occupy your attention instead of your surroundings. Pay attention to your surroundings at all times, not to be hyper vigilant, but to be taking notes. You know, like mental notes like that is an interesting looking person. I wonder why they're wearing that, you know, I wonder if this person looks like they're having a really bad day by their posture, pay attention to your environment, and the people around you is a powerful tool for self empowerment. And you can even this is what I love, because you have two little girls, you could actually even play games, turn it into a game at the park, you know, and, and, Hey, what did you notice? And what color was that dog. And if you have to tell somebody you know where you were at and what things look like that you're training them in a way that's playful too. So it's not threatening, not you have to be afraid of everything. But just to be aware, so that awareness is so appointed, important. Put your phone down, start working on your awareness. The other thing of course, this is the awareness to be careful where you park, not to be worried but to pay attention. Always have your eyes up, look people in the eye, even strangers, smile at them, say hello. Because then people know that you're paying attention, people know that you're looking. And that is very empowering. Pay attention to how you walk and how you stand. When you're talking to somebody, let's say you're in a crowded room and networking of event, I talk with my hands a lot just because I always used to. But even now, when you have your hands in front of you been using them as self expression, they can always be used to knock somebody else's hand out of the way. Never stand with your you know, hands crossed, because that's in front of you. That's considered disrespectful. Hands on hip is considered confrontational. Hands behind your back, you might be holding a weapon. So just be careful of your body language and watch somebody else's body language as well.

Philip Pape  57:15

This is great advice. What about in a restaurant? Do you recommend sitting facing the door? Oh, yeah. Yeah, that's what I've always done. Like my family knows. Like, I'm the I'm the guy who has to sit far from the door facing the door that

Cheryl Ilov  57:28

I want to see everything that's going on.

Philip Pape  57:31

Yeah. Yeah. You know, paranoia is not paranoia when it's when it's what's the phrase? Right. It isn't paranoia. Once it isn't paranoia or something? You know, I don't know what

Cheryl Ilov  57:41

the phrase is. But I just think that that a healthy dose of paranoia is is really important to have. Yeah, everywhere. Yeah. Yeah. Being aware. And again, as you're back to the wall, watching. For the audience, pay attention when you walk into a restaurant, a new building someplace you haven't been before. First thing you do look for the exits. Know where the exits

Philip Pape  58:04

are. Yeah. Even if it's even if it's just for safety if there was a fire or something like that. Right, exactly.

Cheryl Ilov  58:10

We're not thinking nothing bad's gonna happen. But if you wanted to make a quick escape, the other thing is, I used to cringe when Sensei would say this, but everything's a weapon. We all walk around with water bottles nowadays. And that's really a good thing to have. So put your phone in your purse, but your water bottle in your hand. I like the ones that have the little hook where you can kind of swing it a little bit. Make sure it's always full.

Philip Pape  58:39

Yeah, my wife tells me about the keys between the fingers, you know?

Cheryl Ilov  58:43

Okay, but he's between the fingers. The problem with that is you have to be really close to the person.

Philip Pape  58:48

Okay, fair enough. distance there. Yeah,

Cheryl Ilov  58:52

I have something called a kubaton. Okay, so you can look it up, you can, I'm sure you can buy one online kubaton. And it's just a little stick with your keys on the end of it, and you hold it, you know, like, like you're holding a pencil or a pen, and you can swing the keys. Imagine what you could do

Philip Pape  59:09

with that. Okay. All right, kind of like, yes, the

Cheryl Ilov  59:13

last bit of advice I want to share with the audience, especially the women out there, do look into taking a self defense class or two. And don't just take one class and think I'm good. Take it a couple of times, take it with a bunch of girlfriends, have an engine night, you know, and practice some of these techniques with each other. Talk about the philosophies, talk about different scenarios of how you could get out of the way how you could protect yourself, you know, the knowledge is power, and the more you know, the safer you're going to

Philip Pape  59:43

be. Love all this advice. And if you get strong in the process, or you know, focus on your health that way and they complement each other don't because a stronger person who also knows how to fight. That's pretty good. Pretty good combination.

Cheryl Ilov  59:56

That's a happy coincidence.

Philip Pape  59:58

Yeah. All right. So I do like to ask this of all guests. So when I respect your time where I know we're wrapping up here, but is there a question you wish I had asked you? And what is your answer?

Cheryl Ilov  1:00:09

Oh, yeah, I thought about that. Um, I don't know, maybe, if you could have asked me. What would you like your legacy to be?

Philip Pape  1:00:24

Okay, what would you like your legacy to be?

Cheryl Ilov  1:00:28

Hmm, that there's a warrior in each and every one of us, and incredible strength and power. And if I could find mine, oh, trust me, you can find yours.

Philip Pape  1:00:42

Love it. Love it, we're gonna leave it, we're gonna leave it that. Share. This has been a pleasure. There's a lot of great strategies here. For people and a lot of insights. We had myself included. I always love podcasts because we learn through our interviews, and therefore I know the listeners learning. So where can listeners learn more about you and your work?

Cheryl Ilov  1:01:03

You can go to my website, it's Cheryl i love.com. Remember, there was no E at the end of I love everybody puts one on there. Even I do it sometimes out of habit. You can find my website I do have if you sign up for my newsletter, you have access to three what I call, you're gonna love this, Phillip, after we talked about meditation, you have access to three audio recordings of I call it meditation through movement. They're actually somatic movement exercises based on Feldenkrais. They're only 20 minutes long. You can download them and unsubscribe, you can find me on Facebook, you can find me on Instagram, find me on LinkedIn, I'm probably more active there than anywhere else. You can also contact me through my website, if you have any questions, especially if you're a woman, and you're thinking about taking some martial arts classes, and you'd like some advice, contact me, I would be happy to guide you through the process. Because if you do want to study martial art, or even just take some self defense classes, you want to be in the right spot. You do not want to be in the wrong school or the wrong dojo, I was fortunate because I got into a school that absolutely loves women. It's a very friendly, user friendly Dojo so I can give you tips on what to look for.

Philip Pape  1:02:15

Perfect. So I will add those links there. The website IG, definitely Cheryl's super responsive. And if you need help with anything we talked about, I always encourage you to reach out to any of our guests but Cheryl, especially for questions, I'm sure she'll help you out. Cheryl, thank you so much for coming on the show sharing your awesome story, amazing things we can all learn from and take action from so appreciate you coming on.

Cheryl Ilov  1:02:36

Oh, thank you so much for having me, Philip. And I do want to say one last thing. Philip is going to be on my podcast next week. So stay tuned and listen to what he has to say. And the name of the podcast, the feminine Joe project. And men are always welcome on the feminine Joe project. And that's one of the things that I make very clear. I love having guys on the show.

Philip Pape  1:02:58

Yes, yes, you do. And so the feminine is a project you can find it I think it's all one word. It is because if you put a space there it may not show up. So all one word, the feminine to project. You're listening to this show now so it's easy to go follow it and subscribe her show. And then you also catch my interview there and all of her other great episodes. So thank you again, Sheriff for coming on.

Cheryl Ilov  1:03:16

Thank you Philip. Have a wonderful day.

Philip Pape  1:03:18

You too. Thank you for tuning in to another episode of Wits & Weights. If you found value in today's episode, and know someone else who's looking to level up their Wits & Weights. Please take a moment to share this episode with them. And make sure to hit the Follow button in your podcast platform right now to catch the next episode. Until then, stay strong.

Ep 104: Fat Loss vs. Weight Loss

Today, we get into the very relevant differences between two terms that seem similar on the surface, fat loss and weight loss, but are polar opposites in terms of the behaviors you would take to achieve them.

One of these can be downright destructive to your body, leading down a dark path that you’ve probably been down before, many times, that sacrifices your health and physique for the sake of hitting a number. The other drives you to make the changes you need and want to vastly improve your health and physique and do it in a sustainable, life-altering way that aligns with your body.

We talk about the semantic differences in how we use language in the fitness industry regarding the terms ‘weight loss’ and ‘fat loss.’ We talk about why fat loss is more important than weight loss. We also talk about the dangers of crash dieting and yo-yo dieting, and how they can backfire and make it even harder to get the results you want. Finally, we talk about how to achieve fat loss to get the exact results you want without the negatives of weight loss.

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Click here to apply for coaching!
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[3:43] Weight loss vs. fat loss, definitions, and industry problems
[7:51] Struggling with weight loss before the wedding
[10:52] Unsustainable cycle of crash dieting and weight regain
[12:30] The backlash against weight loss and extreme approaches
[15:27] The debate between restrictive dieting and intuitive eating
[17:23] Using a data-based approach for efficient weight management
[26:32] Losing fat instead of losing weight
[28:13] Combining strength training with proper nutrition for muscle-building
[32:34] Recovery and stress management for a better physique
[37:24] Focus on fat loss
[38:09] Take action now for successful fat loss
[40:23] Outro

Episode resources:

• Ep 88: Break the Cycle of Body Fat Overshooting for a Stronger, Leaner, and Healthier Physique - https://www.witsandweights.com/88 

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Transcript

Philip Pape  00:00

Here's the thing, if you're serious about losing fat and improving your health, improving your body composition, then you're going to focus on fat loss and not weight loss. You're going to train, you're gonna eat protein, you're going to keep that muscle while you lose your body mass. So it's just fat. Welcome to the Wits & Weights podcast. I'm your host, Philip pape, and this twice a week podcast is dedicated to helping you achieve physical self mastery by getting stronger. Optimizing your nutrition and upgrading your body composition will uncover science backed strategies for movement, metabolism, muscle and mindset with a skeptical eye on the fitness industry. So you can look and feel your absolute best. Let's dive right in Wits & Weights community Welcome to another solo episode of the Wits & Weights podcast. I hope you enjoyed our last episode 103 Sweet proteins, food science and the future of sweeteners with Jason Ryder, where we learned about sweet proteins, including the science behind them, their potential health benefits and new nutrition strategy to what foods you might find them in now and in the future. Today for episode 104 fat loss versus weight loss, we will get into the very relevant differences between two terms that seems similar on the surface fat loss and weight loss, but are polar opposites in terms of the behaviors that you would take to achieve them. And what the results actually look like? One of these can be downright destructive to your body leading down a dark path that you've probably didn't bend down before many times as of AI, a path that sacrifices your health and physique for the sake of hitting a number. The other drives you to make the changes you need and want to vastly improve your health and physique. And do it in a sustainable, life altering way that aligns with your body to find out what I mean, let's stick around and get into today's topic. Fat Loss versus weight loss. Here's the thing. What if I told you that the way you've been thinking about weight loss is all wrong? What if what you want is not actually weight loss? Here's the thing. The truth is that weight loss is not the goal for most people, even if it's what you tell yourself, even if it's what the advertisement advertisers tell you, even if it's part of the process itself, right, actually reducing the weight on the scale. What most people really and truly want is fat loss. And they want that for certain reasons that go even deeper than that. But we're going to talk about the semantic differences in how we use language in the fitness industry, when it comes to those two terms, weight loss, and fat loss and stick around. Because I have a lot to say and a lot of opinions. Some might be a little controversial, hopefully not hopefully, there's just reality based on my experience and what I've seen. But when it comes to those two terms, weight loss and fat loss, there are definitely some differences in the industry. We're going to talk about why fat loss is more important, just much more deeply more important than weight loss. And we're going to talk about the dangers of Crash dieting, yo yo dieting, all the I'll say the benefits that you get from potentially losing weight, but also the dangers of a purely weight loss approach, and then how these things backfire and make it even harder in the future to get the results you want. And then finally, we'll talk about how to achieve fat loss, right, because if we're going to put it on this pedestal, I need to justify it for you and talk about how we get there to get the results that you want without the negatives of weight loss. So let's start off with the definitions. And let's talk about the industry and the problems with weight loss because I think these things are very important, these differences and distinctions are important. So in the industry, the terms weight loss and fat loss are often used interchangeably. But there's a subtle or maybe not so subtle, but important difference between the two. Okay, weight loss is simply the loss of any kind of body mass. This is just the weight on the scale, going from one number to a lower number. And this is fat tissue. muscle tissue also includes daily fluctuations like water, but generally we're talking about over time, some sort of permanent loss in tissue as measured by weight on the scale. Now in this episode, I'm not going to get into fluctuations and averaging your weight and all that kind of stuff. We're just going to assume that when somebody says weight loss, they mean true a true drop in body mass over time, whether it's five pounds, 20 pounds, 50 pounds, 200 pounds. Fat Loss on the other hand, respire refers specifically to the loss of body fat, and it may be in the context of a loss of weight. So most people want to get past that initial A new training phase where you might be able to build muscle and lose fat at the same time and not change your number on the scale. Most people when they want to lose a decent amount of extra fat will still also lose weight. But there's a very different process to get there a different result. And the the recurrence of weight regain, and the psychology are vastly different. Okay, this is why I prefer one or the other over the other. By leagues and leagues, when people lose weight quickly, when people lose weight quickly, they're more likely to lose muscle and water but muscle than fat, right. And this is why crash dieting, yo yo dieting, the way that most people diet with restrictive diets, where they really don't have much understanding of how much they're consuming, and what deficit they're in, and how and why the weight is falling off. And so generally, to get the results that you think you want, and get to that number, you go to extremes. And sometimes you push that extreme further and further during a diet, especially as you hit plateaus to make sure that you lose that weight. And this is a very dangerous process. If you want to lose fat and keep it off, it's really about losing weight slowly and gradually, but also preserving muscle and we're going to tie that all together toward the end. But I want you to understand that that's that's the key difference between the two. Now, here's the problem with weight loss. Weight loss is often seen as a numbers game, right? People focus on losing as many pounds as possible, regardless of how they do it by numbers game, you know, I like data, you know, I like numbers. But it's a single number that people focus on, instead of taking multiple data points, multiple qualitative measures of your feedback, multiple aspects of your movement training, nutrition, it's this one number. And for what, what is your real goal here, I want you to just take a step back and ask yourself, why do I want to lose 20 pounds? Right? Or 30 pounds or 50 pounds? And when I do, how am I going to feel when I get there? And is that what I'm after? Meaning? If I lose a 30 pounds, am I going to now feel very confident with myself comfortable in my clothes, I'm going to have the physique I want. I'm not going to have any more insecurities about food, or my training my nutrition, I'm going to be able to maintain my results for the rest of my life. I'm going to be able to keep eating the way I've been eating. If those are all true statements, then, then yeah, maybe you're in a great place. But tell me if that has ever happened to you, when you just lost a bunch of weight. We know it doesn't happen because we know 95% of people regain the weight that they lose, because they're doing it in this way that's focused specifically on that number on weight scale. Wait, let me just tell you a quick story about my my wedding. This was almost 20 years ago. Okay, so I know I'm dating myself. But you guys know I'm in my 40s right I'm the over 40 Crowd says a lot of what I talk about. For my wedding. This was back in the mid 2000s I did some sort of crash diet and on for the life of me no matter how far back I go and emails and everything. I can't figure out what I was doing. It wasn't like a named a big names diet. I did those later paleo zone keto, and so on. I did Atkins earlier than this. But well, all I remember was I had a piece of paper with a list of foods that I could eat. Okay, sound familiar list of foods I can eat. And they were actually very specific foods. It was like, I could eat lunch meat. And I could eat

Philip Pape  08:45

strawberries, you know, and maybe a little bit a few nuts, right? And it was like these very specific prescriptive quantities and types of food. And they were like, I don't know 15 foods total at most, and I can mix and match them. And that's a whole a that's all a it was. It was miserable. And here's the thing, my wonderful wife who loves me and we're getting ready to get married you know, she's just supporting me all the way she was the opposite of a bridesmaid I have to say so good throughout the process had really had fun with it. We had fun planning for our wedding. And deal she never said a word she just supported me you know we were still living separately so I was kind of doing it on my own anyway it's not like she was making my meals for me and come the wedding. I had lost probably 1520 pounds I was you know nice and trim fitting in my suit. But when I look back on pictures of myself back then I said Man, this guy is kind of emaciated is the word I might use like extremely skinny pale, not healthy looking as the word now far be it for me to judge other people like that, you know, at least out loud. We all judge people in our heads I get it. I'm not going to do the on this podcast and say that but I'm talking about myself here so I can do it. that, and this is what I was feeling. But at the time I didn't, I didn't have the same perception. I just knew that I had hit a number on the scale, I was able to fit in my suit. And guess what happened? We go on our honeymoon, we go to Italy, and we go on a cruise. I mean, it was quite the honeymoon, I have to say. And I just was unhinged when it came to food I just picked out I ate everything, all the things. I said, well, the diet did what it was supposed to do. I fit in the suit, and it's over. And now we're married. So there we go, I'm just going to enjoy everything, I'm going to enjoy the unlimited food on the cruise, I'm gonna enjoy gelato is everyday in Italy. And we had a great time in Italy. And I really enjoyed the food. And I don't regret it at all. I don't regret it at all. We had wine, the wine was less expensive than Diet Coke. You know, it's crazy in Italy. So we had we had those prosciutto sandwiches every day, you name it. And I had a great time. But in hindsight, I know that I was completely out of control and had no clue what I was doing. And none of this was sustainable. And the goal of weight loss was fleeting, I hit it, and all of a sudden was over and I gained the weight back. And for years and years went on that same process, right? So just because you hit the number, it doesn't solve all your problems. And that's one of the big problems with weight loss. And then it leads to this unhealthy unsustainable relationship with food with with the dieting process with the what dieting even means, right? We think of dieting as a negative thing of like, Okay, I gotta turn on the switch. And I've got to go, just cut, cut, cut. And I'm going to suffer through this short term period, or maybe long term period, or maybe, maybe years. And I'm gonna get to this number, and then I'm done. And then why, right. So that's if it ended there, that would be bad enough. But we know and you've heard me talk about this on on a previous podcast, this mentality of Crash dieting, and doing it over and over, can make it harder to lose fat in the long run because of what it does to your body, physiologically, and somewhat permanently. Right. And I'm gonna get to that in a second. But besides that, you end up gaining the weight back, you end up having an increased risk of disease, you generally gain more weight than you started with. And this leads to just most people becoming more and more overweight throughout their life. And this is part of why we have just a massive problem with obesity in the Western world. And it's a problem. So I would love to say that the fitness industry understands this perfectly, and has decided to, in principle, do the right thing. But instead of adding nuance, we know that the fitness industry perpetuates misinformation, it perpetuates unhealthy practices, right. And sometimes they are a backlash to weight loss. But instead of solving the problem, they go to another extreme. So I want to touch on a few of these. I know this isn't like the controversy episode. But I think this is so important to the idea of, of weight loss and why I just I almost despise the term I try to never ever use the term, I will use it occasionally. And I very much respect people like for example, Brandon Cruz was on my show twice. And he will use the weight loss quite often. But I know that the way he's using it is really to mean fat loss. And if you listen to what he says that's exactly what he's talking about. So I don't hold it against people who, when it comes to semantics, who use the term and really mean something, that that's cool. Like I really I don't want to get into that. What I think is the nefarious part of all of this is when influencers or people in the fitness industry will say well, weight loss is unhealthy. So we do the opposite of weight loss, whatever that is, right. But let's just focus on how weight loss is portrayed in the industry. First and foremost, it's everywhere, right? It's the very first strategy regardless still the majority strategy online, offline on billboards in ads, we were on the highway, my wife and I were taking a road trip the other day, we were on the highway near the airport, and you have one billboard after another and it's either a lawyer or weight loss add pretty much right? A lawyer or weight loss ad. And I'm like oh, and they always show somebody with a you know, oversized pants, they're stretching them out and look at all this weight they've lost and you can lose, I don't know 10 pounds in your first week or second week at some massive claim always right. And here's the thing, weight is this tiny metric. When it's used out of context, it's just one tiny element of your of your body. Right. And it's virtually meaningless, except for generalizations about obesity and disease risk overall meaning if some, if I told you a person weighed 400 pounds, you wouldn't even have to ask their gender, their height, their age, you automatically know that as far as the human population goes that that is an unhealthy level of weight, most likely now now there actually could be a tiny segment of say, Sumo wrestlers, power lifters athletes who just have so much muscle They're metabolically protected that way. Okay, but come on, we're talking about the 99% of the population that 400 pounds would be excessively overweight. So in terms of generalizations, that kind of makes sense. But in terms of what the day to day person is trying to do to just quote unquote, lose 20 pounds and lose 30 pounds, meaning they really want to be healthier, they want to look better, they want to feel better in their clothes. It, it takes it out of context, from all the other things that matter. Because it's such a powerful marketing tool, I think of weight loss is like restrictive dieting. Right? Restrictive dieting, makes things very simple, because they tell you just eat these foods. That's it? Well, weight loss is very simple, because they say, we're just going to focus on this one number, if we get this number from here to here, you're successful, we're successful, we've taken your money, you're not going to sue us move on. And then next time you regain the weight, just come back to us.

Philip Pape  15:50

And if you send some note of cynicism in my voice, it's legitimate and warranted, in my opinion. Then there's the backlash of the anti diet crowd. So this is what I was talking about before where, where they say, okay, dieting is inherently harmful in all its forms, meaning like being in any calorie deficit, just a bad thing, calories in calories out. All that's just awful. And it can lead to disordered eating and other health problems. And here, you need this holistic approach to health that focuses on listening to your body and eating intuitively and listening to your hunger signals. And we're going to teach you exactly how to do that. And there's a couple problems with this. The first problem is that they're assuming that restrictive dieting, right named diets is the only way to create a calorie deficit and lose body mass or lose weight, or whatever it is. But we know that a flexible approach to dieting can also induce weight loss and fat loss without the problems of disordered eating and weight regain. In fact, it's like this idea of flexible dieting, we know is very much associated with a healthy approach, and a healthy relationship with food. And you can use it to lose some body mass as well, which means we have to add nuance, okay? Intuitive Eating on the other hand, can actually be a problem, because most people are going to have a very hard time learning, intuitive eating without developing the intuition first, and you can only do that through awareness. Now, can you develop awareness via looking at portion sizes, mindful eating, and all of those practices, you can, I will say, however, that if somebody feels that they are an unhealthy level of weight, and is trying to lose some fat, to be healthier, metabolically healthier, it may take a lot longer, it'd be a very frustrating, long drawn out process that requires a lot of discipline and willpower to get those kinds of skills in place. Whereas a simple feedback loop of tracking your macros and calories, and managing a few things like your training, and sleep and stress can be more approachable and measurable, to get you to where you need to be and create that awareness. Once you've got that awareness, you can then do things more intuitively. But I'll tell you what, I talked to people who are experts in physique enhancement, like Dr. Bill Campbell, like Brandon Cruz, and decrees and others. And they will tell you time and again for themselves and all their clients who have a goal. And it doesn't even have to be a super aggressive goal. It's just, they want to get from here to there. And they want to do it efficiently. They don't want to drag it on forever, because dragging things on forever, is unsustainable. They want to get it over quickly. And so using a data based approach with tracking and a science based mindset of you know, we're going to apply all of our tools we have as efficiently as we can to get it done quickly, is what they use. And that involves using a calorie deficit with a known number of calories rather than trying to eat intuitively. Not to say it's not possible. I'm not Pooh poohing intuitive eating. I'm just saying that. It is not the only antidote to weight loss. Okay. Then there's there's the Bazi excuse me, fumbling over my words. Then there's the body positivity movement. Oh, here he goes. Watch out what is Philip gonna say today? So, this is this is this movement that challenges the idea that there is only one ideal body type. Now, right there the premise, I already reject that premise as well. Just like the movement does, I reject the premise that there is only one ideal body type because there isn't. Hey, this is Philip. And I hope you're enjoying this episode of Wits & Weights, I started Wits, & Weights to help people who want to build muscle, lose fat and actually look like they lift. I've noticed that when people improve their strength and physique, they not only look and feel better, they transform other areas of their life, their health, their mental resilience and their confidence in everything they do. And since you're listening to this podcast, I assume you want the same things the same success, whether you recently started lifting, or you've been at this for a while and want to optimize and reach a new level of success. Either way, my one on one coaching focused on engineering your physique and body composition is for you. If you want expert guidance and want to get results faster, easier, and with fewer frustrations along the way to actually look like you lift, go to wits & weights.com and click on coaching, or use the link in my show notes to apply today, I'll ask you a few short questions to decide if we're a good fit. If we are, we'll get you started this week. Now back to the show. Everybody has a different body type first of all, and can nobody can look the same as anyone else. And whatever you are happy with is your ideal body type. And by happy, extrapolate that to whatever it means for you capable, functional, healthy, fit, long life, high quality life. And the again, this is where we talk about extremes, the Buzet body positivity movement encourages people to celebrate their bodies, okay, okay, all good with that, regardless of their size or shape, I'm good with that, too. There's no doubt that they are really focused more on the mental health side of things, which I think is a great mission, because you should definitely love your body, no matter what, no matter what. And that includes giving your body the best shot at a long, high quality life. That is where I have the that's that's my statement, where I think it starts to differ from some in the body positivity movement, that will claim that you can be healthy at any size. And that's really the statement that I have a problem with, because we know physically, physiologically, objectively, medically, that is not true. We just know that we know that above a certain weight, or with a certain lifestyle, or even if you're not above a certain weight, but you have a certain sedentary level of activity, we know that those are associated with higher disease risk, our disease, diabetes, you know, mortality, and so on cancer, whatever. And that's a physical objective thing. I like to think of it as I am positive about my body, I love it so much. And because I love it so much, I'm going to do everything I can to keep it alive and thriving. So get into a healthier weight, ideally, via fat loss. So we're going to talk about and not indiscriminant weight loss is associated with improvements in self esteem, and mood, not to mention the confidence in your body and its capabilities for the rest of your life for the decades to come. So hopefully I gave that the right. That subject the right respect, you know, I'm not the type to go off on things and become the radio jockey kind of guy. I am trying to give it nuanced, but also recognize that there's a ridiculous, if not stupid level of irrationality out there. When it comes to Oh, yeah, you can be 500 pounds and healthy, no, not possible, I'm sorry. But if you're 500 pounds, you can love your body. And you love it so much that you want to do something, and hopefully there are people to help you do that. Right. And that's, that's what we're trying to do in this show is help you do that and do it in the right way. So we know that losing weight in general, can lower the risk of developing chronic diseases like heart disease, diabetes, but only if you can maintain the weight loss. And as we're going to learn in a bit losing fat instead of losing weight is the way of maintaining your newfound health. So let's take this for what it is.

Philip Pape  23:24

There is Vanbrugh. And by the way, if I if I offended anyone I didn't mean to hopefully I didn't. And if I did, please send me a note and let me know that I did. So I can apologize, I don't think I got off track on that. But that some of these subjects are highly sensitive. So you know, and I am a sensitive guy, I think and want to give it the treatment it deserves. So let's take this for what it is, there is value in losing pure body mass from a health perspective. Yet, the only way to do that in a healthy and sustainable way is by prioritizing fat loss instead of weight loss. Therefore, let's take advantage of these benefits of losing weight. And understand that if you only lose weight indiscriminately, and don't lose fat, there are three things that are conspiring against you. Okay, these are physiological things that ultimately also become psychological. And these are the things that make it impossible for 95% of people who lose weight to maintain that weight loss. We are trying to avoid these things. So I want to clarify what those are. All right. So if you say need to lose 30 pounds, and you go and you do a crash diet or you do keto or something you just the weight starts flying off. Okay? There's going to be a few things that happen along the way that are going to backfire because you went so aggressively and you didn't prioritize fat loss. I talked about this on episode 88. It's called break the cycle of body fat overshooting for a stronger leaner and healthier physique, but I'm going to recap them so the first one is body fat overshooting. This is when you lose weight too quickly. The body tries to conserve energy you have metabolic adaptation. But even worse, you start To lose muscle, this leads to an increase in appetite, excuse me, a decrease in your metabolism much more quickly than it would otherwise, which makes it harder and harder to lose the additional pounds that you're going for. And then when you are done, you more easily regain weight for a variety of reasons. Having to do with the hunger, for example, having to do with the fact that you are on a restrictive diet. And now because you've turned off the dieting, switch, everything's back in play, and you're not sure what to eat. So you just eat all the indulgences and all the high sugar, high fat, high carb, whatever things high, everything high calorie, doesn't matter what macro it has probably not a lot of protein, let's be honest. And you regain all the weight and then some and this happens to 95% of people within I think five years. The second phenomenon is called hyperplasia. This is the growth of new fat cells. When you lose weight too quickly, the body might produce new fat cells to replace new ones that had been lost. Now I've seen this been called into question by, you know, reputable evidence out there. So I'm waiting to see more evidence come out, it may not be as big of a deal as we think. But you know why chance and I guess, and if you create new fat cells, you're never going to lose them, you're always gonna have those, it's just more energy storage for future weight regain. And then hyperphagia is the third one. And this is the excessive consumption of food, I believe it's triggered by the metabolic adaptation and the loss of muscle, like we talked about first, and you get these intense hunger pangs deep into the diet. And then that leads to binging, overeating weight regain. Okay, so enough of the doom and gloom, there's a very simple solution, all this to all this, okay? It's not not easy, but simple. We want to lose fat, instead of lose weight. And by losing fat, we're gonna gain all the benefits of losing weight, the health benefits of living at a lighter body mass, but none of the consequences that we just talked about. And so we can get the exact physique we want. And we can know with confidence how to shape our bodies, anytime in the future, do it sustainably feel in control, feel a sense of freedom, it's a great place to be. It's a place that I finally discovered about three years ago, and I've been living in ever since. And it's been so liberating. And then all my clients get to experience this as well. And it's just a joy to see them go through that transformation in such a short time, you know, we're talking three to six months, come out of it with a clarity they've never had before. And it really comes down to body composition. When we talk about our physique. We're talking about looking lean, and strong, and having less fat, which can be dangerous, depending on where it is stored in the body.

Philip Pape  27:51

Being at a healthy level of body fat, and then having carrying a lot of muscle, right. So body composition is what most people are going for. Now you can improve your body composition as a new lifter, without even losing weight on the scale. In fact, you can improve it while gaining weight on the scale. You could of course, build muscle and lose fat while losing weight on the scale. And you could just hold on to muscle and lose fat while losing weight on the scale. So now we start to see, okay, wait on the scale is one metric. But it's not everything is one metric. And we can use that metric. And we can use it for its advantages. But we need to do it in context. And so there really, I'm gonna say four major things that if you can do these, you're gonna have 8590 95% of the progress you want. And the first one is strength training. Absolutely, bar none. We want to build muscle when we are eating. We want to preserve muscle when we're in a deficit, we want to increase our insulin sensitivity, we want to burn more calories at rest. We want to better utilize our food as energy, we want to get stronger, we want to get better bone density, I can go on and on. I've done podcasts in the past all about the benefits of muscle, there are no disadvantages, and there are only upsides to having more muscle. But that is number one. And all the things I talked about before about weight loss and all the programs, all the crazy crash diets, all the billboards I see on the highway. None of them talk about strength training, they are all about just cutting and restricting. And so the people on those programs are going to be in for a rude awakening because when they're not strength training, they're just going to lose a ton of muscle, they're going to get more skinny fat, they're not going to be happy when they hit that magic number. They're going to regain the weight. They're gonna have even higher body fat percentage than before. They're gonna repeat the cycle over and over and over again. Again, body fat overshooting. But strength training is their biggest protector against this. It's your biggest protector against us both in the muscle mass you add, but even in the act of strength training itself and the adaptation and the signal that it sends to your body the day after the week after you know while you sleep. Because once you're in that calorie deficit and you're losing Weight, yes, you're losing weight, you're losing primarily fat tissue. As a representation of most of that weight, the man or woman down the street following the billboard program is losing half of their tissue as muscle, you're losing zero of that tissue as muscle. So while they're losing 10 pounds of muscle and 10 pounds of fat, which is just killing their health, you're losing 20 pounds of fat, period. That's what we want. So strength training is going to be the biggest signal toward that. And then it has to be combined combined with the right energy, the right food for that training. And this is the way I like to approach I'd like to start with strength and start with training. Because once you become an athlete, okay, all my clients are athletes, I'm not saying that they are athletes, and then they become clients. I'm saying they become clients, and then they become athletes. And anyone listening to this show, you can be an athlete, you can be an athlete starting today. Okay, once you're an athlete, and you think that way, and you train like an athlete, an athlete who recovers well, of course, we're not talking about an in season athlete, let's call it an offseason athlete, you're gonna then want to fuel that performance. And we fuel it with the right balance of protein, fats, carbs, which is probably a lot more protein than you're getting now, probably double for what a lot of people are getting, if you haven't ever tracked before, it's probably at least double and probably a lot more carbs than you used to as well. And then you're like, Well, are you telling me to eat more of everything? Yeah, actually, you're probably gonna need more calories overall, to fuel that act of building muscle, you're gonna be able to burn more calories, you're gonna be able to do so with gaining little to no weight, to set yourself, set yourself up for this fat loss phase, where you're training, send your body a signal, that muscle is important. And you're feeding the repair of that muscle with protein and sufficient carbs. Because remember, we've talked about this before, carbs protect protein, so we they kind of complement each other. But when you're in a calorie deficit, you're not gonna be able to have that many carbs. So you try to keep the protein as high as possible. Okay, so we've got training, we've got protein, folks, this is nothing new. You've heard me say this over and over again, these are the, this is the checklist. This is the checklist, okay, but it's good to be reminded of, it's good to remind myself of how important these are. Because as soon as one of these these things drop off, you enter the realm of weight loss instead of fat loss, then we have the appropriate rate of loss that is really important to this, because when we talk about the diets on the Billboard, those are crash diets because they promise fast weight loss and you probably get fast weight loss. And that is a problem because go back to my previous thing about body fat overshooting, hyperphagia, hyperplasia, hunger, you know, unsustainability, on and on and on. We don't want those, we want to go at a reasonable rate, which can still be somewhat aggressive, depending on your starting point, depending on how you feel, depending on how much metabolism adapts, and we're starting from, and depending on your hunger signals, we can vary that between, you know, moderate to pretty aggressive. Depending on where you're starting from, right, some of my more advanced client athletes can go more aggressive because they have a higher metabolism or they're bigger, they burn more calories, or they do a lot more activity and training. Whereas somebody who's been dieting a lot, who has kind of a suppressed metabolism, even once we recover it, it's still not may not be that high in relative terms, or it could be someday. And so you're not gonna be able to go as aggressive on that dieting phase on that fat loss phase, right. So it really depends. But the typical rate of loss is anywhere from a quarter to 1% of your weight per week, we won't get into aggressive fat loss today, because I don't want to mix the signals between that and crash dieting and confuse you here, I will do a future episode, I'm pretty committed to doing a future episode all about aggressive fat loss and how to accomplish that safely. And effectively. And you know, kind of what the limitations are. But today, I'm just keeping it to the standard quarter to 1% of your body weight a week, which for most people is going to be kind of in the middle of that range a half to three quarters of a percent of your body weight per week. So for 200 pound person that's going to be like one on one and a half pounds a week, which is about like a 500 to 750 calorie a day deficit. Okay. And then the last thing is recovery, getting enough sleep reducing your stress. I recently heard something on the revived stronger podcast, Dr. Mike Israel was on there. And he used the phrase, I think I posted a story about it, where he said physique, or he said fatigue kills physique. Fatigue is a killer for the physique. And what he was talking about is when you have too much stress in your life, and the stress could be in the form of too much training too much Exercise and Movement, right? If it's just too much, that creates fatigue that you cannot recover from and it starts to compound on itself. And this creates a load on your body a stress in your body that suppresses your metabolism quite a bit, in addition to the other things that suppress it. So getting enough sleep, reducing your stress are great ways to do that. I'll tell you about my personal journey right now. I'm eight weeks out from left rotator cuff surgery And around the time I record this episode, and I talked to one of my physical therapists about, actually, John Patrizio, he's going to be on the show soon, he's a starting strength guy who's also a physical therapist in my barbell club. And he and I went over some ideas for how I can ramp up my lifting. Now, I can start doing some things like some limited rom bench pressing, I can do safety bar squats, I can do some conventional deadlifting again, so I'm getting into that phase where I can start loading my recovering arm. But instead of doing a four or five day split, like I was used to, he's like, why don't we go to three days do full body. And the reason we're going to do that is because I can't lift that much weight with some of these movements right now. And so it's kind of like I'm a beginner, I'm regressing a little bit to linear progression, like a novice, almost like a novice linear progression, where I'm going to start deadlifting, like 90 505 pounds. Whereas Normally, I'd be up in the mid to upper three hundreds, right. So I'm doing that because I have this bottleneck of my left shoulder, preventing me from lifting as much weight. But now I can do it three times a week instead of once a week. So as an intermediate lifter, I was doing most major movements once a week, because that's the, that's as frequently as I can do them to progress, I might do a second or third day of that movement, at a much lighter weight or a variation of it. But now I could actually deadlift, Monday, Wednesday, Friday, for example, you know, maybe a set of five heavy set of five. And by heavy, I just mean, you know, my top set, what I can handle. So what is my point with all this, I'm actually going to work out one day less a week. And I'm going to increase the frequency. And this is a way to manage fatigue and stress, I'm going to increase the stress that I need to progress my deadlift. But I'm reducing the systemic stress and the frequency stress by going to three days a week and making a full body. These are all important concepts. Now, I don't mean to go off on this long tangent about training in the context of weight loss versus fat loss. But if I was in a fat loss phase now, which I'm not, if I was in a fat loss phase, this would be very important variable in how many calories I can eat. And I like to keep the calories as high as possible during fat loss. So that it's easier, don't you, right, so that's another benefit of keeping your energy coming in as high as possible by keeping the stress down. So those are the big things training, protein, appropriate rate of loss, and in managing sleep stress recovery. Okay, here's the thing, if you are serious about losing fat, and improving your health, improving your body composition, then you're going to focus on fat loss, and not weight loss, you're going to train, you're gonna eat protein, you're going to keep that muscle while you lose your body mass. So it's just fat, while the billboard folks are losing muscle, and worsening their body composition. So it's not easy, but it's doable. And it's totally worth it. And remember, if you haven't done these yet, if you haven't done what we're talking about here yet, if this is all new to you, you know, don't beat yourself up. In fact, congratulate yourself for listening to this content and getting these ideas and learning. And now you have something to run with. And I would absolutely love you to reach out to me if you have any questions if this is confusing in any way, because I know I can cover a lot in one show. But here's the thing, there's no time like right now to get started or to restart this process. There's no time like right now, there really isn't, now is the time. And then once you do once you make that progress, if anyone asks you what you're doing to look so incredible, I want you to share this episode with them and start using the language of fat loss. Instead of weight loss in your conversations. Instead of saying, Yeah, I lost a bunch of weight, talk about how you lost fat and improved muscle composition, or body composition. Or I built some muscle and I lost some of that excess fat in the process, rather than making about weight loss, right? Because at the end of the day, you're gonna probably weigh quite a bit more than you thought you could actually look leaner than you thought you could. And then we can spread the word about the important differences between weight loss and fat loss and why they matter. And if you're tired of not seeing the results you want, I get it. Right I work with people like you every day, we use the same science backed methods I talked about on this podcast who lose fat, no BS, just stuff that works. It worked for me or for my clients. It's not the stuff on the billboards that the show that they're trying to show you in the fitness industry. It's just reasonable, simple, not easy, simple things at work. So if you want to lose fat, not just weight, you want to actually look like you lift. That's what we do. My coaching program, if you're interested is a six month commitment to do just that. It's pretty much the fastest time period you can imagine getting that kind of result because we know how to do this. We take your diet, your training, your lifestyle, we make it all work together. It isn't for everyone. It's just not. It's for people who are serious about making the change we talked about today and who are tired of wasting time. And if that's you, there's a link in my show notes It says apply for coaching, I want you to click it, fill it out, I'll get back to you with a couple of questions. And then we'll see if this is the right fit. If it is, we start immediately, no messing around because I hate wasting time as much as you do. So you don't want to be in the same spot. Six months from now, thinking about weight loss instead of having gone through successful fat loss, I want you to click the link to apply for my one on one coaching program. And let's get to work. All right in our next episode 105 Strength, power and vitality for women at any age with Cheryl I love Cheryl and I will be discussing the art of movement, the challenges faced by women in fitness, and actionable strategies to enhance vitality and build confidence No matter your age, or where you're starting from. The best way to get these new episodes and help others find the show is to click subscribe or follow or whatever it says in your favorite podcast app. And I'm always grateful when you tell others about the show. Because they too can become more informed. They can learn the differences between fat loss and weight loss and they also can have the power to get the outcome they desire. As always, stay strong. And I'll talk to you next time here on the Wits & Weights podcast.

Philip Pape  41:18

Thank you for tuning in to another episode of Wits & Weights. If you found value in today's episode, and know someone else who's looking to level up their Wits & Weights, please take a moment to share this episode with them. And make sure to hit the Follow button in your podcast platform right now to catch the next episode. Until then stay strong

Ep 103: Sweet Proteins, Food Science, and the Future of Sweeteners with Jason Ryder

Have you ever heard of sweet proteins? If not, you’re in for a treat, pun intended, as we dive into this topic with Jason Ryder, CTO and Co-Founder of Oobli, a food technology company building a new category of food and beverages based on naturally sweet proteins.

You'll learn about sweet proteins, the science behind them, their health benefits, and where to find them. Jason will discuss sweet proteins' significance in our diet, how they will change the food industry, their health benefits, and how they're made.

Jason had senior technological leadership roles at Amyris, Bolt Threads, and Hampton Creek / Eat JUST before Oobli. He received a B.S. and Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering from the University of Alabama and the University of California at Berkeley, respectively. Jason became Adjunct Professor and Executive Director of the Master of Bioprocess Engineering (MBPE) program in the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at UC Berkeley in 2018.

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[2:19] Interest and motivation in food technology and sweet proteins
[6:16] The science of sweet proteins
[10:24] Role and benefits of sweet proteins
[14:21] Human propensity for sweetness and the added sugar dilemma
[18:40] Health implications of sugar, artificial sweeteners, and sugar alcohols
[20:28] Quantity of sweet proteins in products
[27:41] Production process of sweet proteins
[30:19] Challenges in scaling production and increasing awareness
[33:27] Influence of academic role at UC Berkeley on his work
[35:09] Impact of sweet proteins on the food industry
[39:22] Addressing criticisms and skepticism
[41:07] Excitement and future vision for the field of sweet proteins
[42:10] Potential applications of sweet proteins in other foods and drinks
[49:28] The question Jason wished Philip had asked
[51:51] Where to learn more about Oobli
[53:09] Outro

Episode resources:

• Website: Oobli Sweet Teas

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/ooblifoods 

• IG: @ooblisweetproteins 

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Transcript

Jason Ryder  00:00

sweetness comes in a lot of joyful places. And I think normalizing that that's good by separating it from the negative health effects is really important to us as a human society, because we need to have joy and we also need to have health. And we very much view sweet proteins as one of the key tools and helping us reestablish that connection right. Both joy in and health can live in the same place around Sweden's

Philip Pape  00:27

Welcome to the Wits & Weights podcast. I'm your host, Philip pape, and this twice a week podcast is dedicated to helping you achieve physical self mastery by getting stronger, optimizing your nutrition and upgrading your body composition will uncover science backed strategies for movement, metabolism, muscle and mindset with a skeptical eye on the fitness industry so you can look and feel your absolute best. Let's dive right in. Wits & Weights community Welcome to another episode of the Wits & Weights podcast. Have you ever heard of sweet proteins? If not, because I haven't, you're in for a treat pun intended. As we dive into this topic with Jason, writer, CTO and co founder of Uber li a food technology company building a new category of food and beverages based on naturally sweet proteins. You'll learn about these sweet proteins from the science behind them to their potential health benefits to what foods you might find them in. Jason will share his insights on the role of sweet proteins in our diet and how they're poised to disrupt the food industry, not to mention the effects on our health and even how they're made. Prior to Uli Jason spent time in senior technical leadership roles at a virus bolt threads and Hampton Creek eat just he earned a BS in chemical engineering from the University of Alabama. So real scientists here on the show, and a PhD in Chemical Engineering from the University of California Berkeley. In 2018, Jason joined the UC Berkeley faculty in the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, where he currently serves as adjunct professor and Executive Director of the Master bioprocess engineering program. Jason, welcome to the show. Thanks,

Jason Ryder  02:04

Philip. Great to be here.

Philip Pape  02:05

Man. I'm excited to learn about this because I don't know anything about sweet proteins and I withheld from doing too much research intentionally so that I can learn it from the man himself. I do want to learn a little bit about you and your personal motivations before we jump into the topic. So how did you get interested in food technology for one and sweet protein specifically, and sort of what are your values and personal connection to all of this?

Jason Ryder  02:28

Sure thing. So I'd say you got me right. And the intro, I am a chemical engineer by training. But I'm a sustainable bioprocess engineer by choice. And growing up in Alabama had strong sensibilities about sustainability. Even back in the 80s and 90s. Before you know, the rest of the world really appreciated what our choices as humans were, you know, what, what impacts they were having on on us from a climate, food and health perspective. And so all of my work up to date has been figuring out different ways to harness sustainable technologies like bio processing, to address those problems, including when I was at amorous working on various renewable chemicals and fuels via fermentation technology up through materials that was the bolt threads. And all the way through the last 678 years of my life focused on foods. Sweet proteins was a really interesting one for me, in terms of applying my skill set, which is mostly around fermentation technologies to address that, and it came along in the form of Foodtech, I was working on a different problem making an egg replacement product at each us that just egg product and stumbled across through a biotech incubator, my co founder who was working on sweet proteins, and his interest in sweet proteins was around his grandmother who had cancer, which is horrible, but also the chemotherapy treatments she was getting which are horrible, what they don't tell you is you oftentimes lose your taste. And one of these sweet proteins from the miracle berry it's called miraculous and enables you to regain the tastebuds, which is fantastic. When you're going through chemotherapy and you need nutrition, you'd love to have the taste of food so that you can eat and rebuild health. And so what I did when I joined was to figure out a technology beyond growing these these plants that produce these sweet proteins taking it to fermentation technology, so that you can have a scalable and affordable solution. And that that was again it's sort of hit me right in the sweet spot pun fully intended of the things that I care about. Sustainability, climate, food and health all in one.

Philip Pape  04:50

Okay, so there's a couple of things I wanted to pull the thread on in those what is bioprocess engineering and bio processing in general as a medium of sustained Billy, if you can explain that a little bit, and then I have another quick follow up after that.

Jason Ryder  05:04

Sure. So most of the listeners are familiar with biotechnology. And that's mostly around using living cells to make bio based products on ways that are more sustainable than then then the other ways that humans have produced them a great example are biofuels and bio materials, right? Those that are produced via fermentation. And bio processing is using those living cells essentially building scalable processes around them so that you can make these materials and in our case, foods at a scale that that that is meaningful for the planet and addressing those problems. So things like large scale fermentation, everybody's familiar with brewing beer. In our case, we brew sweet proteins, and that's the bioprocess engineering that we do at Dubli. Okay,

Philip Pape  05:49

and one of those you mentioned was miraculous, which is an amazing name from the miracle berries. And you've regained taste during chemotherapy. So the obvious question you've probably been asked before is what about the COVID, long COVID symptom where people lose taste? Does it help them that

Jason Ryder  06:03

works for those that as well. And again, I think we're all trying to get rid of COVID Right, or trying to stick it, but it is a very useful, sweet protein for those that have been impacted.

Philip Pape  06:16

Okay, so let's step back and talk about sweet proteins in general, let's just define them what they are. Why haven't most people myself included, heard about them and I'll tell you, I know a lot about food and, you know, I look at I think about macros and micros all the time and food selection, I have clients, we're always talking about food, but I've just, it's just a new one to me. Start high level and then feel free to dig into the science like we talked about before we started recording and then how they compare to other sweeteners would be helpful. Sure thing.

Jason Ryder  06:43

So at high level sweet proteins are simply proteins that tastes sweet like sugar. They come mostly from plants and various around the equator. And unlike sugar and alternative sweeteners that most of your listeners are familiar with sweet proteins don't spike your blood sugar, or give you gut microbiome issues that makes them in and of themselves, a revolutionary game changer in the world of healthy sweets, going one level deeper. For for those of your listeners that want to dig into the science, proteins are relatively large biomolecules, right? They're made up of amino acids, often called the building blocks of life, but they comprise some 50% of the dry weight of your cells. Your body has a lot of proteins that are very functional. And based on that sequence of amino acids, they have a three dimensional folded structure that can take on a number of roles in your cells, catalyzing bio reactions. These are called enzymes, and even doing things like your DNA replication. To make more of you you need enzymes, you need protein, right? They're fundamental to life. Now back to sweet proteins. Sweet proteins are a subclass of mostly plant based proteins I mentioned that come from plants, berries and fruits around the equator. And their amino acid sequence and three dimensional structure make them sweet to our tons to our tastebuds what I'll call our T one, r two and two and R three taste receptors. And they're 1000s of times sweeter on a waitwait basis than sugar. Now, why would a plant make such a protein that was sweet to humans and sweeter instead of sugar? Well, plants are really good at making sugars. And they need to make sugars. Well, they make sugars by photosynthesis, right? That's their process. But they would rather turn those sugars into things like cellulose that enable them to grow more plant material for more photosynthesis, right? That's the leaves and the stems and the like. It's metabolically expensive for them to simply store sugar hoping that a human or a higher primate come along and eat them and hopes that they carry their seeds, right. And so we as humans, those mobile species and seed carriers and the early forests evolved in are wired to crave sugar for energy, right, we needed to try and gather. And we gorged on sources like fruits and berries that these plants make. And so they simply made that trade off metabolically to make a small amount of a sweet protein to trick us into eating them, as opposed to all that that sugar. And that was a dirty trick on us several 1000 years ago, when we needed that energy. But nowadays, we've cultivated sugar in a lot of forms, namely sugar cane, corn syrup, sugar beets, it's very cheap. It's recklessly abundant in our food system. And we're paying the price for it in the form of, you know, 40% pre diabetes and the US obesity rates are similar to that heart disease I could go on. It's just not natural. We weren't meant to eat that much sugar. And the cool thing about sweet proteins is they give us a path to have that sweetness, which we deserve as the people fill it but without all of that bad stuff associated with it.

Philip Pape  09:53

Yeah, I agree. The modern food environment has skew things way off from where they were intended to be. And I personally and pretty much everybody listening to this can relate with some level of sweet tooth, right? Whether it's, you know, yeah, we've gone artificial sweeteners or stevia or something like that to continue enjoying sweet things without the deleterious effects of too much sugar, or we've gone just, you know, as much toward Whole Foods as we can, and you kind of lose that sensitivity. But there are a lot of people that are just still stuck in that, you know, cycle of, of eating the sugar. So I think it's fascinating how this was an evolutionary change in these plants to have highly dense form of sugar. So it was a more efficient storage, and it still got the same result of spreading seeds. I mean, that's pretty cool. Is is in terms of like, all the plant matter on the planet, I guess, before agriculture came along with these have comprised a decent amount of plant species, or are they just small corner niches of of the environment?

Jason Ryder  10:51

Yes, so far, we know, there are between 10 or 20 of these species that are commonly known. And they're known because of the cultures that identify them. They're mainly in West Africa and around the equator around the world. And that's because these proteins, they don't have a long shelf life, once you pick the berries or the fruits, you got about three days to eat them before. Different enzymes inside those fruits, break them down. And so they've stayed local, the only one really didn't make it to the US in any form is the miracle berry. And it still has to be grown in the tropical area, mostly Florida and Hawaii. And so the cool thing about fermentation is we can brew these proteins in the same way that you brew beer, and you can brew beer anywhere on the planet. And that's that's game changing technology to go with the game changing proteins as you can make them and make them at a scale that's meaningful. As sugar is literally everywhere, I'd say it's 70 to 80% of the products in your grocery store have sugar in some form or another. And it's confusing for consumers because we call sugar a lot of different things at least 50 By my account, and sweet, sweet proteins give you a great alternative to that. And so that's why we're working on it.

Philip Pape  12:08

Okay, so let's I kind of want to dispel if my audience gets too excited thinking that this is like the new base of a protein powder or something, right, we usually discuss protein in terms of it's important for building importance for building and repairing muscle increasing satiety and our diet, higher thermic effect of feeding all those and we're talking about, you know, fairly high quantities of that macronutrient in our diet. But I suspect the sweet proteins aren't necessarily consumed at that quantity. And so what is, first of all, let's, let's let's discuss whether that's true or not. And then what's the added benefit of the proteins that taste sweet? Is it mainly as a sweetener, that's what I'm getting?

Jason Ryder  12:46

Yeah, so So I'll give you a visual example, since we're recording for, for your audience. And so I'm going to show you a bottle of an orange, fizzy beverage that has around 72 grams of sugar in it, right, which looks roughly like this 18 sugar cubes, which are around four grams each. And so when we sweetened the beverage, like our sweet iced teas, it only takes a few 10s of milligrams of sweet protein, because of the potency of the sweetness, right 1000s of times more potent than sugar. So for

Philip Pape  13:17

the audience, it's a big jar of many, many, many cubes of sugar, versus a tiny vial of a tiny sprinkle of the sweet protein.

Jason Ryder  13:26

Yeah, so a few 10s of milligrams isn't going to get you the protein loading if you're trying to get out and get small. There's lots of other great protein sources for that either animal or plant based depending on your sensibilities. And so what we do is functionally sweetened on that product. And so if you're having a protein shake, for example, we can give you that sweet taste that you're looking for in your chocolate or your strawberry or vanilla. But we can do that with a tiny amount of protein while you're getting the building blocks for all of that muscle from another protein, for example, like whey or pea protein.

Philip Pape  14:00

Love it. And that's actually a great point because, again, most people listening probably have at least one if not two protein shakes a day. And because most people don't like pure unflavored whey protein, they tend to buy the kind of has flavoring which then is associated with usually a form of sweetener, whether it's sucralose or stevia or something else. So we'll get into specific products in a bit. But I do I want to talk a little bit more about this sweetening aspect of it right. We don't add sugar, we will eat fruit and things like that to satisfy your sweet tooth will use these other sweeteners in moderation. If the alternative is significantly more calories, right, because that's what we're trying to do. What's your take on added sugar and our tendency to make things sweet in general, and then artificial sweeteners? You know, because you did allude to insulin spiking. You alluded to gut microbiome and I know some of that science is sketchy and some of it is more solid plus you had the recent who announcement aspartame which is getting a lot of controversy. So what are your thoughts on all of that?

Jason Ryder  14:59

Yeah, So let me describe for your listeners, how sweeteners and in turn sweet proteins work. And so you have a great analytical instrument in your mouth for evaluating the sweetness, right? Because we're, we're hardwired for it, we need sugar for energy, it's the great currency from which we fuel our daily life. And so we have these T one, r two and T winnaar, three tastes receptors on your tastebuds that tell your brain, hey, this is sweet, you should eat more of it. And that never stops, right. But it also we have additional taste receptors in our gut. And they do the same thing. They tell your brain ah, we see sweetness keep eating that but also it alerts your pancreas to make insulin right to ferry that sugar into the bloodstream so that you can use it to fuel your life, and so on sweet proteins work more or less the same way as sugar. And as alternative sweeteners is they bombard your taste receptor to tell you how that sweetness, the difference comes back to the chemistry that I explained before is they're made of amino acids, and they have a folded structure. And so the difference in sweet proteins is once they hit your stomach, which is an acidic environment, or low pH, as scientists tend to think of it, it unfolds and when it unfolds, it loses its activity for tripping, that that taste receptor that's in your gut, those taste receptors that are in your gut, because most of the form of sugar you get are from more complex carbohydrates, where you take those simple sugars and you connect them, you polymerize them, right. And those are, you know, things like complex sugars, multi dextran, I could go on, right. And so you need to be able to tell your body that the sugar is being broken down by enzymes, so you can vary it in your bloodstream. So the sweet proteins don't touch any of those, and so they don't spike your insulin response. That's super important, right? Because even alternative sweeteners can continue to give you that sweetness response in your GI tract continue to bombard insulin production and lead to type two diabetes. And so that's a big difference. Another big difference is your gut microbiome. Um, for those of you that eat protein, or drink lots of protein shakes, or eat high protein products that are sweetened by alternative sweeteners, you call it aspartame, stevia, you know I could go on, you might have tolerability issues, that's a polite way of saying give you gas, you are all walking, talking fermenters, as you have a number of different microbes that are in your tummy that help you break down all of the things that aren't broken down by your normal gi process. And it's a consortium there's lots of different species in there. And when they get out of balance, and they can get out of balance when they're exposed to different different chemicals they're not used to or different food sources that you're not evolved around. And that certainly happens when you have high levels of alternative sweeteners, even stevia and monk fruit. And so the cool thing about sweet proteins is they never get to the gut microbiome, your body has already unfolded them, and is breaking them down into the peptides and amino acids that you normally need to build cells and all that great cellular function I mentioned earlier.

Philip Pape  18:17

Yeah, I think that's pretty cool. I can definitely foresee so many applications for that. Where, you know, protein bars are a big one people talk about, you know, getting bloated and whatnot, because they have the sugar alcohols, there's things like allulose, or there's always some new innovation. And they all seem to have a little bit of a disadvantage in one of those areas, depending on the quantities, you consume them. And so we talked about all right, I think that's amazing. The protein structure fold and how it unfolds when you get to your gut and because the acidic environment and then it doesn't trigger the receptor. This is the science I know we're diving a little deeper, not too deep. It's just Just what I like to hear. What about. So let's talk about the implications of this then, and maybe the food supply, the technology, the psychology of dieting, and all of that some of we alluded to the psychology of dieting. Right? We have an emotional relationship with food. How do you see your work with sweet proteins impacting that? Yeah,

Jason Ryder  19:09

I think we shouldn't hate on ourselves or criminalized sweetness, right? It's a great thing. We associate it with all of the fun things in our lives, like birthdays, for example, birthday cakes. You know, even my kids, they are self self acclaimed. boba tea experts, right? So sweetness comes in a lot of joyful places. And I think normalizing that that's good by separating it from the negative health effects is really important to us as a human society. Because we need to have joy and we also need to have health and we very much view sweet proteins as one of the key tools and helping us reestablish that connection right. Both joy in and health can live in the same place around sweetness.

Philip Pape  19:55

Ya know, couldn't couldn't put it better myself. We talk about sustainability in this program all Time have, you know, no foods are really off limit except maybe trans fats. No foods are off limit to some extent as long as they meet your goals and they serve what you're trying to do. So part of that is our life or lifestyle or social situations. I just today answering the question about carnivore diet and how, you know, when you restrict things too much, then you now all of a sudden you making all these other trade offs and compromises. So if we can use technology to kind of bring that back to a rational space, it's, it's all the better. So as a food technology expert, how do you see this transforming the industry? Because I know you guys I know Googly makes a few products, maybe two or three different products, is this gonna replace traditional sweeteners on a large scale, we'll be able to buy them in, you know, containers and packets in the store, will they be in protein powders and bars and everything at some point?

Jason Ryder  20:48

Yes to that, that is my goal is of course, we're developing a few of our own products to feature our sweet proteins and also establish that relationship of trust with with consumers. I imagine a few of your listeners feel a little jerked around by the stories on, you know, sugar and alternative sweeteners. And even recently, aspartame has been linked to cancer, sucralose, a chlorinated sugar of sorts is linked to genotoxicity. This is scary. And, you know, it's hard to know what to trust. And so we're launching our own products. And we've done our own safety studies, for our consumers to try get curious about sweet proteins drink our sweet iced teas, eat our chocolates, you can go to voobly.com and find all of those, as well as a few stores here in Davis and down in LA. And I think that's a great first step in a series of products that we'd like to launch ourselves through bliss brand, but also partner with others to help rehabilitate products that you know, a lot of your listeners and consumers in general love, but are loaded with sugar. And we know how to formulate and all of those products. And we're working on a platform of these sweet proteins that can get all of them. And so that's really what I'm looking for, throughout the rest of my career with googly is to figure out how to basically go everywhere shutter is,

Philip Pape  22:19

yeah, now that makes sense that I'm looking forward to that, you know, because I put some stevia in my coffee every day because it's, you know, quote, unquote, the making all the trade offs that I can make, it's the best option I feel like I have at the moment. But if I could take a little dropper, dollop of Euro, sweet proteins in there from the miracle barrier, wherever it comes from, that'd be great.

Jason Ryder  22:37

We're working on it, Philip. And so the protein that you'll see and experience through your mouth, and when you buy our sweet iced teas, as well as our chocolates is called the googly fruit, sweet protein that does come from the googly fruit, which is another one of those plant species. And it's berries that grow in West Africa. And it's, it's an amazing, sweet protein gives you a really sugary sucrose taste in your mouth that you crave. And again, it's because that specific plant evolved to trick us into thinking it was sucrose. And so enjoy that. And there's there's several more on the way.

Philip Pape  23:16

That's a good point, right? Because some of these alternative sweeteners even if they're quote unquote unnatural have after after taste or they're bitter. A lot of people don't like stevia, for example, and which is the one in the pink packet that just nobody likes. But I'm curious, so only now I see what are the name of the company comes from the food labeling house? What's that going to look like? I mean, you already know what it looks like because you have to have the FDA labels. What is it expressed as in the food label?

Jason Ryder  23:42

Yeah, we call it ugly fruit sweet protein. As we feel that that's the most direct and honest way to talk about sweet proteins with with consumers in a way that they can grab onto. There are technical names for all of these proteins. I mentioned one, the miracle berry fruit protein is referred to as miraculous. The only fruit sweet protein is also called braising. But but not all of our, our your listeners or even our consumers are protein biochemists and I think recognizing that the proteins are natural they're identical to the ones that come out of plants they just happen to be made via fermentation it's important to know I think we all know in our hearts and heads that natural products are the best ones for us. But you know calling them something a rose by any other name, I think names pretty important. And so for us, we're going to name them by the berries that these natural proteins come from

Philip Pape  24:42

full transparency, what is the what about the macro labeling? Does it is it designed to be shown as a sugar carb or protein? What is it?

Jason Ryder  24:49

It doesn't show up anywhere because it doesn't break the threshold is so small Okay. Routine, right? So we believe me we struggled on that I'm a Scientists and engineer I over communicate by nature, I've probably done a lot of that here. And so we played around with our label a lot to try to figure out how to tell our consumers about our superhero proteins but but also explain why there aren't 10 grams of it, you don't need very much, you just need a couple of 10s of milligrams actually, to get that sweetness.

Philip Pape  25:23

Again, it's kind of like salt. And when they put salt in suddenly it just says salt and there's very little of anything in it. Well, it might show sodium. But what what does so if we if we on your sweet tea, because I actually didn't look at the label yet does it have does it have any other sugars in it? Besides that? It does.

Jason Ryder  25:38

So for example, with our lemon, peach and mango uses sweet teas, we do use fruit to make all of those. And so along with that fruit comes around five grams for our 16 ounce teas. But But again, we don't think that we don't think sugar is a bad thing. But having too much sugar is certainly been a bad thing for us. And so we have the natural fruit that comes along as well as a little bit of agave to round out. And what we're looking for with our sweet proteins is an unrecognizable reduction in sugar that doesn't give you those off. Notice that things like stevia and monk fruit and even aspartame and, and sucralose give you that you can have the sweetness and the form that you expect. And maybe not even though there's sweet proteins in there, we want you to know they're sweet proteins in there for sure. But, you know, your mouth is a very finely tuned instrument around sweetness. And so our sweet proteins along with a little bit of sugar that comes with the fruit is just the right balance for our teas and chocolates. We feel like that hope hope.

Philip Pape  26:50

Okay, yeah, I want to try them. So we'll see I love chocolate. So that you know, it could be dangerous, but that's a that's a good thing. I love chocolate.

26:58

Okay, my name is Lisa. And I'd like to give big shout out to my nutrition coach Philip pape, with his coaching, I have lost 17 pounds, he helped me identify the reason that I wanted to lose weight, and it's very simple longevity. I want to be healthy, active and independent until the day I die. He introduced me to this wonderful Apple macro factor I got that part of my nutrition figured out along with that is the movement part of nutrition, there's a plan to it and really helped me with that. The other thing he helped me with was knowing that I need to get a lot of steps in. So the more steps you have, the higher your expenditure is, and the easier it is to lose weight when it's presented to you like he presents it it makes even more sense. And the other thing that he had was a hunker guide. And that really helped me so thank you below.

Philip Pape  27:42

So you mentioned the sourcing and the types of berries they might come from and where they're located. Let's talk about the fermentation process, because I am curious about that how that comes into this.

Jason Ryder  27:52

Sure thing. So we brew our sweet proteins much the same way you would brew beer, we use a foodsafe yeast just like you would use for brewing beer. And so we does require a little bit of sugar. But again, that sugar is upgraded. And a lot of ways given that the sweet protein is 1000s of times more potent. So it takes a lot less sugar to make or sweet proteins than you would in practice using these products. And so I mentioned on the sustainable bioprocess engineering. So all the steps that follow fermentation are simple, simply some mechanical separation filtration and drying, to make that that sweet protein ingredient that I'm holding up here. And it's great again, if you think about the sustainability aspect of what we're doing. Sugars grown about 65 million acres across the earth 65 million acres that, in many cases used to be arraigned for us, in all cases could be rainforest again, or be growing more nutritional crops, right, most of the sugar grown has to put into drinks and candy bars. And so for us, you know, every six 600 Or every 1% reduction in sugar gives us 650,000 acres back for us to do that. You know replant the rainforests so that the Earth can breathe or grow, you know, better crops to solve the world's sort of food disparities. And so I'm super excited about that. And also the fact that you don't have to ship that sugar in the places where it's grown. Brazil, for example, is a huge exporter of sugar requires a lot of fuel to get it to the ports and a lot of fuel to put it on barges to ship where it needs to go. That's carbon in our air that we don't need. And so the great thing about precision fermentation and in our case, making these sweet proteins as we can make them very close to where you use them and avoid a lot of those costs, not just the agricultural ones, but the shipping costs. Because it's again, you need a A lot less mass for sure. 1000 times less.

Philip Pape  30:03

Yeah, people, people care more and more today as they should about how their products are made and sourced. And if there's a net, if there's a net benefit, where it's not a government, industry, government agency coming in and telling you have to do it, and it's just innovation, I mean, people typically get on board with that. What is the competitive landscape look like? Are there other companies doing the same thing? Is, is the scalability there? Or are there some still challenges in that realm?

Jason Ryder  30:29

Sure thing, yeah, there for sure. A few other companies that are exploring sweet proteins, it's still a relatively new area for folks to commercialize. We commercialize the first one and the first products behind it, we also were the first to publish safety studies around using these as ingredients. But but they're, they're more focused on the way I'd say what differentiates us from some of the other folks that are doing this is we are manufacturing on three different continents now, which is great, building a robust supply chain, so that we can make sure we can get all of our consumers that want it. And we're also focused on natural proteins, those that are there that are present in the plants and nature, there's always an opportunity, when you're you're making proteins to, you know, to make mutant proteins, right? Molecular substitutions that give you a different sweetness profile that can give you a different flavor profile. And I'd say that might be important to consumers in the future. It's I think most folks are focused on on natural products now, and I think that's a good thing. And I'd say, you know, in the future, when that's important, and when the safety of those new proteins has been established, I'd say it's a great time.

Philip Pape  31:48

So speaking of safety of your products, you mentioned safety studies, I'm gonna assume the that your company is funding them, maybe not? How do you ensure the independence of those studies.

Jason Ryder  31:58

So we do all of our safety studies with third parties, okay. And we partner with the FDA, who also has a great interest and at least in the US on on consumer safety. And they're all scientists that review our data packages. And even before that, we have an expert panel of independent scientists that are even independent from the FDA that review our package. And so our first one, the ugly fruit, sweet protein, we've established what is called self grass, are generally recognized as safe for using Doobly fruit sweet protein as an ingredient to sweeten. And that was signed off on by independent scientists in nutrition and toxicology, etc. And it's a similar process at the FDA is you submit the package, you meet with them, I've met with the FDA several times to talk through that. And at the end of the process, after you've established that they progress are generally recognized as safe, the FDA gets a chance to ask questions, and once they're out of questions, they give you a note questions letter. And we have established the safety of the ugly fruit sweet protein, but a lot of the large scale, you know, stores that distribute would like to see that no questions letter to put them on on the big store shelves.

Philip Pape  33:20

Fair enough. Fair enough. Yeah, I mean, I interests are generally aligned with these things. So I just want to ask it to the listener has some more information. Yeah. And then you're at UC Berkeley. So how does your role there contribute overlap to your work with the sweet proteins here.

Jason Ryder  33:35

So I have a great passion for sustainability. And all forms, I tend to refer to my students as mass and energy balances hugging the Earth. My students are by and large, bioprocess engineers trying to learn how to use biotechnology and bio processing to solve problems across climate, food and health. And I hopefully make myself relevant by the work that I do in industry, keeping one foot Iblis and the other foot at UC Berkeley, to for my students, many of them are taking their last steps on their academic path before a long one in an industry where they're going to solve these problems. And so I bring my work into my classroom, not just the work that I'm doing and do bleed, but all of the work I've done beforehand. And I also bring a lot of my colleagues who are working on similar problems into the classroom. And that's a great way to build community Connect community, not just with the older folks like me, that are out doing it at a more advanced stage of life, but also making sure we're growing and developing the young ones who will continue to work on these problems many many decades into the future. So for those my students that are listening to this Go Bears

Philip Pape  34:46

Yeah, no, I think it's great when you're combining industry and and university. A lot of the folks in the fitness and nutrition space that I really admire and follow are the other ones who specifically look for studies that can involve all subjects doing real things that we all want to learn from and do and then kind of bridge the science to say, you know, the bro science is right or it's not. But so extending that to what you do are other studies where you work with, I don't know, nutrition scientists, nutritionists, people that deal with either, you know, weight loss, physique, anything like that in the health and body realm or obesity, you know? Yeah, tell me about that.

Jason Ryder  35:25

We're interested in all of those things. And so I mentioned UC Berkeley, where I also teach but the company who Billy is right next to UC Davis, which has a hospital as well as many of those experts that are working in the field of nutrition, and health. And so we have a number of studies that are ongoing to evaluate the impact, if any, of you know sweet proteins as you replace sugar and alternative sweeteners, so that we can publish that data for all to see, I think that's an important currency for us, as a society to have objective truth and science to make sure that when we are bringing, for example, new ingredients to market, of course, we have a process from which to establish that they're safe. That's the Grasp process I mentioned before. But it's not all encompassing. It doesn't touch on other things, right. That you just mentioned, overall impacts on health, and more importantly, what changes when you replace something like, you know, an alternative sweetener or, or sugar with a sweet protein. So we're interested in all of this.

Philip Pape  36:37

Yeah, I am as well, there's even in the established sweetener and artificial sweetener realm, as we know, being studied for decades, there's still confounding data when you try to interpret what happens, for example, when we talk about diet soda, and obesity, that the idea that you know, replacing sugar beverages with unsweetened actually helps obesity and then others will argue that, well, no, it triggers you know, appetite, and then it goes against it. And then others will say, well, it's people who are trying to lose weight are the ones drinking the more diet soda. So you tend to confound the variables. It'd be interesting at some point to see if these affect things like that, like if you have googly sweetener, and only that kind of sweetener in a in a food, would it then because it doesn't spike insulin? Would it then that have the same effect on your appetite? Right things like that. I don't know if any of those questions sounds like haven't really been answered yet. Because your focus is on safety and going to market? Is that fair to say?

Jason Ryder  37:33

Yeah, I'd say, you know, it's easy to assume that they don't. But I'd say it's really important to validate that it's not true. And what I'd also say if for any of your listeners that, you know, would like to collaborate or partner on this, we think this is important to the whole world. Me and my partner, Ally Wang, are here to bend the Global Health curve on things like diabetes, obesity, heart disease, and we can't do that alone, right, we're certainly going to try with our products, and I mentioned partnering with others. But this is a systems level solution to climate, food and health, we'll need a lot of folks and all of the different, you know, their respective expertise and experience to help us and we're learning all the time. I'm a lifelong learning AI. And I'd really like to learn everything there is to know about these sweet proteins. So if you're out there and would like to collaborate, drop me a line,

Philip Pape  38:32

there we go, there we go. I could probably throw you 10 or 15, names on top, my head two that are just very respectable scientists in different realms of health and nutrition that I'm sure it'd be interested in, this will fill

Jason Ryder  38:43

and we can make this sweet protein, we make a lot of it. And that was important in the early days from which to formulate products and still is, but we now have sufficient quantities to launch products, and also do all of the studies, we're interested to do what I think the only thing I struggle with is his time and bandwidth, right? But I find it, there's anybody out there, I will find the bandwidth and the time.

Philip Pape  39:08

And I'm certainly willing, it is very exciting. I mean, anything new, like this is exciting when especially when it's from a plant, which has just been on the earth for millions of years. And you're like, well, we can do something new with it. Which makes you wonder, always wonder what else is out there? What are the criticisms or skepticisms? Let's just, you know, cover the other side here that you hear about sweet proteins.

Jason Ryder  39:28

Yeah, most people don't know they even exist, and they've never had them. And I think we have a natural fear of the unknown, which, in my experience, education is a great assault for and so a lot of what we're doing in Dubli is getting the good word out about sweet proteins. Hey, if you hadn't had them before, try them. We've had many different events and programs that enable folks to get discounts and in some cases, even free chocolates to try them and we put a lot on our website, we've been participating in a lot of great media forums, like your podcast to get the word out and also published our safety studies so that all can read. So we're going to continue to do that education in all forms, establishing that relationship with trust with with our consumers, as as we all learn more about sweet proteins and all of the great places, and our food and beverage system than it can replace sugar. I think on the opposite side, we know a lot about sugar. The more we learn, the more it validates, you know what, what we know that it's not good for us in excess. And I'd say we're learning a lot more about the alternative sweeteners. None of it is good. And so consumers much like you mentioned with stevia, as they're looking for an alternative. You're making trade offs to do it often on taste, and my joy and making sweet proteins as you don't have to have that trade off. This is revolutionary. It's really a game changer. So I'm excited for you all to try it.

Philip Pape  41:04

Pretty cool. Yeah, me? Yeah, me too, for sure. So you since you are so excited, I could I could sense it. I mean, what, what's your vision for the future here? You know, I mean, you've sort of alluded to it, of the research of getting the product into more hands and more products. Is there anything else we didn't cover that that excites you about the future?

Jason Ryder  41:22

No, I get excited every time I walk into a grocery store, and I look at a product that I hadn't thought about. And there aren't very many left to be honest. But but it gets me excited about the next five or 10 years when we can get products and all of those areas that people love and enjoy sweetness from. And I you know, the way I would like to see that manifest is and true drops and the the growth rate first for obesity, diabetes and heart disease. And then the direct correlation, I would love to be part of the studies that demonstrate it was OOB Lee's suite proteins and the revolution that we created that started the bend on that curve and started bending it in the opposite direction. So that's, that's what I'm excited about in the future.

Philip Pape  42:09

What would you say is one or two of the products that would have massive impact? I can think of one and I think it's diet soda personally, if that's a possibility. And I would love to hear how you would incorporating that, because that's one, one of my vices. And I have no problem saying that because the alternative would be other things and probably have a lot more calories. So yeah, well, what are those products,

Jason Ryder  42:29

for sure. And I think you hit on that one, because 40% of the sugar we consume comes in the form of beverages, many of them are fizzy, like that soda. And so the cool thing, as I mentioned, this bottle of orange soda that I start showed you earlier in the 18 sugar cubes that go in the only function that the sugar cubes do with this bottle of soda is sweeten it. And so that's a great product for us to formulate around regardless of whether or not it's, it's, it's a tea, which is one of the beverages that we're selling now, or a fizzy one, which we plan to sell in the future. And so that gives us coverage of 40. And some would even guess as high as 50% of sugary products and, and they're they're essentially drop in replacements. So that's great when you can make it easy. In other cases, like chocolates, right, that's our other product, it's a little more difficult because sugar makes up by bulk 50% of the chocolate bar. And so when you replace when you remove all that sugar, and replace it with sweet protein, you can give somebody half of the size of the chocolate bar there, that's immediately going to give them a ho hum effect, right and so or you can replace it with something better. And so in our case, we've replaced it with fiber, which is something that's come out of our diet with Ultra processed foods is we just don't eat enough fiber. net net. And so rebuilding products with more healthy ingredients, natural ingredients that people can pronounce the names of without PhDs is also a passion of mine. Again, I appreciate it. I'm you know, I'm doing science at the cutting edge. And I also teach it at UC Berkeley, but I'm still an Alabama kid at heart and trying to solve problems for everybody. Right. And certainly the problems that we're seeing across climate, food and health are touching everybody.

Philip Pape  44:28

Yeah, yeah, I think that no doubt would be a massive impact. I mean, if you go into the grocery store and just go down the aisles, everything is sugar, just everything. I mean, pretty much you can randomly stick your hand out unless it's you know, in the canned goods or something that's gonna have sugar. You mentioned fibers that will kind of fibers added to those.

Jason Ryder  44:45

So we work with a couple of different fibers like Acacia fiber is one of those chicory root fibers is another. There's several What are widely viewed as healthy fibers, plant based fiber As of course, all fibers is plant based, but but can be good for you and help you either as a prebiotic, or just a healthy addition to a product replacing what we're used to what the diet we evolved around and have removed because of, you know, the the advent of ultra processed foods.

Philip Pape  45:20

Yeah, I wanted to ask us some some of the cheaper products, we'll just use the corn fiber. So I was curious about that.

Jason Ryder  45:26

I didn't know, fiber and maltodextrin. In general, we view those as a backdoor to diabetes. And so you do have the enzymes in your GI tract that can break down much of that soluble fiber and corn and make simple sugars, which take you right back to spiking your blood insulin, or your blood sugar level and your insulin and type two diabetes, and so on the types of fiber that we select for, and our products don't have that capability, as we really are working for those folks that want to get their sugar under control, without giving up taste.

Philip Pape  46:05

It's always an interesting topic, right? Because I know you don't listen to the show religiously. But I definitely touch on carbs a lot. And in the beauty of carbs and the benefit of carbs, and you know, everything from whole grains to starches to vegetables and fruits for energy recovery performance. And even for, you know, when you have a healthy lifestyle, and you build insulin sensitivity, it's good to have the carbs. Sometimes you want to spike your insulin when you have to work out, for example, to draw circles on you have muscle mass, but what we're talking about here is the mass of humanity that unfortunately consumes like 50 to 60% processed foods. And if you're not going to necessarily change it at the root. You can like chicory root, just getting change at the root then at least changed the available options in the environment, right, because the Western food environment is a big obesogenic factor that you know, you can you can blame people for their choices. But the it's out there, you know what I mean? It's very hard to get away from it.

Jason Ryder  47:03

Yeah, and I do. I have listened to a couple of your podcasts, particularly the misconceptions on protein, because I'm a huge protein lover. And, and building muscle over 40, I think was was the title of it. And I let your listeners guess which side of the 40 I'm on. But I think it's important and not to demonize carbohydrates. Right, I think what you're telling your listeners is, you're a chemical engineer, right? As you're solving mass and energy balances around people, much like I'm trying to solve them around the planet. And that that, you know, make sure that in minus out, you know, equals accumulation or loss and you want that at steady state, right is how we got ourselves into this situation with diabetes and obesity and heart disease is by eating far too much of one type of carbohydrate, that sugar. And we did it because it's recklessly abundant and cheap. And I'd say it's an opportunity for us to take a step back and look at not just what we're eating, but what other folks are making and selling to us and saying we want something different, right? We don't want to compromise on taste, or health. And we need foods that respect both of those things. And so I think that's largely what you're speaking to is going back to a diet that matches our lifestyle, certain from certainly from how much energy we're consuming, as well as the types of the carbohydrates that we're consuming, that they match our needs of our body that we evolved around. And don't put us in a position where our mass and energy balance gets out of whack.

Philip Pape  48:33

Yeah, for sure. And the choices out there should be as abundant as possible. So that when we make those choices for our lifestyle, we can still be sustainable. We could still have our our social time and still make baked goods and birthday cakes and all of that because again, I you know, I will tell people look if you if doughnuts are non negotiable. Enjoy your doughnut, let's just fit it in. But if you can have a doughnut made with a little bit better ingredients that just nudges us more in that healthier direction,

Jason Ryder  49:00

though, I like the way you think and I like your ideas. I think I just got a new one.

Philip Pape  49:05

Do you want to share it or is this?

Jason Ryder  49:07

You mentioned doughnuts. Doughnuts are also a big thing for where I come from two. So hurry to work on after this podcast.

Philip Pape  49:15

Yeah, I mean, you still have the fried dough part of it. But you know, we can at least get the frosting and

Jason Ryder  49:21

all good things in moderation, right? I can certainly help you with the sugar and the sweetness part of the donut.

Philip Pape  49:27

Sounds good. Okay, so I like to ask this of all guests. And that is what one question Did you wish I had asked and what is your answer?

Jason Ryder  49:36

What one question that I wish you had asked. I think it was more around the sustainability. But But I sort of seated my own answer there as most folks don't connect sweet proteins. With sustainability. It's the problems on health and food are the obvious ones. But But sustainability is not Yes, and I'd love to leave your listeners with some of what I've seen in my life. I spent a lot of time in Brazil earlier in my career, building bioprocess facilities that use that sugar to make bio based products. And there's a lot of sugarcane in Brazil and a lot of the tropical areas of the planet. And it's, it's a terrible crop for us to be growing from an environmental perspective. And so, I'd love for folks to think about sugar reduction, not just in terms of their own bodies and their health, and our food system, but also in terms of our global climate. And, yeah, that's, that's the question you didn't ask, but I think I answered a couple of times anyway.

Philip Pape  50:45

No, I appreciate ya know, for sure I was focused more on the health side, but that is that is going to be valuable because when you hear stories about the rainforests and deforestation things like at the end of the day, it's it's it affects all of us at some level, the wildfires and all that no matter what, what side of politics you are, there's, you know, a very strong, factual part of all this, we need to be aware of

Jason Ryder  51:06

that it's like all things if you don't get a chance to see it on a daily basis, that might be easy for you not to think about it. And so I'm encouraging folks to think about it, as all of your choices have implications. And we as a human society, can make better ones together and solve this whole system of problems we're facing across climate, food and health. I often don't refer to these as challenges or problems to my students, I only use the word opportunity because they're at that early stage in life and they're they're you know, all ready to get out and tackle all of these these opportunities and I say get after it.

Philip Pape  51:43

For sure. I'm gonna call my friend Alan when he says the obstacles the way right there

Jason Ryder  51:47

you go. Alright, so Phillip thank you for that.

Philip Pape  51:53

So where can listeners Jason find out more about you your work Uli any, any discount any study whatever you want to send them, I can throw all those links in the show notes.

Jason Ryder  52:03

Yes, please do visit our website www.weebly.com. That's Iblis spelled o bli. And you can buy our sweet iced teas, both our rather our peach, our lemon and our mango, yuzu, as well as our chocolates, dark chocolates. For now we do have milk chocolates on the way that are dark chocolates or silky cacao. We also have sea salt and raspberry bits. And so try them. And please share your feedback. Feedback is a gift. Certainly the supportive but also corrective. I'd love to hear how you feel about our products and our sweet proteins in general, as we're making them for you. So I'd love to hear from you.

Philip Pape  52:48

Absolutely. So ui.com sweet iced tea, dark chocolate. That's my favorite kind. So I'm going to try those out. Jason is a pleasure to have you on um, you know, I learned a lot I'm sure the listener did. I'm looking forward to more of the sweet proteins in our in our food supply.

Jason Ryder  53:02

Wonderful. Well, I appreciate the time and the ability to go a bit deeper on sweet proteins with your listeners. And I look forward to coming back and telling you more in the future.

Philip Pape  53:13

Sounds good. Jason, thanks so much for coming on. Thanks. So thank you for tuning in to another episode of Wits & Weights. If you found value in today's episode, and know someone else who's looking to level up their Wits & Weights. Please take a moment to share this episode with them. And make sure to hit the Follow button in your podcast platform right now to catch the next episode. Until then, stay strong.

Ep 102: Q&A – Home Workouts, Antioxidant Supplements, Food Logging Hacks, Best Grains for Carbs

Today, we are doing a Q&A to answer questions from the free Wits & Weights Facebook community, emails, and messages from listeners.

We have questions from four listeners about training at home with a video vs. your own program or a template, how supplements impact your immune system based on dosing, some of MacroFactor’s features and how they actually work, and options for grains and cereals as a carb source.

I’m sharing some of my favorite strategies for all of these, and refer to a few past episodes if you want to dive deeper into specific topics.

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Click here to apply for coaching!
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Today you’ll learn all about:

[2:02] How should I program my home workout?
[13:48] Do exogenous antioxidants (supplements like Vitamin C) negatively impact the immune system when consumed in high quantities, and how much is too much (if there is a case of “too much”)?
[21:54] Does MacroFactor allow you to pre-log the day before?
[25:41] Is it only via your body weight that it figures out how to change calories and macros?
[29:57] Can you change the macro amounts? For example, I eat pretty high protein for my weight, as I am a petite female. Or does it do a standard like 1 gram per pound?
[32:09]  Aside from oatmeal, are there any other cereals or grains that we can incorporate? Also, do high-protein cereals such as Kashi Go ( which I love with plain Kefir or Greek yogurt) or Magic Spoon offer an acceptable alternative? I guess the main question would be, should we avoid going down the cereal/granola aisle and stick with plain oats?
[41:00] Outro

Episode resources:

• Wits & Weights Facebook community

• MacroFactor app – use code WITSANDWEIGHTS to extend your free trial to two weeks

• Ep 98: Is Your Food Logging App Sabotaging Your Fat Loss and Physique Goals?

• Ep 6: Set Your Fitness and Nutrition Habits on Autopilot

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Transcript

Philip Pape  00:00

All the things that your body does to burn calories in a 24 hour period are going to be very complex and almost pretty much they are impossible to measure. But you don't need to measure because guess what? All of that energy that you burn causes your body mass to either go up down or stay the same because your body either stores or uses that energy. Welcome to the Wits & Weights podcast. I'm your host Philip pape, and this twice a week podcast is dedicated to helping you achieve physical self mastery by getting stronger. Optimizing your nutrition and upgrading your body composition will uncover science backed strategies for movement, metabolism, muscle and mindset with a skeptical eye on the fitness industry. So you can look and feel your absolute best. Let's dive right in. Wits & Weights community Welcome to another solo episode of the Wits & Weights podcast. I hope you enjoyed our last episode 101 The truth about postpartum recovery and empowering women after childbirth with Peter Lappe about postpartum recovery diastasis recti and the unique challenges women face post pregnancy. Today for episode 102. We are doing another q&a to answer questions from the free Wits & Weights Facebook community and emails and messages from listeners which I always love to get. Whether it's a question whether it's feedback, a comment, maybe something you didn't like, whatever it is, I'm all ears and I'd love to hear from you. We have questions today from for listeners about training at home with a video versus your own programming or template. How supplements impact your immune system based on dosing, some of macro factors features that's the food logger and how they actually work and options for grains and cereals as a carb source. Now definitely listen all the way through because I'm sharing some of my favorite strategies in the answers to each of these questions. And I will refer to a few past episodes as well if you want to dive deeper into specific topics. Let's jump right into question number one. The first question is from tionesta. And she says I was a regular gym goer before COVID. Then I moved to another state and now workout strictly at home. And since I work from home, it's most convenient, I totally get that because I also work out from home. I'm more successful with following along with a video workout versus some programs I own that either have just a PDF with exercises, sets or reps or a five minute video showing the moves. But then you have to pause the video to execute. Is this just a mental block I have to get past I've accumulated a variety of home equipment that makes it convenient to stay home. When you follow a video. It's like having a trainer right there with cues. One of my strength programs as a fillable PDF that gives freedom to choose moves based on methods such as push pull, squat, push, pull, carry, squat, push, hinge, etc. Maybe I just need to take the time to compose the plan and start day one to execute. Okay, there's a lot here, but I'm sure many of you listeners can relate to what Ginetta is asking about this is the classic dilemma between having the structured guidance of let's say a video, a personal trainer or a class, right many of us have come through doing classes, whether it's boot camps, yoga, aerobic classes, strength training classes, CrossFit, et cetera. And it's the difference between that and essentially doing it by yourself to some level by either following an existing program, or designing your own or somewhere in between. And so I want to break down each piece of this because I think they're even though it's kind of one overall question. I think there's different aspects, we want to attack one by one. Because my overall philosophy with anything like this is, what is the true source of the problem? Where's the root cause? And where's the most friction? Because the surface level assumptions may not be the real answer, let's say. So first of all, the fact that you like video workouts, right? This suggests that maybe you're, you're doing a program that is too complicated, meaning the fact that you have to have a video to walk you through all these moves, and then every session is going to be new moves. It reminds me kind of like p90x Beachbody, that kind of thing that I used to do back in the day, that wasn't super effective. But it definitely required you to watch the video because it was always different. Well, when I see something like that, I think it's actually too complicated. And perhaps you're trying to do too much. And what we want to do is simplify our programming and make sure that it meets the basic principles of building strength and muscle. Are you are you performing more or less the same or similar movements from session to session, or every other session, depending on your split, and progressively overloading via the weight on the bar or dumbbells or the rep reps or sets? If instead you're doing something different every single time I mean, maybe coming back to the same move like four weeks later or five weeks later, or almost never, it's not going to be very effective. And it can be very complicated. And you will feel tied to having to do video workouts. So that's the first thing I would ask myself is, is it just am I trying to comp too much stuff because I want it to be, let's say fun. And I'm all for things being fun, but they also have to be effective.

Philip Pape  05:24

Another way to simplify your workout, if you're doing too much as some people are, for example, in addition to the workout, they're doing all sorts of warm ups and mobility exercises, and stretching and cooldown. And you don't need any of that you don't need quote, unquote, mobility, most people, okay, I'm not talking about physical therapy or rehab set sessions, or somebody with an extreme physical limitation that needs to get over that 95% of people just need to warm up with the movements. So if you're going to squat, just warm up with your squat, you don't need to do 20 minutes of quote, unquote, mobility, because mobility will come from working through the full range of motion on those movements. So just warm up with the movements. If you have different full body movements during a workout you want to, and you're going from, say legs to upper body, you definitely want to warm up the upper body as well. But if you're going from a leg movement to another leg movement, you're probably already warmed up. So what I want you to do is check out Episode 15, way back in the archives, it was called maximize your lifting sessions, warm ups, supersets, rest periods, and more about that. But continuing on my question, Shana is what is it that you like about the videos? Because let's focus on the positive as well, not just what you're not doing? Let's focus on what you get out of the videos. Is it the cues, right? They say, Okay, now do this do this, is it the tempo? Is it the immediate visuals you get on the form. And again, I think a simpler set of movements that you can master first, like, for example, most of my newer lifters, or people who start with me, after lifting for maybe three to six months, they're doing something like starting strength, or some other compound lift base program where you might be doing three or four sessions per workout at most. And these would include the big lifts, squat deadlift press, overhead press, and then some maybe rows and or chin ups and pull ups, for example, well, if you only have five movements to work on, it really simplifies the learning process. And the only cues you need are your own personal cues to focus on the things that you're working on in that moment. And this is where the mastery of these lifts is going to come in handy. And you may want to hire a personal trainer for one or two sessions to go over those and get the cues that way. But then once you have them, it's really up to you and your budget and time and all that you should be able to continue mastering those moves for the rest of your life. Now, you could also join a group where you can put form checks up on the group like the Wits & Weights community, we can do that for you as well, you know, totally free, where you film your squat, you upload it, you say what am I doing here, and I and others can let you know what the cues might be. And so that's that that again, comes down to simplifying and making sure you're not trying to do like 50 different movements, a whole bunch of aerobic or muscular endurance type movements, but rather, a few key strength base lifts. And then as you get more advanced, adding in a few accessories that support those lifts. Okay, so you also mentioned a mental block, right? Perhaps just hear me out, perhaps it's not you so much as the programs you've picked, and making it harder, harder on yourself, thus creating what seems like a mental block. For example, you mentioned a fillable. PDF. To me, that sounds like a lot of work that the work has put on you to design your program. That's a big source of friction of resistance. And I would say in my opinion, 95% of people out there or more can just use a good template. I mean, I think you mentioned templates as well. But when I say a good template, I mean one that again, is very effective focused on the lower rep ranges, the big lifts with some accessory movements, done in a way that maximizes rest periods of recovery, and works along with your your goals and your nutrition. So, you know, personal trainers may not like me saying that because their job is to program for you. But I don't think you need someone to program for you 95% of the time. A middle ground would be to be in something like a club like a barbell club. For example. I'm in Andy Baker's barbell club. I have been for probably three years now. He's one of the best programmers on the planet. And he writes a program for each week that everybody can follow. So it's not customed to you, but it changes so you get the variety. It's fun in that way and you get different options to choose from you get a four day split, you get power, or what do you call it? A basic barbell split For three days, and then you get a six day bodybuilding split, you can choose one of those to follow. And something like that is more than adequate for pretty much anyone other than if you're trying to be a competitor or something like that. And you need something very custom. So instead of a fillable, PDF, why don't you get a fixed template that is effective. So some programs that I I recommend for people starting strength, Mike Matthews for women thinner, leaner, stronger, and he has an app called stacked that's free that has the programs in there. So if you'd like using apps, you could just jump right into the app and pick one of those programs. Cody McBroom of tailored coaching method has a brand new app that came out I don't I don't mind plugging that for him no affiliation. And I think that's when you pay for it's like 29 bucks a month. But you also get access to tons of what I know are going to be effective programs for different goals. My good friends Katie and Heather at stronger than your boyfriend have a program called stronger. It's a four day split. It has a nice combination of big lifts and accessories that are kind of unique, some moves that you may not have seen before just to make it fun. But it it goes on a three month cycle like a 12 week cycle where each four week block, lowers in rep range. So you go from sort of a call it I hate to say hypertrophy rep range, but the higher rep ranges of eight to 12 down to like six to eight and then you end up at like one to four something like that. But it gets it kind of eases you into it that way, any of those would be effective. And you could easily learn the most basic movements by watching videos, learn the cues, and then execute them. And hopefully that helps you get over some of these blocks. Now, another block could be that you are not planning ahead. And you kind of alluded to that in one of my very early episodes, episode six. Okay, set your fitness and nutrition habits on autopilot. I do talk about how to pre plan for everything in your week, including your workouts. And I don't know how well that episode has aged but the principles are still the same. And what I like to do personally, and what I recommend to clients is anything you can do ahead of time, well, when you're thinking logically and you feel refreshed and have energy, like on the weekends for many people is going to reduce friction during the week. So simple way to do that is take the template that you're going to use now, let's say it's starting strength, where you know that there's a Monday, Wednesday, Wednesday, Friday workout, and go ahead and pre log, the exercises, the sets, the reps, and the loads that you plan to work to use for your top sets for your working sets. And go ahead and pre load those in your app or your notebook, whatever you use to track so that all you have to do is go into the gym, do it and then check it off. And of course, if you you know, if anything changes as you're working out, you can note it there. Pre prepare your gym clothes, your squat shoes, your belt, your pre workout or protein or creating all that stuff, just prepare all of it ahead of time. So that you get up Monday morning, boom, ready to go. Let's do it. And then that's just one less excuse. So the last thing is I'm a big fan of using resources and communities to figure this stuff out. So whether your medium of choice is a book or videos, but not videos in real time, but more like YouTube videos to learn the form. I like starting strength. I like barbell logic for the big lifts. Hiring a personal trainer for a few sessions, or even using an online community like Wits & Weights to post your lifts. And then of course, if you wanted to work with a coach like me, I'm a nutrition coach, but I do provide

Philip Pape  13:36

form checks. And again, I'm not dragging this directly you should edit but just in general, for folks to know that there are many, many options out there that that are kind of an in between for the answer to your question. Okay, hope that answers your question. I'm gonna go to number two. Now. The second question is from Christina. Do exogenous antioxidants. supplements like vitamin C negatively impact the immune system when consumed in high quantities? And how much is too much if there is such a thing? And yes, there is such a thing as too much. Let's get into some of the details. My general advice for people, my clients and just anybody listening is Be judicious about supplementation and use it for a specific known purpose for you as an individual, including nutrient deficiencies. So this is where you would use a multivitamin. Maybe you take magnesium, maybe you supplement with vitamin D, and the dosing and the need for or depending on your deficiencies for performance. So this is where creatine comes into play. I think everybody should be taking creatine honestly. And probiotics right for digestion and gut health which can be obtained from food but many of us like to supplement with that as well. Now I'm okay dosing with vitamin C, vitamin E, selenium, zinc, copper, whatever you need for deficiencies or immune function in moderate amounts in the amounts that you would normally See on an over the counter product. But an excessive amount of anything is going to be at best useless, meaning you get diminishing returns and at worst, toxic, right? We know that anything in too high of a quantity can be toxic. I mean, it depends on if it's water soluble or fat soluble, things like that, like for example vitamin C, it's hard to overdose on that versus a vitamin D. So you kind of have to understand those nuances. But the key is to keep it in a moderate dosing level per the recommendations. Now, the first source of all nutrients should be what food right period. This is why I prefer a diet of something like 80%, or more whole foods. Notice I said 80%. I didn't say 100%. I didn't say you cut everything out. We we are not about restriction here. This is more that if we are trying to improve our body composition, we're trying to manage our hunger. And we want to manage our health at the same time, we're going to seek out lower calorie density, higher satiety, higher fiber, lots of variety, fruits and vegetables, whole grains, all that a lot of which has been actually conventional wisdom for many years. But because of our modern food environment and the level of processing, it's hard to do that. And the more processed foods you have, the less nutrients you're going to have and the more deficiencies you're going to have. But I also like data, you know that you know that Christina and everyone listening, I love data, I love closing that feedback loop. And here you can track specific nutrients and micronutrients. If your food logging app can do that, and this is where I talk about macro factor all the time, we went into detail about it on episode 98. But it can now do that in great detail. You can track your macro micronutrients, you can set targets, you can automatically set targets based on what the science says. And that will give you a really good idea as well, if something is too much, right. So things that can be at a toxic level of intake, they will often have an upper limit to find not always but but they will in many cases, like for example saturated fat. So like anything, there is a minimum effective dose that you might need to to fill in that gap. And then there's often a toxic dose. And it varies based on the individual, right your age, your dieting, history, medical history, your activity, your diet, of course, one simple reference, if you're looking for numbers, Christina is the recommended dietary allowances the RDA is, and as much as there might be controversy over government sponsored recommendations, it's at least a starting point, right? Because they tend to be on the conservative side anyway. And you can look those up for specific nutrients and see if a particular supplement or antioxidant is way out of bed from those recommendations. As to your specific question about their impact on the immune system. A few things come to mind. First, the the supplements form of anything. So if you get anything in a pill instead of from food, it may not have the same benefits as the things in food, right? Because it's not complemented by the other nutrition and the other the other nutrients and the other compounds in food. So I think I talked about this, what did I talk about this on Oh Is my bonus episode about the carnivore diet recently, where I talked about how real food like fruits, vegetables have other compounds that aren't necessarily tracked. And they may have complimentary effects with these nutrients that you're trying to seek out here. They may not have the same benefits. And they might even act as what's called a pro oxidant which can cause oxidative stress, which is the opposite of what you want. We want antioxidants, not pro toxins. The second thing is that high doses could modulate the immune system in ways that we don't understand. Right meaning you're actually causing an effect on the immune system to compensate in some way. And this is beyond the scope of this podcast and should shouldn't be a concern if you're not taking unreasonably high doses of these antioxidants. So long story short, keep it simple. Don't use supplements as a shortcut. They are absolutely the lowest priority thing. When I work with clients after energy balance, macros, micros, fiber, hydration, even meal timing are all more important than supplements, but supplements can fill in that gap. Okay, so that was the second question. Let's move on to question number three from mn. She says I loved your recent episode 98 about food logging apps and macro factor in particular, great info. And by the way, I've gotten a lot of feedback on that episode. When I created it. I wasn't sure if it would come across as just like a sales pitch for the app. But a lot of people got back to me said You know, I was on the fence. I've been using, say my fitness power or something else for all these years. And it was on the fence because it's a paid app. And I jumped in based on your episode which clearly outlined why these other apps are problematic. And now all of a sudden, like within days or week of using it. I absolutely love what it's helping me discover about myself and helping me reach my goals. So thank you everyone who wrote in about it. Anyway, continue with the question she has no has three questions built into this one question? Does macro factor allow you to pre log the day before? Is it only via your bodyweight that it figures out how to change calories and macros? And can you change the macro amounts? For example, I eat pretty high protein for my weight as I'm a petite female? Or does it do a standard like one gram per pound? Okay, I love these questions because they go to the heart of features that make food logging apps helpful or not the very principles I was talking about in that episode. So I'm going to answer these one by one and then I will repeat and questions as I go along just so everybody can follow what I'm answering. Before I do I get again, I want to remind you to check out Episode 98, which is titled, is your food logging app, sabotaging your fat loss and physique goals? Go check that out. So you have some more context. Hey, this is Philip. And I hope you're enjoying this episode of Wits & Weights, I started Wits & Weights to help people who want to build muscle lose fat and actually look like they lift. I've noticed that when people improve their strength and physique, they not only look and feel better, they transform other areas of their life, their health, their mental resilience and their confidence in everything they do. And since you're listening to this podcast, I assume you want the same things the same success, whether you recently started lifting, or you've been at this for a while and want to optimize and reach a new level of success. Either way, my one on one coaching focused on engineering your physique, and body composition is for you. If you want expert guidance and want to get results faster, easier, and with fewer frustrations along the way to actually look like you lift, go to wits & weights.com, and click on coaching, or use the link in my show notes to apply today. I'll ask you a few short questions to decide if we're a good fit. And if we are, we'll get you started this week. Now back to the show.

Philip Pape  21:54

So NS first question was, does macro factor allow you to pre log the day before? The answer is yes, you can log foods meals or not meals, foods and what they call plates, which is multiple foods and a single time. Because macro factor doesn't use meals because meals is a limiting construct manufacture allows you to log to anytime you want. So if you eat 10 times a day, you can log it that way. Very flexible. So you can pre log or you can log a day, the previous day, you can log future days as far out into the future as you want. Even better as I encourage this practice as a way to meal plan for yourself. And to also solve problems that have been a struggle for you. So let me break those down. The first one, using macro factors a meal planner is is a beautiful thing because you can for example, if you know you're gonna go out on Saturday night, for a big dinner or to a restaurant and you know, it's going to be pretty indulgent, you can pre log that whole day and figure out what it's going to look like you can say, okay, walking back from right to left, I'm going to put in my dinner first. And I'm going to have you know, buttered butter dinner rolls, I'm gonna have that appetizer of fried onion rings, I'm gonna have a Caesar salad, I'm gonna have you know, a steak with butter, and I'm gonna have potatoes or I'm gonna have dessert, whatever, just right, I'm just randomly rattling off things. And you come to find that it's 1800 calories. And it's, you know, blown through your fat budget most likely, and your, your calorie needs or your calorie targets or let's say 2500 calories. So now you know you have 700 calories left for earlier in the day. And you go ahead and you plan out a light protein, veggie based lunch and breakfast. And maybe maybe it's more than 700 calories because you know you don't you know, you don't want to starve yourself, you want to have enough energy, you want enough carbs and protein throughout the day, you want to distribute protein and all that. And you don't want to feel like you have to binge. So you go over by maybe 300 calories. But guess what, that's just 300 calories, you've already figured out what you're going to do, you have a plan 300 calories is a drop in the bucket compared to if you didn't do that. And then you had a big breakfast because it's Saturday and then you know you had a big lunch and then you maybe your normal snack, and all of a sudden you get to dinner you've already eaten, let's say 1500 calories. If you still eat the way you are, you're going to plan to eat now you're going to be 1000 calories over your budget. So it's great as a pre planning meal planning tool. The other way to do this, as I mentioned was if you have trouble hitting a particular macro like protein, that's very common one you have trouble hitting in protein. Actually, a lot of my clients also sometimes have trouble hitting carbs because I'm asking them to eat more carbs than they ever thought they could eat, and still, you know, lose fat, improve their body composition, but it's true. And so, what I what I asked them to do is use macro factor and plan out their next day, let's say a routine day like today's a Wednesday. Tomorrow's a Thursday and I want you to plan out the day as if it is 100% successful right 100% macro and calorie adherence meaning, you know you hit it right, pretty much close to the ground, even though reality is never going to work. count that way, and that's okay. It will immediately tell you based on the food, you start to log, where you're off. I mean, it's pretty simple, you see that you need or you want 150 grams of protein and what you've logged as 100. You know, you're short 50 Now you have to start moving things around. So it's a perfect, logically driven, case, cool headed in the moment, non emotional way to tell your future self, hey, get real, what you're doing isn't quite getting there, we need to make a change. And now I'm pre planning how to make that change. Okay. So the answer is, yes, you can pre log. And then I just went on two big reasons how you why you want to do that, actually. And second question was, Is it only via your bodyweight, that the app figures out how to change calories and macros? So what she's asking because I'm going to reword this, what I get from a lot of people is where do I enter my activity? Like my exercise? Why? Or why don't? Why does it need exercise, right to figure out your expenditure and what the targets need to be? Well, here's the thing, all macro factor needs is two data points, you need your body weight, and it needs your calorie intake. And the beauty of this is that our bodies are a closed system, right. So you have energy coming in, in the form of food, which is measured by calories, you do a bunch of stuff, not just voluntarily, but involuntarily. All the elements of your metabolism, metabolism are happening all the time, every day, right, your organs have to function that uses a ton of calories, your liver, your heart, your lungs, your brain, those are using a ton of calories, your lungs to keep you breathing. All the involuntary movements like flat, you know, blinking your eyes and such. So that's like two thirds of your calories. You move around all day doing stuff, whether you're standing, sitting, walking, cooking, cleaning, all of that you are potentially exercising as well, right? You should be your training, your strength training, you're, you know, biking or walking or doing some sort of cardio, or whatever. And you're eating food as well. And the act of eating food and digesting that food burns calories. So guess what, if, when I hear the question, where do I enter my activity calories? And I know and you didn't ask that explicitly, I'm just extrapolating into what a lot of people think.

Philip Pape  27:16

I should also ask the question, okay, where do I log my digestion calories? Where do I log my, the calories that my organs need to function? Where do I log you get where I'm going, it gets kind of ridiculous. Actually, when I, when I make that hypothetical, that all the things your body does to burn calories in a 24 hour period are going to be very complex, and almost pretty much they are impossible to measure. But you don't need to measure because guess what, all of that energy that you burn causes your body mass to either go up or down or stay the same. Because your body either stores or uses that energy, it stores it in your fat cells, or it releases it from your fat cells, as well as glycogen, right in the form of glucose from carbs, and maybe from protein. If you don't have enough carbs, and your body starts to cannibalize its own protein, it's going to take immediate energy from the food coming in, and then stored energy from your fat cells. And what happens at the end of the day, your weight either goes up or down or stay the same. So macro factor only needs your weight and your calories to know how many calories you're burning, without having to know all the stuff that happens in the middle. Think of a car, think of it as a car. I don't know if this, this analogy will work. But if you wanted to calculate the gas mileage of a car, which is kind of which is kinda like its expenditure, right? Kind of like its metabolism, you're gonna say, how many miles did you drive divided by how much gas did I burn? All you have to know is how many miles you drove and how much gas is left in the gas tank. You don't have to know how much energy is used by all the components of the engine by the tires by all the wasted heat and mechanical energy. No, you have to know all that. Just what goes in? And what goes out simple and precise all in one. So to answer your question, yes, all it needs is weighed in calories. And I encourage you to log those every single day. If you log weight, it needs at least one way in per week. But I strongly encourage you to weigh every day to get better precision. Because if you do it once a week, as I've talked about before, you may be hitting a high point or a low point. And if it goes up or goes down from one point to the next, it may not be an accurate reflection of what's happening in your body. Macro factor will use an average over a three week period regardless, but it's better to have more data points. And then calories. You should be logging your food every day anyway. It's great for awareness and it's great for precision in the data. So it knows okay, I'm eating this many calories my body is doing this, therefore I'm burning this, then you'll know what to do you know, oh, maybe I should walk more and start to push that expenditure up. You don't need to log it in the app, the Apple will realize that you're eating the same amount of food and all of a sudden you're losing weight or you weren't losing weight before Oh, you must be moving more doing something that burns more calories. Alright, and last question related to manual macro factor was Can you change the macro amounts? For example, a pretty high protein for my weight is I'm a petite female, or does it do a standard like one gram per pound. Alright, so in macro factor when you set up a goal, to gain weight, lose weight or maintain, it's going to prompt you to set up your program, your macro program, and there's a few different settings there. And a few settings are universal, I recommend these universal settings, the first one is called coached. So you can either do coached collaborative, or I think it's called manual. And the coach profile is going to set your targets for you, based on your body stats, body composition, and the goal that you set, right based on the rate of gain or the rate of loss. And based on what weight you are right now. So if you want to maintain, it's going to be based on that on not changing at all. So I would use the coached profile for pretty much 99% of people. And then here's the thing, you can change the amount of fats and protein that it uses. So you can set it to low fat or low carb or keto, you can do that it gives you those options. So for somebody who just prefers lower carbs, and wants to give it a shot, do that, again, I usually recommend just the balanced option, which is let the app figure it out for you based on the evidence of a good balanced approach to your macros. And then finally, you can set your protein level you can set it to, you know, low, moderate, high and very high. And I usually recommend high or in some cases very high. And so the high and very high, it's gonna get it close to that one gram per pound. And then the low and the very low will be like around point seven 2.9. But it's all within the range of what the evidence suggests is optimal for results. And by results we mean improving your physique, improving your health, achieving your goals, losing fat building muscle. Cool. So your question was, can you change the macro mounts in that's the way I would do it, I would change if you don't want to do balance your little low fat or low carb or keto and if you don't want to do like very high protein you can go to high or moderate protein. Okay. The last question is from Alan. Cooler weather is coming and many people may turn to cozy oatmeal overnight oats etc for their carb sources making me hungry. I eat oatmeal every morning. Aside from oatmeal, are there any other cereals or grains that we can incorporate? It's a good question, right? Seriously, I love that we're asking explicitly like give me more carbs give me more grains and cereals because I know that those are carbs and they might serve my goals and there's nothing wrong with them whatsoever. Also do high protein cereals such as Kashi Go which I love with plain Kefir or Greek yogurt, or magic spoon offer an acceptable alternative? I guess the main question would be should we avoid going down the cereal and granola aisle and stick with plain oats? I think you know my answer to the question. First of all plain oats are down the cereal granola aisle generally but that's a technicality, semantics. I think when you're talking about grains, most of the options are going to be in the middle aisles of the grocery store, right? Because they're not perishable, like meat, dairy and produce what you would find on the perimeter. So you're going to find them in the middle or maybe you'll find them in the organic or the weak natural section some grocery stores have. But here's the thing. So you kind of know you kind of are leading me with the question, Alan, because you know, I'm all about flexibility and nothing's really off limits like I think you should, every aisle in the grocery store is open to having something that you enjoy that meets your needs period. I absolutely do love oats. I love oats because they're versatile. They taste great. I mean they're, they don't have much of a taste in of themselves. But you know, you can put them with lots of things to add flavor. And they are high in protein. Of course. I personally like old fashioned oats but there's many different cuts to choose from. There's the instant there's the like you said overnight, there's the steel cut, the quick oats, etc, whatever you want. Now, as far as other cereals and grains, I'm going to suggest seven of them. I know it's a big list, but I just want to put it all out there as a nutrition coach. There's a million options, but these are seven good ones. Quinoa. Of course, it's an ancient grain, high in protein, high in fiber. It has that nice nutty taste. Not everybody likes a texture but you can cook it in some broth and it gives it a little bit of a different texture. So you can go from like going from crunchy to soft. So quinoa, of course, Ferro is another ancient grain FA RR O, and it's more it's dense and chewy if you want that. So again, I'm all about mouthfeel I'm kind of a foodie. So if you're into that and cooking and recipes and you want different textures definitely play around with all these grains. And if you're finally back on the carb train after years of being low carb and you're enjoying the beauty of what carbs give you it's it's time to explore and go out go out there and you know pick these up at the grocery store and see which ones you like. So quinoa Farrell, the third one is barley. Barley is good in soups. It's good as a side dish. Yeah, it's in beer too. That's that shouldn't be your main source of it though, Boulder B you LGR is very quick to prepare and that's good in like salads or bowls like when you have those even like the vegetarian bowls, but of course I love adding meat to vegetarian bowls so it kind of defeats the purpose. The next one is rice. I mean rice should be on the list for anybody rice is a mainstay both white and brown rice, all the varieties, all the fragrances Jasmine basmati you know, brown rice is a nice wholegrain alternative if you want more fiber and decrease calorie density, but it is a little bit more. You know, because it's rougher and texture, it's not as smooth mouthfeel and if you're on let's say you're in a building phase Allen, which you are and you want to get a lot of carbs. You know, it actually may be too filling to just eat brown rice and you may want to have white rice I think white rice is is also versatile and delicious. So rice, the sixth one is couscous. Couscous is just made from wheat, it's effectively a form of pasta just in a different shape. That can be a lot of fun. Kids tend to love it as well. And you can, again very versatile. And then millet, it's a small grain right also very versatile cheese in portages, things like that. Now, some of these animals never eat and some of them I eat a lot of like I eat a lot of rice. I eat quinoa, couscous occasionally. The other ones not so much. It's just you know, how much do you want to keep in the pantry? And how much variety Do you want to have at home and try? Okay, so you also asked about high protein cereals. Now here's the thing, I personally have a subscription to magic spoon, I get a few boxes every few months or whatever a very small amount in case I get that cereal craving or you know, I want a cereal fix. I don't get a lot of cravings these days. It's something that you find happens when you go more toward Whole Foods You don't you don't have these massive emotional cravings like you used to which is part of why we do it. Keep in mind though, things like magic spoon, they're still processed foods right in terms of the spectrum but they're not. They're not crazy, like ultra processed side of the spectrum per se. I went back and looked at my box of magic spoon and most ingredients are fine. I mean it has chicory root as like a fibrous filler. That's that's a natural filler. I'm okay with that. It uses alue Lowe's, which is a non nutritive sweetener from fruit, it actually does have a few calories. I think for every 10 calories, you absorb one. So it has some impact on calories. But products like magic spoon, I think were developed for like the the low carb crowd and I kind of wish there were some high carb high protein versions like just kind of normal cereal with good ingredients that add protein. But you're fine with these honestly, because the food science is incredible. It's okay to take advantage of it where it serves you. And when you look at something like magic spoon, it's kind of like a protein bar. You'd have it occasionally don't have it every single day necessarily. Well, I mean, even if you had it once a day, it still probably would fit within your goals. To be honest, I don't want to be that restrictive for anything. But

Philip Pape  37:58

it's it's impressive, right? And they're tasty. They have all these now, they have not what they call natural flavors, which is really not natural per se. I mean you can you can go research what that means. And there were like two other ingredients. Honestly, there weren't too many. I think it's the the primary ingredient is Man, I wish I had it with me, I should look it up. But the primary ingredient is just, I think whey protein isolate, right? It's whey protein, something like that. That's where the protein comes from. That plus the chicory root gives it that, you know, Harvey texture. Okay, so here's the thing, I'm gonna let you in on a secret Alan, and everybody listening, the 1000s of people listening. If cereal is like the most delicious thing to you, it's the thing you just have to have. It's your non negotiables you just love it. And I know people like that with cereal, which by the way you can pour almond milk in and you know you don't have the extra calories from milk if you want to do that. And here's the thing if you have the calories and macros for it in your allocated targets for your flexible diet. All right, a bit of your favorite cereal, even if it's not high protein can absolutely fit in a sustainable diet. Yes, even those, okay, I'm gonna say even high sugar cereals made for kids. gasp There I said it. Right, some cinnamon toast crunch is not going to kill you if it's in your 10 to 20% budget for indulgences. Alright, and when you're eating 4000 calories and building muscles. Sometimes your indulgences come from interesting places. And in granted in a fat loss phase, these are the first things that we tend to limit, right because they don't serve our goals. Something like high sugar cereals just not gonna be very filling. It's processed, yada, yada, it's not going to have much in the way of nutrition although you'd be surprised at how much they fortify these things with after the fact. Anyway, that's what we mean by flexibility and not restricting yourself and so take that fear mongering fitness influencers. Okay, that's it. That's all the questions I have for today's episode. And I think that was enough so please send them in if you want your question answered in an upcoming QA In any episode, the best way to do that is send me a message on IG at Wits & Weights, or Facebook, either directly to my profile. I think my link is in the show notes but better off, go through the free fit a free, the free Wits & Weights Facebook community, those links are in the show notes. So our next episode 103 titled, sweet proteins, food science and the future of sweeteners with Jason Ryder. Wow, I couldn't have planned that any better. To tie off with that last question from Alan. We're going to be diving into the topic of sweet proteins. If you've never heard of these, neither had I before I met Jason. I obviously researched for the episode but even then I wasn't fully understanding exactly what they were until we talked. So check out that episode we're going to explore the science behind sweet proteins, their health benefits in your nutrition strategy, and then what foods you might find them in now and in the future. Maybe a magic spoon who knows? As always stay strong. And I'll talk to you next time here on the Wits & Weights podcast. Thank you for tuning in to another episode of Wits & Weights. If you found value in today's episode, and know someone else who's looking to level up their Wits & Weights. Please take a moment to share this episode with them. And make sure to hit the Follow button in your podcast platform right now to catch the next episode. Until then, stay strong

Ep 101: The Truth About Post-Partum Recovery and Empowering Women After Childbirth with Peter Lap

In this episode, I talk to UK post-partum recovery expert Peter Lap. Peter will dispel myths and offer post-partum recovery tips, from diastasis recti to women's specific health concerns.

We'll explore the physical, mental, and emotional journey after motherhood, challenging your assumptions and changing your view of women's health and fitness. This episode is also for men since we all want to support the women in our lives.

Peter is an expert in postpartum recovery with 12 years of experience. He has authored hundreds of articles on post-partum recovery, diastasis recti, and back and neck discomfort. He also advocates for more affordable access to women's health professionals.

Peter hosts the Healthy Post Natal Body podcast, which interviews experts and answers listener questions on post-partum topics. He has also appeared on various podcasts, radio shows, and panels.

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Click here to apply for coaching!
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[2:02] Becoming a male expert in women’s post-partum recovery
[6:57] Understanding and managing diastasis recti
[14:01] Effects on the core muscles, alignment, and core function
[17:49] Basic exercises for core and glute strength
[23:31] Training protocol for women who trained during pregnancy
[25:36] Post-partum recovery: timelines, misconceptions, strategies
[28:26] Measuring diastasis recti and testing muscle functionality
[31:20] Progression for postpartum recovery
[37:01] The societal pressure to lose baby weight post-partum
[42:03] Addressing and coping with post-partum depression
[50:20] Unethical practices toward post-partum women in the health industry
[55:30] Advocacy for better post-natal health support
[58:39] Key insights from the Healthy Post Natal Body podcast
[1:03:26] The question Peter wished Philip asked him
[1:05:50] Where to learn more about Peter
[1:08:58] Outro

Episode resources:

• Peter’s website – free program after you sign up for 90 days, then goes deeper after the 3 months, then ~$10/mo for 5 months - https://www.healthypostnatalbody.com/

• The Healthy Post Natal Body podcast

• Email: peter@healthypostnatalbody.com

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👩‍💻👨‍💻 Click here to schedule a FREE results breakthrough call with Philip

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Transcript

Peter Lap  00:00

post partum is not about focusing on burning calories. And we all know as as personal trainers, the best way to actually burn some calories to some muscle gain some muscles and do your strength training and and have your basal metabolic rate go up and you can sit on your bum and burn more calories.

Philip Pape  00:21

Welcome to the Wits & Weights podcast. I'm your host Philip pape, and this twice a week podcast is dedicated to helping you achieve physical self mastery by getting stronger. Optimizing your nutrition and upgrading your body composition will uncover science backed strategies for movement, metabolism, muscle and mindset with a skeptical eye on the fitness industry so you can look and feel your absolute best. Let's dive right in. Wits & Weights community Welcome to another episode of the Wits & Weights podcast. In this episode I'm discussing postpartum recovery with Peter lap one of UK is leading authorities in this critical area of women's health from unraveling the complex condition known as diastasis recti. To the unique challenges women face post pregnancy, Peter will address misconceptions and share actionable strategies for postpartum recovery. We'll get into the physical, mental and emotional journey that follows childbirth, uncovering truths that will challenge your assumptions as always, and transform your perspective on women's health and fitness. This episode is for men and women alike because we all want to support the women in our lives. Peter is a post natal expert with over 12 years of helping women recover from pregnancy and giving birth. He has written hundreds of articles on postpartum recovery diastasis, recti, postpartum back and neck pain and advocating for better and more affordable access for women to women, women, to women's health professionals. He's also the host of the healthy postnatal body podcast, where he interviews expert guests and answers, listener emails on anything postpartum related. And as appeared on various podcasts, radio shows, and panels. Peter, thank you so much for coming on the

Peter Lap  01:58

show. Thanks very much for having me, Philip, thanks so much for the very kind introduction.

Philip Pape  02:02

Likewise, yeah, I'm looking forward to get into this. It's not a topic we really just really covered here. And I just want to start with the obvious, right? You're a man working in a field focus on women's health? How did you find your way to becoming an expert in specifically postpartum recovery?

Peter Lap  02:16

Yeah, this is like my, my what went wrong story, so to speak. So I used to have a proper job long, long time ago as a project manager, and then I retrained to become a personal trainer. And as most PTs in the UK, do, you go to personal training school, you take a course or whatever, and then you go work in the standard gym for for a little while until you build up a client base. And I worked for one of them slightly more higher end gyms because they needed people. And I joined. And I found that most of my clientele tended to be women between the ages of 25 and 35. And one of my American friends who was a personal trainer in New York, and have the same clientele same sort of same sort of market. And he said to me, he kept losing clients all the time. Because at that age, now women start families and have kids or they already have one, but then the other second, and if he wasn't postpartum qualified, and 12 years ago, believe it or not, that wasn't a big thing at all, was God and qualifications weren't as popular as they are now. But he said, so he couldn't really he didn't feel comfortable training them anymore, even though he had a whole bunch of clients that wanted to keep training with him. But he was not really comfortable training them. And I just thought, well, that's a silly way, as a business person, that's a silly way to lose clients. All you have to do is take a course and become comfortable with this style. So then I went to have a look at some courses, there were some courses available and take my money, and I took the courses and all that sort of stuff. And before I knew it, I found that within the city where I live, which is Edinburgh up in Scotland, Scotland's capital, and there wasn't anybody else doing, it was nobody else doing postpartum exercise for women at all. And I've always written a lot of articles, that exercise and blog posts and all that sort of stuff. And the more information I kept putting out there, the more Google like, because 10 years ago, hardly anyone was really writing about diastasis, recti, and all that sort of stuff. And I was just contacted more and more, but people were saying I've never heard of it, again, postponed. The postpartum feels wasn't the same as it is now. 10 years ago, women's health wasn't the same as it is now 1010 years ago, and before I knew what it was all I was doing, and so I kind of fell into it for as I kept my clients, which was awesome, right? But then it kind of just became the guy that does postpartum stuff. And the more I don't know whether you experienced this as as as a, you know, white guy, you might be younger than I am. Don't know how old you are, but I'm 48 now, right? So I'm your typical middle aged white guy. And problems tend not to exist until they happen to me It might just be understand. And therefore, and because my wife and I don't have kids, we never went through this process. But the more women I spoke to, the more I found out that women's health, despite recovery for women, just was completely unaddressed by a lot of people. Also, by the health care system in the UK, at least, you know, in other countries, you get quite a bit of help postpartum in the UK, that just isn't a thing. And then I found out in America, it also kind of isn't a thing. And so yeah, before you know it, that's why I found myself. So this is kind of all I do now.

Philip Pape  05:40

That's, that's pretty cool, right? Because I think it bucks the trend of the 99% of the time, when you ask somebody, where did they get to where they are now, it's like, well, I my personal story led me to this exact thing. That's like, of course, you couldn't have necessarily personally experienced it. But like you said, even in your own realm of your wife, or whoever else, you may not have either, but it was because of your clients and the demand and a lack of supply in the market for that. And even just tangential to women's health in general, I can see it through my clients, and through my wife, the huge gap in knowledge research, you go back to, you know, decades ago, and you could see reasons why women weren't even included in sample sizes for research, and we lacked all this information. And yeah, we're two white guys in our 40s. And I'm 42 We're gonna be 43 who are nonetheless we care, we're passionate about helping people who we can help. So I love that. And I think it means nothing's off limits for people if we care about it. And people receiving that kind of care, I think, you know, if they can find somebody who has expertise, almost shouldn't matter who's delivering it as long as it's helpful. So let's let's get into the topic, then. Because there's a lot here, including the pronounciation of diastasis recti, which is there. So let's, let's talk about diastasis recti. Right, the the as I understand it, the separation of the muscles, but it's pretty common, like both during and after pregnancy. So what is it? And what symptoms can it cause?

Peter Lap  07:11

Yeah, sure. That's an excellent question. First of all, the pronounce it, I call the diastasis. Some people call diastasis. This potato for data. It's a dead language.

Philip Pape  07:20

It's Latin. Yeah, exactly. It's not No, I asked my daughter on how it's pronounced cuz she's taking Latin. I'm like, How do you pronounce it?

Peter Lap  07:28

That's probably that's probably the only way to do it. Because that's it. But there is not going to be like an ancient Roman for jumping on the podcast. And

Philip Pape  07:35

you mispronounce this stone tablets. Yeah,

Peter Lap  07:37

it's awkward. So I don't really mind how we pronounce it. Basically, you're right, it is separation of dystonic muscles along that middle line that we all have that runs from the Sturman to the sternum to the pubic bone. So basically, where your belly button is, right, that that's in the center, like the center point of the body, that's kind of where, where the muscles start to move away a little bit. And that is like the center of of it then tends to be so the muscles move, focus, you know, when you're, and I always say that, so director, the cause of it is internal pressure, not necessarily pregnancy, it can be an injury, it can be just a build up. Have you seen a lot of people who have raised too much, I have a lot of valley that, that get it because they lift heavy things. And they're, they're holding their breath as they lift heavy things. And then it becomes a sort of a repetitive strain injury, almost, because that's fundamentally what it is prolonged internal pressure on the core muscles, and a beast that everything just moves up. Now, obviously, during pregnancy, that is because you're growing a human in there. Which is an awesome thing to do so well,

Philip Pape  08:56

before you get there. So I've never heard of this happening to like a man who lifts weights and uses a belt and then literally having the brace but does it how often is it?

Peter Lap  09:07

Not that much. You find it a lot in people with recourse? So

Philip Pape  09:13

if you've built it up over time, maybe Oh, yeah, I

Peter Lap  09:16

mean, if you're an experienced lifter, and all this stuff, because then what you get if you're a serious lifter, and all of a sudden, you have an injury that tends to be a hernia and what we do find with people who are office workers, and people in wheelchairs, believe it or not, people in wheelchairs have this a lot because every time they have to get in and out of the wheelchair, if they push themselves up, and they're bracing that core because you've been sedentary all day, that cord just isn't strong enough to constantly deal with that internal pressure. So yeah, it should have been in Geisinger, and

Philip Pape  09:47

I don't know I'm so curious. I was curious about it. Yeah. But but it does happen in

Peter Lap  09:51

men. So if there are guys listening to this, you know, the big I always said it's you see this a lot in the UK I'm guessing a lot America, as long as alpha guys listening to this, you know how you have some people that look amazing and a T shirt, they look phenomenal. And now you get to the belly and the belly is round. Right? That is internal pressure on the core, fundamentally. And you might find that when you adjust that, actually, there's a bit of separation of the stomach muscles, because the internal pressure is just constantly there. Now what is actually happening is that your muscles are out of position, that's fundamentally what's causing it, like you said, separation. And that's along that linear. So that's that middle line that I spoke about belong the belly button, and all that sort of stuff. Now there's a facial shutdown of a fascia sheet. And that is essentially the bit that is stretching. So that's why men can also get this because you constantly have a, a bloated belly, so to speak, then that fascial sheet stretches and then when you bring it together, all of a sudden, the fascia she just stretched, right. So it's

Philip Pape  10:56

this is not visceral fat from drinking too much alcohol, I'm just gonna, there's different, there's different things,

Peter Lap  11:01

it's a different color. So to understand, because understanding that this is not caused by practices quite, it's quite a big, it's just caused by internal pressure. And that really matters for postpartum recovery. Because 100% of women who are pregnant have diastasis, recti 100%, you physically cannot grow a baby in there and stay completely flat, that is impossible, it is never been done. That doesn't mean it's a problem for everyone. But that's a different beast altogether. Those fighting we find that after six weeks, about 80% of women still have some form of diastasis recti. If you use a narrow definition, I won't go into much detail. But fundamentally for diastasis recti, what matters is the width of the gap, the depth of the gap. And in my humble opinion, muscle functionality is actually dictate whether your core still does what it should be doing. So when we understand is caused by internal pressure, then you can realize and most guys listening to this advice, and most women listening to this who are postpartum at some stage, and doesn't matter whether you're 10 or 20 years postpartum, you'll find that sometimes when we eat food, that bloats our belly as well. But I can't have a dominance without my belly immediately swelling up to the size of a balloon that matters if you're trying to heal diastasis recti. Okay, because it's really difficult to put everything back in its place, if the food you're eating is constantly increasing pressure, do it, I mean, we're trying to flatten the balloon, so to speak, if you're constantly putting air in that balloon, then of course, the balloon is never going to shrink. So understanding that matters, because it means that quite often postpartum, your body responds differently to different types of food, and every woman in the world will understand what I'm talking about that you used to be able to do used to be fine with apples, pre prenatal, and all of a sudden postpartum. You look at an apple and a stamp bloating already. That means that whilst you're trying to do this rehab exercise, which essentially is what postpartum recovery exercises, it's the same as a frozen shoulder and doing shoulder rehab. You just want to lay off the apples a bit as well. Because if they're causing the bloating, then they're not helping you in the moment. Yeah, it doesn't mean you always need to cut out apples. It just means that in the moment for rehab, that's kind of where they need to be. I'm sorry, they felt that way too boring, perfect.

Philip Pape  13:39

But no, I'm fascinated by it. So I always say, Look, we're coming up on 100 episodes, if my audience is bored, and I'm not, then they're not my the ones that do well, listen, so All right, what? Why is it a problem, I guess is another thing I want to understand. I love all the things about preventing the symptoms by paying attention, your food, and then also how it's different for different women. And it's the principle of the separation, not so much that it's caused only by pregnancy, but it's put affects all pregnant women. So

Peter Lap  14:10

why is it a problem? And that is the big question. Because for a lot of women, it used to be an aesthetic problem. They didn't like the way it looked. And that's completely fine. That is a valid reason for addressing something I mean, I go to the gym predominantly to stay healthy, but also to look have reasonable, right? I want to look half human by the time I'm 6070 years old, that's why I got so I always say aesthetics is a completely decent reason to address a problem. The main issue for the SSS Rector is that muscle functionality is quite often impaired when you have diastasis recti. And if your deep core because that's quite often the the one of the problem areas your your transverse abdominus and all that sort of stuff, which is the the middle layer of your three layers of core muscles for anybody listening, right? If that is not working properly, that means sooner or later, other muscles will start to kick in, and work to heart. Right. And in 99, out of 99 out of 100 cases that I come across, that tends to be the back muscles that will start to kick in, especially deep core, back muscles, your QL, and all that sort of stuff. Right. And again, that is just for anybody listening, that is not the superficial muscles that you feel this is your deep core stuff that basically the most important of all the core muscles, these are the ones that protect your spine. And that makes sure you can rotate without any pain and all that sort of stuff, this is not the get a Swedish massage. And then that is a drop down type type stuff that when muscles are out of place, as a physio will tell you, which you kind of tend to have with diastasis recti and a weak core things, your body tends not to be in alignment, your glutes aren't quite firing up properly. And that needs to be addressed because your imbalance is affected. You're, if you're an athlete, your athletic ability is severely impaired, if your body isn't functioning optimally, but just in daily life, if you think about what women have to do women with kids, what they have to do to get from point A to point B car, they have to carry buggies and travel systems and a bag full of stuff. And you can have a toddler that is fighting against you and throwing a little tantrum that is constantly jerking into you, and all that sort of stuff. If you're, if your core isn't doing what they're supposed to be doing, that's when injuries happen is what I always say, it's a life, it's a life thing, much more than just say, other muscles don't work out, we'll deal with it. This is why back pain kind of comes from.

Philip Pape  16:59

Okay, I love that you brought up all that. So for those who listen to this show, not long ago, probably about 10 episodes ago, we talked to Dr. Ryan Peebles about core training and the deep core, and how it propagates into back pain. And it's very nice tie in here to all of that, and I hear what you're saying, because we often hear of injuries, in any context, not even this, just this context of often happening when you you know you're doing something beyond your level of strength or movement capability that you haven't trained for. And so you often hear even somebody who's very strong, they'll go, and they'll reach way over for something to put it on a truck. And that's when they'll their back will have an issue, not the 400 pound deadlift that it's kind of funny. So yeah, glutes not firing, your balance affected, there's a whole propagation of issues. So it's very important. It sounds like to address this earlier than later. So that leads to the question, what kind of training or therapy do you recommend for managing it?

Peter Lap  17:54

Yeah, that's an excellent question. Because it's exactly the issue is exactly what you said it was it is exactly your body is not capable of doing the things you're asking it to do. Right. That's fundamentally how injuries happen. And that means that when you do any sort of rehab training, and like I said, Then it says, back to recovering any sort of postpartum training, in spite of that, you have to go slow. Your muscles aren't doing the things they're supposed to do. So I always say, the first three to four weeks. And this is how long is a piece of string sort of scenario, right? If you were really active during pregnancy, your muscle activation will be better if you were still squatting up until the day before your due date, and all that sort of stuff, your glutes will be much more active than someone who's been sedentary for the entire, entire, like 678 Diamond periods. But I always start with a nice steady, get the body fired up again. So we start we do some glute bridges and all that sort of stuff. And I think top of my head, the first full week home program that I do is like, this is not a sales thing, right? So this is just that I do with all my postpartum clients. We do some heel slides. We do a choreograph. That's the first thing learning how to breathe properly, is essential. With some heels slides that you just lay on the floor, you stretch one leg out, and you bring that back in and see how you respond to that. We do some glute bridges, not even a single leg glute bridges that just a bog standard laying on the floor blueprint is no way to squeeze your bum. We do some squats, we do some reverse lunges. And that's pretty much if basic stuff. And we've tried to do 10 to 15 reps of all this sort of stuff. Not because we're looking for and I'm sure you've discussed high rep ranges and all that sort of stuff a lot on this product, not because we're looking for hypertrophy we're just looking for. Because I get asked this question a lot. Why is it 10 I'm not trying to get a bigger bump. By doing some bodyweight glute bridges. No one's ever built a big bomb in that way. We're just looking to make sure that your glutes are doing the work and not hamstrings. Because how often do we see someone walking into a gym, and then banging out some amazing looking glute bridges with a big barbell, but there's a hamstrings doing all the work? For sure. Right? That is just another way to get injured. So that's where we starting. So it's just building that up. And the more we ask of the body, over a three to four month period, again, how long is a piece of string, some people will be a bit longer, it depends on how your pregnancy went when he had a C section, but it's your second or third child, whether you've been active beforehand, or whether it's six weeks ago, or 20 years ago, right? It's a muscular problem. So it can always be addressed by exercise. That's what I always say, doesn't matter if it's 20 years ago, but your recovery time will increase rather exponentially. If you do, we just ask a bit more of the body every three to four weeks. And the thing is, because it's a rehab thing, we do this every day. Right? That is quite often the key going to the gym once a week for an hour with a personal trainer won't help. Unless you do your home exercises. It's physio stuff, it's I don't know if you've ever had a shoulder injury or anything like that loads of

Philip Pape  21:12

I'm recovering from rotator repair right now, the rotator cuff repair. I haven't started my physical therapy only a month out.

Peter Lap  21:20

The recovery for that will be boring as anything, it's not going to be fun to do big shoulder presses, Military Presses, all that sort of stuff. It's boring, is repetitive. And it's absolutely essential that you do it otherwise you won't heal properly. And it's going to cause you a problem later, you can any sort of we have stuff frozen shoulder over with your tongue, I love to show because everybody has shoulder pain. So I love given that as an example. But all that sort of stuff, we can all rush through it very easily. It is not a problem to rush through shoulder stuff, and then be fine with life and just have a niggling shoulder for the rest of your life. Right, it'll just be that old shoulder injury. Yeah, the problem is, sooner or later, you're gonna have to take a couple of weeks off, because your shoulders flaring up massively after you did some big shoulder presses and all that sort of stuff. And you know, all of a sudden, you can't really train clients anymore, because you can't show them how to do proper shoulder press, because overhand movement is a bit tough, you just end up and therefore it starts impact on the way you live your life. Right, all of a sudden, you have to ask your wife to reach for things off the top shelf, because you know your your stiff shoulder. And, and that's what I always say Wisconsin postpartum recovery as well. But it is dull in the beginning, it's not exciting. In the beginning, you just do 10 minutes every day. But you have to do them every day. Because you have to retrain your body to use the right muscles, again, that they haven't used for three, four or five months at least if you're talking about postpartum recovery. So this is a I

Philip Pape  22:57

love this specificity of your answer, you know, telling us specific movements and rep ranges, that's really good because people get an idea of what you're talking about. And it is a rehab protocol. So you're not, you know, you're not hitting high intensity three days a week, you're hitting, you know, a high high rep range. For, you know, the light resistance, I don't know if it's gonna be bands or by weight every day, which which makes sense. What about what's the difference between women who might have been training beforehand and after should is how valuable is this training protocol versus easing back into whatever they were already doing? And the body just recovering back to normal on its own? You know?

Peter Lap  23:37

Yeah. That's again, that's a great question. Because women who train during their pregnancy are athletes, I've trained one or two tennis players, and all that sort of stuff, and they don't stop training just gets her pregnant, but they're still new competition, they've got money to make, these are not like top 10 level in the world tennis players. I'm not talking to Serena Williams, I'm talking about people who tour and have to tour and make 30 grand a year, whilst working like a beast. They, they find that their postpartum recovery is simply much better, because their muscles still know what to do. Right? That muscle hasn't been inactive for three to four or five months. And therefore, the early stage of postpartum recovery is simply shorter for him. Nothing fancy, I mean, the first four to six weeks of muscle activation, that's usually two to three. And that's fine, and they're completely fine. And then we can start to to place more of the demand on the muscles. So they progressed through the program a bit quicker. And some of them only need a post a recovery program really short because this is all individualized, right? In an ideal world. Personal Training. The important part isn't the training element. It's the personal element of it. In an ideal world, everybody gets their own personal personal program. So for these four Some of these women, I've seen them for like a month, and then they're like, okay, I'm good to go, I can do whatever I wanted, because they know what to do. I'm sure as as a PT, a few myself as some sort of, you know, you have those rotated belts in a restaurant, you just pick your thing. That's why I'm an assembly line, I have a client I six, I moved the map, simply because I think it's rehab stuff, I don't want to I love working with some people for eight 910 years. That that is not my that's not my goal. I want to fix people so I can help the next person. So for some women, that is a month, and then they can go about their merry business for other people. And this is tends to be the case of women who were not active during the pregnancy or haven't never trained all that much on different things. Prenatal. So if you do a lot of cardio during your, during your pregnancy, that is awesome. And that is phenomenal. And it is fantastic. And I'm not knocking it. But it's not going to help your postpartum recovery when it comes to rehab stuff. Because lots of women, lots of women do do this, because they get told to you know, when you've just given birth, the best exercise to do is what they're told is to go walking. Yeah, no, it isn't. Just isn't the best exercise and and postpartum walking is awesome. And you need to leave the house anyway. So I'm not quite sure what that comment is aimed at. There's you should be doing it anyway. Yeah. But but it doesn't help you postpartum recovery from a rehab perspective doesn't get your glutes fired up. Unless you're walking up a hill, or indeed down the hill. Your core activation won't necessarily improve unless you're off balance, or you're asking your core to, to do stuff or just walking does very little for them. So so that is kind of the type of activity you're doing prenatal. And during the practice, it really matters for your postpartum recovery. But predominantly, the program is any sort of rehab program is kind of the same for most variations of diastasis recti have three or four different variations. But the recovery is kind of the same for absolutely every single one of them.

Philip Pape  27:14

Yeah, it sounds just like any time you are going to have a change in your situation, like you said, surgery, I've had two surgeries. And in both cases, I kept lifting right up until the surgery, and then the recovery is really fast. You know, it's the same thing. But I don't know how many I don't know how many I can't speak for women. I don't know how many women who are pregnant or are very aware that this is can be thought of in that way. Right? Like I'm sure it could be I don't remember my wife talking about it. So she may not have experienced it to an extent that it was an issue. But I guess that's where I'm going is how do you know? It's it even needs recovery? I guess you said all women get it, but he didn't get a test. Do you measure something? Is there you know, circumference measurements? Like what do you do to kind of figure it out? Yeah, that that action? Yeah.

Peter Lap  28:00

That's a good question. Yes. For most women, what happens is they get a six weeks postpartum checkup, right? They go, you go to your GP after six weeks. What the GP tends to do, they may look at the baby for 10 minutes, and then it gives you a quick, cursory glance to make sure you're still alive. You're good. Yeah, he's still alive, you get you're not gonna kill yourself, right? That is very, to be very blunt to get asked about postpartum depression. And but that's kind of what it is. Sometimes, you get a good GP and they say, Okay, let's also check your, your core muscles and see how they go. They basically lie on the table, and put a couple of fingers along that linea alba and there's tons of videos on how to measure the assessors RekSai. online on YouTube, it's on my YouTube channel as well. I have a slightly different way of doing it. But predominantly, you lay on your back, Leisha middle fingers, these are finger along that that line that I spoke about, and you just see how wide that gap is, how deep you can put the finger and all that sort of stuff. That doesn't test muscle functionality at all. Right? That is just it with measurements. And as I always tell everybody, that if you're going to measure the assessors, right, and that way, it's completely valid to do it that way. Make sure you get a tape measure. Because I have this big sausage fingers. And if I measure you, you're gonna have to center two fingers separation. And if you measure yourself and you are built, like my wife is, for instance, was much smaller hands than I do. You can fit three fingers in them. And if you take that home, and I tell you, you have two fingers separation, and a week later you measure yourself and you tell yourself I've got three things separation. The first instinct isn't, oh, my fingers must be smaller. The first instinct is oh my god, it has gotten worse. Right? So we need to get a tape measure out to make sure I always get my clients to measure their own. I sit next to them and showed them how to do it and say use your own fingers. Your fingers won't change that much insights and knowledge and even dentists will use the technique. Then what I do is just a basic exercise Can you lift your legs without your stomach? Tommy? Can you do that? With bent knees? Can you do the straight leg some have a leg raise, as most of your listeners will be familiar with the exercise. But there is a leg, which was a tremendous amount of pressure on your core. How many people do we see that their stomach bulges when they do a leg raise, or they start bouncing up and down and they do a leg base because it's predominantly their hip flexors and momentum doing all the work. But want to make sure the right muscles are doing things like I said, with glute bridges. Is it your glutes that are doing the work? Or is it your hamstrings that are doing the work? Those questions those those two things are actually the main ways that I discovered, okay, what's your what's your muscle activation, like the side plank of dips is also a nice way to do it. Because want to know if your obliques are doing their job. And not everybody has equipment in the house to do like woodchopper type exercises, and then off presses and all that sort of stuff. So those three things, right, so you put your fingers in there, you see how wide the gap is, you see how far you can get your finger in there to see how deep the gap is. And then you do some glute bridges, you do some leg raises. And you do a side plank with dips, and they'll tell you but your muscles are working.

Philip Pape  31:12

Very straightforward. very prescriptive. Love it.

Peter Lap  31:14

It's so yeah. But that's

Philip Pape  31:16

why that's the thing, that least sexiest solutions are usually the most effective. So we know how to maybe recognize it, we know why it happens. We know the differences when you are training versus not training and the importance of strength training, not just cardio and walking. And then you mentioned the the recovery period. Besides that form of recovery, you talked about the rehab is there are there any other strategies for recovery, and not eating apples, if that doesn't work for you.

Peter Lap  31:45

The main strategy for recovery is kind of still keep challenging your body as whenever you can. So that's something that we tend to forget quite a lot. As personal trainers in gyms at least, you know, everybody listening to this will probably have signed up to a gym at one stage. And you get your induction with a personal trainer this way, usually you get your first free program from the gym, right? These are exercises you need to do. And they'll say that this is a program and then you do the program for free for five months. Right. And that's usually one session that is not an actual program, they usually give you a session plan exercises new for a month and then say come back to me in a month's time, and I'll sell you a new one. And no one shows up for a second appointment, right, because all of a sudden, it's gonna cost you money, and all this sort of thing. The issue is that if you do the same stuff that you're meant to do for a week, or two weeks, or three weeks or a month, for four or five, six months, you're wasting your time for at least four months of that. Because you're not challenging yourself. And the whole point of this is that any good program has to be progressive. And that includes for postpartum exercise that includes doing the things you want to do. One of the things that I used to forget a lot about is that, you know, I used to be one of those guys that said, hit high intensity interval training. That's the best way to do it. Man. That's amazing. That's the most effective way of training. And I'm kind of completely in a different camp. It's amazing to love hit, you do it every day. That's phenomenal. You do hit once a week or you do Zumba classes seven times a week. Zumba is going to do more for you than the hit classes. Not as a standalone, but as the results you'll get from constantly and consistently doing Exercise and Movement. That's a no brainer. So make sure that if you like kettlebell stuff, there isn't anything scary about a kettlebell swing, if you postpartum if your glutes are working your coursework and go take a kettlebell class, do your thing. Any exercise you have, and this is the biggest takeaway and anyone can get I think from any sort of postpartum thing. Once your muscles are working nicely, you can do whatever you want. And that is essential because it means you can go back to the gym. If you'd like to kettlebell classes, if you'd like to deadlift, I've heard so many stories about people saying I can't hold a plank postpartum because I have diastasis recti. Right, your your your muscles working. Yes, that means the plank will help heal your diastasis recti. strengthening muscles up is an essential part of a rehab program that lifts I had clients that gave birth to twins so that the plan C section and one of my clients was squatting 100 kg, the day before him today. one rep. We didn't go nuts. She just wanted to make sure you know she wants to she wants to go in to the O R. And she was a surgeon herself. She was so she was going to be operated on

Philip Pape  34:42

by her colleagues two plates. That's two plates for people to 25 for America. Yeah,

Peter Lap  34:46

yeah, exactly. So so. So I mean, that is she wants to walk into the hospital and just go come off. So I still squatted 100 kg the day before the day for postpartum. So Over a month that she just back to squatting 40 kg. She couldn't go back to 100 the body wasn't ready for it yet. But if you'd like to squat because what doesn't matter and you slowly but surely and you keep an eye on what you're doing any exercise, absolutely any exercise helps with your postpartum recovery. As long as you don't overdo it.

Philip Pape  35:21

I love it. I love it. I mean, so many things, you said, there's gold, you mentioned progression, we talk about progressive overload all the time. in different contexts. You mentioned, don't be afraid of any particular movement, if you do it right. And it's at the right level of where you're at. I mean, treat treat the pregnancy, like a kind of like an injury or like a disruption or detraining event. And work back into it. You probably like my my former client, she was a tireless hero. She was also on the podcast a couple times. She's powerlifter here in Connecticut, and she was posting video right up into, you know, a week before she was, you know, had a baby of just lifting, lifting everything, you know, lighter weights, because by the time you like you said right before pregnancy, you tend to dial it back a little you don't want to over brace and things. But that's a great message for people because we do use excuses, all of us have whatever it is, and I think lifting weights is never a bad thing. Unless you have an injury that that's preventing it. So good, good message. You know, it's it's awesome. Ya know, we're in agreement, I'd have to kick you off the show.

36:28

All right, this is our and I just want to give a shout out to Philip Pape at Wits & Weights for his nutritional coaching. His coaching is based upon science research, intellect, and wisdom. His coaching is safe, supportive, connecting. And an actually has helped reset my compass in terms of how I direct my health, the action steps I do, and really, really has helped me regain trust and belief in what my body can do and how my body can change.

Philip Pape  37:01

Okay, so another side topic to this is the pressure to lose the baby weight. Because I know we're gonna get into some things. Some of them are controversial topics and maybe Oh, absolutely, yeah, yeah, the pressure to lose baby weight that's very pervasive. Should this be on the list of priorities for women postpartum like wanting to lose weight, and I understand everybody has a vanity, or everybody has different reasons, and vanity can be one and that's fine. But But what are your thoughts on this in general,

Peter Lap  37:29

but generally speaking, and I always tell people this because most women don't notice what happens during your antenatal class is, most women go to an antenatal class and if you're your wife or kids, you got to get it right your dance and be basically just yet exchanged phone number. So you can have coffee mornings with women postpartum because the the messages you pick up in most antenatal classes are nonsense. And they're rather toxic. Okay, because there'll be messages such as breastfeeding will help you lose weight. No, it won't. Breastfeeding has never helped anyone loses weight to lose weight, it will bring some calories. Yeah, we can eat eat to compensate for that. Right. So it is it's breastfeeding is a zero sum game, it genuinely is if you do it, right. The reason I always tell people tell women to not focus on weight loss postpartum is because you still have all those hormones flowing through your body. And breastfeeding is a part of that. Prolactin, for instance, which is the hormone that helps you produce foreign breast milk will make you gain five to 10 pounds. For every woman in the world, that is true. So how are you going to fight that postpartum? How are you going to if you want to lose a baby 510 pounds isn't going anywhere,

Philip Pape  38:48

right? You're gonna starve you're gonna be an energy deficiency to do it. Yeah.

Peter Lap  38:51

And now you have a baby that needs nutrients. And so I once wrote, and I think I copied it somewhere onto my new website as well. I once wrote an article called your baby is a parasite. That got me a lot of angry emails. But there's a lot of truth to it. As my parents, I don't mean anything bad about it. I just been the babies will get nutrients from your body. Right? So if you are under fed and and undernourished, especially undernourished. Where's your kid going to get all this healthy stuff? Right. And this is why I find a lot of the time. You see a lot of women obviously they're they're sleep deprived and all that sort of stuff. They're walking around, not quite looking. They don't have their natural glow anymore, because they've been so focused on losing weight and not not focused on eating right, that they become nutrient deficient. They just are the baby will take a lot of this stuff. And this is not talking about breastfeeding. Breastfeeding is in an ideal world. People can feel breast milk is the better way over formula and all that sort of stuff. If you can help if you can do it. That's an awesome way to do it. but it makes weight loss as a very silly thing to focus on, is what I make, I don't like to be harsh about this sort of stuff because I understand that women have a tremendous amount of pressure put on them to bounce back and all that sort of stuff, you know, in a way that I can never understands, I understand that. But to focus on that is just insane. And the more we move away from the and this is, again, the National Health Service in the UK advice is this on their website is to burn some calories go for a walk. Postpartum is not about focusing on burning calories. And we all know as as personal trainers, the best way to actually burn some calories to some muscle, gain some muscles and do your strength training, and have your basal metabolic rate go up and you can sit on your bum and burn more calories.

Philip Pape  40:53

Yeah, I was gonna go there. I was like this is it's kind of like when we periodized our nutrition and some days like because at least from a man's perspective, you know, I want to put on that power belly as I'm building muscle. And I'm cool with it, because I know it's building muscle. But yeah, both while you're in pregnancy, because again, I've had some clients that while they were pregnant, you know, we're like, we're not losing weight, we have to gain weight. So let's just intentionally make the most of that. And then after you're pregnant during breastfeeding, like you said, treating it as a muscle building phase is a beautiful way to do it. Because now it's serving all your goals, and not going against you in the nutrition and health department. The stuff about you know, breastfeeding, we won't get into all the all of that. Yeah, but what about people who know? And that's fine. Now. I mean, I think everybody knows that today. Right? That's yeah, yeah. And not everybody can do it. And there's reasons you can't do it that are for various reasons, right? And some women aren't able to. So that's fine. You know, my, actually, our first daughter couldn't keep down anything. And so we had to supplement. You know, there's all these different Yeah,

Peter Lap  41:54

exactly. There's completely the January system. I always say that your job is keeping your baby alive in the best way. Yes. Anything after that? I don't care about that.

Philip Pape  42:03

So what about? So now what about if a woman is not breastfeeding? Does that that whole thing go out the window are there so other reasons to not rush into thinking about weight loss?

Peter Lap  42:14

Well, I always think that, you know, when we have to prioritize in life, we have to decide what is important to us. And we do the things we can do, when I don't know about you, but when I work with clients who tend to be sleep deprived, as a lot of new moms are like, who have high stress levels, potentially high anxiety, high anxiety, or high depression levels, or whatever, just elevated levels of anxiety, because all of a sudden, you know, things are things you never used to worry about, such as driving a car through city center are a lot more scary with a new baby in the back of the car. Because all of a sudden is this guy gonna stop he's gonna crash into an executive that was a little bit higher. So you know, the hormonal response. I don't. I will say there's people that are anxious state struggle to lose weight more than people who are relaxed and chilled about this is why I have a ton of clients that they go to Dubai on holiday for a couple of weeks, and they come back later than they were when they were working 8090 hour weeks

Philip Pape  43:22

due to their expenditure just jumps. Yeah,

Peter Lap  43:25

they've been stuffing their face. And then but they've been chilling on the beach, living switches. It's amazing. It's a genuine, it's a genuine thing. I'm not making this up the list. So and then we have to prioritize stuff. I have to prioritize my gym time and my work and my family and all that sort of stuff. So I want to do the thing that is going to get me the most bang for my buck. And that is simply get your rehab training done first. Right, get your strength training done first make sure your body functions well. Because part of raising a new healthy human being is being as pleasant to be around them as possible. And what I find is that when you're comfortable, my confidence is loved by looking at my own family My confidence is low because I'm feeling crap or I'm in pain. Have you heard of the pain cycle? You know, when you're in pain, it gets a bit worse. And you know as a nation, that that type of stuff. You start to take that out on people not deliberately I'm not saying you shouted your wife or your spouse or your kid or your you do silly things, but your mood is not what it should be. So part of raising a healthy human being is having the most caring and nurturing environment and taking care of yourself is a huge part of the on weight loss doesn't really come into them. It is just not part of that discussion for me bots Python. If you if you don't breastfeed or eat Want to express? Can you lose weight? Yes, sure. But should it be your focus? Right? In my opinion? Not Not unless you're preparing for a movie, right? If you're Margot Robbie going to do Barbie, you get 10 or 21st and a million bucks, then it's your job.

Philip Pape  45:12

Yeah, like, like you said, it depends on your goals and whether it's serving you and your life. I do love how you talked about stress, overall life stress, chronic stress as a sort of tax on your body, or some firm term that I sometimes use is like your energy stack, your metabolic stack, it's like you want to build this nice, big robust tower of, of energy production in your body, rather than trying to cut and restrict and lose, because at the end of the day, like you said, you may just naturally, slowly get back to the way you want to be anyway. But you're doing it in a healthy, abundant way, not a restrictive way. But the whole thing about anxiety and depression does lead to the other question I wanted to ask about, which is postpartum depression. Because we know this affects a lot of women. I saw the statistics recently, I want to say it's anywhere from like one and eight to two and eight, something like that. The numbers are huge. Yeah, it's huge. Yeah. And even beyond that, in some smaller level, and I've had many women in my life who experienced various levels of this, some to the point where they couldn't be with the child for a bit, you know, is that serious? And there's a lot of gaslighting. I mean, talking about women's health, and talking about like, just, there's differences between generations I've seen or like how older generations like act like it doesn't exist. And then anyway, how do you help your clients cope with this, because it does come into the equation comes into the stress anxiety. And this

Peter Lap  46:33

is a huge issue. And we because we say things like one and eight and two and eight, and you're right, those are the stats, we forget just how huge that number really is. When we're talking actual numbers, like the small city I live in 600,000 people 600,000 5000 babies are born every year to fortify from the different routes or something like that means out of those 40 545, almost 1000 will suffer from PPD. That's just the 600,000. So city, the numbers are astronomically huge. And the deed like you said, there is a this is real. Well, let me put it this way. One of my clients, you won't mind me mentioning this. She had baby number five, and cover two sets of twins and then then a fifth by a standalone baby, so to speak. And she didn't cope with it particularly well. Her husband referred to it as yes, she has the baby observes. And I'm like, Dude, I want to I want to kill you right now. The baby blues? Are we still using that phrase? It Yeah, more, especially when you're talking about people that suffer from intrusive thoughts, as they call it these days? Not necessarily. I want to harm myself. But you know, we can talk a lot can go wrong. When you're when you're feeling that way. I always say that. And this goes for all my clients. Exercise should never be stressed. If our sessions planned with my clients, and they say, last minute, dude, I want to cancel. I'm not I'm not afraid today. Don't worry about it. I don't have a cancellation policy. Unless you text me say, I cannot be bothered because I got drunk last night. I charged for that session, because that's punishment for you for your sins. There you go. Anything else I don't tend to charge for, because of the clientele that I work with. Right. So a lot of the time when I have one hour session going to help us regularly save lots of time regularly. The women will have just bathe the baby cleaned the baby out for me come to the house to do a lot of my clients have home gyms and all that sort of stuff. I go to their houses. And the baby froze up last minute. And now we have to start the whole process again. So now she's running around like a maniac because Peter is coming in 15 minutes time. Just send me a text, I'll be 15 I'll sit in the car for 15 minutes, do your thing. It's no big deal. Removing stress from anyone who suffers from postpartum depression is just a small thing. But it can really help. I just don't want to be part of the problem. I love that. Yeah.

Philip Pape  49:12

See how you can help or at least not interfere? Because I've seen Yeah, I've seen that too. Like, you know, people who are close to the person was wondering why they're not XYZ wondering why they're not responding to me or letting me visit or this or that. It's like, just back off, you know, like they need a little space. Right?

Peter Lap  49:29

Yeah, just Yeah, exactly. Just just respect that. I don't have the solution for anyone's postpartum depression. Now that you know, that's what doctors are for in psychiatry, cynicism. But I can indeed at least not be part of the problem. So I chill. You want to cancel last minute to get canceled last minutes. I've got paperwork to do it is fine. It's never a big deal. And I made that very clear to my clients. So they they don't need to feel guilty about that. Because like I said, that doesn't necessarily Go for old PT. So if I'm working with if it were to work with a bodybuilder and he cancels last minute, he's just being a jackass.

Philip Pape  50:06

Yeah, or compassion that you need for this group of people. I want to respect your time because I know technology wise we got started late Do you have? Yeah, okay, I'll be good. Good. All right, cool. Just Just a few more. So another, well, maybe not controversial, but I think you've mentioned the health and fitness industry is just like ripping off postpartum women, I want you to want to, to elaborate on that.

Peter Lap  50:31

This is something I've found in that it's really odd when we see especially online, because the online obviously people listen to podcasts and all that sort of stuff. So what I find online is that if I want to do a bodybuilding program, or a get fit, weight loss tech program, I pay 69 bucks, right? It doesn't matter which one you go to, you can go to ATHLEAN X, you can go to anyone just got

Philip Pape  50:56

60 969 4797

Peter Lap  51:00

all over the place. It's always down from 200 bucks to 69.

Philip Pape  51:04

Off promotion, as always, exactly.

Peter Lap  51:08

Look for postpartum stuff and find the one that is below 150 bucks.

Philip Pape  51:12

Okay, okay. 297 497. Yeah,

Peter Lap  51:16

the real value, one of my, one of my colleagues had something online saying my program is worth $2,500. I will sell it to you for 250 bucks, or $500, or whatever was the biggest selling those pricing program in the world. And I won't name it here because I don't want to crap on anyone's great, but the biggest selling point of selling in the world has had 18 price fluctuations that I know of in the past five years, they started off at 100, then they thought that we can get away with charging 200 pounds. So $300 The last one that I called them out on because I sent them an email was 99 pounds. So that's what 120 bucks for a year access. This is a 12 week program. 12 modules they call it now but it's a 12 week program. Or you can pay 30 bucks a month. And I said what about people that don't have 100 bucks in sitting in their account? Write it because all most of these programs do what I do. And they talk about how they like to help women. Yeah, but if you only like to help wealthy women, then how realistically would you really like to do and for an online programs, I'm not talking about again, I'm not talking about face to face PT face to face PT is a different thing. And when you're dealing with travel time and all that sort of stuff. But for online programs, there is no reason why a postpartum rehab program should be more expensive than a weight loss program. It's a bunch of videos. It is not it is not extraordinary.

Philip Pape  52:52

It's the level of the level of desperation is probably a lot higher causing that demand right you will

Peter Lap  52:57

and that's the thing and when you look at most of these things that are sold and this is part of the whole unethical practices for me is that the idea that a lot of these people say well when I was pregnant I had to find all this stuff out for myself and therefore I decided to put together the bla bla bla the program like no you didn't have to find anything else for yourself because

Philip Pape  53:21

I know you're gonna market it Are you kidding me if you want to go down that rabbit hole Peter you could you could tear off

Peter Lap  53:27

you can do because what they're selling is that you can look like me sort of thing quite often but I'll definitely get I completely get it but I can't look like the rock because first of all genetically I'm not the same I don't have access to his level of money. I don't do it there's a full time job and I don't take a GA but I said allegedly Oh they'll drain Johnson sewing news probably good from

Philip Pape  53:53

that for me. we all we all love them we all love them but we know

Peter Lap  53:56

absolutely nothing but we all know he takes off. So and unless you live that life and it's part of the unethical program that practices I think when a 20 year old has never had a kid says you can look like me to a mom was in her 40s Who said faith is just not going to happen.

Philip Pape  54:15

You know my only challenge to that and not not not on the supply demand thing because you can be a cold hard capitalist and say that that's what it is. Is isn't this just isn't as widespread regardless. In other words, I don't necessarily want to give a free pass to any other part of the health and fitness industry. I feel like oh though the Healthy Weight Loss This is not the right find the right angle and niche of like desperation to hold on like we're going to take your pain and we're just going to shove your face in this you know bowl of pain until you realize you have to

Peter Lap  54:49

know Yeah, absolutely right. And you know, I'm okay with almost all of that. Usually in the Alpha fitness industry. The reason I struggle with it is because We're dealing with health issues for a wide group of people, like if like you, if your shoulder, your shoulder, if your shoulder is causing you a tremendous amount of pain, and there's a ton of people selling shoulder rehab programs, but then deliberately overcharging for what I think is a health issue that you can't help, then it becomes slightly different from saying, is just another weight loss program. But I find

Philip Pape  55:25

it's, you know, it's an elective kind of thing. Yeah.

Peter Lap  55:29

And you're completely right in that the problem isn't with the health and fitness industry, the health and fitness industry does what it does. And that's make money from a certain level of desperation. That's why I go to the gym. If I could eat Domino's all day feel great to take a little bit, we want our problems. Yes, I think that for sure. The problem is, with the support not being there when it comes to healthcare systems and insurance providers and all that sort of stuff. But if that was freely available, like I think it should be like I think it would be this as a non problem. Right? You Can I can I have private medical insurance, I have the state one and I've private this off, I can get almost anything I want to be just go to the doctor. And as I've got private insurance, he says what do you want, pick it go but different. If you look at France, and Germany and several other countries, when you're postpartum you get six sessions or eight sessions, depending on where you are with a postpartum health specialist, whether it's dog floor or whether that is something that doesn't I do, okay. That means there's no one in in France selling this stuff is unethical. But the fitness industry has evolved, because it's healthcare. And that's kind of where I struggle with that sort of thing.

Philip Pape  56:46

I understand. Yeah. And there's huge differences between the UK, the US systems as well. And so many health, I think of like just lifting weights, I would love for insurance to cover strength training, but it's too, it's too it's not short sighted enough for them, you know, for them, they have to tie it directly to some like immediate disease. It's like the weight loss drugs that have come out, we'll go in the other ones, you know, now that they know that it reduces the risk of heart disease, because you're helping a bunch of people lose weight, whatever you're feeling on using that versus making lifestyle choices, that's a different thing. So now the insurance companies are forced to look at that as oh, maybe we should cover it, because it's actually going to save us money down the road, when people are not getting heart attacks. And maybe if they can make that connection that but that's the insurance company, man, we're not going to solve that. And

Peter Lap  57:36

that's exactly right. I did an interview with someone a while ago about exactly that. She was asking me what I was going to do more research into this. And so now that the research we have to do is how much money will it save people to give women access to this stuff? Yeah, for free. And that can be an I look at this as a women's equality issue. If you're looking at the gender pay gap and all that it's a part of that is going back to the office, feeling confident within yourself feeling happy within yourself, not being yourself and looking your best feeling your best. So that after a year, you can go back into to your bosses obviously you can have a pay rise now.

Philip Pape  58:12

Is it the same with postpartum depression? In the industry?

Peter Lap  58:15

Yes, they're much. Yeah, very much. Yeah. Yeah.

Philip Pape  58:19

Yeah. All right. Well, some some heavy stuff to think about it. You know, I'm curious for people listening should definitely reach out to both of us about your thoughts on this. Because, you know, we're two guys with two opinions, hopefully, well informed with a lot of information that we objectively, you know, analyze and try to be compassionate about, but everybody has their opinions and our experiences. So, I did want to ask you one more thing, and that's about your podcast, the healthy postnatal body podcast. What are some because your 200 Something episodes now?

Peter Lap  58:49

I just for next week is 226. So this weekend will be to 25

Philip Pape  58:54

Oh, so 225 Two plates. All right. So yeah, so you're getting your past into the string phase? Yeah. What would you say are some of the biggest insights or surprises? I know, it's a big question, because you had a lot of episodes, but is there one thing that sticks out is highly memorable that, you know, changed your perspective or taught you something that you now carry with you, Florida? Yeah,

Peter Lap  59:16

that's a good question. I for a long time, I looked at this as a this whole fun thing. I was I was your typical, I guess difficult PT from the personal changes I see around me. I thought, okay, I do this, why doesn't anybody understand that this is essential, right? The same way lots of PTS look at strength training, and and all that sort of stuff. And the more people I spoke to, whether they were psychologists or parenting experts, or whatever they were, the more it made me realize is that people have so much stuff happening in their life that All I can all I can get, especially postpartum women, there's so much more happening than what I ever thought, it's that that mental load of being a parent is a, you'll notice that the mental load of just being a parent and having to do all the things you already have to do, and then add a whole layer of human beings on to that, and different relationships between spouses and all our citizens how to navigate that new world. I mean, I remember what it was like for when, and I'm not comparing the two, just a little bit. When my wife and I got like a dog for the first time. It changes the thing, also, you're just talking about poop, and walkies, and all that sort of stuff all the time. And I thought that the postpartum recovery bid was significantly more important than it actually turned out to be. And I'm not saying that it isn't important, I just thought it was more important than it tends to be for the people actually go through some recovery. And I think I think this stuff is so it meant that I had to change my approach to postpartum training. And that's why it matters, right? So I used to say to people do two to free sessions, 45 minutes with me a week, and you come to my studio, and other very nice studios, amazing, I was all set up, not realizing that means putting them baby and preparing the journey that's half an hour to get there. Praying, the kid stays for too quiet for 45 minutes and go on back. So I ask these women to give up two to three, two hour slots a week for their postpartum recovery. That is insane. And it's just so unfair when you think about just asking somebody and saying the only way you can do this is if you come to my studio and do it that way. And then so I had to complete the lock change, my approach to exercises stays the same. But I had to use find a different way, you have to be able to do it as part of recovery thing you have to be able to do at home. Because you have to be to be able to do it in a short period of time, because nobody has an hour, three times will be we just don't mean I can barely get myself to the gym three times a week

Philip Pape  1:02:12

for an hour and have a home gym for that reason. Yeah, well, 20 minute

Peter Lap  1:02:15

sessions, I don't want to do an hour three times a week, I want 720 minute sessions, or whatever it is. Out. So I'd be less equipment. And that meant making stuff easier for people because I just had to change my whole approach to this stuff and realizing that if people don't think this is important to them in the moment, it's not important for them, it's fine. If you've got other things to do. That is okay. Don't put it off forever. But just realize that when you have things like this as a director, you can wait a year before you addressed it, it is fine. If you don't do it within the first year postpartum. There's no biggie, we'll fix it. We'll sorted just do the exercises a year later, when you can squeeze it just chill about all because it's

Philip Pape  1:02:58

a priority. Yeah, no stress, no stress, no stress and finding a way to make it easier for the client. Which is funny because I have an online coach. And same thing, like I don't want to make all my clients constantly schedule calls, when it's easier to send them videos or when it's easier to like do it asynchronously, because I'm like, You know what, that's stress. So that's pretty cool. I love that I it's not something I thought you were gonna say that I was gonna be some very specific, you know, technical thing or topic. Awesome. Um, last question I asked this of all guests, Peter. And that is, is there something you wish I had asked you? And what is

Peter Lap  1:03:32

your answer? Well, the thing is, you've covered an absolute ton of stuff. Of all the of all the interviews I've done, you're definitely you know, indigenous and well prepared, and all that sort of stuff. So that's awesome. I think, you know, the, the thing. The, what are other postnatal issues that need an easy solution, back pain, neck pain, and all that sort of stuff. And how are they linked? is good. But again, it's a specific question. Unless you're a physio, you're not going to ask it because, you know, don't know that this. And that's pretty much it. They're not realizing that for anybody listening, back pain, those parts of back pain to start a neck pain, all that stuff, postpartum. stiffness, and other stuff can all be linked back to things like diastasis recti, on a given birth, and a weak pelvic floor and all that sort of stuff and all this stuff. All this stuff. My answer is that is a solution for and it's not complicated. None of this stuff is rocket science. A lot of and that's easy to say because I've been doing this for 10 to 12 years. So I'm very familiar. I can knock you've been the PTE for a while you can take a position plan in five minutes because you have years and years of expertise.

Philip Pape  1:04:54

You like ABC and I had to get you from here to there but

Peter Lap  1:04:57

client says I can't do this today. I want to do Something else awesome. Give me five minutes, we'll be fine. But But let's focus on recovery isn't isn't rocket science. It's not complicated. But we have to address all these issues in one, one little ball. And that that is kind of the thing, we have to do more than just focus on the TVA. And focus on includes if you have to do everything in one go. If that comes anywhere close to what your question actually was that

Philip Pape  1:05:26

there's no wrong answer to that, because you just told me a question you wished I would have. So there you go. All right. Well, you're a cool guy, Peter. And I imagine your clients that love working with you, because just I mean, the energy I get from you, and for those listening and watching hopefully get the same thing as a guy who cares who does have the solutions, even if they aren't rocket science can get you quickly to that and is willing to help and is available to help. So where can listeners learn more about you and your work? And that includes, who around the world can get access to you? Or is it local? Or do it online?

Peter Lap  1:05:59

Yeah, this is this is the big thing for me. So a few years ago, I was indeed just a personal trainer around Edinburgh and I had loads of questions. So I set up a website called Health postnatal body.com, handy title podcast kind of big on that, and it was very much we do assess on the Jordan Defense for Health, postnatal, bodyart, calm and, and and all the other postpartum websites. You know, the 13 week 12 week program I talked about earlier that someone says Pay 99 pound a month or a year, I give it to you for free, it doesn't cost you a penny you sign up, you get three months free trial, right? And beauty so you can cancel on day one, you still get three months free access. Then after the three months, the program goes deeper because it goes into back pain and neck pain and all that sort of stuff. And then I charge $10 A month or eight pounds a month depending on where you are for five months, and that's the total copy of lifetime access. And that includes emailing me Peter and healthy postnatal bodyart comm i get emails every week from people saying, hey, how do I do this exercise completely free is all included. The reason I did that is when you're asking who can access it. Not everybody lives in the UK in the US and has a high level of disposable income. I have a ton of Eastern European members that eight to $10 a month isn't a lot of money for most Americans. It's not a lot of money for most British people. It is a tremendous amount of money for people living in certain parts of Asia and all that sort of stuff. So that I just said this, you pay you pay nothing for three months. Make sure you cancel on day one if you've never gone to pay, don't say that with a state credit card, right? Because you can buy those things out say credit cards and after three months they fail I get charged for that stuff. You sign up on day one to pay dollar whatever cancel on day one you get three months free I still ask the emails I don't care and so healthy postnatal volume comm that's where everybody can get access to the full program. Like I said the program is I think I just added month 12 Or something like that because after four months of progress let's up into what you want to work on. Glutes, core of asanas of legs, shoulders, whatever you want to work on. But you know, sign up for three months and then go away it's also completely fine. And of course alphaplus natively podcast is out there for your listening entertainment every Sunday night at 6pm. UK time so both at 1pm Eastern

Philip Pape  1:08:24

Yeah, that sounds about right yeah so five hours Yeah, perfect. So anybody listening you're on your on your podcast app right now go and follow or subscribe healthy postnatal body podcast right now that's the easiest thing for you to do. And then the next easiest thing to do is if you or someone you love or woman in your life you think needs the help with what Peter offers for postpartum recovery. It sounds like you couldn't get a better bargain then free for 90 days and then it's up to you. I promoted way more expensive things in that for guests and others so go for it jump in there's no risk. Awesome very great conversation Peter so much really good information that I wasn't aware of. It's gonna help me and my clients and other women I know so I'm sure the listeners got a ton from it as well. Thank you for coming on my

Peter Lap  1:09:08

absolute pleasure, man. It's been phenomenal.

Philip Pape  1:09:13

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