What Your HRV Numbers Actually Mean (Resonance Theory) | Ep 288

Submit a question for the podcast (and get a personal reply plus a shoutout). Just go to witsandweights.com/question

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Confused about what those HRV numbers mean on your wearable device? Or if they even matter?

Learn how Resonance Theory, the same science behind musical instruments and bridge collapses, reveals why focusing only on heart rate variability (HRV) numbers misses the bigger picture of what's happening in your body.

Main Takeaways:

• Your absolute HRV number matters less than changes from your baseline

• 3 key factors affect your baseline HRV

• Daily factors like sleep, alcohol, and stress can push you away from baseline

• Looking for patterns over 2-3 weeks is more valuable than daily numbers

• Understanding your body's natural frequencies helps optimize training and recovery

Episode Mentioned:

• Interview with Dr. Peter Martone [Episode ###]

Timestamps: 

2:01 - What is resonance theory?
4:08 - Interpreting HRV numbers and using data effectively
10:43 - Tips to improve HRV 

Remember, to submit your question for a future episode, go to  witsandweights.com/question and you'll get a personal reply from me plus a shoutout on the show!

What Your HRV Numbers Really Mean and How to Use Them to Improve Recovery

Heart Rate Variability (HRV) is one of those health metrics that pops up on your fitness tracker, but what does it actually tell you? You might see numbers jump from 25 to 65 overnight and hear that “higher is better,” but is that really true?

In this article, we break down what HRV really measures, why the absolute number doesn’t matter as much as trends, and how resonance theory explains your body’s natural rhythms. By the end of this article, you’ll know exactly how to use HRV to optimize your training, recovery, and overall well-being.

What Is HRV and Why Should You Care?

HRV measures the small variations in time between your heartbeats. Unlike a steady drumbeat, your heart isn’t perfectly rhythmic—it adapts to what’s happening inside and outside your body.

A higher HRV generally means your body is in a more relaxed, adaptive state (parasympathetic nervous system is dominant). A lower HRV suggests higher stress, fatigue, or poor recovery (sympathetic nervous system is dominant).

But here’s the key: HRV is highly individual. What’s low for one person might be completely normal for another. Instead of focusing on an arbitrary “good” number, the real value comes from tracking your personal trends over time.

Resonance Theory and Why Your Body Functions Like a Tuning Fork

To really understand HRV, let’s talk about resonance theory.

In engineering, resonance happens when something vibrates at its natural frequency. Think about a tuning fork that hums at a precise pitch or a child swinging higher when pushed at the right timing.

Your body operates on natural rhythms, too:

• Your heart rate beats around 60 times per minute at rest.

• Your breathing rate is about 12-20 breaths per minute.

• Your sleep cycles follow a predictable pattern.

When these systems sync up, your body operates at peak efficiency. But when stress, poor sleep, overtraining, or bad nutrition throw things out of sync, HRV takes a hit.

What Your HRV Numbers Actually Mean

HRV scores range from below 20 to over 200 milliseconds, and here’s what really affects them:

1. Age

HRV tends to decrease with age, but it’s not just about getting older. The bigger factor is lifestyle—lower muscle mass, less movement, and more stress cause the decline, not just aging itself.

2. Fitness Level

Better cardiovascular health usually means a higher HRV, but you don’t need to run marathons to improve it. Strength training, walking, and general movement all contribute to a well-functioning nervous system.

3. Genetics

Some people are just wired to have higher HRV than others. That’s why your personal baseline matters more than any universal standard.

How to Interpret HRV Trends

Instead of obsessing over daily changes, look for patterns over weeks and months.

• A sudden drop (20% or more) – You might be under-recovered due to poor sleep, alcohol, stress, or a tough workout.

• A consistent downward trend – Overtraining or chronic stress could be wearing you down. Time to reassess training volume or lifestyle factors.

• A gradual increase – Your recovery habits are working, and you’re adapting well to training.

• Extreme daily swings – Your body’s rhythms might be out of sync due to inconsistent sleep, erratic training, or stress.

HRV is best tracked overnight with wearables like the Oura Ring, Whoop, or Garmin since that’s when external variables (movement, food, etc.) don’t interfere as much.

How to Use HRV to Optimize Training and Recovery

Breathe Your Way to a Better HRV

Deep breathing exercises like box breathing (inhale 4 sec, hold 4 sec, exhale 4 sec, hold 4 sec) can help regulate HRV by calming your nervous system. The key is slow, controlled breaths—around 6 breaths per minute tends to match the body's natural rhythm.

Train Smarter, Not Just Harder

HRV trends can help guide training intensity, but don’t let them dictate every session. Instead, use them as one piece of the recovery puzzle. If HRV is tanking consistently, it’s worth adjusting your volume, sleep, or stress management.

Sleep and Nutrition Matter More Than You Think

Poor sleep wrecks HRV. Alcohol, late meals, and inconsistent bedtimes disrupt your body’s natural rhythms, leading to lower HRV and worse recovery. If you want a stable, higher HRV, sleep should be your number one priority.

The Bottom Line

HRV is a useful tool, but it’s just that—a tool.

Instead of chasing a higher number, focus on creating balance in your body through sleep, strength training, daily movement, and stress management. Use HRV to guide recovery adjustments, but don’t overthink it.

By understanding resonance theory and tracking your HRV trends over time, you can make smarter training and recovery decisions to keep your body performing at its best.

👩‍💻 Book a FREE 15-Minute Rapid Nutrition Assessment:
https://witsandweights.com/free-call

👥 Join our Facebook community for live Q&As & support

👋 Let's connect! Ask a question, get my FREE newsletter, or find me on Instagram

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Transcript

Philip Pape: 0:01

you've seen those HRV numbers pop up on your fitness tracker or aura ring 25 one day, 65 the next. Maybe you've heard higher is better, but you're wondering what the numbers really mean for your health and performance. Today I am getting into why HRV metrics only tell half the story. Using a principle called resonance theory the same science that explains why bridges collapse and musical instruments sing You'll discover how your body's natural rhythms affect everything from stress to recovery. By the end of this episode, you'll understand not just what your HRV numbers mean, but how to actually use them to optimize your training, sleep and overall well-being.

Philip Pape: 0:52

Welcome to Wits and Weights, the show that helps you build a strong, healthy physique using evidence, engineering and efficiency. I'm your host, Philip Pape, and today we're uncovering what heart rate variability, or HRV, really tells us about our bodies by looking at the science of resonance. I want to give a special shout out to Aubrey in our Wits and Weights Physique University, who asked a question related to HRV and she said quote I am not clear on what good, normal, bad numbers might be for HRV. So not only will we answer that question today, but you'll learn why focusing solely on those numbers might be for HRV. So not only will we answer that question today, but you'll learn why focusing solely on those numbers might be missing the bigger picture of what's happening in your body. Before we dig into HRV and resonance theory, I want to let you know that if you have questions like Aubrey did, and you're not already in one of our communities and you want to have a topic covered on the show, you can head over to witsandweightscom slash question witsandweightscom slash question link in the show notes as well, where you can submit your question to me. You'll get a personal reply. I will answer your question, usually within a couple days max, and then you'll get featured on a future episode and I'll even give you a shout out if you prefer.

Philip Pape: 2:01

All right, so I want to start with a concept of resonance as the background and in the world of engineering, resonance occurs when a system vibrates at its natural frequency. Now, every physical object has a natural frequency. That's the rate at which it wants to oscillate when it's disturbed. So if you strike a tuning fork and then it vibrates at its specific frequency, it's going to create a pure musical note, right? People can use that to tune instruments, for example, If you're pushing a child on a swing at just the right timing and then they go higher and higher. This harmonious timing creates what we call resonance. The opposite happens when frequencies clash right, A marching army is going to break step when they cross a bridge because their synchronized footsteps could match the bridge's natural frequency and cause it to collapse. I don't know if you knew that this isn't just theoretical. It actually happened to the Broughton Suspension Bridge. I think I'd say it pronounced Broughton Broughton in 1831, when 74 soldiers marched across it. Broughton Broughton in 1831, when 74 soldiers marched across it. And you may know the famous Tacoma Bridge that tore apart as well. Kind of an example of frequencies gone wrong.

Philip Pape: 3:13

And this is where it gets interesting when it comes to health and fitness. Your body operates on natural frequencies as well. Your heart beats around 60 times a minute at rest. These are averages, okay. You breathe about 12 to 20 times a minute. These are not random numbers. They are your body's natural oscillations, and when these systems are synchronized, they create what engineers would call constructive interference, which means it amplifies their effects. When they're fighting each other, you get destructive interference, and so this is why HRV numbers alone like let's be honest just about any metric by itself isn't going to tell the full story. If you have an HRV of 50, it might be fantastic for you but very concerning for someone else, and so it's not about hitting a magic number right. In this case at least, it's about how well your body systems are resonating together.

Philip Pape: 4:08

So I want to address Aubrey's question directly about interpreting HRV numbers. I don't want to remain theoretical here. For you guys, your HRV can range anywhere from below 20 to over 200 milliseconds. The crucial thing here that I've already alluded to is that these numbers are highly individual. I have clients with average HRVs in the 30s who are incredibly fit, and others with numbers in the hundreds who might struggle with recovery. So think of HRV kind of like your body's check engine light as opposed to your speedometer right, the absolute number matters less than how it changes from your baseline. So when you understand something like resonance theory, this makes sense. Just like the tuning fork has its specific frequency, your body has its natural rhythm. So three key things affect this natural rhythm your baseline HRV.

Philip Pape: 5:02

The first one is age. Hrv generally decreases as you get older. Okay, and like many things when it comes to age, my big caveat here is a lot of things that happen as we age are actually tied to other variables like a loss of muscle mass, a loss of fitness, lower activity, higher stress, and we need to make sure to separate the two. But generally, if you live the average typical american's lifestyle, which is fairly sedentary not at all what we are going for here a lot of these things will just simply get worse with age. But we're trying to defy age, aren't we anyway? That's age. The second of the three is your fitness level, so it usually increases with cardiovascular fitness. Okay, and remember, cardiovascular fitness isn't just from cardio. In fact, it's predominantly because you are generally active, you walk a lot, you move and you lift weights. It's not just because you are a runner or endurance athlete. In fact, for many people like that, they actually have issues with stress.

Philip Pape: 6:00

Keeping that in mind, Number three is your genetics, and that's kind of your starting point, and that's why the absolute number isn't as important as you seeing your trend over time and then making the changes to nudge it in the direction you want. Now, daily factors can then push you away from your baseline and this is where it's kind of a chicken and egg. It's like do you want to react to the HRV or do you simply want to recognize that what you do is going to affect your HRV and change your behaviors? I mean, I would argue they all work together, but just keeping that in mind, poor sleep is the first one, and big one, that is going to knock your systems out of sync and going to cause your HIV to drop. Alcohol huge disruptor to your natural frequency, Anybody who has an aura ring. If you eat too late or you have too much alcohol, you're going to see your HRV be worse the next day or overnight. High stress that creates dissonance in your autonomic nervous system and then even things like room temperature can affect how well these resonate together. It's why we talk about having a really calm, dark, cool environment for sleep.

Philip Pape: 7:04

So if you want to actually use the information because I know a lot of you you see it and you're like okay, that's great, what do I do? Instead of chasing just a higher number, which was the chicken and egg thing I mentioned I want you to look for patterns. Okay, Patterns First. You're going to establish your baseline. So you've got to. You've got to be tracking your HIV somehow with some sort of wearable over about two to three weeks and you notice that many things that we track when it comes to human body. It's like you've got to do it for at least two to three weeks. It just takes time to understand these things. Um, so, two to three weeks of your normal routine, your normal living. You're going to track your HRV during sleep, because that's when external factors are adding noise to the system, adding extra variables.

Philip Pape: 7:44

Hrv during sleep is a really reliable indicator from a day-to-day trend, and then you're going to look for significant deviations, For example, a sudden drop of 20% or more below your baseline. That usually says that you have excessive stress or poor recovery. That's a sudden drop. And do we always have to be worried about that? Eh, I mean, if you know why, if you, if you, if you, you know, got drunk last night, then that could explain it. Or if you had like an extra 2000 calories late at night, right, and you know what causes it again, chicken and egg it's like, okay, I know that happened, move on, Um, but it's good information to know why that the HRV dropped is because your stress level just went up because of what you just did. So it's a good way to correlate those things. That's a sudden drop. Now a consistent downward trend over several weeks. That could indicate, for example, that your training load is too high. Maybe you're overtraining and you're getting fatigued, assuming nothing else is pushing it up like some new source of chronic stress or some anomalous situation like travel. But again, that's why it's good to understand, it's good to take these measurements when you're in your normal routine so that you can isolate variables.

Philip Pape: 8:58

Multiple days of elevated HRV actually could be a good thing. It could indicate that you're adapting really well to training. It could also be that you just improved your sleep, Like I just started using a new pillow sleeping on my back. And I'm monitoring my HRV. It's only been a week. I've seen it go up, I've seen it go down. I don't know if the trend has is is has moved in one direction or not yet, Cause you can't tell just from a few data points, just like can't with scale weight or anything else. And then if, however, if, however, you have large day-to-day swings, so we're talking about huge ups and downs. Okay, and this is different than scale weight, because the scale weight, that's actually pretty normal With HRV it could mean that your body's natural rhythms are being disrupted somehow and that itself, even though it may not deviate to a certain value.

Philip Pape: 9:43

The fact that it's fluctuating so much could be a red flag. So, going back to resonance theory, where this becomes practical, and remember the analogy of pushing the kid on the swing just at the right time, well, you can kind of work with your body's natural frequency to optimize your HRV and if, for those of you who caught my episode with Dr Peter Martoni, he actually talked about the fact that if your HRV is higher and you're adapting well and handling stress well, it also could represent a more distinct gap between your parasympathetic and sympathetic nervous systems. There's a healthy separation and distinction between the two. They're not overlapping and conflicting with each other. So it kind of goes with this whole frequency resonance thing where we don't want them to clash, we want them to actually be more in sync and not interfering with each other. So if you want to optimize your HRV, a lot of this has to do with stress, but it's also recovery and training. It's the things that you're doing in between the recovery.

Philip Pape: 10:43

So, breathing practices you know we'll get talked about a lot, but they're they're actually kind of underrated. I think even just taking 30 or 60 seconds to stop and breathe it could be very helpful. Um, people with anxiety, whether it's chronic or acute bouts of anxiety, find that breathing practices are extremely helpful because it forces you to become mindful and it also makes your body feel safe. It feels like, hey, there's not a threat here, because I'm able to focus on breathing like this. How would that even happen if I was under threat? Therefore, activate the parasympathetic nervous system and relax. And it's like six breaths per minute tends to match your cardiovascular resonant frequency. So there is this theory that breathing in sync with your heart rate can be helpful.

Philip Pape: 11:30

Now, don't overthink it. This could stress you out. Just using a typical like box breathing technique, chances are your heart itself will also match your breathing, so it kind of works that way. There's also your training. So some people are actually using the aura ring data to schedule their workouts when they know the HRV is at or above baseline.

Philip Pape: 11:51

Now the problem, the only problem I have with this one is like, if you wait till the day of and you wake up and you're like, oh, my HRV is good today, Now I'm going to train, I'm not, as I'm not a big fan of that, because I'd rather you have a training schedule that is preplanned and sometimes, when your HRV isn't great. You can still train really well and actually you might need the training to kind of get you out of the funk, so to speak, and help you out. Um, it's just more of the intense training where you might be dealing with things that are exacerbating your existing fatigue. I think it's good to pay attention. And if your HRV is like totally shot because you just like whatever you did last night was not pretty normal routine, I mean yes, then you've got to consider seriously whether it's going to be most effective to train.

Philip Pape: 12:31

But for a lot of people I'll tell you what just going by feel is not always the best indicator of how effectively you're going to train or whether it's good for you. I'm sorry to say so. I usually recommend people just get in the gym, warm up, see how you feel and, you know, modify the lifts if you need to like, if low back fatigue is an issue or whatnot, but don't necessarily let your HRV tell you what to do. And then recovery protocols as well. Hrv is a good indicator of how you're recovering and so if you are pushing or backing off, or you're in fat loss or you're in a gaining phase, it's kind of nice to see the patterns and correlate them with how hard you're pushing and how much you're recovering, you might find that like an extra training day in between your training weeks, like two days off instead of one day off, for example, is exactly what you need to get your HRV to have a much better trend over time. But it's gonna take a while to kind of figure that out.

Philip Pape: 13:29

So I guess my point with this whole episode is to not really overthink HRV and use it as more of a lagging indicator of the stuff you're doing. Maybe it'll give you some surprise insights. A lot of times it's not really surprising why it's lower. But if you're trying to tweak something to improve recovery or your training, adaptation or stress, it's great to have a baseline and then see like three weeks later oh yes, it actually improved. So it is likely that what I did helped me. Again, the only caveat there is if it didn't improve markedly, that doesn't mean it's not beneficial. Whatever you're doing, it could take longer to reveal itself through your HRV, or it may not really reveal itself through your HRV, and that's why I don't want you to put too much stock in this one number.

Philip Pape: 14:15

All right, so tying this all together, this principle of resonance. It doesn't just explain HRV. It actually it reveals why certain practices feel almost magical. All right, so I mentioned box breathing. That is a technique used by Navy SEALs and most people think it works because you're you know, quote unquote calming down. Right, You're calming down, but there's actually a lot more to it. There's science behind it, because when you breathe in for four seconds, you hold for four, out for four and hold for four. You are creating a 12-second cycle and that is five breaths per minute. That is actually remarkably close to the resonant frequency of six breaths per minute I mentioned earlier. So I kind of buried the lead back then.

Philip Pape: 14:59

And then I recall that I had a note on this and wanted to share why that, um, that system, why there could be some uh magic behind this, behind the mathematics of our bodies and our heart rate and our breathing. I mean it's pretty cool, I mean it almost sounds woo, woo, right, but it really is mathematical if you think about it, Um, and then you're literally like tuning your body, like an instrument, bringing your whole system into harmony. And that's why some people do get really great results from breathing work, Um, but others don't, because you, your resonant frequency might not match up with that breathing, and so that is something to think about. In other words, try box breathing and if you can experiment with different numbers of seconds, you may find something that's closer to your resonant frequency. Cool stuff, Whether you buy into it or not, it doesn't hurt to breathe and to relax, guys.

Philip Pape: 15:51

Okay, as we wrap up, I want to recap the key points so you don't forget all this. Okay, HRV, resonance theory. Your absolute HRV number matters far less than how it changes from your baseline. Remember that, Like a tuning fork, your body has natural frequencies that work best when in harmony. If you can understand the patterns through both HRV, through your breathing, through your training, recovery, all of your health practices, it's just one more thing in the toolbox to help you improve and optimize the way you live your life. And then simple practices like the controlled breathing can sometimes help you even find your resonant frequency. Isn't that cool? All right, the beauty of viewing HRV through the lens of this theory, through resonance theory, is it transforms something that just seems like this random, complex number into potentially an intuitive tool. You know, you don't have to obsess over the number, Just learn to work with your body's natural rhythms and then the numbers will follow. All right, If you have questions about today's episode or any other health or fitness or nutrition topic you want me to cover on the show, head over to witsandweightscom slash question.

Philip Pape: 16:56

Witsandweightscom slash question. I'll throw a link in the show notes and then your question might and I'll say might, but almost most certainly will be featured in a future episode. I mean, I need a lot of topics, folks. I never run out of episodes to put topics into. So today we answered Aubrey's question. Yours can be in a future episode. Go to witsandweightscom slash question. All right, until next time, keep using your wits lifting those weights and remember, just like a well-tuned instrument, your body performs best when all systems are in harmony. I'll talk to you next time here on the Wits and Weights Podcast.

Should You Lose Those Last 5-10 Pounds? (Nutrition & Training Audit) | Ep 287

To book your own FREE 15-minute Rapid Nutrition Assessment (not a sales pitch) and have me personally audit your training and fat loss approach, visit https://witsandweights.com/free-call

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Trying to lose those final 5-10 pounds but feeling stuck?

In this episode, I share a real live recording of a 15-minute Rapid Nutrition Assessment with Libby, who wasn't sure if she should continue losing weight for fat loss... and together we discovered a better path forward.

You'll hear how shifting your mindset to body composition (not scale weight) might be exactly what you need to finally achieve the lean, strong physique you want.

Main Takeaways:

• Why continually pursuing weight loss isn't always the answer to achieve your ideal physique

• How to transition from a fat loss phase and keep your progress

• The importance of training frequency, steps, and proper nutrition

• Why gaining weight strategically can lead to better long-term body composition results

Episode Resources:

• Try MacroFactor for free with code WITSANDWEIGHTS

• Episode related to the fear of gaining too much fat - Why I’m Getting Fluffy Before I Get Jacked

Should You Lose Those Last 5-10 Pounds or Shift Your Focus?

For many lifters, the idea of hitting a specific scale weight becomes an obsession—especially when they’re down to those last stubborn 5-10 pounds. But is losing more weight actually the right goal?

In this article, we’re breaking down a real coaching conversation where I told my client Libby to do the exact opposite of what she expected: gain weight instead of losing it. If you’re stuck chasing an arbitrary scale number but still feel like something’s missing, this might be the shift you need to finally get the strong, lean physique you’re after.

You’ve tracked your food, hit your macros, trained consistently, and lost weight. But now you’re sitting at a lower weight than you’ve been in years, and something feels off. You don’t necessarily want to be lighter—you just want to look leaner, stronger, and more defined.

That’s exactly where Libby was when she booked a 15-minute Rapid Nutrition Assessment with me. She thought she needed to lose five more pounds, but what she really needed was a new approach.

The Shift From Fat Loss to Muscle Gain

Step 1: Understanding That Weight Loss Isn’t the Goal Anymore

When we dug into Libby’s real goal, it wasn’t about the scale. She wanted to change her physique, add definition, and feel stronger.

Her first breakthrough? Realizing that chasing a lower number on the scale wasn’t the answer.

➡ Instead of "losing weight," the focus shifted to "building muscle."

This is a key moment for many lifters who’ve been in a deficit for months (or years). The lean, athletic look they want isn’t going to come from eating less, but from fueling muscle growth and embracing a building phase.

Step 2: The 3-Part Plan for Lean Muscle Gain

Once we identified that a muscle-building phase was the next logical step, I gave her a clear roadmap to follow.

1. Reverse Out of the Deficit and Hit Maintenance

• Instead of staying in a caloric deficit, she would increase her calories to maintenance for a few weeks.

• This helps reset metabolic function and ensures her body is primed for muscle growth.

• Key strategy: Jump straight to maintenance instead of slowly increasing calories (reverse dieting is unnecessary).

2. Lean Gaining Phase (3-4 Months of Strategic Bulk)

• After stabilizing at maintenance, she’d enter a small surplus (~0.3-0.4% body weight gain per week).

• Focus: Strength training progression and hitting enough protein (~0.8-1g per pound of body weight).

• The mindset shift: This phase is about building muscle and embracing the number on the scale going up (because that’s what muscle does).

3. Mini-Cut to Fine-Tune the Physique

• Since she had a deadline (summer), she wanted to feel leaner by July.

• Plan: A short 6-8 week cut to trim excess fat while keeping the newly built muscle.

• Key metric: Body composition (waist measurements, muscle retention) over scale weight.

Common Fears About Gaining Weight (and How to Handle Them)

It’s normal to feel hesitant about intentionally gaining weight. But building muscle is the only way to look more defined. Here’s how to reframe the process:

✅ "I’ll get fluffy." – A small, controlled surplus won’t make you fat. Fat gain is minimal if your surplus is within 200-300 calories.

✅ "I’ll lose my progress." – You’re not “losing” progress, you’re evolving it. Muscle takes time, and this is the next phase of long-term success.

✅ "I don’t want to eat that much." – You don’t need to stuff yourself. Increase meal frequency, add liquid calories (milk, shakes), and choose denser foods (nuts, whole eggs, ribeye).

✅ "Won’t I gain muscle in maintenance?" – Not significantly. Without a caloric surplus, muscle gain is very slow or nonexistent beyond the newbie stage.

Gaining Might Be the Missing Piece

If you’re stuck chasing those last few pounds, ask yourself this:

👉 Do I actually need to lose more weight, or do I need to gain muscle?

For many, shifting from fat loss mode to muscle-building mode is the key to finally achieving the physique they want.

👩‍💻 Book a FREE 15-Minute Rapid Nutrition Assessment:
https://witsandweights.com/free-call

👥 Join our Facebook community for live Q&As & support

👋 Let's connect! Ask a question, get my FREE newsletter, or find me on Instagram

📱 Try MacroFactor for free with code WITSANDWEIGHTS.

🏋️‍♀️ Download Boostcamp for free for evidence-based workout programs

🫙 Get 20% off Legion supplements with code WITSpod

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Transcript

Philip Pape: 0:02

Have you been stuck in the cycle of trying to lose those last 5-10 pounds, but something just doesn't feel right. Your workouts are there, you're tracking your food, but the results don't match your effort. Today, I'm sharing a recent coaching call where I told a client to do the exact opposite of what you might expect gain weight. You'll hear why this approach could be exactly what you need too. Whether you are a former cardio junkie turned lifter, a busy mom or dad juggling fitness with family, or just tired of chasing that arbitrary scale weight, this episode reveals how shifting your mindset about weight gain might be the key to finally achieving the lean, strong physique you're after. Welcome to Wits and Weights, the show that helps you build a strong, healthy physique using evidence, engineering and efficiency. I'm your host, Philip Pape, and I want you to picture this. You've already lost some weight, some fat, through tracking your food, lifting weights, eating your protein. The scale has moved, but now you're stuck. You think maybe I need to lose five to 10 more pounds, but deep down, you're wondering if that's really the best way to go. You're pretty happy where you are, even though there's a little more fat to lose, but you also know that you want to improve your physique. That is exactly what happened during a recent 15-minute rapid nutrition assessment call that I had with Libby. I'm going to record more of these now going forward so you can hear what it's like to have a conversation with me and get some coaching on these calls. What started as a conversation about potentially losing the last few pounds or maybe going back to maintenance, turned into shifting your mindset toward gaining weight and building muscle, and in today's episode I'm going to share what happened during that call. I'm going to just play the recording for you and why this mindset shift about gaining weight could be what you need for your own transformation. As you listen to the rationale and the process and how this is done Before we get into it, if you're feeling stuck with your nutrition or training, if you want the same kind of clarity and direction Libby gets after you listen to this book a free 15-minute rapid nutrition assessment with me.

Philip Pape: 2:14

It is not a sales pitch at all. You will hear this exactly today in the recording. Just click the link in the show notes, go to witsandweightscom, click the big button at the top or click the free call link. This is a focused, fast-paced strategy session where we identify your biggest roadblock, and then I give you a three-step action plan to overcome it. All right, enough of that.

Philip Pape: 2:33

Let's get into today's story about why sometimes the best way forward is to flip your approach. So I know you gave me a little bit of information when you signed up for this and you had mentioned, uh, your goal weight, your body composition. You've gotten to a certain point and you're wondering what to do next and really the purpose of this call. It's only 15 minutes, right, it's pretty fast paced. I want to get a fairly clear picture of where you're at, what's holding you back, what the next steps could look like, Um, and then really help you narrow it on one thing and give you a few steps to get there. So, with that said, what is the main reason you booked the call?

Libby: 3:08

Sure, so I am, I'd say, a few months into my new healthcare journey just learning about macros and protein and the value of strength training. I was always a pretty healthy-ish person, I worked out, I did all the things, but then I guess this month I just started to learn more about the macros, about intermittent fasting. I was searching in podcasts and I was like using keywords, and so that's how you popped up and then I just started listening to a bunch of your episodes and I felt like they really helped me like educate myself and just really really add to my knowledge base. And so I guess, like if, to just like kind of like set the stage super fast. So I'm 42, have three kids, again like more or less, you know, healthy. I'm at the.

Libby: 3:59

I used to be like more of a cardio person and then it's, you know, I learned that like weight training is really important. So I guess you know, what I wanted to say today is to tell you kind of like what I'm doing nutrition wise, what I'm doing fitness wise, and just kind of get your assessment on like where I should go from here. But essentially, like I'd say, probably in the summer I was about 10 pounds heavier than I am today, and five, six. I was about 150 pounds. Let's call it I wanted. My goal was like. I was like I want to get to 145. That would be awesome.

Philip Pape: 4:32

I mean, I'm a foodie, I really like food, I like to eat.

Libby: 4:33

I don't overeat but I enjoy it. I don't want to live a life of deprivation, I don't want to be in a diet, but I I was like, okay, if I could get to 145, this would just be great. And I started, you know, upping my protein a whole bunch, learning how to do that. I started intermittent fasting, but like baby fast, like just don't eat after dinner and the next time I eat is morning, that's really all it is. But that also helped me and I just found that I think, probably especially because of the protein, that over the past few months, like the weight has that weight that I held onto there kind of just went up. Like I just lost the weight. I didn't even feel like it was a huge effort and then actually I went past that 145 and now I'm at like 140. And so this is like an interesting thing for me because like I haven't been this weight probably since, like maybe almost having my first child, which is now he's turning 11 next week and I'm like I don't think my weight at this. My goal doesn't have to be weight anymore. Like I just don't actually like I feel healthy, I feel like I look like I feel good how I look, and so I'm like, okay, weight doesn't have to be the goal. But I am, of course, like I'm holding on to some excess fat, like it's in the stomach area. I've kind of always held like I'm not large, but I've always held some excess weight in my stomach area, in my thighs, and I'm like, okay, I think this is a body composition change I'm looking for, so I don't need the scale weight to move, I just want to add muscle, right, convert the fat to muscle. And so first it was the eating, it was like the adding the proteins.

Libby: 6:06

I'm using macro factor because of you. I used your link. Thank you so much for that. I think macro factor doesn't. But the thing is this now I'm weightlifting a lot more. So I don't think macro factor likes the fact that, like I put in that my goal now was 135, because again, I just don't even know what to use as my goal. Maybe my goal should just be maintained, I don't know. But it just keeps kind of cutting my calories down and I'm not. I'm not hungry, I'm okay. I just like don't know how much more I wanted to take me down Because, again, I'm weightlifting and so, if anything, I think maybe the number on the scale is actually going to go up a little bit maybe.

Libby: 6:43

And so that's the thing. So, nutrition-wise, that's kind of like what I'm keeping tabs on there and then working out-wise. I go to this amazing gym here we strength train. It's hypertrophy. They're like OCD on form. They have their eyes on you. I'm doing all kinds of things with better form than I've ever done in my life before. So I do that twice a week. I do Pilates once a week and then I'm trying to just then find a way to get hit in once or twice on my own or in a class and just like get my heart rate up, because I feel like I should have a little bit of that, okay.

Philip Pape: 7:20

I'm letting you talk because you're saying so many things that I want, if people hear this, that you've already leveled up and I was going to ask you, like, what does your training look like? How are you tracking? Are you eating more protein? So you even have a mindset of, okay, it's not all about the scale. So I love that. It sounds like obviously you'd listen to the podcast. What were you? What keywords were you searching?

Libby: 7:40

by the way, when you think I was searching like macro. I was searching protein. Okay, I was probably also stretching like strength training or like weightlifting.

Philip Pape: 7:49

Okay, cool. So, um, just just to summarize, right, you've gone through part of the journey. You've lost some fat I'll say, you know, not just weight. You've lost some fat. You've been training, you're eating, you're doing a lot of the right things, Right, and now you're wondering what to do next. Uh, in terms of not only your goal, but like which direction you want to go. So I was going to say, like, are you chasing fat loss? Are you chasing muscle? Are you chasing performance? Like what is the real thing? If you dug deep, where you want to be like a year from now, do you care at all about the scale anymore? It sounds like you're moving mentally away from that. In which case, have you ever gained weight? Have you ever intentionally gained to build muscle?

Libby: 8:26

So I know I listened to your episode about like. You know, sometimes it's not right to be like in a cut and you should do the gain. So the answer is yeah. I mean now I've done a whole bunch of months of like doing this cut and I'm like, well, maybe I shouldn't actually like, or even maybe I should just be eating at maintain so that I can like really build muscle. But yeah, I mean, that's what I'm looking for. I'm really looking to like convert the fat to muscle. That's like my main. Yeah, right now, yeah.

Philip Pape: 8:51

And I know. And what we mean right, of course, is is lose fat, build muscle at the same time. And when you mentioned a macro factor giving you lower and lower calories, that's because your expenditure has dropped Correct In the app. You've seen it drop. Now it could drop. It could drop for good reasons. It could drop because you're gaining muscle and losing fat already and therefore the scale isn't moving as fast as it would if you were only losing fat and Maca Factor says oh well, if you're eating this amount of calories and you're not losing as fast, we think you are burning fewer calories. In reality you're not. You're just kind of it doesn't know that you're adding muscle.

Philip Pape: 9:28

I see that all the time with clients. It looks like a plateau, but then you measure your waist and your measurements. How are you measuring? Are you? Are you taking circumference measurements?

Libby: 9:35

Yes, so I just started like I literally three weeks like I literally have taken two measurements. Now because, again because you cause you were like why didn't you start measuring?

Philip Pape: 9:45

So I started doing, do you, do you like? Just very simply like, like your clothes, how they fit, like, do they fit Does is your waist smaller, like things like that, even without the measurements, can you tell over this time?

Libby: 9:56

Yeah, I mean well, yeah, I mean I'm comparing myself at this point to, like, let's say, August or September. So, yes, definitely a definite difference. And people, I mean also the biggest thing is that I'm like getting it from. I'm getting positive affirmation from other people.

Philip Pape: 10:15

Awesome. And then, internally, what kind of affirmation do you want? And by what I mean by that is are you wanting to be? Are you wanting to be stronger? Are you wanting to be? Is there a athletic or performance related goal you have? Like, I'm just curious, beyond just physique, if there's anything specific you're going for.

Libby: 10:32

Well, I do actually this is kind of funny to say this, but um, I've never been able to do like a real pushup off my knees, cool Okay. And I really like to be able to just crank out some pushups. I'm just not there. I mean, I'm just not there yet, you know.

Philip Pape: 10:45

Okay, perfect, so awesome. That is a strength goal. Pin that and put that up on your wall or wherever, and make that a goal of yours. Because then, as you think about your training, your cardio, the mix of how you move because I know you mentioned twice a week training, once a week Pilates and then some HIIT Definitely have some specialization in there toward the pushup and, of course, if you need resources on that, let me know.

Philip Pape: 11:11

Um, a lot, of, a lot of women will want to get their first chin up, for example. Right, so there's a progression you can get there, um, but that that's a, that's a fun way to drive your need to gain weight so that you, when you start doing it, libby, you're not getting too concerned about the fat you might be gaining or the muscle, because that's the biggest fear. So I mean, based on what you're saying, I think the only thing really holding you back from like explosive performance and being super strong and what, um, what? Nikki Sims she's actually giving me the podcast from Barba Logic. She calls it thriving and strength. Right, thriving and strength is the gaining uh for muscle. So I think, if you're open to it, that a six to nine month building phase could be really solid for you if you do it at a conservative rate, since you're already tracking with macro factor. I mean, how does that sound?

Libby: 11:58

before I get into any details on that, I mean it obviously like sounds a little scary to me because you're just like you know, you're like I've made all this progress and like now is it real? Like what am I going to see? But like I guess what I could do is, instead of tell macro factor that I want to lose, I can just tell it I want to maintain right, and then it will anyway just up my calories and I could just try eating at that maintain level.

Libby: 12:22

Like it's funny because I am maintaining right now, which is why he doesn't like that I'm not losing. But maybe I just tell it I don't want to lose and then it will up me, would that be?

Philip Pape: 12:31

Yeah. So if I were to like, let's say, let's say you were a client, I never worked with you before we said our goal is to build muscle, I would definitely, I would definitely spend a month or two of maintenance to let things normalize.

Philip Pape: 12:41

And then I would go into a surplus, but you don't want to just be at maintenance long-term. If you're going to do this right, and since you're currently in a cutting phase, I would definitely set it to maintain for three to four weeks, just so you can let the calories come up. When you do that, try to overshoot the calories. A mistake a lot of people make is they stay in an unintentional diet. You've probably heard of reverse dieting out in the world. I don't like that term. I don't know if you've ever heard me say I don't like reverse.

Philip Pape: 13:09

Reverse dieting is when you just gradually increase calories to try to get back to maintenance. Well, since you're tracking with Macrofactor, you know what your maintenance calories are. Just jump right to there and overshoot it by a little bit, and then that'll force your body to recover as fast as possible. And then, over a several-week period, you'll see some transitional changes like a fluid retention, maybe a tiny bit of bloating. That sometimes happens initially because you're upping your carbs and your body sucks in more glycogen, and initially it's like a little bit of puffiness. But then your body adapts and it starts to release the fluid again and that gives you a nice chance to just kind of get used to that. See how you feel with your training. You should feel really good. Your biofeedback should tick upward, like you shouldn't have hunger. Your sleep and stress and all of that should like feel better, supported by the energy, and then you can say hit the gas pedal, go for a gain at something like if if you want to be conservative, 0.3%. Everybody wait a week.

Libby: 14:08

And I'll send you.

Philip Pape: 14:08

I'll send you resources on this later. You know, when we're done I'll shoot you an email with the steps, Um, and I'm also going to send you. Just yesterday in the physique university we did a training on gaining and the fears associated with it. So I'm going to send you like a Google doc that has some thoughts, just to kind of reset your mind. And then I did a podcast a long time ago that said why I'm getting fluffy before I get jacked and I, like was vulnerable about my concerns about that. That I think you'll relate to as well, so I'll send you those, Um, but yeah, I would. I would say maintenance for four weeks and then 0.3% body weight a week for at least six months. And given that it is, uh, February, you're in the Northern hemisphere I would take that all the way out, past any point where you're like worried about eating too much If you got off of the game, meaning like go all the way through the holidays.

Libby: 15:01

Okay, although this is probably going to like reverse it. It's just in the summer when we moved back to the States and I see people I know this sounds whatever. This sounds maybe shallow, like I just I want to look great when I see people in like July Okay.

Philip Pape: 15:17

So, okay, got it. Here's what we can do. Are you, are you pretty happy with where you are right now as a, as a baseline? Okay, okay, then what we can do is it is February, so, uh, march, april, may, june, july it's still a decent amount of time. There's a couple of ways we can slice this. One is to do like a, a mini bulk, which normally I wouldn't recommend, but it's something, and you can kind of dip your feet in the water and see what it's like for like three months March, april, may and then you could do a six to eight week mini cut and kind of get right back down to where you were, but having added a little bit of muscle.

Libby: 15:51

How does that sound?

Philip Pape: 15:52

Yeah, I would, I would we're trying that, in which case you don't want to wait too long to get started. So I'm going to say maintenance two weeks, bulk three months. Cut six to eight weeks, the bulk is, the bulk is going to be. I almost want you to go slightly more aggressive, so I'm going to say 0.4% a week and then the cut is going to be what's your expenditure right now? I didn't ask that.

Libby: 16:16

I'll let you know.

Philip Pape: 16:17

Let's see.

Libby: 16:18

My expenditure. Um so, uh, here's what it says right now. So it's saying 1794.

Philip Pape: 16:26

Okay, we're on 1800 and that's after the cut. Has it dropped? And it's dropped from like what? 20,000, 2,000, 2,100.

Libby: 16:34

Oh, do you know that I'm not? I actually hold on. Look, there's this insights graph. Um, let's see where. Would I see the very beginning of it?

Philip Pape: 16:43

Yeah.

Libby: 16:44

I think well, you know I haven't been using, I mean because of you. I haven't been using it that long, so probably I only started it in the high 1800s.

Philip Pape: 16:54

Okay, okay, fair point If you haven't been using it long and it may not have converged all the way to 1880 something.

Libby: 16:58

Yeah, cause I've only had like a month and a half of data. Yeah.

Philip Pape: 17:03

Okay, then when you go back to maintenance you're probably going to be obviously in the upper 1700s. It may recover a little bit over the next couple of weeks, but that's. It's pretty short timeframe for that to cause any much change. But then when you go into the bulk, um, you're probably going to be eating, you know, 1900, maybe 2000 calories. Like it'll push you a little bit. The carbs are going to come up a bit and then you do that for, you know, 12 weeks or so and if you do the math you'll see you're not going to gain that much and at least half of it's going to be muscle. If you're training hard, it's going to be-.

Libby: 17:34

And the funny thing is I'm like what will I even do with 2,000? Like if you give me 2 eating like this, that I'm like what do I even need to get to 2000 calories? I guess like lots of snacks, I don't know. I just I have a good protein rich meal and I'm like I'm full. I'm like I cannot stuff another bite in my mouth.

Philip Pape: 17:55

So I mean yeah this is where we can go down so many rabbit holes. Obviously, um, this is what I help people with coaching, but honestly, the the the easiest advice I would say is meal frequency is your best friend. Like having more meals?

Philip Pape: 18:09

because, that's usually the biggest challenge for people who don't get hungry is just um frequency and then a little more calorie dense foods and occasional indulgences are fine if you need to get them in there, as long as you're eating like 80% 90% of whole foods and fiber. Um. So I would say that for the food and then for your training. The only I wanted to visit that real quickly because, um, all I would think here is I would prefer you be training three days a week and if I was going to ask you cause this membership.

Libby: 18:38

You could do it's this, this. It's like this membership gym and you can move to a third day a week.

Philip Pape: 18:44

Yeah.

Libby: 18:44

So I just wanted to ask you like in in my scenario, you would do three days a week of weights at the gym For sure You're 42 years young.

Philip Pape: 18:53

Look, I'm 44. You're 42 years young. A lot of potential for muscle. Three minimum. I mean maybe even four, but I would say three. Um, I don't know. The Pilates If you do it for fun, that's great, Like you don't need it.

Libby: 19:05

I want to do it. It's like something that I just love, or whatever.

Philip Pape: 19:09

Yeah, that's cool, yeah, so. So one Pilates is three weights and then but like I, need to get right Like I should get some.

Libby: 19:23

I should to Fitbit like literally new a month I'm trying to hit those 10,000. And if the weather's nice here, more so.

Philip Pape: 19:31

Yeah, yeah, 10,000 solid, I mean anywhere over eight, is good. And then if you really want some little bit of extra hit to your cardio, hit to your health heart, but not hit. I'm a big fan of sprinting now, and by sprinting I don't necessarily mean on flat ground, I mean you could do it on a bike or elliptical or whatever. Really, um, simple short sprinting protocol. So you're going to look at it and say this is kind of like hit, but it's a lot more recovery and rest time than normal hit. And honestly, at this point, listen to my episode with Brad Kearns coming out on the 21st and he mentions the exact protocol that I've stolen from him, because a lot of my clients don't even do cardio in that sense, they just walk a lot.

Libby: 20:15

Walking is the best.

Philip Pape: 20:16

Thing you can do for fat loss. It keeps the stress low. Hit can be a little bit stressful. Granted, when you're gaining it's less stressful, but you don't need it unless you really really enjoy it. Libby, which most people don't Do you enjoy it or no?

Libby: 20:31

I'd say like not really. But there is something about when you're done and you feel really good. You know what I mean.

Philip Pape: 20:36

I get it, I get it, that's the dopamine and the endorphins.

Libby: 20:41

I get it, yeah, yeah.

Philip Pape: 20:46

But it also. So just always remember that kind of addictive high is also associated with stress. So, um, whereas walking you don't get the addictive high, but you get the more long-term high. You know what I'm saying? Like it's super. So that's just my philosophy on that. Um, I think that covers the bases. Again, I'm going to number one. You're going to go to maintenance, bulk, then cut, and then you could always redevelop a new phase of periodization after that. It never ends. It's a fun thing. I'll send you two resources that I mentioned. And then I recommend up up into three days a week training, lots of walking. You don't need to do the hit, it's not going to hurt.

Libby: 21:18

I mean, if you've fit in, that's great, and then I'll send you a recap with with notes and resources later on.

Philip Pape: 21:24

Awesome, okay, are you in our Facebook group?

Libby: 21:31

Um, I don't know actually. No worries, I'll send you a link to that. I've looked at it.

Philip Pape: 21:32

Have I joined? I mean probably joined, I don't know. Yeah, all right, cool, I mean any other questions, anything else? Uh, this, is.

Libby: 21:36

This is truly like amazing and, uh, I may be reaching out to you at some point about coaching as well, so thank you so much. This is a great start and definitely I'm looking at it as like this is a long-term, like. I think, my perspective has you know what I mean. It's not just like a diet, it's like this is now like life.

Philip Pape: 21:57

I can tell you you and I are totally on the same page. I'm really happy when I meet someone like you who's like, just gotten the bug and discovered this, the the secret sauce of like how this all works based on the evidence, just like I did like four years ago, and it becomes so much easier. You're going to get all the, all the things you want if you just put in the work and um, yeah, I'm here to help you out. However I can Amazing.

Libby: 22:17

Awesome Thanks.

Philip Pape: 22:18

Libby, thanks for doing the call, awesome yeah.

Libby: 22:20

Thanks so much for your time.

Philip Pape: 22:31

All right, look for my email. Okay, sounds great. Thanks again. Bye-bye, all right, and that was my call with Libby.

Philip Pape: 22:33

As we wrap up today's episode, I really want you to take away one key message that sometimes the best path forward isn't always what you expect, and that's why some expert guidance and someone looking over your shoulder could be exactly what you need. Libby came to me thinking she needed to lose the last few pounds, but what she really needed or wanted was permission to build, to build muscle, to build strength and, most importantly, to build a new relationship with her body and the scale. And she was already on her way toward doing that, and now she's going to take it to a new level. So if you're in that place right now where the scale has become your enemy, where you're stuck trying to lose those last few pounds, or where you just know something needs to change, but you're not sure what, take that as your sign. Your breakthrough might be on the other side of letting go of weight loss or even fat loss as your primary goal. And if Libby's story resonated with you, if you're ready to get the same clarity about your next steps, go ahead and book that call with me.

Philip Pape: 23:24

It's a free 15 minute rapid nutrition assessment. It's not a sales pitch, it is just a focused session. We identify your biggest road block. I give you some steps, some resources. Off you go and you find success in just 15 minutes. That's all it takes. You could transform your approach to fitness and nutrition, just like Libby did. Click the link in the show notes or go to witsandweightscom and click the big button to schedule that assessment. Until next time, keep using your wits, lifting those weights, and remember sometimes gaining is the new losing. I'll talk to you next time here on the Wits and Weights podcast.

Walking vs. Running for Fat Loss and Longevity (Brad Kearns) | Ep 286

Book a FREE 15-minute Rapid Nutrition Assessment, designed to fine-tune your strategy, identify your #1 roadblock, and give you a personalized 3-step action plan in a fast-paced 15 minutes.

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Are your long runs and cardio sessions actually making fat loss harder? Could walking be more effective for your physique and longevity?

I bring on former pro triathlete and Olympic coach Brad Kearns to challenge the conventional wisdom around running and fat loss. Brad explains why chronic cardio may sabotage your metabolism, increase your appetite, and even make you lazier.

Brad Kearns is a two-time US national champion and a former #3 world-ranked professional triathlete. He is the co-author of Born to Walk with Mark Sisson. Brad is a coach, researcher, and speaker focused on longevity, fat loss, and performance.

Today, you’ll learn all about:

02:12 – Why running is the second most dangerous sport after football
06:19 – The genetic flaw in the argument that humans are "Born to Run"
09:34 – How chronic cardio affects metabolism and fat loss
14:27 – Why most calorie burn calculations are totally inaccurate
20:56 – Walking is anabolic, running is catabolic—here’s why
30:02 – The best way to sprint for fat loss (without burnout)
39:09 – Why endurance runners tend to be lazier throughout the day
45:46 – The fat max heart rate and why most people run too fast
55:36 – How to run without destroying your metabolism or joints
1:04:13 – Outro

Episode resources:

• Free bonuses when you buy the book: borntowalkbook.com

• The B.rad Podcast

• Website: bradkearns.com 

Walking vs. Running for Fat Loss and Longevity

If you’ve been logging miles on the treadmill or pounding the pavement in hopes of burning fat, but the results just aren’t there, it’s time to rethink your strategy. In this episode of Wits & Weights, former pro triathlete and Olympic coach Brad Kearns shares why chronic cardio might be holding you back and how a simple shift to more walking (and less running) could improve fat loss, recovery, and longevity.

Why Running Isn’t the Fat Loss Hack You Think It Is

For decades, running has been sold as the ultimate way to get lean. But the science tells a different story:

• Running increases appetite and calorie compensation – More miles often lead to more eating, negating the calorie burn.

• It’s a catabolic activity – Over time, excessive endurance training can break down muscle tissue instead of preserving it.

• Chronic stress from running raises cortisol levels – Elevated cortisol can lead to increased visceral fat storage, making fat loss harder.

• High injury rates – Around 50% of regular runners get injured every year, making it one of the riskiest sports for long-term health.

Yes, running can be a fantastic form of movement if done properly and in moderation. But for many people, it’s more of a fat loss roadblock than a solution.

Walking: The Underrated Fat Loss and Longevity Secret

Unlike running, walking is a low-stress, high-reward movement pattern that aligns with our genetic blueprint. Here’s why walking should be your go-to for fat loss and overall health:

• Minimally stressful and anabolic – Unlike running, walking doesn’t break down muscle tissue. In fact, it can support muscle retention when paired with strength training.

• Keeps cortisol in check – Because walking is low-intensity, it promotes fat burning without excessive stress.

• No recovery cost – You can walk for hours a day without wrecking your body, unlike long-distance running.

• Supports cardiovascular health – Walking at a brisk pace provides many of the heart-health benefits of running without the downsides.

The Fat Max Heart Rate: The Key to Effective Movement

One of the biggest takeaways from Brad’s research is understanding the Fat Max Heart Rate—the intensity level where your body burns the most fat per minute.

A simple formula to estimate your Fat Max Heart Rate:
180 minus your age

For example, if you’re 40 years old, your Fat Max HR would be 140 beats per minute (BPM). Going beyond this threshold shifts your body from primarily burning fat to burning carbohydrates, increasing fatigue and stress hormone production.

Most people hit their Fat Max HR with brisk walking, not running. That’s why slow, steady movement is often a better long-term strategy for body composition and overall health.

Sprinting: The Missing Piece of the Puzzle

If you love running but want to make it more effective, sprinting is the way to go. Sprinting is powerful, explosive, and delivers benefits that long-distance running never will:

• Triggers massive fat loss, especially visceral fat.

• Boosts testosterone and growth hormone, making it one of the best anti-aging activities.

• Improves athletic performance and enhances overall movement efficiency.

• Doesn’t lead to the same metabolic slowdown seen with chronic endurance training.

How to Sprint for Maximum Benefit

Brad recommends a quality-over-quantity approach to sprinting:

• 4–8 sprints per session

• 10–20 seconds per sprint

• At least a 6:1 rest ratio (e.g., if you sprint for 10 seconds, rest for at least 60 seconds before the next one)

Unlike running, sprinting is about short, explosive bursts with full recovery. You’ll get stronger, leaner, and more athletic—without the wear and tear of endurance running.

Making Walking a Part of Your Daily Life

The key to making walking effective is consistency. It’s not about tracking every step—it’s about integrating movement naturally into your lifestyle:

• Walk after meals to help with digestion and blood sugar control.

• Take walking breaks at work instead of sitting all day.

• Use a dog walk or a podcast (like Wits & Weights!) as motivation to get moving.

• Replace short drives with walks whenever possible.

Brad makes a great point—walking isn’t just exercise, it’s a biological necessity, much like sleep. When we move more, we function better. Simple as that.

The Bottom Line

If fat loss and longevity are your goals, walking and sprinting should be at the core of your routine—not chronic, steady-state running. While running has its place, most people overdo it and end up harming their metabolism, increasing stress, and slowing fat loss.

Instead, prioritize:
✅ Daily walking (as much as possible)
✅ Strength training (to preserve muscle and metabolism)
✅ Sprinting (for maximum fat loss and longevity benefits)

By shifting your mindset from “running for fat loss” to “walking for health and sprinting for performance,” you’ll burn more fat, stay injury-free, and improve your overall longevity.

👩‍💻 Book a FREE 15-Minute Rapid Nutrition Assessment:
https://witsandweights.com/free-call

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Transcript

Philip Pape: 0:01

If you've been hitting long runs and cardio sessions, hoping to get leaner, but you aren't seeing the fat loss results you want, this episode is definitely for you. Former pro triathlete and Olympic coach, Brad Kearns, reveals how chronic cardio may be sabotaging your metabolism and making fat loss harder. You'll discover why walking could give you far better results than running. Learn about how running impacts your appetite and hormones, and understand exactly how to optimize your movement for both physique and longevity. Welcome to Wits and Weights, the show that helps you build a strong, healthy physique using evidence, engineering and efficiency.

Philip Pape: 0:46

I'm your host, Philip Pape, and today we're challenging conventional wisdom about cardio and fat loss with Brad Kearns. Brad is a researcher, coach, former two-time US national champion, number three world-ranked professional triathlete. He placed second in last year's USA Masters National Championships in the 55 to 59 high jump. His new book, Born to Walk with Mark Sisson, exposes the science behind why extensive walking, not running, aligns with our genetic blueprint for optimal health. Today, you'll learn the metabolic reasons running can make fat loss harder, how it might make you lazier and tips for a more effective approach to cardio for fat loss. Brad, thank you so much. Welcome to the show.

Brad Kearns: 1:26

Hey, philip, I'm glad to be on. Great intro there. Thanks for spending the time and, yeah, we're going to roll up our sleeves and get into it, because we got some issues to discuss in the fitness world and it's been decades now of this programming message, of struggling and suffering your way to getting fit, that this is the path and it's time to unwind it, because so many well-meaning people have, you know, laced up their running shoes and, in the case of what we focus on in the book, but also, you know, devoted gym rats who are going in and taking a bunch of classes or immersed into the extreme CrossFit community and, by and large, following an inappropriate protocol that leads to breakdown, burnout, illness and injury and especially, failed efforts at reducing excess body fat and all kinds of other fallout, where the body is trained inappropriately and the results don't happen.

Philip Pape: 2:19

So let's go right for the jugular, because you took us there. You mentioned some trigger words for people, I'm sure including CrossFitfit, which I did for like eight years before I switched the way that I trained. What's wrong with running brad like what is wrong with it?

Brad Kearns: 2:31

uh, well, depends who you are, and it's really a wonderful outlet for people who are highly trained and well adapted and have that baseline physical fitness and musculoskeletal resiliency to enjoy endurance training. But it can easily lead to problems when you are not well adapted and you're coming from sedentary lifestyle patterns and then lacing up the shoes and heading down the road. So we need to look at running as a very dangerous, high risk sport because of the aforementioned fallout that I talked about. I talked to earnest high school kids who are competitive runners and then they get injured and their parent seeks me out to talk about my experience as a former elite level high school and college runner and pro triathlete and I say you know, you understand, like it's probably the second most dangerous sport on the high school docket besides tackle football. And it's this pounding and this prevailing approach where the obsession with repeatedly accumulating lots of miles day after day in the interest of getting fit for these ridiculous events that we glorify, like the 26.2 mile marathon. So it's inherently too stressful for the body and for most participants to gain any benefit from.

Brad Kearns: 3:53

Therefore, we have that tongue and cheek title of the book. We call it Born to Walk and it's a little bit of a take on the 2009 bestselling book called Born to Run, which glorified the amazing genetic attributes of the human for endurance. So we are indeed built for occasional magnificent feats of endurance as we are hunting down our prey on the savannah and evolving to the top of the food chain because we are able to access the big game and the nutrient-rich foods, and so that's part of our evolutionary biology that we are, for example, bipedal, so we are much better runners than a four-legged creature, and we have sweat mechanisms so we can persist and do endurance achievements in the heat where other animals might become overheated. We have an Achilles tendon, which primatologist Bill Sellers contends is quote the primary evolutionary adaptation that made human beings who they are, because our ape cousins, who don't have Achilles tendons if you go to the zoo and watch a chimpanzee decide to sprint across his area. He's running with this strange flat-footed style like a gorilla, and they're not well adapted for running any distance.

Brad Kearns: 5:04

And so we take this story and this message and then we have a very flawed misinterpretation and misappropriation to conclude that we are going to benefit from running long distances on the regular. So what happens when we get into overly stressful workout patterns and I'll define exactly how you can determine whether you're in an overly stressed pattern or not. But when we overstress ourselves with regular workouts that are slightly to significantly too difficult, that's when we incur these overuse injuries at an amazing rate. The stats on the running community are absolutely shocking and embarrassing. Yale University School of Medicine contends that 50% of all regular runners are injured every year and that 25% of all devoted runners are injured at any given time.

Philip Pape: 6:02

Yeah, I was going to get into that stat, so I'm glad you led with that, because two major things you brought up. One is the injury rate. I know soccer is another one that's way up there on the injury rate, which involves a lot of running but of course involves people crashing each other without equipment on, and I know lifting weights is at the bottom, if not the bottom lowest injury on the list, just so people are aware of that. You also mentioned the genetic or ancestral factor. Let's just talk about that for a second, because you made a great argument that it is a, not a red herring. What's the logical flaw when people say, well, if our ancestors did this one thing, then it extrapolates to everything else, which we do, for food too, let's admit it, yeah.

Brad Kearns: 6:38

Yeah. And then you, you lead with sentences like wouldn't you think that blank, blank, blank, lead with sentences like, wouldn't you think that blank, blank, blank? And I'm like, well, maybe not, but since you loaded me up, I guess I have to think that way, yeah, so I guess it's out of context. Evolutionary biology insight. So indeed, if we went and looked at the Hadza in Tanzania one of the last remaining hunter-gatherer populations on earth they cover between three and nine miles per day in the course of their daily business gathering or out on persistence hunts. And so the human has long been engaged in frequent everyday movement, until only actually recent times, when you think of, like you know, the industrial revolution. Before that, we were mostly farming and moving on our feet, and even in factory life, people were working hard and moving on our feet, and even in factory life, people were working hard. That's why we have three meals a day, because you have to fuel up at breakfast to go and bust your butt in the factory. You got to take a midday break because you've been working so hard and then you come home and you want more food and we still have three meals a day for people that sit in front of a screen all day.

Brad Kearns: 7:39

So modern life is so different that we really can't compare to some hunter-gatherer anecdote and contend that we too can engage in persistence hunting day after day.

Brad Kearns: 7:52

And in fact, the ancestral pattern was completely different than what we perceive it to be, because if we were to fail at persistence hunting, we would be someone else's dinner. To fail at persistence hunting, we would be someone else's dinner. So we did not chase after the antelope for hours and hours and finally prevail because it got too hot. But we did that once in a while and then we carried the game back to camp and we celebrated and feasted for a long time. And hunter gatherers, by definition, did the bare minimum physical activity necessary to survive, whereas today we have a tendency to overexercise, especially in the running and the fitness communities where we push ourselves so hard. Because of all the confines and the comfort and predictability of modern life, we feel compelled to push and challenge our bodies, and that stuff is all great and it's a great way to live a balanced, adventurous, active life. However, the problem occurs when you overdo it and compromise your health, compromise your fat loss goals and get into these ruts where we see as a common pattern in the fitness scene.

Philip Pape: 8:57

Yeah, perfect segue to talk about metabolism expenditure. There's a few concepts here that overlap we can maybe get into. When you talk about the Hadza, first of all, what came to mind is how much honey they eat.

Brad Kearns: 9:07

I remember watching the documentary about that.

Philip Pape: 9:10

It's pretty cool. But the idea of, for example, the constraint versus the additive model of expenditure you're familiar with Henry Ponser's work on that and the doubly labeled water study and then the fact that people overexercise I mean that is a key pillar we address on this podcast all the time is, a lot of people are doing too much and not enough of the right thing, and in my own nutrition coaching practice, plenty of a person, especially women, but I don't want to stereotype because men too will come in, just they're doing too much. And then you step back, you strip it out, you focus on lifting heavy and walking and all of a sudden so many things start to normalize. So how does this chronic cardio affect your metabolism, your ability to burn fat? And then we can lead to what are the alternatives?

Brad Kearns: 9:53

Right. This constrained model of exercise asserts that we engage in an assortment of compensatory behaviors when we expend an excessive amount of energy exercising. I think it was Dr Herman Ponser's quote where he said reproduction, repair, growth and locomotion are a zero-sum game. So locomotion means all manner of movement and workouts and your workout patterns. And then if we dedicate too much energy to locomotion we turn down these important dials of repair, reproduction and growth. So that means the compensation theory of exercise means if you wake up your alarm at 6am and go slam a spinning class or run eight miles in the freezing, cold winter temperatures in Connecticut, the rest of the day your body is going to conserve energy because you expended so much with the workout, especially if the pace was incorrect, and we'll get into that shortly. But it also means that this exhausting, depleting exercise pattern that many fitness enthusiasts are engaged in will dysregulate appetite and satiety hormones. So the 6 am spin class is paired directly with reaching for the pint of Ben and Jerry's in the evening and wolfing the whole thing down. The body does not like to be depleted and exhausted on a regular basis and we kick into these survival mechanisms that prompt us to overeat, as if the brain is telling the body well, I better finish this whole pint in case this fool tries again tomorrow morning to wake up at 6 am and burn 750 calories at spin class. So that's the constrained model of integer expenditure as we turn down other dials. And the additive model, like you mentioned, is this long flawed notion where you can go on the internet and calculate your basal metabolic rate and then go determine that a spin class burns between 650 and 700 calories and then add that up and, as the calculation finishes here, you should lose 42 pounds of excess body fat in one year because you're doing spin class three days a week and obviously we've learned that that's a disastrous, dismal failure.

Brad Kearns: 12:03

But to continue on this rant, to answer your question, what happens when you engage in overly stressful endurance exercise patterns is that you chronically overproduce stress hormones and they linger in your bloodstream, just like they do in our hectic, high-stress modern life.

Brad Kearns: 12:20

So we already have stressful lifestyle patterns that are in disconnect with our ancestral model and our genetic expectation for health.

Brad Kearns: 12:28

And now you layer on top that 6 am spin class or that long distance run and that 30 miles a week that you're trying to hit, and then work it up to 40 miles a week before the marathon comes in the final months, and what happens is it's stress on top of more stress, and when you put out too much cortisol people are familiar with that term as the preeminent stress hormone when you do that routinely, your body gets the signals, the genetic signals are sent to add body fat and shed lean muscle mass and, in particular, you are prompted to store visceral fat.

Brad Kearns: 13:03

That's the health destructive fat that collects around the organs, even worse than the subcutaneous fat, which is stored all over in your problem areas and is largely. It's not a big health concern, but the visceral fat has immediate destructive effects to your overall health and your hormone balance. And this is what happens to endurance freaks that train too hard and push their bodies without that balance of stress and rest and also a more varied fitness program where, like you say, you're doing the low-risk activities like lifting weights are far more safe than just jogging down the road with your elevated, cushioned shoes.

Philip Pape: 13:39

And I want to put a pin in a topic to get to later, if we don't forget, because I do want to address the corner case of the person who can do a high level of endurance activity and balance things out. I want to talk about that but in the meantime, a few things just to clarify for folks listening because you put that so clearly is, if you're trying to burn an extra 100 calories from more activity, you're probably going to offset a fraction of that, if not the whole thing, through this compensatory mechanism.

Brad Kearns: 14:07

Yeah, philip, when I worked for a spinning company, the spinning indoor cycling program, my friend Johnny G invented spinning and we were trying to educate consumers about different things and so we actually funded a study to see what the calorie burning was like. And a spin class burns around 650 to 700 calories in that 45 minute class. And then I did a macronutrient analysis of a Jamba Juice medium smoothie and a breakfast scone and it was like 710. So you're going at 6am if you do a spin class, you're going to be tending to reaching for that extra food to replenish depleted glycogen.

Philip Pape: 14:47

Yeah, and guess what, if you're tracking and you use willpower or discipline to not do that, then you're just going to be starving. So it's just either way right. It all works out one way or the other, and this is why I like the body, treating the body as a closed system. Because you mentioned BMR calculators and people know the pie charts that have BMR, thermic, effective food, exercise and non-exercise, and they try to add it all together and really what you should do is okay, this is what I'm eating, this is how my weight is changing. Therefore, I know how many calories I'm burning. And that's effectively what Ponser and the guys did is, they said, almost everybody on the planet has roughly the same BMR when normalized for muscle mass, when normalized for body composition, and so that's not going to be an efficient way to burn more calories, and I know we're going to get to one. That is that everybody knows we're going to talk about, which is walking.

Brad Kearns: 15:35

On that note, I came up with some interesting research in the course of writing this book, which was really fascinating. Someone who is sedentary and unfit this is the sitting is the new smoking body of research. But what's happening there is that they are engaging overactive inflammatory processes and stress reactivity end quote. I'm remembering this, burned into my brain. So they are burning energy in an inappropriate manner.

Brad Kearns: 16:04

And the analogy that was brought up was like the firefighters are in the station and they're not getting any calls on the truck and so they're racing up and down the stairs and then they're coming over to your house just for practice and so they bash in your front door and they run up around and they also put an ax into your stairway and then they go back to the station and rest and then do it to someone else's house. So we don't want these overactive inflammatory processes and stress reactivity, but that's what's happening if you do insufficient exercise and don't burn the calories in the correct manner through extensive everyday walking and dedicating yourself to an appropriately designed fitness program. And that's again because you mentioned the ceiling. It made me think of that and like, wait a second, how is my unfit, lazy neighbor burning the same number of calories per day, as I am. When I'm going to these, 6 am spinning classes. Some of it is devoted to the body not working right.

Philip Pape: 17:01

Yeah, it is fascinating when you look at walking versus standing and not being sedentary versus cardio versus lifting and when you kind of combine the best of those. I was just talking to my coach the other day about having better work capacity and conditioning when you're a lifter. Are there benefits to that from a nutrient partitioning perspective? And there is evidence that shows that if you're trying to build muscle, for example, and you're in a calorie surplus, a little bit more of that will go toward muscle. If you're a little bit better conditioned, it doesn't mean doing a bunch of cardio. It just shows how, like we're kind of meant to be fit people. You know doing things.

Brad Kearns: 17:36

Yeah, and also, uh, you're probably familiar with Chris Hinshaw. He's a big coach in the CrossFit scene, his business is called Aerobic Capacity and he's a former compatriot of mine on the professional triathlon circuit. So we both had that extreme endurance background Now, you know, transformed into he's a big CrossFit guy and I'm a sprinter and a high jumper in Masters track and field. But he was discovering when he started working with the CrossFit athletes that these guys are so powerful and explosive and have the amazing ability to do 10 box jumps and then climb the rope and then do some upside down handstand pushups. However, with the lack of that baseline endurance or that baseline aerobic capacity, they're going to do this amazingly impressive workout and bomb out in 17 minutes instead of 31. And they're going to get eliminated in the CrossFit Games regionals instead of going to the finals. So every athlete in every sport obviously the elite soccer players and the NBA players who are running up and down the court everyone needs this aerobic foundation in order to thrive and perform, even in the most explosive events.

Brad Kearns: 18:44

A power lifter okay, the most explosive sport of all where your effort is four seconds long, the longest thing they're asking you to do is lift the weight off the ground. But how long do these guys' workouts last? They last for hours. They do a two and a half hour weightlifting session. So as soon as you get out of the car and walk through the parking lot to the front door of the gym and beep your pass and get your towel and head over to the weights and do a warm-up set and then sit and go through your text messages, which apparently is part of gym culture these days. And I often wonder because I'm not a big gym guy, philip, but I'm like I see a guy on the bench press machine that I want to use, but he's resting between sets and sending text messages. Is it okay to say hey?

Philip Pape: 19:30

can you text like one bench over, so I can do my one set and move on with my life. It is okay. It is okay. It's a genetic to say can I work in there? Yeah, you should tell him to pace around, get some steps, yeah exactly, but I'm making the point.

Brad Kearns: 19:39

It's like as soon as you get out of your car car your heart rate is at least double resting rate, and spiking up even higher when you're doing sets. But when you're sitting on the bench texting it's still double resting rate. So you are getting a cardiovascular training effect for that entire hour and 45 minutes that you're goofing around in the gym in between doing hard stuff, and so that counts toward your cardio quotient to the extent that you don't have to go and pound out miles on the road to hit that checkbox on your total fitness scoreboard.

Philip Pape: 20:14

Yeah, that's right Because, again, I used to do CrossFit and you get conditioned but you also burn out and if you look at the competitors, they also focus a lot on their strength and their exercise. You know their movements to where they have a strength base as well, such that the cardio, the conditioning for them, visceral fat. But you mentioned something specific. You said it can break down muscle tissue, I believe, which means it's catabolic, and people love to understand, or don't always understand, that concept of anabolic behaviors eating anabolically, having higher energy flux through walking that it's anabolic. Recovering is anabolic, Hormones are anabolic, but catabolic is the opposite. I don't know where you stand on carbs. This is just a side tangent, but I often talk about how sometimes carbs can be anti-catabolic when you're building muscle. But anyway, that's a separate topic yeah, well said, exactly.

Philip Pape: 21:09

Yeah, yeah. So I know you said walking is anabolic and running is catabolic, so maybe explain that a little more for folks.

Brad Kearns: 21:16

Oh, my goodness, that's so funny. You bring up this because Mark and I spent probably a week talking back and forth to add a couple paragraphs to the book to explain it properly, and it's so complex, but we want to give you the simple insights. But just as a background, like body is, it's an oversimplification to say this is catabolic, this is anabolic, but it makes the point really well. But at all times the body's undergoing processes that are both actually and the best example is sleep. So sleep is called an amphibolic process because you are both engaging in catabolism as well as, of course, anabolic. Uh, when you talk about, you know restoring and repairing and regenerating with your overnight sleep. So with walking, it is sending signals to the body for anabolic processes because it's minimally destructive, you have minimal impact, trauma and you're getting all these processes working. Where you're getting more blood flowing, oxygen delivery, you're building a brain-derived neurotropic factor to help with neuroplasticity. So all this great stuff is happening with minimal penalty or destruction or breakdown. Now with running overall for most runners, because they are not fit enough to really do the sport in a manner that is minimally stressful and building the aerobic system, they're just breaking down the body over and over with a slightly too stressful pace and also incorrect form. That's resulting in more impact trauma, because what we see this pattern is the over-striding, breaking, jarring heel-striking pattern as seen in 80 to 95% of all recreational runners, according to Dr Daniel Lieberman's research at Harvard percent of all recreational runners, according to dr daniel lieberman's research at harvard. And so the reason that we see so much of this overstriding braking pattern are people that are poorly adapted, have insufficient overall physical competency and musculoskeletal resiliency to run with correct form. Why are they running or how are they able to run?

Brad Kearns: 23:19

It was the invention of the elevated cushion shoe back in the 1970s by Nike. So these shoes came out where you could put on the shoe and shuffle down the street with this heel striking pattern and go and run five miles, whereby, if you didn't have these magical shoes, you'd be traumatized after two minutes or three minutes and your calves and your feet would hurt because of the poor running form. So the shoes enable poorly adapted people to run who should not be running in the first place. Do they cause poor form? Of course not. It's an innate object that sits on a shelf and so what they do is enable poor form.

Brad Kearns: 23:57

What's the cause of poor running form. It's that lack of basic physical fitness. So you have tight hip flexors, you have tight hamstrings, you have dysfunctional glutes because they don't fire, because your form is incorrect. You have poor core strength and poor foundation, so that you have an insufficient forward lean of the trunk, so you're allowed to do this breaking stride. You have poor ankle mobility and all these factors against you because you're not a super fit person and you have a lot of sedentary patterns in life. And then you insist on shuffling down the road at this dangerous sport that is gonna drive chronic overuse injury.

Philip Pape: 24:35

Because it's so easy, right? You just lace up your shoes, no equipment needed, and you just go. Yeah, so I know the shoes in the 70s and I believe there was some book in the 70s too, that I don't know if you know which one it is that led to a huge the fitness revolution, or whatever.

Brad Kearns: 24:49

what came to running this running boom kicked off, and it's important to understand, because there's been so much hype and marketing commentary socializing us to think that running is this end all fitness accomplishment, when in fact it's, you know, mainly catabolic and prompts accumulation of fat rather than reduction of fat and prompts the loss of muscle. And boy, we really got into this mess with profit driven corporate marketing forces with a big interest in it, especially the running shoe advertising Just do it is widely regarded as the greatest advertising campaign of all time, and so, hey, how can you resist? And I want to clarify that, like getting people off the couch in comfortable modern life and out, doing something is a great step forward for mankind, but it's really important to do it correctly, otherwise we can actually be worse off than someone who just engages in a basic level of activity, like tending to their garden and walking down to the post office to mail a letter, and all those quaint memories that we have from a previous time, before the fitness boom kicked into gear.

Philip Pape: 25:58

Yeah, so we addressed some of the reasons why running is not great for fat loss. Not only that it breaks down muscle tissue, but you also compensate for the calorie burn. It also causes overtraining, which means you're not going to be moving as much or you're going to impede recovery. But just to make it super clear for people I know there's this idea running makes you tone, it burns fat. It's just part of that culture. Why is just that not the case? Just so people know. Like the big bullet points behind that.

Brad Kearns: 26:26

Well, it's not a very demanding sport for the overall musculoskeletal system. Right, you're just shuffling down the road. Go look at the elite runners in the Olympics. These guys are super skinny and somewhat emaciated, but they're also ripped and they're fine athletes and they're running at a very, very high speed. So it's sort of like a different deal when you look at a guy who's running a two-hour marathon or running the 10K around the track in 26 minutes. They're extremely highly trained athletes and very fit and have the physique of a champion.

Brad Kearns: 26:59

So the recreational aspect, where people are running very, very slowly. However, they're still stressing their bodies too much with the simple act of running that they're not adapted to do. So it's kind of like pushing yourself to do a bunch of deadlifts, of squats with really crappy form and continuing and insisting to continue and do more and more sets until you're really tired and your form's even worse, and then you get injured and exhausted and reach for the Ben and Jerry's. We wouldn't dream of doing that, that stupid of a workout in the gym, but basically that's what we're seeing every day when people are going for that weekly mileage goal, with that poor form, with that excess impact, trauma and the overeating and the appetite and satiety dysregulation that occurs from overly stressful pattern. And one thing when you listed off those reasons that were criticizing running, we forgot another huge one, which is, if you're devoting all this energy to cardiovascular endurance training at a slightly to significantly too stressful of a pace, guess what you don't have time and energy for anymore. You don't have time to even dabble in weights and go do one set through the machines once a week, or the very bare minimum necessary to maintain functional muscle mass and muscle strength, and forget about probably the greatest return on investment of any workout known to mankind, which is sprinting right. So the brief, explosive, all out sprints are the thing that we lose more quickly with aging than we do the cardiovascular endurance.

Brad Kearns: 28:36

I talked to my mom about this. She's 87. She's in fantastic shape and she walks one to two miles every morning with her dog and she's very proud of it and looks around at people her age who are falling apart and I say, hey, that walk is great, that's a great foundation. Now you need to keep that appointment with the personal trainer at the gym and you need to go put your body under resistance load to maintain that muscle mass. It's absolutely essential and I think you know it's nice to see now with the content you're putting out and many other people like strength training and sprinting are vastly more important than this baseline cardiovascular steady state endurance training Because, as I mentioned, you are getting cardio if you become a competent strength trainer or a sprinter.

Philip Pape: 29:19

Okay. So you opened the door to sprinting because I wasn't even going to go there. I was next going to say okay. So we know pretty much for a fact that you could lose fat, be fit, not have to run ever. Trust me, I know from personal experience and coaching many, many clients who don't want to run and they don't have to run. But sprinting is its own form of running, in its own category, and I will say I love it. I don't do it as often as I used to. Again, in CrossFit, my favorite thing to do was shuttle runs.

Philip Pape: 29:44

I love the ones where the every minute on the minute where you had to do like I don't know, I think it was 10 meters, and then on the second minute you do 10 meters and then 10 meters back and then on the third you add another segment. You see, if you can get up to like 18 was a pretty good. Like you know, I have an ego. I'm satisfying my ego right when you get to like 18, but let's dive into that then, because I don't talk about that enough on the show. I'm not against it. I talk about things like pushing and pulling sleds. We talk about if you need to go on the bike or do some swimming or something that is completely concentric without the eccentric loading. That's cool, you know, for a session here or there, but tell us about sprinting.

Brad Kearns: 30:22

Well, if we had more space on the cover, the book would appropriately be titled Humans Are Born to Walk and Sprint. Okay, and so that is. Our essential genetic expectation for health and survival is that we need to be prepared. In primal times we need to run for our lives or run to get food so we didn't starve, and so that selection pressure, the genetic adaptations occurred where we became great endurance machines, as discussed earlier, and we also became very strong and we became powerful and explosive to deal with a primal hazard. So we want to honor those genetic expectations for health today, and sprinting is a hugely important piece of the puzzle.

Brad Kearns: 31:04

Interestingly, it doesn't take that much time, so it's not a huge ask to have someone sprinkle in some sprinting stimulation into their fitness regimen. And we're talking about when we really use the term sprint properly. We're talking about a brief, explosive, nearly all-out effort, and we know from exercise physiology the human can only deliver a maximum effort for seven seconds. Right, that's what the ATP, creatine, phosphate, the energy inside the cell where you can go full bore, starts to peter out at seven seconds, and so anything over seven seconds is not technically a pure sprint. So when we watch the 100 meters in the Olympics and the guys run 9.79,. They're actually decelerating a bit in the final stages of even the fastest, most explosive event in the Olympics. So that's something to understand when we talk about sprinting. The ideal template for a workout would be to sprint for 10 to 20 seconds. Yes, sprinting for seven seconds is great, but if we get 10 to 20 seconds then we're getting some good fitness stimulation. But we're stopping before we incur too much cellular stress and musculoskeletal trauma and stress hormone production because the workout's too brutal and your tongue's hanging out at the end.

Brad Kearns: 32:20

So a proper sprint workout is not Rocky Balboa puking on the side of the road from going so fast so many times. It's a very crisp, explosive session where you're executing precise technique and you do not degrade over the course of the workout. So, unlike high intensity interval training where you're hanging on and you got two more and you can do it and the group is rallying around you and you high five at the end as you're dripping in a pool of sweat during that spin class where you're asked to go over and over again for 30 second sprints with 30 seconds rest and we're going to go for it, that's one form of training but true, sprinting is an extensive amount of rest in between very brief bursts of all out performance. So I give this recommended template for anyone could be a four to eight sprints lasting between 10 and 20 seconds, with a minimum six to one recovery to work ratio. So if you're sprinting for 10 seconds, you rest for at least a minute before you do another sprint and that gives you this consistent quality of high performance effort with each rep. You only have to do four to eight.

Brad Kearns: 33:32

Oh question, in the back of the class, what if I get really good and fit and I do eight good ones? Then what you're going to do is you're going to go faster. You're not going to go up to 12 someday or 14, or keep adding volume, as we've been socialized to believe inaccurately by fitness programming where it's like more, more, more. With sprinting it's all about quality and extensive rest and, as you read on my bio, now that I'm a master sprinter and having to learn all the attributes of sprinting that weren't familiar to me as a longtime endurance athlete, I'm getting scolded by my advisors because I'm only taking a six to one ratio, which I feel is plenty for me.

Brad Kearns: 34:12

But to do to get fast at 10 second sprints, you might want to rest for two or three or four minutes before you do another one, and that's just a more sophisticated level of sprint training. But for the basic template for everybody is that four to eight sprints, 10 to 20 seconds, six to one ratio, and then you're opening up a whole new world of fitness benefits. Especially, and probably of most interest to people, is the ability to shed excess body fat quickly, especially visceral fat, and there's great research showing that sprinting targets visceral fat reduction in particular, because visceral fat is more metabolically active than subcutaneous fat, so it makes it easier to remove if you send the right genetic signals through things like sprinting or I guess you could arguably throw in fasting and things like that that are trying to rev up the metabolism.

Philip Pape: 35:06

I have to say, brad, you've got the bug in me all right, so I got to do this now Because you're right, the way I used to do it was more of the HIIT style that you're talking about, and I absolutely love this prescription and the caution to only go up in intensity, only go up in speed, as your form of progressive overload for your sprinting is really good, because then people aren't doing oh, now I'm doing 12 of these, now I'm doing 20. Guess what? My Brad Kearns protocol is now an hour long. It doesn't work that way. This is good. I'm going to follow up on this with you later and then this could be a whole separate topic to dive into. All right, cool Sprinting, brad. Good, everybody has that.

Brad Kearns: 35:43

Oh yeah, sprinting is definitely a full show dedicated to that.

Brad Kearns: 35:48

And when we look at these research benefits like brain-derived neurotropic factor and just making you a more confident, resilient person, and also what sprinting does is it reduces perceived exertion at all lower levels of exercise intensity.

Brad Kearns: 36:03

So if you become competent at sprinting, your five mile jog or your hour long group exercise class in the gym, everything feels easier and it literally is easier because, as you know from like central governor theory, your perception of how difficult the workout is is how difficult the workout is.

Brad Kearns: 36:23

And so when we say my quads got really tired on my 12th rep of squats, it's not literally true. The quads don't have feelings and emotions and think they're tired. It's your brain that gets tired because you never worked that top end, and so everything becomes sort of a challenge or grueling or all these sensations where we need to teach the body to perform that brief, explosive, powerful as the essence of anti-aging. So the anti-aging benefits are tremendous and, in contrast to that chronic overproduction of stress hormones that I talk about with an endurance training regimen, what sprinting does is an appropriately brief fight or flight spike of hormones into the bloodstream and then, because the workout is over quickly. You're able to quickly recalibrate back to homeostasis and come back stronger and more resilient, thanks to testosterone and growth hormone coursing through your bloodstream, acting upon target organs, building more muscle, shedding excess body fat and improving the brain's perception of fatigue during exercise.

Philip Pape: 37:29

Yeah, the mind-body thing is really powerful there you mentioned. This reminds me a lot of just the system we use for lifting right, it's the ATP-CP system, and if you look at the physique of sprinters, you know that they're not emaciated like long distance runners.

Brad Kearns: 37:47

Yeah, there's a popular quip when we're doing live lectures and you ask have you ever seen a fat sprinter?

Brad Kearns: 37:55

And the answer is no. There's no such thing, because it's the penalty for carrying excess body fat when you're going at high speed is so severe that the genetic signaling will occur every time you do a sprint workout to shed that excess body fat, to adapt and become stronger for next time. Now, have you ever seen a fat marathon runner? In fact, the research from Cape Town Marathon in South Africa determined that 30% of the participants were over the healthy BMI range. And then we compare contrast to World Health Organization research showing that 30% of the global population, largely in the developed nations, is also outside of healthy BMI range. So when you go to an event and you cannot distinguish between the spectators and the participants, you got a problem with your sport. You go to a powerlifting meet I can see who's competing in the heavyweight division and who's watching, but the marathoning generally does not support any improvement in physique and can actually cause extreme harm with that accumulation of visceral fat and the loss of muscle mass.

Philip Pape: 39:02

Yeah, and I know when I've sprinted and I've asked people to just do it randomly who are lifters, who squat a lot, it's like that base of power goes a long way as well. They're a duo, they're like.

Philip Pape: 39:12

Batman and Robin. There, it's cool. Yeah, it's pretty cool, all right. So on the other side of the spectrum, you posted something on Instagram just recently, a few days ago that said endurance running the way most people do it prompts increased laziness in general life, and I'm very intrigued by that. I want you to tell me more about that one.

Brad Kearns: 39:29

Yeah, it happens both consciously and subconsciously. So when you're proud of yourself for waking up on the cold, snowy morning and running eight miles before most of your neighbors are awake, or they're shuffling out to pick up the newspaper and head back into the warm home, what happens is you give yourself permission, you give yourself a hall pass to be lazier throughout the day. And so when you're asked, hey, do you mind raking the leaves this afternoon? You say I'll do it tomorrow because I ran eight miles this morning and I'm tired and lazy. So, on a conscious level, you give those hall passes for another scoop of ice cream, another serving, another helping at the meal, and runners glow and crow about how they have a free pass to eat more food.

Brad Kearns: 40:20

And you were mentioning the books that helped launch the running boom. One of them was the complete book of running by Jim fix, who famously dropped out of a heart attack at age 51, ignoring all recommendations to get medical checkups, even though he had a family history. And he would write passages like the great thing about running is when the furnace is hot enough, anything will burn. In other words, you don't have to scrutinize your dietary choices because you're burning so many calories. And this became a cultural paradigm in the seventies. And even the leading cardiovascular experts at the time the doctor, said the same thing they thought you would be heart attack proof if you could run a marathon and now're seeing the opposite a rash of heart problems in long-time extreme athletes.

Brad Kearns: 41:01

But back to the permissions where consciously you give yourself those hall passes and then subconsciously the body engages in these energy conserving mechanisms to react to what's perceived as a survival threat and so you need to conserve energy.

Brad Kearns: 41:18

You turn down those other dials, remember they are reproduction repair and growth in favor of excess locomotion. And I think the most extreme example when we talk about reproduction for males that would mean one's libido and for females, reproductive fitness can go awry with these extremely high-performing females when their body fat drops below a threshold and they experience amenorrhea, the loss of menstruation. So whether or not you're interested in family planning and what's happening in the immediate future, our primary biological drive to exist is to reproduce. So when one loses reproductive fitness, this is an extreme indicator that one's stress mechanisms and lifestyle are out of balance. And the elite female athletes deal with that routinely, especially in the sports that demand low body fat. So if you see a female with six pack. She is treading on thin ice, even though she looks great and is getting a lot of followers on her social media posts. Um, the body does not really want to be pushed that hard and you have to make all these concessions for general health.

Brad Kearns: 42:26

Yeah, and one thing I mentioned uh, you know I was. I was pro circuit for nine years, so I traveled around the world. I trained all day. I slept for half of my life during my career as a pro triathlete 12 hours, 10 hours a night and two hour every afternoon. But I also experienced all around five or six colds every year and it was just part of life as a pro triathlete, with all that traveling and all that training. So, hey, that's nine years times, let's say six.

Brad Kearns: 42:58

I had 50 upper respiratory minor infections in my peak years of ages 20 to 30. Kind of ridiculous, when you think about it, that I was bashing my immune system and suppressing it so routinely with all that stress, hormone production. And, on a less extreme example, that's what the recreational enthusiast is dealing with, because they have little kids that they have to get up and deal with school and then they have to go to work and be responsible and rake the leaves and they want to run eight miles in the morning and it's too much. In contrast, that sprint workout that I described fills you with energy and enthusiasm and a level uh appetite and satiety hormone, uh status, so that you go through life eating healthy, nutritious meals and feeling great and having more energy because you work out and train rather than less hey, just wanted to give a shout out to philip.

Jerry: 43:49

I personally worked with philip for about eight months and I lost a total of 33 pounds of scale weight and about five inches off my waist.

Jerry: 43:57

Two things I really enjoy about working with Philip is number one. He's really taken the time to develop a deep expertise in nutrition and also resistance training, so he has that depth. If you want to go deep on the lies with Philip, but if also if you want to just kind of get some instruction and more practical advice and a plan on what you need to do, you can pull back and communicate at that level. Also, he is a lifter himself, so he's very familiar with the performance and body composition goals that most lifters have. And also Philip is trained in engineering, so he has some very efficient systems set up to make the coaching experience very easy and very efficient and you can really track your results and you will have real data when you're done working with Philip and also have access to some tools likely that you can continue to use. If all that sounds interesting to you. Philip, like all good coaches, has a ton of free information out there and really encourage you to see if he may be able to help you out. So thanks again, philip.

Philip Pape: 45:00

Yeah, again, the parallel with lifting is I was thinking the exact same thing when you talked about running. I used to try to train for half marathon. I never got there. That was many years ago. I hated it, I hated the running. But yeah, you felt like, well, I just did this thing and now I'm exhausted and the rest of the day is done and maybe I'm going to eat more too. But lifting and sprinting give you a different feeling, especially with the cortisol. It helps you manage that and feel like you want to be productive, and there's also the mental resilience you get of overcoming these hard things.

Philip Pape: 45:30

The costs of getting lean are very important. You just mentioned that. We've talked about that as well, and we've talked to bodybuilders about it who are like, look, it's a serious thing, it's an extreme. Like any other sport, you have to be willing to do the trade-offs, like the immune system. People don't think about that. But if you've already got metabolic adaptation happening during fat loss, now you're just going to exacerbate it with all the other stuff happening. So all great stuff. So you mentioned heart health and I think you've talked about something called the Fat Max heart rate. Do I have that right in my notes and people are thinking again running heart health zone two it's all the rage now getting doing zone training. What are your thoughts on that?

Brad Kearns: 46:06

Yeah, that's funny because I was just looking down at my notes is the one thing that's really important to cover, and you mentioned it briefly at the outset. It's sort of like when can you get permission to run and when can it be beneficial? So it's the metabolic and stress impact of one's workout that determines whether it is supportive to long-term fitness improvement as well as longevity, or whether it can set you back. And so there's this important concept called fat max heart rate, and it represents the intensity level at which you are burning the maximum number of fat calories per minute, and that goes with the heart rate. So fat max heart rate is widely regarded as 180 minus.

Brad Kearns: 46:47

Your age is a great way to pretty accurately estimate your fat max. So I'm about to be 60 years old, so I go 180 minus 60. My fat max heart rate, my training heart rate at fat max, is 120. If I were to speed up and raise my heart rate and go faster, of course I'm gonna be burning more calories the faster I go. You burn more calories sprinting than you do when jogging or walking right. But at fat max, what happens if you envision a upside down U-shaped curve is you start burning fewer fat calories per minute in favor of a quick spike in glucose burning as well as a quick spike in ventilation and stress, hormone production and everything. So this cutoff point is so important to recognize because if you go past fat max, the workout now becomes moderately stressful rather than energizing and restorative. So the amount of low intensity movement that one can do there is virtually no ceiling to the benefits you accrue. So if I say, philip, hey, let's take this summer, take a break from podcasting and let's hike the 2,000-mile Appalachian Trail in 90 days, that would by and large be a tremendously healthy way to spend the summer. We're hiking at a comfortable pace, we're outdoors, we're getting sunlight, we're getting de-stressed from mobile technology and taking breaks and having all kinds of great benefits. So there's no upper limit to the benefits of moving more.

Brad Kearns: 48:14

There's research from Cooper Institute about this group called Super Exercisers and they studied these people that reportedly exercise 30 to 35 hours per week for decades. I'm envisioning like someone retired who walks five miles every morning and then walks the dog for another 30 minutes at night. Whoever these people are that can put in that much exercise, but they're super healthy and they have great longevity. Obviously it's not extreme exercise at that level. But the active lifestyle is number one. Then what happens when you exceed fat max heart rate routinely? Then you are getting into these glucose burning workouts that are turning you into a sugar burner and a sugar chomper. You are suppressing immune function in favor of this chronic stress hormone production and all the benefits kind of go out the window when you routinely exceed what is regarded as that cutoff between a stressful workout and a restorative workout.

Brad Kearns: 49:12

You mentioned all the fascination with zone two and it's wonderful to see this popularity now because the upper limit of zone two correlates with that fat max heart rate. But one contention I have with the fitness movement right now is no one's giving enough love to zone one and the amazing cardiovascular benefits you accrue when you're doing very comfortably paced zone one exercise, like getting out of the car, walking across the parking lot, sending text messages between your sets you're still in zone one and you're still getting all kinds of training effect to the fat burning enzymes and energy systems in the body. Here's an important anecdote or a comparison Elouid Kipchoge, the greatest marathon runner of all time, the guy who ran 159 in the marathon and two Olympic gold medals. He performs 83% of his weekly mileage in zone one, not zone two. Of his weekly mileage in zone one, not zone two, zone one, he does around 9% in zone two and 7% at the higher zones where he's really hitting it hard and doing these amazing track workouts. But what he's mostly doing for you and I, the direct comparison would be a medium to brisk walk.

Brad Kearns: 50:25

Now, for him, zone one is eight minute pace per mile at high altitude for an easy 15 mile run. Uh, because he's so physically conditioned. Yeah, and he's running a marathon, by the way, at a pace of four, 34 per mile. So an eight minute mile, even though it's pretty impressive to you and I, is way, way slower 63% slower than his marathon pace. Wait a second. Take the average marathoner and slow down 63%. Guess what you're doing? You're walking and you're training, just like the greatest runner of all time trains. There's the argument to emphasize walking and not worrying about having to shuffle down with this breaking stride because you're not adapted to run correctly anyway.

Philip Pape: 51:08

Yeah, I love it. Two things come to mind there, brad. One is recent research that confirmed again that the volume of movement, no matter the intensity, is pretty much equally effective for heart health. Right, which is what you're kind of saying. Like, you can walk, walk, walk, walk a ton and it's cool, like, and it's great for you. It also makes me think about the mode of movement and training. We've been talking about combining walking with lifting and sprinting. When you lift for 90 minutes like that's typical for me, a 90 minute session and I look at my Apple watch there are moments that I peak into zone two on a heavy deadlift or on, you know if the rest period short or whatever, so you're going to hit zone two and then sprinting, you're going to hit it, of course, maybe even zone three or four, because that's very short, yeah, whatever Zone five.

Philip Pape: 51:52

Zone five, and the percentages you mentioned actually align perfectly with that idea. Not that you have to measure it I don't even care about it, to be honest, and personally I don't know if you do but I just Not at all.

Brad Kearns: 52:03

No, I mean, the reason you need to care about heart rate is if you're at risk of getting into these chronic patterns. So when I was a pro triathlete, I obsessively measured my heart rate at every single workout, making sure that that beeper alarm did not go off, because that is the destruction of a desired effect of the training session and I could not get away with that stuff. And, interestingly, because I was so fit back when I was a young person and racing fast, I would do a lot of my workouts in zone one, just like Kipchoge, because zone two was six minute pace per mile and you can't pound the body with that kind of impact, even though it feels comfortable. And I'm still chit chatting with my training partner the training becomes too stressful and so the fitter you get, the more time you're spending building that aerobic base correctly. But again, we have to realize that the stress is relative, such that our protocol for preparing for our modest endurance goals would be a lot of walking and then an occasional effort where you push your body hard and you have a great effort doing the weekend 10k race or whatever it is, whatever your goals are.

Brad Kearns: 53:09

So I don't want to blanketly trash running.

Brad Kearns: 53:12

It's been a part of my life forever and I've got a lot of great benefits out of it. I have buddies from high school that are still running and enjoying it because they've been fit their whole life and the run is like a brisk walk for most people, but we have to honor that. Fat max heart rate is like a brisk walk for most people, but we have to honor that fat max heart rate. See what that represents for us in our own workout protocol and accordingly proceed at that pace rather than bullheadedly and doggedly assume a running pace because you think that you have to. And also what this means is the duration of the workout has to be at, or below fat max heart rate. So what this means is the duration of the workout has to be at, or below fat max heart rate. Right? So as we get tired as the workout proceeds, we have to slow down, and so you might be able to run one or two miles jogging before that heart watch beeps and then it's going to start beeping the rest of the workout.

Philip Pape: 54:00

Fair point, because the fixed point is that heart rate, which then shifts as you get fatigued.

Brad Kearns: 54:05

Yeah, and what a lot of people do is they say, hey, let's go and keep a nine minute per mile pace for our six mile run. Well, that doesn't make any sense to the body and the brain. The brain knows intensity and the heart knows intensity. So your nine minute pace should be nine nine, nine, 20, nine, 45, 10, 10, 15, whatever, because we're honoring heart rate, not blindly adhering to some pace. The only time that you should do that is in a race where you're trying to run your best time. Of course you want to run the same split per mile. That's how records are set and personal records are set, but training is entirely different than race model for most people two more things I want to cover before I do.

Philip Pape: 54:46

I wanted to say a nerdy thing. When you mentioned the fat max heart rate and you said you know, it's in the shape of and I thought you were going to say parabola, because I'm a math guy and you said upside down you, which is what most people would get.

Brad Kearns: 54:56

You're a good communicator, but like, I think, parabola, that's the word I was looking for. Oh, okay, okay.

Philip Pape: 55:02

But it's okay. You probably don't want to use it in most contexts, as people are like what are you talking about? Um, I was thinking of price optimization from economics, where you have like price economics major.

Brad Kearns: 55:13

So now I'm with you, man. I remember that, the price optimization curve. Yeah, I had a instructor with a british accent. Let's, let's, investigate our price optimization curve. Oh, you can't charge too much and make more money. I see, I see.

Philip Pape: 55:28

Unless you want to preserve your monopoly. It's Microsoft new back when they sold Windows 98. They sold it way cheaper than the price. Max profit maximization to keep the market, you know.

Brad Kearns: 55:37

Wow.

Philip Pape: 55:37

Anyway. So two final things. That one is let's talk about people who do love running or maybe are good at it or want to get good at it and still want to do it, and they're like I hear you, brad, but I still want to run. How do I do it? And then we can conclude with how do people incorporate walking? I think those are two good places to kind of end the.

Brad Kearns: 55:55

Nice. So you want permission to run? That's great. Let's first look at the propensity for an addictive approach. And we have a whole chapter in the book called the Ordeal of the Obligate Runner. And the very definition of addiction is requiring a hit or a dose in order to feel normal. So we think about the addicts on the street. They're drug addicts and they need it. They steal money and they want to go get high. Well, it's not really that they want to get high, that might have been at the start. They need to steal money and go get their drug to feel normal, to get to baseline.

Brad Kearns: 56:30

So if you're listening and you're wondering, am I an addict to exercise? If you feel cranky, irritable and out of sorts, if you miss your workout on a particular day, this is a sign of addiction or an unhealthy obsession with exercise. And that's very easy to drift in that direction, especially as your goals become more refined and sophisticated, as in you get more and more immersed into endurance culture or gym culture or CrossFit culture. So we have to be very careful and realize like and I had to learn this as a high performing athlete to like hey, look in the mirror and what are my goals? My goals are to excel in the races. And what are my goals? My goals are to excel in the races and I'm making a living at this, so it's very important. It's not just a hobby. So I need to take absolute best care of my body. So I had built in guardrails against overtraining, because if I disperse that energy in the workout, it was costing me a chance at winning prize money in the race. So you very quickly become a really, really smart trainer when you get your ass kicked in the race because you came in a little bit tired. So those are nice protocols to have and I'm just honoring that and sharing that with other people that like look, if you're here to do a favor for your health, to promote longevity, to prevent disease and to get the body composition of your dreams, these are all warranting a sensible approach rather than an overly stressful approach. So that permission to run let's really ask what you're all about. And if you want to really enjoy yourself and take care of yourself, you can slow down and it's okay and you're still getting a good workout. But that permission comes from how well you perform at fat max heart rate. Now here's another little side note. If you're not, if you're frustrated that you have to go so slow, you're allowed to do jog walks for the duration of your workout. So you can go and jog for 30 seconds and then walk it off just as your heart rate's about to climb and start beeping and ruining the intended metabolic effects of the workout. You walk for a minute or two or three or four minutes and then do another jog and then walk and then do another jog, so you get some running in. You get that sensation of running. That's great.

Brad Kearns: 58:41

The other side of the coin that you asked was how do we get a more walking-oriented lifestyle?

Brad Kearns: 58:47

I think we have to make a fundamental shift in our mindset and our philosophy to put walking in a different category.

Brad Kearns: 58:56

It's not like a fitness option, it's really like sleep.

Brad Kearns: 59:00

It's a human genetic expectation for health and when we don't move sufficiently during everyday life, we incur all manner of immediate consequences. One of them is a decline in cognitive function the brain research. There's one study from Stanford that I mentioned in the book you experience cognitive decline after 20 minutes of focusing on an intense, peak performance cognitive task. So if you do not take a break every 20 minutes from intense work, a break will be taken for you, and I find, with my tabs open on my browser, I have these high jump videos that I love watching, and I find myself watching them instead of focusing on a book manuscript or a podcast outline because I've been working for too long. Afternoon nap, which I'm a huge fan of, because I know when I come back I'm going to be kicking butt at a different level than if I were just powering through all these natural declines in cognitive function. So that's a big vote there for just sprinkling in short and longer walks throughout the day as a fundamental necessity to be at your best anyway.

Philip Pape: 1:00:06

You're a master at reframing this stuff. I really love this. I'm glad you came on to talk about this because just the way I mean think of walking as sleep Beautiful right Because people are thinking they have to almost force themselves, or it's their training or whatever, and I haven't tried to talk about it in language like walking should just naturally flow from the things you enjoy doing and let's find a way to incorporate into your life anyway.

Brad Kearns: 1:00:30

Yeah.

Philip Pape: 1:00:30

And not think of it as trying to get steps right, Like people just think of it as trying to get steps, even though it's a good way to measure a proxy.

Brad Kearns: 1:00:36

If that works for you, that's great. You know if some accountability is fine. My other favorite example is like having a dog. I'm a big dog lover. My dog of 15 years is gone now. She had a great run but like I didn't think for a second that I wasn't motivated enough or I was too busy to get that dog out twice a day like she deserved.

Brad Kearns: 1:00:57

It's like if you're going to adopt an animal, you have a commitment, a lifelong commitment, to give the animal the life it deserves. So I don't care if it's snowing or too hot or you're too busy. You get the dog out for their daily exercise and to serve something higher than yourself and your own fickle forces of like motivation and willpower. Like you mentioned at the start of the show, that's a no brainer. So I think the dog is in your corner. And how can you turn down? I mean, look the dog in the eye and say sorry, I'm too busy, I got a work deadline. I can't take you out for five minutes, boy, that'd be tough. I can never turn my dog's face down. And then the dog has that amazing circadian programming where, at 5.07, they know it's time to eat and they're like where's my bowl? It's after five, you're late. Oh, I love it, man.

Philip Pape: 1:01:40

Yeah, yeah. We have two little dogs, and one is really good at hopping up on you. She's so little she hops like a foot up under your calf Like it's time to go out, Even if you took her out an hour before. If it's the time, it's time, like it doesn't matter.

Philip Pape: 1:01:54

Oh man, this has been fantastic. So many amazing things here about not only why to do this, but just you know the sprinting and the lifting and the walking and what it means to be a human doing hard things but also doing things that are fulfilling for our lives. Being kind of an athlete of aging is the term I've heard some people use. Is there anything we didn't cover that you think is worthwhile, that you wanted to bring up.

Brad Kearns: 1:02:17

Well, I'm glad we got into sprinting because that's been my obsession of recent years and I think it just feels so good to kind of see yourself as an actual performing athlete, where I think in endurance scene we're just shufflers, heading down the sidewalk and accumulating miles and we're so far from you know, an actual athletic competition type of mentality and even if it's not a big part of your life, I promote, you know, with my whole message and you land on my website and it says pursue peak performance with passion throughout life.

Brad Kearns: 1:02:50

I think we need something to give us an edge and give us a little bit of nervousness and, you know, trepidation that we're putting ourselves out there and we're still competing at something and pursuing goals throughout life. Because what instead we see in culture are dudes watching the NFL for seven hours every weekend and perhaps offering up some stories about how, back in the day, you know, I was supposed to play quarterback for SC but I banged up my shoulder at the summer practice and that was the end of my career. Yeah, yeah, yeah, whatever, everyone's got a story and they have their heyday back in their youth and then the rest of the time we just sit around and watch others. I think there's a better way to go through life and to pick something that's scary and challenging, that you have to train for and prepare for, and that will get you out the door. When things are, you know, have a tendency to get comfortable and convenient.

Philip Pape: 1:03:41

So be an athlete, not a shuffler find an edge compete. Pursue your goal always be improving, always be improving. Pick something scary, pick something challenging. Totally on board with that philosophy, my friend.

Brad Kearns: 1:03:57

And where do you want folks to look you up? Well, we talked about Born to Walk and we have a great website called borntowalkbookcom where we have these bonus items. When you place an order at whatever retailer you like, you come back and you can get these great PDF download resources and shopping discounts and all kinds of things. I host the Be Rad podcast. I would love to have you on someday. We can talk more about strength training and that precise approach that you communicate, so maybe that'll be a good place for people to start and bradkearnscom all kinds of fun stuff going on and I'm so glad to connect with you here and great interview. Keep up doing the great work that you're doing.

Philip Pape: 1:04:32

Likewise, Brad BornToWalkBookcom. Get the free bonuses. Definitely get the book, the Be Rad podcast. I'd love to be on it. So thank you for the offer and this is a pleasure. I could talk to you for hours and, honestly, there are other topics like sprinting we could get into in the future, I'm sure.

Brad Kearns: 1:04:46

So thanks again for coming on Brad. Thanks a lot, Philip.

What Is Your Muscle Gain Efficiency (MGE) Score? (The Bottleneck Effect) | Ep 285

Get 14 days and your first challenge FREE in Wits & Weights Physique University (WWPU) plus the Muscle Gain Efficiency (MGE) calculator, a custom nutrition plan, monthly challenges, workouts, and coaching through the community. Tap on this special link for an exclusive 40% off rate for podcast listeners

🎓Learn about WWPU here, then use this super secret link for two weeks free and an exclusive 40% off rate

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Want to know if you're actually building muscle or just gaining fat during your bulk? 

Learn about the Muscle Gain Efficiency (MGE) score and how to use engineering's Bottleneck Effect to optimize your muscle-building system.

Discover how factors like training experience, frame size, and strength ratios influence your muscle-building potential, then learn to identify and fix what's limiting your gains.

Main Takeaways:

• You have a unique muscle-building potential

• Your Muscle Gain Efficiency (MGE) indicates how well you're gaining muscle vs. fat (how "efficient" you are)

• The 5 key bottlenecks that limit your muscle-building success

• Having a solid system + consistency = sustainable results

Timestamps: 

0:01 - Why we need a better way to measure muscle gains
3:05 - Introducing Muscle Gain Index (MGI) and Muscle Gain Efficiency (MGE)
7:31 - Interpreting your MGE score
9:46 - The 5 bottlenecks holding back your gains
19:13 - Using data to validate progress
21:30 - Tips to implement for your next muscle building phase

Get 14 days and your first challenge FREE in Wits & Weights Physique University (WWPU) plus the MGE calculator and a 40% off discount exclusive to podcast listeners

How Efficient Are Your Muscle Gains?

Most lifters track their weight during a bulk, but that number doesn’t tell the full story. Sure, the scale is moving, but how much of that weight is actual muscle, and how much is just fat?

That’s where Muscle Gain Efficiency (MGE) Score comes in—a system I developed using an engineering concept called the bottleneck effect to measure how efficiently you’re converting your calories into muscle. In this article, we’ll break down how to calculate your true muscle-building efficiency, what factors influence your potential, and how to fix the biggest roadblocks holding back your gains.

Your Body is a “Muscle-Building Factory”

Think of your body as a muscle-building factory. Every factory has:

• A theoretical maximum output (how much muscle it can build under ideal conditions)

• An efficiency rating (how well it actually converts inputs—like food and training—into muscle)

Your Muscle Gain Index (MGI) represents your potential for muscle growth, while your Muscle Gain Efficiency (MGE) tells you how well you’re achieving that potential.

MGE is a score from 0 to 1 that represents the ratio of muscle to total weight gained.

• 0.1–0.3: Poor efficiency (mostly fat gain, minimal muscle)

• 0.4–0.6: Moderate efficiency (balanced muscle and fat gain)

• 0.7+: High efficiency (maximizing muscle gain while minimizing fat)

• >1.0: Recomp territory—building muscle while losing fat

The higher your score, the more efficiently you’re packing on lean mass.

What’s Bottlenecking Your Gains?

If your MGE score is lower than expected, something is slowing down your muscle-building process. Here are the five bottlenecks that could be limiting your gains:

1. Training Bottleneck (Weakness or Poor Program)

• Not following a structured progressive overload program

• Avoiding compound lifts like squats, deadlifts, and presses

• Lifting too light or not training close enough to failure

Fix: Use strength-based programming, track your strength-to-bodyweight ratio, and progressively overload every lift.

2. Nutrition Bottleneck (Inconsistent Eating or Poor Macros)

• Inconsistent calorie intake (some days too high, some too low)

• Not eating enough protein (aim for 0.7–1g per pound of body weight)

• Gaining too fast or too slow, affecting muscle-to-fat ratio

Fix: Plan meals ahead, stay consistent with protein, and aim for controlled weight gain (0.5–1 lb/week).

3. Recovery Bottleneck (Sleep & Stress Issues)

• Poor sleep quality or low energy levels

• Constant fatigue or the need for frequent deloads

• Chronic high stress raising cortisol and slowing muscle growth

Fix: Improve sleep quality, manage stress, and prioritize rest days. If you constantly need deloads, adjust training volume.

4. Body Composition Bottleneck (Starting Too High or Low in Body Fat)

• Too lean: Your body resists gaining muscle to preserve energy

• Too high in body fat: Poor nutrient partitioning, leading to more fat gain

• Hormonal imbalances affecting metabolism and muscle protein synthesis

Fix: Optimize body fat levels before bulking, use phased nutrition strategies, and strength train year-round to maintain a high metabolic rate.

5. System Integration Bottleneck (Lack of Strategy or Tracking)

• No long-term plan for muscle growth

• Not tracking key metrics like weight trends, strength progress, or macros

• Following a randomized approach instead of a structured one

Fix: Use a tracking system, periodize your nutrition and training, and follow a step-by-step approach to muscle gain.

How to Use MGE to Optimize Your Bulk

To maximize your muscle-building efficiency:

1. Track your weight and body fat over the course of your bulk

2. Calculate your MGE score (inside my Physique University calculator)

3. Identify your biggest bottleneck (training, nutrition, recovery, body composition, or strategy)

4. Fix one thing at a time and reassess every 4–6 weeks

The Big Takeaway

Muscle gain isn’t just about eating more—it’s about gaining efficiently. Your MGE score helps you measure progress beyond the scale, ensuring you’re actually building muscle instead of just getting fluffy.

If you’ve ever felt like your gains aren’t what they should be, this is your tool to fix it.

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Transcript

Philip Pape: 0:01

Let's say you've been building muscle, tracking your weight, watching it go up steadily during your bulk and the number on the scale is going up, but it doesn't tell you how much of that gain is actually muscle. What if there was a way to know exactly how efficient your muscle building efforts are? Using an engineering concept called the bottleneck effect, I've created a system that measures your true muscle building potential and efficiency, and today I am introducing how the MGE score muscle gain efficiency can tell you if you're mostly building muscle or just gaining fat. You'll learn the factors that determine your baseline muscle mass potential, how to calculate your efficiency score and, most importantly, how to identify and fix whatever's holding back your gains. Welcome to Wits and Weights, the show that helps you build a strong, healthy physique using evidence, engineering and efficiency.

Philip Pape: 1:04

I'm your host, philip Pape, and today I'm introducing a revolutionary way to measure your muscle building success. I want you to think of your body as a muscle building factory. Engineers know that every factory has a theoretical maximum output and actual production efficiency. Your body's no different. There's your potential for muscle growth, which I call the muscle gain index, and then there's how efficiently you're reaching that potential your muscle gain efficiency, both of which are new scores that I've created. They are part of a spreadsheet, a tool where you can plug in some numbers between the beginning and end of your bulk and see how efficient you were at gaining muscle. Now, before we dive into the score and how to use it, if you want to actually access that complete calculator, along with some other evidence-based tracking tools like a body composition tracker and a biofeedback tracker, they're only available in Wits and Weights Physique University. I saved my most juicy choice calculators for that group and all you have to do is join, and I don't know what you're waiting for. It is super affordable and it is extremely valuable. Go to whatsoeightscom slash physique or click the link in my show notes to learn more about the Physique University, where you can take your tracking and results to the next level. This is only for people who are lifters, who are frustrated that they haven't quite gotten the fat loss or muscle gain output that they want, and we help you dial it in. We onboard you, we take you through a step-by-step method and process based on evidence and we tell you exactly how to measure and calculate those things so that you have utmost confidence and no more ambiguity or questions about what your metabolism is doing, how to train, how to eat, and then you can get that result with tons of support and accountability. So if you want to join Wits and Weights Physique University and get access to the exact calculator I'm talking about today, check out the link in the show notes or go to witsandweightcom slash physique.

Philip Pape: 3:05

Now, stick around anyway, because I am going to explain generally how this works and you'll understand what matters. So, whether you have the calculator or not, so that you know how to go into your next muscle building phase and do it efficiently. So I'm going to start by understanding our theoretical maximum output. Right, if we think of the factory analogy here, because this is an engineering episode, what we want to do is avoid bottlenecks. We want to understand the maximum, but then we also want to avoid bottlenecks.

Philip Pape: 3:36

So the theoretical maximum output for you is your muscle gain index, mgi. Muscle gain index, mgi. This actually tells us how much of your lean body mass is likely skeletal muscle mass, based on key factors that influence muscle building potential. Okay, listen to that again. When you gain weight to build muscle, you're going to gain some body fat and you're going to gain some lean mass. What I do with the muscle gain index is tease out how much of that lean mass is likely skeletal muscle mass, so actual muscle mass, because not all of it is muscle. Some of it is bone, fluid, organ, other tissue, and we need to understand how much is muscle.

Philip Pape: 4:16

And the factors that affect your muscle are like, let's say, the specifications of your factory's machines, right? So there's a list of these. First there's whether you're male or female, because that's going to affect your baseline muscle mass potential, not, I repeat, not the rate at which you gain muscle. Ladies, men, it's exactly the same, no matter your sex, no matter your age. What's different is the baseline potential, because men start with a higher baseline, given that they have more muscle mass, but it's only about 2%. Believe it or not, it's only about 2%, so it's actually quite negligible.

Philip Pape: 4:50

Age is the next factor that's going to impact your muscle building capacity, because the older we get and by older I mean over 50, over 60, your muscle building capacity declines just a tad, just a tiny, tiny bit. But guess what? It's always there. You always can build muscle to the day you die, all the way through into your 90s, we've seen, but it does have a small impact less you're stronger and then you might. So there's kind of this counteracting forces going on which leads me to your strength to body weight ratio, and we can measure that through your squat or we can measure it through your deadlift, for example, and that's your current performance. That is also going to affect your muscle gain efficiency. Then we have your frame size, and that can be measured by your wrist. That can tell us do you have a small, medium or large frame? And that also determines how much of that percentage of lean mass is skeletal mass as opposed to maybe just bone right or representing something that is not muscle mass. And then, finally, your current body fat percentage, which influences hormones. It also influences your muscle building efficiency, your muscle building efficiency.

Philip Pape: 6:04

So the muscle gain index that I came up with is a formula that accounts for all of these things. So in the calculator I created, you basically plug those in and it gives you an estimated skeletal muscle mass out of your lean mass and it pushes it up or down depending on all of these factors. So a young male with years of training experience and strong lifts might have very high potential, while someone starting out would have room to grow but the benefit of newbie gains. So it's kind of balanced between all of these. So that's kind of the potential of your body, of your factory, and now we have to measure how efficiently that it's running. And this is your MGE, your muscle gain efficiency. That number tells us how much of your weight change is actually muscle and how efficient it is. So it's roughly a number between zero and one, the way that I came up with it, and this accounts for the changes in your muscle mass, the changes in your total body weight, and whether you're bulking, cutting or recomping as well, because I don't want to ding you if you are cutting and of course you've retained or gained a little muscle mass, even though it's small. The fact that you're cutting means you might have been pretty efficient at cutting, gaining muscle, because you did better than the average, if that makes sense. So I'll give you some real world example, right, or examples for this score, this muscle gain efficiency A score near the bottom, near about 0.1, remember this goes around zero to one.

Philip Pape: 7:31

There are possibilities of going negative and possibilities of going one, but those are very extreme cases. So a score near 0.1 just means a very poor bulk. It means you gained almost all fat. A score in the middle, around 0.5, is hey, this is a pretty good bulk, it's pretty decent bulk. You've balanced your muscle and fat gain. A score above 0.6 shows high efficiency, right, you're actually gaining a lot more muscle than fat. And then, if you're like re-comping, you could see scores over one, which is like the holy grail of gaining muscle while losing fat.

Philip Pape: 8:04

But the asterisk on that, folks, when you think about that, is the quantity of muscle might not be that much. In other words, it's, it's very efficient, but because you're not actually gaining weight, you have to multiply that efficiency by how much weight you're gaining, which is small. It's going to stretch out the duration by months or years to actually gain the same amount of muscle as somebody who's at like a 0.6, but gaining weight faster, if that makes sense, right. So I know it sounds a little bit confusing. If you have the spreadsheet, it makes total sense. It actually calculates it for you and then it says oh, here's your number and here's how efficient it is, and here's what you might do differently next time. Um, but, and the other thing I want to clarify is a 0.5 doesn't mean it's like 50% lean mass, 50% fat. However, it does almost mean you've gained 50% muscle to fat. You get what I'm saying. So it's a little bit of a different way to look at the data that you can't just easily calculate from knowing your body fat.

Philip Pape: 9:03

All right, so when the score is lower than expected, something is bottlenecking your gains, and that is really the point of this episode is not to say, hey, you know, here's a calculator, here's a formula. I'm not even going through the math and, honestly, even if you don't have the spreadsheet, you can still do the right things to have the best success. I just know some people love to have that feedback and that data to really dive in and level up to the next level, and that's what we help people do in our coaching program and in the Physique University. So if that's you listening, you're like, yeah, I need to get to that level. Definitely reach out and join, definitely reach out and join. But if your score is lower, uh, there are five potential bottlenecks.

Philip Pape: 9:46

All right, the first bottleneck is the training bottleneck, and that is where you basically you're weak. You just don't have a high squat to body weight ratio. Something has stalled out, right, you haven't either that or you're a newbie. And again, I want to kind of separate training age, because if you are fairly new to this, you're going to gain muscle fairly quickly, but you still have to be on the right program. You still have to have the right progression, the right amount of volume, incorporating the big systemic, compound movements, proper intensity. All of that is basically going to fix this issue. So if weakness, if a lack of strength, is a thing preventing you from gaining muscle, you are always going to be stalled and you are always going to gain more fat than muscle in the future when you try to gain weight and this could have been your problem most of your life. If you're not training properly, if you just hit the gym randomly, if you just use the machines without regard for progress over time, that's what's going to happen.

Philip Pape: 10:38

Somebody in our Facebook group just posted hey, I want to go into a fat loss phase. I'm not sure how to train and, by the way, for the last two months, even though I'm not in fat loss, I haven't made any progress on my lifts and I said whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Okay, you're not even ready for fat loss. My man, like we. We got to fix that before you do fat loss, before you do a gaining phase, whatever. So that's the training bottleneck that's. That's a big one for a lot of people. And again, in you know, in our coaching, we take you through the steps to find out where's the issue for you. Is it your form? Is it your progression? Are you not understanding how to, like, use micro plates or something to go up at the right level? Um, are you even using the right program, et cetera, right?

Philip Pape: 11:20

The second bottleneck is nutrition. So this is where you have either your weight gain is too rapid or you don't have enough protein, or you're very inconsistent with your eating. You know, inconsistency is the big one here and the fix, of course, is consistency with your protein at that 0.7 to 1 gram per pound, a controlled rate of gain when you're bulking or when you're cutting, of course. But one of the problems people have is they bulk in a very seesaw roller coaster way where they'll eat a lot more food on certain days than other and on the weekly average they're kind of bulking and on certain days they're way overconsking and on certain days they're way over consuming and certain days they're actually under consuming. It just creates chaos to their body. Where you're not efficiently gaining, you're not using meal planning. That's. The fix is to use meal planning, meal prep, always plan ahead and know what you're gonna eat you know, not down to like every single ingredient, but it could just be the general foods or types of foods and making sure to plan ahead.

Philip Pape: 12:20

The third bottleneck is recovery. So poor sleep quality, constant fatigue, no rest days. You know, when I hear someone say I have to have deloads constantly, that's a big red flag. You shouldn't need deloads very much at all, depending on the program, or ever if it's built into the program. And this could definitely be a different issue related to sleep or stress, or the wrong kind of lift for you, or pushing too hard and trying to overreach or you're not taking enough rest, and so obviously the fix here is that consistent sleep, bedtime, wake time, consistent amount of sleep that you need. Maybe it's seven, maybe it's eight hours, you know, maybe it's six and a half. Having deloads, yes, if you need them. I talked about this in episode I think it was 282, about the only strength standard you need. We talked about progressive overload and I briefly discussed deloads in there about how, ideally, if you structure your program the right way, you hardly ever need them, and then, of course, managing your stress, whether that's managing your perceived stress, having stress coping mechanisms, tracking the data associated with stress, like HRV, and focusing on sleep to improve your stress, and so on. Right, so that's the recovery bottleneck that's going to hold you back from building meaningful muscle. Yes, even when you're gaining and eating a lot of food, improper recovery could happen, because now you're able to train much harder, but you're also able to push past the limit much more easily. Much harder, but you're also able to push past the limit much more easily.

Philip Pape: 13:39

Bottleneck number four out of our five bottlenecks is the body composition bottleneck, where, if your body fat is too high or too low, or you have poor nutrient partitioning, or you have hormonal issues, things like that, there could be a lot of different causes depending on the person, and so that's why I lumped it kind of into its own category. It could it could have to be with the fact that you are not optimizing the body fat range to be in for you. Like some people say well, I have to get down to X percent body fat and I want to live there. Well, for you that might be way too shredded and unhealthy. For another person, it might be perfectly normal. So we have to have realistic expectations.

Philip Pape: 14:18

Also, phasing, periodizing your approach I mean that is the bread and butter of what we do in our coaching is we develop periods and phases for you. I mean, when I give you your nutrition plan when you join Physique University, one of the main features in there is explaining what to do over each various range of weeks, like weeks one through four. You're going to do this, weeks five through 12, you're going to do this and we phase the approach to kind of ease you in properly. So you're doing the right things and developing the right habits and it also works really well with your body, your hormones, your body composition. And the last thing as part of this bottleneck is addressing hormone health. And I do love to address hormone health with lifestyle, which means strength training, lots of walking, managing stress and eating plenty of food, first to see what gets normalized, before you then say, well, okay, I still have certain hormones that are far out of whack. I need HRT or some sort of treatment. So that's the body composition bottleneck.

Philip Pape: 15:11

And, by the way, ladies who are in peri and post-menopause, body composition is going to get worse if you're not lifting weights and it's the main reason your metabolism drops during that time of life, because your muscle mass drops, your fat goes up, even if you maintain the same scale weight, and then it does a number with your hormones and everything just cascades. You know, thyroid, cortisol, insulin it all cascades and a lot of times all you've got to do is take off some of that stress and start lifting weights. Really, that's sometimes what the main fix is. The last bottleneck is the system integration bottleneck. This is about your overall system.

Philip Pape: 15:48

We talk about system engineering and physique engineering and that is your goals, your approach, your consistency. You know if your goal is mismatched to what you're doing, or you're trying to go too quickly for the quick fix, or the approach you're trying to take doesn't quite jive with the evidence or your body, or you're not consistent, those are all gonna be bottlenecks to gaining muscle. And the fix is gonna be having all of these aligned with you, with your lifestyle, with your body, with your needs, with your preferences, focusing on one phase at a time, one goal at a time and, of course, tracking and measuring everything that matters. Tracking and measuring everything that matters and I could have put this at the top of the list everyone because 90% of the time, when someone reaches out, they're new to the community, they're new to the podcast and they say I'm struggling with X, maybe X is binging on the weekends, maybe it's, you know, with their lifting. I say, are you tracking? And they're like, oh no, I'm not tracking. What should I track? Right, if they're open to it. I hope you're open to it and then I'll give some free resources on how to do that.

Philip Pape: 16:51

One of the best resources is my Nutrition 101 guide. If you're looking for something free, go. If you're looking for something free, go to whatsoeightscom, slash free and you can find that it actually tells you how to set up your calories and macros, the correct way dynamically to work with your body, and then how to do it for the different phases. So all of these things, these system things I know it sounds complicated if you're new to this or if this is the first episode you've ever heard of my podcast, but it really does put you in a situation where it's sustainable rather than a quick fix, where it's part of your life, where you don't have to cut out all carbs or all plants or whatever extreme diet and you can just focus, actually have the confidence, actually make the progress. Everything is aligned and part of why you're able to be successful is because you know what the heck is going on and you know what's going in your mouth and you know what your squat was two weeks ago, right, and you're tracking and measuring the right things, all right.

Philip Pape: 17:43

So that's kind of the meat of this episode was what the bottlenecks might be that would prevent your muscle gain efficiency from being higher than it could be. And for most people that means if it's like, as in the 0.2, 0.3 range, we can get it up into the 0.5 to 0.7 range and you're golden, like getting it to 0.8, 0.9,. That's usually not realistic for most people, it's just it's kind of the extremes of the range. So, to use this score, if you have our calculator, if you're in Physique University and you actually have the calculator, the way it would work is you would enter your numbers from before and after, right, or you can do it in the middle of a bulk to see how efficient it is going, because a bulk is usually six, nine, 12 months anyway. So if you're three months in, you can calculate how efficient you are. So you're going to calculate your muscle gain index, that's, your skeletal muscle mass that you're possibly gaining. That's your potential. Then you're going to see how efficient your muscle gain efficiency is and then you can use that to reverse, engineer what your bottleneck is and fix one thing at a time and reassess every four to six weeks and you're golden. That's how we do. That's how we do it. It's continuous improvement and feedback.

Philip Pape: 18:49

So what's really fascinating? When it comes down to cause, I'm so nerdy and data centric. I love my Excel spreadsheets and, by the way, this is an Excel spreadsheet and even if you're not in quote unquote into that stuff, having these different angles of data can reveal patterns that are just not visible with the stuff everybody uses. Like they're not going to be visible. If you just take your scale weight right.

Philip Pape: 19:13

If I have a client who's frustrated because their gains are quote unquote slow but their MGE score shows that they're actually building very efficiently, let's say at a 0.6, well above average. And we look at all the data, how it correlates, and we're like, actually you're doing a fantastic job. It's just you don't quite have the patience. Yet this is the first time you've gone through it. Your expectations are skewed by social media. But understanding your true efficiency, then it. Then it changes their perspective and it changes their motivation. In fact, I just had a client. We just ended our six month um contract together, um, you know, and we're parting ways amicably, like I do with many clients who they learn what they need to learn. They're they're good to go and they they're, you know, happy to tell others about me and move on, and that's what I love to see.

Philip Pape: 20:00

You fire me as a coach and she, along the way, she always had a little bit of frustration where it seemed like things weren't quite moving. And at the end of it all, we crunched the numbers and we said, wow, you dropped 9% body fat and, by the way, she only weighed like 120 pounds when we started. So she was already pretty light and lean like 120 pounds when we started. So she was already pretty light and lean. She's shorter, she's a leaner frame and we had to take it very reasonably during the fat loss, so she wasn't down at 800 calories and at the end of the day over you know a three, four month fat loss phase, pretty typical she lost 9% of her body fat and, what's interesting, it wasn't just fat loss. She actually gained, I think, three and a half or four pounds of muscle as part of it. So her scale weight didn't drop as much as she expected when we started, but she was actually happier with the results because she was leaner than when we started, like quite a bit, and so all of this stuff is super fascinating.

Philip Pape: 20:54

It's why I love frameworks and the engineering side of it all. It strips away the emotion. It gives us concrete data to work with. Your body is so sophisticated it's the most sophisticated factory that you'll ever operate and it deserves this level of analysis, at least initially, so that you can know what the heck is going on if you're struggling right. It's not necessarily a long-term thing, although many of us get the bug and we always want to have our numbers and things like that. It's really about becoming more in tune with yourself, whether it's through numbers or through journaling or through whatever method of tracking makes sense for you, but it's doing something to get that feedback All right.

Philip Pape: 21:30

So, as we wrap up, remember you have a muscle building potential and there's a certain efficiency you can go at to reach that potential, and bottlenecks are what limit your efficiency.

Philip Pape: 21:40

So, understanding the five bottlenecks, you can then focus on one of them at a time and slowly crack the armor holding you back from building as much muscle as you want to build. If you want to calculate your own MGA score, if you love data, like me, if you're nerdy about this, if you really want to level it up, take it to the next level. This, if you really want to level it up, take it to the next level. If you want to access our complete suite of tracking tools and, more importantly, the accountability support strategy to actually get the result you want for fat loss and building muscle, join Wits and Weights Physique University today. Head to witsandweightscom, slash physique or click the link in the show notes to learn more about WWPU and start optimizing your gains. Until next time, keep using your wits lifting those weights and remember, in the factory of your physique, removing those bottlenecks will help your gains soar. I'll talk to you next time here on the Wits and Weights Podcast.

My Hardest Bulk Ever (The Hidden "Energy Drain" When Your Metabolism Fights Back) | Ep 284

Get your free Muscle-Building Nutrition Blueprint at witsandweights.com/muscle to optimize your nutrition for maximum muscle growth while minimizing fat gain.

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Learn how your metabolism can fight back during an aggressive muscle-building phase by dramatically increasing energy expenditure, even when you're doing everything right. 

Discover the hidden factors driving this metabolic adaptation and how to overcome them.

Main Takeaways:

• Your maintenance calories can increase significantly during a bulk due to metabolic adaptation (400+ calories)

• High-quality muscle gains are still possible even when facing metabolic resistance

• The 3 key factors that drive increased energy expenditure during a building phase

• How to successfully break through a hardgaining plateau

Episode Resources:

• Try MacroFactor for free with code WITSANDWEIGHTS

• Download my Muscle-Building Nutrition Blueprint

Timestamps:

0:00 - The unexpected metabolic challenge
3:10 - Real data from my current bulk
8:33 - The hidden energy drain revealed
14:50 - 3 factors driving metabolic adaptation
16:48 - Strategic approach to overcoming plateaus
21:27 - Being realistic about timelines and goals
23:19 - Key lessons and broader applications

When Your Bulk Hits a Wall (How to Overcome Metabolic Adaptation)

Bulking should be simple, right?

Eat more, train hard, and watch the muscle pile on.

But what happens when your body seems to fight back, burning through your surplus like a furnace and refusing to let the scale budge? That’s exactly what I ran into during my latest bulk, and if you’ve ever stalled while trying to gain size, this one’s for you.

Why Metabolic Adaptation Isn't Just a Fat Loss Problem

We talk about metabolic adaptation all the time when it comes to fat loss. Your body gets efficient, burns fewer calories, and makes it harder to drop weight. But the same thing happens in reverse when you’re gaining—just with a different set of challenges.

Instead of holding onto energy, your body ramps up its calorie burn to keep weight gain in check. Here’s how it happens:

• Increased NEAT (Non-Exercise Activity Thermogenesis) – More movement, fidgeting, pacing, and subtle activity burns extra calories without you realizing it.

• Higher Training Demand – As you get stronger and lift heavier weights, your energy output climbs, especially if you’re running a high-volume program like I am.

• Metabolic Inefficiency – The more food you eat, the harder your body has to work to digest and process it, leading to an increase in calorie burn.

My Bulk Was Textbook… Until It Wasn’t

I started my bulk in late October, aiming for 1 pound of weight gain per week. Everything was on track—strength was up, muscle was growing, and my body fat stayed in check.

Then, around mid-January, the scale stopped moving. Despite eating in a consistent surplus, I hit a wall. And it wasn’t just daily fluctuations—my trend weight refused to climb, meaning my body had found a way to burn through the extra energy I was throwing at it.

My estimated maintenance calories jumped from 2,550 in early December to over 3,000 by February—a massive increase in energy expenditure. And despite pushing food intake higher, my metabolism adapted to keep me in check.

How to Overcome a Bulk Plateau

If you’re running into this same issue, here’s what you need to do:

1. Dominate Your Calories

• Eat early and often—front-load your meals to stay ahead of your burn rate.

• Focus on calorie-dense foods like whole milk, fattier cuts of meat, olive oil, and nut butters.

• Use liquid calories—shakes, smoothies, or even whole milk can make hitting your target easier.

• Add extra snacks with minimal fullness impact, like dried fruit, granola, and dark chocolate.

2. Track Your Trends and Adjust

• Don’t just look at daily weigh-ins—track your trend weight over weeks.

• Increase calories proactively, not reactively. When weight gain slows, add 100-300 calories immediately before you fall behind.

• If eating more becomes unbearable, dial back activity (lower step count, adjust training volume).

3. Reframe the Challenge

• A fast metabolism isn’t a bad thing—it’s a sign you’ve built muscle and increased metabolic capacity.

• Focus on performance. If strength is climbing and body composition looks solid, don’t stress over a short-term stall.

• Keep your bulk timeline flexible—if you don’t hit your exact weight goal by a set date, it’s not the end of the world.

My Final Thoughts

Bulking isn’t just about shoveling in more food. Your metabolism adapts to fight back, sometimes in ways that make progress frustrating. But if you recognize the signs early and adjust accordingly, you can push through and keep growing.

This isn’t a failure—it’s proof that your body is adapting, and that’s a good thing. Keep eating, keep training, and keep pushing forward.

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Transcript

Philip Pape: 0:02

Everyone talks about metabolic adaptation during fat loss, but no one warns you about what happens during an aggressive bulk. Here's what's happening right now Despite eating in a clear surplus and hitting PRs in the gym, my metabolism has cranked up to burn through everything I throw at it, my maintenance calories have shot up multiple hundreds of calories in just a few months, and today we're uncovering the hidden ways your body fights back during a muscle building phase and why, even when you're doing everything right getting stronger, building muscle, eating more than ever the scale can suddenly stop moving If you're trying to gain some muscle or push past a plateau in a bulk. You're going to learn exactly how to identify and overcome these metabolic roadblocks. Welcome to Wits and Weights, the show that helps you build a strong, healthy physique using evidence, engineering and efficiency. I'm your host, philip Hape, and today we're examining a fascinating phenomenon that is happening right now in my current bulk and I just had to press record and talk to you about it I am at least 14, let's see as I record this 15 or 16 weeks into what started as a textbook gaining phase, the strength gains have been very consistent, doing great in the gym, about to hit new PRs, the muscle gains are there, based on all of my measurements, but my body has thrown me a metabolic curve ball that I guess I didn't quite see coming. I've had situations in the past where I hit plateaus and hard gaining phases, but this one was quite persistent and I didn't wanna just record another podcast about eating more food. I think I wanted to explain the complex ways that your metabolism adapts during a bulk, because we talk about metabolic adaptation during fat loss all the time, but there's this reversed way that that happens during a bulk for different reasons and in different ways. That I think is important to understand, and these adaptations can sometimes derail your progress because they put you into what looks like a plateau and it could last for a long time if you don't know what to look for and what to do.

Philip Pape: 2:14

Now, before we dive in, I have created something for those of you wanting to maximize your muscle building results. It's one of my most popular downloads. It's called the Mus building nutrition blueprint. It lays out the exact steps to optimize nutrition, training and recovery for maximizing your gains while minimizing fat, and I keep it updated with the latest evidence. For example, what are the optimal rates of gain? If you want to understand a little bit of the science behind effective bulking, if you want to avoid some of the common pitfalls and if you want to see an entire appendix of how a real bulk was actually done successfully, with all the numbers, download your free copy at witsandweightscom slash muscle or click the link in the show notes for your free muscle building nutrition blueprint Again witsandweightscom slash muscle, or you could always click the link in the show notes.

Philip Pape: 3:10

So I want to start with some real experience, some real data, and share that with you. Because the numbers I'm a big numbers guy. I'm always tracking as much as I need to to measure progress, and they always tell you a story about what's happening, and in this case it's a story about how our bodies adapt during what I'll call an aggressive bulk. I started this gaining phase back on my birthday, october 26th, and I weighed about 175 pounds on the scale. I'm 5'9", I'm 44 years old Actually, I turned 44 on that day, obviously and the first 11 weeks or so went pretty much according to plan or maybe not 11, maybe 9 or 10 weeks. I went from 175 to about 189 by mid-January, and so I gained about exactly a pound per week. Exactly what I was going for right at the upper end of the new sweet spot and I say new because I used to be more conservative. Now I push things a little more aggressively for me and my clients, knowing that the science says it and reality says it, we could actually go at a decent clip to support real growth of muscle but avoid adding excessive fat. But only if you're precise about it and you're tracking your numbers. That's the key. And if you just kind of wing it and lag behind what's actually happening, it's not going to work as effectively. And so I would say the quality of my gains has been pretty solid this time around even more so than last time Based on body fat calculations using the Navy formula.

Philip Pape: 4:32

It's very simple For men that's just your neck and your waist, for women it's neck, waist and hips. Plug it into a calculator online. I actually have one in my website too, witsandweightscom, and the trend is what matters, not the actual numbers but the trend. And if you go by that, I've added about nine pounds of lean body mass, which is about 58% of my total weight gain as lean tissue, which, for being an intermediate maybe advanced trainee, I guess I'll go with intermediate it's a pretty good ratio right. Most would consider that pretty optimal. If you're more on the beginner side, you would expect to gain a little more, Keeping in mind that that 58 or that 60% lean mass it's not all muscle. There's a small percentage of that that is going to be fluid. That will come off later on when I do a fat loss phase, but a lot of it is muscle. So I'm happy with that and my measurements confirm this efficient gain.

Philip Pape: 5:22

My chest has gone up by about an inch and a half Um, and I'm not very good at developing my chest, I'll be honest. I'm more of a back guy, arm guy. Um, chest and legs are where I struggle and you don't have to work a little bit harder. My biceps have grown by half an inch. Thighs have added about one and a half inches.

Philip Pape: 5:37

You know some of you may say, oh, that's not a big deal. Others may say, oh, that's great. Keeping in mind I've been running primarily a strength-based program to build my peak, not a hypertrophy program. So I'm not really trying to add visible mass, especially pumping it up with fluid. I'm really looking to push. My lifts and my singles are going to be tested in a few weeks and I'm very confident that I'm going to hit new PRs based on my progress so far.

Philip Pape: 6:03

My waist has only gone up an inch and a half at most, so that tells you. I'm also having minimal fat gain around my midsection and I can see it in the mirror. This is the first bulk I've ever done this aggressively where I don't see a lot of fluff, which is pretty cool. It's kind of a validating thing where the more you do this and the more muscle you have, the less you have to be concerned about the fat that you add during a bulk. Okay, so that's the setup, but then something interesting happened because, despite continuing to eat in a surplus in the proper aggressive surplus I'm tracking with Macrofactor. By the way, guys, if you don't use Macrofactor, it's the only app that exists that can actually calculate your dynamic metabolism based on what you eat and what you weigh exists that can actually calculate your dynamic metabolism based on what you eat and what you weigh, and then it adjusts the gain or the surplus based on your true rate of gain, which is important in a surplus, because muscle and fat have different densities and everyone gains different ratio of muscle to fat, and so an app that can do that is incredible.

Philip Pape: 6:59

Of course, I'm an affiliate, so full disclosure. You can support me using my code wits and weights, all one word macro factor, downloaded from the app store. Anyway, I use it myself and despite consistently getting stronger in the gym and eating in, this surplus was a decent surplus my weight started to plateau, and by weight I don't mean my scale weight, I mean my trend weight. My scale weight always fluctuates, but you can tell when it's starting to fluctuate and it's like up down, up down within the same range for a while. That's telling you there's a plateau. And we're talking about this happening for almost a month now, and I know what to do during a plateau.

Philip Pape: 7:34

I eat more food. I get ahead of it. I always advise my clients when I see this we just need to get ahead of it. A hundred calories, 200, sometimes 300 calories, because your expenditure is starting to skyrocket, your metabolism is going up, and that's what I started to do. I just started to eat a heck of a lot more food, and part of the challenge there is I eat a lot of whole foods. So unless I add a ton more junk food or processed food, it's a challenge, right, but I'm not complaining about that I know to do that I can make it happen.

Philip Pape: 8:02

Now, the 189,. We're still not near my target of 195 to 200, which I had almost planned to reach by now before I transitioned to the maintenance phase, and so that's why I wanted to make this episode for any of you struggling with gaining right now. So here's where the story gets fascinating. Now I want to talk about this hidden energy drain that I teased you about in the podcast title. So I've been using Macrofactor tracking my nutrition and my expenditure throughout this bulk. The app calculates your expenditure based on your actual intake and your weight trend.

Philip Pape: 8:33

As I mentioned, you know one of the most powerful ways that we have to understand metabolism in real time, short of getting measured with a mask and or doubly labeled water or something crazy like that in a lab. So my expenditure started at 2,640, so 2,640 calories in October, and you might say, oh, that doesn't sound that high. But look, this was after a long cut, so it had come down, and then, after a little bit of a roller coaster, it actually dropped up, went up and went down to about 2,550 in early December which, by the way, that can happen. So don't get worried if your expenditure drops at the beginning of a bulk, um, that's normal. Your body's becoming more efficient, some other stuff is happening. But then the wild, uh, rocket launch occurred.

Philip Pape: 9:17

Okay, my expenditure started climbing steadily, week after week, until it hit nearly 3000 calories, and that's about a 400 calorie increase in maintenance, um, in a very short period, very, very quickly. And oh, and, that's, that's a net, by the way. So that's, it's more like 450, and it's actually above 3000 now. So we're pushing a 500 calorie change. So think about that for a second. My body's now burning extra four or 500 calories every single day compared to when I started the bulk. Even when I intentionally overeat by two to 400 calories above my target surplus, my body finds a way to burn through it all. The metabolism is incredibly adaptive and right now mine is working overtime. Right it's it's almost to my detriment.

Philip Pape: 10:00

And then what makes this more interesting is my diet quality is solid. Is it better than ever? I think it's pretty steady state, like generally. I, you know, I want to be a good example for my clients. I eat 80, 90% whole foods, a lot of fruits and vegetables, a lot of whole food based grains and, of course, lots of meat and dairy and fiber. I try to get you know at least 30 grams of fiber a day and this is fantastic for health, for digestion, for metabolic health, for hormones all that and even for your hunger signals to an extent. But it actually then creates another interesting challenge for gaining weight, in that they're nutrient-dense foods, so they're also higher volume foods and they're more filling. They have a higher thermic effect, so you're burning even more calories and sometimes it makes it hard to reach the high calorie targets. Now, like I said, that's not the fundamental issue that I'm having. I'm willing to make that trade-off right For long-term health and performance, because I'm trying to push.

Philip Pape: 10:56

But what I wanted to talk about is what's causing this, what I'll call energy drain. It's weird I know it's a weird phrase, but kind of, the way I see it is, the opposite thing happens in fat loss, where your body's clamping down. It's getting super efficient, it's trying to conserve energy and you don't want it to do that. You want it to burn calories. But in the bulk it's almost like an energy drain, like a leak, like your body is just burning so many calories. It almost seems impossible. So I want to explain that. The first thing that comes to mind is your training expenditure, and what I mean by that is we don't often give enough credit to the fact that the way we train burns calories, because even I often talk about the fact that that is not why we exercise right, we don't exercise to burn calories, but it does burn calories.

Philip Pape: 11:43

Now I've been running. Shout out to Alex Bromley Okay, look him up on YouTube. Really smart guy, uh, and I think he was just on Dave Tate's um table talk as well. I'm running his bull mastiff program which, by the way, I think you could still get it for free in boost camp. If you download boost camp, it's a really good workout logger app. I use it. Use my link in the show notes. I get a little bit of a bonus for affiliate bonus. It's very small, but just if you're looking to support me. But you can get Bull Mastiff and run it yourself.

Philip Pape: 12:12

Now this is a I'll call it a high load, but also high volume strength building and then peaking program, meaning for about nine weeks you do three waves of ever-increasing volume, that reset for each wave and you're doing a lot of volume, more volume than I've ever done, maybe double. Then you switch to a peaking phase where you reduce the volume but you start increasing the load. You get up into fours and then triples and then doubles. Now I'm finally in singles phase, which is going to lead to testing my one rep max for my squat, deadlift and so on. And while you're doing this kind of training, especially the high volume training that I was doing even though each rep might be more efficient as you get stronger, your body's using less energy for the same movement, because my movement patterns are being executed so frequently. I feel like there is a sense of efficiency there and then I'm able to push even harder. And now the increased volume and intensity. You multiply those together, you get higher energy demand. So while the efficiency might save a little bit, the volume more than makes up for it, especially the program I've been running. Again, I've never run this high of a volume program before. I suspect that's part of it. Now it's been at least six weeks since I was at level of volume. It's been way less volume and it's still going up. So you know it could be a cascade effect or just like kind of a runaway effect going on. So as you get stronger, as you're handling heavier weights during a bulk, even if you're doing fewer reps, your total tonnage, your work capacity tends to increase. You're able to push harder, push to that more effect, your effective reps get to a higher load, et cetera. All of that burns a ton more calories and then it has that afterburner effect and so on. So I think that's part of it. I think that's part of it. Just keep that in mind.

Philip Pape: 13:53

The second factor is NEAT, right, non-exercise activity thermogenesis. You heard me talk about this. This is everything you do outside the gym. Primarily you're walking. This is everything you do outside the gym primarily you're walking, but also you're fidgeting, unconscious movement, and it increases even if your step count doesn't change. Your knee might increase, sometimes dramatically, when you're in a surplus because you've got all this extra energy now almost nervous energy, you might call it. Your body unconsciously moves more throughout the day. You fidget more, you tap your feet, maybe you shake around a little bit more. Um, I stand working up most of the time and I catch myself. You know, shifting around you might take more steps, you might pace more when you're pacing, you know, you just might pace more and all these small movements add up to hundreds of extra calories burned without you realizing it. So that's my second theory here of supported by the evidence, is that your neat is unconsciously going up, even if your step count doesn't necessarily go up because of all these other unconscious movements.

Philip Pape: 14:50

The third factor is broader metabolic adaptation concept We've talked about a lot, especially during fat loss. You know, just like your body fights to preserve energy during a cut, it can fight to prevent excessive weight gain during a bulk by ramping up various metabolic processes in your body, like increased body temperature. You get a lot hotter, trust me, during winter now it's like the gap is even wider between what my wife thinks is cold and what I think is cold. You get higher energy expenditure during digestion. You're just eating a heck of a lot more food and digesting it a lot more frequently. Subtle changes in your hormone levels right, your body's like, yeah, you've got, you're flooding me with energy, there's no need to conserve anything here, wrap it all up, which is a great place to be energy wise. But then you become just less and less efficient with calories. You're just wasting calories left and right and your body's just burning the heck out of them. So those are the three factors I believe are important behind why you might have this runaway effect with your expenditure.

Philip Pape: 15:52

So understanding these adaptations has led me to think about how are we strategic with this? If you're dealing with this, what do I do for this? And three specific things came to mind. Yeah, I'm just going to, I'm just going to jump into them and you're basically balancing the fact that you have this short-term goal of, like, eating a ton of food and keeping up and continuing to build. I will say the one caveat before I get into any of these is I noticed that even though I have quote unquote maintained the fact that I've been eating more and more food has, ironically, still given me the feeling and performance of being in a surplus energy state. So it's not like I've fallen behind, because that's another issue people face is they actually start losing weight in this situation? But I've at least kept up with it and it's been more than enough, with a little bit of extra fat I have as well, to not make me feel like it's a problem, which I guess is a cool thing, right?

Philip Pape: 16:48

So the first thing I like to do as a strategy is what I call caloric dominance. Like, you've got to dominate those calories, and that means not just eating more, right, that's the simple thing. Okay, I need more food, great. But eating smarter, like front loading your calories in the day and around your training sessions, like just you've got to get ahead of it and be smart and realize that if you don't, it's going to catch up to you by later in the day. It's a little bit of a job. It's a little bit of a job to do. You got to understand that there's a trade off, there's a sacrifice, and that you have to be paying attention. And on top of this stuff, you've got to be strategic and plan ahead. Plan ahead, just like in fat loss, you want to plan ahead Same thing here to get all the calories in and eat around your training. Eat a ton around your training when your body is primed to use them, not like right before you train, where it's going to give you digestive issues, but around the training, strategically.

Philip Pape: 17:45

Add liquid calories. Whole milk is awesome If you can tolerate dairy. Whole milk is awesome If you can tolerate dairy, excuse me. Whole milk is fantastic. It's for the price and the macros and the calories and everything. It's a wonderful food. Of course, you know protein shakes, adding higher calorie ingredients, processing things, nuking, not nuking things. What am I trying to say, blending things together into smoothies and stuff, can definitely help. That's more of just a general strategy to get it in.

Philip Pape: 18:09

But high meal frequency, calorie dominance, starting early, getting around your workouts, calorie-dense foods that don't kill your appetite but still maintain that base of nutrient-dense whole foods. So, adding in extra olive oil to your meals, choosing fattier cuts of meat oh, extra olive oil to your meals. Choosing fattier cuts of meat oh ribeye this is the time to go to town on ribeyes. Man, that marbled fat there is like nature's butter. Well, butter is from nature, but you know what I mean? It's like the steaks built in butter, having lots of nuts and nut butters as snacks. You know it's great and the key here is to to keep it consistent. Like having regular meal timing.

Philip Pape: 18:51

While you're scaling everything up because you don't want to make, you don't want to get in a situation when you're just trying to catch up and you're stuffing yourself. That is not fun. Or you're like I'm gonna go Like uh gorge on rice crispy streets and pop tarts because I just need the calories. That is not a sustainable situation you want to be in. So again, think of things like dried fruit, granola, like homemade or even packaged granola. They tend to be calorie dense as well, without giving you excessive fullness. So that's calorie dominance.

Philip Pape: 19:20

The second thing here second strategy, is about mindset. It's about maintaining perspective and resilience. So, instead of just getting frustrated by the plateau, which you know, after a week I'm like, okay, it's not moving, what do I do, right? I use this opportunity to learn about my body's response, and it might be different every time you do a bulk Like. For me, this is a unique situation for the first time because it's it's persistent, but it also maybe tells me some good things that my body is really growing and really taking advantage of this caloric environment.

Philip Pape: 19:53

So your data, whatever data you have, like the data for macro factor, for example it's not just numbers sitting there, it's the feedback you need to close the loop right. The control system. It helps me understand how my metabolism adapts to different situations. This is why I like people to keep tracking, even when they're sick or even when they have a surgery or whatever, assuming the tracking itself isn't stressful in those situations. It helps you understand how your body reacts to those, and then that knowledge is super invaluable for future gaining phases or whatever situation and, of course, for me, helping others through similar challenges. It's amazing.

Philip Pape: 20:29

So when you're facing a plateau, it's easy to get caught up in the numbers and just lose sight of the bigger picture. And remember that your scale weight, your trend weight, is just one metric. I mentioned this already. My performance is really strong. My energy is really high. The quality of my training not only hasn't it suffered, it's continuing to increase, and through this I've been dealing with some of my legacy shoulder issues, having nothing to do with my bulk or anything else, and those gave me little setbacks along the way. But the fact that I'm so well fed has actually been helpful. So sometimes the best response to a plateau any plateau is step back, appreciate the progress you've already made, appreciate all the wonderful victories you're getting right now despite the plateau, and, of course, stay patient with the process, because it's data telling you that something might have to change. You learn from it and you grow and you continue. That's what I have to say about that. All right.

Philip Pape: 21:27

The third strategy is I guess it's also mindset, but it's really being realistic about the timelines and the goals, because that can frustrate the heck out of you, like like it could have done to me when I said I needed to be, by one at one, 95 by this date, cause I'm going to be doing a cut like four weeks after that. No-transcript will end naturally at that point. And you know what? That's perfectly fine. Not only that, what are the advantages of that? All right, maybe one advantage is I won't be as heavy as expected, so the cut is gonna be easier to get to my target weight. Great, that's a great way to reframe it.

Philip Pape: 22:25

When I look at the bigger picture, I'm in a great place. I've gained quality mass, my performance is solid, I'm maintaining better nutritional habits than ever before, even in a gain, and the fact that my maintenance calories have increased so dramatically is actually a sign of improved metabolic capacity. Sometimes our bodies have different plans than what is up here in our brains, and learning to work with that because that's reality, that's reality rather than against it that is going to go a long way toward being a positive, optimistic person. That will make you successful over the long term. All right, so I hope you take away from all of this something super fascinating and also inspiring about building muscle, in that your body is very intelligent. Also inspiring about building muscle in that your body is very intelligent when you understand that these adaptations occur not as obstacles, but as signals that you are pushing the boundaries of growth.

Philip Pape: 23:19

That is where you can say all right now, what do I do to work with that? The fact that my maintenance calories have increased so dramatically is not a problem at all. It is a sign my body has built the machinery to handle more volume, more food and ultimately, yeah, more muscle. That's my takeaway. Maybe I'm rationalizing, lying to myself, but I don't think I am. This is like an increased metabolic capacity. It means I'm more resilient. It means I'm more capable of handling intense training. It means I'm better equipped for long-term growth. And guess what? I know I can now do this kind of program in the future and get some pretty good gains, which means look out numbers. Here we come, all right.

Philip Pape: 23:58

So we often hear about metabolic adaptation during fat loss, but the same mechanisms are working in reverse during a bulk, and that was what I wanted to talk about today. So if you can understand this, it's not just going to help you gain weight, that's fine. Eat more calories, that's fine. It really helps you build a more resilient, more capable physique All right, a physique that you didn't have before. That is a new person. You've become a more athletic, strong, capable person. Stop chasing skinny, start chasing strong.

Philip Pape: 24:27

What I've learned through this phase has changed how I approach muscle building now for the next time, as well as for myself and my clients. And sometimes the hardest gains. You know that these hard parts are the things that teach us the valuable lessons about how our bodies adapt and grow. All right, if you want to build muscle more effectively and understand the science behind successful bulking, grab your free copy of my Muscle Building Nutrition Blueprint. This guide gives you the exact steps and framework to optimize your nutrition to maximize muscle growth and minimize fat gain. Head to witsandweightscom slash muscle or click the link in the show notes to download your copy 100% free. Until next time, keep using your wits lifting those weights and remember when your metabolism fights back, it is not trying to stop you. It is challenging you to get stronger. I'll talk to you next time here on the Wits and Weights Podcast.

Are Low Bar Squats REALLY Needed for Strength and Size? (Andy Baker) | Ep 283

Download my free Progressive Overload Guide to maximize your progress in the gym and build strength and size.

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What if sticking to just one squat style is actually limiting your gains? Struggling with joint pain or mobility issues from low bar squats but are afraid to switch?

I’m joined by elite strength coach Andy Baker to break down the myth that low bar squatting is mandatory for gains. We dive deep into the world of squats, comparing different styles to see which ones are best for building muscle and strength. Andy and I will help you figure out the perfect squat for your body and what you want to achieve.

Andy Baker is a highly sought-after strength coach, co-author of Practical Programming and The Barbell Prescription, and owner of Kingwood Strength & Conditioning. Through his Baker Barbell Club, he’s helped thousands of lifters get stronger by training smarter.

Today, you’ll learn all about:

05:59 – Why low bar squats aren’t as superior as you think
09:40 – The origins of low bar squatting and why it became dominant
16:40 – When and why you shouldn’t low bar squat
22:05 – How to know if you should switch your squat
29:20 – The real reason elbow and shoulder pain happens with low bar
35:40 – Why strategic variation makes you stronger and healthier
46:07 – The most underrated squat variation for quad growth
55:49 – The #1 most common squat mistake lifters make
1:09:05 – Best squat variations for quads—Andy’s top picks
1:20:52 – How to cue yourself for a perfect squat
1:25:00 – Outro

Episode resources:

• Baker Barbell Club: andybaker.com 

• Ep 60: Strength and Programming for Maximum Gains at Any Age with Andy Baker

• Ep 131: Andy Baker on Bodybuilding for Hypertrophy and an Aesthetic, Muscular Physique

The Truth About Low Bar Squats for Strength and Muscle

If you’ve ever forced yourself into a low bar squat because you thought it was the only way to get strong and build muscle, or if joint pain and mobility issues have made it a struggle, this is for you. Strength coach Andy Baker is back on the show to break down the role of squat variations and whether low bar squatting is truly necessary for size and strength.

Why the Low Bar Squat Became the Gold Standard

The low bar squat has been championed in strength training circles—especially in programs like Starting Strength—for its efficiency. It recruits a lot of muscle mass, allows for heavier loading, and helps beginners get strong quickly. But as Andy points out, this doesn’t mean it’s the only way to squat, nor does it guarantee better results than other variations.

• More weight ≠ more muscle – Just because you can lift heavier doesn’t mean you’re maximizing hypertrophy.

• Not all squats are created equal – Different squat variations shift emphasis to different muscle groups.

• Injury and comfort matter – If low bar is wrecking your elbows and shoulders, forcing it may be a losing battle.

The Real Difference Between Squat Variations

Andy sketched out a simple spectrum: on one end, not squatting at all (zero), and on the other, the low bar squat (rated as a 10 in effectiveness). But the kicker? Most other squat variations—high bar, safety bar, even some machine-based options—were clustered right behind it at an 8 or 9. The takeaway? The difference between them isn’t as drastic as people assume.

So if low bar is causing pain or limiting your progress, shifting to a high bar squat, safety squat bar, or even a well-executed hack squat isn’t going to derail your strength gains.

Does Low Bar Build More Muscle Than High Bar?

Here’s where it gets interesting:

• Low bar squats bring in more hips, glutes, and adductors, making them effective for overall strength but not necessarily optimal for quad growth.

• High bar squats put more demand on the quads while still engaging the posterior chain.

• Safety squat bar squats challenge the upper back more and can be easier on the shoulders and elbows.

• Hack squats isolate the quads effectively while minimizing stress on the spine.

For muscle growth, a mix of variations often works best. If you’re trying to maximize quad development, relying only on low bar squats might not be ideal.

When to Ditch the Low Bar Squat

If you're constantly dealing with nagging pain in your elbows or shoulders, or if low bar just doesn’t feel natural, it’s worth experimenting with different squat styles. Some key scenarios where swapping it out makes sense:

• Chronic elbow or shoulder pain from low bar positioning

• Struggling to hit depth or maintain good form

• Plateauing in squat strength despite consistent training

• Training for hypertrophy and needing more quad emphasis

What’s the Best Squat for You?

It depends on your goals:

• For strength – If you’re a powerlifter, low bar squatting is useful for competition. But if you’re a general lifter, you can get strong with multiple squat styles.

• For muscle growth – A combination of high bar squats, hack squats, and safety bar squats may be better than just low bar squats alone.

• For longevity and pain-free training – If low bar is causing chronic issues, it’s not "better" for you—choose a variation that lets you train consistently.

At the end of the day, squatting in a way that fits your body and goals is more important than sticking to a specific squat style out of dogma. Don’t let attachment to one lift limit your progress.

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Transcript

Philip Pape: 0:01

If you've been forcing yourself to low bar squat because you believe it's the only way to maximize strength and muscle, or if nagging joint pain and mobility issues make low bar squatting a struggle and you're wondering can I squat a different way and still build strength and size. This episode is for you. Today, I'm discussing the low bar squat with strength coach Andy Baker. You'll discover how different squat variations compare for building muscle and strength, learn why sticking to just one squat style could be limiting your results, and get a clear framework for choosing the right squat variation for your goals and body. So, whether you've got injuries, you're questioning if low bar squatting is right for you, or you just want to understand the options, this episode will give you the knowledge to train effectively without giving up squatting altogether. Welcome to Wits and Weights, the show that helps you build a strong, healthy physique using evidence, engineering and efficiency.

Philip Pape: 1:00

I'm your host, philip Pape, and today I've invited Andy Baker back on the show for the third time to discuss squat variations and challenge the notion that there is one best way to squat. Andy's a highly sought after strength coach, co-author of Practical Programming and the Barbell Prescription. He's the owner of Kingwood Strength and Conditioning and the online Baker Barbell Club, where he's helped thousands of lifters like myself train to get stronger by training smarter. If you missed him last time, check out episode 60 and 131, where we discussed his programming, philosophy and approach to bodybuilding. I'll throw the links in the show notes.

Philip Pape: 1:35

But today we're answering the question are low bar squats really needed to build strength and size? Andy, thanks for coming back on the show. Thanks for having me. I appreciate it. So I wanted to bring you on because a few days ago in your Facebook group, you posted a picture of a line graph from zero to 10, and 10 was the low bar squat, implying it was the, let's say, most effective squat. Whatever you want to call it. Zero was not squatting at all, and then a whole bunch of other variations of the squats clustered near the 10. And I want to ask you why you posted that and get into what it means.

Andy Baker: 2:08

Yeah, so that little graphic or that little picture that I posted, it came as a result of a conversation with one of my members, a longtime member of my club, and it's a conversation that I not just had with him. I've had with dozens or hundreds of people in some context. You know, throughout all the time I've been, you know, hosting forums and social media and you know just conversations with clients and that sort of thing. It's something that's come up, you know, a million times. And so the little graphic that I did was a hand-drawn. You know, I just I had this conversation with him and I literally just reached over and grabbed a piece of typing paper and a Sharpie and made this and took a picture of it with my phone and posted it on the Facebook group, because I don't know how to create infographics, because I'm-.

Philip Pape: 2:55

That's the way to do it, man. It's organic, right I'm technologically.

Andy Baker: 2:58

you know, like my technological age is about 80. So I don't know how to use Canva and all that stuff. Every time I do it it winds up taking me 10 times longer than it should, and it's just so. I'm like you know what, I'm just going to draw this really quick and take a picture of it and put it on there. But like it got a lot of response on there and I was kind of surprised like how many people really responded to that and kind of self-reported, like how eye-opening it was to me, which that happens when you're coaching.

Andy Baker: 3:27

Sometimes you don't realize things that you assume to be common knowledge or things, that you take a lot of things for granted, and then you you say something. You know just a little short infographic or an offhand comment that you make on a subject and it just, for whatever reason, resonates with tons of people. And this one did, and basically the conversation that I had with him. It's a guy that has been lifting in my club for a long time and he's had a history of different injuries and things like that. Nothing major but just little shit that we all get when we're pushing ourselves hard, but things elbows and shoulders I can't. Actually I can't remember right now what the actual issue he was having, but it's been a recurring issue with him over a number of years with low bar squatting and basically what he was kind of reporting to me was that I had told him to start integrating the safety squat bar, you know, not too long ago to kind of save some wear and tear on his elbows and shoulders.

Andy Baker: 4:28

Um, and then he had more or less basically just converted to safety bar squatting entirely and trained like that for a while and didn't have any issues. Uh, all the kind of the, all the little minor injury stuff that he had been dealing with off and on, just kind of went away when he switched over to the safety squat bar and then he decided, okay, I'm going to go back to low bar and a lot of those, some of the little injury stuff started coming back. He was very disappointed and frustrated because low bar is something that he wanted to do but he's like, at this point is it worth it? And he he sounded like the tone of his post was very dejected and I was, I like I didn't quite get it.

Philip Pape: 5:07

Life is over because I can't lower anymore. That was kind of the tone is that like, is it over for me?

Andy Baker: 5:11

like yeah, and the kind of the tone of his post was that like, well, I'm relegated to this other squat variation. You know, I'm relegated to safety squat bar. So it's. It was like somebody told him you know, you just need to do yoga or something you know know. It was like and I'm like, dude, it's not that big of a trade-off. And so I said, let me here, let me explain this to you, because I think you're making this out to be a much bigger deal than it is to switch to some other squat variation. And so I did the little graph and I'm like, look, you guys know me, I came out of the starting strength world. I'm an advocate of the low bar squat. I do think it's. You know, if you had to rank them, um, which that's. That kind of stuff's hard to do because it's always context dependent. It's hard to. With exercises, it's always hard to say this is best. You know this is first, this is second. You know cause it's?

Philip Pape: 5:58

it's context dependent the S tier, the A tier, yeah, yeah.

Andy Baker: 6:01

Right. So it's like it will. It's always. It goes back to that answer that people hate, which is you know, it depends. You know what's the best squatting? Very well, it depends. But you know, if I kind of made this little chart and I was like okay, or this little graph and I was like okay, if we assume, if we're going to say that you know, low bar is the best and I put that as a 10, you guys have in your head that these other squat variations are like two and three, like they're, they're like way, way down, and I said, look, they're probably like eight or nine, like they're all. So it's like all these squat very like low bars, 10 it's over here, but then like right behind it would be the other. You know squat variations of um. You know front variations of um. You know front uh, not front squats necessarily, but high bar, safety bar and and then like zero is like not squatting yeah, it's good to have that on there.

Philip Pape: 6:52

And then like, and then even like leg presses.

Andy Baker: 6:54

I put it like six or something and you know, as what happens online, people get really wrapped up in like the actual number. Well, is it a six? And I'm like don't get. What the point is is like you're not, you're not missing out on that much by switching to it. So like don't get dejected and think that like it's over for you because you can't do this one exercise. And I would say that to any exercise, not just low bar versus high, I'd say that if a guy can't bench, you know, for whatever reason, you know, if the, if the flat barbell bench, like are you missing out on some stuff by not being able to do that? Probably, but is there other things that you can do that are going to still get your upper body, you know, big and strong, of course. So it's not like it's over. There's been plenty of great, you know, bodybuilders and strength athletes and stuff that had to do modified versions of things you know.

Andy Baker: 7:45

So, and that was kind of my point with him was like, look at this point, even me being an advocate of like low bar and all that kind of stuff, you're going on several years now of battling this stuff and even if it is theoretically better on paper for all the reasons that you know, I would tell you that it is it's not better for you as the individual in practice because you're having to just constantly battle through entries and it's not just affecting your ability to squat, but when your elbows and shoulders and stuff are getting tore up from it, it's affecting your bench pressing and your upper body work too. So it's not. What good are you really getting out of it by constantly having to battle through this?

Philip Pape: 8:28

Yeah, people reduce it to just the lift as opposed to the systematic recovery, the consistency, like you said, the avoiding injury. Man, we were talking before about my shoulder and my favorite lift used to be the overhead press and I can't do it right now. So what do I do? Do I go cry? No, I have to figure out what to do. But there might be people listening like why is this a big deal? There are others listening like they love you because they, you know starting strength and they came from that world and they're like well, we know why the low bar is just dominant. What is the origin of that whole thing? So we can get into it. Why is the low bar squat seat put on this pedestal?

Andy Baker: 9:01

Well, it's for the reasons that are outlined, that Ripoteau has outlined in starting strength, basic barbell training, and again you have to kind of put that into context of who is starting strength written, for it's a beginner's program and we're trying to maximize certain amounts of things, and one of those things we're trying to maximize is efficiency. And so you know, what are the lifts that were selected for a novice program, you know, for somebody that's interested in general strength, and that would be the overhead press, the bench press, muscle mass through their most effective range of motion with the most weight possible. So, what variation of lifts? Uh, best satisfy those three criteria and we're going to use those to help us kind of make our exercise selections for a novice and just work on mastering those basic lifts rather than trying, just like any other area of skill development, whether it's in sport or not, even outside of sport, any other discipline that you're trying to learn from scratch and master, is going to start with a handful of basic fundamentals that need to be mastered before you move on to the next thing and the next thing and so.

Andy Baker: 10:29

But then the argument becomes well, what are the basics? I mean, most people don't get in an argument about that, whether it's weight training or math or baseball or any other discipline that somebody would be trying to learn from scratch. If you just make the general assertion that, well, you need to master the basics first, most people go, oh yeah, that makes sense, that's probably right, and then you go on to more and more complex things. From there the argument comes as okay, what are the basics, what are the basic things that you should master? Because most people agree that, as a beginner in any discipline, trying to master too many things especially for people that are doing this, that aren't particularly athletic all the time, it's harder for them to master too many things. So what are the things that we want to focus on in the beginning, that are going to give you the biggest ROI on your return in the gym, that are going to build the most amount of strength, build the most amount of muscle mass, carry over to other endeavors, and so those are the reasons that the low bar was chosen as the squat variation is that it allows more weight to be used. It works more muscle mass than the other variations through their most effective range motion. So does it work? Now, it doesn't work.

Andy Baker: 11:35

The quads specifically, as well as, say, a high bar squat, but the high bar squat in general uses less weight and it doesn't work other muscle groups quite as well as the low bar squat in general uses less weight and it doesn't work other muscle groups quite as well as the low bar squat does. So that's why the low bar was chosen. It doesn't mean a high bar squat is a bad exercise. It just means that for a novice, we think that a low bar squat is the best way to go for those reasons. It's going to work more muscle mass and allow you to use more weight, which are important things for a novice to do in terms of it, because the novice program doesn't use a lot of exercises.

Andy Baker: 12:09

So we're looking at what the exercises that we do use. We want them to work more muscle efficiently, and so on a low bar squat you get a lot of quads not as good as a high bar, but you still get a lot. A lot of quads. You get a lot of hamstring, a lot of gluten, a lot of quads. You get a lot of hamstring, a lot of gluten, a lot of adductor, and so we like to develop all of those things with just a single exercise, which is the way a beginner should do it, as opposed to where we would do. Let's say, we want to work the legs with leg extensions, leg curls, an adductor machine and RDLs or something. That's an inefficient way for a novice to build muscle mass and strength when you could basically develop all of those things with a single exercise.

Andy Baker: 12:53

That is also going to increase force production to a much higher degree. So that's why the low bar is recommended for a novice and then as a, as a trainee progresses and his the goals become more specific to that person. Then you look at, not just on squats but every exercise, branching out your exercise selection to more you know uh, meet whatever your individual goals and needs are. So that's where that comes from.

Philip Pape: 13:19

Yeah, yeah. And before we get to that cause, I love that. If you were writing start, if you were inventing a starting strength today it never existed, you'd never heard of any of that Would you still pick the low bar squat even if equipment wasn't an issue? So, in other words, safety squat bars are just as common as barbells, um, kabuki bars, whatever. Is there anything you would? Would you make a change today?

Andy Baker: 13:41

Not really, because if you do, it just muddies the water for people. You know it depends on whether you're when you're talking about providing information. Are you providing information to an individual or are you providing individual to the masses, to a large group of people? And and to you know and I get an. You know this is always hard when you're writing, when you're doing like what I do and you're trying to do articles or podcasts or whatever. You know this is always hard when you're writing, when you're doing like what I do and you're trying to do articles or podcasts or whatever, there's always a million different caveats and exceptions to everything that you're going to say, and it's it's hard to say anything without you know wanting to provide all those caveats and exceptions to everything, but then what happens is everybody thinks that they're the exception.

Philip Pape: 14:23

Right, so it's.

Andy Baker: 14:24

So, in terms of just now, I can tell you in practice, having walked a million people through you know, like a like a novice program, there are plenty of people, especially with my in-gym clients, who tend to be much older, who from day one cannot do a low bar squat. They and it's it's because of the grip issue. They just and if you've never worked with adults in their 50s and 60s and 70s I mean it's 50-50 at best whether somebody's going to be able to get a bar into the low bar position and you don't want to force it down there. I mean some things can be stretched.

Andy Baker: 14:59

Sometimes people have mobility issues that can be improved with time, but sometimes those issues with your you know you get older men and stuff in there with very arthritic shoulders and that sort of thing those are that's not really that improvable. So you're going to have to find a place on their back where they can put the bar and squat it. And so you're going to have, if you, if you do this stuff in person with people, you're going to have a whole bunch of your clients, especially if you're working with older adults, that are going to be high bar squatting from day one and are never going to low bar squat because they cannot get the bar into that position, and trying to force it into that position is only going to do damage to them from an injury perspective. So sometimes those mobility issues improve over time, yes, but sometimes they don't, and so it's not an issue that you necessarily want to force.

Andy Baker: 15:45

And so, in practice, you're going to have a whole lot of people, uh, that are going to wind up, you know, doing high bar squat or even like a safety bar squat or something like that, from day one, you know, and so that's, uh, that's one of those things, and that's that's where the importance of and and and rip went to in starting strength. Rip went to great pains not to just provide a program in there but explain certain things that would help a coach who can take the information and think on his feet about how to make these adjustments there are. He went to great pains to making sure that people understood things like the relationship to where the bar sits on your shoulders or your back and where it is relative to your midfoot.

Andy Baker: 16:32

Well, when you understand that, you can tailor a squat to anybody, right, and so, um, principal first principles Yep, right, you do have, and so you need to understand the whole thing and the bigger picture rather than just doing what people do, which is flip to the back of the book and find the program and go, okay, I'm going to do this and oh, I can't. Low bar squat, what do I do? Well, if you understood the whole model of the pains that they went to to explain you know how and why squats are performed, the way that they are, um, and how to do them and how to coach them, then you will learn that you know the high bar versus low bar thing. It kind of exists on a spectrum as well. Not everybody is a pure high bar squatter with the bar way up on top of their traps, nor are they a pure low bar squatter with it. You know much further down across the spine of their scapula and that some people may be in between.

Andy Baker: 17:25

But as long as you understand that relationship to where does the bar sit relative to its position over the middle of the foot, then you can put people into a squat that's going to work for them and it may be kind of a tweener, a little bit of a kind of between high bar and low bar squat that feels right for them, that maximizes and gives them the best leverage, but isn't going to force a range of motion on their shoulders that they can't do, and that that position on their back may change over time.

Andy Baker: 17:53

They may be able to get the bar lower. They may start out low and it needs to go higher because it's causing problems, and then you, as the coach, know how to adjust the rest of the squat in order to accommodate where the bar is going to be on there. A big mistake that people make in this high bar versus low bar thing is they'll read the book and they'll go well, I can't do low bar squat because that hurts. And so they'll put the bar in a high bar position and then continue to use low bar mechanics for the rest of the squat.

Andy Baker: 18:22

And you can't do that Because then if you're trying to keep a more horizontal back angle and use a lot of hip drive and you've got the bar and high bar, you're creating a moment arm where that barbell is getting way forward to the midfoot and that's not a good position to be in.

Andy Baker: 18:37

Likewise, if you have the bar in low bar position and you're trying to keep a very vertical torso and you're not understanding why you can't get to depth, well, it's because if you get to depth you're going to fall over backwards because the weight is now so far behind your midfoot that you can't balance it anymore, and so understanding that relationship between bar and midfoot really solves this problem. So you're just trying to get the bar in the right spot for each person, not necessarily getting so wrapped up in whether is it in high bar or is it low bar or is it kind of somewhere in between, and then just getting people set up in the right squat that's good for them, and using those kind of those physics principles that are outlined in the book, those very basic physics principles, to keep that barbell in balance over the midfoot so that they can squat strong but also squat safely.

Philip Pape: 19:29

Yeah, and I'll say anybody who hasn't read starting strength, it is worth looking at the biomechanics charts where they explain all that, also the 30 something page chapter on squats, and actually sit and take notes and start from the you know foot stance and doing it without a bar, and go through that whole process and then get a coach. Once you've tried that for a little bit because you still are not are going to be missing some things. Yeah, people's arms are different lengths. There's so many different reasons. I was talking to my, you know, tony. He was in the group Tony Perry. I'll give him a shout out, cause he he wanted me to send some questions your way too, but he's now maxing, or he's now hitting PRS on his high bar because he switched to it because of his, uh, soreness in the elbow.

Philip Pape: 20:08

As I joined a doctor a doctor, you know I myself went to kind of a between high bar and low bar because of my shoulder, and yet now I'm like, should I just go to the safety squat bar? After seeing your graph, it's like it's not that big of a difference, right, so? But at the end of the day, what you said about the bar path and being over midfoot once you understand that, you can then understand the eye gaze, you understand where squat shoes might be helpful, you understand, like you know, where the knees go and the different squats, because sometimes there'll be more forward and the more upright squats and such. I mean you kind of figure that out over time. So a lot of this which I've learned from you, andy no-transcript.

Andy Baker: 21:09

And then, like you said, understanding individual anthropometry I've been low bar squatting for over 20 years. I've never had an issue with any of the stuff that people regularly have issues with. I've never had shoulder inflammation, I've never had elbow inflammation. I've never had a torn adductor. You know some of those, uh, the most common problems that we see from low bar squatting. I've never had that. But I can't use just my own experience as a lifter and carry that over to a coach and and uh, or in my role as a coach and I have to recognize that certain people are going to and you can do the other assumption that everybody makes is that if my elbows are hurting, my shoulders are hurting or whatever, I'm doing something wrong, that I'm making an egregious form mistake, and if I could fix this, that may be the case and that's why coaching is important you may be making a mistake. There are some very common mistakes that people make in low bar that will exacerbate all of those injuries. I'd say the most common one is probably carrying way too much of the bar weight in the hands. So people have in their head that the low bar is much lower than it actually is and so they've got that bar seated actually well below the spine of the scapula and what happens is, in order to accommodate that, they're either having to bend way over a much more horizontal back angle than what we would like, or, if they try to keep the torso more vertical and what's kind of a more natural or more aesthetically pleasing looking squat, is that they wind up carrying a lot of the weight of the bar in their hands, as opposed to the whole weight of the bar in their hands, as opposed to the whole weight of the barbell sitting on their back. And that's one of the places that we try to get people on. Day one is kind of where they could kind of loosen the fingers off the bar and the bar still pinned to their back, so they're not actually carrying load in their hands. Because if you are, that's going to drive this area in here, nuts shoulders, it's not your shoulders and elbows aren't going to hold up to that. So, getting the bar higher if people are carrying the bar too low and carrying it in their hands and getting that into the proper place Some people are, especially smaller guys.

Andy Baker: 23:17

They tend to want to pull their hands way too far in and it's like they're under so much tension while they're squatting. It's like, yeah, if you do enough reps like that, enough days per week, you're, you're holding a very, very forceful isometric contraction there. You know it could lead to some some elbow or shoulder, you know discomfort and it's like you know, teaching people. It's not really about where your hands are, it's about your shoulder blades. It's about keeping that really tight upper back, really retracting those shoulder blades with some people call packing. You know you're taking all the skin and muscle and fat on your upper back and really pulling it in tight and really building a good shelf for that bar to sit on. The hands work to just kind of reinforce those tight shoulder blades. But you can keep the tight shoulder blades and move your hands out a little bit in order to take a little pressure off the elbows.

Andy Baker: 24:09

And a lot of people don't they have this idea that their hands need to be drawn in just absolutely where it's. It's like if you pulled their fingers off the bar they would just come apart, like you know, like a cartoon. You know cause they're, they're wound up so tight underneath that. So tight is good, we don't want to be loose under the bar, but understanding what is the role of the hands, the role of the hands is to reinforce the tightness of the upper back, not to have the hands tight on the bar just for the sake of having the hands tight on the bar.

Andy Baker: 24:37

So a lot of people just don't understand big picture of why things the way, that they are the same thing with the thumbs around the bar versus thumbs over the top of the bar. You know a lot of people don't. The reason why you know it's often coached to have the thumbs over the top of the bar instead of gripped around the bar is because that makes it harder to hold the weight in your hands and we're trying to teach the lifter to pin the bar to your back. Pin the bar to your back, pin the bar to your back with your hands Don't hold the weight in your hands and so by eliminating the thumbs it almost it mechanically prevents them from holding a lot of the bar weight in their hands. It forces them to just pin the bar to their back and that keeps a higher percentage of the bar weight, you know, just on their torso instead of in their hand, no-transcript. And when you have a good, clear, big picture, understanding of that, then it allows you to manipulate them in order to fit you, as opposed to just say, well, I got to do it this way, I got to do it this way.

Andy Baker: 25:42

And there's so many people that get involved in this world that are just so obsessive, compulsive about things to their own detriment, and they don't even really understand why it is they're doing what they're doing. And so when you, when you don't have the big picture understanding, then you don't know how to manipulate the variables to create a good squat for yourself or for the lifter that you coach, you're just, you're just blindly following this model, and the model is to get you into a good. It's like one of the things of a model, one of the analogies that I use, and this is true of programming and it's true of uh, of, of, uh. You know technique models, if you want to call it that, or is that. It's kind of it's like a hand-drawn map for somebody. You know, if I draw you a very detailed hand-drawn map, um, of how to get somewhere, how to go somewhere, that's going to get you really, really close to the destination, if it's accurate, but it may not account for every pothole in the road, every puddle every log that fell.

Philip Pape: 26:44

You know what I'm saying.

Andy Baker: 26:45

You're going to have to do some self-navigation on that road. You can't just close your eyes and blindly lock down the road because I drew you a map. You still have to have your eyes open and learn how to navigate some of this stuff. And the same thing is true whether it's a program that somebody writes for you or that you're following, or whether it's a technique model that you're following, is that, yeah, you should try to follow it as best as you can, but you still have to do some individual adaptation along the way to make it fit you and realize what you can manipulate and what you can't. And that makes it really easy and it undoes a lot of this kind of obsessive, compulsive thinking.

Andy Baker: 27:17

Makes it really easy and it undoes a lot of this kind of obsessive, compulsive thinking and it undoes some of the anxiety about having to switch from a low bar to a high bar, which is just, or you know, a safety squat bar or something which to me, even as a starting strength coach which advocates for low bar squatting, I just don't see as that big of a deal in practice for people who are just trying to use this for as a means to get generally stronger and build some muscle mass.

Andy Baker: 27:38

It's just not that. It's just not that big of a deal, especially if you're constantly battling injuries and such like that. Just, I mean, you know as well as I do the one thing that'll derail your progress more than anything else in the jeb it's not your squat technique, it's not your program, it's injury. Injury is the the thing that will set you back weeks, months and years and cause you to never get any headway when you're continuously dealing with the same old injuries over and over again. And so getting somebody where they can train in a way that's pain and injury free is, you know, it's really one of the big picture things you got to take care of.

Philip Pape: 28:21

Yeah, and that's why I wonder how many people start with a low bar and let's say they deal with all the biomechanics and the technique issues you talked about, cause we're maybe talking two audiences at the same time one who maybe hasn't quite learned the low bar squat properly or need to learn some of the things you talked about, like the thumb over grip and others, and then you have folks that are like a lot of folks in your club who came from the starting strength world. They know the low bar squat, they've done it, and then something happens either they get injured or it's just not comfortable anymore. Um, how common do you see people then transition away from the low bar squat due to those issues and maybe even find better results, cause now they've got something that works for them introduce some variations to their programming.

Andy Baker: 28:55

Most people will not just low bar squat all the time. I usually don't remove it from the program, you know, unless there's a need to remove it from the program, like they have an injured adductor or something like that but or if they're, you know they're having the repetitive shoulder and elbow pain and we can't get it fixed. You know, if there's no reason to remove it, I don't just arbitrarily remove it, but I may reduce the frequency of it and introduce other variations for any number of reasons, Some of which just might be preventative. It's just to to, because I know those issues are likely to occur, even if their form is good, and all that kind of stuff I may introduce, like their light day squat, maybe a safe squat bar.

Philip Pape: 29:56

It's simply to eliminate the movement pattern altogether. Right, of course, the cause of the issue, yeah.

Andy Baker: 30:01

Right, and that's what what gets people is is, um, it's not just the low bar squat like in the starting strength program where we're having people squat three days a week heavy. You know that's, that's a short term thing for a novice. You know. I always say you know you're looking at six weeks to six months. You know, with six weeks being really really short on the short side, six months being kind of exceptionally long, most people be it in that three to four month range of how, how long they're going to be able to run or should run the novice phase of the program. But during that short window of time, you know we're having people squat fairly heavy three days a week because they can, they can get away with it and they can, they can add weight to the bar, you know, two to three times a week, um and so, and they can put a lot of poundage on their bar in a very short period of time. They'll make the fastest progress they've ever made. But then you know, once the once the novice gains are realized, you have to. You have to uh, switch your programming methodology.

Andy Baker: 30:55

And squatting with the low bar heavy three days a week is not a good idea and squatting low bar period three days a week may not be a good idea, even if you're using something like a heavy light medium system where you're only going heavy once a week and the other days. It's the frequency that gets people and that's not just true of low bar squats, that would be true of a lot of different lifts. It's it's the frequency that you're exposed to that creates the problems. It's not usually the load, it's the fact that you're low bar squatting three days a week. So you're just hammering away on the exact same tissue in the exact same way in the exact same spot, day after day after day after day, and that's what's. That's what gets people so like, say, reducing.

Andy Baker: 31:38

If you're squatting twice a week and you're going to have your heavy main squat day, be your low bar squat, but then your light day later in the week, maybe that's a safety squat bar so that we're still training that squat pattern. It's not that different from a low bar. In some ways it's not different at all, depending on how you carry the bar, but it allows your shoulders and your elbows to relax and get a break. And maybe that lighter squat day is being paired with your heavy bench day so that you can do your squats first and you're not carrying any of that fatigue over to your bench press. A lot of people and I guarantee there's somebody listening to this they think they're they're they go to, they're doing their bench pressing and they're feeling that elbow tendonitis in their you know, in their elbows while they're bench pressing and they think, well, what am I doing wrong on the bench, like it's like nine times out of say one are you bench pressing?

Andy Baker: 32:29

directly after squatting?

Andy Baker: 32:39

If so, we're going to change that. Or are you bench pressing the day after squatting? And if so, we're going to change that. We're going to bench the day before we squat instead of vice versa, in order so that they're not having to, Because what happens is that the inflammation that's being created in their elbows from the low bar isn't manifesting until they get on the bench, but they attribute it to their bench press because that's just where they feel it, but that's not what's causing it. It's the low bar squat that's causing it. So you know. So just playing with exercise selection, you know, down the road in order to minimize that kind of stuff and say stay healthy and stay injury free is just smart programming.

Philip Pape: 33:16

Yeah, you know, the more I've gone through this with some of your programs, like Conjugate, your bodybuilding program, others even volume-based programs where they have developmental variations of the lift and talk to a bunch of great coaches on this show is the variety has massive benefits. Once you get past that point, even for reasons you may not be aware of, because of the fatigue versus stimulus over time issues, especially as we get older, where things are just cascading across days, like you said, you might be doing your low bar Monday and then your next upper body. You have a developmental variation of the squat, you mix it up or testing the one RMs on conjugate right and you go to a. You rotate literally every week. There's something to be said for that Cause. I know there's dogma in the world that they come from with starting strength, which a wrong audience cause. That's beginners Right. And if, if you then extrapolate that, okay, so the next 10 years I'm going to do the same three lifts over and over, it's not going to be sustainable For most people.

Andy Baker: 34:10

That's true. And exactly what you're saying for strategic variety is kind of what I call it, where the variety is strictly there for the purposes of fatigue management, and that's both systemic fatigue, you know, just manipulating the exercises so that you're using, like with the conjugate program, like on your max effort day, where you're. You know, this week we're doing a rack pull and it's 650 pounds, and then the next week we're doing a front squat which is 300 pounds, like that's there strictly to kind of mitigate some of that systemic fatigue, but also the local fatigue which is not doing the same movement hard and heavy, over and over and over again, because it's the same. I call them hotspots, but it's basically the same little, it's not just the same tissue, but the same little spot, the same little point on the tissue where it's the weakest or the most vulnerable is being stressed over and over and over and over again and not getting any time to recover from that stress. Even just switching from a low bar to a high bar is slightly changing where the peak stress is at in the tissue, and I don't necessarily know where it's at in every single lift, but I know it's different, right, so I know the peak stress in a max effort, low bar squat is in a different spot than it is in the high bar squat and in a different spot than it is in the low bar squat and in a different place than it is in a deadlift. And so by kind of varying up those movements week to week on your heaviest days, you're minimizing that stress being all directed in the same exact place every single time.

Andy Baker: 35:44

The best analogy and I have to give credit to Matt Winning for this, for pointing it out I don't know if he was the first, I'm not a big, necessarily Matt Winning guy, but still I have to give credit for it because he's the one where I heard it and I was like that's perfect analogy. It's just like rotating the tires on your car. Why do we rotate the tires on your car? Because, if you're and if you want to take that analogy even further, what if we kept the tires, all four tires, in the same spot and all we did was high speed left turns in a circle, right, that's where would the where be? Well, it would be in one spot, it would be in a, it would be in one spot and it would be in a predictable spot, right, because the peak amount of stress on those tires is in the same spot all the time. But how so?

Philip Pape: 36:25

how do you accelerate?

Andy Baker: 36:26

It would accelerate because you're going fast, right, and it just like with you when you're going heavy. That's like the same analogy is going fast, so you're applying peak stress to the same area over and over and over again. Well, how do you mitigate that? Well, make some right-hand turns, mix the right-hand turns in with the left-hand turns. Rotate your tires every few months so that it's a little bit. The back tires get moved to the front and left gets moved to right. So you're mixing it up a little bit and it's just a small amount of variation like that, you know, can save your tires a lot of wear and tear, right. So it's, that's the same way to the tire.

Andy Baker: 37:03

Analogy is the same way to think about the different tissues on your body is, if you're going hard and heavy frequently, all the time on the same lifts, it's going, you're going to wear out those spots. So, figuring out a way to reduce frequency, introduce variation. There's a lot of different ways you can go about it Managing, mixing up the loads, the intensities, that sort of thing. That's going to save you a lot. And again, it mitigates against injury and overuse, which is the thing that derails your training more than anything. So I'd rather have somebody injury free on a, maybe a what is on paper a slightly suboptimal program, versus being on the optimal program and being hurt all the time.

Andy Baker: 37:47

Right that that makes it not an optimal program it cancels out the optimality and it made and it differs across individuals, right like, like what's, because again we get into the anthropometry thing. So even with differences in anthropometry I mean the frequency and the exercise selection and all that that may work for well for one guy is not necessarily going to work for the next guy. And and even even not just limb length and things like that, but even you know even the size of a guy's traps and upper back. I mean, if you get a guy that's a real thick power lifter type guy with real thick, big traps and big, thick upper back, versus a guy that's 165 pounds, that's not as developed or whatever. I mean that can be different as well. Have trouble with low bar, say, one guy doesn't have enough thickness to do it, right, he's got, he just doesn't have enough meat back there. I mean he can, but it makes it harder when you don't have, when there's nothing to pack, pack together and create a shelf for that bar to sit on. You know that the skinny guy may have trouble with it, but so also is the big, thick guy that's got monster traps and a big thick upper back and all that. He may also have trouble getting the bar down there. So you. You know you just can't force it with everybody and you have to kind of, you know, understand the bigger model and then just find, find the spot on the back and the variation that's going to work best for them. Yeah, go ahead. I was going to say just, I mean, this is just an aside, but I was kind of terms of the preventative thing, where I was talking about changing exercise selection slightly, not just in response to a problem, but in order to potentially prevent a problem that you know is likely to occur.

Andy Baker: 39:31

I do that a lot with certain athletes. A lot with certain athletes Probably more than any other sport of athletes that I've worked with is probably swimmers and baseball players. If I work with a pitcher that's a young kid or whatever that's got a really good arm and that's pitching a lot and maybe has a chance to go play college ball or maybe, you know, get drafted minor league or whatever. Like you have to protect their arm. As a coach, as a strength coach, yes, you want to get them bigger and stronger and all that kind of stuff is. Have them start having shoulder and elbow pain on their pitching arm. It'll get you.

Andy Baker: 40:18

I mean, you're one you can't, as a coach, be responsible for creating problems in the gym that are then carrying over to their sport. That's regardless of any sport. But like stuff like that, where you're you don't have a lot of leeway and the thing is is like with inflammation, tendonitis and things like that once it gets set in it's very hard to get rid of. You know, especially on a kid. That's like a pitcher that's throwing all the time the way that they do now, where they're not just. You know, it's not like they just have a game on Saturday.

Andy Baker: 40:49

These kids pitch all the time. They're going to private lessons all the time. So that arm is under a tremendous amount of wear and tear and of none of those, those types of factors are under your control as a coach. So you know it's very rare. If I get a kid of that caliber which I do get occasionally I'm probably going to have them safety squat bar right right off the bat, because I don't even want the potential of low bar squat fucking around with their shoulder or their elbow.

Andy Baker: 41:16

Yeah, just get the arms out of it, right, if it's just a general guy, that's, you know, 35, and comes in it's like, hey, I just want to build some muscle and get stronger. Then it's like, yeah, we're going to try low bar, you know, and if it doesn't work later and you start getting some elbow and shoulder pain, no big deal, we'll switch it up, you know and figure out. But somebody like that where you've got a higher caliber athlete or something where you have to really protect them, in those cases it may not even be worth the risk and it may just be well to start a risk mitigation game right off the bat and particular I have special interest in, and Tony and I were talking about how it places a little bit more stress on your back, actually in a weird way with a yoke, where you find you can't you know you can't push as much through the legs and the loads a little bit less than your low bar, but also there's this extra back element.

Philip Pape: 42:12

Is there some sort of rig or special equipment for an athlete where, if they literally just want to use their legs and nothing else, you know what I mean Like, or is that? Is that a hip squat or a belt squat? You know what I mean?

Andy Baker: 42:22

Yeah, that would be a belt squat, which may be appropriate in certain cases. I don't really put a. I put a belt squat kind of in the same place that I would like a leg press or something it's not like a six or seven, I'm not.

Andy Baker: 42:33

I'm not against them, but I don't think that they're quite as good of a tool. As you know, I like the idea of the force being generated from the legs and traveling up, you know, through the back and through the core, if you will, through the abs into the torso and up into the bar. I like that longer kinetic chain. I think there's a lot of value on that for most people in terms of really developing, you know, real practical full body strength. I think that longer kinetic chain of you know, from from the feet all the way up into the bar has a lot of value. You lose a lot of that with a with a belt squat or you know a leg press, certainly, um, you know, but do they have their place? For sure, if you have a guy with a bad injury, uh, to the upper body, where you know, or the back you know a guy with a bad injury to the upper body or the back, a guy with a bad back injury, something like that, then for sure a belt squat or something like that is entirely appropriate. The safety squat bar there's a learning curve to it, for sure. I kind of liken it to and again, it kind of depends on the person and where the bar exactly sits and even what they choose to do with the handles. You watch some guys kind of push up a little bit as they go down and come up. Some guys pull down a little bit, you know. So where does that bar sit? You can even flip it upside down to make it really hard if you want to. It's more like a front squat there, but it's you know, it's.

Andy Baker: 43:53

To me and this is just my own personal feedback from it, no-transcript my subjective feedback on it is it's kind of a tweener in between high bar and low bar. The weight that I'm able to do kind of reflects that. You know. It kind of is the weight I can squat on. Safety squat bar is kind of in between what I can do. You know high bar versus low bar. So I think that's an indicator to look at.

Andy Baker: 44:40

And then you know, I would say, depends on how you want to look at this.

Andy Baker: 44:43

Is it a downside or is it an upside to the safety squat bar is the stress that it places on the back and the fact that you do have to develop a very strong upper back in order to safety squat bar big weight, because it does want to roll you.

Andy Baker: 44:56

It does want to kind of collapse your upper body and roll you over. So if you're not you know, if you're not paying attention to that, if you're not you know, holding everything tight from the, from the waist up, and paying attention to that, it's easy for the heavy safety squat bar to get to fold you in half and you can kind of feel that when it gets heavy, you can feel that that that pressure of wanting to fold you up and you have to resist that at the same time that you're coming up, which is an element that is there on a barbell squat but not quite as pronounced as it is on a safety squat bar. So you know, in terms of, is that a pro or a con? It depends on the context. I happen to think that safety squat bar squatting, getting really strong on a safety squat bar has tremendous carryover to a barbell because of the fact that once you get on the barbell it almost seems easier after the safety squat bar, because of the fact that you've had to learn.

Philip Pape: 45:50

I totally agree with that yeah.

Andy Baker: 45:51

Your back and your core, if you will, and everything has gotten so much stronger that the barbell it feels I don't want to say feel easy, but it almost is like you're squatting on a machine or something, because you're not having to fight that tendency of that bar to want to fold you in half. So I think it has tremendous carryover to the squat. I also think it has tremendous carryover to the deadlift because I think in order to get a big safety squat, bar squat, you have to get, you have to get very, very strong in the mid back, and I think that that that's a positive thing. Um, as an assistance exercise, if you wanted to call it an assistance exercise for the deadlift, I think safety box safety squat, bar squatting is right up there, almost at the top of the list in terms of in terms of improving deadlift strength. So that's that's a. That's a pro as as a con. You know, deadlift strength, so that's a pro as a con. For people that are less athletic and maybe don't already have that upper body kind of the upper back or core strength or whatever you want to call it. It could be a con because then the limiting factor on the squat is no longer the legs and the hips.

Andy Baker: 46:52

It's like a front squat. It's like a front squat. It's like why is a front squat? In theory, is a front squat a really good squat variation for building up the quads? In theory, yes, for where you know the, where, where the bar sits and the fact that other muscle groups aren't as involved in the quads are having to do all the work and torso is very vertical and you can get a really full range of motion on the quads by getting deep, because you're not having to fight the resistance from the hamstrings and all that. So in theory, the front squat is a really great quad developer. In practice it's not always, because the limiting factor is almost never quad strength. For most people it's the rack position.

Andy Baker: 47:30

So, in order, from a hypertrophy standpoint, in order for an exercise to be considered a good hypertrophy movement, the limiting factor needs to be the target muscle that's being trained. So if you're doing front squats for the development of your quads but the quads are not what's limiting you and you're being limited by your ability to rack the bar or even just hold the bar upright and you're failing because you're getting doubled over at the bottom of the squat or halfway up on the squat, then it makes it not such a good exercise for that purpose. And so the safety squat bar in general is not as challenging as a front squat in order to maintain position, but it's more challenging than a barbell for most people, and so in some ways it could be considered not as good of an exercise if the limiting factor is that. But it's like everything else, though. If you start it, if you're new to it, and you start it in a conservative spot, you know with a weight that you can do and do in good form, and then you load it progressively, but conservatively.

Andy Baker: 48:30

Everything that needs to get stronger is going to get stronger. I mean your legs are going to get stronger, you know, at the same pace as your. You know your abs and your upper back and all that stuff that needs to be strengthened in order to. So it's all going to get stronger if you train it. But at the beginning there may be a little bit of a learning curve for people, because the limiting factor is not the legs and the hips but instead is the you know, the upper back and the ability to hold that weight. So you know, that's just that's. That's one programming consideration.

Philip Pape: 48:57

Yeah, yeah. And then there are a million ways to vary these things like um, pause squats I learned from you with the safety squat, bar or plat squats. You can really hit the quads really hard with those. One question that comes up then okay, if you've got high bar, safety bar, low bar, they're kind of clustered together. They each have their not pros and cons, but different things that you need to adapt and get stronger with the different muscle groups, like we were talking about, to put a positive spin on it. And then you shift a little bit over and people are thinking okay, in the absence of low bar squats and again shout out to Tony for this question you still want maybe to develop the part of your hip musculature that's maybe not getting hit as much with the low bar that you have it out of your program. Would you then supplement with leg press, hack squats, box squats? What's your approach to that for folks who are just not low-barring anymore?

Andy Baker: 49:41

Yeah, it all just depends on the goal. I mean, certainly, the thing that the low bar really hits well and a lot of people. Part of the reason you know it gets hit hard is because this is where a lot of the injuries occur is the adductors, which know, which is on the end, the big meat on the inside of the leg that then wraps around to the back of the of the leg and kind of attaches on the, on the underside of the pelvis, in the in the rear. A lot of people mistake uh, what is an adductor injury for a hamstring strain? Most people cause it, they, they, it the adductors. You think of them on the inside of your leg, which they are, but they're hip extensors and they go around to the back and so adductors get hit hard in a low bar squat and that is one of the most common areas where you see a bad injury on low bar squat. That's the most common bad injury on a low bar squat is a torn adductor. They hurt like a motherfucker and they take forever to heal and so but that's, that tissue is being it's being stretched a lot at the bottom and it's it's being really heavily engaged in a lot of that hip drive element from a, from a low bar squat, is coming off of a rebound, not just of the hamstrings but off of the adapters, and so that's an element that you that you somewhat lose the with other squat variations. You know I'm not a big fan of like the adapter machine or something like that. So you're you know you're losing that If I was having somebody say strictly high bar, you know I would certainly make sure and I do some of this with athletes anyways I would make sure that we're doing things like RDLs or something like that. That really hits a lot of the of of hamstring. But you know for, for that really hits a lot of the of of hamstring. But you know for for most people, just for your average guy looking to, just I'm just trying to get stronger and build muscle mass. You know the mechanical differences between high bar and low bar. Are they different? Yes, are they that different where it's just going to affect the regular guy trying to get bigger and stronger? Not, not really.

Andy Baker: 51:35

You know I I took a picture. I think I put it on my Instagram picture or video. I'm not sure how long ago it was. It feels like maybe six months ago, probably been longer, and it was a picture of me at the bottom of a low bar squat and then another side-by-side a picture of me at the bottom of a high bar squat and you can barely tell the difference right. I mean, the the back angle is slightly different. You know the every the knee angle is slightly different, but they're not that different now they are more, they are more they're they're they're more different on certain people, certain body types may may exhibit more difference between high and low bar, but, like on me there, it wasn't that, it wasn't't that different. Now it's different enough, even though to the naked eye it doesn't look that like that much.

Andy Baker: 52:21

But I can still low bar squat a lot more than I can high bar squat, even though that I train high bar now more than I do low bar. But I so there is difference in the fact that you are can squat a lot more weight. You know it's a different movement You're bringing in and the reason you can squat more weight is because you're bringing in more muscle mass into the movement. So the low bar allows you to squat that heavier weight. But even all that being said, functionally carry over to everyday life. General leg size, that sort of thing. Are you losing that much between switching from one variation to the other? Not really If you're highly competitive in a given sport.

Andy Baker: 52:57

Are you competing in powerlifting? Are you missing something by not low barring? Yes, because the whole idea in that sport is to squat as much weight as humanly possible and low bar is going to allow you to do that. If you're bodybuilding, are you missing something by exclusively low bar squatting? Yes, most likely, if that's your only variation that you're going to have in your program for your legs is a low bar squat, you know. Are you potentially missing something? My answer for most people and again this varies by anthropometry, but for most people, yeah, you're going to be missing something.

Andy Baker: 53:32

Because I know, like, for me and I was never a prolific squatter best squats I ever did was, like you know, around 550. I think I did a triple with like 535 or something like that. So not not world-class at all by not even impressive by today's standards, but not weak, um, and it's, it's definitely stronger than average. Your average guy did squat in the gym, um, but visually, you know, my quads were not developed, you know not, not really, I mean, are they bigger than the average guy that doesn't squat? Yes, but were they for somebody who had spent that much time under the bar and could squat five, 50, you would think you would see a bigger set of quads than what I had. Um, what I did have was a gigantic ass and a gigantic set of adductors. So that's so. All of my leg mass was basically I always I've made that joke a bunch of times I was all ass and adductors, but quads not so developed.

Andy Baker: 54:24

Now a guy with a slightly different build may be receiving a little bit more of that stress, you know, in his quads and it's not like my quads didn't get work. I mean they still got sore and all that kind of stuff didn't get work. I mean they still got sore and all that kind of stuff. So I know that quads are getting work, but from just a purely aesthetic standpoint of you know, like if you were competing in bodybuilding or whatever, you know, I got much more development in my quads when I started switching to predominantly high bar and safety, squat bar, squatting and less low bar, which is to be expected. You know I wasn't that strong at them when I first started, which was another indicator that they maybe weren't doing all that much work in the low bar squat relative to the posterior chain, especially the adductors, them relative. Some of that's just technique, getting used to the technique and all that. But I'm a pretty good athlete so the technique changes aren't necessarily that hard for me in the gym.

Andy Baker: 55:26

For some people it's like reinventing the wheel. I mean, if you work with guys that just aren't good athletes and aren't good natural lifters, slight changes in technique it's like, oh my God, it's like you're teaching them to, you know, a whole new sport or something. Whereas a good natural athlete can switch between a high bar and a low bar squat, no problem. But athlete or guys that aren't good natural athletes have a harder time with that kind of stuff. And that's one of the reasons, like rip talked about in the in starting strength about one of the reasons if you go back to the early earlier in starting strength, about one of the reasons if you go back to the early earlier editions of starting strength, there were some variations of the novice program which had front squatting on the middle day. So you would, you know, squat regular back squat on Mondays and Fridays and then the middle day was like a front squat and the you know the idea was to, you know, to lessen the load a little bit or whatever.

Andy Baker: 56:13

But the kind of the challenge with that is that those are two fundamentally different movement patterns. One, you're trying to teach a guy to stay bent over and drive with his hips. The other, you're trying to teach a guy to stand straight up and, you know, come straight up with the legs and almost push the hips forward and you're bad natural athletes, which a lot of your clients are going to be. If you're a coach, you're just you're not going to be always working with very gifted people. It completely confuses the movement pattern in their head. Now, if you have a guy like a college athlete or something, that's not going to happen. They're not going to be confused. Their mechanics and their proprioceptive awareness and all that that's not going to be confusing to them.

Andy Baker: 56:49

To switch between a high bar and a low bar or a front squat All three of those could be taught at the same time and they'll immediately know how to differentiate between how to do.

Andy Baker: 56:56

All three of those could be taught at the same time and they'll immediately know how to differentiate between how to do all three of those. But if you take a less talented, less gifted person and you try to teach a multiple squat variations at the very beginning. It's like you're trying to teach them three different sports at once. It totally doesn't make sense in their head and they'll start trying to do low bar stuff on their front squats and front squats on their low bar and it's a mess in their head. Bar stuff on their front squats and front squats on their low bar, and it's just it's a mess in their head. So that's just something that you learn as a coach and something that Rip identified pretty early of let's not confuse the average non-athletic person with too many different cues for too many similar movements, Cause it just muddies the water for them a little bit.

Philip Pape: 57:30

Yeah, there's a lot there, eddie, a lot there, eddie, but yeah.

Andy Baker: 57:35

That's what I do, I do. I stream of consciousness.

Philip Pape: 57:37

So no, no, it's all good. I'm trying to figure out what to follow up on Cause I know you asked something.

Andy Baker: 57:42

I know you asked something about leg presses and hack squats, but I don't remember now.

Philip Pape: 57:45

You covered it, you covered it. You always cover it in your own way, which is good. So I feel like to listen to you. But but developing those movement patterns I mean the, the, the low bar squats technical enough, like you said, for a beginner to not have to throw in yet another thing to learn. And but then going back to the argument of variation, I mean again, you talked about not only strength but size. We know a lot of strong guys who don't necessarily have the most well-rounded physique, or maybe it's asymmetric, if you want to use that term, like you said, ass and adductors, and what are the things you work with when you coach and in the club and everything else is the everyday Joe who wants to be strong but also look good. Yeah, there are guys who want to push their lifts. We also want to, you know, look healthy and have decent physique.

Andy Baker: 58:26

Yeah, I just call it. You know, small B bodybuilders you know, not competitive, not not up on stage with the spray tan and all that, but basically training for as much muscle mass you know as possible so that it to maximize their, their physique, for their, for their genetics, within reason.

Philip Pape: 58:43

Right, which closes the loop on the whole discussion of squatting being one, one type being superior or not. It really depends. And, like you said, if you're a power lifter, olympic lifter or something, it's going to be one thing, something that's going to be one thing. If you're an everyday guy that's trying to be well-rounded, enjoy the variety. Like I think there's a fun, you know, mental aspect to getting to try all of these things. Um, and even, you know, using blocks and periods to kind of go through one. You know, if you want to do five, three, one and stick with one lift for a while but then vary the reps, great. Then you go to the bodybuilding for a while. Maybe try that. You know it's good stuff. Andy, I know we don't have a lot of time left. Are you open to some rapid fire questions about this topic? And by rapid fire we can keep the answers a little shorter. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's fine, I'll try to time myself.

Andy Baker: 59:24

No, no, no, it's cool. The problem is is, once a thought gets into my head, if I don't say it, I'll lose it.

Philip Pape: 59:38

It doesn't come to say so all right. So what's the most underrated variation of squat in your opinion?

Andy Baker: 59:44

Oh, you know what I'm going to say here? The 14 inch camber bar squat. Okay, the rackable camber bar for that. So, that's the, the, the curved. No, no, no, that's like I call that the. Well, yeah, different people call it. That's like a Buffalo bar, which is like the, the, the Duffalo bar, whatever they call it, like the the curved bar, where the the it's the 14 inches the weights are basically sitting at, like hip level um, when you're standing there.

Andy Baker: 1:00:15

That is a hard version, but that is a um. That is a great version to squat with. Um. I think it's very underrated for quad development and the reason I say that is because it's similar to a front squat, which is it doesn't look anything like a front squat but the weight tends to swing out a little bit in front of you, kind of like where the bar would sit if you were front squatting it. You have to keep a more vertical torso and you can't really hip drive on that. You can cheat a little hip drive into a like.

Andy Baker: 1:00:48

So a guy that's, let's say, just trying to work his quads right, I little hip drive into a high like. So a guy that's, let's say, just trying to work his quads right I have to watch this because of my bill. When I'm just trying to really work my quads, when I'm not trying to, there's a difference between working your quads and trying to squat a heavy weight right. So when I'm trying to squat a heavy weight, I'm going to introduce techniques and squat with leverages that allow me to squat the most weight. So that's going to be low bar and I'm going to introduce a lot of hip drive into that movement. If I'm trying to work my quads, I'm going to high bar or safety squat bar or camber bar or something like that and I'm going to intentionally try to reduce the amount of hip drive that I get into that movement, because that is the reason you hip drive is to recruit hamstrings and glutes and such into the movement and I'm trying to not do that.

Andy Baker: 1:01:30

The camber bar does not allow you to hip drive very much. What will happen if you try it is your hips keep going up but the bar just sits there. But you really have to drive straight up through the bar and you have to keep a more vertical torso, kind of like with a front squat. But where the bar sits it's so much more comfortable. It's not like a front squat where the whole time you're fucking fighting that rack position. Or if you're doing it like I do with straps, you're battling with the straps or moving around. And if you don't have the mobility to do a really, really good front squat, then they're a challenge constantly because of the rack position and then it makes them not a great quad developer because the limiting factor is your just ability to hold the weight, whereas the Cambridge bar doesn't have that. It's very, very comfortable to hold.

Andy Baker: 1:02:16

People talk about the instability of it and all that, but I think that I haven't really. Unless you're using shitty form or whatever, the weight doesn't really swing that much. So it does sit comfortably on your back, but it keeps a lot of pressure just on the quads. And every time I do that movement which is not very often, because the bar is a pain in the ass to go get it's 85 pounds. It's hard to carry across the gym and I'm lazy, so I often pick a variation based on how the rack is already set up. So it's like, if safety squat bar is sitting in the rack already on the J hooks, I'm like, oh, I'm safety squat bar squatting today. If the high bar, if the bar bell's in there, yeah, so I'm, I'm all about like, so it's, it's um, but every time I do that lift I'm like why don't I do this more, Like this, like I, like my quads are so pumped and particular where you'll feel it is right, in that area of the quads that is the hardest to develop for most people, which is that, that area, the lowest part of the quads.

Andy Baker: 1:03:20

Okay, the most, the most distal area of the quads, right above, like the knee, which is the part you know if you're training for aesthetics and you're wearing shorts or whatever. That's the part that's visible Right and like you can have big quads. But when that area is like you have turnip quads, so that the quads are really big up top by the hips but small above the knee, you can't really tell that you have jacked quads right. But when you get done with a set on that camber bar, that specific area of the quads is just lit up and I'm like I don't know why I don't do those more and I don't know why I don't prescribe them more to more of my clients that have access to that bar, because it's a very, very underrated tool for quad hypertrophy I think.

Philip Pape: 1:03:57

Well, it's been a while since I got a new bar, so because I've looked at the transformer bar for years, it's just so expensive and it probably gives you something similar, maybe with, depending on which.

Andy Baker: 1:04:12

The cambered bar is the easiest on the shoulders. It is absolutely the easiest bar to squat with on the shoulders because your hands are at your sides. Your hands sit at your side, so it's really, really easy.

Carol: 1:04:20

Before I started working with Philip, I had been trying to lose weight and was really struggling with consistency. But from the very beginning, philip took the time to listen to me and understand my goals. He taught me the importance of fueling my body with the right foods to optimize my training in the gym, and I lost 20 pounds. More importantly, I gained self-confidence. What sets Philip apart is the personal connection. He supported and encouraged me every step of the way. Connection he supported and encouraged me every step of the way. So if you're looking for a coach who cares about your journey as much as you do, I highly recommend Philip Pape.

Philip Pape: 1:05:00

So my next two questions. I think you answered them Best. Variation for quad development Sounds like you like that one for quads.

Andy Baker: 1:05:06

I can't say it's the best. It's definitely unique. It's definitely unique enough to potentially integrate for just for the just for its own sake. It's hard to say what's best, and that's true with any exercise, because you're always trying to find that sweet spot, kind of that nexus between load and the range of motion of the muscle that you're trying to target right, so you can stimulate a muscle really really well with certain exercises, but that just you just don't have the capacity to really load those exercises well, which makes them, you know, not as good.

Andy Baker: 1:05:42

It's kind of like a bench press versus a cable fly. Like a cable fly does it? Does it hit the chest really? Or let's see either. The better example is like an overhead press and a lateral raise. Right, a lateral raise is a good exercise, like it. It hits the side delts really, really hard. What's the problem with it? There You're going to have an inability to load that movement over time, right, and so you can only. So you need to find movements that both stimulate the muscle really really well but that also allow you to progressively load them into the heaviest weights, and so that can be a little bit.

Andy Baker: 1:06:18

That's like the low bar versus high bar thing, right? Yeah, do low bar allow you to use more weight? Yes, are your quads doing more work? Not necessarily Because, yes, you're using more weight weight, but not all of that weight is being done by the quads. You know you're doing. A good portion of that extra load that you're using is adductors, hamstrings, glutes, whatever. So for again, for the beginner, that's appropriate, but for a guy with a very narrow focus in that training session of I'm just trying to apply stress to grow my quads, you know is is a low bar better just because I can squat more weight? Not necessarily, because not all that weight's being done by the quads. You know it's being done with a lot of others. So maybe a high bar is better from that standpoint because, yes, it's using less weight but much more, a higher percentage of that weight, is actually being lifted with the quads.

Philip Pape: 1:07:09

Would you if you, if you had to rank just for quads being lifted with the quads? Would you if you, if you had to rank just for quads? You know, and would you even throw the leg press in there, or hack, squat, or you know a pause variation like which one would if you had to pick one? You know, hack squat.

Andy Baker: 1:07:22

Yeah, I mean of all variations are just like non-barbell stuff um squatting variations.

Philip Pape: 1:07:29

If I had a, if I had a gun to my head and they said A Texas six shooter.

Andy Baker: 1:07:36

You have to go into this bodybuilding contest in 12 weeks and your success or failure will be dependent on the size of your quads. I love these analogies because it will. If you can be honest with yourself, what would you do? I would live and die on the hack squat. Yeah, I think it has probably more more capacity than anything. Talking about strictly quad hypertrophy, it's, it's hard to beat a hack squat. You know there's some downsides to hack squats but, um, in terms of just strictly the hypertrophy of the quads, it's, there's nothing else involved in that movement, which is a downside for a strength athlete who actually does want other muscles involved in that movement low on the platform, narrow ass to grass, full range of motion, slight pause at the bottom is very, very hard to beat that and you can load them super, super heavy, um yep which.

Andy Baker: 1:08:40

So it's very hard to make an argument against a hack squat for just pure quad hypertrophy cool hack squat.

Philip Pape: 1:08:47

I'm saving up for one of those machines at home because those things are damn expensive they are and they and they're good, and don't get a cheap one because they're not worth it. Right, so right right, no, yeah, for sure. So what's the? What's the most common squat mistake that you see?

Andy Baker: 1:09:00

oh, not understanding that relationship between barbell and midfoot. You know they did they, and so they're making changes to the squat without understanding how the changes to the squat are affecting that relationship. And that's the one thing that really can't be compromised with. If you're talking about doing a good, you know there's areas for compromise in all different aspects of the barbell squat. But the one area that really doesn't have any room for compromise not if you're squatting heavy, if you're squatting light, I guess it doesn't probably doesn't matter as much, but that that that barbell has to remain over midfoot and a lot of the changes and manipulations that people make, they do so without understanding how those changes are going to affect that relationship. And so you need to understand the model of a squat from a big picture view and understanding.

Andy Baker: 1:09:51

Okay, when I move the bar up my back, how does that going to affect my torso, my torso angle? You know my back angle. If I move the bar lower on my back, how's that going to affect my, my back angle? You know that sort of thing and and you know, and so if you don't, if you don't understand those, then it may. It makes it harder to make technique adjustments to yourself. So I think that's. I still see that. I see that with some of the guys in the club sometimes, and I'm surprised that I see it because they're like well, I switched to high bar and what they mean by that is well, I just moved the bar two inches up my back, but I changed nothing else.

Andy Baker: 1:10:26

You tried to do everything else the same way and if you think of the balance point, of what is your midfoot, that's a very small area, and so if you're changing the bar on your back by several inches, you're changing that relationship significantly and on a very heavy weight.

Andy Baker: 1:10:44

You're going to find yourself in trouble If you've got the bar and high bar and you're keeping the exact same back angle and you're trying to hip drive out of the bottom and all that. So if you say I'm going to switch to high bar but then you change nothing else, you're kind of in trouble. And the same thing for a guy that wants to try low bar, that you know wants to switch to low bar and then tries to keep all the rest of the mechanics exactly the same, is he's going to have trouble with that squat. It's not going to feel natural to it.

Philip Pape: 1:11:09

Two things about this. First is, like I liked that your answer was a principle as opposed to a tactic, cause I think you know a lot of the answers about a common mistake would be foot stance or some specific tactic, and, like you said, it comes down to the principle from which all potential mistakes derive for every individual. But then, um, would you recommend some sort of like mind body exercise where and I'll tell you from personal experience, trying to find the right position for my shoulder in one session I remember trying like eight different positions for the bar and loading it just so I could see the difference, and that actually taught me a lot just in that moment, something I'd never done before about the differences. Would have you done something like that or recommend it?

Philip Pape: 1:11:49

in terms of, in terms of just like learning, just a learning learning thing, just to understand the midfoot out of the context of just one type of squat, but actually being able to translate it across the different ones, it kind of depends because people are different types of learners.

Andy Baker: 1:12:03

Okay, so some people are going to learn really well by seeing it. Like seeing the diagram, like what they have in starting strength, like seeing the seeing the diagram of the guy squatting from a profile and seeing the line drawn down from the end of the barbell, you know, to the mid point on his foot and seeing how a change in back angle would affect that. Like some people will see that and it will translate. Like they'll understand that and can get it to translate immediately. Like once they understand it intellectually, they can get it to translate on the gym floor. And some people may understand it intellectually and not get it to translate on the gym floor because they're smart but bad athletes. And some people can have it very roughly explained to them and can feel it when it's right and feel it when it's not right. And those are usually your good athletes. Your good athletes don't require a whole lot of instruction. They feel what's right. Naturally, they pick up things on their own with just verbal cues Okay, move the bar a little bit down your back, tighten up your shoulders. Now, when I want you to go down, I want you to lean over just a little bit more, and they understand exactly what that means and they do it perfectly with just a short verbal instruction. So it kind of depends on what type of learner you are. So a lot of I mean.

Andy Baker: 1:13:24

Eventually you have to learn by being under the bar and you have to learn what that feels like and you have to use enough load to where a mistake. You can feel it. If the weight is too light, a lot of people can't like. An empty bar is not enough weight for people to learn with because they don't feel the mistake. If you're a let's say you're a 225 squatter, you're likely not and you're saying I'm trying to work on technique with the. I'm going to go in the gym today with just the bar and I'm going to work on technique. That's not going to work because 45 pounds is not enough weight for you to feel your mistake. You need to feel how wrong it is when you lean over too much and get the bar out over your toes. You can take an empty bar and put the bar out over your toes and you're not going to feel it. You can maybe put 135 on your back and lean over too far and have the bar four to mid toes and you're not going to feel it. You can maybe put 135 on your back and lean over too far and have the bar four to midfoot and not feel it. So you got to have enough load. That's why we're always we're not just when we talk about like we kind of make fun of, like I'm going to have a technique day and I'm just going to do like really lightweight work on technique. We're not just shitting on it Like, oh, you're a pussy or it's not that. It's that. No, it really is not technique training.

Andy Baker: 1:14:35

If you're going with really lightweights, the weight, in order for the technique to be trained, it has to be done with a heavy enough weight for you to really integrate it and really understand what a good rep versus a bad rep feels like.

Andy Baker: 1:14:48

And that's the same in any sport. I mean, if you're trying to teach somebody how to hit, yeah, there's things that you can do, little drills you can do to work on certain things. But if you're not swinging that bat full speed, you know it's not going to be integrated into the mechanics. You know, because doing doing things slow in sport or doing things very light in the gym is not really technique work, because the technique involves the load. That's a part of it and it's, and that lifter barbell system and its relationship to the center of mass and and your balance point over your middle of the foot changes with load. You know. So that that center of mass is not the same at 135 as it is with 315. So you're not really working technique when you're going with very light weights. So it's, if you're going to work technique, it has to be heavy enough for you to actually feel a mistake yeah, fair point.

Philip Pape: 1:15:45

I only asked because it was an accidental thing that I had put myself in, because I couldn't get into a position right and and I was already fairly loaded up after because, like you said, during the warmup you don't even notice Right, and then it starts to hit you and you're like, wait a minute, this isn't quite going to work. Let me shift it. And I noticed from three different variations back to back. It was just a little revelation for me. I'm not, that's how I was curious about that but if, but of course you're going to get fatigued if it's loaded up too.

Andy Baker: 1:16:12

Right, that's true too. Yeah, and there is. I mean, there's always room for self-experimentation with that kind of stuff and you learn. I mean, dave Tate has this kind of philosophy and I somewhat agree with it. I definitely see his point and I somewhat disagree with it. But he's like everybody needs to work without a coach for two years.

Andy Baker: 1:16:35

And there's some value to that, because if you're just having somebody walk you through everything all the time, you kind of it's like think about it. Like when I'm driving somewhere, if I'm sitting shotgun and a buddy of mine or an uncle or somebody else is driving out and we're driving out to a hunting property, going out in the middle of nowhere, if I'm sitting shotgun I can never tell you how to get, how to get to where we're at. But if I'm driving myself, I'll remember where to go and where to turn and all that kind of stuff. And it's kind of the same principle of you know, when you're always the passenger which sometimes, as a client, you are because the coach is doing so much of the work and the thinking for you and he's telling you put your hands here, lean over this way, put your feet here, do this, do that. He's doing so much of the thinking for you and you're just doing it, which of course usually leads to better results in the short term.

Andy Baker: 1:17:28

But you're also not necessarily always learning why. Because I know me as a coach, I don't always explain why to all my clients. They're not necessarily interested all the time. So every time I give them a cue or a set of instructions, I don't always tell them. And this is why we're doing it right, because I got an hour with that person and it's like we got to just get the workout done and get out and they don't. Some of them care, some of them don't, and so it's kind of the same thing of like Dave's point of you know, it's not a bad idea for somebody to just train completely on their own for a number of years so that they can go through all that self-experimentation, even if maybe they don't get the best results. But they will learn some stuff better on their own by doing it on their own and then having it kind of fine-tuned with a coach.

Philip Pape: 1:18:11

Yeah, that's one way to put it, but I'm sure you've seen a situation where there's a lot of bad habits to break down, if it's been too long.

Andy Baker: 1:18:18

Yeah, and it depends. Again, it's one of those things where it depends. It depends on the person, and some people really need the coaching and they need the hand-holding and they won't figure it. They will never figure it out on their own, they just don't have the aptitude to do it. Just like I probably wouldn't figure out nuclear physics on my own right, I could probably you know what I'm saying. I could read every textbook in the world cover to cover and still not know. You know, not know anything. So it's like it's if you don't have the aptitude for something, you're probably not likely to do that well on your own without some coaching.

Philip Pape: 1:18:56

Yeah, and the whole thing about cues, that's an interesting one, because that's kind of the final thought I have here is when you talked about the mistake being people don't understand the relationship or don't take time to learn it, and then you talked about different learning styles. So you've got the on paper biomechanics and then you have trying it out. If somebody is at least starting just on their own and they haven't had a coach yet, what's maybe I don't know if it's a cue is the right thing to ask you about, but something that they should be thinking about tactically to make sure that they're tying it to the midfoot model. You know, cause just to say, well, put it over your midfoot isn't going to work for everyone.

Andy Baker: 1:19:29

No, it doesn't work. I mean, even with an experienced lifter, I don't ever say get over the midfoot.

Philip Pape: 1:19:35

Right, that's not the actual cue Right.

Andy Baker: 1:19:37

So I will tell them something to put them over the midfoot.

Andy Baker: 1:19:41

So I may say uh, you know, I may say something like you know you're on your toes, or something which they're usually not on their toes.

Andy Baker: 1:19:48

But I'll see, you know, I'll see their heels start to slightly lift off the ground right, so they're starting to carry too much weight on the balls of their feet which is going to shift everything forward of midfoot. So I'll say, you know, I may say back on the heels or get off your toes or whatever. And again, the thing with cueing and we talk about this in the seminars is it's cueing becomes a very intimate language between the coach and the client, and the same cue may not work for one person the way that it does for others. And that's part of your role as a coach of people is understanding. What word or phrase am I going to say to this person that effectively reminds them? And it doesn't matter what, it is right. So it's just like when you're trying to teach people to set their back on a deadlift. With some people you say set your back harder. The next person you say lift your chest more. You're trying to get two people to do the same, but for the one person, telling them to set their back doesn't cue anything. So you tell them to lift their chest and it does. But then for the next guy, if you tell them to lift their chest, they so you tell them to lift their chest and it does. But then for the next guy, if you tell them to lift their chest, they don't set their back, they drop their hips. So you don't use that cue with that guy, but you do use it for the other guy. So you're trying to get the same result, which is, I'm trying to get both of those guys to flatten their back out, but I'm using two different phrases between each lifter because I know, for whatever reason, one clicks with one guy and not the other guy. So the same thing would work on a squat when you're trying to get somebody back over, say midfoot or whatever it might say.

Andy Baker: 1:21:16

I may tell a guy you can get back on your heels. Well, I don't really want him on his heels, I want him off of his toes, right, and some people bond better to negative versus positive. So get off your toes versus get on your heels. One's a positive, positive, one's a negative. One is stop doing this, the other is start doing this right. So some people interpret positive versus negative a little bit differently. You know it may be.

Andy Baker: 1:21:43

It may be if he's leaning over too much, if his back angle is starting to drift too far down, I may tell him chest up, you know that's getting him over midfoot. You know, because I don't want to, I don't want the bar him leaning over too much more to where the bar starts to drift forward to midfoot. So I'm telling him chest up more to get the barbell back centered over midfoot. So the chest up cue is a midfoot cue, it's just. I'm not telling him get over midfoot because it's not necessarily specific enough. It's too, it's too zoomed out. You need something more specific in that instance to get him midfoot.

Andy Baker: 1:22:17

So, um, and not every cue is about getting them onto the midfoot. There's other things. You can fuck up in a squat, you know, knees out. Knees out can get people back over midfoot.

Andy Baker: 1:22:27

Because if a guy's knees are drifting forward too much as they squat down or they're having a lot of knee slide at the bottom, that will pull that whole lifter barbell system forward a little bit and can get them off the midfoot.

Andy Baker: 1:22:39

So I may cue them knees out more.

Andy Baker: 1:22:41

You know I want them to shove their knees out more as they're descending and, and that cue is and knees out fixes a number of different things sometimes, but one of the things it may do is help them get back over midfoot better. So that cue it's just I'm chewing these out in order to help get them back over midfoot, among maybe a couple of other things too. But that's so. You just have to find the language between you and your lifter as a coach that's going to resonate with them in real time, and that's really all that queing is is what is real time instruction that I can give them while they're performing the movement that gets them to do what I want them to do under the bar. And if I said purple monkey dishwasher and that got them to shove their knees out and lift their chest up, then that's a good cue, right? So it doesn't matter what the cue is. As long as the lifter understands what that is and does what I want them to do in order to correct the form, then it doesn't matter.

Philip Pape: 1:23:40

Yeah, and I think it's powerful because when I learned starting strength I did it from the book. I did it on my own for several months. Then I went to see a starting strength coach here, cody Anino, here in Connecticut. Starting strength coach here, cody Anino, here in Connecticut. And within one hour you know he fixed, you know, 90% of what I was doing wrong. Right, just because of having that ability for an expert to say here's what I'm seeing and here's, here's the cue you need. You think you can cue yourself and watch yourself on video and it's just there's a block for a lot of us in getting that right until you have that expert or you join the barbell club and you post a form video and have andy uh say say exactly what he's seeing. He'll get you fixed up and it's never too late.

Andy Baker: 1:24:15

Sometimes you get the coaching. I was at a. I remember back in 2000 I don't know when it was, I was just fresh out of the military, but it was sort of in 2007 or something like that and I, my deadlift was around like 500 and I'd kind of been stuck around like in that 500 range for a long time. And I did like a 10 minute coaching session with Rip and Josh Wells in the back of a gym. They were doing a. They were with CrossFit.

Andy Baker: 1:24:42

Rip was with CrossFit still at the time and he was doing a seminar there and he had invited me out just to attend and sit in on the, on the, the lecture and such.

Andy Baker: 1:24:52

And then during like the lunchtime workout, like where the coaches lift and stuff, I I got in a workout and, um, I was doing my deadlifts and him and one of the staff coaches got me by Josh Wells, who's an excellent coach here at Houston actually, to walked over and they were watching me deadlift and I remember I don't even remember what the cue was, but Rip was, like you know, in his here do this, do this, do this, okay, pull, pull, another rep.

Andy Baker: 1:25:15

And I did it and 500 went up easy, whereas before it was like kind of a max effort. And then I threw on like 525, 530 and it popped right up. That's one little simple cue by a good coach like a Rip or a Josh Wells on a guy that's not elite but already at 500 deadlift that PR'd my lift by 25 pounds right there on the spot. So it's little things like that that even an experienced lifter who more or less knows what they're doing is not seeing in themselves or feeling themselves that a trained eye can see and fix. Right there in the moment, and in some cases instantly, you know, set a 25 pound PR.

Philip Pape: 1:25:59

If you're watching or listening, listen to what Andy has to say here, because you will be a better lifter if you take his advice. So I know we talked a lot about squatting. Is there anything else we should have covered that you're like yeah, I got to get this off my chest about squats?

Andy Baker: 1:26:16

No, not really. You know, I would just tell people to in general about their training. Kind of the way this whole conversation and this whole podcast episode started is just relax, you know, like have fun with it. Like if you can't do, yeah, if you can't do exactly what you want to do, like just relax, make small changes and then go for it as hard as you can from there and chill out about it and don't turn like there's enough stress in life where we don't need to turn our training into another form of stress. So just chill out.

Philip Pape: 1:26:43

True, it's true. And if you're like type a uptight guy like I am, it's all the more that you need to relax and chill out, cause it will definitely help's most of the guys I'm talking to I mean, that's who a lot of my clients are, and I'm not that way, they're the ones who listen to podcasts too.

Andy Baker: 1:26:56

And I'm not that way. Yeah, a type A guy is the one that's going to tune into a podcast on squat mechanics, like you know what I mean, and that's it's like not my personality, but it's written in a book or whatever drives them nuts and they wind up sucking a lot of the enjoyment out of the process but also, I think, sucking some of the results out of the process too. One of the things look around at some of the guys that are really really strong out there. Social media is not always the best place to gather information, but a lot of them are having. If you kind of watch it, just it appears from the outside they're having a lot of fun with their training. You know, and I don't think it's just because they're awesome lifters. I think the fact that they're having fun with the training sessions are just nothing but one big giant source of anxiety and stress for you. How good are you really going to be?

Philip Pape: 1:27:55

100%, 100%. Where's the live by man? Yeah, all right, where do you? I think I'm going to send people to the barbell club if you're good with that, but is there anyone else who want people to hit you up?

Andy Baker: 1:28:04

Yeah Well, to find the barbell club or one-on-one coaching or training templates or whatever else. It's all there at andybakercom. You can find everything from there.

Philip Pape: 1:28:23

All right, and those who follow me also, if you have questions about it, I'm in the club and I know a bunch of guys in there, so if you want to know what it's about, reach out Andy. Thanks again, man. It's always a pleasure. We get deep into some of this stuff and people need to know to just chillax, have fun with their training squat, however, it makes sense. There's no right, there's no wrong. Just train and get better over time, that's right. Thanks for coming on, man. All right, man, thanks, appreciate it.

The ONLY Strength Standard You Need to Progress Forever (Control Systems) | Ep 282

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Stop chasing arbitrary strength standards and learn why progressive overload is the only metric that matters for continuous progress.

Discover how engineering Control Systems reveal the three key components that regulate your training adaptation, and why understanding them transforms your approach to building strength. 

Whether you're plateaued or just starting out, this framework will help you create sustainable progress without burnout.

Main Takeaways:

• Your body operates like a control system with built-in feedback loops

• Three components (PID control) determine training adaptation

• Progressive overload requires strategic adjustments based on data

• Small, consistent changes beat random progress chasing

Timestamps:

0:01 - Why arbitrary strength standards hold you back
2:53 - Control systems and progressive overload
8:01 - Understanding PID control for training
10:22 - Proportional control: Immediate response
13:15 - Integral control: Accumulated training effects
14:35 - Derivative control: Rate of adaptation
16:48 - Practical metrics to track
20:25 - Creating a sustainable feedback loop 

The Strength Standard That Actually Matters for Lifters

Too many lifters chase arbitrary strength standards, thinking they need to squat twice their body weight or bench two plates per side to be “strong.” But true progress isn’t about hitting some magic number—it’s about optimizing your body's adaptation process.

In this episode, we take an engineering-based approach to strength training by looking at progressive overload as a control system. When you understand how feedback loops drive long-term strength, you’ll stop spinning your wheels, avoid unnecessary plateaus, and set yourself up for consistent gains.

Why Strength Standards Are Misleading

Strength standards exist as general benchmarks, but they don’t tell you anything about your personal progress.

• Some lifters progress quickly, while others take years to hit certain numbers

• Body weight, limb length, and experience all impact how much you can lift

• Chasing external numbers without respecting your own feedback loop leads to frustration, injuries, or plateaus

Instead of trying to match someone else’s numbers, focus on what your body is telling you and adjust training accordingly.

Strength Training Is a Control System

In engineering, a control system is a feedback loop that continuously adjusts to reach a goal—like how your car’s cruise control maintains speed or how a thermostat keeps your house at the right temperature.

Your body operates the same way with strength training:

1. You apply a stimulus (lifting weights)

2. Your body adapts by building stronger muscles and neural pathways

3. You track progress and adjust the load accordingly

If you overload too fast (slamming the gas pedal instead of smoothly increasing speed), your system breaks down—bad form, stalled lifts, or even injuries.

The Three Components of Training Adaptation

To make progressive overload work efficiently, we can break it down into three key principles inspired by PID control systems (proportional, integral, and derivative control).

1. Proportional control: Small, gradual increases

Your body responds proportionally to the challenge you give it. If you add weight too fast, you’ll exceed your ability to adapt and stall out.

Instead, make small, strategic jumps based on what your body can handle:

• Beginner lifters: Increase weight each session, ideally by 2.5–5 lbs

• Intermediate lifters: Progress may be slower, so use microplates (e.g., 1.25 lb increments)

• Advanced lifters: Focus on weekly or monthly increases, plus other overload methods like more reps or volume

2. Integral control: Tracking fatigue and accumulated volume

Your body doesn’t just respond to today’s workout—it remembers the total workload from the past weeks and months.

Track these three key variables:

• Volume per exercise (sets × reps × weight)

• Total workload per muscle group

• Progression over time (across a 4–6 week cycle)

If fatigue is building faster than adaptation, you might be doing too much volume too soon and need to scale back.

3. Derivative control: Managing fatigue and recovery

Your rate of progress matters just as much as progress itself. If you push too hard too fast, fatigue builds up and stalls your progress.

Signs you need a deload or adjustment:

• Performance plateauing or declining

• Feeling drained even after rest days

• Warm-up sets feeling harder than usual

• Decreased motivation to train

The key is to preemptively manage recovery, not just react when things break down. Planned resets or deloads every 4–6 weeks keep your system running efficiently.

How to Apply This for Long-Term Gains

Forget arbitrary strength standards. Instead, create a feedback-driven system that maximizes your progress.

1. Track your performance: Log your lifts, reps, and volume so you have real data to act on

2. Make small, measured increases: Avoid ego lifting and jump weight only when your body is ready

3. Monitor biofeedback: Sleep, energy, and soreness tell you when to push or pull back

4. Use strategic recovery periods: Deloads and training waves prevent burnout and injury

5. Think long-term: Your training is a process, not a race—play the long game and build sustainable strength

Final Thoughts

Strength isn’t about hitting some number on a chart. It’s about understanding how your body adapts and managing that process like an engineer. If you get your progressive overload system dialed in, you’ll be able to make gains for years—without burning out or stalling.

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Transcript

Philip Pape: 0:01

Are you chasing arbitrary strength standards, constantly comparing yourself to what others can lift? Maybe you're frustrated that your squat still isn't at body weight or your bench press hasn't hit two plates yet. Here's what most lifters miss that true strength development works just like a control system. It's not about hitting random numbers. It's about creating the right feedback loop for continuous progress. Today, we're talking about why progressive overload is the only strength standard you'll ever need and how understanding control systems will transform your training forever.

Philip Pape: 0:44

Welcome to Wits and Weights, the show that helps you build a strong, healthy physique using evidence, engineering and efficiency. I'm your host, philip Pape, and today we're talking about the most important principle in strength training, the one from which all others derive progressive overload, or what some people like to call progressive loading, because technically you're not overloading, but that's a different topic and we're going to look at this progressive overload or what some people like to call progressive loading because technically you're not overloading, but that's a different topic and we're going to look at this through the lens of engineering control systems. I'm surprised. I have never talked about control systems before, but here we are. A control system is a feedback mechanism that helps something, improve or maintain stability, like, for example, for example, the speed on your cruise control in your car right. Or another one I like to talk about is your thermostat Keeping your house at the perfect temperature. It's always feeding back based on what the actual temperature is, and your body has a similar system for adapting to training. And if you can understand that and tie it to this concept, it is kind of going to revolutionize how you think to getting stronger.

Philip Pape: 1:48

Now, before we get in to this episode, if you want to experience a program that applies this and all of our other principles for nutrition training mindset with scientific precision I'm just kidding, not that scientific, there's a little bit of flex in there I want you to consider joining Wits and Weights Physique University. We now have, as of the end of February, going into March, we're going to have our first monthly challenge. Every single month we're going to have a challenge in the group in addition to the custom nutrition plans, workouts, tracking tools, courses, the supportive community check-ins all of that to help you reach your strength and physique goals faster than ever. So if you want to try it free for 14 days and get your first challenge at absolutely no cost, use the special link in my show notes. That is the only way to get it. You have to click the link in the show notes to join for free for the first 14 days, wits and Weights Physique University and get to try the first challenge at no cost, and I will be unveiling what that challenge is soon. But you can join at no cost. Reach out to me if you have questions.

Philip Pape: 2:53

And now I want to get into today's topic, which is progressive overload, and we're going to cover it from a different perspective. First we're going to talk about control systems, because control systems are a really good analogy to our bodies in the context of strength training. Then we'll talk about the three components that regulate your training adaptation, and then how to apply this framework to your own training so you can get some consistent progress. Now I've talked about progressive overload before. I usually approach it in the more traditional sense, talking about increasing your weight and your reps and all of that. But today is going to be a different angle that I think you're going to appreciate.

Philip Pape: 3:31

So let's talk about control systems. These are actually everywhere in engineering. They're everywhere in your life. You don't even realize they're there. They monitor outputs, they compare them to a desired target and then they make adjustments and anything run by a computer today pretty much has a control system and that's how things can run optimally and automatically. So I mentioned the cruise control in the intro your car's cruise control very common system that we're all familiar with. It is measuring your speed on the road, it compares it to your target speed and then it adjusts the throttle. Now, of course, if you're driving a Tesla or something that has automatic driving, that is a much more advanced control system that's using sensors and cameras and everything to keep you on the road. But just back to the cruise control, you know if you go uphill it's just going to add more gas. If you go downhill, it eases off and it does it in a very smooth way. Well, generally it does. It's not jerky, it's not like over responsive. The system's always working to maintain that perfect speed.

Philip Pape: 4:29

Well, your body works the same way when it comes to building strength. When you lift weights, you create a stimulus. Your body then responds by adapting. It builds stronger muscles and more efficient neural pathways. Right, it's both neuromuscular as well as physical muscular. But here's where most lifters go wrong. They focus on arbitrary numbers instead of trying to optimize the feedback loop so that they can keep making progress.

Philip Pape: 4:55

Whether you want to call it ego lifting or just a lack of understanding very common problem, I see. If I give you a concrete example. All right, let's say you're squatting 225 pounds and then you try to jump straight to 275 pounds. What usually happens? Your system gets overloaded, your form breaks down, your reps get sloppy, you risk injury. And it doesn't even have to be that big of a jump. You may take a 10 pound jump and it's too big. It's one of the most common reasons people fail their reps common reasons people fail their reps. Then they say, hey, philip, this isn't working. Should I do a reset or take a deload? I'm like, no, you just jumped too much and you would have known not to do that if you had taken your history and your data into account. But we'll get back to that. So if you jump more than you can handle, that'd be like again in the car analogy you're slamming the accelerator instead of letting the cruise control make the smooth adjustments. And remember when you do that your car can't quite get there and then it may eventually get there, but it's basically doing it in a very jerky way that taxes the engine, your body, like a good control system needs time to process the feedback and then adapt. I mean Same idea Now progressive overload, which is the gradual increase in training demands. That's all that is right.

Philip Pape: 6:10

It's not that your body is on its own just deciding to get stronger. It is that you are pushing it to its limit and it's getting stronger. And it works just like any other well-tuned control system. You provide a stimulus, you measure the response and you make calculated adjustments. And too many lifters get caught up chasing numbers. I need to squat 315, or my buddy squats 315,. I'm only squatting 275, so I'm weak. But yeah, maybe for you you're not. I should be benching twice my body weight. Whatever. You know these strength standards and I've been asked many times before like what is considered strong? Well, it's all relative to you. Some people are super strong right out of the gate. Some people are not. Some people actually get stronger, faster than other people, and so if we use arbitrary standards, they are going to ignore how your unique system responds.

Philip Pape: 7:00

Think again about homeostasis, your body's natural tendency to maintain balance. When you train, you are disrupting that balance and then your body is going to adapt to handle future disruptions better. That's one way to put it. Another way to put it is you are shifting your homeostasis, your capacity, your peak. You're shifting it outward, you're shifting it upward and it's this beautiful feedback loop that allows you to become a different person physically, but only if you respect how the system works and lean into it properly. So that gets me to something very it's going to sound a little bit technical.

Philip Pape: 7:36

It's something we use in control systems and it's called a PID controller. I'm going to use this as an analogy for the three components of training control, but you'll I'll go back and forth so you know what I'm talking about. So don't get lost in the terminology. It's a pid controller, proportional integral derivative. Again, you don't have to know exactly what those means mean and I'm going to give you a very um kind of simplified definition of those. So it might sound complex, but your body's response to training follows the same pattern.

Philip Pape: 8:01

Let's let's just break it down First. The P. So remember PID proportional integral derivative. The P is proportional control. This is your body's immediate response to a training stimulus, like right in the moment when you lift a weight. That's challenging but manageable, meaning you can actually do it, and that includes for all the reps. So that means if you're doing a set of five, that means you lift a weight that you can get for a set of five and it's not like a max, all-out grindy set.

Philip Pape: 8:29

Your body then responds proportionally proportional. It recruits the right amount of muscle fibers, it helps you maintain proper form, right Balance, stability, all that and it helps you complete the movement successfully. A lot of this is neuromuscular. A lot of this is based on movement patterns. This is why having enough reps and enough practice and frequency is important. But the point is your body will proportionally respond.

Philip Pape: 8:55

If you, however, try to go too heavy, too fast, the system gets unstable. You're going to fail your reps or your form is going to break down. That could be the potential for injury. Your nervous system also gets overwhelmed, especially on really big lifts like deadlifts. But if you increase it just the right amount, right, just that five pounds on your bench press, or maybe it's two pounds with microplates depends on where you are your body's going to adapt perfectly. There's a nice sweet spot. It's not super wide, but it's also not so precise. You have to be down to a decimal point or anything like that. And again, I've seen this countless times with clients those who try to force huge jumps in weight inevitably are going to plateau. I don't even call it a plateau, I just it's like um, they, they feel like the program's wrong for them or it's not the right weight or not the right lift or whatever, and they immediately go to the doom and gloom. All these potential issues and, granted, if you're not sleeping enough, you're not eating enough, those could definitely be the issues. But sometimes it's just you're not increasing by the right amount or you're not taking enough rest period and you're just over. It's not only progressive overload, it's progressive way overload, okay. But if you respect this proportional ability for your body to meet the demand only up to its limits, right, and getting into that sweet spot with those small calculated increases, now you could build strength consistently for years on end. I mean years and years. So that's proportional control. Then we have integral control Remember PID proportional, integral, derivative. So integral control.

Philip Pape: 10:22

This is really looking at history. It's looking at the accumulated training over time, not like your injury history or your training or diet history over the years. This is more of the recent, like the last few days or last few weeks of training, and this is also why tracking your volume and your progression and what you're lifting and how much you're lifting really matters a lot. Okay, your body, just you know it doesn't just respond to what you're doing today. It kind of remembers the workload that you've handled over the past few days, weeks, even months. And so if you brought me someone and said, hey, write a program for them, I wouldn't know what is optimal for them unless I talk to them about what they've done recently, right? Or I would have to get them into a kind of prep, easy kind of prep phase for a few weeks just to work all the fatigue out of their system. Actually, there's a good analogy when we talk about dieting and prepping for fat loss, kind of getting the food-related calorie deficit stress out of your system similar idea. So your body kind of remembers this kind of like. You know it's like your bank account. I mean, you know, if you put $1,000 in the bank today, that's great, but if you've spent so much money the last six months that you're in a million dollars of debt, that thousand dollars isn't going to do much. So I don't know how great of analogy that was, but it came to mind. And back to training.

Philip Pape: 11:46

This is where the program, a lot of programs themselves, like in isolation, actually fall short because it's all about this individual workout, right? Hey, come buy my latest workout, like I have a workout for you. Or follow this workout on YouTube and it just says just jump right in, it's not personalized, it doesn't count for history. If, if you're going to buy a program from somebody, um, take, take my coach, andy Baker, for example. He sells templates on his, on his website, but when you download one of those templates, it's this like 20 page PDF explaining the principles behind it, and there's actually a lot of work you have to do to make it work for you. And this is not a criticism on Andy, he wouldn't mind me saying this. It's because he doesn't know where you started from and you need to figure that out as you get into the program. He's not just going to say, hey, do these exercises these days and you're done. Anybody can do that with chat GPT today. That's going to fall short and you're done. Anybody can do that with chat GPT today. That's going to fall short.

Philip Pape: 12:40

Um, the bigger picture is are you gradually increasing your volume or have you gone with too much volume recently? Are you balancing intensity and volume over different exercises, days and weeks, right, Because your body knows this, even if your mind doesn't realize it, and that's why you need um, well, I guess I'm going to get, I'm going to get to the third piece now when I talk about deloads. But that's why you have to be aware of your history when you program. So the last part is derivative control. So remember PID proportional, integral derivative Derivative control is the rate of change, so that's how quickly you're progressing or accumulating fatigue, right.

Philip Pape: 13:15

And this is why we need either deloads or we need a program that naturally incorporates resets or variety or undulation or waves or whatever it is. It doesn't have to be complicated Some are more complicated than others Some sort of cycling that is in there where you don't even need a deload necessarily, right, some programs you just design it that way and then six weeks and then you have a deload. Others it's kind of built in. You know, like I'm following a program that's based on a base strength and then peak strength, and every third week you reset slightly, but the reset is heavier than three weeks before that. So it's kind of a natural deload.

Philip Pape: 13:55

Your body has limits on how fast it can adapt, so if you're pushing too hard, too fast and the system starts to get too fatigued, you start breaking down. That's where you're going to hit a wall and you're going to keep hitting a wall until you somehow release all that tension and go at the right rate of change. So both the history of it how much have you accumulated and then also now what we're talking about is the rate of change, how fast and how hard you're going as you work through this are really important. It's like balancing all of this out is critical. So now, how do we use this knowledge to build your real-world strength, to become as strong as possible, to keep doing it without injury, to keep going and being consistent?

Philip Pape: 14:35

The first thing is to forget arbitrary strength standards. Don't worry about it, stop asking about it, stop worrying about absolute numbers and instead create a system that respects how your body actually adapts to training and you may respond differently than someone else to a certain amount of volume. You may respond differently when you're in fat loss versus when you're not, or when you're eating certain foods versus not, when you're training fasted or not, how much cardio or sports or other things you're doing outside of the lifting sessions. So, going back to our three components, if we want to apply these to real life. Let's start with proportional control. This means you're going to make small, consistent increases in either load that's, the weight on the bar and or reps. So if you're bench pressing 185 for three sets of five, you may not want to jump to 215 next week or next session. Whatever program you're following. You may want to go from 185 to 190. And if you've been doing that for a while and it's getting really, really hard, you might want to go from 190 to 192 and a half.

Philip Pape: 15:40

This is where microplates are helpful and a lot of people somehow don't even realize they exist. I shouldn't say it that way. That sounds patronizing. I should not have said that, but what I mean is a lot of people. You could sense some of my frustration here and how many times this comes up. For those of my clients listening who have benefited from me sharing microplates, who didn't know this before, I apologize if that comes across as insulting, but I guess I'm just saying I'm surprised that it's not part of the common lexicon, like so many other things.

Philip Pape: 16:10

So look for microplates which include both small fractional plates for your barbell but also plates that can go on dumbbells, and then that way you can progress in the right levels and then, as you get closer and closer to your limit, until you reduce the frequency. In other words, if you're squatting three days a week, you can only go up so so much doing that before you have to now increase once a week, right. Even if you're squatting three times a week, you may only go up once a week, for example, right. So it's got to depend on what level of training you're at. So that's proportional controls, those small, consistent increases.

Philip Pape: 16:48

If you're a beginner, I definitely love focusing on increasing load, and then, as you become more advanced, you can learn how to increase on reps as well, or back and forth load reps, depending on what you're working on. For integral control remember, this is the one based on accumulated fatigue you're going to want to track three metrics. The first one is your volume per exercise. This is sets times reps. It could be times weight as well, so that's called tonnage, but even sets times reps, just the volume per exercise, okay. And then number two is the volume per muscle group, because that way you can see how many sets you're doing per muscle group, which will also tell you maybe you're not doing enough, depending on what your goals are and then your overall training load across your what some people call mesocycle or a block like a four to six week block. What's your overall load? And there's some cool apps that do this as well.

Philip Pape: 17:42

If you're into that, like I use Boostcamp. You could find a link to that below in the show notes. But with Boostcamp you could actually see a graph of your volume over time. So the program I'm following you'll see it go up for three weeks and then drop, and then go up for three weeks and drop. So that can be really helpful for those who are trying to make sure that you're in the sweet spot. Now, if you're following a, if you have a personal trainer or you're following a really good coach or using one of the programs like that are already in Boost Camp, for example they're probably already set up to give you a reasonable volume.

Philip Pape: 18:13

But you need to know hey, I'm feeling really fatigued, do I have too much volume? Well, you don't know that unless you track it, and a lot of people don't track this stuff. I'll tell you, even in my lifting community, with all the buddies that lift, that I know a lot of them don't really think about volume. A lot of them are following lower volume programs anyway. You may not have enough volume, though, for what you're trying to achieve, or you may have too much, and it depends on what phase you're into. You may have to drop the volume, for example. So tracking, that's the only way you're going to know, right, that you're progressively overloading without overwhelming your system.

Philip Pape: 18:47

And then the last piece, the derivative control. This is more. How do you know, do you need recovery or deload, unless you've already built it in, which I talked about earlier, which is a really smart strategy. Just build it in and be proactive. But I want you to be tracking your biofeedback. How's your sleep quality? How is your recovery? I mean, are your warmup sets feeling smooth? Are you feeling kind of wiped out right from the beginning? Is your overall performance trending up or down? How is your motivation? How is your energy right? All of that is important and, again, it may indicate a problem with your diet, with your carbs, with your meal timing, something else like with your sleep, with your stress. But as long as you have the information, you can then start digging into the why behind them. And these indicators are great because they tell you whether you're adapting optimally or you need to adjust something. Of course you can use aura rings, you can use your Apple Watch, and those all have different measures of stress and resilience. It's all good stuff, just make sure you're correlating it with what you're doing.

Philip Pape: 19:40

So the key to all of this? To progressive overload and notice. I'm just talking principles here. This one principle is going to translate to everything else. It is even more important than, for example, mechanical tension. Right, we talk about mechanical tension being the driver of hypertrophy and muscle mass, but I've never seen a really good lifter not also progress by virtue of using mechanical tension. Thus it's sort of a secondary principle, if you will. As long as you're progressing, that tells you you're doing the right things. Now you may have to uncover what things you need to do right to get to proper progressive overload. That's a whole different deep dive. So the sustainable feedback loop is pretty cool once you've implemented it. It makes you a lifter, it makes you confident, it helps you get progress.

Philip Pape: 20:25

So I have a client who made progress on a beginning style three by five style program, kind of like starting strength with some modifications right, and she made progress for a while and then she started to move into an intermediate program and started to stall a little bit and get frustrated and asked her are you progressing on all of your accessory movements? She's like, yeah, all of that's coming straight up. I said, okay, then there's something going on with the main lifts in one of these three areas we're talking about here that we're off on. We're either not increasing the right levels right, we we are, we have too much fatigue. I don't think that's the issue in this case, but you know, could always be that I think it's more the proportional control. We're not necessarily going up in the right levels. Something's off in the way we're progressing. If she's able to progress all this other stuff, you know it could be a form issue or something as well. All right, so you know.

Philip Pape: 21:11

What do you do here for this system? Just to recap, you're going to monitor performance through consistent tracking, so you have the data to act on. You're going to make small strategic adjustments based on your data. You're going to have adequate recovery between training sessions, between sets and across your whole block of training and you're going to repeat this while gradually increasing demands over time as your capacity increases and then, when all of this works well, you're going to notice consistent strength gains without plateaus. They're going to be very infrequent and usually for other reasons, or usually because you've just gone, you've overreached just a little bit. You're going to have better recovery between sessions. You're probably going to have fewer aches and pains, lower likelihood of injury and more predictable progress, like you can forecast.

Philip Pape: 21:55

Okay, six months. I want to. I want my deadlift to be here and I know I have a pretty good confidence I can get there now that I've gotten a predictable process in place. And that's how you build lasting strength without burnout or injury. Right, it's not as exciting as chasing big numbers every session, but it's far more effective and efficient in the long run. That's what we're all about, right?

Philip Pape: 22:16

What's what's fascinating about all this is, once you understand this control your body is a control system. It has these feedback loops you realize that progressive overload really isn't about just adding weight to the bar. Right, it's actually about optimizing your body's adaptation mechanisms, your adaptation mechanisms. The weight on the bar is just a method to get there right. And then that framework can apply to any fitness goal, from fat loss to muscle gain. They're all adaptations. So then you're not just building strength, you're becoming guess what an engineer of your own physique.

Philip Pape: 22:52

That is what we do on this show. That is the point. When you stop chasing arbitrary numbers of any of this stuff and you start treating training, nutrition, mental growth, all of it, relationships like the sophisticated control system, it is, I mean, your body. When it comes to training, everything changes. Your progress becomes more consistent, more predictable and, ultimately, more sustainable. All right, and again, if you want to apply these principles to your training, join us in Wits and Weights Physique University.

Philip Pape: 23:23

I'm going to give you a secret link in the show notes, and I didn't mention it earlier, but in addition to the 14-day free trial, in addition to a free challenge, you are going to get a discounted rate from what is publicly available. It is a rate that I am testing with new clients. Keep it a secret. Well, I know the millions of people listening to the show won't but hearty heart, okay. Anyway, back in the physique university.

Philip Pape: 23:49

You know we use this approach, this kind of very logical, objective, efficient, confident building approach, to help you build strength and muscle and also tackle your nutrition Nutrition is a huge part of it To make this sustainable, to stay injury-free, to get the confidence in the wins constantly. So click the link in my show notes for the 14-day free trial, the free challenge, the secret discounted price. And remember, smart training beats random progress. Chasing every time, every single time, all right until next time. Keep using your wits lifting those weights and remember your body is the most sophisticated control system you'll ever work with, so learn how to use it. This is Philip Pape. You've been listening to Wits and Weights. I'll talk to you next time.

Is Allulose the New GLP-1 Alternative to Weight Loss Drugs? | Ep 281

Submit your nutrition and training questions at witsandweights.com/question to get featured on the show

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Discover how a natural sugar called allulose is getting attention for potentially offering similar metabolic benefits as modern weight loss drugs by stimulating GLP-1. 

Learn the science behind how this unique compound affects blood sugar, appetite, and fat loss through natural pathways.

Main Takeaways:

• Allulose stimulates GLP-1 more modestly than medications, working with natural body rhythms

• Research shows up to 50% reduction in post-meal blood sugar spikes

• Practical dosing starts at 5-10g per serving, best taken with meals

• May help with transitioning off GLP-1 medications while maintaining results

• Shows promise for preserving muscle glycogen during training

Timestamps:

4:00 - What is allulose and how it differs from regular sugar
5:17 - Key research findings and real-world uses
8:24 - Practical dosing guidelines and timing considerations
10:05 - Benefits and potential side effects

Is Allulose a Natural Alternative to GLP-1 Weight Loss Drugs?

GLP-1 medications like Ozempic and Mounjaro have dominated the weight loss conversation, but what if a naturally occurring sugar could offer similar metabolic benefits? Enter allulose, a rare sugar gaining traction for its potential effects on blood sugar control, appetite regulation, and fat metabolism—all without the side effects or cost of pharmaceutical interventions.

This isn’t just another sugar substitute. Allulose has been shown to stimulate GLP-1, the same hormone targeted by modern weight loss drugs, while behaving more like fiber than sugar in the body. But is it really a viable tool for fat loss and metabolic health? Let's break down the science, practical applications, and how lifters and dieters alike might benefit from this unique compound.

What Is Allulose and How Does It Work?

Allulose is classified as a rare sugar because it naturally occurs in small amounts in foods like figs, raisins, and maple syrup. Structurally, it resembles fructose, but it’s metabolized differently:

• 90% is excreted in urine, meaning it provides almost no usable energy.

• It doesn’t spike blood sugar or insulin levels, unlike traditional sugars.

• It triggers metabolic pathways, including GLP-1, that regulate blood sugar and appetite.

The most compelling aspect of allulose is its ability to stimulate GLP-1, a hormone that slows gastric emptying, reduces hunger, and improves insulin sensitivity. While allulose doesn’t act as powerfully as GLP-1 drugs, its effects align with how the body naturally regulates energy balance, making it an interesting potential tool for those managing blood sugar or working on fat loss.

What Does the Science Say?

Research on allulose is still emerging, but here’s what we know so far:

1. Allulose Can Reduce Blood Sugar Spikes

A 2018 Nature Communications study found that when participants consumed allulose with a meal, their post-meal blood sugar was up to 50% lower. Unlike artificial sweeteners, which often just replace sugar, allulose actively improves carbohydrate metabolism, making it potentially useful for those with insulin resistance or prediabetes.

2. Appetite and Fat Loss Benefits

Animal studies have shown that allulose supplementation:

• Reduces appetite by increasing GLP-1 secretion

• Enhances insulin sensitivity

• Improves fat oxidation, leading to lower fat accumulation

While human data is limited, some physicians, like Dr. Charles Cavo, have reported using allulose to help patients transition off GLP-1 medications without experiencing rebound weight gain.

3. Potential Benefits for Lifters and Athletes

For those who train, allulose might offer glycogen-sparing effects, helping preserve energy stores during workouts. While this research is early-stage, it raises interesting possibilities for endurance athletes and those in cutting phases.

How to Use Allulose for Fat Loss and Metabolic Health

1. Start with the Right Dose

Most studies suggest 5-10 grams per serving, increasing up to 15-20 grams if well tolerated. Unlike artificial sweeteners, allulose doesn’t cause blood sugar spikes, but consuming too much at once may cause digestive discomfort (similar to sugar alcohols).

2. Use It Strategically with Meals

Since allulose improves carbohydrate metabolism, the best time to use it is with meals containing carbs. For those managing blood sugar, this could be a simple way to blunt post-meal glucose spikes without eliminating carbs altogether.

3. Incorporate It into Cooking and Baking

Unlike many sugar substitutes that taste artificial or don’t behave like sugar in recipes, allulose caramelizes, browns, and blends seamlessly into foods. You’ll already find it in products like Quest bars, Magic Spoon cereal, and various protein snacks.

Should You Add Allulose to Your Diet?

Allulose isn’t a magic bullet, but it’s a compelling tool for fat loss, blood sugar control, and metabolic health. Unlike GLP-1 drugs, it works within the body’s natural hormonal pathways, making it a low-risk, accessible option for those looking to optimize their diet.

That said, it’s not necessary for results. If you’re already eating balanced meals with protein and fiber, lifting weights, and managing calories effectively, you don’t need allulose to lose fat. But if you want to experiment with a metabolically friendly sweetener that does more than just replace sugar, it’s worth trying.

Final Thoughts

Allulose is more than just another sugar alternative—it’s a functional ingredient that may improve metabolic flexibility, appetite control, and carbohydrate processing. Whether you’re looking to transition off GLP-1 medications, optimize fat loss, or simply find a better way to satisfy your sweet tooth, allulose offers an intriguing evidence-based approach.

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Transcript

Philip Pape: 0:01

You've probably heard about the GLP-1 medications, like Ozempic, transforming the weight loss industry, but what if I told you there is a natural sugar that stimulates the same pathway, a sugar that can help control blood sugar, reduce appetite and might enhance fat loss? Today we're uncovering the science behind allulose, a rare sugar that's getting attention for potentially offering some of the metabolic benefits of the modern weight loss drugs without the side effects or the cost. You'll discover how this molecule works, what the research shows about its effects on GLP-1 and metabolism, and whether it could be a useful tool in your fat loss toolbox. Welcome to Wits and Weights, the show that helps you build a strong, healthy physique using evidence, engineering and efficiency. I'm your host, philip Pape, and today we're going to look at allulose. It is a unique sweetener that is generating some news, some buzz, for potentially offering some similar metabolic benefits as modern weight loss medications, but through natural pathways. And the timing couldn't be more relevant, because the GLP-1 drugs like Ozembic and Monjaro have exploded on the scene. They're being talked about all the time, as am I, and they're changing how we think about weight management, fat loss, lifestyle combined with these drugs, understanding alternatives, and it's really cool to have something that might work through similar pathways. That's more of a natural approach, not as a replacement for medication. Again, that is outside my scope. You work with your medical professional. If you have a prescribed need for med, so be it. We're not going to talk about that today, but what makes this topic fascinating is how a natural sugar might actually help control blood sugar and appetite rather than spike it, although, again, we're not going to fear monger over spikes in blood sugar. It's totally natural when you eat any form of carbohydrates that have glucose. It's more of using this for specific mechanisms that are similar to the GLP-1 agonist, and the science behind this shows some insights into our metabolism that go beyond just finding another sugar substitute. So I definitely want you to stick around to hear the more in-depth findings when we get into them.

Philip Pape: 2:21

I want to give a special shout out to Michael Kay, one of our longtime listeners. He's a fellow coach. He and I talk all the time over uh, over DMS, and he brought this research to my attention, so I definitely want to give you a shout out, michael. Uh, you have definitely a commitment to evidence-based nutrition. I know you are always reviewing the studies. You have Google alerts and stuff set up and you shared this with me, so now I can share it with the audience and help make this show what it is, but also help people learn and apply this to their lives.

Philip Pape: 2:50

All right, before we get into the science of allulose, I have a quick favor to ask If you've been enjoying these evidence-based deep dives, these Monday deep dives into nutrition, physique optimization, all of it. Take a moment and submit a question so that I can answer it and turn it into a podcast episode. I'm going to give you a specific reply anyway, a personal reply, and then I very likely will turn it into an episode and give you a shout out. Go to witsandweightscom slash question or click the link in the show notes witsandweightscom slash question. And that will continue to shape the topics that we cover and ensure we cover what matters to you most.

Philip Pape: 3:28

Now let's build our mental muscle by getting into today's topic. Let's start by understanding exactly what allulose is, and I'll never forget when I first learned about this compound, because I saw it as an ingredient on, I think, some sort of Quest bar. I'll say a sweeter version of the Quest bar. Oh man, what was it called? You guys probably even know what it is. I should have looked that up. And you know I was skeptical because I didn't know what it was, and we've all heard claims about miracle sweeteners and all these brand new artificial sweeteners.

Philip Pape: 4:00

But allulose is fundamentally different. When I started to look into it, it is what we call a rare sugar, because it does exist naturally in foods like figs and maple syrup, but it's in tiny amounts. And while it's structurally almost identical to fructose, which is just regular sugar from fruit, our bodies handle it differently. Our bodies handle it differently. Instead of being converted to energy, like regular sugar, around 90% of allulose gets eliminated in your urine, so you only absorb 10% of it, meaning 10% of the calories, and during its journey through our system it triggers some metabolic effects and this is what I want to cover today that I wasn't aware of.

Philip Pape: 4:41

The most intriguing of those is the ability to stimulate GLP-1, which is the same hormone targeted by the weight loss medications like Gozembek and Manjaro. Now I want to be crystal clear here. I'm not suggesting allulose is equivalent to these medications. The GLP-1 response from allulose is equivalent to these medications. The GLP-1 response from allulose is more modest. It's shorter acting, but that's what makes it interesting. It works within our body's natural systems rather than overriding them, and so, combined with lifestyle which we should always have lifestyle in there it could be a great natural alternative to at least start with, if you are considering those drugs.

Philip Pape: 5:17

And that brings me to what the science actually shows. There is a 2018 study in Nature Communications this is the study that Michael sent me that when subjects consumed allulose with a meal, their post-meal blood sugar rise was reduced by up to 50% Kind of like the effects you would have on having a more balanced meal or having fiber in there. Even more interesting, it wasn't from blocking sugar absorption. The allulose was actively helping the body's process carbohydrates more efficiently. So that's pretty cool. But what about fat loss? Animal studies have shown that adding allulose to a high fat, high-sugar diet significantly reduced weight gain compared to control groups, and the mechanism appears to be three different things going on. Number one is reduced appetite, and that's from the GLP-1 stimulation. The second is improved insulin sensitivity and the third is enhanced fat oxidation. Now, we never want to compare animal studies to humans. We know there's a vast majority of them that do not translate and the human evidence is still emerging but it is promising.

Philip Pape: 6:28

Dr Charles Cavo. He's a physician who specializes in metabolic health, and he's reported success using allulose to help patients transition off GLP-1 medications while maintaining their results, which is really crucial, because the weight regain after stopping these medications is currently a major concern. My caveat here is I've worked with clients to help them come off of these drugs. We never had to use allulose and you can still do it, as long as you are eating nutritious foods, you're lifting weights, you're not cutting calories dramatically, and I'll tell you just as a side tangent one effective way to do this if you are on these drugs right now, like terzapatide or something like that, is when you get to a reasonable level of body mass that you're going for with the drugs. You can titrate down the drugs in conjunction with your medical professional and come out of the calorie deficit.

Philip Pape: 7:19

So it helps, of course, to be tracking, to understand your calories and macros, to be eating sufficient protein and fiber and to be lifting weights and being active. Those are the lifestyle changes you have to put in place in parallel. You just have to put those in place so that you're at least going in a reasonable deficit, you don't lose muscle mass, you maintain all of these things and you set yourself up so that it actually is not that big a deal in terms of the food noise and the satiety when you come off the drug. And then, when you do that, don't do it while in a dieting phase, you know, come out of it at maintenance or even into a muscle building phase. That's a whole separate topic. Um, so I just wanted to have that caveat because, yes, I could see that if you lose, use allulose, it's almost like a stepping stone and that is actually pretty cool. I do think that is pretty cool as we start to see allulose in more and more food products, or it's something that you can buy off the shelf and incorporate and, like I said, it's already in like a certain line of the quest protein bars and it's probably in lots of others. At this point, in fact, I think it might be in that magic spoon cereal. Take a look at your ingredient labels, folks, and see where you find it.

Philip Pape: 8:24

Anyway, back to the topic how can we use this information? First and foremost, always, always, always. Dosing matters, the dosage. When we talk about efficacy and we talk about toxicity and you hear about fear mongering about different things, dosing always matters. Dosing in context. Research suggests starting with 5 to 10 grams per serving, working up to 15 to 20 grams if well tolerated and the timing appears optimal, with meals Kind of makes sense. If you're talking about blood sugar and fullness signals and all that, it makes sense that you're doing it with meals, although I could see why people might think doing it between meals could have its own positive effect of potentially reducing your hunger signals, for example.

Philip Pape: 9:07

And then they said especially carbohydrate-containing meals where you want to minimize blood sugar spikes. I have to go on a little side diatribe here. Blood sugar spikes are not to be feared. I had somebody come to me saying I'd stopped eating potatoes because I wore a glucose monitor and my blood sugar spiked. I said oh, how far we've come in this industry where you think just a blood sugar spike itself is somehow a problem. It is not. It is not unless you already have your pre-diabetic, your diabetic insulin, as a concern For a healthy individual who's active. It's not Now. It could cause fluctuations in your energy levels. It can cause different usage of nutrients where maybe it's suboptimal in certain cases if you're just eating lots of carbs at individual meals, and that is why I definitely recommend balanced meals that always have some protein and fiber, and that usually mitigates the concern. And then walking after meals is the other thing. So again, just my little side diatribes here that I think are important in context of all of this.

Philip Pape: 10:05

So back to allulose. I think the beauty of allulose is it's a pretty versatile sweetener, right? Unlike a lot of alternative sweeteners which can have an aftertaste or bitterness or like doesn't behave the same way when you cook with it. Allulose behaves almost identically to sugar when you cook or when you bake. It even caramelizes. And again, intuitively, that makes sense because it's derived naturally from basically a fruit sugar type situation. So it makes sense that it would act naturally. But you never know, right. So for real world use it's pretty practical. But the caveat always caveats. Some people might experience digestive discomfort if they consume too much too quickly. But that's like anything Same thing with sugar, alcohols. Some people tolerate them just fine. Some people have gas, bloating, lots of things that are not great. So always start slowly, look at the dosage, increase gradually.

Philip Pape: 10:58

If you are an athlete or a lifter which should be most of you listening if you lift weights, you are an athlete. If you listen to this podcast and do it the way we talk about it. You are an athlete, I don't care your age, your gender, your previous lifestyle. So for us, some evidence suggests that allulose might help preserve muscle glycogen and that can potentially benefit performance and recovery. So that piques my interest. Okay, now, I haven't done it myself, using it as a pre-workout, but maybe you're going to see this in more pre-workouts, I don't know. We'll, we'll see how it goes. Um, all of this evidence is preliminary, so it always takes a while, like years, for this stuff, stuff, get it to get in there. Uh, but the mechanism makes sense because of its effect on glucose disposal, that it would help preserve muscle glycogen. Um, so something fascinating that I think is going to tie all this together, because this episode isn't going to be too long.

Philip Pape: 11:47

Allulose isn't just affecting our metabolism through GLP-1. The latest research suggests it might help reprogram how our bodies handle carbohydrates entirely. Okay, so think about that. This is a sugar that teaches your body to process other sugars more efficiently, and kind of working with our metabolism in a way, and who knows what that's gonna result in. I'm always skeptical of these kinds of things because at the end of the day, I think we can overthink it and again having balance, having the right level of macros. Having nutritious foods, having sufficient fiber and protein, are plenty to focus on for most people and will do the job. But if you're looking for little optimalities or ways to sweeten things up that are not sugar or not an artificial sweetener, this could be a really cool little corner case. So just to recap first, allulose is a natural sugar that stimulates GLP-1, similar to, but a lot more modestly than, modern weight loss meds. Second, research shows promising effects on blood sugar control, appetite and, potentially, fat loss. And third, its practical use is important in terms of its ability to use for cooking and baking, but always start gradually and dose up so you can see how you tolerate it. All right, whether you're looking to optimize metabolism, manage blood sugar, support fat loss, iolos is a very interesting tool out there in our nutrition toolbox. It's not a miracle Like none of these things are miracle, or superfoods or anything like that but it seems to be a scientifically supported option that works with our body's natural processes and I wouldn't fear it, just like I wouldn't fear pretty much any food at this point, and we're already seeing it in approved products. So there is that. All right.

Philip Pape: 13:29

If today's episode sparked any questions about this or any other aspects of nutrition and body composition. I do wanna hear from you with our new Ask a Question form. Go to whitsonweightscom slash question or click the link in the show notes Again. Whitsonweightscom slash question Sub question. Or click the link in the show notes Again. Witsandweightscom slash question. Submit a question to me and you will get a personal answer by email and then I will turn it into an episode and feature you on the podcast, if you want. That helps shape the podcast and give you what you want. All right, until next time, keep using your wits lifting those weights and remember sometimes the most powerful solutions are the ones that work with our biology and not against them. This is Philip Pape, and you've been listening to the Wits and Weights podcast. I'll talk to you next time.

Make This ONE Change for Better Sleep, HRV, and Fat Loss (Dr. Peter Martone) | Ep 280

Download my free Better Sleep, Better Body guide to optimize your sleep for fat loss, body composition, and hormones

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Could your sleep position be holding you back from optimal recovery? You track your training, nutrition, and HRV—but what about your neck alignment during sleep? 

Dr. Peter Martone joins me to explain how your sleep position affects your nervous system, HRV, and overall performance. He reveals how traditional sleeping positions might be sabotaging your recovery and shares practical tips to start fixing it—tonight.

Dr. Peter Martone is a chiropractor and exercise physiologist with over 25 years of experience. Through his research, he discovered how sleep position and spinal alignment impact nervous system function, recovery, and pain. He has helped thousands optimize their sleep and performance through proper positioning. 

Today, you’ll learn all about:

02:12 – What is a "sleep avatar," and why does it matter?
06:28 – How Dr. Martone discovered the link between sleep and spinal health
10:30 – The one sleep change that fixed Dr. Martone’s chronic pain
14:13 – How your sleep position affects your nervous system and HRV
20:09 – The #1 mistake people make with pillows (and how to fix it)
25:47 – Why side sleeping could be causing your shoulder pain
30:42 – The real reason for imbalances and chronic pain
35:35 – How sleep position impacts snoring and sleep apnea
41:18 – The easiest way to start fixing your sleep position

Episode resources:

• Website: drsleepright.com

• Instagram: @drsleepright

The One Sleep Change That Can Transform Your Recovery, HRV, and Fat Loss

Most people think optimizing sleep is all about going to bed earlier, using blackout curtains, or avoiding blue light. But what if your sleep position—the way your body is aligned when you sleep—was the real key to better recovery, higher HRV, and even more efficient fat loss?

In this article, we break down what Dr. Peter Martone shared on the Wits & Weights podcast about why your sleep posture matters more than you think. You’ll learn:

✔ How your sleep position affects your nervous system and recovery
✔ Why side sleeping might be contributing to pain, poor HRV, and even weight gain
✔ The best way to sleep for long-term health and performance

Why Sleep Position Matters More Than You Think

We all know sleep is essential for fat loss, muscle recovery, and overall health. But most sleep advice focuses on surface-level factors like:

• Sleeping in a cold, dark room

• Avoiding screens before bed

• Using supplements like magnesium or melatonin

While these can help, they don’t address a critical factor: how your spine and nervous system are aligned during sleep.

🔹 Your nervous system controls everything from recovery to metabolism
🔹 Neck and spine alignment directly affect HRV, stress levels, and hormone balance
🔹 Sleeping in the wrong position can reinforce poor posture, increase stress, and disrupt sleep cycles

According to Dr. Martone, side sleeping and stomach sleeping can misalign your neck and spine, leading to:

❌ Shoulder and hip pain (especially if you lift weights)
❌ Lower HRV (Heart Rate Variability), making you more sensitive to stress
❌ Inefficient recovery, which can impact muscle growth and fat loss

Instead, the ideal position for sleep is on your back with proper neck support.

The Best Sleep Position for Recovery and HRV

If you want to improve your HRV, reduce pain, and recover better from training, here’s how to optimize your sleep position:

1. Support Your Neck, Not Your Head

Most pillows push your head forward, worsening neck posture and increasing stress on the spine.

✅ Instead of a traditional pillow, use a small support under your neck, allowing your head to rest slightly back.
✅ This helps restore the natural curve of your cervical spine, reducing tension and improving nerve function.

2. Start Sleeping on Your Back

While side sleeping feels comfortable, it puts your shoulders and spine in a compromised position, leading to joint pain and poor recovery.

✅ Transition to back sleeping with your neck supported to allow optimal spinal alignment.
✅ This position promotes better lymphatic drainage, improved vagus nerve function, and reduced cortisol levels.

3. Add Pressure for Comfort

Your subconscious brain associates pressure with safety, which is why many people instinctively curl into a ball when they sleep.

✅ Use a weighted blanket or an extra pillow on your chest or side to mimic the security of side sleeping without sacrificing alignment.
✅ This helps your nervous system relax into deep sleep faster, improving HRV and recovery.

How Sleep Position Affects HRV and Fat Loss

HRV (Heart Rate Variability) is one of the best indicators of nervous system health and recovery. A higher HRV means better stress resilience, while a low HRV suggests chronic stress and poor recovery.

Research shows that **proper sleep posture can:

✅ Increase HRV, helping your body handle stress better
✅ Reduce cortisol, the stress hormone linked to belly fat storage
✅ Improve parasympathetic nervous system function, which controls digestion, recovery, and fat metabolism

By simply adjusting your sleep position, you can enhance your ability to recover from workouts, optimize hormone balance, and even improve fat loss over time.

The Biggest Sleep Mistakes That Sabotage Recovery

Want better sleep, faster recovery, and a higher HRV?

Avoid these common sleep mistakes:

❌ Sleeping on your side with a thick pillow – This misaligns the spine and compresses nerves.
❌ Using a pillow that supports your head instead of your neck – Leads to forward head posture and poor vagus nerve function.
❌ Eating too close to bedtime – Digestion keeps heart rate elevated, disrupting deep sleep.
❌ Ignoring stress before bed – High nighttime stress = lower HRV and poor recovery.

How to Test if Your Sleep Position is Hurting Your Recovery

If you track your sleep with an Oura Ring, WHOOP, or other HRV monitor, try this:

1️⃣ Check your HRV before adjusting your sleep position
2️⃣ Sleep in the optimal back-sleeping position with neck support for one week
3️⃣ Compare your HRV, resting heart rate, and sleep quality

Most people see measurable improvements in recovery, deeper sleep, and less morning stiffness within days.

My Final Thoughts

If you’ve been struggling with recovery, low HRV, or stubborn fat loss, your sleep position might be the missing link.

By simply supporting your neck properly, starting on your back, and using strategic pressure, you can:

✅ Improve nervous system function
✅ Enhance recovery between workouts
✅ Boost HRV and resilience to stress
✅ Support fat loss and muscle growth

Sleep isn’t just about getting enough hours—it’s about positioning your body for optimal recovery.

Try these simple changes tonight, and you might wake up stronger, leaner, and more rested than ever before.

👩‍💻 Book a FREE 15-Minute Rapid Nutrition Assessment:
https://witsandweights.com/free-call

👥 Join our Facebook community for live Q&As & support

👋 Let's connect! Ask a question, get my FREE newsletter, or find me on Instagram

📱 Try MacroFactor for free with code WITSANDWEIGHTS.

🏋️‍♀️ Download Boostcamp for free for evidence-based workout programs

🫙 Get 20% off Legion supplements with code WITSpod

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Transcript

Philip Pape: 0:01

We all know that sleep is super important and you might even be tracking your sleep, your training, your nutrition, your HRV, your aura ring all of that. But what if your sleep position is the thing holding you back? Your neck alignment, for example, during sleep, affects your nervous system and your recovery. Well, in this episode, sleep expert Dr Peter Martone is on to share how traditional sleeping positions might be working against you and shares a better approach that could help you out. You'll learn why neck position impacts everything from HRV to recovery and get some practical tips to implement, starting tonight. Whether you wake up with stiff shoulders, can't seem to recover between workouts, or you just want to optimize your rest, this episode will change how you think about sleep and sleep position.

Philip Pape: 0:51

Welcome to Wits and Weights, the podcast that blends evidence and engineering to help you build smart, efficient systems to achieve your dream physique. I'm your host, philip Pape, and today we're examining how sleep position affects your recovery and results with Dr Peter Martone. Drawing from over 25 years as a chiropractor and exercise physiologist, peter discovered some profound connections between neck position during sleep and nervous system function, and he's helped thousands optimize their sleep through proper positioning. So today you're going to learn how your sleep position influences nervous system function, why the way you currently sleep might be compromising your recovery, and some practical tips to improve your sleep, starting tonight. Dr Martone, welcome to the show.

Dr. Peter Martone: 1:36

That was a great interview. Thank you for being I mean a great introduction. Wow, you've really summed up everything. I think we're done you did it.

Philip Pape: 1:43

There you go. Yeah, no, you just said that the interview is done. Yeah, there we go. No, that's awesome, you know, for the folks listening. Dr Martone gets around the podcast circuit for sure, and I first heard him on another podcast and it blew me away, because we talk about sleep a lot in the nutrition and training world. It's kind of the same things over and over, though it's the sleep hacks 's, the, you know, the cold, uh, the cold dark room with the sleep mask and the avoiding blue light and all of that. But I want to get into this very special angle that you come at it from with position, and my first question really is what exactly is a sleep avatar? Because I think that would lead to this very well I think that that is.

Dr. Peter Martone: 2:22

That is so. And listen. All the advice from the experts out there. It's great, it's all a piece of the pie, but in moving into this field I realized that they're missing the crust, and the crust is the connection that we live our life. And by the end of this podcast, if anybody wants to improve their performance, take their training to the next level, take their injury recovery to the next level.

Dr. Peter Martone: 2:48

You have to understand one thing that we live our life through our nervous system and everything we do through recovery, through, you know, digesting food, how we digest food, is all controlled by the nervous system. So when you eat food, putting that food in your system, that's not what makes you healthy. It's your body adaptation to that food, and that is all driven neurologically. So when I took that understanding and then I applied it to sleep, you can see that all the advice is great Lie in a cold room. That helps Make it quiet, shut off the TV. All of these things are super important. But what's happening right now? How you're listening to this, let's say, this podcast, that podcast is happening in real time, but you're not listening to it in reality. You're accepting this podcast through your sight through sound. So you're basically your brain is integrating the information and what you're listening to is a distortion of reality. And so what one person's experience might be listening to this podcast the same exact podcast somebody else could have a very this podcast the same exact podcast somebody else could have a very, very different experience because it's driven through our nervous system.

Dr. Peter Martone: 4:09

So when you think about our nervous system, we have basically some specific needs. You're in fight or flight, where you're in like training, or you're in growth or in a repair when you're sleeping. So think about when you are running from a tiger. You're in the stressful state, and that stressful state some people live there emotionally. So if you live in stress, one of the fundamental underlying needs for sleep is safety. So some people require a lot more safety than others. Some people curl up in a ball to sleep and some people can sleep opened up. So, your avatar, we've designed this very specific test at drsleeprightcom, where you take these I don't know, maybe it's 10, 15, 20 questions and it identifies what animal you need to sleep like. Basically, what it's doing is it's identifying what your subconscious need for safety is, and then, by doing that, I give you specific advice based on what your avatar score is or what animal avatar you are. Are you a gorilla, are you an armadillo or are you an ostrich?

Philip Pape: 5:19

Yeah, gorilla, armadillo, ostrich Good, I want to be able to get into that. First, I want to say I didn't take offense that you said this was a distortion of reality, because the context you put it in made 100% sense. I'm a fan of the matrix, by the way, so you got me going there through the senses. But it's true. All of existence that we perceive is through our senses, and even philosophers over the centuries have argued what is real right. So what's really cool about this, peter, is we talk about the central nervous system a lot, with stress and also with training, but we don't drop that connection in very much when it comes to sleep. I'm realizing that myself.

Philip Pape: 5:57

I've talked about sleep a lot and helped many clients with it, and I don't often put it in that context. So that's going to be super helpful as you move forward. And then the need for safety. I just had a guest on talking about the need for safety with our food choices, how we go to food for comfort, and it's just all so primal. So I want to understand about these three animals. I'd be curious what I am. I haven't taken the test yet, but I'm going to do that. You said the gorilla, the armadillo and the.

Dr. Peter Martone: 6:25

The gorilla, the armadillo and the ostrich, and the ostrich. Okay, so now we're in the second step, right? So let's just let's talk about where this came from. Actually, let's just go all the way back and tell you why I'm even in the sleep industry.

Philip Pape: 6:38

Okay, good, yeah, why are you in? It? Does position matter? All of that?

Dr. Peter Martone: 6:42

This was nuts. So I'm an exercise physiologist. I trained in UMass, amherst in Australia. I was a professional trainer in Australia and it was. So I'm an exercise physiologist. I love the study of biomechanics. I geeked out on it.

Dr. Peter Martone: 6:57

I loved the shoulder, but I always had pain. I always had pain in my shoulder. I always had back pain. I went through chiropractic school always had pain, even adjusting patients. I'd teach patients how to get out of pain, but I myself always had pain.

Dr. Peter Martone: 7:11

I attributed it to being a competitive mountain biker skydive, rock climb. I do anything to scratch the itch of having ADD that can drive me to adrenaline. Right, because stimulation is what calms somebody that has a brain that goes a million miles a minute. So I was driven to stimulation.

Dr. Peter Martone: 7:32

And then, you know, my best friend was in a tragic accident, died right in front of me. We were on quads and it flipped over and landed on him. You know, I gave him CPR and it set me into a negative dalwich spiral, just a a dark, dark place where I never wanted to be again. And um, so I was there and I was mountain biking, taking crazy risks, just had my first child and I jumped off this drop. It was about a 10 foot drop on my mountain bike and I felt a little tweak in my lower back and and you know I have had it before it wasn't really too big of an issue. But then after the next couple days, I went down. All I did was pick up a pencil and blew out my disc. Now I'm. I remember I was in so much pain I I told my wife I'm like I call the ambulance, I can't move, and she's like I'll take you to the hospital. What's wrong? I'm like you don't understand. I can't move.

Philip Pape: 8:33

Yeah, unless you could pick me up, I can't move.

Dr. Peter Martone: 8:35

Leg was numb and I had so much morphine. By the time I got to the hospital they asked my wife if I was a drug addict, because I was in that much pain and I can remember me in the emergency room saying how does it get to this? I'm a chiropractor, I understand biomechanics, but I myself can't help myself. So once I got out of the hospital I said I'm not going to have surgery. I got to figure this out. So I reviewed 3,000 x-rays at the time and I just I knew, knew there was a pattern. I just couldn't really put my consciousness to it. So I started reviewing x-rays, reviewing x-rays, looking at cervical x-rays and how they relate to lumbar x-rays.

Dr. Peter Martone: 9:13

Cervical is the neck, lumbar is the back, cervical lumbar, cervical lumbar. And I found this correlation that in our body we're supposed to have curves. You have a cervical curve and the lumbar curve is the same curve. But when you lose the cervical curve, which I had, I had a little bit of a loss of curve, never any pain in my neck. The reactive response due to what's called dura mater tension is a curve in the lower back and that curve in the lower back happens through the psoas major muscle, which is another thing that we found. And the psoas is the only muscle in the human body that attaches directly to a disc. So I didn't have back pain all these years because I wasn't getting adjusted enough or because I wasn't stretching enough.

Dr. Peter Martone: 9:58

It was because I had loss of cervical curve, picking up pelvic rotation, doing an adaptive response, and I'm like, holy shit, are you kidding me, ken? And that was a side sleeper. I used to curl up in my ball because my physiology loves protection, had shoulder issues, hip issues, and I'm like wait a second If I can spend, because I know long, long stretching is the best type of stretching, because I know long, long stretching is the best type of stretching, so I can spend one third of my life stretching my neck back, making sure I can reestablish that curve. In theory, at the time it should be able to take the pressure off my low back and fix my disc problem, and that's what ended up happening.

Dr. Peter Martone: 10:40

I started jamming pillows up under my neck until I created this neckness and then I started to transform the health of my spine and then I transferred that to my patients. So that's really what drew me into the sleep industry. It wasn't because I wanted to help people sleep. I wanted to fix their spines while they slept, and that is why our approach is so much different, because I come from all of this, this wholism, this, this holistic approach to healthcare, and now we've adapted that entire thing to sleep and increasing performance.

Philip Pape: 11:17

Yeah, no, it makes sense Mixing the biomechanics with the nervous system, with your individual propensity for that. What I want to understand, peter, is the three avatars you mentioned. It's a safety thing, but there's also a biomechanical or physical thing. I mean, I guess it's in the questionnaire, but I'm trying to understand how someone decides what they are, and then is the solution very different between them, or is there like a baseline set of things that are practical for everyone to use?

Dr. Peter Martone: 11:45

So then what we do is we have this triune of sleep, and this is where the avatar comes in. You have the conscious brain, the subconscious brain and then the body. Okay, the body wants alignment, that's all it wants. It doesn't want to be in pinning. And this is where the trick is the subconscious brain, the fundamental need for the subconscious brain. It doesn't know posture, it knows pressure, and the subconscious brain wants to feel safe in order to sleep.

Dr. Peter Martone: 12:16

Right, when I grew up in Malden, massachusetts, I was on a busy street and kids would bang on the window and it would scare the heck out of me. So I was always afraid to go to sleep. So I curled up in a ball, I put all these stuffed animals around me, and only when I felt safe was my body able to fall asleep. So different people, depending on their types of personality, require more safety than others. And so let's say you're a gorilla, okay, everybody needs to start in the same position. You're a human, you need your weight distributed over the greatest surface area and everybody needs to start in a specific position. Now your conscious brain is going to say you can't do it. But what your conscious brain is mistaking for comfort, it's the subconscious brain saying this isn't a safe position. That is what we have to understand. So we put the body in alignment. Then we need to figure out a plan to be able to create safety for the subconscious brain, because once you fall asleep, the conscious brain is out of it.

Dr. Peter Martone: 13:15

The subconscious brain controls sleep. So if you can identify the amount of safety somebody needs, some people need to put a pillow on their head, like the ostrich. The ostrich needs to stick to you. They're the stomach sleepers. They need all of that pressure on their chest. They put pillows over their heads. They need to stick their head in the ground to feel safe. The armadillo curls up in a ball. The gorilla has no enemy, so it can fall asleep anywhere. The gorilla has no enemy, so it can fall asleep anywhere. So, depending on which avatar you are, then I can tell you how you need to create safety in order to fall asleep in the aligned position, and then the avatar tells us what technique you need to use to shut off the conscious brain.

Philip Pape: 14:01

Okay, that makes sense. And before we go further, one thing that always comes up for me is the ability to fall asleep doesn't always correlate with the restfulness of the sleep, right? So when someone has no problem just falling asleep, I imagine it's still possible that they're still not in the maximum safe position for them just because of that. Is that correct?

Dr. Peter Martone: 14:23

Yeah, and that's where, like the five pillars of sleep and body temperature, what time you're eating stimulants you have. We have this way better sleep academy where we address all of that, because once you close your eyes, people are like, oh, I can have a cup of coffee and fall right asleep. Oh yeah, you can. Of course you can, but your heart rate's still high, keeping you out of deep sleep, so you're not getting deep restorative sleep. Test still high, keeping you out of deep sleep, so you're not getting deep restorative sleep. Testosterone levels are going to be cranked, adrenal glands are going to be cranked, but you wake up eight hours later and you think you slept great, but you didn't go through the natural cycles. And that's all the technical aspects of sleep.

Dr. Peter Martone: 14:55

And so what we really try to do, especially for that performance in that athlete, when you're looking at pain, pain is biomechanics. Biomechanics follow head position. So most people that have a shoulder issue or a hip issue have a neck issue because their head's too far forward and, due to the writing reflex, your balance is getting thrown off because most people are going to lean to the side of a sprained ankle. So the balance is coming over and the spine is twisting the head's coming forward, then you put that on the load in the gym. Then you're just going to hurt something. Because we want to start with alignment at night, especially for the athlete.

Philip Pape: 15:35

Okay, so just a little bit more on the biomechanics and the physiology behind this, and then I want to get some practical tips for folks. You mentioned the nervous system. Where does the vagus nerve come in here? I think you talk about that a lot in your work as well. Why that matters. It also comes up when talking about stress and relaxation and meditation and all sorts of other topics.

Dr. Peter Martone: 15:57

Yeah, so the vagus nerve controls sleep. So the opposite of sleep is awake. So awake is sympathetic dominance. So the opposite of lifting would be growth. So you have growth in defense. So when you are engaging the muscle, your body is in defense. When you are repairing the muscle, the body is in growth.

Dr. Peter Martone: 16:17

So those two things are like a seesaw. Each one of them is controlled by a very specific nervous system. And the issue is the nervous system is controlled by our emotions. So sympathetic stress whether you're running from a tiger because you're being chased or your body thinks you're running from a tiger, you're going to have a stimulation, you're going to have a stimulant response, which is why emotions affect sleep.

Dr. Peter Martone: 16:43

So the opposite of that is the parasympathetic nervous system. So the parasympathetic nervous system 80% of all the healing that goes on in your body, your body's ability to sleep. It controls three areas immune system, digestive system and reproductive system. So most people don't just have a problem with one of those systems. You have a problem with all three because there's an issue and a dysfunction within the vagus nerve. Now, the important thing about the vagus nerve is that it comes out right at the base of the neck, so when you lose the curve. You are just, you are tanking your vagal nerve function. So because we sleep curled up in a ball, a lot of times people can't sleep because their vagal tone is getting compressed due to the loss of cervical curve and the position is reinforcing that inability, like a weak muscle for you to turn on that deep healing capacity of the vagus nerve, because it's being compressed like stepping on a garden hose.

Philip Pape: 17:45

Okay, great. No, I'm glad you connected all those. So then, if you want to capture a baseline of where you are now based on all of this I don't know if it's like HRV, because I know you've talked about HRV having a big potential impact and improvement when you address this but what would people want to be measuring, like right now today, knowing they haven't touched anything, and then you know, once they've addressed the neck positioning and other factors, they can see an improvement. What would that be?

Dr. Peter Martone: 18:11

yeah, the best thing in this is that's how you brought it up. And I don't care what monitor you're using, whether it's fitbit, whether it's apple, whether it's Fitbit, whether it's Apple Watch, whether it's Oura Ring, it doesn't matter. You just need to be consistent. Whatever you're monitoring. And I like HRV, because HRV, which is heart rate variability, basically monitors the balance between the sympathetics and the parasympathetics, the balance between the sympathetics and the parasympathetics, the balance between the running from a tiger or that survive nervous system or that thrive nervous system.

Dr. Peter Martone: 18:45

When you are surviving and you're running from a tiger, that heart rate needs to be very rhythmic and the body needs to be able to depend on the amount of sugar getting to the cell like clockwork. That's a rhythmic heart rate, believe it or not. If you have a 60 beat per minute heart rate, that's one beat every second. That's not good. You want it variable, like bum, bum, bum, bum, bum, bum, bum. So one beat might be in 0.5 seconds, another beat might be in a second, Next one a second and a half, next one three quarters of a second. So you want that variability within the heart rate because that means the parasympathetic nervous system is at play. So when the parasympathetic nervous system is at play. In your sleeping, your heart rate is very variable. When you're awake and you're running from a tiger, it's very non-variable, so you can then take a reading over a period of a day and see how calm your system is and being able to see how well your body's repair.

Philip Pape: 19:42

That's one of the best explanations I've heard for HRV, because it's a confusing concept for people and even if you have an O-ring like I do, and you know you learn and dive into this subject people don't quite always get it, and your description of it being a gap between your sympathetic and parasympathetic meaning that the more of a calm state you can get into, the more it's going to vary is a good visual for that. So then I guess then I want to get into the positioning stuff, because you talked about a pillow, you talked about the curling up and whatever based on the avatar. I mean, what are all the things that people are going to potentially adjust when they fix their sleep position? All right, sleep position. Is this going to potentially adjust when they fix their sleep position.

Dr. Peter Martone: 20:19

All right, sleep position. Is this going to be audio visual? What is it?

Philip Pape: 20:22

it's mainly audio, I mean, you know, but but we have the video.

Dr. Peter Martone: 20:25

We do have the on youtube yeah, so this is what's going to do. What I'm going to do is I'm going to put myself in the position and you're going to explain what I'm doing okay, all right, okay, here we got it so I will move my audio here.

Dr. Peter Martone: 20:40

My thing oh, I got my spine on the bed, so I'm going to be using right now to do a neck nurse. This is something that we created, but if you have a soft down pillow or you have like a blanket, you can put under your neck. What's important is that you support so anytime you support something in the body you can put under your neck. What's important is that you support so. Anytime you support something in the body, you weaken it Anytime. I don't care what you're supporting. Anytime you support the body, you weaken it.

Dr. Peter Martone: 21:06

So when you use a pillow a pillow is defined as a support for your head You're weakening the cervical curve in your neck. You do not want to support your head when you sleep, but if you support your head or you use a cervical pillow and it goes under your neck and it's supporting your head at the same time, that's even worse. So you want some sort of force. If you have a bad curve, like I did, you want some sort of force applied to the neck that gently stretches and arch back into the neck and that would be distraction. So you support your neck, but you use the weight of your head off of the back of the neck nest or whatever you're using, so that your head is basically almost three quarters of an inch or an inch off the bed and it's gently like a slinky, like a weight up the end of a slinky.

Dr. Peter Martone: 22:01

It's gently stretching the curve back into your neck, even though you're supporting the neck by using the weight of your head as a distractive force. The body reacts to force, a force. Stress is a force that causes change, so that is what will reintroduce the curve back into your neck.

Philip Pape: 22:20

Okay, yeah, it makes total sense. So only support your neck. Your head hangs back a little bit. So Peter is about to lay down on his bed here in the video and he's just got a looks like a soft pillow squished up under his neck, just like he explained, and the back of his head is up a bit from the surface.

Dr. Peter Martone: 22:40

Yeah, I know. And when most people okay, here we go, right, we're going to talk about this. So when most people see that, right, it's like you're sleeping in a coffin the first thing that people say is I can't do that. I get it, you do not have control Right now. Any decision you're making is the conscious brain, so we know that that decision's flawed because the conscious brain makes all the excuses. It's why you don't do it. It's the problem. So let's talk to your conscious brain. Hello, consciousness, I get it. You can't do that. You're not in control.

Dr. Peter Martone: 23:13

I'm talking to your friend who is actually in control, like in my house my wife. You talk to my wife if you want to get anything done. So I'm going to talk to the subconscious brain. Subconscious brain, I know you can do this, but what you're saying is it's not safe and you don't feel safe doing it.

Dr. Peter Martone: 23:28

Listen, all we need to do is fall asleep like this and then, once you fall asleep in this position every night, I don't care what you do. So that's the lifestyle habit. The lifestyle habit is not to be a back sleeper with something under your neck and think that you're not going to be able to sleep like that Get like what every other expert tells you. Oh, you know, fall asleep on your side, that's the best position. Listen, idiot, not an idiot talking like the subconscious brain. You're not in control. I'm not talking like the subconscious brain. You're not in control. Once you fall asleep on your side and your arm's in this position, try to watch a two-hour movie in the position you fall asleep in. It's not possible. So for somebody to tell you that you can fall asleep on your side and that's the best position, you're only in that position for 20 minutes and then the average person tosses and turns 20 to 40 times a night because they're giving them the wrong explanation, because they don't understand spinal biomechanics.

Philip Pape: 24:28

And when you do this thing with your neck, you don't do that, so like what? Inevitably you're going to stay in that position. Is that what you're saying?

Dr. Peter Martone: 24:33

Yeah. So when you I don't want you to think about the whole night, but when you fall asleep in that position, right, everybody needs to start in that position, I get it. Your airway might be an issue. You snore, you have apnea. It's worse in that position. I get all of that. We have tricks and tools to help people overcome those things, but you want to start the body in alignment. Then the next trick is then be able to create the pressure from sleeping on your side, mimic that in the back sleeping position. So, for instance, if I get all right, I'm going to show you one more thing right here. So if I'm a back sleeper, if I'm a side sleeper, okay, I sleep on my side. That's pressure against my face, okay. So what you can do, you take neck nurse, put it on your neck but put a pillow against your face.

Philip Pape: 25:28

Put a pillow against your face on the side, okay.

Dr. Peter Martone: 25:33

Right or put a pillow on your side. You is. How important is it for you and how much safety or pressure do you need to create in order to allow the subconscious brain to have to stay in that position?

Philip Pape: 25:46

Oh man, okay, so, yeah, it makes total sense now. So if your body is inclined to want to go onto its side, you're giving it the safety so that, even if it tries to, it's now snuggled in that pillow and you're remaining aligned.

Dr. Peter Martone: 25:57

Okay, beautiful, yeah, that makes total sense and nobody has ever this has taken so much understanding, because these concepts that you know we have, like spare breathing and all of these things, they didn't exist before, because everybody you know takes the. They look at the 2015 study that was done on rats and say that side sleeping is the best for humans. But even though there's a significant study, this is a gold standard. The gold standard study that tells people that lymphatic drainage happens best on your side was done on a rodent. The rodent spine is completely off the cervical spine is completely opposite the human spine and in there there's a significant, same say, significant statement saying, even though this was done on rodents, we're extrapolating that the same is going to be done for humans.

Dr. Peter Martone: 26:48

And this goes through the entire industry and and it's like it drives me bonkers. So I said I gotta figure out where that study is, because I didn't know that it was done on rodents. I'm like, because there's something flawed because lymphatic drainage only occurs with ease is if the cervical biomechanics are good, because it's flow of the heart with breath around the spinal cord that you you need that cervical spinal flow, and if you have a breakdown in the proper spinal biomechanics of your body. You're backing all that stuff up cause like heart pressure, blood pressure and all sorts of different issues. And that's when I saw the study and I'm like that makes perfect sense.

Philip Pape: 27:30

That makes sense. Yeah, the findings were that, but it does not apply to humans. I mean, I could tell you that from my girl's hamsters, that they're very different creatures than us.

Stephanie: 27:37

I could tell you that from my girls, hamsters, that they're very different creatures than us. The most value that I got from this was the fact that I had someone that I could talk to about anything and that there was going to be no judgment. It was just well, here are your goals, here's the best way that you're going to achieve it, and then let's work together to help you feel inspired and motivated to do that and there's a lot of people out there trying to be coaches and not all of them have done the work and also just be a genuine person that is positive and coming from the heart in terms of wanting to help, and Philip really embodied all of those qualities. I would recommend him to just about anyone that's looking to achieve goals in that realm of their nutrition and building new habits.

Philip Pape: 28:23

So we're going to break it down into different pieces here. You mentioned somebody with shoulder pain right, and again, I know lots of people who lived right. They have various issues that come across over time and sometimes they seem to not go away, even if they have surgery, even if they have physical therapy, even if they're doing everything they can to train around it. Maybe it's because of their sleep. I mean, how does that cascade or those mechanisms work to then say, somebody who had rotator cuff surgery and just never quite could recover, now, all of a sudden, is pain free?

Dr. Peter Martone: 28:51

You give me a side sleeper, I'm going to give you a shoulder problem.

Philip Pape: 28:55

Okay, so that's me, that's me.

Dr. Peter Martone: 28:56

I'm speaking for myself. I can see it because your head shifted to the left side, your hip is going to go to the other side and your shoulder is internally rotated. So when you have that, your body posture adjusts to head position. Then Davis's law so writing reflex says body posture adjusts to head position, so the head comes forward. Davis's law says tissue remolds based on the stresses applied.

Dr. Peter Martone: 29:19

So if you're sleeping on your side, you're internally rotating the shoulder, so you're stretching out and you're weakening most people because we're not rock climbers, we're not climbing things have inferior trap issues. The inferior trap is the main muscle that causes shoulder issues and impingement syndromes. Most people believe that the rotator cuffs are the problem. They're not the problem, they're just they're getting worn down because the altered biomechanics of the shoulder, because the shoulder blades. We have weak inferior traps. The inferior trap is done only with one exercise Grab the bar and squeeze your shoulders together. So the blade needs to squeeze together and then that will bring the shoulders back. But if you continue to sleep on your side, you're going to continue.

Philip Pape: 30:07

You're offsetting it? Yeah, cause even uh, dead hangs are known to be helpful. But, like you said, if you're just making the root cause worse, it's not going to help, okay.

Dr. Peter Martone: 30:15

That is a good as long as you go up and down a little bit and just get that flow. But that's what it's doing. It's reversing what? So? The rotator cuff right, supraspinatus, infraspinatus subscapularis and teres minor All of them, you know, most of them do this. Only two of them do external rotation, but none of them really retract the shoulder blades, which is what causes the impingement syndrome, the shoulder riding up into the capsule.

Philip Pape: 30:42

Makes a lot of sense. So I assume similar logic follows for everything down the whole posterior chain when you get to the low back, because low back's the next big hitter, would you say, or from your experience.

Dr. Peter Martone: 30:52

Well, the big hitter is the eyes right. So it's the eyes. Everything wants to level the eyes Now, oh, I got a short right leg. I got a short. That's all bullshit. Those are all adaptation to forward head posture.

Philip Pape: 31:05

Oh, when people say I have asymmetry or whatnot, that's what you're saying, yeah.

Dr. Peter Martone: 31:08

Yeah. So most people are like oh, it's the leg, and they saw a therapist and they say I have to work down here. I got to work on my core more. It's not your core, it's not your core, it's proprioception, it's balance. So it's innervation to the muscle. See, muscles are minions. They're always being told what to do. They're being told by the neurology. So if a muscle is in spasm, it's either moving something or protecting something. That's it. So we have to stop looking at the muscle structure and seeing why it's out of balance. It's out of balance because we're losing. I don't want to get technical, but it's all right, get technical.

Philip Pape: 31:43

It's all good.

Dr. Peter Martone: 31:43

The premise in our brain is atrophy. So, for instance, for you, what I want you to do is go to your screen, look at me through your screen and bring that circle back to your eye. What? Do you mean Like, so make a circle, okay, yeah, and look at me through the lens of the iris of the webcam.

Philip Pape: 32:01

Okay, yeah, it's like a teleprompter, so hopefully I'm doing it All right, make it smaller, make a circle.

Dr. Peter Martone: 32:06

Now bring that back to your eye. Okay, I could, so your right eye.

Philip Pape: 32:11

So now, oh, I see, yeah, you're telling me eyes that are dominant, and I got it.

Dr. Peter Martone: 32:15

Are you right-handed or left-handed? Right-handed, do you kick with your right foot or your left foot, right foot and do you do anything ambidextrous? No, okay, good, so you're fully lateralized. So that fully lateralized neurology is a lot easier to work with than and if you kick a ball, you're going to kick it with your right foot, correct? Yep, for sure it is a lot easier to work with.

Dr. Peter Martone: 32:41

Sleep wise, and one of the issues is you're constricted because I can see it in the way you stand in the frontal plane. So what happens is, as we lean forward or as we atrophy the brain people walk forward. That's why people have foot issues or toe issues. Yeah, you can see it right there. So when you're leaning forward, so when you go to sleep on your back, your body it's a lot of people are going to have nightmares, thinking because it's not safe, because the head's in that extension and you you're not safe in that that backwards plane.

Dr. Peter Martone: 33:10

So you want to work on balance to retrain the neurology, like we're working on a pack right now, on a specific wobble board that quantifies balance. But you want to work on like, just get a wobble board, not a bose ball, it needs to be a wobble board, like really hard wobble board which is a circle with the ball on the bottom and you want to stand on it and and have upright posture. Most I mean most people fall backwards or they fall forwards and they're constricted in one of those planes, but but that is what's firing the patterns wrong. So with all of my athletes, I have them immediately work on balance, because that is the best way to retrain the symmetry of the body. You don't look at it and say, oh, you need to do more on the left psoas, because you're not in control.

Dr. Peter Martone: 34:00

The subconscious brain's in control. It's your nervous system. Yeah, yeah, everything's the nervous system.

Philip Pape: 34:04

No, no, it makes sense, Like I'm thinking robots and gyroscopes and I'm thinking Segway, Like, oh, that's going through my engineering brain of how like all that stays balanced with counteracting forces that you don't even think about. Think about just like with lifting. You know, sometimes just being able to lift with the major movement patterns can resolve some quote unquote imbalances and such that people thought they had, because you're training things as a system, so you're talking about your nervous system. So, okay, this is good, man, I didn't realize I'd get my own coaching session here, but this is good for people listening because they're like now they can walk through the process.

Dr. Peter Martone: 34:37

And you sprained your right ankle, by the way, just to let you know.

Philip Pape: 34:40

I sprained my right ankle. Yeah, you think I did.

Dr. Peter Martone: 34:43

Turn your head to the left side my head to just my head, yeah. And now turn your head to the right, as far as it'll go. See how far you go to the right side and you don't go as far to the left. Yeah, that's coming up from an old ankle sprain. So the talus is pumped forward. It's possible, man, I've had injuries over the years. It's possible, yeah, but your body is leaning to that ankle sprain and then the heads go in the opposite way. So that's the mechanics, so you know, so that biomechanics of that right ankle need to be addressed. So you stand in on one foot on that wobble board, you work on proprioception, you retrain the brain to get out of pain. That's where, like, all of my work was done in that whole area before, and then it moved into the ADD world, then into the sleep world. So that's kind of where all that stuff is put together.

Philip Pape: 35:29

Wobble board sounds like fun. It reminds me of the. Uh what would? I grew up in the eighties. They had the. It looked. It looked like a board with the ball. That was the pogo ball. I know you said not that like the hard one, but still made me think of that. What about people with um, like sleep apnea, snoring issues, does? Where does that come into play with all of this?

Dr. Peter Martone: 35:45

no, that's great. Those are things that have to be overcome with airway management, but it does not change the position. So we have to have anchors. An anchor is something that is is law 100 of the time. So so writing reflex Davis' law, wolf's law and these are laws that they're not denied it's like gravity. You can't deny that. So in one of the laws that we've applied, is that your nervous system controls everything in the body. How important is it that nervous system functions optimally Extremely important While the spine protects your central nervous system. How important is it to maintain the integrity of the spine versus a 2% increase in heart rate, blood pressure when you sleep on your back? It's absolutely asinine when you're looking at things and comparing them to the overall yeah trade-offs.

Philip Pape: 36:33

first principles yeah, right.

Dr. Peter Martone: 36:35

So everybody, regardless of the airway. That's where the academy can come in, right. It can help people overcome things with understanding and learning. We're doing high level view, but you should always just start on your back with the pillow under your neck, put the body into alignment, create safety and then you know remember yourself to sleep, don't think yourself to sleep. So you got to get out of your own mind and you put those three things together. It'll transform the way that you sleep and will transform your results in the gym and improve your performance.

Philip Pape: 37:08

Something came to mind just totally off the wall. Is there any connection with your dreams and this like level of safety in the way you sleep? Like you mentioned the falling back, and I'm like I've always had dreams where I'm falling at the end in my nightmare and that's how I wake up.

Dr. Peter Martone: 37:20

Yeah, because you're losing Remember. Your dreams are in this weird space in the brain that nobody understands. Yeah, true, and if you are losing balance and your head is in a position you're going to stimulate some sort of vertigo, let's say in your head you're going to feel like you're falling off.

Philip Pape: 37:40

Yeah, yeah, I was just curious about that man. This stuff fascinates me. I'm a very skeptical person, very rational minded, but the more I've talked to experts like you and understand that there there is a rational principle basis for this stuff when you really explore it, and it's fascinating. So and then the other thing is my. You know, sleep masks are big now and weighted blankets and all of this other stuff. Are there any any things like that that could either get in the way or help in all of this that we should like maybe stay away from or I love pressure, love pressure in the eyes.

Dr. Peter Martone: 38:11

You can use a sleep mask. You can use a pillow over your head. You can use a sock. I've used a shirt.

Dr. Peter Martone: 38:18

When you travel, it's important to create a cocoon of pillows all around you, stuff them everywhere. Pressure is what creates safety. That's why babies like to be swaddled. That's why the weighted blankets work with some people. I don't use a weighted blanket, I just put my covers up underneath my chin close. I put some on my eyes. I just create that safety type of feeling. I'm more of a gorilla avatar, but I do need the safety. But I don't like all that pressure. I don't like the weighted blanket personally, but I do use it a lot with some of my clients. So I do love the idea of doing that. One thing interference Melatonin interferes with sleep cycles. Right, it knocks you out. Sleeping medication knocks you out, but you don't get good, deep, restorative sleep. Sleep for the bodybuilder or the athlete is the first third of your sleep cycle. The most important sleep for the anxiety, the ADD, the people that need to quantify their emotional stuff in their brains, is the last third of your sleep.

Philip Pape: 39:31

Right, is it deep and then REM? Yeah.

Dr. Peter Martone: 39:32

So the body healing is done in the first third brain heal. Mind recategorizing is done in the first third brain heal of mine recategorizing it is done in the um in the last third. I need it all because I got add. No, I can't super. You know athletic, so I I really am so disciplined on recharging if I want performance during the day. It starts with me at 9.30 when I go to bed and then when I wake up, my daily rituals that I choose. I know how I'm going to sleep that night. So it's not that you can just work on sleep and close your eyes and be healthy and have great sleep. It's really who do you need to become? Nobody wants to waste eight hours in bed. They want who they're becoming because they're getting better sleep.

Philip Pape: 40:18

Yeah, I agree. And what about wasting six and a half hours in bed? Because the other question is people are wondering well, what does Peter think about just sleep duration, like what are your thoughts on that?

Dr. Peter Martone: 40:27

Sleep duration does vary. I need a lot of sleep, but basically what you do is simply what we talked about at the very beginning. You keep taking your HRV. Take a day when you're at your best and see where your HRV is. That's your target. Then you want to increase that by 15% to 20%, or if you're never feeling your best, you want to increase that by 20% to 30%. So you do the thing. If you're not where you want to be, you need more sleep or you need to improve your quality. But I like the number eight right Eight hours of sleep. I like the number eight right Eight hours of sleep. I think the more athletic I am, I need nine, nine and a half hours of sleep. Sometimes If I'm not doing a lot, then I can get away with less.

Philip Pape: 41:09

Yeah, yeah, I know it's tough for a lot of people, but baby steps right Like one thing at a time. So I guess one of my last questions here then is is the best place to start? Besides, we're going to send them to your links and all that. Don't worry, peter, they're going to go through all that, figure out what you've got to offer them. Is it the pillow, or is there any other tip that you usually like to share with folks that they should come out of this with?

Dr. Peter Martone: 41:28

The best thing to start is start with positioning. Yep, start with positioning first. Don't say you can't is. That just lives in your own conscious brain. You start with positioning. You then create pressure in some way. Just use a sleep mask, use a pillow over your forehead, doesn't matter. And then, the biggest thing that I help people to get to sleep and I glanced over this so I want to go back to it think about the nervous system. You have nervous system at play.

Dr. Peter Martone: 41:57

When you are running from a tiger and you have to be quick with it, you know the blood's in the front portion of your brain. You need to think. When you're running from a tiger and react, you know it's the opposite of thinking. It's either remembering or letting go. So you can't think yourself to sleep because the blood's going to go to the sympathetic state and it's going to block you from sleep.

Dr. Peter Martone: 42:25

So if you're falling asleep and you're like I can't do this, I can't fall asleep like this, this is not going to happen or you're living in hate, anger, envy, fear. Those emotions are going to keep you out of sleep. Fear, envy, fear those emotions are going to keep you out of sleep. Now, if you talk about things like love, respect, gratitude and you give in to like an old memory. We have a thing that we call a sleep memory. Walk around a golf course in your head. If you golf a rhythmic, go from every hole, think about every sand trap, you'll be asleep by like the night hole. And then, once you walk that golf course, once walk the same golf course over and over and over again, that rhythmic memory your body will link to sleep and you'll fall asleep real quick.

Philip Pape: 43:10

I like counting sheep. You'll sleep tight, just like it says on your wall oh man, this has been super valuable. Peter, is there anything else you wish I had asked? I mean, I think we covered a lot in one, you know, jam packed topic here. Was anything else you wish I had asked about this topic?

Dr. Peter Martone: 43:25

I like data that identify things that we can control. So the first thing we have to understand is heart rate needs to drop down, respiratory needs to drop down and core temperature needs to drop in order to get good quality deep sleep. You can't do that by exercising too late at night, right before sleep, and you can't do that by eating too late, because if your body's digesting, you're producing heat, your heart rate's staying up and your metabolism will stay stimulated. So you want to go to sleep really clean. I guess you can say so. I have a rule no more than 300 calories within three hours of going to bed, and if it's a big meal, you want to have that at like 5 pm in the afternoon.

Philip Pape: 44:18

You hear that everyone. It's another reason to maybe train earlier in the day. And also, don't eat too late. And for us who are like bulking, which I am right now, that's a little more of a challenge, right, because that just means you need to start early with your food and spread it out and not be too late, because I've noticed those numbers on the HRV and everything just go to hell when you eat too late. With the amount of food I'm trying to eat right now, so, thank you, Peter, for all of that.

Philip Pape: 44:41

Where can listeners find more about TORQ? Where should they start to get the assessment and then find out more about what's available?

Dr. Peter Martone: 44:46

Just go to drsleeprightcom that's D-R-S-L-E-E-P-R-I-G-H-Tcom. Take your free animal sleep avatar test. Then you're in my world. You'll be able to find out anything from me from there, and always on Instagram at drsleeprightcom.

Philip Pape: 45:00

Awesome and I'm going to take advantage of some of this stuff myself. I'm definitely going to do the pillow thing tonight and I'm glad we spoke, because I'm happy to report back after seeing some improvement or checking out your stuff, and I'm glad the listeners got to learn from you today. So thank you so much for taking the time to be on here All right.

Dr. Peter Martone: 45:15

Thank you so much for having me.

Why Your Stress Feels Out of Control (Nyquist Stability Criterion) | Ep 279

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If your stress response feels stuck in overdrive where small triggers cause massive anxiety, this episode explains why using a fascinating engineering concept.

Learn how the Nyquist Stability Criterion from control systems engineering reveals why some people maintain their cool while others get overwhelmed by the same stressors. Discover how to build a more resilient stress response system based on proven engineering principles.

Main Takeaways:

• Your perceived stress matters more than actual stressors

• Stress operates as a feedback system that can become unstable

• Three engineering principles for stabilizing your stress response

• How to measure and adjust your stress management strategy

Timestamps:

2:41 - Overview of stress as a feedback system
5:03 - Understanding stability and the Nyquist Criterion
7:58 - Three key factors in stress response
10:42 - Strategy #1: Implementing negative feedback loops
13:04 - Strategy #2 & #3: Signal delay and stability margins
16:12 - Building resilience and key takeaway

Why Your Stress Feels Out of Control and How to Fix It

If you've ever felt like stress is spiraling out of control, where even small problems trigger massive anxiety, tension, and fatigue, you're not alone. Many people feel constantly overwhelmed, even when their actual stressors haven’t changed.

The good news? Stress is a system, and just like any system, it can be optimized for stability. In this article, we’re breaking down why your stress response sometimes feels unmanageable and how you can stabilize it—using a simple engineering principle called the Nyquist Stability Criterion.

Stress is a Feedback Loop—Not Just an Event

Most people think of stress as something that happens to them, an external force that they just have to deal with. But in reality, stress is a complex feedback system, much like the thermostat in your house or the cruise control in your car.

Your brain perceives stress, compares it to past experiences, and adjusts your physiological and psychological state accordingly. The problem? Perception of stress is often more important than the actual stressor itself.

🔹 Two people can experience the same stressor (e.g., a busy schedule) but have completely different reactions
🔹 Your body doesn’t distinguish between real and perceived threats—a lion chasing you and an overflowing email inbox can trigger the same response
🔹 Chronic stress can rewire your nervous system to overreact to minor triggers, making small stressors feel catastrophic

So, if you’ve ever wondered why you used to handle stress better but now feel like you’re constantly on edge, it’s because your stress feedback system has become unstable.

What Makes a Stress System Unstable?

In engineering, a stable system is one that absorbs disturbances and returns to baseline—just like cruise control adjusting for a hill and then returning to normal.

An unstable system, on the other hand, amplifies small disturbances until they spiral out of control. This is the equivalent of putting a microphone too close to a speaker and getting that high-pitched, ear-piercing feedback loop.

When it comes to stress, your mind and body can become unstable in the same way, reacting to small triggers with exaggerated responses, making stress compound rather than resolve.

Here’s why:

1. Delayed Stress Processing (Signal Delay)

If you ignore stress rather than process it, the response builds up and hits you harder later on—like a dam bursting instead of slowly releasing water.

➡ Example: You suppress anxiety about an upcoming project, but when the deadline arrives, the stress hits like a freight train.

2. Amplifying Small Stressors (Feedback Magnitude)

Some people naturally dampen stress, while others magnify it by ruminating and overanalyzing.

➡ Example: You get a slightly passive-aggressive email from your boss. Instead of letting it go, you spend hours analyzing the wording, assuming you’re about to get fired.

3. Lack of Recovery (System Damping)

A stable system has built-in mechanisms to return to balance after stress, but if you lack proper sleep, exercise, or relaxation techniques, stress stays elevated.

➡ Example: You have a stressful workweek but don’t prioritize sleep or movement, so the stress accumulates instead of dissipating.

How to Build a Stable Stress Response (Like an Engineer Would)

If stress is a system, then we can apply stability principles to make sure it absorbs stress rather than amplifies it.

1. Implement a Negative Feedback Loop (Cancel Out Stress)

Instead of letting stress build up, use counteracting activities to neutralize stress before it spirals.

✅ Strength training – Lifting weights reduces cortisol and improves resilience
✅ Walking – A 30-minute walk significantly lowers stress hormone levels
✅ Deep breathing – Activates the parasympathetic nervous system, shutting off “fight or flight” mode
✅ Short breaks – A 30-second pause between meetings can stop stress accumulation

Think of it like noise-canceling headphones for stress—you’re disrupting the cycle before it gets out of hand.

2. Process Stress in Real-Time (Reduce Signal Delay)

Instead of suppressing stress, deal with it as it happens.

✅ Mindfulness or meditation – Helps process emotions before they get out of control
✅ Journaling – Writing down stressors helps organize thoughts and reduce emotional intensity
✅ Talking about it – A quick conversation can help diffuse stress before it lingers

Ignoring stress delays the response, which only makes it worse later. The sooner you acknowledge and address it, the more stable your system remains.

3. Build a Buffer Zone (Add Stability Margins)

In engineering, systems aren’t run at their limits—there’s always a safety margin. Your stress system needs the same.

✅ Prioritize sleep – Sleep deprivation makes stress feel worse than it is
✅ Eat enough protein and whole foods – Nutrient deficiencies make it harder to regulate stress hormones
✅ Lift weights consistently – Strength training improves stress resilience by regulating cortisol and nervous system function

If your system already has stability, it takes a lot more stress to push it off balance.

Putting It All Together: Train Your Stress Response Like a Muscle

Just like you wouldn’t go from never lifting to deadlifting 400 lbs overnight, your stress system needs progressive adaptation.

1️⃣ Start tracking your perceived stress (1-10 scale) to notice patterns
2️⃣ Implement just ONE stress-regulating habit (e.g., daily walk, deep breathing, lifting weights)
3️⃣ Adjust based on results – If stress levels don’t improve, tweak your approach

This is how you create long-term resilience—by gradually increasing your stress tolerance while making sure your system returns to balance after each challenge.

The Bottom Line: Stability Beats Elimination

Stress isn’t the enemy. The real problem is how your system responds to it.

Instead of trying to eliminate stress altogether, optimize your system so that it handles disturbances efficiently and returns to stability—just like a well-tuned machine.

No matter how chaotic life gets, you have the ability to train your stress response just like you train your muscles. And just like in lifting, consistency is everything.

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Transcript

Philip Pape: 0:01

If you're the type of person who feels like your stress response has been stuck in overdrive lately, where little things trigger massive anxiety or where one stressful event seems to cascade into an overwhelming spiral of negative thoughts and physical symptoms, this episode will change how you think about and manage stress. Today, we're talking about why stress can feel completely out of control even when, objectively, the stressors in your life haven't changed much at all. We'll look at stress through an engineer's lens to understand why your mind and body sometimes overreact to minor triggers. Whether you're dealing with daily anxiety, chronic stress that's affecting your training and nutrition, or just want to build more resilience, this episode will give you a powerful new framework to regain control. Welcome to Wits and Weights, the show that helps you build a strong, healthy physique using evidence, engineering and efficiency.

Philip Pape: 1:02

I'm your host, philip Pape, and today we're examining stress through an entirely new lens by applying a concept called the Nyquist Stability Criterion, to understand why stress can spiral out of control. And don't worry, I'm gonna explain what that is and you'll see why it makes a lot of sense. Now, I was recently working with a client, michelle. Special shout out to her for inspiring this episode. She is in our physique university and she made I'm going to call it an incredible self-discovery about how focusing on perceived stress versus actual stress helped her finally get a handle on chronic stress that had been plaguing her for years, and that got me thinking about stability in systems and how the same principles explain why our stress response can become unstable. Now what's fascinating is that two different people can experience exactly the same stressor, like a busy work schedule or a demanding training program, but then they react completely differently. One person maintains their cool, the other person gets really overwhelmed. Today, we're going to uncover why this happens and what you can do about it Before we get into it. Of course, if you are struggling with stress, if you want some personalized guidance on managing it while staying on track with your fitness goals, I'd love to help. Just book a free 15-minute rapid nutrition assessment call with me. It is not a sales pitch. It is a focused, fast session where we identify what's holding you back whether that is stress triggers or something related to your training nutrition and then create a simple three-step action plan to help you feel more in control. So click the link in the show notes or go to witsandweightscom and click the big button at the top for that rapid nutrition assessment.

Philip Pape: 2:41

All right, let's get into today's topic. What we're covering today is first, we're going to understand how stress works as a feedback loop and why your perception matters more than the actual stressors. A lot of this is in our minds, so if we can control that, or at least understand it, we can go much farther in coping with stress. Second, we're going to look at why some stress responses stay stable while others spiral out of control. And we're going to look at why some stress responses stay stable while others spiral out of control, and we're going to use the Nyquist stability criterion to examine that. And then, third, we're going to use strategies from engineering as an analogy to help you stabilize your stress response. So bear with me as I nerd out a little bit, but it is going to be super practical.

Philip Pape: 3:19

So I want to start by explaining how stress operates in your body. Going to start by explaining how stress operates in your body, right, most people think stress is just something that happens to them, an external force that they cannot control. But stress is really about how your body and your mind process and respond to those challenges. And it happens through a system, through a complex feedback system, and that's why different people respond differently, and even you might have responded differently to the same types of stress at different points in your life. Now, in engineering, we use feedback systems everywhere, right From the cruise control in your car to the thermostat in your house right, your nest thermostat. These systems are measuring the current state, they compare it to the desired state and then they make an adjustment. That's it, and your body's stress response works the same way. It takes in information about potential threats or challenges and then it adjusts your physiological and psychological state accordingly.

Philip Pape: 4:14

What most people miss is it's not the external stressors themselves that determine your stress level. It's how your internal feedback system interprets and responds to them. And this is called perceived stress, and research shows it's actually a better predictor of health outcomes than objective stressors. And it makes kind of intuitive sense, right, like how you feel in terms of stress is probably more important than, objectively, what the stress might be. And another way to think about this think about your thermostat, right? It doesn't care if it's cold outside because your neighbor left their door open or because there's a winter storm. It doesn't care, it just responds to the temperature change. So, similarly, your body doesn't distinguish between a real threat being chased by a lion right and a perceived one, it initiates the same stress response either way.

Philip Pape: 5:03

We've talked about this before and I've had guests on that talk about the sympathetic versus the parasympathetic nervous systems, the fight or flight response. So this brings us to the Nyquist stability criterion. I know it sounds kind of technical, but it's just a simple principle in control systems that helps determine whether the system remains stable or spirals out of control when disturbed. So I want to break this down in a way that will transform how you think about stress specifically. So in engineering, a stable system is one that can handle disturbances and then return to normal.

Philip Pape: 5:38

Think about the car cruise control. I mentioned that earlier. Cruise control you turn it on, it goes at the same speed without you having to have your foot on the gas pedal when you hit a hill. You get to a hill, it starts to crank up right. It adjusts the throttle to maintain speed, cranks you up and then returns to normal on flat ground. That is a form of stability. On the other hand, it's going to overreact to a disturbance. Each response triggers a bigger accelerating response and that creates what engineers call positive feedback. It's not the good kind of positive right. It's like when you put a microphone too close to a speaker and then you get that small initial sound that gets amplified, amplified, amplified, right. Or if you ever have like, if you're on Zoom on a phone and then you're near a computer, on Zoom, zoom, and all the sound starts to feed back through the speaker and amplifies that terrible, like screeching noise we've all heard. That's what that is Okay.

Philip Pape: 6:34

Your stress response can become unstable in the same way. So let's say you have a deadline coming up for work. In a stable system you would recognize okay, this is a challenge, I'm going to mobilize resources to meet it, I'm going to do it and then I'm going to return to baseline afterward. In an unstable system, the anxiety about the deadline is going to increase your heart rate, increase your muscle tension, makes you more aware of your body's stress response. Your anxiety increases further and further and further and it becomes overwhelming. It creates a vicious cycle.

Philip Pape: 7:06

So that is an important analogy for the different types of people, but even you yourself, the different ways you handle different stressors. You know I always joke to my wife that like I can handle a high level of stress because I just kind of let it brush off of me, and some people perceive that as not caring or not having a sense of urgency. But it can be helpful as well when others get stressed by something Like, let's say, we're planning to go to um, my in-laws are planning to get, they got a flight to go to a funeral and they were freaking out about all the travel arrangements. So I said, okay, let me just go book multiple health hotel rooms for our family, I'll take care of it, they don't have to worry about it. Right, and that's my way of coping to help their stress. And it can be helpful vice versa. But then other things aren't going to stress them out at all. That might make me anxious, right? So we all can relate to this.

Philip Pape: 7:58

So the big insight from this Nyquist thing is that stability depends on how the system processes and responds to feedback right and in engineering terms which, again, we're going to apply this to us as humans, with our bodies and minds. We are going to look at three factors signal delay, feedback magnitude and system damping. So I hope it isn't getting too nerdy, but it's kind of cool how we map these to your stress response. So first we have signal delay. So in engineering, delays between the input and response often cause instability. So think about taking a shower. If you have a long delay between turning the handle and getting hot water, you might overcorrect and end up scalded. Or for anybody who watched Groundhog Day again, because we just had Groundhog Day, bill Murray gets in the shower, he cranks it up and it's freezing cold, right, and you overreact. But anyway you might overreact and end up scalded. And then your stress response has similar delays. When you try to suppress or ignore the stress, it can lead to bigger emotional response later. We all have been there, right, where we push it deep down inside and it comes out ferociously later on. So that's signal delay. That's basically, you're just procrastinating or you're not dealing with it.

Philip Pape: 9:15

The second is feedback magnitude. So a stable engineering system reduces the impact of disturbances. An unstable one amplifies them. Your stress response can go either way. Some people naturally dampen stress, they feel it, they process it, they let it go, and again I feel like I'm more in that camp, just naturally, and you may not be. Others amplify it through ruminating and catastrophizing and you turn small stressors into these major crises. Right, everything is a huge deal. Again, this is not a judgment. This is just something to be aware of. Do you respond this way to stressors? So that's feedback magnitude.

Philip Pape: 9:51

The third one is system damping how quickly these oscillations settle down. So, even when it's been disturbed, do they settle down? In engineering, we add filters or dampers to prevent this. Your body has natural damping mechanisms, like deep breathing and hormonal regulation right, some that you do on purpose and some that your body does involuntarily. But they can be overwhelmed if the system becomes too unstable. Right Again, you can only cope with a certain amount of stress beyond which it starts to expand out of control. So how do we apply these principles to stabilize your stress response? So we're going to use three strategies. I know I have a lot of lists in here, one, two, threes, but hopefully you're following. I'm trying to keep it pretty organized. We're going to use three strategies that are based on this control system theory.

Philip Pape: 10:42

All right, the first one is we're going to implement a negative feedback loop. Remember we talked about feed, positive feedback in the past being a bad thing. In this case, like it amplifies, like that screeching sound when you have the microphone near the speaker. In engineering, a negative feedback stabilizes a system by counteracting those disturbances, almost think of it like noise cancellation for stress. This means you can develop habits that automatically reduce stress when it starts building. And guess what? One of the best habits is Regular movement, regular lifting and, in some cases, a brief bit of high intensity activity like sprinting or something like that, but not overdoing it with lots and lots of chronic cardio, for example, because that creates the opposite problem that increases your stress. So lifting regularly, walking regularly, are two huge ways to increase your resilience and create a physiological response that counteracts the stress hormones like cortisol, or helps regulate them. It gives you resilience. There are also other negative feedback loops you can intentionally incorporate, like progressive muscle relaxation. It's a form of mindfulness, a form of meditation, and many, many others breathing meditation and so on. It doesn't have to be one of those techniques and I will say walking alone can be a huge one for a lot of people and it's easy to do. So that is a negative feedback loop, keeping in mind that that's a good thing. In this context, you're counteracting, you're negating the stress that starts to build up.

Philip Pape: 12:16

The second strategy is reducing signal delay. So notice that these are basically counteracting the problems we talked about before, so you remember how delays. If you delay, it causes instability. Right, and in stress management, this means you want to process your stress in real time instead of suppressing it, instead of pushing it deep down into the core of your stomach. Research shows that mindfulness, meditation, really any form of relaxation, even play, can literally rewire your brain's stress response circuits to respond more quickly and appropriately to stressors. It's like upgrading your processing speed when it comes to the stress and being able to cope with it, to deal with it.

Philip Pape: 13:04

And then the third strategy is adding stability margins. Engineers never run systems at the absolute limit. You always have safety margins built in. So for your stress response, this means maintaining what I call psychological redundancy Getting enough sleep, staying hydrated, eating nutritious foods these create a buffer zone. And lifting weights it's a buffer zone. I've talked about this multiple times recently about alcohol and other things. Small stressors, then, won't immediately push you into instability. You've got a lot more buffer zone built in where you can handle these things better.

Philip Pape: 13:45

So if you take all this together, where does this approach really shine? If you measure and adjust, you can put this whole thing on steroids right. Just like we monitor control systems, you need to track your stress response and there is something called the perceived stress scale. It's a validated tool used in research to help you quantify stress levels and monitor improvements. But you don't have to get complicated. Just start by establishing a baseline and rate your stress level on a scale of 1 to 10 or 1 to 5, whatever makes sense to you. We do that with my clients all the time. As part of our biofeedback tracking In Physique University, we have a biofeedback tracker. It includes stress, among other factors, and you're just going to rate it the same time each day for a week. So normally I recommend people track biofeedback weekly, but in this case, if you're trying to dial in something, you want to do it more frequently and then you're going to implement one strategy right, we're doing this systematically One strategy for reducing stress.

Philip Pape: 14:39

I touched a little bit on that today. I didn't want to get into the actual all the possible laundry list of stress details. I actually have a guide for that, called the stress solution guide, with specific things you can do. I think we all know some things that we can do, right? I mentioned walking, lifting weights. I mentioned being resilient. I mentioned breathing meditation and so on. I mentioned walking, lifting weights. I mentioned being resilient. I mentioned breathing, meditation and so on.

Philip Pape: 14:59

Um, I had a guest on who talked about just taking 30 seconds or a minute between things in your day, between meetings, between doing an errand and another errand All of those things can increase your resiliency and your stress response. I like the pillars lifting weights, walking, uh, um, you know, eating nutritious foods, getting enough sleep those are going to be the big ones, but you're going to change one thing and then you're going to see how your stress level changes. If you're wearing an Oura ring or some other wearable, it's kind of cool to see those numbers like HRV, resilience scores and whatnot. You could look at all that, look at how your numbers change and then if the approach hasn't really worked, you could adjust the parameters, just like you would tune any system. For me, right now, the thing I'm working on is my sleep posture and let's see when this comes out, when this episode comes out. Okay, this comes out on Wednesday and this Friday the episode with Dr Peter Martoni comes out. He's a sleep expert who talks about positioning, how to have a neutral spine and use back sleeping to improve your HRV and your sleep resilience quality. So that's the thing I'm working on and I'm going to see how the numbers change. Same thing with you. Pick one thing, measure it, track it before and after.

Philip Pape: 16:12

Now, the thing that most people miss about this whole stability thing, this whole stress response thing, it's not about eliminating the disturbances, because we can't control everything outside ourselves. Right, the stoic in me stoicism, ancient philosophy that's still super relevant today says that I can only do it, I can only control what's in my realm of control and I shouldn't really care about the rest. Right, it's changing how your system responds to those stressors. The most stable systems aren't the ones that never get disturbed, they're the ones that handle the disturbances elegantly. The same is true for your stress response. The goal is not to eliminate it, it's build a system that processes it effectively. So, as we wrap up, I want to recap the key points.

Philip Pape: 16:56

Your stress response is a feedback system. It follows the same stability principles as any system. By understanding and applying what we talked about today, you can implement strategies to prevent spiraling out of control and then build lasting resilience. And it all starts from understanding your level of perceived stress and then coming up with solutions to mitigate that. And that's it. It's not avoiding disturbances, it's building the system to respond and return to baseline. And, by the way, your baseline can be much bigger and more robust by building in the big pillars, like the lifting weights and having a healthy, active lifestyle, nutritious foods and so on.

Philip Pape: 17:30

All right, if you're ready to take control of your stress response and you want personalized guidance on some of those big pillars, don't forget I do have this free 15 minute rapid nutrition assessment. Not a sales call, it's just you and me chatting about what is holding you back, what are your specific stress triggers or areas of concern with your training, nutrition whatever and create a simple action plan tailored to your needs. I say here you go, one, two, three. Here's a resource or two, totally free, have fun. If you need any other support, you know where to find me. That's all. It is Low pressure. Click the link in the show notes or visit witsandweightscom and click the big button on the top to schedule your call today. Until next time, keep using your wits lifting those weights and remember, when it comes to stress, stability isn't about never experiencing stress, it's about having a system that returns to balance. I'll talk to you next time here on the Wits and Weights podcast.

Lifting Weights vs. Hormone Replacement Therapy (HRT) for Fat Loss Over 40 | Ep 278

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Can strength training alone help optimize your hormones after 40, or do you need homone replacement therapy (HRT)?

Learn what the research actually says about how lifting weights impacts your endocrine system and body composition.

Whether you're dealing with menopause, andropause, or age-related changes, discover how to make informed decisions about combining lifestyle interventions with medical approaches for optimal results.

Main Takeaways:

• Strength training influences hormones through multiple pathways beyond just building muscle

• Your body becomes more efficient at using hormones through proper training

• The type and intensity of training matters significantly for hormone optimization

• Context is crucial when deciding between training alone or combining with HRT

• Consistency and progression are key for long-term hormonal health

Timestamps: 

00:01 - Can strength training really impact your hormones after 40?
03:47 - Breaking down what happens to hormones with age
08:29 - Three key pathways strength training affects hormones
13:21 - Systems optimization approach for hormone health
17:32 - Three scenarios for combining strength training and HRT
21:04 - Research on maintaining youthful hormone profiles 
22:45 - Closing remarks and community invitation 

Should You Lift Weights or Use HRT for Fat Loss Over 40?

As you move into your 40s and beyond, changes in hormones, metabolism, and body composition make fat loss and muscle maintenance harder than they used to be. The common advice? Get on hormone replacement therapy (HRT) or lift weights—or both. But which approach is best for optimizing body composition, and can strength training alone be enough to regulate hormones?

Let’s break down the science behind lifting weights, hormonal changes, and fat loss to help you decide what works best for you.

How Aging Affects Your Hormones and Body Composition

As we age, hormones like estrogen, progesterone, testosterone, and growth hormone naturally decline, leading to:
✅ More fat storage, especially around the midsection
✅ Muscle loss (sarcopenia), making it harder to stay strong and lean
✅ Decreased insulin sensitivity, making it easier to gain fat
✅ Higher cortisol levels, increasing stress-related fat accumulation

For women, menopause causes a steep decline in estrogen, which leads to a slower metabolism and increased visceral fat storage. For men, testosterone gradually declines by about 1% per year after 30, which can reduce muscle mass and fat-burning capacity.

With these changes, the way you approach fitness and nutrition needs to evolve.

Can Strength Training Improve Hormones and Help with Fat Loss?

The short answer? Yes. Strength training is one of the most effective tools for managing hormones naturally. Research shows that lifting weights influences hormones in three key ways:

1. It Increases Hormone Receptor Sensitivity

Even if your hormone levels decline with age, your body can become more efficient at using them. Strength training enhances receptor sensitivity to hormones like testosterone, estrogen, and insulin, meaning you get more benefits from what’s already in your system.

2. It Triggers an Acute Surge in Anabolic Hormones

Heavy compound lifts like squats, deadlifts, and presses stimulate:
🔺 Growth hormone – Can increase up to 400% during training, supporting muscle growth and fat metabolism.
🔺 Testosterone – Rises significantly even in postmenopausal women, improving lean mass retention.
🔺 Insulin-like growth factor 1 (IGF-1) – Helps with tissue repair and regeneration.

3. It Improves Insulin Sensitivity

Muscle tissue acts as a storage site for glucose, reducing insulin resistance and making fat loss easier. Strength training increases GLUT4 transporters, helping your body store and use carbohydrates efficiently—without spiking insulin.

Should You Do Strength Training Instead of HRT? Or Both?

The answer depends on your symptoms, hormone levels, and goals. Let’s look at three scenarios:

Scenario 1: Mild Symptoms & Body Composition Changes

If your primary concerns are muscle loss, slower fat loss, and mild energy dips, start with strength training first. Give it three to six months while tracking changes in:
✔ Muscle tone and strength
✔ Fat distribution
✔ Energy and recovery levels

If these improve, you may not need HRT at all or might choose a lower dose if you decide to go that route.

Scenario 2: Severe Menopausal Symptoms or Significant Hormone Deficiencies

If you're experiencing hot flashes, extreme fatigue, major muscle loss, or severe metabolic decline, combining HRT with strength training is likely the best approach.

HRT can restore optimal hormone levels, while lifting ensures those hormones are effectively utilized for muscle retention, fat loss, and metabolic health.

Scenario 3: Already on HRT and Want to Maximize Results

If you’re already using testosterone replacement therapy (TRT), estrogen therapy, or bioidentical HRT, strength training will enhance the benefits and may even allow for a lower dose over time.

Many individuals on HRT find that adding a structured strength program improves their results dramatically by boosting muscle mass, fat loss, and overall energy levels.

Best Strength Training Approach for Hormone Optimization

To get the biggest hormonal response from lifting, follow these science-backed training principles:

✅ Train 3-5 times per week – Focus on progressive overload and consistent resistance training.
✅ Prioritize compound movements – Squats, deadlifts, presses, pull-ups, and rows engage the most muscle fibers.
✅ Use heavy weights with proper intensity – Work in the 4-8 rep range for big lifts and 8-12 reps for accessory exercises.
✅ Rest 2-5 minutes between sets – Allows for maximum strength output and hormone response.
✅ Track your biofeedback – Monitor strength progression, recovery, sleep, and mood to see how lifting impacts your hormones over time.

The Bottom Line: Strength Training Should Be Your Foundation

Whether you choose HRT or not, lifting weights should be part of your strategy. It preserves muscle, improves metabolism, and supports hormone health, helping you stay strong and lean well into your 40s, 50s, and beyond.

If you're on the fence about HRT, start with strength training first, track your progress, and then reassess if additional intervention is needed. Either way, the barbell should be your best friend for longevity, strength, and body composition.

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Transcript

Philip Pape: 0:01

Should you lift weights? Should you get hormone replacement therapy? Should you do both for fat loss over 40, men and women? If you're wondering if lifting weights alone can make a big difference in your hormone levels, we're going to talk about that today. I'm answering a question from our Facebook group about optimizing hormones and body composition after 40, and you'll discover what the research actually says about strength training's impact on your endocrine system.

Philip Pape: 0:26

Whether you're dealing with menopause, andropause or any other age-related changes, the goal is to you build a strong, healthy physique using evidence, engineering and efficiency. I'm your host, philip Pape, and today we are answering an excellent question from Angela L in our Facebook group, and she asked can strength training impact hormones, specifically in menopausal women? Does strength training provide benefits in production and or regulation of hormones that can help with fat loss? Is strength training a good first step before trying HRT? Now, the reason I love this question is it gets to the heart of something that I deal with constantly in nutrition coaching people wondering whether lifestyle interventions like strength training lifting weights are enough, or do they still need medical approaches like hormone replacement therapy or HRT? Now the research here reveals some, I'll say, fascinating, overlooked connections between resistance training and hormone regulation that we don't talk about a lot and I wanted to dig deeper into that subject today. So, angela, your timing couldn't be better, because I've got lots of clients that navigate this exact challenge and it's been really amazing to see their ability to improve their hormone levels without HRT or in complement with HRT, and we're going to cover that today Before we get into it.

Philip Pape: 2:04

If you find value in some of these discussions based on evidence and you want to connect with others, like Angela who asked the question, who are on their strength training journey, join our free Facebook group. Just search for Wits and Weights in Facebook or click the link in the show notes. It's really an amazing community we're at about a thousand now are really trying to grow. People sharing their experiences, asking great questions. We do a biweekly live. I share lots of free resources. Sometimes I just do ad hoc videos and lives to help you out with specific topics and help each other succeed. So click the link in the show notes to join the Facebook group and I will see that. Come in and I'll approve you and you can join the group.

Philip Pape: 2:43

All right, so let me show you how we're going to break this down today I want you to think of your body as a complex system with multiple interconnected feedback loops. Right, we've talked about this concept before. It's the kind of thing we deal with in engineering. We've got hormone production, receptor sensitivity, tissue response, and all of these work together. If you can understand the connections, we then can optimize the system instead of just focusing on one single component. So I'm going to start by laying out exactly what happens to our hormones as we age, because then that sets up everything else we'll discuss. It's probably why Angela asked the question and then I'm going to show you specific ways that strength training itself influences these hormone systems. And that's, I think, where it gets interesting. Even I always learn something new when I do this research behind the scenes. And then, finally, I'll give you a practical framework, as always, for deciding whether strength training alone might be enough for you or if combining it with HRT makes more sense.

Philip Pape: 3:47

So first let's talk about what happens to our hormones after 40. And for some of you, it might start happening in your 30s. You know, the period of perimenopause for women can start in your 30s. Everybody's a little bit different and of course, men can have a decline in their hormones as well, predominantly testosterone. I'm going to get a little bit technical here, which I think you guys like, but I do like to nerd out. I hope you do too, but I think it's important to understand this.

Philip Pape: 4:13

So, for women entering perimenopause and menopause, what we see is the major change in two key hormones estrogen and progesterone. Now most people know about the drop in estrogen, but what usually gets missed is it's not just the having less estrogen, it's about how that decline affects your metabolic system, your metabolism. The research shows that when estrogen drops, especially a form called estradiol, three major things happen. First, your body starts storing more visceral fat, that is, the dangerous fat around your organs. Your muscle tissue becomes harder to maintain, and so that leads to accelerated sarcopenia or muscle loss. And then your insulin sensitivity also decreases, making it easier to gain fat and then harder to lose fat. And so I see this play out a lot with clients, and we talk about this in the Physique University. We just had one of our live calls and I showed the timeline.

Philip Pape: 5:14

That happens when you get into peripost-menopause, and again, this is going to apply to men and women to an extent, but predominantly women right here, and clients are frustrated. Women are frustrated, right Because you are eating the same way you've always had. But then you start gaining weight, and not just anywhere, you're getting it around your belly right. So we hear the phrases menopause, belly, belly fat. And then your doctor says, even if you have a halfway decent doctors, they might mention HRT. I know a lot of doctors won't even mention it. That's a whole separate discussion.

Philip Pape: 5:44

So HRT hormone, bioidentical, hormone replacement therapy and you either start down that path or you're like well, before I do that, let me try some other approaches, some lifestyle approaches and clients that come to me. Either Either they start on HRT because they've addressed an issue, a deficiency, or they haven't done it yet and they want to see if some other things will normalize their hormones first, to see where the real issues lie, if there are any. So that's kind of where I'm getting to with this episode today, and what I usually see with women in that situation is women are storing more fat. They're responding differently to their usual diet and exercise routine that they've done for years. What worked in the past no longer works now. And it's not that you're broken, it's not that, like all of physics has changed, it's not that you're doing anything wrong, it's that the context has evolved and we have to evolve with it.

Philip Pape: 6:38

And for many of us, for many of you listening and watching, when you were younger, you could kind of get away with more types of training and types of eating and your body would be cool with it. And so then in your brain you're like, okay, this works, but in reality you were just delaying the inevitable. Now, for men, the changes are, I'll say, more gradual, but they're still very impactful. I mean, you know, men are really affected by these, uh, this situation as well, because around age 30, testosterone starts to drop roughly at 1% per year on average, and you know that might not sound like much, but if you compound it over 10, 20 years, you're looking at pretty significant changes. And then, by the age of 50, many men have testosterone levels that are like a quarter, you know 25% lower than their peak. And so what's interesting is for both men and women, they see growth hormone drop and IGF-1 drop with age, and so those are like your repair and regeneration hormones, if you will.

Philip Pape: 7:36

You know, when they decline, everything from your ability to maintain muscle, to metabolize fat, becomes more challenging. It's like stacking on top of each other. Then there's another hormone that tends to be a boogeyman but it does increase with age, and that is cortisol. Cortisol, the stress hormone, and that can affect your body composition. If it's chronically high and higher, cortisol then leads to increased belly fat storage and it could actually break down muscle tissue. And then the, of course, physical and psychological stress of aging just more obligations, and you're older and there's lots of things going on in your life. They drive cortisol up just when we would hope that it's more regulated. So I get it right, I'm 44. I'm just experiencing a little bit of this now. Fortunately, I started lifting about five years ago and I've noticed how beneficial that has been to a lot of different things, including testosterone. Uh, but we're going to get into that now.

Philip Pape: 8:29

How does strength training influence the hormone systems? Because Angela's question was um and by the way, if I sound a little hyper, it's because I've just had my coffee but strength training, um, the? The question is can you just lift weights and will that, you know, fix your hormones, so to speak? And this is where I think, like the technical engineering background kind of helps the systems thinking so, when you lift weights, you are, yes, building muscle, but you're also creating a cascade of hormonal responses. It's like you're tuning multiple control systems in your body simultaneously together. Right, they're not independent variables, they're all working together, and the research here is pretty robust and also pretty amazing. So I reviewed some of the studies. There is a 2022 meta-analysis, which is a study of studies, and they looked at 50 studies and they found that strength training influences hormone regulation through three main pathways, and I'm going to break them down. The first one is that it improves hormone receptor sensitivity.

Philip Pape: 9:31

So, even if your hormone levels are lower, your body becomes more efficient at using what you have. So it's kind of like upgrading your hormone software. Right, even as the hardware changes. The hardware's evolving, but now you're upgrading the software to kind of keep up. It's older hardware but newer software, and I've seen this with male clients. A lot of my male clients are in their 40s, 50s, 60s, so you start to see this around the 50s, especially dealing with lower testosterone, and some men are like jumping at the chance to go on TRT and others don't want to go there yet because they want to see like, is there something else I can do? And so we focus on a structured strength program keeping the stress levels down. Right, you're not necessarily going to the gym seven days a week and what you sometimes find when you lift is that total T doesn't necessarily go up. It could, but free T, the amount available for your body to use, can improve. We see this a lot with those situations where you're more efficient with your testosterone, which is it's emboldening. It's empowering to think that, because then you know it's not, you're not just trying to crank up your T level, you're trying to better use it right, and then your energy improves, you start having better symptoms, maybe building muscle more easily and have improvements in your body composition, even though your hormone level, your total, hasn't changed that much. So the sensitivity is important to understand.

Philip Pape: 10:55

The second. Well, okay, I think I might cover this later, but you think of how insulin sensitivity increases when you lift weights. So apply that to any hormone in a good way. The second pathway is the acute hormone response, right. So, like the in the moment, short-term hormone response. When you perform heavy compound movements, right, like the squat, like the deadlift, your body produces a surge of anabolic hormones. Growth hormone can increase by up to 400% during an intense training session. Testosterone rises significantly Even in menopausal women, who have a much lower baseline testosterone but, as I learned from Karen Martell, that is still the highest hormone in your body. Like you have the most of that of any hormone, even though it's much lower than men.

Philip Pape: 11:44

The acute response from lifting helps maintain your muscle mass and your metabolic health. So it's super important. But wait, there's more right, because I mentioned cortisol. Strength training helps regulate cortisol, the stress hormone, because and the irony is that when you lift weights it causes an acute cortisol spike during the workout, but over time it actually improves your body's stress response system, kind of like how it raises your blood pressure during the workout but it actually gives you lower overall blood pressure and metabolic health. Studies show that regular strength training can lower baseline cortisol levels and improve how your body handles stress hormones, and I think I touched on this a little bit in another episode about how just being a lifter helps your body handle lots of things better stress, alcohol, whatever Very important concept to remember.

Philip Pape: 12:33

And then the third pathway is about insulin sensitivity. So I promised I would get to that. Your skeletal muscle is the largest glucose sink in your body. It's this nice huge pool to store glucose. The more muscle you have, the better your body then handles blood sugar. So strength training increases something called GLUT4, glut4 transporters, and that helps shuttle glucose into your muscle cells without needing as much insulin. And so that is massive for fat loss as well, because better insulin sensitivity means better nutrient partitioning and then better metabolic health. It all works together. It's really, really cool. I hope you find this stuff as fascinating as I do. So that's kind of how strength training impacts hormones through three pathways that are very important.

Philip Pape: 13:21

Now what do we do with this information? So we're going to use what I call systems optimization approach, right? Systems? We talk about systems the same way we would tune an engineering system, right? That's where I come from. So you need, I'll say, four key components to tune your system. You need the input right, these are going to be your training parameters for your lifting. You need the control that's going to be progressive overload and managing recovery. You're going to need feedback. So these are your like, writing down what you're doing in the gym, your performance metrics, as well as your biofeedback and then output. So how does your body composition change and how do your hormone markers change? And, by the way, in the feedback, that can also include the blood work and the hormone panels as well. You may not need to go to that level, honestly, it could be just symptom driven by biofeedback, but just keep that in mind.

Philip Pape: 14:14

So for the training parameters, research shows that the sweet spot for hormones is going to be what we talk about all the time, something like three to five sessions per week, prioritizing compound movements, big heavy lifts that use multiple joints. But it doesn't always have to be in the heavy rep range, which I would say is like four to six and four to eight. It could also you know, you could definitely have some accessory work in there in the eight to 12 rep range. More importantly is the mechanical tension and depends on what your goals are, but some, some combination of those. You then have to have progressive overload consistently applied. What does that mean? That means you are always pushing yourself to your current limit so that you can adapt and create a new limit that's stronger over time. So if you were able to lift you know, 135 pounds for your squat this session, you might lift 140 next time. Or if you're able to get eight reps at a certain weight, you would get 10 reps at a certain weight, some combination of that, which we're not going to get into super great detail today, but I have other episodes about it. I also have some guides on that.

Philip Pape: 15:14

Okay, and then you know, interestingly, when we look at what types of movements create a large hormonal response, it's going to be the ones that use more muscle mass, more of your system, more of your body, the bigger, the ones that recruit more muscle fibers. So squat, deadlifts, um presses, rows, pull-ups, lat pull-downs, really any compound lift you can think of. And then, of course, you can branch out into other movements to compliment that. So it's yet another reason to lift, lift heavy and use compound lifts and use all the things we talk about, as opposed to the YouTube workouts that change every time, that have like 20 reps. That are circuits. You know the circuit training yeah, it's got to be heavy where you're taking long rest periods, you're in fairly lower rep ranges and you're progressing over time.

Philip Pape: 16:02

My female clients who stick to those types of programs are the ones that have massive success and they find that this cascade of hormones leads to lots of other benefits, including fat loss. It makes it so much easier. The rest periods I mentioned that they matter more than most people realize. Um, the rest periods I mentioned that they matter more than most people realize. Um, if you're trying to maximize strength and muscle, you need longer rest periods, but it also doesn't hurt to have shorter rest periods for endurance, for work capacity, for even for hormone output. There is some correlation. So I like to mix both right. I like to have big lifts where you're resting three to five minutes and then a couple accessories after that where you might rest anywhere from rest anywhere from 30 seconds to two or three minutes. So that's just training in general.

Philip Pape: 16:47

The question here now getting back to Angela's original question is should you do strength training instead of HRT or should you use both? It depends. This is where context becomes really important, because this is I'm not a hormone. I'll call it expert. I'm not a hormone coach. This is not a hormone podcast, but I listen to a ton of information about, and research a ton of information about hormones, and I'm always working with clients on trying to, I'll say, not interpret their hormone panels, because that's technically outside my scope of practice, but take the interpretation and then apply it to okay, what are we doing for our training and our nutrition that can be improved? That might then translate back to an improvement in hormones. And the research shows.

Philip Pape: 17:32

I'll say three scenarios that you might fall under. The first one is if your symptoms are moderate and primarily related to body composition so increased fat storage, increased muscle loss I think starting with strength training is the best thing you can do. It's very accessible, right. You can literally start this week. You don't have to hunt around for a good medical practitioner and I mean it's a whole can of worms when you talk hormone replacement therapy. Good medical practitioner, and I mean it's a whole can of worms when you talk hormone replacement therapy. And I would give it three to six months with a before and after, with everything you care about. So if that means hormones, get a hormone panel, maybe work with a hormone therapist, but then see what happens with just the strength training as its own variable. It's good to know that for yourself because that'll give you the confidence that a lot of this is in your control. Okay, and that doesn't preclude you then using HRT anyway. After that. We're only talking a few months.

Philip Pape: 18:25

And I say this because I've had a lot of clients who have these perimenopausal symptoms, right, and some of them have, like you know, the hot flashes and all the symptoms, I mean the laundry list of 10 to 15 symptoms that start to occur, and they come to me for lifestyle changes, and so sometimes what they're doing is a lot of cardio, a lot of um, high rep work. Maybe it's not consistent, maybe they're not progressing, they have a lot of stress, maybe they're not sleeping as enough enough, maybe they're not walking as much. So there's usually a lot of low hanging fruit, and oftentimes you're so overwhelmed with life or you've you've tried so many things or you've paid so many coaches you just feel lost or like you've hit a wall. And, frankly, I get men in this situation too, where they keep jumping around diets. It's like I'm gonna do carnivore, that's gonna fix it. Nope, I'm gonna switch up my lifting to this thing where I don't have to irritate my shoulder at all, and then I'm gonna make progress. Nope, something has to change. You know, something has to change. And so when we take the stress out, we focus on sleep, we focus on recovery, and then we have a reasonable level of intensity and volume for your training right, which for a lot of women means getting stronger, not the circuit stuff. Body composition starts to improve and then the symptoms start to improve, and then, when you get blood work, you notice your hormones are improving as well Not always, but often and then it becomes manageable and then you can say, okay, if I still need HRT, I could at least target it. So all of that was the first scenario.

Philip Pape: 19:47

The second scenario is if you've got severe menopausal symptoms so debilitating hot flashes, significant bone density loss you may need to jump right into doing both Strength training with HRT, right, and frankly, a good medical practitioner who's an expert on hormones should be able to tell you that hey, you're far off the range that you should be on this thing and so we need intervention and even lifting, and lifestyle isn't going to fix that. But a lot of people are kind of on the hairy edge and it's because the lifestyle isn't great and we fix the lifestyle and then everything comes back normal. And then guess what you don't have to do HRT, at least for a while, or you don't have to do as much, or you don't have to do as many different hormones. And then deal with potential you know potential symptoms from that, which, again, I'm not um, I'm not dissing HRT at all. I think it's awesome. A third I think it's awesome.

Philip Pape: 20:41

Third scenario if you're already on HRT, if you're already on it, which a lot of my clients come to me having gone through a hormone therapist or you know I mentioned Kara Martell before and others like her working with her and then they'll come to me. The proper strength training, then, can enhance the benefits of the HRT, and sometimes you end up finding that you need to reduce it. People who strength train regularly respond better to hormone therapy as well, so sometimes it makes sense to do both together. All right, hopefully I haven't gotten off on too many tangents.

Philip Pape: 21:04

But to sum all this up, in general, the research shows that people who maintain consistent strength training through their 40s and 50s often maintain hormone profiles that are closer to their younger years. And that makes sense because physique-wise, body composition-wise, strength-wise, I've seen people turn back the clock 10, 20 years because they improved their lifestyle. Right? There was a recent study that found that resistance-strained individuals over 50 had growth hormone and testosterone levels which averaged 30 to 40% higher than their sedentary peers. Right? So we can't stop the hormonal changes, but we can significantly influence how our bodies adapt to them and are efficient with them by incorporating lifting. There's no reason not to do it, I hope, is the message you've taken from this. So, as we wrap up, remember your body is very adaptive. No matter what age you are, it's always going to adapt to what you give it, and so, if you choose to pursue HRT or not, you should always have strength training in the foundation of your lifestyle.

Philip Pape: 22:04

It's the one intervention that improves every marker of health and fitness. We care about Every single one. There's no downside whatsoever. The key is doing it right, being consistent, using progression right. You don't have to be a power lifter. You don't have to be a bodybuilder. You're not going to get bulky. You don't have to gain weight. You can gain a tiny bit of weight, but it'll be mostly muscle. That's a whole separate topic. You just have to challenge your muscles and push the limits right. The weights have to feel heavy. You've got to be training hard. You've got to be moving and growing. Start where you are, progress systemically and then let those compounding effects of training accumulate and improve your home run profile over time.

Philip Pape: 22:45

All right, if today's episode resonated with you, if you want to connect with others like Angela optimizing their health through strength training, join our Facebook group. Search for Wits and Weights on Facebook or click the link in the show notes. Share your wins. With training, you can ask questions, become part of the community. Have fun. That's what we do. We have fun. We're positive. Until next time, keep using your wits lifting those weights and remember your body's systems get stronger and more resilient with every training session, no matter your age. I'll talk to you next time here on the Wits and Weights podcast.

Managing Autoimmune Disorders and Chronic Illness Naturally (Heather Gray) | Ep 277

Are you struggling with autoimmune symptoms that doctors keep dismissing? Are you tired of trying endless medications without seeing real improvement?

I bring on Heather Gray to share her remarkable journey, from battling multiple chronic conditions for 30 years to becoming a leading voice in natural healing.

As a Functional Diagnostic Nutrition practitioner and head coach at a prominent cancer treatment center, Heather breaks down the strategies that finally helped her overcome chronic illness – and now helps others do the same.

Today, you’ll learn all about:

02:06 - Why focusing solely on treatment fails
08:01 - Understanding the "perfect host" concept
17:15 - The real deal about comprehensive health assessments
20:15 - Moving beyond supplements to true healing
24:22 - The game-changing power of stress management
32:01 - Being your own health advocate
37:04 - Outro

Episode resources:

• Website: renegadehealthboss.com

• Podcast: Renegade Health Boss

• Facebook: facebook.com/RHBPOD 

• Instagram: @renegade_health_boss

• Youtube: @RenegadeHealthBoss 

• Get her free Foundations of Health ebook: rhbcourses.com

How to Manage Autoimmune and Chronic Illness Naturally

If you're dealing with autoimmune conditions like Hashimoto’s, celiac disease, or rheumatoid arthritis, or struggling with chronic illnesses such as Lyme disease or fibromyalgia, you may feel like you’re stuck in a cycle of symptoms, medications, and frustration. While conventional medicine plays a crucial role in managing these conditions, research shows that nutrition, stress management, and lifestyle interventions can have a profound impact on symptom control and overall well-being.

Why Conventional Treatments Alone May Not Be Enough

Traditional medicine focuses on diagnosing and treating disease, often relying on medications like steroids, biologics, and NSAIDs to suppress symptoms. While these can provide relief, they don’t always address underlying triggers like inflammation, gut health, or immune dysfunction.

Some common issues with conventional treatment include:

• Standard lab tests may miss key markers – Many autoimmune conditions go undiagnosed for years because standard testing doesn’t always detect early inflammation or immune dysfunction.

• Medications can’t replace lifestyle changes – While medications help manage symptoms, they don’t fix poor diet, chronic stress, nutrient deficiencies, or toxin exposure, which all contribute to disease progression.

• The role of gut health is often overlooked – Research shows that up to 70% of the immune system is located in the gut, and gut imbalances can trigger or worsen autoimmune conditions.

If your current approach isn’t getting you results, it's worth exploring additional evidence-based strategies to support your body.

The Root Causes of Chronic Illness

Chronic illness doesn’t happen overnight. It’s usually the result of a combination of genetic predisposition and environmental triggers. Here are some key factors that contribute to immune dysfunction and chronic symptoms:

1. Chronic Stress and the Nervous System

• High stress levels lead to increased cortisol and inflammatory cytokines, which can worsen autoimmune symptoms.

• A dysregulated stress response (HPA axis dysfunction) is linked to fatigue, inflammation, and immune suppression.

2. Gut Health and Autoimmune Disease

• A leaky gut (intestinal permeability) allows unwanted substances to enter the bloodstream, triggering immune overactivation.

• Microbiome imbalances are common in autoimmune diseases and can contribute to inflammation.

3. Environmental Toxins and Inflammatory Load

• Heavy metals, mold, pesticides, and endocrine disruptors can contribute to immune dysregulation.

• Air pollution and industrial chemicals are linked to increased risk of chronic inflammatory diseases.

4. Nutrient Deficiencies and Immune Regulation

• Vitamin D deficiency is associated with an increased risk of autoimmune disease.

• Omega-3 fatty acids help regulate inflammation and have been shown to improve symptoms in autoimmune conditions.

How to Manage Autoimmune and Chronic Illness with Lifestyle Changes

There’s no one-size-fits-all approach, but research supports these key strategies for improving immune function and reducing symptoms naturally.

1. Eat an Anti-Inflammatory Diet

• Prioritize whole, nutrient-dense foods like lean proteins, healthy fats, and fiber-rich vegetables.

• Limit inflammatory foods such as processed sugar, refined grains, and industrial seed oils.

• Consider eliminating gluten, dairy, and soy if you have known intolerances or autoimmune conditions.

2. Support Gut Health

• Eat fermented foods and prebiotic fiber to support beneficial gut bacteria.

• Identify and remove food sensitivities that contribute to inflammation.

• Consider gut-healing strategies like bone broth, collagen, and resistant starch.

3. Manage Stress and Regulate the Nervous System

• Practice mindfulness, breathwork, or meditation to reduce cortisol and inflammation.

• Prioritize quality sleep to support immune repair and recovery.

• Engage in activities that activate the parasympathetic nervous system, such as nature walks or deep breathing exercises.

4. Strength Training and Movement

• Resistance training helps reduce inflammation, improve metabolic health, and support immune function.

• Low-impact movement like walking, yoga, or mobility work helps regulate the nervous system and improve circulation.

5. Reduce Toxin Exposure

• Filter your drinking water to remove contaminants like heavy metals and endocrine disruptors.

• Choose organic produce when possible to reduce pesticide exposure.

• Avoid synthetic fragrances and plastics that contain hormone-disrupting chemicals.

Where to Start If You’re Feeling Overwhelmed

If this feels like a lot, start small and build habits over time. Consider:
✔ Eating whole, unprocessed foods
✔ Tracking symptoms and patterns
✔ Prioritizing sleep and recovery
✔ Incorporating daily movement and stress management

Managing chronic illness isn’t about perfection—it’s about progress. The more you understand how lifestyle impacts your immune system, the more control you have over your health.

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Transcript

Philip Pape: 0:01

If you're battling chronic illnesses like Lyme disease or autoimmune conditions like celiac, hashimoto's or endometriosis, and traditional treatments aren't giving you the relief you need, this episode is for you. Today, I'm discussing natural approaches to managing these complex conditions with someone who's lived it firsthand. You'll discover why conventional testing often misses these telltale biomarkers, how stress and mindset affect your symptoms more than you think, and practical strategies that can help you take control of your health. Whether you're newly diagnosed or have been fighting symptoms for years, today's conversation will give you a new perspective on managing chronic illness naturally illness naturally.

Philip Pape: 0:52

Welcome to Wits and Weights, the podcast that blends evidence and engineering to help you build smart, efficient systems to achieve your dream physique. I'm your host, philip Pape, and today I've invited on Heather Gray to discuss natural approaches to managing chronic illness and autoimmune conditions. After spending three decades navigating multiple diagnoses, including Lyme disease, celiac disease, hashimoto's and endometriosis, heather now helps others as a functional diagnostic nutrition practitioner. Today, you're going to learn how to advocate for proper testing, understand the mind-body connection in chronic illness and, as always, practical strategies for managing symptoms naturally through your lifestyle. Heather, thank you so much for coming on the show.

Heather Gray: 1:32

Thanks for having me.

Philip Pape: 1:33

So I brought you on here because we want to talk about something a lot of people struggle with and probably a lot of people silently struggle with, and that is a number of known issues, from Hashimoto's or symptoms that go unexplained or undiagnosed. And then combine that with what I'll say is inconsistent expertise in the medical field. Let's be honest, a bit of gaslighting too, right? A bit. A bit yes, and I know you're the comedian, so you can take that where you want and then like a pharmaceutical heavy approach, right, that's the other piece. So sometimes for people maybe it seems hopeless or like they have no clue where to go. And so somebody listening or watching right now who wants to be inspired, they need a little bit of help. They're like how do I even get started? What's the thing that they're missing that could make the biggest difference, like for their next step in managing or reversing these conditions.

Heather Gray: 2:26

There's a lot of big questions in there. Yes, when do I start with which one do I feel back? You know, no, gaslit, I, that is actually. I talk about that in my standup. I talk about being gaslit basically my whole life. And they say that women are like twice. As you know, it takes twice as long for them to get a diagnosis, a proper diagnosis, over a male, because it's still that type of gaslighting and women are just hysterical and it's just our hormones and our hormones get blamed for everything. It's insane.

Heather Gray: 3:00

I am a big fan of not focusing on treatment, right Like I'm going to die on that hill. Stop focusing on treatment Because once you dial in lifestyle, mindset, diet, exercise, proper exercise, health period, end of story. Between the artificial lights, the EMFs, the toxins in our environment, in our food, in our water, the fast pace, the constant fight or flight, we're stuck in. It's a hot mess and I mean, as you read off the laundry list of diagnoses that I have, I'm a walking talking model, proof of all these toxins, all these issues and what can happen once you start cleaning things up.

Philip Pape: 3:52

Yeah, and we were joking about broken water heaters before we started recording and how we you and I business owners we're stressed we were trying to juggle super busy schedules and there's sensory overload. I do like your what you just said stop focusing on treatment because lifestyle could be the solution, or at least it'll get you a lot of the way there. Right Like sometimes when we talk about hormone replacement and someone says, should I do that or should I do lifestyle? I'm like well, do the lifestyle. You may need the hormone replace, I don't know, but always do the lifestyle, like go train and go be active and eat the right way.

Heather Gray: 4:25

Do not pass. Go, do not collect $200.

Heather Gray: 4:27

Do it anyway, this is where you start because even if you get on hormone replacement therapy, you might need less right Like, because you're starting to get things moving. The way. Our bodies are just so brilliantly made that once we get out of the way, give it what it needs. It's amazing. It's amazing what it can do. It's, I mean, absolutely no short of a miracle.

Heather Gray: 4:49

Like I said, the stuff that I have dealt with in my life, the things that I have overcome you know two suicide attempts. You know horrific pain being a hundred pounds overweight. You know not digesting anything, psychosis from mold, like you name it I have been through it. And the fact that I now shoot. I run two podcasts. I have my practice. I just got hired in a very prominent cancer doctor's practice to be her head coach. I do standup comedy. I travel.

Heather Gray: 5:18

Like my life is not for the faint of heart and it wouldn't be this way if I didn't dial in these lifestyle tweaks and continue to keep some sort of a maintenance going. Like sleep is my religion. You know I make sure I detox every week, like there's certain non-negotiables that I have, because if I don't, I'm a little on the different side. I'm the canary in the coal mine. I, you know I've gotten some. Really I got.

Heather Gray: 5:42

I got dealt some pretty shitty hands with genetics and not detoxing properly. I don't make vitamin D, store it, transport it properly, you know. So it was fun to see these kind of weaknesses within my genes. But, as you know or hopefully you know, I think you know. You know what's in our genes is not the be all end. All you know there's got something called epigenetics, which is our lifestyle and toxins and that sort of thing on what, how the genes get expressed.

Heather Gray: 6:08

So there's so many people that are like, oh my God, I have the BRCA gene. You know I'm down to get cancer and they start to cut off their breasts and I'm like, no, no, no, no. You know, that's why I work for this cancer doctor. I work for us because she is totally in alignment with let's clean up all this stuff first before we ever stop about chemo and mastectomies and all that stuff. And it is incredible. I'm just so impressed with what she's doing as a doctor because she was surgical, you know, medically trained, but then went back to school, learned the functional way and what we're seeing the results with her clients are absolutely amazing.

Philip Pape: 6:45

Yeah. So you mentioned a few things that people are thinking of like okay, you had all these different symptoms. You also have an environment that's not made for humans you mentioned you know we have genetics. Whether we blame our genetics or not, they're there but they're not. You know they're the noise in the signal oftentimes. But at the same time, you did have some things that were unique for you, like the vitamin D deficiency. So a woman listening or somebody who's facing what they can't diagnose, it's chronic fatigue. I know a friend who has chronic fatigue. He's dealt with for years and it's fibromyalgia or one of those areas where it's kind of mysterious. What were the early signs you had and when did you decide that you needed to look into this, not just address the lifestyle? But I imagine there's other things you have to do to pinpoint what it is for you right, what the issue is for you.

Heather Gray: 7:31

Well, absolutely, and I love saying, no matter how common a symptom may be, it is never normal, right? It's always your body's check engine light coming on saying, hey, dummy, there's something going on in here. And all too often we've been brainwashed, you know, to reach for over the counter medications, right, which is just puts a bandaid over that check engine light and then our body just keeps screaming louder and louder and louder until we have an autoimmune disease or we have cancer or we have, you know, something bigger and scarier. But it started with me, like I always start off. I was four years old. I was basically born full of shit, like you know how many people can relate to being constipated as a little kid. And that started my let's throw band-aids at symptoms, you know model with thick, nasty oils, laxatives, but nobody was asking why this four year old couldn't poop hindsight's 2020. That was the. Did you have a lot of prune juice back then? I don't remember. Okay, yeah, I don't remember. I doubt it. I doubt it.

Heather Gray: 8:26

I was eating a standard American diet. Yeah, I was being raised by alcoholic addicts very young alcoholic addicts and my uncle had just committed suicide. So there was a lot of early childhood trauma that, I think, churned on my celiac disease. I said I was eating the standard American or the sad diet and it's kind of what started me to be the perfect storm. And so that's the one thing that I love teaching people is, even with Lyme disease, they're like I got bit by a chick and I got sick. No, actually you've been becoming the perfect host for probably one year, five years, 15 years, before you ever got to the place where Lyme disease could take over. Same thing with cancer. I just got cancer. It's in my history. No, I hate to tell you. It's probably been a lifetime full of stress and toxins and bad diet. And now you're quote unquote again the perfect host, right? So I was living in some moldy environments when I was a kid like I said, a lot of trauma and when I was 13 and got bit by a tick, I was the perfect host. So I got diagnosed two years. No, I didn't get diagnosed two years. I started showing symptoms two years later with my first suicide attempt. That was the first of two or three in the psych ward. So much fun. I just need to write a book about my experience in the psych ward, because this was before they actually separated and had different wings for young adults. So I was 15 in with adults and some of the stories I could tell you it was just ugh but anywho. So yeah, hindsight's 20-20. You know, 27 years later I'm 34 and I finally get diagnosed.

Heather Gray: 10:04

You know, I had been to probably 30 or 40 different practitioners and if that's the one thing I can tell people is like, listen to your intuition If you know something's up. But you keep going to practitioner to practitioner and they say your labs look normal and they don't find anything wrong with you. Next, keep looking. And typically I found that functional practitioners have a tendency to look a little bit deeper, more root cause. Their lab ranges are different. So, like for vitamin D, you know people are like what's functional medicine compared to regular medicine? Vitamin D, the Western model is looking for disease period, that's it.

Philip Pape: 10:40

Based on the population, too Right, and it's a sick population right.

Heather Gray: 10:43

Yes, it's going to skew that bell curve. So, like for me, my vitamin D was in the 30s. Well, according to Western med, 30 to 80 is optimal and it's not In functional med. We want it to be 60 to 80. You know, that means that you're actually performing properly, right and that you're functioning, not just close to flatlining and a disease.

Heather Gray: 11:07

So it was after I, on a podcast, I heard the founder of FDN, reed Davis. He was with Sean Croxton who wrote the book Underground Wellness. He used to have a pretty popular podcast and he was talking about how you got to. You know, make sure the hormones are balanced and that your gut is healed. And you got to detox. I was a silly hairstylist at the time, I didn't have a background in medicine. Intuitively something hit and I was like that's it, that's how I'm going to get better. And so very, very sick, with a young kid and my own business going through this course. You know, just a Hail Mary, hoping that we were going to find answers. And that was the start of my journey. That was back in 2013.

Philip Pape: 11:49

Yeah, obviously a lot of tough, tough situations to get through that that you dealt with. That created what you said, that environment for being the perfect host, which, just so I understand that phrase, this is a combination of the environment we're in as well as our behaviors and genetics. Like, what do you mean by that the perfect host? Can you explain it a little further?

Heather Gray: 12:08

All of the above, anything that lowers your immune system and allows critters to overcome your good guys, the stuff that we do. So birth control, antibiotics, other prescription medications lead to a leaky gut. So if you've got a leaky gut, then we've got a compromised immune system. The stress causes a leaky gut. We have a compromised immune system. Now. You're not getting enough sleep. I was living in a moldy home, so all these things stacked up against my immune system, making me vulnerable, making me more susceptible to these things. So that's what I mean about the perfect host.

Philip Pape: 12:44

Good, yeah, what do people understand? Because, yeah, and gut health I know you briefly alluded to that. We're learning so much more now about the microbiome and its impact on everything. It's even like the second brain of your body, right? You said, listen to your intuition, and that kind of hits on the gaslighting thing a bit from the other end, because we all know multiple people in our lives and ourselves included. I mean my own wife and friends and family and grandparents and parents.

Philip Pape: 13:09

Everybody's been affected by this where they go to the doctor, they get some sort of half-assed treatment and then it doesn't work. They go again. They either get another treatment or they're told well, you just got to deal with it, or it'll go away, or you know what I mean, or or or. There's so many inadequate answers and the idea that if you don't have the answer, you've got to keep going. You've got to be persistent, be in control of your health. I mean I have a personal, just a quick little, almost silly story of I was taking a inhaler, I was breathing it in for an esophageal issue and after about a year of it, my voice started to go hoarse and as a podcaster, this is not great. My voice started to go hoarse, starts out like a smoker yeah right, I Googled it which in the past you'd say that's dangerous. Nowadays I'm like I'm okay if you want to start with Google, because you might get some surprising things that come up.

Heather Gray: 13:57

Start with ChatGTP over Google.

Philip Pape: 13:59

There you go Nowadays, yeah, and it said steroid-induced hoarseness. I'm like, well, that sounds exactly what it is. So, guess what? I took it to the doctor and he's like, no, that's not a thing, oh really. So then I went to a different doctor no, no, that's not a thing. And so I experimented, I Every time I did, guess what? The hoarseness went away, and then it came back. And finally the doctor admitted he learned something from this through his arrogance. And so that's my personal. I get angry at it and I'm not going to say silly, but it was minor for me, but it's a lot more major for a lot of people, depending on what issue they're dealing with, right?

Heather Gray: 14:37

Oh my God, my kid was diagnosed with celiac disease two months after his second birthday. His belly had been so distended for so long, the muscles actually separated like a pregnant person. He you could count his ribs skinny little arms with this great big distended belly. And I remember seeing the hospital's dietician for the first time and I educated her on the celiac diet, like they were. I felt like I should bill her. It was so insane. What year was this? What like this was back in 2012, 2011, because everyone knows about celiac disease.

Philip Pape: 15:15

Now you would think, no, this is, this was right yeah, edge, and I was just like oh my god.

Heather Gray: 15:20

But even then they don't know like it's. One of the biggest misnomers with celiac is that there's all the gluten-free quote-unquote grains. A lot of them cross, react like wheat. So you know corn, rice and they've even got their own form of gluten. You know it's crazy. And oats, you know. So I tell people with celiac it's still because they'll feel better for so I tell people with celiac it's still cause they'll feel better for a while and then they stop and then they usually go backwards again and they don't know why. I've seen it with myself, I saw it with my kid, I've seen it with my patients. So I'm like, if you really want to get better from celiac you know, kind of heal and be more robust, you need to go grain free, because grains, those things are just you know all the gluten-free and a lot of times they're swapping out just regular processed crap for gluten-free processed crap.

Philip Pape: 16:04

Oh sure, sure, like the classic vegan diet I do, I kind of joke about it. It's like all processed foods.

Philip Pape: 16:11

Oh, so if we take that celiac example cause there are so many, if someone suspects they have it, or like people are thinking okay, I have symptoms, I have no idea what it is, when do I start? And then there's also I have symptoms. I think it could be this what do I do? Maybe those are two different scenarios, but let's start with the celiac one. People are confused. Do they get food and allergy testing? Do they get blood work? Do they have to go to a special doctor, special FDN, Like you know what I mean. It's overwhelming.

Heather Gray: 16:37

It's a good point, you know, and a lot of times the testing that a regular doctor will do is not going to unearth what you're looking for, unfortunately. So, like with Lyme disease, they will still use a Western blot, and Western blot is good if you can catch it, like within the first six months. Outside of that, it's crap because it's looking for an immune response and a lot of times Lyme has shut down that immune response and there's a couple like bands missing because of some controversial crap that goes on with our FDA, and so you're not going to get a real good answer from a traditional doctor's Western blot, unfortunately. So you know, I like starting people off with these intake forms. I have two intake forms, all together about 500 questions Like it'll take you a good hour to fill out, but it is really awesome at helping tease out. You know, is it gut issues? Is it Lyme? Is it autoimmune? Is it heavy metals?

Heather Gray: 17:35

You know, looking at the lifestyle back when I first, unfortunately, when they train FDNs and a lot of functional doctors, they just want to like $5,000 worth of labs right off the bat.

Heather Gray: 17:46

I found out very quickly that not everybody could afford $5,000 of the labs and then another $5,000 worth of, you know, quote, unquote treatment or, you know, supplement support, that type of thing. So I really got great at case management and looking at the history and looking at you know, all these different puzzle pieces. That kind of helped me put it together. And then if I felt like further testing needed to be done, I'd be like I maybe want you to do this stool sample or maybe I want you to do this genetic test because I want to see if you've got the genes for celiac or you know, it just kind of depends. But really starting with that case history and extreme intake form I think is a really great place to start, Because if you, you know, if you got somebody who's just wanting to throw either a thousand dollars with the supplements at you right off the bat or $6,000 with a lab test right off the bat, you know might want to run yes.

Philip Pape: 18:39

Yes, no, I've seen it in some of the. There's a lot of new precision medicine companies that have, just you know, popped up out of nowhere. You got to be careful, because their end game may be affiliate sales from supplements. Right, you got to watch out. So I like what you said, though, because when I think of like in my nutrition coaching practice, how it's very personalized, you really have to understand the whole person and how everything interacts and the whole system of like their history. What is in that kind of assessment in generally? Are there any symptoms that you asked for there? Is it their physical, like movement history as well as their medical history? I'm just curious what kind of lifestyle things are in there? Everything it's 500 questions.

Heather Gray: 19:15

All the above. I want to know if you got mercury in your mouth or if you had a root canal, because if so, you might be susceptible to cavitations, which are one of the biggest barriers to health. I need to know if you've had a mold exposure. Have you been tested for sleep apnea? What's your trauma like? Because nine times out of 10, even with cancer these cancer diagnoses if you look back one to a year and a half before their cancer diagnosis something happened. It's insane. Every single time something happened Lyme disease, like I said, talked with my, you know, but a lot of people haven't put the pieces together. So one of the first things I started asking for is okay, so you get diagnosed in 2021. That's pretty common these days. Things are starting to happen in 2021, 2022. What happened before that? Covid stressed everybody else out, whether they got vaccinated or not vaccinated. That's a whole, nother freaking set of can of worms, but digging into the mental, emotional and the stress part of their life as well, because that's the other thing that a lot of doctors aren't talking about, and sometimes those are the biggest wins. I had a guy that worked with me for over a year and I thought he knew my methodology by that time, but he didn't.

Heather Gray: 20:33

I'm still really stressed out and anxious. Can you give me another supplement? I said did you do your grounding exercise today? Get your feet out on the ground for 20 minutes today no. Have you gotten sun on your eyes today? No. Have you taken a 20 minute walk today? No. Have you done your meditation today? No. Have you done your journaling today? No. Have you done your breath work today? No, I'm not giving you any more supplements, like until you learn how to move your nervous system out of fight or flight and into rest or digest all these pills. Even though they might be healthier than their alternatives, it's still just a supplement. That's what supplements are for. They're supplements. They're not supposed to be the be all, end all.

Philip Pape: 21:15

Well, a hundred percent People want to shortcut and make excuses. I love that, so would you. Then, is your approach to the level where you start with lifestyle on day one, or do you still want to do some sort of parallel assessment and start with lifestyle? What does that process look like?

Heather Gray: 21:32

It depends on the person. Everyone is so different and I found that the Lyme patients and a lot of the cancer patients are a lot more sophisticated than other patients out there because they've had to be their own health advocate for so long, especially Lyme. Frigging chronic Lyme just got accepted as a diagnosis two years ago Wow. Okay, the frigging disease that haunted my Lyme.

Philip Pape: 21:54

I live in Connecticut, by the way, and I've heard about Lyme for years, so yeah, it's funny.

Heather Gray: 22:00

The thing that has haunted me for decades just got recognized by the CDC is a real diagnosis chronic Lyme, like. Wrap your brain around that one. So we've had to become our own health advocate, we had to become our own health detective, and so it just depends on where a person's at. But I really I try to do parallel, like I'll start maybe working with them on food stuff At the same time I'm working on them with mindset stuff. You know, it's so funny.

Heather Gray: 22:24

So when I was, you know, getting into the functional practitioner, I was really great at doing the physical stuff right Diet, no problem, in bed by 10. Okay, coffee enema, sure, no problem. And then I would get better and I'd relapse. And then I would get better again and then I'd relapse. And the book the Body Keeps Score came across my desk and if you haven't read it it's a really tough read, especially if you have any kind of trauma, sexual trauma, and I'm on the couch like ugly crying and my ex-husband's like what the fuck are you reading? And I'm like this little girl and her dad and he's like no, no, no, I don't want to hear it. But it was the first time that it was really explained to me how these traumas get stuck in your nervous system and keep you in fight or flight. Right, and it can be big T traumas, little T traumas, but either way they get stuck in your system and we're not meant to be running from a tiger 24 seven, and that's part of the reason why I kept relapsing.

Heather Gray: 23:19

And so once I started moving the needle on my nervous system somatic experiencing work, breath work, tapping, cold plunges, plant medicine completely changed my life total different ballgame. So then I finally I mean I haven't had a relapse of Lyme in five years. I haven't had an autoimmune flare, I've had nothing. I just I have whatever I get right. When I got the flu, it's the flu. When I got a cold, I got the cold, but I don't get any of these other like quote unquote flares, which breaks my heart because so many people think that that's also just kind of normal autoimmune flare. Oh, I'm having a lung flare and I'm like you don't have to have that Right.

Philip Pape: 24:10

You hear that like, especially like with GI issues a lot. I hear that like the diverticulitis, ibs and all that, like the flare ups, and you're saying, because you know people are skeptical, obviously, of a lot of this stuff listening and we're not talking about that you're curing these things but you're helping manage or put them into remission or avoid, like you said, flare ups with the lifestyle changes and it comes down to stress and the sympathetic versus parasympathetic state that we're in. So I do love that, because we talk about stress a lot as being just one of those massive pillars and it ties into your sleep and your sleep quality. And we talk a lot about strength training. I'm curious about your thoughts on just on lifting weights and strength training and resistance training in the context of all of this.

Heather Gray: 24:42

It's the bestest thing in the whole wide world. Like you have to continue to lift weights, and especially anybody over 40. Like if you're wanting to keep your structure, your balance, like any kind of a good lifestyle as we age, we have got to keep our bones and our muscles strong. I you know. Cardio over cardio, I think, is absolutely destroying people.

Philip Pape: 25:03

Yeah, over cardio, yep think is absolutely destroying people.

Heather Gray: 25:06

Yeah, over cardio. Yep, I'm not a fan and I found out in my genetics I have thin veins, thin walls in my veins, which means that if I do cardio for very long, much longer than like 30 minutes, it actually causes inflammation. It causes more stress in my body than it's worse. So I have a diminishing return of investment if I overwork out with cardio. But weights, I love weights. I love pushing something heavy. I just got back into it again. I don't know why I got out. I say that every single time. I'm like oh, I feel great, why did I ever stop?

Philip Pape: 25:34

Yeah, no, I just wanted to hear your thoughts on that with regards to the nervous system and stress too, because people it's underrated, it's like an underrated form of and because people it's underrated.

Philip Pape: 25:45

It's like an underrated form of and you also mentioned menopause, and you know we're learning more and more how, because of the hormone changes, right, your muscle mass loss accelerates at that age. If you're not doing anything to hold on to it and because you tend to eat the same amount of food, you know your body fat goes up and then your metabolism goes down and it all just spirals. Okay, so I know we're going on little tangents here.

Heather Gray: 26:06

No, I love tangents. It's great, it's great.

Tony: 26:09

Yeah, I guess.

Philip Pape: 26:10

I know if I'm thinking of what the listener is asking. They're probably wondering there's all these protocols and all these treatments, and when you talk about lifestyle and you hear something like cold plunges again I know what people are thinking. Are there 30 things I have to do every day just to be healthy? And I know that's. You know, do I have to do grounding and cold punches, this and that? And sometimes I skeptically poopoo on those things when I'm like are you even lifting weights and walking and eating right, like I think there's a hierarchy. What are your thoughts on that?

Heather Gray: 26:38

Oh, absolutely. I just got done doing an interview talking about how I love biohacking, because all the tools you know right now I've got I've got a. This thing generates frequencies through a red light. This is a tracking ring. This is an EMF blanket. This is like I've got like 10 biohacking tools around me at any given time. But that's because I told you I was kind of dealt a shitty hand when it came to my genetics and I have to work a little harder, but it's never, never, never. In place of lifestyle, lifestyle stuff always comes first For me. When I was in, when people are in the thick of healing yes, sometimes it can be. I say all the time sometimes my self-care feels like a part-time job, but it's better being full-time sick and it's all how you frame it. It saves time, money and years down the line, yep absolutely.

Tony: 27:32

It's not I have to, it's I get to right, it's a lack of self-care for your future self. Yeah absolutely.

Heather Gray: 27:39

It's a huge act of love. So, yeah, it just it's doing that. But now, you know, now I sauna every day, I do ground every day, I do meditate every day, so there's certain things and I try to have it stack when I can. You know, I only do coffee enemas once a week now. They used to be more because, like I said, I was born full of shit. That constipation never really changed much. So that's one of those things that I do to keep myself running in that, and this is a very toxic world, you know. So, yeah, there was a documentary out there, I guess, where this guy was like a billionaire doing all these biohacks and like he literally had no time to live because he was doing so many that's extreme it's like about living a long life.

Philip Pape: 28:25

That guy that's trying to extend his life, oh yeah, but he's not really living you know, that's the problem.

Heather Gray: 28:30

You know, and I think he even said that.

Philip Pape: 28:31

He also doesn't look like he lifts weights, but that's my own pet peeve on some of these guys.

Heather Gray: 28:37

Oh, I know, Right, absolutely crucial. You know I'll tell them you got to stop your cardio, but I want you walking, yoga, stretching and weightlifting like that, absolutely, as we're healing. Yeah so many benefits so with the comedy.

Philip Pape: 28:52

I think that's really cool because it's hard, like I do, public speaking and speech contests. But I consider myself highly unfunny, and so in the past I've competed in humorous speech contests, deliberately make myself try to write jokes right, which I think is great. You got to get out of your comfort zone. Oh, absolutely so. If people are listening like, oh, that's interesting, that could be something I would enjoy, or I'm into humor, or I was the class clown or whatever, I'm thinking like, what do you recommend for folks to get into it themselves? I know it's a real side tangent.

Heather Gray: 29:22

I know it's a real side tangent. I took a class Like improv, yeah, and it was stand-up.

Philip Pape: 29:25

Oh, stand-up like okay.

Heather Gray: 29:27

It was funny. There's another doctor, his name's Dr Sam Shea and he's on the spectrum and he does stand-up. He has a one-man show called NeuroSpicy. Okay, and I met with him in person one day, because I do a lot of networking with fellow practitioners, and within five minutes he knew I wanted to speak more and be on keynotes. And he was like you know, have you ever thought about doing standup? I was like why on earth would I do that to myself? He's like cause it's a really great skill to have If you're going to be a speaker. It looks really good on your resume. And I was like, okay, he goes. Do you have any trauma in your life? I said how long do you have for lunch? And he goes I think you'd be really good at it. You should take this class with me. And actually that was a week ago last year. So I've been doing standup for a year. I've actually made money. This year. I've been on over like 50 shows, like in clubs and bars and stuff.

Philip Pape: 30:18

Yeah, yeah, where can we find? Like, are you on YouTube?

Heather Gray: 30:21

for that I'm on YouTube, yeah, yeah.

Philip Pape: 30:23

and then there's a comedy page on my website when I gave health boss, so all right, yeah, I just personally want to check that out selfishly, so I'm gonna. I'm gonna go watch that later. I love stand-up comedy. There's so much of it now too on, like all the streaming services. There's like too much right my name is tony.

Tony: 30:38

I'm a strength lifter in my 40s. Thank you to phil in his wits andights community for helping me learn more about nutrition and how to implement better ideas into my strength training. Phil has a very, very good understanding of macros and chemical compounds and hormones and all that and he's continuously learning. That's what I like about Phil. He's got a great sense of humor. He's very relaxed, very easy to talk to. One of the greatest things about Phil, in my view, is that he practices what he preaches. He also works out with barbells. He trains heavy not as heavy as me, but he trains heavy. So if you talk with him about getting in better shape, eating better, he's probably going to give you some good advice and I would strongly recommend you talk with him and he'll help you out.

Philip Pape: 31:20

What's something that you want listeners to learn about you that can help them in ways that were like, if they don't hear this advice, that 20 years are going to go by that they regret not having heard it. Do you know what I mean? No pressure.

Heather Gray: 31:34

Absolutely that not to give up. You know that, like I said, no matter how common a symptom may be, it is never normal and everything is figureoutable for the most part. You know it makes me so sad with these people who get diagnosed with Hashimoto's or other autoimmune and their doctor tells them they have to be on a biological or some other steroid or cortisone or something for the rest of their life. That is absolute BS, you know. And if you're willing to put in the work, because it's not easy, it's not easy going against the grain of society. Sometimes it can feel a little lonely, a little isolating, and I'm finding that it is getting easier.

Heather Gray: 32:11

Like people are starting to wake up, like red dice Woo, you know the FDA finally decided that ref, they're going to ban red dye five. It's going to be another three years. So do yourself a favor. And fricking banded in your own house, cause that stuff's been linked to autoimmune issues, mental health issues, adhd. But slowly but slowly it's starting to come around. People are starting to wake up.

Heather Gray: 32:32

And see, you know, there was a huge group of practitioners who were out protesting in front of Kellogg's and I wish I could have been with them. I was at another conference at that time. But Kellogg's and a lot of companies have got two different ingredients labels, one in Europe and one in the United States, because a lot of the food that we make here is banned in other countries. Right, like, wrap your brain around that one, you know. So, like I said, just really digging deeper, being an advocate for yourself and knowing that there can be another way if you're willing to look. You know, that's kind of so, like I said, just really digging deeper, being an advocate for yourself and knowing that there can be another way if you're willing to look. You know, that's kind of it in a nutshell.

Philip Pape: 33:10

Yeah, no, that and that ties to your earlier comment about persistence or whatever we were saying. You know about continuing to investigate, even whatever the doctors are saying, and it's not solving the issue for you. Okay, so one other thing came to mind when you mentioned that, because you talked about when you were talking about celiac. It was avoiding certain foods, not just grains but other potential gluten-containing foods, some autoimmune conditions that I understand. The first line of defense recommended from a natural standpoint is some sort of elimination diet or potentially cutting out certain foods forever, and oftentimes it's a very unpalatable list of things like 80% of what you would normally enjoy, even in a quote unquote healthy diet. I'm just curious of your thoughts of that where, like you're trying to make trade-offs for the rest of your life and you don't want to suffer either, and they're like here's this biologic you can inject yourself with once a week and you'll be good. You know what I mean. How do people address that kind of decision point?

Heather Gray: 34:07

Pain is inevitable. Suffering is optional. Again, a lot of that's mindset and a lot of it can be done slowly over time. I am a rip the bandaid off type of gal. Not everybody can do what I do. You know Dr Tom O'Brien, he's a huge hero for me and has been for the long time and I had him on my show and he was like you know, Heather, you can do it slower.

Heather Gray: 34:28

You know, like the first month you have them cut out wheat, and then the next month you have them cut out corn, and then the next month and then in a year's time, right, and then it doesn't feel so heavy. Up front I was like, oh yeah, I suppose you could do that. But, like I said, I'm kind of a rip the bandaid off. But I was also really, really sick and I really needed answers, like yesterday. So you can do it that way. A lot of it is mindset, A lot of it's just a new learning curve. I eat amazing and that's why I made like a seven video cooking series, because I got so sick of people going God, what can you eat? And I'm like God, what can you eat? And I'm like tonight I'm having short ribs with braised carrots and sweet potatoes. You know like I am, a bad-ass cook.

Philip Pape: 35:12

You had me at short ribs.

Heather Gray: 35:14

We eat so good. It's ridiculous. And you know, and there's a lot of variety in our diet. Like I just eat real food, you know meat, vegetables, fruit, like there you go. And and I'm not a fan of cutting out a lot of the starchy vegetables because I I know that they can help actually feed the microbiome in a certain way. You know, if you cook, cool it. You know, eat it cooked and cool, that helps with the starch resistance. If you eat it last, it can help with the blood sugar issues.

Heather Gray: 35:45

And never, never never, never eat it naked, you know. Always some sort of a healthy fat, you know because it creates more resistant starch.

Philip Pape: 35:51

When you do that right, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Heather Gray: 35:53

Yeah, so you know there's a couple of different hacks that I do, but for the most part, you know, I don't. You know, and everybody's different too. I've started doing this genetic test a nutrition genome on people, cause I really want to find out, cause for the longest time everyone was touting keto, keto, keto. I got on keto. It jacked me up in so much weight, I was in so much pain and come to find out that my body does not process that much fat, even healthy fat, like it was like. And then I also had food sensitivities towards almonds and coconut at the time, which is hugely used in a lot of keto foods. So you know I do better on a little bit more of a paleo type diet. You know, even kind of a little on the Mediterranean side. So you know I like finding out what works for a person instead of just this throwing shit at a wall and seeing what sticks or putting somebody on a one sizesize-fits-all, because we're just so different.

Philip Pape: 36:45

All right, is there anything you wish I had asked today? Again, it was a very diverse conversation but, I think, a good one. I think we covered a lot of helpful points for folks who are struggling with some of these and want to know what they could possibly do or what they should do. Anything you wish I had asked.

Heather Gray: 36:59

I know, I think we covered quite a bit.

Philip Pape: 37:01

I know I think we covered quite a bit. Okay, all right, cool, all right. Where can listeners learn more about you? I will definitely look up the comedy side, but from a health side, where do you want them to find you?

Heather Gray: 37:10

I am the Renegade Health Boss across all platforms. And then I have a free Foundations of Health little mini ebook that you can find on rhbcoursescom. That's Renegade Health Boss, rhbcoursescom and that's Renegade Health Boss. You know rhbcoursescom and get that free download and you can, you know, start your journey today.

Philip Pape: 37:30

All right, cool. Yeah, we'll throw those in the show notes. I believe we're going to see each other again soon on your podcast and, yeah, thanks so much for coming on. This is awesome.

Heather Gray: 37:39

Absolutely Thanks for having me.

Daily Scale Weight Tracking Is Useless... and Necessary (Signal-to-Noise) | Ep 276

Try MacroFactor free with code WITSANDWEIGHTS - download on Apple/iPhone or Google/Android

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Should you weigh yourself daily?

Learn about an engineering concept called Signal-to-Noise ratio to explain why daily weight tracking is both meaningless AND essential.

You'll discover how your body's water balance, glycogen, sodium, and other factors create "noise" that masks the true "signal" of fat loss or gain.

Learn how to use the power of trend weight to get clarity on your progress while maintaining a healthy relationship with the scale. Plus, discover how this same principle applies to all aspects of your fitness journey.

Main Takeaways:

• Daily weight fluctuations are normal and can be 2-5+ pounds due to water, glycogen, digestive contents

• Research shows daily weighing improves outcomes but only when viewing trends vs individual weigh-ins

• The 20-day exponential moving average filters out "noise" to reveal true body mass changes

• This principle applies beyond weight - use trends for nutrition, training, recovery tracking

Episode Resources:

• YouTube video about the research on daily weigh-ins

• Try MacroFactor free with code WITSANDWEIGHTS - download on Apple/iPhone or Google/Android

Timestamps:

[03:27] Does daily weighing increase anxiety?
[04:56] Understanding how water weight and digestion affect the scale
[07:43] How to filter signal from noise
[11:21] How to detach emotionally from daily numbers
[14:27] How to implement tracking systems
[15:51] The mindset shift in data-driven tracking

Why Daily Weigh-Ins Are Both Pointless and Essential

Stepping on the scale can feel like an emotional roller coaster. One day, you’re thrilled by the number, and the next, you’re questioning every decision you’ve made. But what if I told you that daily weight fluctuations are essentially meaningless—but tracking your weight daily is still one of the most important things you can do for fat loss, muscle gain, or weight maintenance?

This paradox boils down to a powerful concept borrowed from engineering: the signal-to-noise ratio. By understanding this principle, you’ll not only remove the stress of daily weigh-ins but also unlock a smarter, data-driven way to measure progress.

Why Scale Weight Fluctuates Daily

Your weight isn’t static. In fact, it can fluctuate by 2-5 pounds or more in a single day, even if you haven’t gained or lost an ounce of fat. These fluctuations are caused by factors that have nothing to do with body fat.

1. Carbs and Water Retention

Carbohydrates stored in your muscles pull water with them—about 3-4 grams of water per gram of glycogen. A carb-heavy meal (like pasta or bread) can spike your weight temporarily.

2. Sodium Intake

Salty foods can lead to water retention as your body balances its electrolytes. Ever noticed how pizza or Chinese food makes the scale jump?

3. Digestive Contents

The food and liquid in your digestive system have weight. Depending on your eating schedule and when you visit the bathroom, this can easily add or subtract a couple of pounds.

4. Hydration Levels

Sweating, drinking water, alcohol consumption, or even the weather can affect your hydration and, consequently, your weight.

5. Exercise and Recovery

Resistance training, especially intense sessions, can cause muscle inflammation and water retention as part of the recovery process.

6. Hormonal Changes

Cortisol, reproductive hormones, and thyroid fluctuations also play a role. Women, in particular, experience significant weight changes throughout their menstrual cycle.

Signal vs. Noise

In engineering, the signal is the meaningful data, while the noise is everything that interferes with it. With your scale weight, the signal is the long-term trend—whether you’re gaining, losing, or maintaining weight. The noise is the daily fluctuations caused by all the factors we just discussed.

Think of it this way: tracking your weight every day is like watching waves crash on a beach to determine if the tide is rising or falling. It’s nearly impossible to tell from one wave, but if you zoom out and observe over time, the trend becomes clear.

This is why daily weigh-ins are essential. They provide the raw data needed to uncover the trend. Without enough data points, it’s much harder to determine whether you’re making progress.

The Science Behind Daily Weighing

Research backs this up. Studies, including one reviewed by Dr. Bill Campbell, have found that people who weigh themselves daily are more successful at losing fat and maintaining it long-term than those who weigh less frequently.

Interestingly, daily weigh-ins don’t lead to increased anxiety or obsession, as many fear. In fact, frequent weighing often helps people develop a more objective, data-driven relationship with the scale.

How to Track Weight Effectively

To filter out the noise and focus on the signal, you need to:

1. Weigh Yourself Daily

• Do it first thing in the morning, after using the bathroom, and before eating or drinking.

• Use the same scale and wear minimal or consistent clothing.

1. Focus on the Trend

• Use a tool like a 7-day moving average or, even better, a 20-day exponential moving average to smooth out daily fluctuations.

• Apps like Macrofactor calculate your trend weight automatically, saving you the mental math.

1. Detach Emotionally

• Treat each daily weigh-in as just another data point. The magic happens when you zoom out and observe the trend over weeks or months.

Why Consistency Matters

Consistency in tracking leads to better data, which leads to better decisions. Skipping weigh-ins or tracking sporadically makes it harder to spot trends and adjust your nutrition or training.

For example, if your goal is fat loss, daily weighing combined with calorie and macro tracking can reveal whether you’re truly in a deficit. Similarly, for muscle gain, it can show whether your weight is trending up as expected.

Applying the Signal-to-Noise Concept Beyond Weight

This principle isn’t limited to the scale. You can use it for other aspects of fitness:

• Calorie Tracking: Weekly averages matter more than hitting exact numbers every day.

• Strength Training: Individual workouts are less important than weekly volume and progression over time.

• Recovery: A single bad night of sleep won’t ruin you; it’s the long-term pattern that counts.

My Final Thoughts

Daily weigh-ins might feel pointless when you see the numbers bouncing all over the place. But those fluctuations are just noise. When you focus on the trend, you gain clarity about your progress and can make smarter decisions about your nutrition and training.

By shifting your mindset to see tracking as a data-driven process rather than an emotional one, you’ll unlock a whole new level of control over your fitness journey.

Remember, the signal is in the noise—you just have to know how to find it.

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Transcript

Philip Pape: 0:01

You step on the scale every morning, hoping to see progress from all your hard work. Some days you're elated, others devastated. But what if neither reaction is even necessary? Today we're using an engineering framework that will transform how you look at progress tracking forever. You'll discover why obsessing over daily numbers is rather pointless. Yet tracking them is essential, whether you're trying to lose fat, gain muscle or just maintain a healthy weight. Understanding this one principle will give you clarity and confidence about tracking that you've never had before.

Philip Pape: 0:49

Welcome to Wits and Weights, the podcast that blends evidence and engineering to help you build smart, efficient systems to achieve your dream physique. I'm your host, philip Pape, and today we're exploring how the engineering concept of signal-to-noise ratio can change your approach to tracking and tracking progress and measuring progress. Recent research confirms that daily weigh-ins lead to better adherence and outcomes for fat loss than even weighing five times a week or less. Yet we also know that individual daily weights are meaningless due to natural fluctuations in your scale weight. Today, you're going to learn how to resolve this apparent contradiction and apply it not just to weight tracking, but every aspect of your fitness journey. Now, before we get into it, if you're ready to start tracking your weight and your nutrition properly.

Philip Pape: 1:37

One of my favorite tools is called Macrofactor. It is what I use. My clients use. It's the only app on the market that not only logs your food, it calculates your dynamic metabolism so that it can give you targets for calories and macros each week, unlike other apps that simply allow you to log the data. So if you download Macrofactor from the app store, please use my code, witsandweights. All spelled out, all one word, if you want to try that out for free. Macrofactor has the most advanced trend weight and expenditure algorithms of any app. It's super fast and it does all the complex math that we're going to discuss today. It does it automatically. So go get Macrofactor link in the show notes. Use my code WITSANDWEIGHTS to support me, and here we go.

Philip Pape: 2:21

Let's start by addressing something that might seem like a contradiction. I mentioned in the intro that there is research. There's a study that was reviewed in the Dr Bill Campbell's research review recently. I actually have a short YouTube video about it if you check out my channel at Wits and Weights and it shows that people who weigh themselves every day it actually compared seven days to five days and it showed that the seven days themselves every day. It actually compared seven days to five days and it showed that the seven days was more successful at losing fat and maintaining it long-term, let alone weighing even less than that. And yet at the same time and here's where we have to have two thoughts in our head we also know that daily weight fluctuations have nothing to do with actual fat loss or gain. So it's kind of fascinating, right. It's like we want to weigh every day for some reason, but we know that the data every day doesn't really matter that much, and there was a review in the Journal of Obesity that found better results, not just during the fat loss, but people who continue after the fact were successful at maintaining their results.

Philip Pape: 3:27

What's really interesting is that daily weighing does not increase anxiety or obsession, like many people fear or like many people claim. In fact, studies often have shown the opposite. People who weigh daily report feeling more in control, less fixated on their weight over time. Daily report feeling more in control, less fixated on their weight over time. They develop a more objective, data-driven relationship with the scale, and the wild thing is that your body weight can easily fluctuate by, on average, two to five pounds or more in a single day, even with zero change in body fat. And so I want to explain why that is, so that you have the context for why, then, the tracking is so important in the context of this signal-to-noise idea.

Philip Pape: 4:11

So first, here are the reasons weight fluctuates. One of the big ones is carbs and glycogen. Every gram of carbs stored in your muscles pulls in about three to four grams of water. So if you load up on pasta one night where you normally don't, that could be an extra 100 grams of carbs means a pound of water weight the next day. Right, and that's totally normal. It has nothing to do with fat gain. And then there's salt. There's sodium intake. Higher sodium foods cause water retention as your body tries to maintain proper electrolyte balance, and that's why a salty meal can spike the scale temporarily right, think Chinese food or even pizza. Your body is just doing its job. It's very sophisticated, it's very smart to maintain homeostasis.

Philip Pape: 4:56

Then we have, like, what's in your gut, digestive contents gut, what am I trying to say? Gut content, right, are a pretty big factor for some people, because the food and liquid in your digestive system it has mass, and, depending on when and what you last ate, depending on when you go to the bathroom. This can vary by several pounds, right, and it's why weighing yourself at different times of day is not a great strategy for consistency, because even just literally after having a glass of water you're going to, you're going to weigh more. Um, then we have our hydration status, which is always changing. It's not like you're a fixed creature, right. You sweat during exercise, you drink more or less water on different times, you might have some alcohol. The humidity level in the air can affect your body, body's water balance. All of this can cause multi-pound fluctuations.

Philip Pape: 5:45

Then we have training, right. Intense training exercise, especially resistance training, especially a leg day, can cause some inflammation and temporary water retention. Your muscles are holding more water. It's a good sign that you are adapting and you're getting stronger than happens, but it does sometimes cause a pop in weight. Then we have hormonal changes, right, especially relevant for women, but even men experience fluctuations that affect your ability to retain water. There's cortisol from stress, reproductive hormones, thyroid function. All of it impacts how much water your body holds onto.

Philip Pape: 6:19

And now people wonder why the heck the scale bounces around. Well, there you go. When you understand all these factors, you realize that expecting a linear change on the scale is actually completely unrealistic and not to be expected whatsoever. You actually want your scale weight to look like a huge oscillating up and down line or curve over time. It's never going to be that tight, it's rarely going to be that tight. Let's put it that way, right? It's like trying to measure the tide by looking at waves. I mean, that's a decent analogy. If you think of the ocean, it's just pointless.

Philip Pape: 6:54

So this is where the concept from engineering that you probably have heard of before, it's called the signal to noise ratio, where the signal is that meaningful data that we want to measure and then the noise is everything else that interferes with that measurement. Right, and sometimes the noise is a lot more than you want it to be. So if I give you a real world example, when you're listening to you, remember radios, remember radio in your car Okay, I'm speaking to my demographic, which is probably a lot of you listening and you're on a road trip and you get closer to the station and it's nice and clear, and then you start to drive away from the station. What happens? Right, the music, that's what you want to hear, that's the signal. It starts getting mixed with static and the static is the noise and then, as you get further away, the of that signal to noise gets worse and worse, until you can't hear the music at all.

Philip Pape: 7:43

And your body works the same way. Or your body weight, your scale weight, works the same way. The trend in your weight, whether you're gaining, maintaining or losing, that's the signal that we want to know. But all the daily fluctuations we talked about, that's the noise. And in engineering we solve this using a filter. This is a tool, this is a piece of math that you can turn into electronics, and it separates the signal from the noise. So for body weight, we can do that using a moving average. We can just weigh yourself every day and then use, like a seven day moving average or what I like, which Macrofactor uses, a 20 day exponential moving average. And you know, don't let that scare you, it's actually a pretty simple thing. You can even do it yourself in a spreadsheet. But think of it like this Imagine if, instead of looking at the waves hitting the beach and trying to determine the tide, you look at a time-lapse video over several hours.

Philip Pape: 8:34

You ever seen those where now you see the tide clearly moving in and clearly moving out, even though individual waves are always crashing, moving in and clearly moving out, even though individual waves are always crashing right. The exponential moving average does that. It gives more weight to the recent measurements and smooths out the daily fluctuations, and so, as a result, you get this trend line that actually tells you what's happening with your body composition. And I want to get into this, just nerd out on this a bit, because I've looked into this, and I want to get into this, just nerd out on this a bit, because I've looked into this and I even talked to Greg Knuckles a while ago on the podcast.

Philip Pape: 9:05

Why 20 days? Right, it's not random. It's actually long enough to filter out most noise, but short enough to still be responsive to real changes. Because you don't want to wait six months to determine your trend weight. That would be ridiculous. But we also know we can't do it in as short as seven days because it's still too noisy, right. And so you want to balance in between, and that's where the 20 days is really nice. And so when I'm working with clients, it's like the first couple of weeks, we're just collecting data. Let's not even worry about what it says. And then there's the question of the linear versus exponential. If you care about that. I mentioned an exponential average. A linear average would treat the last 20 days the same, but an exponential average gives more weight to recent days, even though it still considers older data. That's a very smart approach, because what's happened to your body recently is more signal than what happened 20 days ago, so that makes it more responsive to the actual change in direction, but still filtering out the noise. And so what's really powerful about this is it gives you better data with less perfect adherence. Okay, so if you In other words no, let me restate it If you only weigh yourself occasionally, you're going to get less reliable information than someone who weighs daily.

Philip Pape: 10:22

That's what I'm trying to say. It's kind of this counterintuitive thing, but the math proves it. Just look at how the formula works. It proves it mathematically that if you only sporadically weigh yourself, it's not going to work so well and it's not going to give you a great idea of what's going on. But if you weigh yourself daily, it will. And it's not going to give you a great idea of what's going on, but if you weigh yourself daily it will. So again, with my clients, I kind of get on them a little bit when they miss some days of weighing because I don't want to sound like a tracking Nazi here, but it's actually going to help you. It's going to help you to know am I actually losing fat or gaining fat, so that I can change my calories appropriately.

Philip Pape: 10:55

So how do we apply this in practice appropriately? So how do we apply this in practice? Well, pretty simple. We need to collect enough data points. That means you need to weigh yourself every day, and the best, most reliable way to do that is first thing in the morning, after you use the bathroom, before you eat or drink, wearing the similar clothing or preferably none, or, you know, underwear or something like that and using the same scale. But this is crucial. This is the crucial part. That's all the logistical stuff.

Philip Pape: 11:21

Emotionally, you need to detach emotionally from those individual numbers. Now, when I say you need to detach, like, can you just flip a switch and do that? Of course not. I get that. But over time, as you do it daily, you will detach right, unless something else is going on. You will detach and I see this over and over again as long as you relate it to the why and the trend and are kind of treating the data like it's supposed to be, like it's meant to be like.

Philip Pape: 11:47

These are just data points. They mean nothing. The magic happens when you look at the trend, right. And so, going back to macro factor, it handles this for you, right. It calculates your trend weight and then it uses that along with your food intake to say okay, based on what you're eating and based on what you're weighing, over a long period of two or three weeks, we know that you're actually gaining weight or you're losing weight and therefore we're going to adjust your intake accordingly. Or maybe you're gaining more or less than we thought, so we're going to go up or down with your calories right Now.

Philip Pape: 12:18

This principle can apply to anything, for example, your calories themselves, your calories and macro targets. I don't want you to hit them perfectly. That's impossible. It's the weekly averages that ends up driving your results. So, again, we don't want to obsess over hitting the exact number every day. That's super counterproductive. Some days will be higher, some days will lower.

Philip Pape: 12:38

It is the trend that matters Now. If you're always over, the trend will be high. If you're always under, the trend will be low. But you've got to give yourself some up and down room to navigate, similar in the gym, with your strength. Your performance in a single workout matters far less than your overall volume for the week, your sets for the week, your recovery for the week, the intensity going up session to session. You're going to have bad days, you're going to have great days. Neither of them defines you or your strength level in the moment. It's the trend over time. Look at your, the weights, the working weights and the volumes over days, weeks and months. I can go on. Recovery right.

Philip Pape: 13:15

Individual sleep scores, individual things that your aura ring tells you like oh my God, it's terrible. Your stress levels through the roof. Your HRV is terrible. Don't stress. I mean, one bad night's not going to ruin you. One perfect night's not going to fix everything. You know, one night of catching up on sleep isn't going to matter. It's the patterns over time, right, get those naps in, get the sleep schedule to be consistent, you know, slowly lengthen the amount of hours over time, and I can go on.

Philip Pape: 13:46

Like progress photos same thing like looking at yourself in the mirror every day can be misleading, but like monthly shots, those show the changes. Now, that's kind of a weird example, because I don't want you to take photos every day, because it doesn't work that way with photos, right, it's not like photos average out that it doesn't work that way. But for you to see the changes over time, you're going to need data points over time to compare to, and then even subjective metrics, like the biofeedback that I asked my clients to give me to rate their energy, hunger, mood. I look at them when they check in, but I really care about the trend, because you're going to have stress, you're going to have soreness, you're going to have issues here and there, you're going to get sick, et cetera. It doesn't matter. What matters is the trend over time.

Philip Pape: 14:27

So if you put all this together, what does it look like? You've got to have some sort of tool to track. It could be an app, a spreadsheet, a notebook. Have a system that works for you, I don't care what it is. Establish the protocol, right. When am I going to track it? How am I going to do it? So, for for weight we already talked about that every day in the morning, blah, blah, blah, um. Commit to doing it regularly, right? If it's daily, that makes sense. Do it daily. Consistency matters the most, so don't beat yourself up if you miss one Um, but also allow yourself to see the benefit of doing it as frequently as you think you need to do it like daily for scale, weight and maybe less for other things.

Philip Pape: 15:05

And then you're going to review your data weekly or biweekly and spot the patterns. You're going to look at the trends. That can be a really fun part of it, because now you've got enough data to give you a trend. And now you're like, oh, I'm glad I had all that data right, because otherwise it'd be missing and it wouldn't be able to figure out what's going on. Same thing with me as a coach. It's like if you weren't tracking for the last two weeks, I can't help you as much because I don't have that data. And so then you can make adjustments based on those trends, not the fluctuations, and it helps you avoid the obsessiveness and the emotional response, because now you're like, oh cool, like that early bad night I had, whatever it was eating too much or not getting sleep actually is just kind of some noise. It's noise in the signal, no big deal, right. And so it helps you reduce anxiety and obsession around tracking. That's the magic of this whole thing.

Philip Pape: 15:51

When you understand that the daily numbers are noise, you stop giving them so much emotional power. That's all it is. It's just a false sense of emotional power over you. Then you become more like an engineer or a scientist, right? You're just collecting data points and then you're going to reveal patterns. And this shift in mindset is really liberating. It is really empowering, because suddenly you can enjoy that dinner out without stress you know it's just noise and a larger signal dinner out without stress, you know it's just noise and a larger signal.

Philip Pape: 16:21

You start to see your fitness journey as a data-driven process rather than an emotional roller coaster. So the next time you step on the scale, remember you're not looking at a verdict, a judgment. You're collecting a data point that, combined with many others, dozens, hundreds of others, reveals the true story of your progress. And this isn't about weight tracking, right, this is about the mindset the mindset of an engineer, actually. That's why you listen to me, I think, someone who can look past the daily noise and see the signal that matters, all right.

Philip Pape: 16:50

So if you want to start tracking the smart way, a great way to do that for your food and your weight, which then gives you your metabolism and your targets if you're trying to gain muscle or lose fat, is to download Macrofactor and use code WITSANDWEIGHTS all one word to try it out. You're going to get access to one of the best trend weight and expenditure calculators out there. That's doing it for you as you log your weight, as you log your food. It makes it super easy. All right, until next time, keep using your wits lifting those weights and remember, in fitness as in engineering, the signal is in the noise. You just have to know how to find it. I'll talk to you next time here on the Wits and Weights podcast.

The Surprising 4th Macro That Stalls Fat Loss (and Increases Belly Fat) | Ep 275

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That hidden "4th macro" (beyond protein, fats, and carbs) might be the reason you're not seeing results despite tracking everything else.

Philip exposes how this macro impacts your physique beyond just adding calories. What is is? Alcohol!

Learn the science behind alcohol's effects on fat storage, muscle growth, and metabolism - and discover practical strategies to maintain your social life while achieving your physique goals.

Main Takeaways:

• Your body handles alcohol completely differently from any other macronutrient

• Alcohol affects your physique through multiple mechanisms beyond just calories

• The timing of your drinks matters more than you might think

• Exercise changes how your body processes alcohol in a surprising way

• Daily habits matter more than occasional indulgences

• Small strategic changes can lead to significant improvements

Timestamps:

[00:01] Introduction to the concept of a "fourth macro" disrupting fat loss progress
[02:28] Breaking down alcohol's unique properties compared to other macronutrients
[05:23] How alcohol reduces muscle protein synthesis by 24%
[07:21] Research on alcohol's relationship with visceral fat storage
[09:25] Strategic approaches to minimize alcohol's impact on physique goals
[12:14] Practical tips for reducing alcohol consumption
[15:13] Handling social pressure and building alcohol-free habits
[16:41] The surprising connection between exercise and alcohol processing
[18:31] Three-phase framework for managing alcohol while pursuing fitness goals
[20:38] Final thoughts on prioritizing what matters for your physique

The 4th Macro Sabotaging Your Fat Loss and Fitness Goals

When we talk about macros, the usual suspects come to mind—protein, fats, and carbs. But what if I told you there’s a sneaky “fourth macro” that could be the reason your fat loss has stalled, your midsection isn’t budging, and your muscle gains are taking a hit?

That’s right, I’m talking about alcohol, the often-overlooked macronutrient with seven calories per gram that’s wreaking havoc on body composition goals.

Here’s how alcohol disrupts your progress and what you can do to minimize its impact while still enjoying life.

What Makes Alcohol the “Fourth Macro”?

Alcohol has 7 calories per gram, placing it between carbs and protein (4 calories/gram) and fat (9 calories/gram) in energy density. But that’s where the similarity ends.

Unlike the other macros, your body has no storage mechanism for alcohol. It sees alcohol as a toxin and prioritizes metabolizing it immediately, sidelining everything else.

This metabolic priority creates a cascade of effects that sabotage your fat loss and muscle-building goals.

How Alcohol Impacts Fat Burning

A study in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition found that alcohol suppresses fat oxidation (a fancy way of saying “fat burning”) by up to 73% for four to six hours after drinking. Think about that: for hours after you enjoy a couple of drinks, your body essentially pauses its fat-burning efforts.

During this time, the calories from your food—carbs, fats, and even protein—are more likely to be stored as fat since your body is busy processing alcohol. This is like a metabolic traffic jam where alcohol gets the fast lane while everything else is stuck waiting.

The Triple Threat: Muscle, Fat, and Hormones

The effects of alcohol go beyond fat storage.

1. Muscle Protein Synthesis (MPS)

MPS, the process your body uses to build and repair muscle, takes a major hit from alcohol. A landmark study in PLOS ONE found that alcohol consumption post-workout reduced MPS by 24%, even when subjects consumed enough protein. Translation? If you’re drinking after training, you’re undoing some of the hard work you put into the gym.

2. Hormonal Chaos

Alcohol disrupts hormone production, particularly testosterone, a key player in muscle building and fat loss. Studies show testosterone levels can drop by 23% after regular alcohol consumption. Women experience hormonal interference too, with impacts on testosterone and other key hormones.

3. Visceral Fat Accumulation

Alcohol has a dose-dependent relationship with visceral fat (the dangerous fat around your organs). Men who consume more than 14 drinks per week have 30.7% more visceral fat volume compared to non-drinkers. This isn’t the fat you pinch; it’s the deep belly fat associated with serious health risks.

Does Tracking Alcohol as Calories Solve the Problem?

Many people assume they can account for alcohol’s effects by tracking it in their calorie target. While this approach might help with calorie control, alcohol’s impact goes far beyond energy balance. Its hormonal disruptions, suppressed fat burning, and interference with muscle recovery make it a much more complex issue.

Practical Strategies to Minimize Alcohol’s Impact

1. Be Strategic About Timing

• Avoid drinking on training days. Alcohol reduces muscle recovery, so drinking after a workout is a double hit.

• Limit drinking to rest days to minimize its impact on performance and recovery.

2. Moderation is Key

• Every drink you skip is a win for your physique goals.

• Set reasonable limits. For example, aim for one to two drinks per month if body composition is your primary goal.

3. Social Strategies

• Have a go-to non-alcoholic drink like sparkling water with lime or a non-alcoholic beer.

• Be the designated driver—it’s a built-in excuse not to drink.

• Suggest non-drinking social activities like hikes or workouts with friends.

Alcohol Becomes Less Appealing Over Time

As you progress in your fitness journey, something interesting happens: alcohol naturally becomes less appealing. When your training, nutrition, and recovery are dialed in, the short-term pleasure of alcohol often pales in comparison to how good you feel when you’re performing well and seeing results.

This isn’t about perfection or total abstinence (unless that’s your choice). It’s about aligning your actions with what’s most important to you—your health, fitness, and longevity.

My Final Thoughts

Alcohol isn’t just another macronutrient; it’s a disruptor that can stall your fat loss, reduce muscle growth, and lead to long-term health risks.

The good news is, you don’t need to eliminate it completely. With strategic timing, moderation, and better habits, you can still enjoy the occasional drink without derailing your progress.

Remember, every drink you skip is a step closer to your goals.

The key is understanding how alcohol affects your body and making informed choices that support the results you’re working so hard to achieve.

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Transcript

Philip Pape: 0:01

There are three macros, right Protein, fats and carbs and you might be tracking them. You're tracking your calories, your training, but something's off. The fat loss has stalled, maybe around your midsection, and the culprit might be a hidden fourth macro that's wreaking havoc on your body composition. This often overlooked factor is doing more than just adding calories it's actively interfering with your metabolism, muscle growth and fat storage patterns. Today, we're uncovering the science behind how the fourth macro disrupts your progress and what to do about it. Welcome to Wits and Weights, the show that blends evidence and engineering to help you build smart, efficient systems to achieve your dream physique.

Philip Pape: 0:54

I'm your host, philip Pape, and today's episode comes from an important question in our Facebook community. Jerry asked about alcohol's impact on body composition beyond just calories, and it's a really good question, because we are always obsessed over protein, fats and carbs, and alcohol does act like a fourth macronutrient in some ways. That might surprise you, and the truth is, most of us, myself included, have been pretty misled about alcohol's effects on our physicals especially, and if not misled, then maybe the information just isn't out there. We've heard everything from you know it's no big deal as long as it fits your macros to even unhelpful information now that can be damaging, like red wine is good for your heart. So today I'm going to break down what the evidence actually says about alcohol's impact on the things that we really care about here fat loss, muscle gain, body composition so you know you can make an informed decision. Now, before we dig into that science I mentioned, this question comes from someone in our Facebook group. If you want to connect with Jerry or anyone else who's trying to optimize their nutrition and training, they're sharing their progress. They're sharing their progress. They're sharing tips. They'll answer your questions. You can get form checks, all this fun stuff using the evidence, using good, solid training methodologies. Join our free Facebook group. Just search for Wits and Weights on Facebook or click the link in the show notes and you will find a supportive community, like-minded people just like you, most of whom listen to this podcast and just want to help each other succeed.

Philip Pape: 2:28

All right, let's start by breaking down what makes alcohol unique compared to other macros. Alcohol is definitely a macro. It has seven calories per gram in terms of its density, its energy content. In terms of its density, its energy content. And so it sits between protein and carbs, which those have four calories per gram, and then fat has nine calories per gram, so it's in between, but that's where the similarities end. Okay, I don't want you to think of it as like the other macros, because your body handles alcohol completely different from any other nutrients, and understanding that is really important.

Philip Pape: 3:05

First, let's talk about what happens when you consume regular macros. When you consume protein, carbs and fats, your body can store all of those nutrients. Carbs get stored as glycogen in your muscles and liver. Fat gets stored in adipose tissue. Protein gets broken down and used to build or repair tissues. So your body has options and it can process these nutrients at its own pace.

Philip Pape: 3:29

Alcohol is a completely different story. Listen up, okay. Your body does not have a storage mechanism for alcohol Zero. It views alcohol as a toxin that must be cleared from your system immediately. Right, and this isn't about preference, it's a biological imperative. Your liver drops everything else it is doing to deal with the alcohol first, and this metabolic priority then creates a cascade of effects that directly impact your body composition.

Philip Pape: 3:59

Research published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition shows that alcohol suppresses fat oxidation. That means fat burning by up to 73% for four to six hours after you drink. Think about that. For up to six hours after having drinks with your dinner, your body basically stops burning fat. But it gets worse Because during that time, guess what happens to all the other calories you consume, all those carbs and fats that you're eating alongside your drinks, or even just your regular meals. They are more likely to be stored as fat because your body's too busy dealing with the alcohol. So it's like having this traffic jam in your metabolism where everything backs up while there's one priority vehicle alcohol. Maybe, know, maybe Elon Musk owns the alcohol company, I don't know, but it has priority everything, everything else, and it gets through. Now you might be thinking, okay, but what if I account for the calories from alcohol in my daily target? Right, if I, I should just track it right. And that is a great question. And it leads us to the next point point, because even if you could perfectly account for the calories, alcohol still affects your body composition through multiple other mechanisms that have nothing to do with calories. So let's get into that and talk about kind of the triple threat here between muscle, fat and hormones. As it relates to alcohol.

Philip Pape: 5:23

We're going to start with muscle protein synthesis. That is, the process of building and maintaining muscle mass. You might have seen it abbreviated MPS, right, and that's all it is. It's building muscle. And there was a landmark study in PLOS1, I never know how to pronounce it, plos1, that found that alcohol consumption decreased exercise induced muscle protein synthesis by about 24% when subjects consumed alcohol post-workout. Now I know we're not all just like chugging down a glass of whiskey or a beer right after a workout although I have done my share of obstacle course races in the past and got my free beer and I can tell you that was a pleasurable experience but still, we're not all doing that. But regardless, 24% drop in muscle protein synthesis after having a drink after exercise like that's a huge reduction in your body's ability to do the thing that you just trained for build and repair muscle, even when you're eating enough protein and training Like that's crazy. So put that in perspective. Imagine you just finished a training session. You spent 90 minutes with your squats, with your deadlifts, with, with your, all your accessories, right, and you you even hit your protein target for the day. You're eating plenty and you're feeling great. Then you have a few drinks with dinner, so maybe you're training in the afternoon, even though you did everything else right, you've just cut your potential muscle gains for that session by nearly a quarter, according to this research Um, you research, and I know we're not.

Philip Pape: 6:52

I mean, it depends on how often you do it right, how much you drink and all of that. But the impact goes beyond and I want to kind of stack on top of that it's beyond just the protein synthesis, because it also affects your hormones. It affects your testosterone levels and, as you surmise, not in a good way. Research shows that regular alcohol consumption can suppress testosterone production by up to 23% in men, and then for women, even though the impact is a little bit less dramatic, it still interferes with testosterone, as well as other hormones that affect body composition.

Philip Pape: 7:21

And then let's look at fat storage, because it gets interesting here as well. There's research in the European Journal of Clinical Nutrition that shows that regular alcohol consumption has a dose-dependent relationship with visceral fat, that is, the dangerous fat around your organs, your belly fat, and men consuming more than 14 drinks per week had 30.7% more visceral fat volume compared to non-drinkers. Right, and that is not just the subcutaneous fat that you can pinch, it is the deep belly fat that is associated with serious health risks. It isn't just a function of these guys gaining more weight. It is a separate variable that is very important to get into your brain, like I've.

Philip Pape: 8:08

This is one of the primary reasons I've all but cut off alcohol. I admit I still have a drink every now and then. Once a month I'll have a drink. I mean it is so rare compared to what it used to be for many of these reasons. And then there's something that doesn't take. It doesn't get talked about enough how alcohol impacts your stress response, because when you drink, your body produces more cortisol, the stress hormone. We think of alcohol as this downer. It like relaxes you and everything, but it actually makes you more stress on the whole. High cortisol levels are associated then with guess what? Increased belly fat storage and reduced muscle mass. Double, triple, quadruple, whammy. I mean you do the math. You're not just dealing with direct effects of alcohol, but then this hormonal cascade that creates an environment perfect for fat storage and muscle loss.

Philip Pape: 8:57

Come on, guys, are you getting the picture? That is not what we want, right? And I did this episode because I didn't want to say, hey, alcohol's poison, it's toxic, you shouldn't drink it. I actually wanted to come to it from the other direction of no-transcript. If you care about these things, it's up to you how much. Or if you want to drink alcohol, right, that's it. I'm not coming to it from the judgment or shame perspective, but from the physiology, the anatomy, the biology perspective, all right.

Philip Pape: 9:25

So what do we do with all this information? Right, I'm not here to tell you never to drink again. I know that's not realistic for most people and, quite frankly, it's not necessary for the vast majority of us to achieve our goals. Oh boy, I said it. Yes, I said it, and I know I've had some guests on who've talked about total abstinence from alcohol and that is totally an option for you, absolutely an option. I would totally encourage that if you want to do that. But I'm talking realistic pragmatism here and I know not everybody's going to do that. So instead, let's talk about strategic approaches to minimize alcohol's impact on your physique goals. We'll start there and if you decide you want to totally abstain because at the end of the day that will get you the most benefit, that is up to you.

Philip Pape: 10:08

So first, let's talk about timing. If you're going to drink, do it on rest days, don't do it on training days. If we're to believe the 24% reduction in muscle synthesis. You don't do it on training days, right? If we're to believe the 24% reduction in muscle synthesis, you don't want that happening right after a good workout. Now, it's going to happen whenever you drink. So just know that on the net it's still going to have an impact. But if you train on your off day, that might be a little bit better than training right after you work out or on your training day. But not only that your performance in the gym is going to suffer if you're training while your body is still processing alcohol. So don't do it on, like the evening before your training day either. If you train in the morning, just be smart about it and separate it.

Philip Pape: 10:46

And I see this with clients, right? They hit a great workout, a great training session on Friday. Then they go out for drinks that night and then they're like I'm kind of weak and unmotivated on Saturday. Well, what the heck? You just had a bunch of drinks Friday night, right? It's not just in your head. Your body is literally still dealing with the metabolic aftermath of the drinks.

Philip Pape: 11:04

Um, which, by the way, it doesn't necessarily happen if you have like a massive buffet or Chinese food. Many times you go into the gym next day and you're like super energized from that. So that's why there's a difference between these things. Um, the second is the amount, the quantity. Right, we know that there's a clear dose dependent relationship with the negative effects and, by the way, I should have put this disclaimer early on.

Philip Pape: 11:27

If you struggle with alcohol, if there's alcoholism in your family or yourself or any, I'm not touching that with a 10 foot pole. It is outside my scope to deal with actually alcoholism and alcohol dependency. This episode is not for you. This is about just understanding the relationships between moderate alcohol consumption and your body. Okay, so the dose dependent relationships. So every drink that you don't have is a win for your physique. I want you to remember that Every drink you choose not to have. So if you were gonna have like five beers in a row but you decide every other beer is an alcohol-free beer, count those as wins for your physique, and you might be rolling your eyes at this point thinking, okay, again, here's the lecture about never drinking again.

Philip Pape: 12:14

But that's not what I'm suggesting. I want you to set some reasonable limits based on your goals. So if you're serious about body composition, I would limit yourself to one to two drinks per month. And if that sounds crazy, if that sounds extreme for you and I've been there I used to have a glass of wine every night and I used to have like five, six beers on the weekend and I gradually weaned myself off and started to swap things out. So what do you do? Well, you start by cutting your current intake by a percentage of that, like maybe in half, and observe the changes, and then you might be surprised how much better you feel and perform Right, and the way I would do that is I wouldn't just say, okay, if you drink two drinks every day, drink one drink every day.

Philip Pape: 12:51

I might want to drink, like you know, half the days or something like that, but do whatever makes sense to you. Um, you know, one of our, one of our members in our in um, my group program, the physique university, had some struggles with drinking and and you know I see this a lot, right, I see this a lot it's like everything else starts to get dialed in and drinking still is a challenge, and so she simply moved from drinking every weekend every other weekend. So she still accepted the fact that she wanted to go out with her girlfriends to the pub and really enjoy the craft beers, but it would be every other weekend and the weeks where she didn't drink she was like holy moly, I have way better recovery, my walks feel great, I feel like just more up to doing things, my training's consistent, I'm hitting PRs, I'm actually I can lose weight, my metabolism goes up, and then it kind of slides back a little bit on the weeks where she would drink. So that's what I mean by kind of alternating, to see the contrast in your own self and let that data drive you to your decision-making. And then as far as the social strategies, I think that's where most people struggle the most, because it's rarely about that physical craving for alcohol, right, or the physical hunger, whatever you wanna call it. It's the social pressure, it's the habits that we built around drinking. So what do we do about that?

Philip Pape: 14:06

All right, first have a go-to non-alcoholic drink ready to go right, and it could be something, not even in the realm of alcohol, like sparkling water with lime or a seltzer or something you know, not hard seltzer, but a regular seltzer, diet soda, something that looks like a drink. No one questions it. You're at the party, they think it's a rum and coke, whatever. Who cares Not that it should matter, but I know a lot of us care. So that's where I'm starting from. And then, guess what? You stay hydrated too, so probably makes things. You could maybe have the food. You stay hydrated, you enjoy yourself. Don't get as buzzed if if it's mixed in with alcoholic beverages and you're cutting down, um. But here's the thing there are also lots of options with the rise of these non-alcoholic uh, craft beverages, beers and mixed liquors and even wines. So, uh, going with a non-alcoholic beer is a great option these days. Seriously, it tastes, they taste pretty good. So if you just like the ritual and the taste of beer, that alone could be enough for you to say, ah, this is pretty close to it. I'm just not getting that buzz, but I'm also not getting all the terrible after effects and effects on my body composition later either. Um.

Philip Pape: 15:13

The second thing is you don't have to explain yourself to anyone. You just don't write a simple like hey, I'm good with water tonight is enough. If someone's pushing you to drink, it's. It's more about them. It's about their relationship with alcohol, their insecurities. It's not you. Right now you can be strategic. You can volunteer to be the designated driver, and then you know, they know you can't drink or say, hey, I have, I have an early morning training session, like that's important to me, I'm just not drinking. Cause that if you have to give a reason there's, there's a strategic way to do it. And then the third thing here is you know why don't you build connections with people and activities that don't revolve around drinking it and activities that don't revolve around drinking it might sound obvious, but I think that's powerful, right? Instead of meeting friends for drinks, suggest going on a hike or doing a training session together, or a lunch where you're having food but not drinks. I mean, you be the judge. And then you'd be amazed at how many people are actually relieved to have social options that don't involve alcohol.

Philip Pape: 16:10

It's funny part of my wife's family. They stay away from alcohol because there's a history there, and so when we go to parties with them, it's just I remember early on being a little frustrated. I'm like, where's the cooler with the beers? Where where's the wine? And after a couple of those I just didn't think about it and I would go and guess what. We have fun, it's no big deal. You enjoy it. You have diet soda, you have the cake. Right, you throw the football around, whatever, and you have fun. You don't need the alcohol, um, so so that's kind of. Hopefully I didn't get too judge judgmental there. Hopefully that was a reasonable take on this subject.

Philip Pape: 16:41

Uh, and I think if, if you, if you think about alcohol and training, um, it's if you link them together, I think it's going to be helpful, because we know the research shows that regular exercise changes how your body even processes alcohol. Like you actually become better at clearing it, which is not an encouragement to drink more, but it does potentially reduce the negative effects on body composition. It might explain why some, like active, healthy people, seem to handle alcohol better than others. And again, it doesn't mean you should drink more. It suggests that maintaining your training routine becomes even more important. If you choose to drink occasionally, right, you're building a better defense system against the negative effects of really anything you put into your body. It's like having a better cleanup crew right, better, better detox crew in your body. And it like having a better cleanup crew, right, better detox crew in your body. And it explains something that I've noticed with clients over the years that those who maintain consistent training schedules they go to the gym, they put in the work. Even if they do keep drinking moderately, right, they tend to maintain better body composition. They can lose fat. Yes, they can have a-pack abs. Then those who are intermittent with their training but strict about alcohol Now, process that. It's not that the alcohol becomes harmless, it's that the positive adaptations from regular training provide some protection against the negative effects, because you're, overall, a healthier person on the net, which again is a good theme to remember when we talk about moderation and balance, and even when it comes to your food and your indulgences, that, yes, you can have some vices in there. I'm not going to tell you one way or the other, just know the impact and also prioritize being a healthy, fit person, all right. So this episode is getting long in the tooth, but I think it's a really important topic and I want to help you create a practical framework for managing this while pursuing your physique goals.

Philip Pape: 18:31

So three phases I wrote down here. First one is you want to do an audit, an assessment, take an honest look at your current health. Just be honest with yourself, right? How many drinks per week? When do you typically drink? What triggers the desire to drink? Do not judge yourself, just gather the data like we would with anything else we do here. It's data tracking.

Philip Pape: 18:52

Phase two is strategic reduction. Right, this isn't going cold turkey. It's making those intentional choices that are really easy, like switching one drink per week to a non-alcoholic or moving your drinking days away from your training days. Phase three is then building the new habits. Right, and this may be a little harder for some of us, but it's where things get sustainable.

Philip Pape: 19:12

Find the go-to non-alcoholic drink that you identified in phase two. Build connections that don't revolve around alcohol so you don't have as much temptation, and then create routines that don't involve drinking, just in general, things that help you relieve stress, because a lot of you are like well, I drink to relieve stress. There are a million ways to relieve stress that don't have super negative effects that ultimately increase your stress, and remember that one Alcohol actually increases your cortisol. So the key to all of this is progress, progress, progress. It's not perfection. Every drink you don't have is a win for your physique goals. Remember that Every time you choose water instead of wine, you're giving your body a better chance to build muscle and burn fat efficiently, if that is your goal.

Philip Pape: 19:49

So the fourth macro remember that this is the fourth macro, alcohol. It is unique, right, especially if you're trying to be fitter and leaner and more healthy and live a long life. Understanding the mechanisms empowers you to make informed choices. It's not about complete restriction, at least not off the bat. Ultimately, if you want to do that for alcohol specifically, I don't think that's a bad idea. But it's really aligning your actions with what's important right now, right. And when you understand how alcohol affects your body at a biological level. By the way, share this episode with somebody else who needs to understand this or maybe just doesn't know or thinks that there's something good about alcohol. Then you can make decisions that support your goals, just like anything else where we try to get more educated. And then you find that you know, as your physique gets better, your training progresses.

Philip Pape: 20:38

Guess what's going to happen? This happened to me, happens to so many people. The drinks become less appealing. You just want them less Again. The occasional whiskey or whatever you enjoy. I still do that. I get it. But it's not because you're restricting yourself that you avoid those things. It's because you're prioritizing what really matters to you above that. All right. If you found value in today's episode and again you want to connect with others like Jerry on their fitness journey.

Philip Pape: 21:02

Join our Facebook group. Just search for Wits and Weights or click the link in the episode notes and hop on into the group Once I approve you in there, which is usually pretty quickly. Share your thoughts on this episode, right, Say hey, I found you through the alcohol episode and it was interesting and I want to continue the conversation. Right, and hey, I'd love to hear your strategies for managing alcohol, if that's specifically what you're looking for. Uh, but there's lots of other topics we cover in the group, so join to check those out. Until next time, keep using your wits lifting those weights and remember, sometimes the best gains come from what you choose not to consume. I'll talk to you next time here on the Wits and Weights Podcast.

How to Stop Your Fitness Goals from Destroying Your Relationship (EJ and Tarah Kerwin) | Ep 274

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Is your fitness journey unintentionally straining your relationships? How can you pursue personal goals while maintaining emotional intimacy? What systems can help couples thrive in both their health and love lives?

Philip (@witsandweights) explores the intersection of fitness and relationships with EJ and Tarah Kerwin, licensed therapists and co-hosts of the Relationship Renovation Podcast. Together, they uncover practical tools for navigating conflicts, aligning goals, and fostering collaboration in your fitness journey without sacrificing connection with your partner.

Discover how to avoid common pitfalls, communicate more effectively, and build systems that honor your individuality while strengthening your bond. Whether you're meal prepping or juggling gym schedules with kids, this episode offers essential strategies for harmony in both your fitness and personal lives.

Today, you’ll learn all about:

2:45 Relationship dynamics and connection with fitness and nutrition
6:38 Managing different schedules and priorities with adaptiveness and intention
10:06 Creating collaborative systems as a couple
13:23 Plan, predict, and prepare
16:25 Maintaining emotional and physical intimacy during intense fitness phases
18:21 Balancing parenting, meeting needs, and gym time
22:21 Recognizing how to show support in coupleship
26:14 Agreement boundaries in coaching dynamics
31:06 Addressing body image and emotional triggers
35:09 Communication strategies, triggers, and boundaries around fitness and nutrition goals
44:02 Navigating differences in parenting and shared values evolve over time
49:13 How vows and flexibility support long-term relationships
53:48 Rapid-fire questions
57:45 Outro

Episode resources:

• Website: relationshiprenovation.com

• Podcast: relationshiprenovation.com/podcast 
  

How to Pursue Fitness Goals Without Destroying Your Relationship

Pursuing fitness goals like building muscle, losing fat, or dialing in nutrition can be life-changing. But what happens when your partner isn’t on the same page? If your fitness journey starts creating tension at home, it’s time to reevaluate your approach. In this blog, we’ll dive into actionable strategies to achieve your fitness goals without sacrificing connection, using insights from licensed counselors EJ and Tarah Kerwin.

Why Fitness Can Strain Relationships

When one partner starts taking fitness seriously—meal prepping, counting macros, or hitting the gym regularly—it can leave the other partner feeling neglected or left behind. Common sources of tension include:

• Different eating habits, like one partner sticking to a strict meal plan while the other enjoys takeout.

• Conflicting schedules, especially if workouts take priority over shared time.

• A lack of communication about how these goals affect the relationship.

These issues don’t mean your fitness goals are the problem. Instead, they’re an opportunity to strengthen your relationship by getting intentional about balancing priorities.

Build Systems for Collaboration

The key to balancing fitness and relationships lies in building systems that work for both of you. EJ and Tarah recommend these strategies:

Daily Check-ins

Spend five minutes every day sharing how you’re feeling and what your goals are for the day. This small habit can help align priorities, minimize misunderstandings, and create a sense of teamwork.

Plan, Predict, Prepare

Adopt the "plan, predict, prepare" framework for everything from gym schedules to meal prep. Anticipate potential points of conflict and create solutions in advance, like alternating gym times or meal prepping together to stay connected.

Set Clear Boundaries

If one partner wants to help coach the other, make sure it’s a mutual decision with clear boundaries. Avoid letting fitness become a source of criticism or control—it should always be about support.

Addressing Mismatched Fitness Goals

It’s common for one partner to be more invested in fitness than the other, which can create friction. To avoid resentment, focus on acceptance and curiosity instead of judgment.

Ask questions to understand your partner’s perspective:

• "What’s been your experience with fitness lately?"

• "How can I support you without pushing my own goals onto you?"

This approach turns potential conflict into an opportunity to connect, while allowing each person to maintain their individuality.

Don’t Let Fitness Hurt Intimacy

Extreme fitness goals, like contest prep or cutting phases, can strain emotional and physical intimacy. The Kerwins recommend soft, empathetic communication to stay connected during high-stress phases:

• Use “I” statements to express concern, e.g., “I’ve noticed you seem more stressed lately. Is there something I can do to help?”

• Avoid criticism or defensiveness. Instead, focus on curiosity, e.g., “What’s driving you to push so hard right now?”

Fitness should enhance your life—not put up walls between you and your partner.

Adapt to Life’s Changes

Your relationship, like your fitness goals, will evolve over time. Injuries, schedule changes, and family priorities all come into play. A strong relationship isn’t about avoiding challenges but navigating them together.

Think about your fitness journey and relationship as part of a long-term plan. If something isn’t working—whether it’s a workout routine or a shared responsibility—adjust and move forward. Remember, flexibility is key to sustainability in both fitness and relationships.

Actionable Tips to Balance Fitness and Relationships

1. Make Fitness a Team Effort
   Even if your partner doesn’t share your goals, find ways to involve them. For example, meal prep together, even if you’re eating different foods.

2. Be Curious, Not Critical
   When conflicts arise, approach your partner with curiosity instead of judgment. Ask open-ended questions and listen to their concerns.

3. Protect Time for Connection
   Don’t let gym time or meal prep come at the expense of emotional intimacy. Schedule quality time together, even if it’s as simple as a nightly walk or cooking a shared meal.

4. Communicate Your Why
   Share why your fitness goals matter to you and how they align with your shared values as a couple. This builds mutual understanding and support.

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Transcript

Philip Pape: 0:01

If you've noticed your relationships becoming strained as you pursue your fitness goals or your partner seems distant or resentful about your dedication to training and nutrition, or even if you're struggling to balance your physical pursuits with your emotional connections, this episode is for you. Today, we're discussing the often ignored impact that pursuing fitness can have on our closest relationships, and how to prevent your path to a better body from leading to a broken connection. Whether you're meal prepping while your partner orders takeout or spending Saturday mornings at the gym instead of enjoying time together, what we're about to share will help you achieve your fitness goals while strengthening, not sacrificing, your relationships. Welcome to Wits and Weights, the podcast that blends evidence and engineering to help you build smart, efficient systems to achieve your dream physique.

Philip Pape: 0:59

I'm your host, philip Pape, and today we are exploring that delicate balance between fitness goals and relationship health with EJ and Tara Kerwin. Now, ej is a licensed professional counselor and Tara is a licensed marriage and family therapist, and as co-founders of the Relationship Renovation Counseling Center and hosts of the very popular Relationship Renovation podcast, go make sure to follow that. They have helped many couples work through the challenges of pursuing individual goals while maintaining strong emotional connections. Today, you'll learn how to maintain that emotional intimacy while pursuing your physique goals, how to turn potential sources of conflict into opportunities to connect, and specific tools for building a stronger relationship through your fitness journey. Ej Tara, welcome to the show.

Tarah Kerwin: 1:47

Thank you so much for having us. We're very excited to be here.

EJ Kerwin: 1:50

Yeah, nice to meet you, Philip. We are excited to have this conversation.

Philip Pape: 1:57

And I'm going to say this as a first, guys, because we were talking before we recorded that we talk about the nuts and bolts of fitness all the time but never quite get into relationships much more than surface level. So I wanted to have you on to get into that, because I see something all the time with my nutrition clients and I hear it from listeners that, for example, one partner is tracking their macros, their meal prepping, they're using a food scale, they're training, they're changing all their habits right, and the other is at some level not that they either they're not fully on board or they're far from that behavior and there's a huge disconnect. I guess I want to start with that dynamic, the relationship dynamic in that situation, so that people listening can say, okay, I kind of fall into that bucket, and then we can talk about what couples can do about it. You can just share with us your experience with that dynamic.

EJ Kerwin: 2:48

Well, I mean on the personal level. We've just seen it over. You know we've been together over a decade and both of us have had times where we've trained for marathons, you know, embarked on like personal journeys around, whether it be weight loss or toning or whatever. And how much more effective it is when we're both sort of in it together, you know it just makes it a hell of a lot easier. Like you said, if you're eating the same way and so you're meal prepping together, it makes it easier. And then we've also had times where you know there's an injury or there's just a lack of motivation from one of us and that that can not just like make it harder to achieve your goals but also create like disruption and just how we're getting along.

Tarah Kerwin: 3:31

Well, and what? The first thing I think is when EJ and I first started dating, I was a big runner and he's like Tara I hate running, so don't ever expect me to be a runner and I was like, oh, I would, I would never do that, like right. But this relationship, just like we're trying to get in shape with our body, and that's its own system. The relationship is a system and if you don't have skillful ways of making that collaborative, then people will be in it alone. And then that's what we see when couples come in and they're alone in their wellness journey.

Tarah Kerwin: 4:02

Maybe one's got more motivation than the other, but they're not talking about it, they're not sharing their experiences, they're not in this place of acceptance around. Maybe I am more motivated to eat healthier this year, but this person isn't. But how can we create systems that feel cooperative, collaborative so that we can still both support each other and not judge each other to make it feel like we're in it alone? And again, the couples we see they're in it alone. Maybe one person's really healthy and fit, the other person's not so motivated, for whatever transition timing, whatever it may be, for a myriad of reasons, and they, like, are fighting against it, like how dare you want me to change and why don't you want to be healthier and you're just like you guys? How do we get in this together so both of you can get your needs met even though they're differently? Like we can, this can happen. I know that's like a long answer to your no it's beautiful.

Philip Pape: 4:58

There's so many gems in there. One thing you said was skillful ways of making it collaborative and making systems, and just because you have maybe slightly different goals or your different times in your life and this evolves through a relationship. I know for a fact I've been married to almost 20 years and I can tell you that we both have changed quite a bit since then, and it's cool. We both have different goals at any one point and the telling someone right off the bat this is what I like, this is what I don't right Honest communication, just so that you can get on the same page, because, who knows, maybe it is a deal breaker for, like getting married, that hey, you don't like to run, forget it, that's you don't like to climb mountains.

Philip Pape: 5:37

I don't know, but it sounds like communication is obviously going to be important part of this, and also supporting each other regardless and there's going to be a lot of personal stuff for me that comes out of this conversation, which I'm sure you get that a lot where I think about.

Philip Pape: 5:51

I'm huge into lifting my wife she strength trains, but she's more into cardio type stuff and we've realized that what we want to do is just support each other, whatever that means for that, and by doing that you then tend to get a little more openness on both sides to what the other is doing and curiosity, I guess I would say Absolutely. So then what happens when this goes to that level of a wide chasm? Right, when one partner gets very serious you mentioned before we recorded a bodybuilding competitor and we talk about this show of physique development where it gets really. When you get super serious about it, it's an extreme and a lot of things fall to a lower priority. Can you do that sustainably while still being in a relationship and how does that happen? How does that work?

EJ Kerwin: 6:38

Well, I mean, I think a number of things falls into this category, and and certainly fitness, and and then like training for serious fitness goals, definitely, and and the negative dynamic that often happens is we are, uh, adaptive creatures, you know, we, but we oftentimes adapt unintentionally, right, and so, like in this case that we were talking about earlier, we there was one member of the couple who you know, who did competition, you know where the physique competitions, and so they would go through like a two month cutting period, I think it was, and what they said was like, basically, what happens is, during that cutting period, the one partner just became a bear, you know, and was just like you know. Cause they were, they were at a calorie deficit and so their mood was deteriorated, you know they, they bordered on depression, because when you're, when you're not, when you're not feeding yourself, you can get depressed, you can get anxious, and the way they unconsciously adapted was they would just basically avoid each other for two months.

Tarah Kerwin: 7:44

But the one thing that would happen is she would be alone in it every day because of the guilt she would have for like being a bear, but just would not talk about it. So he would just. He just learned, like just don't stay away, we will not have a relationship.

Tarah Kerwin: 7:57

For two months We'll live together. I'll help her do the meal prep. But other than that, like but she was still alone in her suffering and he felt super alone, Like he wanted to support her and be like hey, I got you, but she had all this shame around being such a bear that she would push him away.

EJ Kerwin: 8:15

And so. So our goal with couples oftentimes is like looking at okay, one's what, what are the ways that you've adapted? Adapted without intentionality? Okay, what didn't work about that? All right, let's create a new system. Right, like, okay, you want to support your partner. You know you go through mood changes. Well, let's make really intentional decisions around that. And that's a big thing that we help couples overcome in multiple ways is just getting like intentional and making decisions that make sense and that keep you emotionally connected. Because what we find happens is first, like that couple, they become emotionally distant from one another because they're not checking in, but then eventually what it leads to is physical disconnection, is like they stop having sex because you know your partner might look fantastic, but if every interaction you have with them is either negative or you're just not talking to them, what are the chances your sex life is going to stay positive?

Philip Pape: 9:19

Yeah, you talked about being adaptive creatures and not doing it with intentionality, and that's that's what appeals to me. Here is again the theme that you don't have to abandon these pursuits. It's just what are you doing to make them intentional, and I suppose that there will be. That would then open up conversation to other trade-offs or compromises that both sides need to make. So, for example, if that person you were talking about the competitor, that's the woman in the relationship right, she was the competitor.

Philip Pape: 9:49

Yep, and she's like look, I have to weigh all my food on a food scale every time I eat. How does that affect when they get together to eat, or do they eat separately? Like I'm curious about the details of how that looked and how they dealt with that. You said they were having issues, but did they resolve those issues and then what did that look like?

Tarah Kerwin: 10:06

So I'm going to bleed this into another couple that I actually directly work with around this, and what would happen is he is meat potatoes kind of dude, like loves his cheese on his potatoes. She went through the six month hardcore training and food, like counting her macros, micros, all of that. And so at first, right, they came in because he was like I'm not eating that crap that you prepared, right? So, anyway, they started having all of this conflict and I was like, okay, hold on a second, let's just get down to what are each of your needs. His need was cause she was the cooker. She cooked every meal for him. He worked nine to five job. She got off earlier so she would cook the meals.

Tarah Kerwin: 10:51

So what we did is we started to come up with agreements. What was he willing to do? What was she willing to do? What was he willing to eat that was clean? What was she willing to eat Maybe one day a week that wasn't so clean, because she got to have like a little cheat day, if that's what this one coach called it. And so we literally sat for a three-hour session and came up with a system every single day for this couple so that both of them would feel they were winning, so they would do a bunch of the meal prep on Sunday for both of them together, and that way they're still eating together, but they might be eating different meals. But now, even though he wasn't in it with her, she felt like, oh my gosh, he's still willing to meal prep with me on Sunday, cause I can't do all of this like two separate meals breakfast, um, lunch and dinner by myself.

Tarah Kerwin: 11:42

And they like literally it was like one or two sessions and they had they not come in. I can tell you, cause we've seen this too they're in a place of resignation. This will never change. This person isn't for me. I don't want to do this anymore. And I was like I helped them be in this place of acceptance, like, look, your wife is going through this program. She's really motivated. I know it's changing your lifestyle completely. It's not forever. What are you willing to do to be in this place of acceptance instead of powerlessness? And when you kind of use that language from like disempowered to empowered, people like, oh, it's like you don't even think about it. It's like the situation is the same, but you could either resign to it and become a victim of it, or you could be like how can I accept that this is our situation right now and how can we work together to the best of our ability to come up with agreements that feel good for both of us?

Philip Pape: 12:32

Yeah, I like the idea of the agreements, because those difficult conversations it's just what they are, I mean again speaking from personal experience and my wife is great at initiating those and I've learned to initiate them because you know, guys and women often don't approach that in different ways and it's like you get the pit of your stomach. You're dreading it all day. If you want to have this conversation, especially if you don't have the support or maybe therapist to kind of make you do it if you will for lack of a better term but then it's like many things that you dread it's. It's kind of tell me if I'm wrong, but it's almost like overblown. Once you get through it you realize that actually wasn't as big a deal, but it's going to make a massive improvement because we labeled these specific things. Like you said, we're going to agree on exactly what we want to eat and we'll know that about each other and then we're going to do the things together, even if we don't eat the same thing, right?

Tarah Kerwin: 13:22

And every single day checking in with each other. Like Dr Stan Tatkin, he's this great researcher in the field of relationships and he has this the triple P's plan predict, prepare. We can't predict everything, but we can predict a lot of things on a daily basis. And if we can plan, predict, prepare for our day every day as a couple whether that's around lifestyle, meal planning, workouts we're going to get successfully through it. But most people don't take those 10 minutes to do that. And then all of these right unconscious expectations, disappointments, self judgments, insecurities, you name it.

EJ Kerwin: 13:58

Well, and it, and it, and it metastasizes right, because it starts off as just like okay, we can't talk about nutrition. You know, every time we talk about nutrition, it ends up in a fight so you, so you avoid it, you know you avoid it.

EJ Kerwin: 14:14

And then and then you just start feeling more emotionally disconnected, or you or you lose confidence that you can face conflict and come out with a resolution that feels good for both people. And so there's again, there's that initial emotional disconnect. We just won't deal with it and it just starts to spread because it's like, well, if we can't talk about this and we probably can't talk about parenting, and if we can't talk about parenting probably can't talk about money. And then all of a sudden, you're, you're avoiding every and especially, like you said, men, men will just be like, well, I'm not going to bring up anything difficult, I'm just going to like can, I'm going to hide in my cave, I'm going to go do my thing and she'll do her thing. And uh, and our goal was like we bring people back and we say, hey, you have different needs, let's negotiate it, you know, let's. Let's honor each other. Let's negotiate it, you know, let's honor each other, let's find some healthy communication habits.

Tarah Kerwin: 15:09

And let's figure out that you actually can solve these problems and that you're not uniquely broken and that you can get through it. It's just skills that we are not. We don't learn how to you know skillfully navigate through difficult emotions. We learn how to defend ourselves from them. So when they hear that you're not uniquely broken, we all have to learn these skills. It's not innate in us. It softens it a little.

Philip Pape: 15:31

Yeah, and that makes me think that any two people on the planet, when you put them together, you're going to have, like a Venn diagram, two circles that overlap a little bit, but there's a lot that doesn't overlap and I think, if we recognize that, about even our closest spouse or partner, whoever that's the case. Something you said, aj, about the men in the conversations. I was watching Ghosts recently. You guys know that show. I think it's on Paramount. It's hilarious. Was watching a game and his wife came up and asked a question and he pauses it and he goes. Okay, this is the best part of the game. But I think this is the time when I need to pause and listen to what you have to say, Like it was the that exact dynamic of you know we're watching the game like come on, but this is important.

Tarah Kerwin: 16:18

You are the most important thing to me. I really want to hear what you have to say.

EJ Kerwin: 16:22

Well, that's, that's that also speaks to this idea of like uh, men are pretty trainable. We, like I've I've found, like in couples counseling, that when you're able to break down I work with a lot of like male engineers over the years who come in and their wives are like telling them like I need you to be more emotionally present. There, they come to me and they're like what is she talking about? I have no idea what that is, president. There they come to me and they're like what is she talking about? I have no idea what that is.

EJ Kerwin: 16:46

And and you just break it down of like well, you want to have this in your relationship, which oftentimes is physical intimacy, right, well, she needs emotional intimacy, and here are things you can do that are pretty practical. When she walks in the house, you put down whatever you're doing, you walk up to her, you give her a hug and a kiss. You know it's like and and men will be like okay, yeah, you know that that's reasonable, that makes sense. But when it's veiled under things like like emotional connection or or vulnerability, there might that that isn't practical enough. You know that's not. That's not like if I do a and B, then then I get C.

Philip Pape: 17:25

Yeah, and that idea, the idea of the systems and the check-ins, I think hits on that in a way where you're just you're making it this objective thing. You know, if I know I want to build muscle, I've got to train three days a week. If I know, when I have more vulnerability and emotional connection, I have to do X, Y, z, like I get that, I get that, and that's a way to appeal to some gender specific differences that folks might have, and I'm sure in your practice everyone's different in their own way, but you just have to find what that is right. Okay, so I'm curious about. We talked a little bit about the food differences. The other thing is the training and schedules and stuff like that. Going to the gym People always ask about that. Well, especially women who have kids, then they have to take care of the kids, or the provider have to get kids ready for school, the list goes on. One parent works from home and they want to go to the gym. That's a massive source of fighting that I've come across right.

Tarah Kerwin: 18:21

Well, I was going to say women, biologically, just like the nurturing piece like there, are more biologically equipped to put all these other needs in front of their own, where and again, this is gender specific but men, like, they're really good at taking care of their own needs, right. And so there's this very like unconscious thing that can happen where it's like, oh, like for me, when I'm putting away laundry, like my laundry is always the last to put away, and I'm like, why is that? Because, like, everybody else comes first. We have four kids and my husband and I didn't even think about it, but guess what I do now? I put away my laundry first.

Tarah Kerwin: 18:55

But it's that idea around like what, if, like that's happening in the relationship, I'm going to start to build resentment. But I didn't intentionally mean to do it. So it's that whole idea of checking in every single day, ej and I wake up at five, 15 in the morning. I'm like, when can I have my gym time? When can you have your gym time?

Tarah Kerwin: 19:15

We make it happen so that both of our needs for fitness are met, because we're agreeing that both of us. It's a very important thing every day for our mental health, for our physical health, to have our gym time and today we're going to the gym at four o'clock so we had to hire a sitter to come watch over our kids so we could do that together, because we didn't have time in the morning to separate and do it. So it's just about a recognizing that needs are equally important and that you have to be able to have those conversations to say what are you needing, what am I needing and how can we make this happen realistically, right and timing and everything. That's where that plan predict, prepare comes in.

EJ Kerwin: 19:57

Well, and I think we we try to use like plural pronouns when it comes to these type of things Like, instead of what, what you know, what you and I, we try to look at it as a we and that we know when we are both taking care of ourselves. We know our brain chemistry is better, we know we feel better about ourselves, we know our attraction level is better, and so it's about like like this is a shared goal, instead of getting you know which. Again, some of this is like a little evolutionary biology stuff where we're very like self-centered, like what I, I, I, you know, and we try to make it about like this is what this is a shared goal we have together. Now, it it might be separate, there might be a period of time where where I'm more in the running phase and she's, you know, more in the F45 phase or what, or whatever you know, and that we have to just like adjust it. But they're shared goals we have together.

Tarah Kerwin: 20:56

And I. But and I do think the first piece of it is like recognizing that the individual needs are both equally important for the sake of the coupleship and being okay to be okay with that. Because I remember, even as a new mom, like, oh, my needs aren't important, like I'm raising humans that have to stay alive. And it actually got us in a really difficult place, which is why we created our Couples Counseling Center in the first place, because I didn't think I had any right to have needs, I mean, my everything went out the window and I lost my identity with my running and my fitness, and it felt really bad. But I just felt like, oh, this is just what we do. And we know now that, no, like you, create systems that will make sure that needs are getting met on both sides, cause that's going to feel really good for both people, and and not lose your sense of individuality within that coupleship.

Philip Pape: 21:48

Yeah, I could see how the nurturing nature of women and again, these are just general statements I know we're making, but there's a lot of truth to them Both really attracts me to the opposite sex in terms of that empathy that they have, and I've learned a lot from it, being around my wife seeing that. At the same time, I could see how it would burn you out because you're putting so many things first. How can a spouse, husband, partner help a woman who does that to herself? How can he help her, maybe prioritize herself, if that yourself, if that makes sense, I mean I love that question.

EJ Kerwin: 22:22

Yeah, for me, like I had to like recognize how much easier it is for me to take care of myself.

EJ Kerwin: 22:31

That that was like sort of the first step was like it took me a long time to realize like, oh, like, some of that resentment she has is like sort of well-based, and that the reality is is, is that like yeah, like I just wake up because I happen to be a morning person I just wake up and I go off to the gym and I'm gone from like five to seven, and then I swoop in and, you know, pick up the kids and take them to school, but like then Tara's left with like the rest of the day where she's trying to figure out how in the world, and clearly it's not working because she's not getting there.

EJ Kerwin: 23:07

So the first thing I had to do was just realize, like you know that that like OK, like I am kind of just taking care of myself and not making room for Tara, right, and then, and then the next thing was like OK, I'm going to have to adjust. You know, like, yeah, I would love to go to the gym every morning at six and and that works for me, but it's not, it's not working for for Tara. She wants me to be around, even if she's isn't able to say it. She needs the support in the morning. So so then it's like okay, like how does this become? Not just me take caring myself, but how does it become us creating a system? And for us it was like, well, we wake up in the morning and we make a plan. You know, because our, our life is sort of it's different from day to day One kid has basketball on Tuesdays, but then there's gymnastics on Wednesdays.

Tarah Kerwin: 24:04

And I was going to say too really quick now to interrupt. But we were just on this new mom's podcast and she asked a very similar question and like moms need to be taken care of too. And so partners hear that because I'm trying to be a super mom right, we had twins that had colic and I'm like nursing and not sleeping or not. But I looked like I got this. I know I haven't slept for five days, but I've got this. So EJ just feels like, oh, she's got this. She's like superwoman. That's not actually happening.

Tarah Kerwin: 24:33

I did not know how to say I need help or support, Because if I say that, that means there's something wrong with me. So when EJ was like baby, your needs are so important, Like you are priority, Like him saying that to me helped normalize and validate that I don't have to be in it alone. So I feel like, yes, EJ doing his individual work, but him letting me know it's okay, you need to get your ass to the gym, Like this is really important, I was like, okay, thank you for recognizing that. It's just you're, you're seen, You're seen and you're being taken care of while you're also taking care of others.

Philip Pape: 25:09

That's great yeah. Going back to plan, predict, prepare. And yeah, because I was thinking, you know, on one hand, we would all love to have our whole week planned and our month planned and like we know when we're going to work out and everything. But life doesn't work that way for everything, for food, for everything. And so, um, I was going to say, ej, just get up at three in the morning and go to the gym.

EJ Kerwin: 25:27

Then right, but that's then, you get no sleep and then you're grumpy and who knows what else. Where does all levels go up and I end up with a hump on my back. And who needs that? There you go.

Philip Pape: 25:37

So something came up regarding training. It comes up a lot in my world where we lift and one partner might ask for help from the other partner, like some coaching, and there's always there's kind of a running joke like never coach your wife. That's the joke, Cause even and I've been through this personally where my wife has asked for help but I'm like I wait until she asks, Cause I don't want to, you know, I don't want to coach her, so to speak, Cause that's not our roles. Um, some people do it successfully and others find that it causes, it makes things worse. So what are your thoughts on that?

Tarah Kerwin: 26:08

Well, yeah, I, I'm interesting to hear what you say, then all yeah.

EJ Kerwin: 26:12

Cool, I think, especially in our relationship, it's I think you, I think you use the Venn diagram, uh, example a while ago, like that that our roles and the aspects of our relationship have a way of polluting other ones, right, and so like, yeah, if you become your, your partner's coach, there are certain ways in which a coach treats the person they coach and there's certain ways in which a husband is a husband to his wife, and then there's certain way business owners, you know, and that's something that that we realize is like our business, our business ownership roles we're messing with our husband wife roles, husband wife roles.

EJ Kerwin: 27:05

And so I think that that's the problem about having that dual relationship is, if is maybe some of the dynamics within your relationship, maybe around control, maybe around poor communication, if you're not careful, it comes into that coaching and and, and it then ends up just not being a positive experience. You know, I can think of a couple I worked with years ago who he desperately wanted to coach his wife in in, uh, on the physical side, you know, in weightlifting, and she just had no interest in it and a lot of it was the, it was the unresolved dynamics that they had in their husband and wife relationship and and so, and then he, you know, really hurt him because it was such an important thing, it was such an important part of his life and he really just wanted to share it, um, but it just wasn't going to happen, you know, and so well, because then there's that feeling of like I'm being judged or if I don't get it this right way.

Tarah Kerwin: 27:56

So I mean I would say it's possible if you have very clear boundaries here's what's okay, here's what's okay, here's what's not okay. It's okay for you to tell me to go up this amount of weight. It's not okay for you to say like I can't believe you didn't just get that last rep in. I mean, I don't exactly know, but like having very clear boundaries around that role, I know each and I do that in our professional life Like here's what's okay, here's what's not okay. Like here's what's okay, here's what's not okay. So if you can have those again agreements, boundaries within that coaching dynamic. But you also say, how do we make sure that this doesn't spill over in our parenting roles or because they're uniquely defined? So I feel like if a couple has good communication skills, is able to have clear boundaries here's what's okay, here's what's not okay I think that's like such a great gift to be able to share that together. But usually people don't have that and so it ends up being it ends up being a nightmare.

EJ Kerwin: 28:52

Well, and then there's all the stuff around like body image and all that right Is like you might be the type of conversation someone you coach you might be able to have a more difficult conversation around around their body that if you have with somebody you're intimate with, they might. That might be a heck of a lot harder. Yeah.

Philip Pape: 29:12

Totally different. I can't imagine if I said to my wife let's get, let's look at your progress photos and look at your uh, you know shoulder definition here, and like no way you've been slipping.

EJ Kerwin: 29:21

Yeah, you're going to a separate bedroom tonight?

Philip Pape: 29:24

yeah, it's crazy, um so. So that's a good segue. Then, when we talk about body image, you mentioned one couple who, like, almost let her health get even worse because as a backlash to her husband or partner being so obsessed with his physical development. Right, do I have that right?

EJ Kerwin: 29:42

Yeah, they were, you know, and then that's within the realm of fitness, but also, sometimes it can be a way a partner protects themselves from intimacy is like is like I don't want to, I don't want to to be attractive to them, or it's the power I have of choosing to work out, not work out that, um, we can definitely use, you know, our fitness, our lack thereof, as a way to, to agitate or to keep ourselves separate from our partner.

Philip Pape: 30:16

I was talking to a guy today who said you know, I'm in my fifties. I built a lot of strength. I want to lean out, but I don't want to get abs, because I know that's weird in my 50s. Like it was this concept of 20 somethings versus 30 and 40 versus 50s, and then whether you're in a relationship or not, whether you're trying to chase girls in your 20s or whatever, and I think there's a lot of maybe misaligned even understanding of what men and women find attractive. So actually the question I wanted to ask more for you, tara, is like do women I mean I know this is general, everybody's attracted to something different? But when it comes to physique, when it comes to six pack abs, when it comes to leanness versus big fat and skinny and all that, like where do women stand on caring about that? And like, how important should it it be? And are men like spending way too much time doing this stuff? I oh my gosh.

Tarah Kerwin: 31:07

That's a loaded question, I know I know, I know, yeah, I mean I here's what's important for me if I see ej taking care of himself, that's important because it makes me feel like I can trust that he cares about his body, his mind, his soul for longevity. So I know that I'm not going to right. I don't have to worry about him having a heart attack or stroke or modeling unhealthy dynamics to our children. So just knowing that he cares and he takes initiative and, yeah, we fall off sometimes but we have this trust that we're, we're really. We want to be healthy. We want to have a healthy mindset. We're not rigid in it, we're very flexible. But I think we both trust each other.

Tarah Kerwin: 31:54

So I don't need him to have six packs Like, is that sexy? And yeah, but I don't. I love him for who he is, cause I know that he yeah, but I don't I love him for who he is because I know that he tries really hard to feel comfortable in his body the way it is. We also have a history. We're both eating disorder specialists, so we've worked with a lot of anorexia, bulimia, purging through exercise. So we know how important body acceptance is and positive body image, no matter what it looks like. So you're probably like talking to the wrong person when it comes to like, how important is that physical critique I think it's the biggest thing for me is like he's willing to stay healthy and strong because it's important to him and it's a value for him and it's also a value to me. So now it's shared.

Tarah Kerwin: 32:40

And if it turned into six-pack abs awesome.

Philip Pape: 32:44

No, that's the good hierarchy of priority. Put that at the bottom.

EJ Kerwin: 32:47

start with the health I know another thing you've expressed to me, though, is when I am being more disciplined around nutrition and around fitness, that you feel then supported in your goals, and when I'm slipping, you get kind of frustrated because you don't feel supported, because then it feels like well, well, like you know, like like you don't really care, and it makes it harder for me to care, you know. So that comes down to with couples like do we have shared values around fitness? Do we have shared values around nutrition?

EJ Kerwin: 33:24

And that can be a one of the big disruptors I've also seen is where two, where there's a couple who doesn't really nutrition and fitness are not important to them, and then, all of a sudden, one of them like the light goes off and, for whatever reason, they're like oh my God, I want to like, feel good in my body, and I want to like, I want to be strong and I want to look in the mirror and feel more proud of myself, and they get on like a fitness journey, and their partner's not there, you know. And then sometimes, their partner even feels like, sort of like judged by it, and almost like back to what we were talking about a few minutes ago, sort of digs their heels into their unhealthy lifestyle because they feel like, like almost like just their partner not being okay with the way they they were, that then it's a judgment on them and that that I've seen cause like major difficulties.

Philip Pape: 34:19

That's a theme that comes up a lot, and not not just with couples but just all relationships. I've noticed, right when you've got a circle of friends, you all go out to the. You know you go out on the weekends, you drink a lot, you go to the game. You know you party all the time, you eat, maybe even smoke, whatever, and then all of a sudden the light goes on for one person and the rest are like trying to pull you back in, potentially unconsciously, due to this insecurity. So as far as your friend circle, it may not be as big of a I'll say deal day-to-day versus the person you're married to or living with. So what do we do about that? What does someone do about that on both sides? So the person who sees their spouse doing this which I suspect somebody could be listening to this podcast, curious about how they haven't really gone on that journey and maybe they got into it because of their spouse and they're not sure and then vice versa, so to me, I'm cause what I?

Tarah Kerwin: 35:10

when I'm thinking about this dynamic, it feels like codependence versus individuation in a relationship. And so and I recognize with EJ and I like, when we both fall off, like we're like, oh, I'm signing up for this fall off, and I'm signing up for this fall off too, let's totally go crazy, and then in January 2025, we are going to get really fit. So that's a codependent piece. That actually doesn't feel really good, because now I've lost my own sense of identity within it. And so when we are talking about this dynamic, I'm like, how do we create a healthy, interdependent system where, if one has a higher motivation than the other, we don't personally react to it, but we're a cheerleader for it?

Tarah Kerwin: 35:54

And if there are insecurities coming up for me, like oh my gosh, I see like EJ's like eating potato chips and drinking whiskey every night, and and I'm like I've been to the gym three times like hey, just checking in with each other emotionally around, what is it like for you to be in this place right now and what's it like for me? And how do you make it not about judging each other, right, because it could be that EJ is maybe going through a difficult transition and like he's kind of just zoning out for a little bit like that's okay. But if I didn't know that and I didn't talk to him about it, I'm going to be like oh gosh, this is my life in 10 years he's going to, like, you know, be that couch potato that I don't want. I mean again it's. It could go down any many different ways, but if you're talking about why it's happening, you, you, you have your sense of independence still, but also for the sake of the relationship and you're, you're really trying to avoid that enmeshment piece. Okay.

Philip Pape: 36:49

Yeah.

Tarah Kerwin: 36:49

And just because EJ is not working out and I am, or I'm not working out and he has, like, what is my insecurity around that? That's growth for me. Like, why am I so triggered by that? That must be something. Then that's my own guilt. Like, oh, I have a hard time being consistent in my life. Why is that? Oh, because I'm a human. Okay, I'm going to have a little self-compassion here, you know, but you got to look at those triggers. Why does it bother me if someone else is being healthy and I'm not?

EJ Kerwin: 37:16

I mean, the big thing for me is just, you can't shy away from the difficult conversations, and that's a big concept that we talk about constantly on our podcast is just like if the actually taking on the difficult conversations builds connection. No-transcript. We've gotten better, you know, and so when it comes around fitness and nutrition, it's just like you just have to, you have to know that you're you're better off talking about it than not talking about it. And if Tara is feeling like a sense of discomfort with some of my habits and she knows like when I'm not taking care of myself, you know, my belly gets bigger and then eventually I don't like, I don't like it, it doesn't, it doesn't feel good, you know, and she oftentimes can see something about me before I see it. And so it has to be okay in our relationship that Tara can be like yo, look you, just, you haven't been really taking care of yourself. That, that, that, that great.

EJ Kerwin: 38:46

And and I'm concerned for you because I know how you are, I know you, I know you care, um, but but what's going on? Cause, cause it's probably not just that. I'm like F it, you know, I want to like, I just want to get you know, I just want to put on 10 pounds Like boy. That sounds fun to me. It's the yeah. It's like I'm struggling to be consistent or or stressed out or.

EJ Kerwin: 39:08

I'm super stressed and I'm just not doing a good job of taking care of myself.

Tarah Kerwin: 39:13

Or talking about it with your partner.

Philip Pape: 39:14

Yeah so so the way Tara would bring that up is and I stay statement about her observations relative to what she knows and you know about each other. Like I noticed you, you've been stressed and not doing this thing that I know you value.

EJ Kerwin: 39:27

How would that look? I mean, if she comes into me with hey, first of all, we always talk about like, when, where, how, like, if she comes to me at the at the right time, um, and she doesn't in a time where you know there's not a bunch of kids and I'm not stressed and she does it then she comes the how is. She says like, look, honey, I'm really concerned about you. Like, cause I? I know, like I've I've known you for years. I know how much you enjoy feeling good in your body and I know how much you enjoy when you have a goal that you're working towards.

EJ Kerwin: 40:01

That's going to be so much more hearable to me than if she's like why didn't you go to the gym? What is going on with you? You are not doing the things that you you know. I'm like cause, what am I then? I'm like automatically defensive. I'm like this is your problem. Like back off, like that doesn't feel good. I'm like this is your problem. Like back off, like that doesn't feel good. Yeah.

Tarah Kerwin: 40:21

It's that soft curiosity and we say we're each other's blind spots, like so many times, like I don't really know what's happening for me and EJ, coming in to be curious and supportive, feels so good because we've gone really good at learning the skills to have that soft startup right. The Gottmans call it soft startup versus harsh startup, like why are you eating that cookie? Versus like hey, honey, help me understand what's happening for you right now.

Philip Pape: 40:51

Right, because there may be an emotional eating piece.

Philip Pape: 40:55

Yeah. So a couple of themes stick out. I mean one is the individuation versus I think you said enmeshment or codependence, right, but then the other being curiosity, and it reminds me of something in positive psychology where there's a hierarchy of connection and the way that you respond to somebody. There's like four categories, right, and of course there's ones that everybody would say, yeah, that's not great when you respond that way. But then there's one where there's a subtle difference, one being hey, how are you, or or you know, just parroting back what they said versus what you said, tara, which is asking a follow-up, asking you know, being curious, wondering about it, because then it kind of puts it back on, you know, from the other person's perspective, and not you accusing them right now you're pushing it on them. Yeah, um, good stuff, good stuff.

Tarah Kerwin: 41:40

And I was going to say really quick because under that, my concern, my curiosity, it's like I love this person and I want this person to be around forever. That's so flattering. But usually people think of it as like, oh, I'm not enough for you, oh, I'm not good enough, and it's like, actually, if I U-turned it, it's because I love you so much, I just want you to be here with me until my grandpa lived to 110. So at least 110,. Babe, you got to surpass my papacy. But we don't share it out like that. It comes out so critical. So, yes, it's really. Yeah, thank you.

Philip Pape: 42:16

I feel you. No, I know what you mean.

Allan: 42:19

Hi, my name is Alan and I just want to give a shout out to Philip Pape of Wits and Weights for being a huge part of the foundation for my continued health and well-being. Philip exemplifies a nutrition coach who demonstrates how much he cares. Philip works tirelessly and with dedication to provide coaching, support and major content for us to use. He creates a practical approach from research and Philip empowers all of us to use food as quality for our health. He is skilled in how to assess and direct nutrition. Philip creates a community full of wisdom, support and camaraderie. In summary, philip Pape is the real deal. He knows how to assess and direct nutrition and he continues to steer me in the right direction. Thank you, philip.

Philip Pape: 43:10

You mentioned kids before. I think there's a place to bring that in because for many people listening who have children, and not to really talk about the parenting itself, but really for the relationship with the children involved in that relationship, Given everything we've talked about, where there are differences, there is individuation. Not everything's the same in a physique competition and one's not. Or one parent thinks keto is the way to eat and the other one thinks it's like vegan. I mean, I know a couple who's one eats meat and one eats vegetables and they make it work with their kids and their kid eats both, which is just it's a little bit odd, but it works. So how do you deal with that and make sure the kids are growing up in a healthy environment?

Tarah Kerwin: 44:01

I mean, first of all, I love that because you're highlighting that every individual is unique and whatever that uniqueness to them is is a gift and a present. It's not the right way or the wrong way, but that vegan is a gift for you. That's you, and you celebrate that. So those unique differences to me, you celebrate that. And then how do you bring that together so it can combine into the family that feels good for all? Cause now they're learning balance. They're learning respect of individual differences and uniqueness. That, and that's the thing too. Couples come in like you guys are two unique individuals. You are not the same person. You're not supposed to be thinking the same thing. And if you think that, then what does that say about you? That like you're inferior or like it's right? Having that conversation is like oh yeah, you're right, we are different, yeah.

EJ Kerwin: 44:51

I mean, I think you want to cultivate individuality but also bring a focus to common denominators. Right, like in that couple you're talking about where one's a vegan or one's vegetarian and one's you know real meat-based diet. It sounds like right there, like, although it might look like they're diametrically opposed, the common denominator is they care about what's going into their body. You know they're making intentional choices. They're just different, intentional choices.

Philip Pape: 45:26

It's a good reframe, yeah.

EJ Kerwin: 45:27

Yeah, so for me, that's what I want to focus with. If that was causing that couple problems, is I want to focus on like wow, like what a wonderful thing that you both care you know so how do you support each other in the thing that is common?

EJ Kerwin: 45:40

Because wouldn't it suck if you were with somebody who didn't didn't care whatsoever, you know. So I'm looking for things value-based, mostly because, also like one, one thing that I know is like when our actions and our values don't line up, we tend to suffer more, right? So? So then it makes sense then that you want to support your partner in living in their value system, because then there's a higher likelihood they're going to feel good. You know they're going to feel good about how they move through the world.

Philip Pape: 46:11

So let's pull on that. The values, what if? What if a couple came together, they got married and they realize, you know, before long, they have two very different values and very important areas religion, politics, even dietary preferences, whatever I mean. It does that Can? Can that work? You know, we we seen like what is that? Uh, james Carville and Mary.

EJ Kerwin: 46:37

what are the two that were married, Right?

Tarah Kerwin: 46:38

I don't know, if they're still together, but yeah, I mean, this is, it's difficult. And this is where, right we, from the start of the consultation, where we see a couple like we have to make sure they have one shared vision or goal for each other, but they're solvable and not solvable problems, like if you want kids or you don't problem solve and expect that that's going to shift, and so there's just this level of reality that we get couples into, like if there's not even that like a goal that you can say, like we can't see you, like that, that like no work could be done here. But I mean, for us people coming in right, it's like it's either this or we're done. There is so many shared values that they just forgot. But if there are those non-solvables, like we've had couples like right, where maybe they got together oh, I'm thinking of this one. They got together. They both didn't want children.

Tarah Kerwin: 47:31

And then there was this really horrible accident that happened where one almost passed away and she realized like oh, I really want children now and he's like. And she realized like, oh, I really want children now and he's like. No, like, how did this change? Like well, yeah, a near death accident, like, and unfortunately, like, they ended up separating cause she and right, she has a family now and children and remarried, but like it wouldn't change and she was just hoping, well, he'll just see one day, like that kids are important, or I'll just get pregnant, and then we'll just like get trapped in this and that kids are important, or I'll just get pregnant, and then we'll just like get trapped in this and it's like no Right. So they came and they did like a amical separation within the couple's yield because there was no changing each other's mind and we couldn't help of the experience that happened there. But things change and you just have to have very adult, realistic conversations because if there's not shared values, it's not happening.

Philip Pape: 48:22

Okay.

Tarah Kerwin: 48:22

So, I know, that's very direct.

Philip Pape: 48:24

No, no, no, it's some. Some of this is going to be a little on the darker, sadder side, because that's reality and it happens. Um, it's funny. I have a client who was her big win was finally finishing her separation with her, with her, with her ex, and it allowed her to focus on herself like never before and for her.

Tarah Kerwin: 48:42

That's a positive.

Philip Pape: 48:42

So I mean, sometimes I have, but we're not here to talk about breaking people up. I just wanted to understand where the lines are. And I guess the other thing is physically we have impacts on our bodies and our energy levels and stuff. When we're going through some of this, when we're training or dieting or whatever, when that changes, how do you help couples maintain that intimacy physical, emotional, whatever when, like, the energy is tanking, you know? That's another thing that comes to mind.

EJ Kerwin: 49:13

I mean, I think I would put it in the context of a relationship being longitudinal, like, right that this is going to be, you're going to be with your partner for years, decades, right, and you know, especially when it comes to, I think, what you're talking about around, like you know, a, a, a period of time, you know, a training period of time is being able to keep it into perspective and be like, okay, like you know, my partner needs this support, or I need to be patient for this amount of time, um, but it's going to pass. You know, and that's like a big thing we talked to couples about. You know, cause there is like sort of for some and imply, you know, an implied agreement, but for some it's explicit, it's like in in the vows they take, in the good times, the bad right, and that, like, there are going to be times where your partners might go through a really difficult period of time. There will be, and that could be a month, it could be a year, it could be a couple of years, right, and what is your, what is your vow? You know, what is the promise that you've made to your partner, and so if your partner goes through, like you know they go through, you know, like an injury or or you know, a really big health crisis, right, like, is there a limit? Like, oh, they can only be sick for three months and then then I'm out, you know.

EJ Kerwin: 50:37

So I would bring it sort of into that context of like, okay, let's, first of all, let's talk about it. Your partner, you know, sort of needs your support in doing this. There is going to be this negative, maybe, effect that you're going to have to deal with, but is that okay and can you trust that it will pass, that you guys will manage it, that you'll have open-hearted, kind conversations about it and that, and that eventually you know you you'll have open-hearted, kind conversations about it and that eventually you know you'll move through it together. Because that's the partner I want. You know, I want the partner that trusts I'll be there for her no matter what she goes through, and that she'll be there for me no matter what I go through.

Philip Pape: 51:16

I love that you mentioned vows and longitudinal thinking here, because that's the essence of sustainability, right Having the thought that things aren't always going to be exactly the same and the energy levels change and our needs change from one to the other. Like you said, if you get it, I mean my wife stuck with me, not stuck with me. I know she'd stick with me, but I had several surgeries over the past few years where you know I was like um needed a little more attention for a little bit. After that she was just amazing. But uh, yeah, we're going to go through those times. It's also another reason. So listen up, listeners. I just recently did a podcast episode about why you don't want to diet very often and you want to actually gain muscle and gain weight to allow you to live in that high energy state. So, when it comes to relationships and being there for the other person, just remember the least you can have to diet, the better, right, yeah?

EJ Kerwin: 52:04

Well, I mean, I can just think of like so last. So both Tara and I have, uh, enjoyed running over the years. She did. Eventually I caught the running bug, like you know, a year or two after we got together and I just, I mean, I loved it. It was just like a really neat high I'd never experienced, and seeing how it affected my body was kind of cool. And so we had fallen off the train of running and we'd been just lifting for a while. And last year we were like, let's do the San Diego marathon, let's do that, like that'll be fun to train. And we attempted to train the way we train years ago and we both got injured literally within like six weeks.

Tarah Kerwin: 52:46

We did run the 5k we went.

EJ Kerwin: 52:47

we went from like. We went from, like you know, running one to two miles to running like 12, 13, in like a four-week period, which which our bodies are not equipped to do anymore like we have to have a have to have a much less steep hill, but we got injured and we both struggled. We both struggled with that. We both sort of like it bummed us out. We could have still trained in certain ways and we just didn't. Our nutrition went offline and so it sucked, but we had, we sort of adapted our way through it. We made a compromise, we just ran the 5k instead. And now we're, a year later, looking at it and being like okay, like maybe let's do that goal again, but let's yeah, let's maybe just do the half and let's really intentionally train this time, instead of trying to train like a like you know, like somebody younger than than than who I am.

Tarah Kerwin: 53:44

Be realistic of where our bodies are right now.

Philip Pape: 53:47

Yes, yes, that makes sense. That makes sense. All right, as we wrap up in time, I hope you guys have a little time for a couple of rapid fire questions here I'm looking for some short, short answers, whatever comes to mind, and maybe each of you can give an answer however you want to do it sure might be hard for terry.

EJ Kerwin: 54:03

Yeah, it's fine short answer short all right.

Philip Pape: 54:07

So the first one is what's one thing everyone listening who's in a relationship should start doing tomorrow that they're not doing today checking in every single day about how they're feeling and a shared like intention or goal for your relationship.

Tarah Kerwin: 54:22

That day it takes five minutes. I'm feeling this, this and this. My intention is to like send you some cute texts today and then we end it with a positive relationship statement, Like we can handle this shit together, whatever it might be. Right now it's the holidays, are like we got this.

Philip Pape: 54:37

Nice.

Tarah Kerwin: 54:38

It takes five minutes. You're on the same page, okay.

EJ Kerwin: 54:40

Go. I like that one. I'll just just say yes on that, Okay.

Philip Pape: 54:45

Okay, all right. If you go, wave a magic wand and make every couple understand one thing about balancing their fitness with their relationship, what would it be?

EJ Kerwin: 54:55

Things are going to change. Things are going to change Like, like your, the pattern of your life are going to is going to change. Your physical body is going to change. That you have to be adaptable and know just because one thing is working doesn't mean that same thing is going to continue to work for for a long time. Be adaptable and I can handle this and I can be flexible. Yeah, good.

Tarah Kerwin: 55:17

I love flexibility. We preach that all the time, so I love that this and I can be flexible, yeah.

Philip Pape: 55:21

Good, I love flexibility. We preach that all the time, so I love that. The last one is what's the most surprising thing you each have learned about each other this year?

Tarah Kerwin: 55:30

Oh, my goodness. Oh, I actually just learned it on our podcast. We recorded this morning that when I touch EJ's face with my two hands and give him a kiss, I'm the only person that's ever done it in his whole life, and it makes them feel very loved. That's sweet, like I'm going to do that more now. I had no clue.

EJ Kerwin: 55:47

Well, and and I can uh go directly at fitness with this is that I didn't realize until she told me early on the year that when, when I sense her frustration with me not being as tuned into my nutrition, it's not because she's judging me, it's because she just doesn't feel supported then in her nutritional goals. I always felt judged it was that she just doesn't. She needs help. She needs help, and when I'm being steady, it's easier for her to be steady.

Philip Pape: 56:20

Awesome. I want the listeners to know that even an experienced relationship, couple license and everything with a podcast is still always going to be learning about each other, right?

EJ Kerwin: 56:28

That's our whole gig right there.

Tarah Kerwin: 56:30

This is why people love us.

EJ Kerwin: 56:31

We're in it with you.

Philip Pape: 56:32

We're in perfect, all right, cool. Is there anything you wish I had asked that we didn't cover today, in this realm that you're like? Ah, we really wanted to address that one thing, anything you can think of.

Tarah Kerwin: 56:43

I feel like this was so great that we touched on so many different avenues and aspects of relationship and wellness. So, no, not, not for me.

EJ Kerwin: 56:50

Yeah, I mean, I think like if we were ever to go deeper, I think around like physical intimacy, I think that that's. That's a big thing and sort of like people they're changing bodies as they age, their fitness goals being in alignment, out of alignment, like how that affects their sexual intimacy, I think is something that could be explored deeper that's a good one.

Philip Pape: 57:13

That's a good one. Yeah, you're right. That's like a whole other conversation, so I love it All right we'll leave it at that. I do want listeners to know how to get ahold of you guys. If it's not obvious, from if you're watching the video, you can see the name of their podcast, of course, Relationship Renovation Podcast. Where do you want folks to find you?

EJ Kerwin: 57:28

I mean, the easiest thing to do is just at Relationship Renovation. Type it into Google, You'll come to our website. We have in-office home programs. We're launching some coaching programs next year, you know just relationship renovation will bring you right to us All right.

Philip Pape: 57:45

Awesome. This has been a pleasure. I hope the listeners got a lot from this. Again, it's we've never talked about this in this great detail, and yet it's one of the biggest roadblocks, challenges, but also opportunities to move forward when it comes to physical, mental health. So thank you so much, tara and EJ, for coming on the show.

Tarah Kerwin: 58:02

And we feel grateful to be your first yes.

Philip Pape: 58:06

I'm not a virgin anymore. No, sir, all right, thanks, guys. Thanks for coming on, absolutely Bye-bye.

The 7 Types of Rest and Recovery for Maximum Muscle Gain (Work-Rest Cycle) | Ep 273

Download the Stress Solution Guide now with more detailed strategies to reduce stress (and improve fat loss and muscle gain)

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Are you tired despite getting enough sleep? Are your workouts feeling like a grind?

Learn how the engineering concept of the Work-Rest Cycle combines with the 7 types of rest can be used to maximize your muscle growth and recovery.

Research from Dr. Saundra Dalton-Smith reveals why sleep alone isn't enough, and how implementing all 7 types of rest can accelerate your results.

Main Takeaways:

• Why proper maintenance is crucial for optimal performance

• The 7 types of rest: physical, mental, sensory, creative, emotional, social, and spiritual

• How implementing all 7 types of rest can improve results more than additional training or food

Today you'll learn about:

00:58 Why sleep alone isn't enough for complete recovery
02:22 The Work-Rest Cycle
03:15 The 7 types of rest
11:42 How to implement all 7 types of rest
15:16 Using metrics to track recovery effectiveness
17:01 Why rest might be more important than training
18:38 Recap of the 7 types of rest

Episode Resources:

• Join the Physique University

Mastering the 7 Types of Rest for Ultimate Recovery

When it comes to building muscle and maximizing recovery, most people focus on just two things: sleep and taking days off from the gym. But what if I told you that’s only scratching the surface? According to research, your body needs seven distinct types of rest to recover fully, grow stronger, and reach your physique goals. Today, we’re diving into these seven types, framed through an engineering concept called the Work-Rest Cycle, to help you build a smarter recovery system.

1. Physical Rest

This is the most obvious form of rest and includes both passive and active recovery:

• Passive Rest: Sleep, naps, and complete relaxation.

• Active Rest: Light movement such as walking or mobility exercises on rest days.

Studies in the Journal of Applied Physiology show proper sleep increases muscle protein synthesis by up to 60%, while active recovery can reduce muscle damage markers by 40%. Think of physical rest as maintenance for your body’s machinery—sometimes you need to shut it down completely, and other times, keep it running lightly to prevent rust.

2. Mental Rest

Mental fatigue impacts your workouts and overall performance. Studies published in Frontiers in Psychology reveal that mental fatigue reduces time to exhaustion by 15% and impairs decision-making during exercise. Even a brief mental rest, such as a one-minute breathing exercise, can improve cognitive performance by 26%. If you feel scattered or unfocused during your workouts, chances are you need more mental rest.

3. Sensory Rest

Constant stimulation from screens, noise, and artificial light overwhelms your senses. Research in the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism shows that excessive sensory input increases cortisol by up to 50%, which directly impacts muscle growth and fat storage. Reducing screen time by just two hours a day can lower cortisol levels by 20% and improve sleep quality by 35%.

4. Creative Rest

This type of rest isn’t just for artists; it’s about giving your brain the freedom to explore new ideas and perspectives. Studies in Behavioral Sciences show creative activities increase brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF), a protein crucial for learning and adaptation. For fitness, this means better movement patterns, motivation, and adherence. Even adding variety to your exercise routine can stimulate neuromuscular efficiency and improve results.

5. Emotional Rest

Unprocessed emotions can act like a pressure gauge ready to burst. Research in Psycho-Neuroendocrinology shows that emotional stress increases cortisol by up to 37% and decreases testosterone by 10-15%, directly impacting muscle growth and recovery. Practices like journaling or talking to a coach can help you release pent-up emotions and restore balance.

6. Social Rest

Positive social interactions can enhance your recovery. According to Behavioral Medicine, they boost muscle protein synthesis by 25% while reducing inflammatory markers. Whether you’re an extrovert or introvert, balancing energizing and draining social activities is key to optimizing your recovery system.

7. Spiritual Rest

Spiritual rest involves connecting to something larger than yourself, whether that’s religion, purpose, or long-term goals. Finding meaning in your fitness journey helps maintain motivation and consistency. Think of it as your body’s mission statement, guiding your actions and keeping you aligned.

Building Your Recovery System

To implement these seven types of rest, start by auditing your recovery patterns:

• Identify your biggest rest deficits.

• Create a recovery schedule that addresses these gaps strategically without adding unnecessary stress.

For example:

• Combine sensory and mental rest by walking outdoors without headphones.

• Pair emotional and spiritual rest by journaling about your deeper fitness motivations.

Tie these strategies to measurable metrics like workout performance, sleep quality, or stress levels. This data-driven approach ensures you’re continuously fine-tuning your recovery system.

Recap: The Seven Types of Rest

1. Physical: Sleep and active recovery.

2. Mental: Clearing mental fatigue.

3. Sensory: Reducing overstimulation.

4. Creative: Adding variety and inspiration.

5. Emotional: Processing feelings and reducing stress.

6. Social: Balancing relationships.

7. Spiritual: Finding purpose and motivation.

When you optimize your recovery across all seven types, you’ll amplify your results far more than just pushing harder in the gym. Proper rest isn’t about doing less—it’s about doing the right things to keep your body running like a well-maintained machine.

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Transcript

Philip Pape: 0:02

If you're always tired despite getting enough sleep, or maybe your workouts feel like a grind and you're not getting the results you want, maybe there's something missing when it comes to your recovery. Most people get this completely wrong. They oversimplify recovery as just sleeping more or taking days off from the gym. But research shows that your body actually needs up to seven distinct types of rest to maximize your recovery, your muscle growth, to achieve the physique you want. So today, using an engineering framework called the Work-Rest Cycle, we're going to talk about exactly what these are and how to help you build smart, efficient systems to achieve your dream physique.

Philip Pape: 0:58

I'm your host, philip Pape. Now you know that feeling when you get a full eight hours of sleep but you still wake up exhausted. Now you know that feeling when you get a full eight hours of sleep but you still wake up exhausted. Or when you take a rest day but your next workout feels heavier than ever. There's a reason for that. Sleep and physical rest are just two pieces of a larger system that your body needs to recover and grow. How the engineering concept of the work-rest cycle combines with research on seven essential types of rest to create your complete recovery system. And before we get into it.

Philip Pape: 1:32

I want to share something that will help you implement an improved approach to stress. It is an expanded version of my stress solution guide. So if you've ever downloaded this before, it was a pretty small guide based on some ideas that we had talked about on the previous episode, but I've expanded it with probably three or four extra pages of very detailed strategies for managing stress. So to get your free copy of that, just click the link in the show notes. You could always go to witsandweightscom slash free. Again. This is the expanded stress solution guide at witsandweightscom slash free or the link in the show notes. All right, in engineering because today we like to talk about engineering frameworks and applying them to your body, to your life In engineering we use something called the work rest cycle to maximize productivity while presenting or preventing system failure.

Philip Pape: 2:22

So I want you to think about a manufacturing line that's always running 24-7, producing widgets Doesn't matter what kind of widgets and if you let it keep running forever, if you never have scheduled maintenance periods, machines are going to break down and when that happens, efficiency is going to drop and eventually the whole system is going to fail. Your body operates on the same principle. It is a complex machine. It's not like a complex machine. It is a complex machine. It's not like a complex machine. It is one and it needs multiple forms of maintenance to perform at its peak. And the problem is that most people focus on just one or two types of maintenance and ignore the others, and that's like only changing a machine's oil while ignoring all the other aspects of managing the machine. It's kind of like with your car, like a lot of us we change, we get gas, we fill up the tank, but then we neglect a lot of the other things and then, before you know it, we've got a thousand dollar bill at the auto mechanic. Eventually, something's going to break, is the point here.

Philip Pape: 3:15

And this is where Dr Sondra Dalton-Smith comes into play. She is a researcher who identified seven distinct types of rest. I learned about her with a recent guest on the show, allie Shapiro. She mentioned her on the show the seven types of rest and I looked into it and I said you know, I need to do a podcast on this because I think this is a great way to frame your overall recovery system and each one of them can play a vital role in your fitness and I think we're neglecting a lot of them, myself included. So I think you're going to get a lot out of this. So here we go the seven types of rest and how they relate to you and your recovery.

Philip Pape: 3:51

First is physical. This is probably the most obvious that we are familiar with. This, yes, includes sleep, but not just sleep. We need both passive physical rest, like sleep and complete relaxation and naps, but also active physical rest. Like you know, light movement, walking, that kind of recovery you do on your rest day, but you're awake and doing something. So studies in the Journal of Applied Physiology have shown that proper sleep increases muscle protein synthesis by up to 60%. Research in sports medicine shows active recovery between training sessions can reduce muscle damage markers by 40%. So sleep and active recovery it's kind of like with a machine which needs to be shut down occasionally and needs some light operational periods while it's running. Same thing your body needs both forms to optimize recovery.

Philip Pape: 4:43

The second type of rest is mental rest. Think of this like rebooting an overloaded computer. You know when your computer starts to crash and Chrome gets really slow and you're like what's going on, I'm just going to reboot it. That usually solves everything. Well, think of your body like that as well. You kind of get this buildup of mental stress. Research in Frontiers in Psychology shows that mental fatigue significantly impairs physical performance and it reduces time to exhaustion by up to 15% and impairs decision-making during exercise. So we know mental fatigue is not just about in the brain. It translates to your physical and can reduce your performance in the gym. It affects your workout focus, your form. You're literally just like running on fumes, right, mental fumes, and you you kind of know when you get to this point, but sometimes you may not realize it because it's that just at just below that, just above that level. But you need more mental rest than that and studies show that even brief mental rest breaks, even a minute of breathing and taking a break and just stopping Again, this was on let's see episode with Molly McNamee recently. She talked about taking 30 second breaks between meetings or tasks. Even just the 60 seconds of conscious breathing can improve cognitive performance by 26%. So mental rest is incredibly important.

Philip Pape: 6:05

Third, we have sensory rest, now your body's sensory systems. This is more than just the physical, like the overall sleep and rest that we need. In that sense, these are the actually your senses, right, your eyes, your ears and so on. They can get overwhelmed, right? Just like on any machine, you could get overwhelmed by constant input from screens, from noise, from artificial light. Research in the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism shows that excessive sensory stimulation increases cortisol by up to 50% above baseline. And we know about cortisol, don't we? It directly impacts everything Muscle growth, fat storage, you name it. A 2023 study found that even two hours of screen time reduction per day can lower cortisol levels by 20% and improve sleep quality by 35%. So when we talk sensory rest, oftentimes we're talking about sleep quality, and yes, these all tie together, but I'd like you to think about it as its own form of rest. How do we reduce the sensory overwhelm? And, by the way, I'm going to get to strategies for all of these, but I really wanted to lay them out first and get you thinking about why these are important.

Philip Pape: 7:15

The fourth type of rest is creative rest. Now, in engineering terms, this is like giving your system an upgrade right? A new algorithm, new input, new inspiration, right, a new feature. Research in behavioral sciences shows that creative activities reduce cortisol levels and increase BDNF, that's brain-derived neurotrophic factor, and that is a protein that is crucial for learning and adaptation. Amazing, right. So creative activities, we know, increase that. And for fitness this means better movement patterns, increased training motivation, which means increased adherence and consistency.

Philip Pape: 7:57

Studies show that, for example, just varying your exercise selection this is an argument for variety, right? Argument for variety here. It can improve things like muscle activation and your neuromuscular activity efficiency significantly, compared to something that is repetitive over and over and over again and we kind of know this intuitively. I do argue for some level of variety. I'm I'm, I'm okay or I'm a big fan of a basic but boring approach when you first start training just to get super strong, super fast. But then I think there needs to be a little variety in there, for a variety of reasons. Um, muscle activation is just just one of them. There's a study that I found that linked those together. But there's a lot of other reasons having to do with what might be called creative rest.

Philip Pape: 8:43

The fifth type of rest is emotional rest. Think of emotions. Like your pressure gauges, they need regular release of the emotions to prevent system overload. I never want you to hold your emotions back. We need to express them, we feel them. We can't help it. It's a matter of how we cope with them and research in psycho neuroendocrinology shows that emotional stress increases cortisol by up to 30% or 37% and decreases testosterone by 10 to 15% and that, of of course, directly impacts muscle growth and recovery. And then, conversely, we know that emotional regulation techniques can reduce stress-induced hormonal disruption.

Philip Pape: 9:26

The sixth type of rest is social rest. So, just like collaborative systems you know, like think of teamwork or teams working together, they need breaks between intensive, all out brainstorming, right? You ever been in a team in a meeting? You can't just go on and on and on. You're going to eventually burn out. You need a balance, uh, so, similarly, you need to balance socially draining versus energizing interactions in everything you do. Whether you are more of a loner type or more of a social type, we all need relaxation and periodization between being with people and not being with people. Research in the Journal of Behavioral Medicine shows that positive social interactions muscle protein synthesis by up to 25% and increase inflammatory markers. And you notice I'm throwing you a lot of numbers and research and everything. I wanted to make sure this one tied into some of the findings we actually see associated with these types of rest. There's plenty of science behind it and a lot of it is somewhat intuitive, but it's good to understand these.

Philip Pape: 10:38

Finally, number seven the seventh type of rest is spiritual rest, and in engineering, this is like having a clear mission, operational purpose, what I'll call a user story or a requirement for your machine. Now, that's kind of a stretch for an analogy. So let's talk about what this means for you. Spiritual rest means connecting to something larger than yourself. That can mean a lot of things to people. It's not just religion or spirituality per se. It could be finding deeper meaning, finding purpose, finding why you are doing this in the first place on the long arc of life, and this maintains your long-term motivation, your long-term consistency, versus just having short-term reasons for doing this. So, if we're gonna take all these seven types of rest, how do we create a practical system for implementing them? Now, I recently went over these in my group coaching program in Physique University. We had one of our coaching calls. I went through specific actions for each one that people could take to apply to them.

Philip Pape: 11:42

But I'm just going to ask you, without without just listing a laundry list of things, start by auditing your current recovery patterns. Like, think about the seven types of rest we just talked about. You can go back and reference them. What are your biggest rest deficits? Right, most people are severely lacking in at least one or two, if not three, of these seven areas, so identify the ones that need the most attention, and then I want you to have a recovery schedule that hits all of these. Now, some of the things are going to be things you're already doing and some will be to address the one or two that you identified as the biggest low-hanging fruit, and this doesn't mean adding more to your day and doing more. Please don't take it as that, because that is going to affect your stress and rest in the most ironic way. This means being strategic and efficient, using stacking, combining things and so on.

Philip Pape: 12:45

For example, you can combine sensory and mental rest by doing your relaxing thing that you like to do. Let's say it's walking outside without listening to a podcast or listening to music. Now you're going to say wait a minute, philip. Haven't you talked about habit stacking, where you can walk or listen to a podcast? Yes. However, if you're constantly stimulated, if when you're indoors, you're always on a screen or have something in your ears, and then you go for a walk and you still have something in your ears, that could be a problem and you could be overloaded and you don't have sensory rest. Instead, take advantage of the fact you're outside to look at the sky, the clouds, the birds, the trees, the animals, other people. Just be with your thoughts and get the sensory rest along with the mental rest. And, by the way, you're probably also getting a form of physical rest in recovery. Getting a form of physical rest and recovery all three just by going for a walk out in nature.

Philip Pape: 13:47

You can stack emotional rest and spiritual rest by taking a moment to write down or journal or think about your deeper fitness motivations. If you haven't done that in a while, right, that's tied to your spiritual rest, but it's also emotional because it lets you get out on paper what you're thinking and feeling. This is where, when you're working with a coach, you can be super helpful when they're prompting you, when they're asking questions from a objective, unbiased sense. So I'll give you an example of this. Many of you, you probably share things with your loved ones or family or friends, even someone who's very supportive, and you tell them hey, I'm tracking my food or I'm lifting weights or I'm focusing. If they're super supportive, they're going to be positive, hopefully, about it. They're not going to question you, they're not going to sabotage you, and they're going to say, hey, that's awesome. And if you've had a bad day and you say this terrible thing happened, they might say, oh, that sucks.

Philip Pape: 14:32

Now, some of us need that, but in some cases, that may not give you emotional rest because it didn't allow you to unburden the emotion in a full way, in a complete way. What I mean by that is a really good friend is going to empathize with you, but they're not necessarily going to help you process or move through it. Like, say, a therapist or even a coach, right? Or? Or someone in a community, like a Facebook community you're in who doesn't have a personal stake with you, but they still want to help you, and so they, they're listening, they allow you to vent, you can share the challenges you've had, and then, if you ask for help, they can say, okay, tell me more, what have you tried? What haven't you tried? Hey, maybe here's some things to try and you could unburden those emotions in that way, right?

Philip Pape: 15:16

So really get creative about each of these types of rest, and then you could, of course, make this very objective by tying that to your metrics. To make this very objective by tying that to your metrics, to your biofeedback. By the way, we just did an episode not long ago called the 6-10 biofeedback model, where we talk about different metrics. So, whether it's your workout performance which translates into, say, energy, recovery, motivation, right, all of that stuff, all of those metrics, and of course, the direct ones like sleep, stress and all the things you like to measure with your rings and your watches and everything which I do as well, you can then get that as feedback and see what's working and what's not, and then you can adjust your recovery schedule, your rest ratios, so to speak, based on these indicators. And I have a lot of ideas where those came from. Again, I didn't want today's episode to be a laundry list and I have a lot of ideas where those came from. Again, I didn't want today's episode to be a laundry list.

Philip Pape: 16:21

A few other things that come to mind would be if you normally are listening to music while working out try not listening to music, just silently work out. Think about a lot of this is that rest and recovery is probably going to build more muscle for you than your training and your food. And that might sound a little bit sacrilegious from coming from me. I say it, however, because a lot of you you've you've started to dial in your training. Your training three, four or five days a week. You started to dial in your food. You know, maybe you're tracking, you're kind of understanding a little bit how macros work and energy balance, and there's still something a little bit holding you back or maybe the progress isn't as much as you'd like.

Philip Pape: 17:01

I bet there's a lot of opportunity with rest and recovery. That's the one that people neglect so often, and sometimes we throw up our hands and we say you know, I just don't have the mental capability here, I don't have my life doesn't allow for it, because I don't have enough time. There's a lot of excuses we make. Let's just be honest, and so I want you to take it at a bite-sized, micro level. Pick one of the seven types of rest right and focus on it, because you want to be a well-aimed machine, well-maintained machine. A well-maintained machine Think of a car that you actually take into the shop regularly. You don't have to worry about it, like it just runs and runs and runs, just fine.

Philip Pape: 17:39

But one that gets neglected is constantly going to have problems, and all those problems which you could translate to being injuries or sicknesses, or you're way too tired or whatever burnout. They actually stack on top of each other to the point where you just never get in a rhythm with your routine. But if you take the time now to actually think about getting your body rest across all seven areas, that is going to amplify your results far more than pushing harder on any single dimension. Right, and this is why some people get better results doing less, like training three days a week instead of four or five, because maybe they're resting more and then they're getting rest across all the dimensions and and and right. And so if I'm going to recap real quick the seven types of rest which, again, I encourage going back and listening through the episode for the details Number one, physical.

Philip Pape: 18:38

Number two, mental. Number three, sensory. Number four, creative. Number five, emotional. Number six, social. And number seven, spiritual.

Philip Pape: 18:43

All right, it's a pretty cool concept, this whole idea of work rest, um, where we don't pay attention to the rest enough. Let's be honest. And if you, by the way, if you want to see the full uh workshop that we did, where we went over all the details and gave you specifics for each, you could join physique university Anytime. Go to wandweightscom slash physique and you'll learn about everything provided there. But part of that is the regular coaching calls where we cover topics like this in detail and give you specific actions and frameworks to apply them. All right, I mentioned before, if you want to have a little bit more help with managing stress and some strategies, you can download my expanded stress solution guide. Go to witsandweightscom slash free or click the link in the show notes. Until next time, keep using those wits, lifting those weights, and remember that proper rest is much more than just sleep. It's strategic recovery across all seven types of rest we talked about today. This is Philip Hape and you've been listening to Wits and Weights. Talk to you next time.

The WORST Weight Loss Diet to Lose 20 Pounds or More | Ep 272

Book a FREE 15-minute Rapid Nutrition Assessment, designed to fine-tune your strategy, identify your #1 roadblock, and give you a personalized 3-step action plan in a fast-paced 15 minutes.

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Are crash diets secretly sabotaging your fat loss efforts? Can eating less ever be too much? What if the key to lasting results is a completely different approach?

Philip (@witsandweights) dives deep into the science of fat loss to reveal why the most common methods of rapid weight loss often fail and how they can even harm your long-term goals.

Discover the red flags of unsustainable diets, why most of them fail, and how to design a personalized, sustainable fat loss strategy that works for your unique needs and lifestyle. Philip breaks it all down into actionable insights to help you lose fat, build muscle, and feel amazing without falling into the crash diet trap.

Today, you’ll learn all about:

3:37 Red flags to spot an unsustainable diet
7:50 Why crash diets seem to make perfect sense
9:31 Science of how your body adapts to aggresive calorie cutting
12:38 Five specific ways that crash dieting makes sustainable fat loss harder
19:18 Three key principles for sustainable fat loss
22:48 Building a good system that works for you
24:22 Why a moderate approach beats crash dieting every time
26:23 Outro

Episode resources:

• 10 Intermittent Fasting Myths That Need to Die

• 6 Ways to Lose Fat in 2025 (Using Science-Based Methods)
  

The Worst Diet for Losing 20 Pounds (and What to Do Instead)

When faced with the goal of losing 20 pounds or more, many people turn to crash diets, believing that rapid calorie cuts or eliminating entire food groups will lead to faster results. The logic seems simple: eat less, lose more. But this oversimplification ignores the complexity of human physiology and often leads to poor outcomes.

Crash diets—those that drastically cut calories or promise extreme results—trigger your body’s survival mechanisms. This includes metabolic adaptation, muscle loss, and rebound weight gain. Instead of delivering sustainable results, these diets create a cycle of frustration, burnout, and eventual weight regain.

Why Crash Diets Seem Logical (But Aren’t)

The premise of crash dieting is rooted in the calorie deficit equation: if reducing calories by 500 per day results in 1 pound of fat loss per week, then cutting 1,000 or more must be even better, right? Not so fast. This linear approach fails to account for the body’s sophisticated adaptations.

When calories are cut too aggressively:

• Metabolism slows down. Your basal metabolic rate (BMR) drops beyond what would be expected from weight loss alone, sometimes by 200–300 calories within weeks.

• Movement decreases. Non-exercise activity thermogenesis (NEAT) declines, meaning you unconsciously move less, further reducing calorie burn.

• Exercise becomes less effective. The calories burned during workouts decrease as your body becomes more efficient.

• Hunger hormones spike. Leptin levels drop, while ghrelin increases, making you hungrier and hyper-focused on food.

Five Ways Crash Diets Sabotage Fat Loss

1. Accelerated Muscle Loss
   Crash diets often result in losing 40–50% of weight from muscle mass, particularly when protein intake and resistance training are neglected. This loss not only slows your metabolism but also diminishes your overall strength and body composition.

2. Increased Hunger and Cravings
   The hormonal shifts from aggressive dieting amplify hunger and cravings, making it nearly impossible to stick to the diet. Research shows that extreme calorie cuts can lead to binge-eating behaviors, further derailing progress.

3. Compromised Training Performance
   Low energy levels from extreme deficits mean weaker workouts, less intensity, and fewer calories burned during exercise. This compromises your ability to preserve muscle and maintain progress.

4. Psychological Burnout
   Crash diets rely on willpower, which is a finite resource. The constant mental battle to stay on track leads to emotional exhaustion, making these diets unsustainable in the long run.

5. Rebound Weight Gain
   Studies reveal that 80–95% of crash dieters regain the lost weight within 1–5 years. Worse, the regained weight often consists of a higher percentage of fat, leaving you in a worse metabolic state than before.

What Works Instead: A Sustainable Fat Loss Approach

Crash diets fail because they fight against your body’s natural processes. Instead, adopt these evidence-based principles for lasting fat loss:

1. Create a Moderate Calorie Deficit
   Aim for a 0.5–0.75% body weight loss per week, which minimizes metabolic adaptation and hunger. A moderate deficit provides enough energy to fuel your workouts and daily activities while ensuring fat loss.

2. Preserve Muscle with Protein and Strength Training
   Prioritize resistance training and a high-protein diet. These habits preserve lean muscle, maintain metabolic rate, and improve body composition as you lose fat.

3. Plan Diet Breaks and Recovery Periods
   Incorporate planned breaks at maintenance calories to reduce psychological fatigue and maintain consistency. These breaks help you manage social events, holidays, and life changes without feeling restricted.

Why Systems Beat Diets

Think of your fat loss approach as a system, not a diet. A successful system is:

• Efficient: Minimizes wasted effort while maximizing results.

• Reliable: Produces consistent outcomes you can depend on.

• Sustainable: Fits into your lifestyle and allows for flexibility.

• Adaptable: Adjusts to changing circumstances, such as stress, travel, or holidays.

The worst weight loss diet is the one that sets you up for failure by undermining your body’s natural processes and your psychological well-being. Instead of chasing rapid results, focus on building a sustainable system that prioritizes fat loss, muscle preservation, and metabolic health.

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Transcript

Philip Pape: 0:01

When you decide to lose 20 pounds or more, what is the first thing that you typically do? If you're like most people, you probably jump straight to cutting calories, trying intermittent fasting, cutting food groups like carbs, or following some quick-fix diet something unique, something new that promises rapid results in maybe as little as a few weeks, and it seems to make perfect sense. Eat way less food, lose way more weight right. But what if the most common approach to losing those 20 plus pounds, the one that feels the most logical and that everyone seems to try first and say is working for them is actually setting you up for failure? Today, I'm going to show you why the most popular weight loss method might be sabotaging your results and, more importantly, what the science says you should do instead.

Philip Pape: 0:51

The allure of rapid weight loss is everywhere. You see before and after photos all over the place claiming that someone dropped 30 pounds in 30 days. You see influencers and hear podcasters recommend extended fasting or detoxes or eliminating food groups to slim down, and the message seems clear If you want dramatic results, you've got to go for dramatic measures. But what if those common approaches to dieting in fact, most of the named diets out there are all really just crash diets that make things worse in the end. And what if there was a more intelligent way to lose substantial amounts of fat while preserving muscle and maintaining long-term metabolic health? Today, we are breaking down the science of why most diets fail, what actually happens in your body when you cut calories too aggressively, and how to approach fat loss in a way that creates lasting results, even when you do have 20, 30, or 40 or more pounds to lose. Now, before we get into it, if you are tired of the cycle of aggressive dieting followed by rebound weight gain, I do offer a free 15-minute rapid nutrition assessment, which is a call without a sales pitch, where we get on Zoom for 15 minutes and identify what's been holding you back. We create a simple, science-based plan usually two or three steps that works with your body, based on what I've learned about you in our conversation. And that's it. You go along your way with a little more clarity and some action. All you got to do is book your free call using the link in the show notes and hopefully I'll be talking to you soon.

Philip Pape: 2:25

All right, First let us define exactly what we mean by aggressive calorie restriction or crash dieting, because when I titled this episode the Worst Diet. The irony there is that I would never recommend a best diet. In other words, the best diet is going to be the one that is most personalized to your needs and your level of flexibility and rigidity, and that's the point. And so when I talk about a worst diet, I'm also not talking about a single diet. I'm talking about an overall philosophy or approach that the vast majority of people use, probably 95% or more, because that's the amount of people that fail to maintain the results. Therefore, it's not working. It's not working. So if you tell me, no, keto worked for me, I'm going to ask you well, are you still doing it and is it still working for you? And if you say yes and yes, and I feel great and it's everything that promised and more then awesome, guess what? That is the diet that works for you, but the vast majority of people it's not the case. So what do we mean by these approaches? All right, I'm going to give you some criteria.

Philip Pape: 3:29

These are the red flags. If any diet has these, then it's a red flag and probably not going to work. The first one is just that they're asking you to cut calories to some extremely low, usually arbitrary level. If I were to give a number on that, I would say for women that's well below 1,200 calories. For men it's well below 1,500. Understanding that, it is highly personal. If I have a client who weighs only 100 pounds or 110, she's a very petite female, she might be dieting at 1,000 and it feels just fine, with no hunger and no metabolic issues. But she's a lot smaller. Her body doesn't need nearly as much energy coming in, so it's not as restrictive for her. Similarly, with a male, smaller in stature, maybe lower in weight, he might find that 1,400 or 1,500 calories is fine for dieting. Others, myself included, anything below 1,800 feels very restrictive. So a diet that tells you you've got to eat this many calories like Optivia I think it's 800 calories Ridiculous. That is a huge red flag there.

Philip Pape: 4:28

The second one is that it promises an outcome like a certain amount of weight loss in a certain amount of time. That is unsustainable. So usually that's well more than two pounds per week. And again it depends on your body mass, right? A 300 pound person losing two pounds a week, that's actually totally reasonable. A hundred pound person losing two pounds a week? That would be highly concerning. So I like that as just a general average, but usually they're promising something that just sounds good enough to be great for marketing, right? I lost this many pounds in this many weeks and it just sounds almost too good to be true, but not quite, but it's probably too aggressive.

Philip Pape: 5:09

The next red flag is that they're telling you to cut foods out, and so this is the red flag that, honestly, the vast majority of diets pin themselves on Food groups like carbohydrates or fat. Most diets don't tell you to cut protein thank goodness, although maybe we're going to see that next but even specific foods. They'll tell you to not eat these specific foods because they are insert fear-mongering adjective here inflammatory. It drives me crazy, right? So if anything tells you you can't eat something, that's a red flag. And then the next one is if it tells you you have to fast or switch up your meal timing to a certain feeding or fasting window, that is a red flag as well, because, again, there is no right or wrong feeding window. It's going to depend on what works for you across a variety of factors.

Philip Pape: 6:00

Fasting myths that have to die and that was the point of that episode was to talk about how none of the claims for fasting actually hold up in terms of them being superior to non-fasting. They may work for you, but they are not superior. And so that's the red flag is if it says you have to include certain fasting windows. And then the final red flag is that they claim to reset or boost or fix your metabolism, with the caveat that I probably have used adjectives similar to that, either inadvertently or in a colloquial way, because it's great for marketing, and I admit that I'm trying to do that less and less now. I don't think I use the word reset. I definitely don't use the word fix. I'm pretty clear that you cannot damage or harm your metabolism. The word boost, yeah, I've used that, but I usually use it in the context of the philosophy of boosting your metabolism through having more muscle mass or moving more, things like that. But a diet that says eat this way and it's going to boost your metabolism, that is the red flag, all right.

Philip Pape: 7:03

So I want to break down today's episode, which I have no idea how long it's going to be, but it's an important topic. I actually broke it down into four segments to make it more accessible. I'm first going to talk about why crash diets. They seem logical and pretty and neat, but they lead to poor outcomes for some very clear reasons, and once you understand them, you know to look for them when it comes to assessing diets. Number two is the science of how your body adapts to aggressive calorie cutting, because that is the root of a lot of the problems people have. Number three is I'm going to give you five specific ways that crash dieting makes fat loss specifically harder, and then, finally, the alternative based on evidence that works for you to give you the sustainable results that I think you're looking for and why you're listening to this podcast.

Philip Pape: 7:49

So let's start with why crash diets seem to make perfect sense, and the logic goes something like this we know that we need a calorie deficit to lose fat. All right, now, if you don't accept that to begin with, go back to Nutrition 101, energy balance, physics, thermodynamics, whatever you want to call it. It is an absolute fact that we need to eat less than we burn to lose weight on the scale and ultimately then to lose fat to lose meaningful fat. Can you lose fat and build muscle at the same time? Yes, and then we're getting into nuances, but in general, you need a calorie deficit. So if a 500 calorie deficit leads to losing one pound per week, then a thousand calorie deficit should mean losing two pounds, right, and then a 1500 calorie deficit, even faster. So just cut as many calories as you can, eat as little as you can, you're good, right?

Philip Pape: 8:39

The problem with this linear way of thinking is it ignores the fundamental complexity of human physiology. Your body is a very sophisticated system, and it adapts to protect you from what it perceives as a threat to survival, to homeostasis, to vibrancy and vitality. Right. When you cut calories too aggressively, you are triggering a bunch of sensors in your body. You're triggering a cascade of protective adaptations that are going to make fat loss way more difficult. And if you think about it from an evolutionary perspective, our bodies evolved during times when food was often scarce and the ability to adapt to reduce calorie intake by becoming more efficient with energy use was then crucial for survival. And so this isn't a flaw in our biology. It's a really amazing feature that helped keep our species alive.

Philip Pape: 9:31

And so this brings us to the science of how your body responds to aggressive calorie cutting, because when you suddenly drop your calories very low just, we're talking not a normal calorie deficit, but a very aggressive calorie deficit, which you will have from many diets. When you cut out a bunch of foods, you cut out a bunch of processed foods, cut out a bunch of carbs or even go on one of these weight loss drugs, for example, you're going to have potentially a huge drop in calories, right, because you don't have an appetite for the drugs in particular, but also because you cut out calorie dense foods. And so what happens? So let's say, you drop well more than 500 calories a day. First, your BMR, your basal metabolic rate that is, the energy you burn at rest begins to decrease beyond what would be expected from weight loss alone, because when you lose body mass, your BMR goes down.

Philip Pape: 10:20

But we have found that research from, in fact, dr Eric Trexler and others have been involved in this research shows that the adaptation that occurs can reduce your daily energy expenditure by 200 to 300 calories within weeks of starting an aggressive deficit, and I've seen, over time, clients' metabolisms drop by up to 600, 700, 800 calories over a long time. But they can happen quickly, especially when it's aggressive. And then, second, your NEAT, your non-exercise activity thermogenesis all the movements you do outside structured exercise naturally decreases. You fidget less, you take fewer steps, you generally move less throughout the day, right, and a lot of it's unconscious some of it's conscious, but a lot of it's unconscious and studies show that this can account for another two to 400 calorie reduction in your daily energy burn, right. Third, then you have your exercise activity thermogenesis how many calories you burn during your training, your workouts, your structured cardio all of that becomes less efficient. The same workout literally burns fewer calories as your body adapts to preserve energy. You actually become more efficient during fat loss. One study found participants burned 20 to 30% fewer calories doing the same exercise after 12 weeks of aggressive dieting. So it stacks on top of itself.

Philip Pape: 11:42

And then on top of all of this is that hormone levels shift to keep you alive, to preserve your energy, to preserve your existing precious fat storage, which is very important from an evolutionary standpoint. So this means decreased thyroid hormone production, reduced testosterone and growth hormone, increased cortisol, changes in hunger and satiety hormones like leptin and ghrelin, right. And these are not permanent. That is very important to understand. These adaptations are temporary. They're your body's natural, reversible response to what it perceives as a threat, and the problem is that crash dieting it's like a threat, it triggers them. It triggers these adaptations much more dramatically than a more moderate calorie deficit, even though any deficit's going to trigger them to some extent. Crash dieting triggers them much more, to the point where you're kind of past the precipice, and it makes it very difficult. So then this brings us to five specific ways that crash dieting makes sustainable fat loss harder.

Philip Pape: 12:45

We're sort of connecting these concepts of what happens to specifically when we're thinking of fat loss. All right, number one accelerated muscle loss. This is the whole purpose. When we're trying to lose fat but not lose muscle and improve our body composition, this is the whole purpose. When we're trying to lose fat but not lose muscle and improve our body composition, this is the whole purpose of keeping a fat loss phase moderate. Actually, when you cut calories too aggressively without adequate protein and resistance training, that's the worst case.

Philip Pape: 13:12

Research shows up to 40 to 50% of the weight lost can come from lean mass. So a lot of you out there, if you're listening and you're not strength training, you're not eating enough protein. Don't go into fat loss yet, because you're going to lose muscle and then you're not going to lose fat, or you're going to lose some fat but you're also going to lose muscle. That's the problem, you know. I think somebody tried to argue with me about this on I don't know where it was on YouTube and say, like, show me the research that says you don't lose fat when you lose. And I said no, no, no. The issue isn't that you don't lose fat, it's that, along with fat, you lose a bunch of muscle. I'd rather you lose only fat.

Philip Pape: 13:47

Another study found that aggressive dieters lost twice as much muscle as those taking a moderate approach, even with the same total weight loss. And again, this is all accelerated when you're not training, when you're not eating protein, when you are lifting weights and you are eating protein, you can actually mitigate this quite a bit, and that's why you can go somewhat aggressively, depending on how long it is, and not lose muscle. But again, that's a little bit more of an advanced strategy once you've got all this stuff dialed in. And I talked about that on other episodes, such as the January 6th New Year's episode about six ways to lose fat in 2025. So check that one out Now.

Philip Pape: 14:25

Why does all this matter? Right, muscle tissue we know it burns more calories than fat when it's at rest. Right, and so we want to have more muscle for a variety of reasons. But that's just from a metabolic and from a calorie burning perspective. It's going to make fat loss harder when you don't have the extra muscle and you start to lose it and your metabolism decline accelerates, and that's the worst thing we want to happen, all right.

Philip Pape: 14:48

The second thing is that you'll get increased hunger and cravings, well beyond what you would if you were at a moderate deficit. So it's almost like an exponential curve. The more aggressive you cut, the more you ramp up those hunger and cravings because the hormonal adaptations that happen. They are making you hyper-focused on food. For a reason and you've probably heard maybe have heard of the famous Minnesota starvation experiment, which gave us a lot of research that we still rely on today Participants in that study became obsessed, literally obsessed, with food. That's all they can think about. They had intense cravings. Many developed binge eating behaviors that persisted after the study. So that alone, from a sustainability perspective, if you think about dropping your calories to the point where you can tolerate it versus past that point, that makes a big difference on whether you're successful.

Philip Pape: 15:40

Number three here is compromise training performance. So because we are trying to prioritize fat loss and not muscle loss and therefore we want to train, we also want the fat loss itself to not chicken and egg us out of training properly, right? So if you don't have enough fuel, so if you don't have enough fuel, if you don't have enough recovery, your workouts are going to suffer. And I guess the irony is that we are deliberately cutting down on fuel and recovery by going into a fat loss phase. So we have to find the right balance, otherwise you just can't push as hard, you can't lift as heavy, you can't maintain the proper intensity, get that stimulus for muscle preservation and then you'll burn fewer calories and it all stacks on top of itself. So think about training and performance. That's huge.

Philip Pape: 16:25

Number four is psychological burnout, mental burnout, right? Extreme restriction, then, requires willpower, and that is not something we have to rely on. Is willpower, discipline and always being on and consistent and perfect? No, we don't want to have to rely on it. We want to enjoy our life and the fact that life is fluid comes and goes. Stress comes in and out, people come in and out. Our situation changes weekly, if not daily, right? And we know that willpower is this finite resource.

Philip Pape: 16:53

Psychology tells us that most people hit a breaking point pretty early on if they go too aggressively and then you realize that this fast, quick fix type of deal is not all it's cracked up to be. It doesn't even give you the result, even if it's just pure weight loss. Oftentimes you won't even get it because you can't stick with it. You hit a breaking point. Only the people who really white knuckle it out, that really just stick with it with their discipline yeah, they'll finally get it. You hit a breaking point. Only the people who really white knuckle it out, that really just stick with it with their discipline yeah, they'll finally get it. And then they're still going to have all the other problems like muscle loss and hunger and everything else. So then it just becomes impossible and that's not sustainable.

Philip Pape: 17:25

The last one number five is the rebound weight gain. Studies are consistently showing between 80 and 95% of crash dieters regain the weight within one to five years. Right and remember, crash dieting is something that adheres to any of the red flags that I mentioned earlier. So don't think that you are not crash dieting because you're doing keto or you're doing intermittent fasting. There is a crash dieting aspect to that that's going to make it unsustainable. And then, more concerning is when people fail to sustain the results, they actually usually end up heavier than their starting weight because they've lost muscle mass. So not only they're heavier, they've got even higher percentage of body fat at that heavier weight. And now they've prolonged their metabolic adaptation which, although I mentioned it's temporary, there are aspects of it that permanently change. If your body composition has changed, granted, you can come back and restore it with bringing back your muscle mass, with losing some body fat, but know that that is what happens. So what's the alternative to all of this? What do you actually want to do?

Speaker 2: 18:32

Hi, my name is Jenny and I just wanted to say a big thank you to Philip Pape of Wits and Weights for offering his free 50-minute nutritional assessment. During that time he gave me really good tools on how I can further my health and fitness goals. He asked really great questions and stayed true to his offer of no sales pitch. I have since applied these things and gotten really close to my health goals and my weight goals, and now I'm able to flip over and work on my strength and my muscle conditioning using a lot of the things he offers in his podcasts, and I just am very grateful for his positive inspiration and encouragement, for all of our help. Thank you, philip.

Philip Pape: 19:18

All right, I'm going to break it down into just three key principles that I think are the most important. Sometimes I can go down a rabbit hole and give you like a million things to do. These are three principles that I work with all my clients to incorporate as part of their skill set, and if you just think about these, write them down, put them on a post-it, put them on your fridge, they're going to go a long way. The first principle of sustainable fat loss is doing it moderately, like doing all things moderately. Create a moderate deficit, right. Create a moderate deficit that allows for adequate nutrition, energy performance, while still getting you the result. So moderate for you is going to be moderate for someone else. I usually talk about a sweet spot of around a half percent 0.75% of your body weight a week. Some people might be lower, some people might be higher, some people it's a lot lower. You may be the type of person that has a fairly low metabolism, not a lot of wiggle room, and you've got to go at like a 200 calorie deficit a day and it's going to take you many months to get to the number you want. Well, so what? You're going to get there as opposed to either not get there or get there in the wrong way and lose a bunch of muscle, make it unsustainable, regain the weight all the things we just talked about. So the moderate rate of loss is actually a very important principle to think about because it can override all the other trade-offs you're thinking of. Right, if you're thinking, okay, I'm going to speed it up at this point because nothing's going on in my life, but it causes a lot more hunger, you might not stick to it. Right, if you are trying to hit a certain date and then you go at a faster rate of loss, you might end up losing muscle. So there's a lot of reasons not to do it aggressively. There are a small subset of reasons where you can do it aggressively, but again, that's beyond the scope here when we're talking about general principles for sustainability.

Philip Pape: 21:09

So the moderate deficit is number one. The second one is that muscle preservation, and I put that as a catch-all principle because then it causes you to think of your protein intake and your resistance training together, but also things like carbs. So it kind of ekes into different aspects of this. We want enough protein, but we also want enough carbs. We also want to train consistently, but not so much that we over-train or don't have recovery during fat loss, that we're starving or whatever, and it kind of forces you to think about all those things. It helps you maintain your metabolic rate. It ensures that weight loss comes primarily from fat tissue and you're going to have better body composition outcomes.

Philip Pape: 21:47

And then the third principle here is planning in diet breaks and recovery periods. So, combined with the moderate loss, the preserving muscle, then the breaks allow you to think about your life. This is where many people go wrong. They think they want to just keep pushing harder when progress slows or they're going to keep going, going, going, going and never stop. But we know that taking planned breaks up at maintenance calories is going to help you, and so we're going to talk about that. And yeah, while it gives you a short physiological break, it's mainly a psychological break and then it teaches you. Oh, I can do this for a long time because I know that I can accommodate parties and holidays and travel and trips and it's not a big deal. I'm just taking a quick little pauses along the way, and that is also part of principle number one of being making it sustainable and moderate in terms of the rate of loss, all right. So hopefully that all made sense to you guys, and I like to think in terms of an engineer, you know that. And so what we're doing is we're building a system.

Philip Pape: 22:48

When I say what's the worst diet, it's the diet that doesn't give you a system for making it work for you. But what does a good system look like? Well, a good system is going to be efficient, which means you use minimal resources, and that can include mental resources. It's reliable, meaning you know if you do it it's going to get you a result consistently. Three, it has to be sustainable. So that means you've got to be able to do it and turn the crank, no matter what's going on in your life. You can keep doing it over and over again. You could ostensibly do it forever. I mean a true fat loss phase. We want it to be a fixed duration, but you're going to be able to do the process no matter what life throws at you, even if you adjust the scale or the magnitude of it. And you'll be able to take breaks. You'll be able to periodize and those sorts of things. And then the fourth thing about your system is it should be adaptable. So I kind of just alluded to that. But it needs to be able to respond to changing conditions, no matter what. Like, you've always got plan B, c, d, you always have. If, then and it's kind of built in right A crash diet fails every one of these criteria.

Philip Pape: 23:56

It's inefficient because, well, the main reason it's inefficient is it wastes muscle tissue, so it doesn't even get you what you want right, and so, by definition, it just fails. It's unreliable because the results are going to vary wildly. I can't guarantee that you're going to have a certain body composition coming out of it. It's just so chaotic. It's also unsustainable because it just fights against what your body's trying to do. Because it just fights against what your body's trying to do, or put another way, it causes your body to over-respond when it comes to homeostasis, hormones, muscle loss, body fat storage, etc. And then it is inflexible because there is nowhere to go when progress stalls, except just eat less, and that's the worst thing.

Philip Pape: 24:37

Whereas a moderate approach checks all the boxes, preserves muscle, produces results that are reliable, you're confident, you can do it. It works with your body's adaptations. It also leaves room for adjustments to work with your life whenever you need to, and that's all the time, let's be honest. So, while the crash dieting might seem faster initially, it takes longer to reach your goals when you factor in the recovery time, the rebound, weight gain, the loss of muscle and I hope I couldn't make it any clearer than that. Okay, I don't think I said that right. I don't think I can make it any clearer than that.

Philip Pape: 25:11

So the worst weight loss diet isn't really a diet, it's the approach and it's the mindset that that approach creates. It's something that teaches you to view your body as an enemy, which is not what you want. You want to work with it, right. It promotes an unsustainable and all or nothing mentality, a poor relationship with food, and there's no way you can have lasting change under those conditions. But if you're armed with science, like we covered today, and what actually works, a flexible approach, you can be among the less than 5% that choose a different path that respects your body's superiority, in that your body knows what it's supposed to do. It delivers the results you want. It builds sustainable habits and preserves the muscle and the metabolic health that make long-term fat loss possible. And, of course, if you are ready to create your own sustainable fat loss plan, if you want a little bit of expert guidance.

Philip Pape: 26:06

Go ahead and book that free 15-minute rapid nutrition assessment with me. It is not a sales call, it is a hey, how you doing. Let's get to know each other, tell me what's happening, and here's a few things you can try that are going to give you some clarity. We'll identify what's been holding you back. We're going to create a simple, science-based action plan, and I usually end up sending you some guides or resources along with that if not a workout program, for example and it's going to help you lose fat? It will. It's going to help you maintain muscle. It's going to help you maintain and improve your metabolic health. Just by applying those principles, click the link in the show notes to schedule your free 15-minute rapid nutrition assessment. And with that, until next time, keep using your wits lifting those weights and remember the best approach isn't the quote-unquote fastest one, it's the one that lets you maintain your results for life. I'll talk to you next time here on the Wits and Weights podcast.

Why Food is NOT the Problem When Your Diet Falls Off Track (Ali Shapiro) | Ep 271

Do you feel trapped in a cycle of dieting and frustration? Why do your best efforts with food seem to fail when it matters most? Is it possible that your food struggles are about something deeper than food itself?

Philip (@witsandweights) explores the deeper roots of food consistency with integrative health pioneer Ali Shapiro. Ali shares why food battles often represent safety battles, how to identify hidden triggers and a practical framework to break free from emotional eating. Learn why food is more than fuel, how unmet emotional needs affect your habits, and how to achieve sustainable food freedom.

Ali Shapiro is the creator of Truce with Food and host of the Insatiable Podcast, and she brings a fresh perspective to overcoming diet struggles by addressing the emotional and psychological roots of our relationship with food.

Today, you’ll learn all about:

2:38 Why food struggles aren’t about food
6:32 Understanding emotional hunger
11:58 Tools Vs. Deeper psychological work
18:37 Food and the human experience
25:32 Stress, loneliness, secret eating, and falling off track
29:58 The T.A.I.L. framework for emotional triggers
36:18 Facing triggers and learning growth
38:34 Ali’s personal journey with food and health
45:04 Finding trust and meeting your needs
51:26 Compassionate witness and feeling significant
55:45 Outro

Episode resources:

• Ali’s Truce with Food program

• Insatiable Podcast

• Website: alishapiro.com

• Instagram: @alimshapiro 

• Youtube: @alishapirollc.founderoftru9290 
  

Why Food is NOT the Problem When Your Diet Falls Off Track

If you’ve ever felt like food is your greatest struggle, despite your best efforts to track, measure, and follow all the rules, you’re not alone. But what if the real battle isn’t about food at all? This article unpacks why food is often a symptom of deeper emotional and psychological triggers—and how understanding these can lead to freedom with food.

The Root Cause: Safety and Belonging

According to Ali Shapiro, creator of Truce with Food, our struggles with food often tie back to a need for safety and belonging. From childhood to adulthood, our emotional systems are wired to seek these needs, and food often becomes a substitute when we feel unsupported, inadequate, or isolated.

For instance:

• Emotional eating can be a response to feeling overwhelmed or lonely.

• Overeating in secret often signals a lack of support in your life.

• Cravings may reflect a need for comfort or reassurance rather than physical hunger.

Understanding these connections is the first step toward lasting change.

The TAIL Method to Identify Emotional Triggers

Shapiro outlines a practical framework called the TAIL Method to help identify emotional triggers behind food struggles. Ask yourself: What’s at the TAIL end of your food noise?

1. Tired: Are you exhausted, physically or emotionally? Rest might be the missing ingredient, whether it’s physical rest like walking or emotional rest through support.

2. Anxious: Is uncertainty or external stress weighing on you? Focus on feeling resourced rather than in control.

3. Inadequate: Are you doubting your capabilities? A compassionate witness—someone who offers support without judgment—can help you navigate self-doubt.

4. Lonely: Do you feel isolated or disconnected? Addressing your need for belonging or significance can reduce feelings of loneliness.

By recognizing these triggers, you can meet your emotional needs without turning to food.

Why Falling Off Track Isn’t a Failure

Many of us view “falling off track” as a failure, but Shapiro argues there’s no such thing as a track. Life is fluid, and every challenge is an opportunity to learn and grow. Instead of beating yourself up, ask:

• “Why does this behavior make sense?”

• “What feels hard right now?”

• “What do I really need in this moment?”

The answers to these questions can help you uncover the unmet needs driving your behavior and develop more effective strategies to address them.

Food as a Metaphor for Belonging

Food is deeply tied to our sense of belonging, whether it’s sharing meals with loved ones or the comfort we derive from childhood foods. Shapiro explains that food noise often reflects a hunger for connection, safety, or meaning.

For example:

• A parent hiding in the pantry to eat after a stressful day might be seeking respite from feeling unsupported in parenting.

• A corporate worker stress-eating at their desk might be masking feelings of inadequacy or unfulfillment.

The solution lies in addressing the root need—whether that’s support, connection, or a sense of purpose.

Building Self-Trust and Food Freedom

Breaking free from food struggles requires rebuilding self-trust. Start small:

1. Identify your triggers using the TAIL method.

2. Meet your needs with appropriate actions, like asking for help, creating emotional rest, or practicing self-compassion.

3. Shift your mindset from “fixing” yourself to learning from your experiences.

With time, these steps can help you achieve true freedom with food—no white-knuckling required.

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Transcript

Philip Pape: 0:01

If you've been fighting food for what feels like forever, tracking, measuring, following rules, only to fall off track again and again, and you're exhausted from food being the project in your life, this episode is for you. Today, we are discussing how the real battle isn't about food at all. It's about something much, much deeper. You'll discover why what you've tried in the past has not worked and how to finally move to a place that's less lonely and isolating and much more confident when it comes to your eating habits, so you can finally attain that freedom with food. Welcome to Wits and Weights, the podcast that blends evidence and engineering to help you build smart, efficient systems to achieve your dream physique. I'm your host, philip Pape, and today we are daring to discuss the deeper roots of food consistency with Ali Shapiro.

Philip Pape: 0:57

Now, ali is a rebel with a serious cause, a pioneer in integrative health, the creator of Truce with Food, and she's the host of the top-ranked Insatiable podcast. Go, give that a follow. I think she's going to have me on soon, so follow that podcast. She has spent over a decade helping clients break free from the cycle of dieting frustration, burnout, not to mention the challenge that we face in the industry with the medical system, diet, culture, body positivity, movements and she does that in her own unique way. And what I love about Allie's approach is how she goes way past those surface level ideas and the motivational memes about consistency and she instead helps solve the emotional and psychological roots of why we fall off track. So today you're going to learn why food battles are actually safety battles, how to identify your hidden eating triggers and a practical path to food freedom that doesn't require white knuckling your way with an unsustainable solution. Allie, thank you so much for coming on the show.

Ali Shapiro: 1:57

Thanks for having me, philip, this is going to be good.

Philip Pape: 2:00

It's going to be awesome. Yeah, the stuff that you talk about with food safety and the relationship with food is super interesting and I think a lot of people listening they struggle with these different thoughts that they have. Right, somebody might say you know, I just can't stop eating, or I have no discipline around food, or it might be very narrow and topic, like I can't help but eat those Hershey kisses every time I see them, right, right. So I mean, so how do you actually? You know, we know it's not about food. I think is where we're going to get to in this conversation. They're telling you something else. So in your words, you've mentioned something about the relationship with safety being part of that. What do you mean by that?

Ali Shapiro: 2:38

Yeah, and I love that we want to define our terms, because safety could be a lot of things, right? Let me start with the food as an example, because it can be about the food and you talk about this a lot on Wits and Weights. So if you think about like, you're sometimes having thoughts of like oh my God, I need I don't know a burger or something, right that might be. Your body feels physically unsafe because your blood sugar isn't balanced right. It's like you don't have enough protein, right, and so that food noise is driven by your body saying I am unsafe. I may have the calories, but I don't have the nutrition I need, right.

Ali Shapiro: 3:12

So I think- True hunger true hunger, yes, physical hunger, true hunger, right. So I look at everything through this lens of safety. What most people, if we go out one ring, if we're looking at like safety rings, like I think of like physical, emotional, spiritual, right, but emotional is kind of in between that and all of us have this deep primal need to basically feel at home in the world, right, feel at home in our bodies, feel at home when we're at home with our families, feel at home at work in a way that we feel we can contribute. So I think we can think of emotion as safety, as like abstractly kind of feeling at home, but on a biological level we also need to feel, we also need to know that we have that safety.

Ali Shapiro: 3:58

So, even though in America we kind of have this highly individualistic like and I'm all for personal responsibility, this is about holding the end and we need each other. And so one of the really interesting things that you know wasn't available to Maslow when he was creating his hierarchy of needs that neuroscience has now proven is that the sense of belonging is more important than even having your basic needs met, and that's because we can think about safety as when you're a child, right, you need someone to care about you to get your basic needs met right the caretaker, feeling at home and being at home with that caretaker and again, there's lots of variations in that definition but you need someone to care about you enough that they're going to get you to where you can be self-sufficient. But still, even as adults, we still have a need to have other people and feel like we have our place in the world and that we can contribute. And so that's what I mean by feeling a sense of safety.

Philip Pape: 5:01

Yeah, that's a very it's a profound and almost mind-blowing place to flip the idea of the you mentioned Maslow's hierarchy of needs and saying that we are social creatures. You have no argument for me on that at all. I used to be a very much like independent cause, like it's we're all you know, in my idealistic youth right, it's all me. But I've come to realize through family and friends and business and life and also, like you said, biology and what we've learned about evolution, that we wouldn't be humans without depending on each other. For that, I mean, babies are helpless for the first few months of their life because they're able to survive with humans.

Philip Pape: 5:35

So your work then proposes that this food noise gets louder because we are feeling separate or feeling alone. And I think you even talk about the physiological piece of that, like the stimulants or the attachment chemicals in our brain, I believe. So I mean let's keep going down that thread, just so people understand, okay, what exactly is happening. And we're not talking about physical hunger, we're talking about what do you call it? Physiological or psychological, emotional hunger.

Ali Shapiro: 6:03

Yeah, I mean, I would say it's emotional hunger, like it's the metaphor, the metaphor of hunger, right, cause our body doesn't speak in language, it speaks in metaphor.

Philip Pape: 6:12

I mean that's good, stop Hold on A metaphor of hunger. Okay, this is great. A client in my recently went back and forth Cause I was saying let's address your hunger, and she's like it's not hunger. It's not hunger, it's cravings. I'm like oh, I see what you're getting at and I think this is part of the thing we want to clear up with terminology is that hunger is like not just food hunger, it's hunger for many other things.

Ali Shapiro: 6:32

Yes, yes, and you can. I mean, I've sometimes call it phantom hunger, but I think it's also realizing that, yes, hunger is a metaphor, right, and so once you know your blood sugars, balance, your gut health, your strength, like, you got all the physical safety Right and you're still having that food noise. So an example I'll give you a couple of food examples of how people, when that food noise, when it's an emotional food noise, right, and these are come straight from client examples. Right, I was with, I was just starting with the client and she's like OK, so I'm all or nothing. And I don't really. I think all or nothing is that's a whole other podcast. But I was like okay, so when do you get into your nothing phase where you're like chuck it, f it, right.

Ali Shapiro: 7:13

And she's like well, like I'll be eating really healthy, and then my, my kids want to go to Chick-fil-A and we're rushed and it's convenient and easy, and so I will just be like, okay, I'm going to just eat this for this lunch, and then the whole day is ruined, right, and what we were able to parse out is that she actually has a story that her needs are inconvenience.

Ali Shapiro: 7:34

She's like I've been told I've been in inconvenience, like my whole life, right, and so it's like okay. So in that moment she didn't even know that she had needs, right. It was just like, oh, I want it to be easy, I have this food noise. This is the most easy path to that, because feeling our emotions actually requires space and time, because so many of us are going going, going. But that's an example of and it's unconscious, not because it's deep and dark, but just because you're going on automatic pilot. But she had a need there to feel like I want to eat something healthy, but she thought that was in conflict with what her kids wanted and she didn't want to be an inconvenience there.

Philip Pape: 8:15

Okay, I see she didn't want to be an inconvenience herself too. Isn't it funny how we separate our kids from ourselves sometimes like that, unconsciously or not.

Ali Shapiro: 8:24

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so it's like, okay, we need to work on, like how is this not like a being health, eating healthy is all on you, like you have to carry the family that way, like because when we're often in all or nothing, we we think we're in, things are there's a conflict between our needs and everyone else being happy. So that's like the safety right? Oh, if people are happy and they get their way, then I'm still going to be included. Here is kind of the assumption in that particular case. So there was a need to want to eat healthy, but there was also a competing need, the perception of being an inconvenience, and obviously you can reconcile both of those once you understand what's happening. But that's one example of emotional safety.

Philip Pape: 9:07

Yeah, and how? How did you uncover that? Like, how does someone listening uncover that? Obviously, we're all we're always going to say go talk to Allie, you know she's a great coach join her program and all. But in reality, you know, people want to understand. What are the tools here, what are the strategies for doing that?

Ali Shapiro: 9:25

Yeah Well, I think the first thing is to realize that when you have phantom hunger hunger that's not physical the go-to knee-jerk reaction is to beat yourself up to be like, oh, I told myself I wasn't eating the Hershey's today, why am I? I can already see myself going home and eating them. Or if they're at your co-worker's desk, I don't know, do people work in person anymore? It's true? It's true, the bulls are there. Yes, you're still there all these years later. I knew they were there when I was in corporate.

Ali Shapiro: 9:50

So the first thing is just to say, like, why does this make sense? So, rather than beating ourselves up because you were talking earlier about that physiological need for safety, and so what you were talking about is what Dr Deborah McNamara talks about in her book Nourish. She's a child developmental psychologist, but she talks about how food stimulates attachment chemicals, but it doesn't give us the deeper belonging that we actually need. So from the time we're born, right, food gets coupled with someone cares about you. So as adults, we turn to the food. We feel like someone cares about us, but we don't actually have the support of the. It's not a caretaker when you're an adult, but it's people that care about you, including yourself, advocating for your needs. So that's why you have to say first of all, why does this make sense? Like on a primal level, I need to feel this emotional safety and it's my hunger. This emotional hunger, as a metaphor, is pointing me to the fact that I do not have it Like that is all that's telling you. It's a symptom, not the problem.

Philip Pape: 10:57

And do you? What is your opinion on the idea that there are different angles of attack for this right and there are different tribes and camps and I know how you're big, like me, you are skeptical of anybody who goes all in one direction but there's the idea that we can use tools and strategies to process our way through, In other words, not necessarily have to uncover the root cause, just find something that helps us move forward and then maybe it eventually resolves the issue, versus going all in on the psychology side, uncovering your deepest, darkest secrets from when you were a child, to like figure it all out, right, Like a therapist. Like what is your thought on that spectrum? Do you know what I'm asking? When it comes to like like you could just change your environment that's a common strategy that's talked about. Right, Like change your kitchen environment and put food where you don't see it, and like those strategies you know what I'm saying and they can help people without always understanding the trigger fully, and I think you need both. It depends, but I'm curious on your thoughts.

Ali Shapiro: 11:58

Yeah, that was gonna be my answer. I think if someone's new to all of this, they should try that, and Someone's new to all of this they should try that. And if it works, my clients have tend to be overwhelmed by all of that. They've tried it and I think of like, for example, some of my clients had food insecurity as a kid Right and so them not having food in the house makes them feel emotionally unsafe. It's like I even though I know logically and this actually I had I actually had a couple of clients who were cruising and then COVID came and they just needed one spot session because they were like, why is this food noise back?

Ali Shapiro: 12:28

Like I have not had this for years. And I was like what feels hard about it? Like that's the next question, what feels hard about right now? And it was like, oh my God, there's supply chain issues. I can't get all the food I need. I'm. I am back to being eight years old again and not knowing if we were going to be able to eat at night, and so these.

Ali Shapiro: 12:46

I think what ends up happening is we give people these blanket prescriptions, not knowing like what does that trigger Cause, even if you change your environment. Even if you do all of this stuff, you still have to be with other people, you still need to interact with people, and so it's, you know, and I, for example, I also had one client. She was trying to do mindful eating, okay, and we were actually working on her feeling really alone and isolated in her life and she had friends around her and all this stuff, but she, there was still stuff that she didn't, she didn't realize she wasn't bringing like her full self to her relationships, right, and so she ended up feeling quite alone, even though she was around other people who liked her and cared about her, and she was like, you know, I've tried the mindful eating stuff. I know I'm not supposed to listen to podcasts, I know I'm supposed to breathe and she's like, but when I do that it's so apparent how alone I am.

Philip Pape: 13:38

Like yes, cause it's now she's, so she's just with her own thoughts. She's even more alone.

Ali Shapiro: 13:42

Okay, interesting, I was like, turn on the podcast. Like, like, you know, like, like that's not, and I think cause you're an engineer, you'll appreciate there's. There's like a sequence over strategy, right, like, okay, all of these strategies will work at some point at potentially for you, but what is the sequence that it makes sense?

Ali Shapiro: 13:59

right so if someone is. You know, I have a lot of clients who have, like you know, hashimoto's or maybe on the pre-diabetic track or something right, like if you may need to stabilize yourself physically, um, but if you've already tried that and it's like I know what to do but I can't do it, um, you know, maybe I need to look at more the psychology. And I would also say and I know that you know it's both camps, but we know what stress this the way that I look at it is like this is whenever you're working on the physiology, you're also working on your psychology, and whenever you're working on your psychology yeah, it's just like an infinity feedback loop.

Ali Shapiro: 14:36

So it's like, oh, the psychology I was going to say is also realizing that so much of our safety is in our body. So it's like these emotional needs generate our thoughts. So I don't, I'm not, I'm. I do more developmental psychology where I'm like, I'm not concerned about all of these thoughts going on. We need to look at the deeper need that makes you think you're, you're trying to be good in your thoughts, but it's driven by a need that needs you to question if that's really the good thing to do.

Philip Pape: 15:04

Right, so like, for example, okay, yeah, no, no, you please, please, yeah.

Ali Shapiro: 15:10

So, for example, um, one of my clients, she would find herself, you know, before going out to eat. This was before we started working together. She's like I will go, look at the menu and I will know what I want to do, I want to make the healthy choice. And then I get there and I am just like, go with the flow I'm going to order, you know.

Ali Shapiro: 15:30

And it's like what is happening and it's like, oh, she was feeling high maintenance, like when we actually got to it right, it was like she thought the good thing was to be easygoing and eat with everyone else she felt judged or whatever, for being too prepared or something, yeah.

Ali Shapiro: 15:47

Well, the perception and this was based on the past, again, it wasn't deep dark into her childhood. It was just like, oh, my family judged picky eaters right, and so it's like, if I didn't know that I'm putting that on my friends now, which, when I so, then we have her try. It's like, okay, that's a small risk. Next time just say you know what, I'm good, I'm going to order this, like what happens? And it's like, oh, nothing happened In fact. Like it opened up this great conversation about oh, I know this is embarrassing, but I used to feel pressured to eat with all of you guys. And then it opened up this big, deeper conversation, generated more emotional safety about, like you can totally eat what you want. I sometimes feel pressure the next time a couple other of her friends ate order different.

Ali Shapiro: 16:32

And so what's often happening with our perception is we're always bringing the past to the present, right, like all of us. So we're often thinking like the good thing was to just go with the flow, be low maintenance, don't be a burden, and what the task of developmental psychology as adults is to say wait a second. This is what I learned and it's not my work is, even though maybe we will touch on the hard things that happened in childhood. It's really about the cultural conditioning of what everyone thinks is normal. That is good or bad, right, and so it's like that's like normal. The more you do this work, the more you're like normal is bad shit, crazy, but we keep going along.

Philip Pape: 17:16

Yeah, yeah, no, I, I. You hit me so hard there. The cultural cause I was thinking, even thinking of alcohol and like the more extreme things that we rationalize to some nth degree. And it wouldn't make any sense if an alien came to our planet and said what are you doing to yourself? What are you guys doing? It's part of our culture, it's our conditioning, and there's behavioral psychology, there's social psychology and learned behavior. So I think the average person, if they could know more about what you're saying and kind of be just open to it and aware of it, will help maybe interrupt some of those patterns and issue just from the awareness.

Philip Pape: 17:49

Here's my maybe this is a deeper question, or maybe not. Why are we even talking about this? And what I mean by that is why is food itself the thing? Like? Many of your clients are probably just like mine. They're highly independent, they're intelligent, they're disciplined, they're high achievers, they're successful in a lot of things. Why do they struggle with food? I mean and we're talking everybody, like it's almost everybody has some struggle with this. Is it because it's your area of expertise and we're talking about it, or is it literally come to the top of the list because it's something we do, we need every day, as humans, like. What are your thoughts on?

Ali Shapiro: 18:20

that. I love that. You asked that because I'm out in the wild and people are like what do you do? Like the easiest way is to be like I help people who want to eat, eat and be healthy do it. And they can't. And they're like isn't that all of America? And I'm like, I'm like, yeah, I'm like, yeah.

Ali Shapiro: 18:42

But I think it comes down to like nature really designed food to be communal and to help us. Like, if you think about um, like it helped us. If we think about belonging, even if we go out to the original belonging is belonging to the land, right. Like food helps orient us. That's a form of safety, like here's the season you're in, right, here's how to take care of your body.

Ali Shapiro: 19:00

And I think about food being the most intimate relationship we have, like what we eat literally becomes our blood, our bones. Like you can't get more intimate than that. And so I think between that, we feel healthier when we feel rooted into place. We feel healthier when we're rooted into family, into community. And again, I'm pulling from some of Dr Deborah McNamara's book nourish, but she talks about like nature, creating this exquisite design of how you know, mealtime is really about. Like I said before, feeling our feelings requires space and safety, and it's like mealtime is often the chance to like, slow down and feel these feelings and then you have the food as like almost what can't be said right, like if, when I think about when people pass away, what do people do to show you that they're there for you?

Ali Shapiro: 19:53

They, they bring a casserole, they bring you know, and it's so to me it's just like nature. Quote unquote comfort food isn't bad, it's necessary. It's when we're turning to comfort for something that it can't.

Philip Pape: 20:08

It can't fulfill. Yeah, it can't fulfill. Satisfy it can't satisfy. You're insatiable. There you go, yeah, yeah, dr.

Ali Shapiro: 20:13

Gordon Newfield says there's. Who is Dr McNamara's mentor? He says there's nothing as addictive as something that almost works, and it's like the food almost works, but it's the, it's the care that's in in constant, that that is what we really need. And so and I think in our culture that has a lot of food issues I don't think we have a lot of communal care. You're expected to do everything yourself.

Philip Pape: 20:38

The care ensconced in food and the experience of food is what we need. I love that. I like the word ensconce too, but I don't know where that came from.

Philip Pape: 20:47

It's great. I know it's so poetic, right. Like this is great. Yeah, so many things come to mind, like just humanity and culture and religion as well, Like people, different religions and how food is a central part of that, and like we don't want to deny those things. We don't want to like. What you're implying here is that there is a, there can be absolutely a comfort and enjoyment of food, and I've seen people post comments to when I've said that before. I'm like if you can enjoy your food, if it satisfies you and you can eat it without guilt, like that's a great place to be. Oh, you shouldn't enjoy food, or food is fuel. Like. What are your thoughts of those? Are those like you know?

Ali Shapiro: 21:22

food is fuel.

Philip Pape: 21:23

You shouldn't enjoy food, yeah.

Ali Shapiro: 21:24

Yeah, I mean, I think it's and right, it is fuel. And again when we think about you. Know, the Surgeon General said loneliness is more dangerous than smoking right or longevity and health right, yeah, yeah.

Ali Shapiro: 21:37

And we're in a culture that loves to measure and quantify it, and I love numbers and all that stuff and they, I think, the best things in life. You can't always quantify. Like you know, you, you have kids. It's like, oh my God, I saw that dance recital. It's like, how do you quantify that, that feeling of pride of seeing your kid like nail something after struggling with it, or even in yourself, right Like it, even at the gym? Like it's like when I can, can just get like even like one pound more on the squat rack. It's like it. Yes, I know I've done better because of the one pound, but it's like it's the, the strength and the courage that ultimately is like what makes, I think, life worth meaning. So I think food can be fuel and I think we need. If you're struggling with it or if you, if you, I would just I think of food as a metaphor. So I'd be really interested with someone who thinks it's only fuel. Like what, what are you missing out on that you don't think you're missing out on? Yeah.

Philip Pape: 22:34

Oh, for sure, For sure. And I joke all the time on my podcast how I'm like kind of a foodie and my wife and I are very different. Like she, she can basically eat anything and it does. It kind of all tastes the same to her. I mean she admits that's just her how her taste buds are, you know, there's like two super tasters and whatnot. She, she, appreciates really good food, but I I'm at the next level, like I could tell you what ingredients are in there or not in there. You know this needs more of this, needs more of that. So there is a fun connection and I like how you tied it to how we feel when we accomplish things or when we're in the gym or whatever, because it's so central to the human experience.

Ali Shapiro: 23:06

Well, I was going to go back to one level deeper too, because this is, I mean, this is the spiritual level. But depending on your beliefs, I mean I think God is part of the earth, right, so it's like it's almost also this, like spiritual right and, like you said, all religious traditions, right, revolve around food and the symbolism there. So we can also look at, you know, it is like us, like the universe, right, it's like commuting with that like right. And when you're like I often say to clients, like when have cause, sometimes people will come to me like I struggle with portion control and I'm like, well, tell me a time where portion control was easy.

Ali Shapiro: 23:44

And it's like, oh, when I went to my family's and we make this thing, let's call it sourdough bread. I don't know, that's probably because I just was on Instagram Everyone makes sourdough bread Like, oh my God, it takes so long, but we all do it together and it's like, oh my God, that spiritual experience of being with others and having you know, and just like that is like the nourishment that we really want. And so I also think it's just food is spiritual, for how I I think of the earth and what it provides as part of that spiritual energy that that has created all of this.

Philip Pape: 24:19

Yeah, and if and if I were to connect that for people who are not as spiritual and that's cool I would say that food making food is one of the last primal things we do like, other than sex. Right, it's making food and that, like we don't build our own houses I mean, most of us don't I built a little bit of my house, but that I would never do that again. But you know, we don't build it Like we don't build shelter, we don't hunt for our food even, or we don't do all the primal things. So maybe it's just like a vestige of what's left from our primal, you know nature yeah.

Philip Pape: 24:51

As we're on the internet talking on a podcast. So it's pretty cool. It's pretty cool, it's holding the end.

Ali Shapiro: 24:55

It's holding the end. Yeah, it's holding the end.

Philip Pape: 24:57

I like that holding the end to your partner.

Ali Shapiro: 25:03

Yeah, yes, Say what they said, and.

Philip Pape: 25:05

Conan O'Brien's really good at that. His podcast, what's it called? Conan Meets a Friend One of the best podcasts ever.

Ali Shapiro: 25:12

I really liked him. Why did the nightly show with him not work out? That feels like forever ago, but I was really-.

Philip Pape: 25:18

I think he's driving now though on the podcast, you should check it out.

Philip Pape: 25:23

Yeah, it's okay. So I guess, going back to um, see, I always have a bunch of questions and notes that I'd never get to, which is cool, so okay. So, handling stress and the alone, the loneliness of all of this, and then tying that to falling off track with food, where do we want to take it to? What's the next step? Right, so now we've, we understand there's the psychology of it. I understand why food is maybe important on both sides of it. Talk about the loneliness and the stress and handling that and falling off track, because ultimately we want to get back on track, or maybe it's not even a track Like maybe we should talk about. Is there really even a track? Is that a faulty premise? I don't know.

Ali Shapiro: 25:59

I freaking love that you asked that question, because of course, I use that in my marketing, because that's right, but there isn't a track. If you know how to learn from what's happening, it's all the same. You know, and this is I mean. This comes down to religion as well Like, but I mean well, there's certain spiritual traditions that believe like, everything's welcome, it's not a problem, right To try to like right. But in America we believe you have to earn your goodness. So it's like falling off track is bad versus like.

Ali Shapiro: 26:25

Why does this make sense? Why? What can I learn from this? And so I think, if people and I love that you use the word alone, because that is you know, and especially for people listening you know that you feel alone if you're secret eating right Like that's what I tell clients Like, your food is always telling you what your needs are in a metaphor. So a lot of my clients, for example, will like after their kids, like their, their, like their kids are melting down or something they just like escape to the pantry and it's like secret eating Okay.

Ali Shapiro: 26:56

Secret eating yeah, yeah, I got it. Or waiting till everyone's alone. You're doing it in your car at night, whatever. That's a symbol or that's a symptom, symbol, metaphor, whatever you want to say that you're feeling unsupported somehow in your life, so kind of the. And I'm gonna give you these steps and knowing that this can be hard, because often the emotions are so overwhelming that you may have to ask yourself this three or four days after the fact.

Ali Shapiro: 27:17

So in Truths, with Food, I always wait. I always tell people like in the beginning. It's kind of like we're just saying like can we catch this after the fact? Not till you're like two or three months in. Are you going to be able to like catch yourself in the moment, because these needs the more we restrict these emotional needs, kind of like, the more you restrict your hunger, then they come back even more in terms of that kind of unnameable energy that causes people to turn to food. So why does this make sense?

Ali Shapiro: 27:45

And then, when the food noise is happening, right, like if you're my client who was like in the pantry, right With her after, like her kid, like hiding from her kids, right, it's like what feels hard about this, right, and if, again. If you're also eating alone, you might want to say it may not be about what just happened the day, like the moment you left work and now you're in your car. It may. It may be something that happened, but because our emotions take space to like actually feel an unfurl, it's not going to be like this happened and then this, and then the food noise happened. It's going to be like once I act although for many of my clients the food noise is just a constant hum, right, it's like it's like a rock in their shoe.

Philip Pape: 28:24

So it's like it's all the time, which could make it even harder to tie it to the thing, which is why we need to dig in here.

Ali Shapiro: 28:31

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I think saying like, what, what feels hard about this, right, and it's like I feel alone in parenting, right, I feel alone. I'm trying to think of a recent you know, yeah, I feel alone with my family trying to eat healthy, right, I feel alone. Um, I'm trying to think. When I struggled with food, I felt, um, my corporate job was like, um, my corporate job was like stressful but boring. I don't know if that makes sense.

Philip Pape: 28:58

I totally understand that. Yeah, yeah.

Ali Shapiro: 29:00

And like, and I again, I was in my early twenties but I had had cancer at 13 and I was like, why am I wasting my time? I don't this feels so hard to like do be spending my all my time, and I don't know what I want to do, and you know. So it's like I felt really and a lot of my friends were like really into climbing the corporate ladder, which I get, but I was just like. That's just not like. You know, you didn't have a purpose.

Ali Shapiro: 29:28

Yeah, like for me that just did not seem enticing you know, I mean, and I was in a competitive corporate job and I was doing that, but I was like this sucks. And again I have friends who love that right, like I love corporate. But it made me feel even more alone because again, having cancer at 13, it sets you on a just a different existential track, let's put it that way. So you want to ask yourself what feels really hard about this and then you want to try to unearth the need that's within that difficulty, right? And there's one of the intermediary steps that you can ask yourself what feels hard about this. You can say what's at the tail end of my food noise? And tail stands for T, a, I, l, and this will help you identify the underlying kind of state of being. So T is for tired, right? So a lot of my clients who are at the end of the night, they're like I deserve this.

Ali Shapiro: 30:19

And it's like why does it make sense? I'm exhausted, I've had no fulfillment all day. It's you know, get up, get the kids work, get home, get the kids, and now it's like this is the only reward.

Philip Pape: 30:33

And it could happen at 3 pm in the afternoon too, right oh?

Ali Shapiro: 30:36

yeah.

Philip Pape: 30:38

Yes, I've heard it all.

Ali Shapiro: 30:39

Yeah, well, and if you're going through perimenopause or menopause and have like sleep issues, you know it could be like first thing in the morning and so T is tired, a is anxious and this is uncertainty and this is uncertainty from the outside. So I don't know about you, but I know a lot of. I had a lot of clients drug come to me during COVID, right, covid was like this uncertain time, like what is happening? How long is lockdown? What are people are sick? I should I go outside, Right? So that uncertainty. We saw alcohol and food consumption like skyrocket, right. Our public health went down considerably, right, not to mention like kids' mental health. So anxiousness is like uncertainty from the outside.

Ali Shapiro: 31:21

Then the I is inadequacy and that is when we're wondering is it me Like? I had a client who introduced with food? It was awesome, she was able to interrupt the cycle because she went to a new job and she was like learning all the systems and everything, but she accidentally did like the wrong project and she's like it made me feel so inadequate and she's like my old way of being would have been like okay, you're going to work and you're going to fix it and then you're going to eat because this sucks. While you're doing this, she's like what I started to do is like I'm going to tell my boss, like you know and, and, but she, so she had to. She felt inadequate. But I was like, are you really inadequate or are you new to the job? You know? So it's like you need someone to be like oh, I have this need for an extension of time and the boss was like, yeah, but I definitely need it by Wednesday.

Philip Pape: 32:13

Let's make sure that you understand, you know, and it was like, oh, my God, you can do that you know she was like, it was probably a big relief.

Ali Shapiro: 32:15

Yeah, yeah, yeah. But when we're feeling inadequate, we're like it's me, not the environment or the contextual, the specifics of the circumstance. And then, last one is that loneliness of like. I just feel separate from here in some way. I feel alone. Often a way that you know that you're having that lonely trigger is you're like if I was thinner, this would not be happening, right? That's a common way of kind of offloading the sense of aloneness of you know, I would. I would be dating now. If I was thinner, I would have already asked for that promotion, if I felt more confident in my body and all of that stuff. Again, holding the end can help and you don't have to wait for that. You can start working on the skills you need to get better communication in relationships or what is the path to the promotion and who do you have to talk to? So those are the triggers of like, when you can say why does this make sense? What's at the tail end of this? And then there's needs within each of those triggers.

Philip Pape: 33:12

Yeah, love it. I love frameworks like that. No, this is really good and I know we could do multiple episodes about each one of these, but I like having that framework where it's definitely not just one thing and we oversimplify it sometimes, and we talked earlier you can't just patch it or bandaid it with a tool or one size fits all like here.

Ali Shapiro: 33:34

Here are the tips for how to blah, blah, blah Right Um, but you can use a framework right. Framework gives you agency.

Philip Pape: 33:37

So yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah for sure, and it and it's nuanced and it gives you options to kind of dig into each of these. And, as you were saying that, I was thinking, oh yeah, interesting, thinking about my past, where I struggled for like 20 years with food and and I always thought it was a very different way than others. And that's true because we all, we all, get there in different ways. Inadequacy is an interesting one, right that? I assume that's uncertainty from the inside, cause you said, anxiety is uncertainty from the outside, right, self-doubt is an easier way of saying it. Self-doubt is an easier way of saying it Self-doubt.

Philip Pape: 34:07

And I like the example you gave, because there are I bet anybody listening can imagine can think almost every day a situation where you screwed up or did something, or maybe somebody gave you a disappointing answer, right, like I wanted to do this collaboration with another podcaster. His PR person's like said no, he's not interested. And immediately you think, okay, it's me right, like there's something wrong with me. And of course, you could ask, you could say, oh, can you help me understand why? But, like, 90% of the time, it's some other situation that has nothing to do with you. At the same time, I like your thought of nothing is bad, everything is. You should be curious, right, Be curious and look at it as a way to learn, even if it is something you did, I mean sometimes a way to learn, even if it is something you did.

Ali Shapiro: 34:49

I mean, sometimes there is that so Well, and what happens is, like when we struggle with food, it wears away at our self-trust a lot. And so what ends up happening is, if we don't ask those questions like what could I do? Or I love that podcaster example, Like oh, why did I? I remember pitching someone that I was friends with, like friendly, you know how it is, and like I heard nothing back and so I was like, look, I understand your platform is, like, you know, next to mine. If that's the issue, that's fine, I'm just following up. And she's like, no, let's do it. But it was like I mean, that's like a happy ending, but you know, you sometimes in this-.

Philip Pape: 35:21

But you stood in For a while, right, yeah, until you got that answer, yeah.

Ali Shapiro: 35:25

But what I'm saying is like, we have that inadequacy trigger will stay until we actually learn the skills of like. So if someone said, if they were like, look, it was great, it's just bad timing and they're going to have an opening in September, it's like okay. Or if they were like I mean, you're a podcaster, I get are horrible, I know yours would not be horrible. But like, if you're someone who keeps getting denied, it's not that it's you, it's the skillset that you can learn. Right To like okay, you need to get better at pitching, otherwise you're going to keep thinking it's you rather than realizing. So that's part of like the work, as well as like all, right, I have this need, I want to be on this podcast, and it's like okay, let's work backwards and figure out because you're capable, right, you can. Yes, yes, sounds like criticism, but now, okay, I know that we're kind of running out of time, but tell me about like, what were the 20 years? Like, what was going on for you, if you think of that break?

Philip Pape: 36:17

Yeah, I mean I I don't get. It's not a big dramatic story, to be honest. Uh, but you know, from from the time I got out of college to when I was about 40, I just didn't know how to eat or train or anything, and so I was constantly dieting and yo-yoing and all of that. But when you mentioned things like eating in secret because I definitely have clients that deal with that and I've thought of my own times in the past doing that, eating in a car or when I was in my 20s and there was relationship issues I would like go to friendlies and buy like this huge chocolate fudge sundae and then just like eat it in my bedroom. You know what I mean and stuff like that, which I couldn't imagine doing now. But you know what. It took a lot of learning about yourself and right and that empathy, that like self-empathy, and tools and practice and falling in your face over and over to like figure it out.

Ali Shapiro: 37:13

So yeah, but can you see, isn't it interesting? Friendlies and relationship issues, doesn't that make sense? It's like, okay, it makes sense because you I don't know what the relationship issue was, but like, let's just say you wanted to be in a relationship or you had a fight, or whatever. It's like, oh my God, I'm feeling alone in this. So it's like the food gives me the attachment.

Philip Pape: 37:27

Exactly.

Ali Shapiro: 37:28

Can you see how?

Philip Pape: 37:29

like that oh for sure, for sure, it lines up.

Ali Shapiro: 37:35

I just I appreciate you sharing because I think everyone listening should ask themselves, like when was food easy for me and when was it hard for me? And you will probably see this theme because once you see it you can't unsee it, but it takes kind of a while because it's invisible, right?

Philip Pape: 37:48

It is, it is and you you can I mean as coaches you can kind of see pretty quickly in talking to someone that maybe they're they're on one side of that precipice or another. Right Like you, can I mean unless, unless they're putting on you know, a bold face, right Like some people might do initially, until you really learn who they are deep, deeper down. But, um, yeah, you can tell in people's language sometimes, like this is not really an issue. Let's focus on the facts and let's get our through our goal and others are like, well, I keep falling back off track on this thing. So now that you asked about me, I actually want to ask about you, cause you mentioned, I know, your history of an early cancer diagnosis. I know you've talked about that on your podcast as well. I mean, where does all this come from and this desire to help people do this? Because I imagine it's from a deep place for you.

Ali Shapiro: 38:34

Yeah, yeah, I mean I started struggling with my weight like probably when I was around oh my God, I'm so bad with like ages but probably like seven or eight, and at the time I didn't understand, like what I know now with my functional medicine. Background is like I had been exposed to pesticides a couple like right before that and I have like an overactive immune system, I mean, based on type of cancer I had, that's what it was. But I started to gain weight around eight or nine years old and I think it was from the inflammation, from the pesticide exposure Cause. I was an active kid, like we ate. My dad was a health and phys ed teacher. My mom grew up on a quote unquote organic farm. They didn't call it organic at the time. It was just like my grandma was all about nutrition, like she believed in that. Like in the forties she was so progressive and so we ate really healthfully and everything.

Ali Shapiro: 39:25

And I just started to gain weight and I tried to do Do you remember Richard Simmons? Oh, yeah, yeah, I tried Weight Watchers at 11. But what had happened in between? That is, I had been bullied in fifth grade and I think and my parents I mean you and I are around, I think the same age, the 80s and 90s people, just I'm only 25, just so you know, just kidding.

Philip Pape: 39:46

No, I'm just kidding, I'm 44.

Ali Shapiro: 39:48

So I'm like a couple of years older than you, but it was like no one has done feelings, you know, until recently. So it was just, and I think I was like so ashamed, like I could have told my parents, but I didn't. And so that's when I would start coming home and eating bagels, like my parents were city school teachers we didn't have bagels in the suburbs yet this is how long ago that was and so there would be these like cinnamon raisin bagels, and I would just come home and be so. I mean, it's called an emotional immune system, which is basically your belonging system but it was so alarmed that it was like, because I had been ostracized right From all of these girls, that was like those bagels saved my life. I mean, they then caused me to gain weight and like then feel even more ostracized and then, yeah, then I got, you know, obviously, went through cancer at 13 and lost a ton of weight and was like the thinnest that I had ever been, and because it was still the early nineties like not a lot of difference of media, I had still internalized that health equals thinness only, and so it felt like there was all this pressure to stay thin, to not, you know, not have a relapse, that.

Ali Shapiro: 40:54

And then when I was in high school, high school I could outrun my eating, like I got up every morning, like you know I mean I was I ran a lot Like I definitely was like, okay, and you get attention, you know, from for me, for from boys, it was like, oh, this is amazing, you know. But then when I went to college which again was that uncertainty trigger, even though I was really excited to go, I was a smart kid, like it wasn't academically challenging, it was just, oh, my God, this is different. It was like I started my emotional eating, started to turn more into binging and stuff like that, and so that that's like a brief, you know history of of my background. But yeah, no, this is.

Ali Shapiro: 41:32

And again, when I found functional medicine in my early twenties and was able to reverse my depression, my IBS, all of this stuff, and lose 15 pounds, but then I couldn't keep it up when I was stressed, I'm like no one has more incentive to be healthy than a cancer survivor, and I know this stuff now that food can be medicine, not just calories, and I was like there has to be more to this, because I'm pretty disciplined, so that's kind of how I came to it and I just you know this, I mean being. I love what you do because you can be with the nuance, but the default narratives in this industry are just like so outdated. And it's like come on, people like let's update our software here, you know.

Lisa: 42:12

Hi, my name is Lisa and I'd like to give a big shout out to my nutrition coach, philip Pate. 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 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 hunker guide and that really helped me. So thank you, willow.

Philip Pape: 42:55

I get the sense. You know I don't want to generalize, but I get the sense that people, once they learn a little bit of information, they're experts, right, you know what?

Philip Pape: 43:02

I'm saying, oh yeah yeah, and I mean maybe we all do it. I'm sure I do it as well. I try not to. I was having a text chat with a friend of mine lifting buddy, and we were saying how both of us had had mentors early on that taught us the value of humility and like asking stupid questions, like asking. And I told him I had a, a boss of mine, maybe 15 years ago, who knew, you know, he had 20 years of experience and he would always go into a new project asking questions like a third grader Like I initially was shocked because he would ask questions that I would, I feel like other people would feel embarrassed to ask.

Philip Pape: 43:35

But then you realize everybody else wanted to ask the same question. You could tell Cause they're like oh, I'm glad he asked that and and and. That's how he would just learn really fast. So why did I bring that up? Because, oh, we're talking about the industry and I think there has to be that curiosity and openness that you don't know what you don't know, right, right, that's the hardest part. And even what you do know may be subject to change because you don't have all the facts or all the information. So the other cool thing is about you, allie, since we met. How did we meet? I don't know, it was through podcast pitching or something right, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Philip Pape: 44:26

But like I couldn't figure all this out till I was 40. And I did it in a different way than necessarily uncovering the emotional side. But when I speak to folks like you, who's an expert in this other realm, I love it because you're like you come on here and you teach me and the listener that there are just so many things that we can not that we have to be overwhelmed with, but that we have tools to the process with right To get through these like cause. I talk about data all the time and tracking and awareness, and I think there's a place for that. But some people have other trauma and things that they got to deal with um, unnamed energy or under what did you call it? You called it unnamed energy. Yeah, yeah, well.

Ali Shapiro: 45:06

I mean cause. Some clients call it automatic pilot. Some clients feel like they're like something voracious just comes over me and what it really is is their emotional immune system is so alarmed that they feel so unsupported or their needs are not being met. And there's no amount of like. I always tell clients you can do, you can, you can do all the morning routines, you can. You can have every hack available to you, but we have a primal need to have these caretaking needs met.

Philip Pape: 45:32

Yeah, Belonging yeah.

Ali Shapiro: 45:33

Yeah, yeah. So it's like I'm all about less is more. Self-care is being self-aware these days. Don't get me wrong. I have a sauna too. I mean, I'm not like a purist here.

Philip Pape: 45:46

No for sure, Self-care is being self-aware. No, I love that and it goes both ways. Yeah, absolutely so. When the belonging thing? So just to pull on that a little bit, when we talk about the tail method and understanding where these things come from, how do we then get to the trust that we want? That's the big question. A good way to maybe wrap up this segment today.

Ali Shapiro: 46:10

But I will say for people, I mean I'm not going to get into like the boring academic piece of why this happens, but when people can just start to identify those tail triggers, if they are like in in Truce with Food, we talk about seven inch, seven foot, 70 foot waves. If there's seven inch waves like, they're just like oh, I'm tired, that sometimes that's enough to be like this is, the more you do it, the more you're like oh, this isn't about the food, and so like, the more you can see that even that starts to restore self-trust. Because so many of my clients like I've tried everything right, if there was a solution out there, I would. I would have already known by now like it's, they really feel like they're broken in some way or they love food too much. That's that's also sometimes what people think.

Ali Shapiro: 46:50

So understanding, why does this make sense? What's at the tail end of this that can start, especially in those seven inch smaller stressful situations start to be like oh, so the needs are, when you're tired, you need rest and people think rest is just sleeping. No, there's physical rest, which is I mean, this is your wheelhouse, it's walk, it's walking non-exercise recovery yeah.

Ali Shapiro: 47:15

Yeah, non-exercise activity, thermogenesis, right, right. Neat activities, right, I mean I can't tell you how many of my clients I like gently suggest I'm like walking after meals, walking when you're stressed, walking to be more creative, and it's like once it's like all of us who are super competitive have dismissed walking because we're like it doesn't count, it's not fast, it's not intense, it's amazing. There's other kinds of rest and I'm pulling on I forget her name's work. This is someone's work who has identified these types of rest. But there's emotional rest, right, so hiring someone like you, or coming into Truce with Food, where you can have someone help you figure out what's going on, right, and so that's not all on you. So there's different kinds of rest that you can again, and I like focusing on needs because it offers flexibility, right, I mean some of my clients. I'm just thinking of one client. She's a partner in a law firm, you know, and she's on the 50th floor of the building and it's like so many of these ideas for, like she's like I get, you know, I bill every six minutes. I don't even have time to go down the elevator to the 50th floor, you know. I mean, well, now she's a partner, now she's not the same, but point being is you have to be able to find something that can fit your environment Right. So that's why focusing on needs enables flexibility with uncertainty or anxiousness is often how people can identify.

Ali Shapiro: 48:32

That is, you need to feel resourced. People think they need to feel in control. That's not true. You need to feel resourced in amongst that. So, like if you think about during COVID, you know, if you were someone struggling with with food, how could you have resourced yourself more? And that might mean, you know, I know we were like daycares, like there were no daycares, I just had a baby. It was like we never planned on having a nanny but we ended up having to get a nanny so that like we could both work and it was not the expense that you know we planned on paying, but it was like I don't know how long this is going to happen and my husband and I both work. So it was like you know, you have to find resourcing and resourcing can also be rest right. So some of these you know time resource Yep.

Ali Shapiro: 49:14

Yeah, yeah, but always plan for more time and energy than you think you're going to do when you have to resource.

Philip Pape: 49:18

Yeah, yeah, we were just. We were talking about your new program that you're launching and how like the amount of work that that creates. That you don't necessarily expect and now all of a sudden it's, it's blocks in your schedule you didn't account for and you're like, okay, now I need to move things around. But you have a really excellent, great way of communicating, ali. That I appreciate here. I hope the listeners do as well. Where? Just the way you put the emotional rest right there? That term, I'm going to be using that from now on. Honestly, it's a simple two words that I haven't quite heard people use that, but the fact that you need support and community and someone else to lean on is really, really important, because not only does it give you the emotional rest right, it gives you the extra. It's like you're borrowing their whole history and experience to be your partner in this thing and so then creates future emotional rest too, by accelerating your knowledge and your everything.

Ali Shapiro: 50:09

So, yeah, I just want to give credit. That is not my term. There's a woman I forget what her name is, I'm like totally blanking right now but she is the one who came up with seven types of rest. So I just want to make sure.

Philip Pape: 50:21

I wasn't saying you trademarked it or anything. It's like Kleenex, you know, like we. Just I think that's a problem.

Ali Shapiro: 50:25

Like I really think like you know, giving sourcing, rooting back from where the people who have contributed, because it's all a conversation. We're, all you know, having conversations together. So I just want to give her credit, but I feel like I'm. So If you Google seven types of rest, she has a TED Talk.

Philip Pape: 50:41

It will come up I'm going to do that Seven types of rest, because that again is a very nebulous topic when people talk about rest and recovery. You know, even when I try to do it.

Ali Shapiro: 50:52

It's like okay, creative rest different. There's active and passive, physical rest um emotional rest, and I'm forgetting um a couple of the other. Oh, sensory rest, okay.

Philip Pape: 51:01

Which you know, so I know I know what that is, without even having explained to me. I need some sensory rest, Not right now. This is actually a very rejuvenating conversation, so I and L for the needs as well. Uh, oh well, I, what do you mean from tail? Yeah, so I did T and a. Oh, you mean Cause we're revisiting it? Yes, please, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Ali Shapiro: 51:25

Um, so I is. When we're feeling inadequate, we need a compassionate witness, and this is important because I want to define it, because a compassionate witness isn't someone who's going to try to swoop in and fix it for you, right? So a lot of times when my clients are like, oh, I'm struggling with my food, and why did I fall off track, it's like they'll go to like the one person that knows they're struggling and they're like you're beautiful, don't worry about it. Or someone's like why?

Ali Shapiro: 51:49

are you still hung up on that, you know, and it's like, okay, you want someone who trusts that you can figure it out if you just have the space to like have a soft landing. So I just wanted to define that for people Cause, and that's why working with someone like you or me and Truce with Food, you know, is like someone who's like I know how to support you in this with, like you know, making you more self-sufficient. But you first have to like know what's happening and all that stuff. But a compassionate witness with anything, right, like even you know, like my mom friends, like sometimes I'm just like, oh my God, I'm so tired. Like you know you could take care of yourself, whatever. But when you have a toddler and are working and daycare closes and just people being like I know, right, like, it's just like I feel seen.

Ali Shapiro: 52:34

And that actually brings me to L, which is loneliness, and loneliness. We all have a need to feel significant. We have a need to feel like we are contributing and that we matter. And so, really, when we're feeling alone, we have to feel like even our struggles are important and matter. So, like, even if you're my client who's in the cupboard struggling with parenting, it's like, okay, what's important to me here, how you know, do I need to get support? How do I want to show up to myself? What do I value, maybe, is is that need that that needs to be significant, but those are the four needs that that come with those triggers, and then, as those get satisfied, you stop turning to food because the real safety or belonging need is being satiated Is being met.

Philip Pape: 53:17

So that wraps the whole thing up really nicely. Right, because you've got the true needs. You're satisfying them no longer with food. All right, beautiful, I love that. Is there anything else we didn't? It's a lot, I know. And is there anything else we didn't cover that you wish I'd asked about in this whole realm? No, I think it's a great question.

Ali Shapiro: 53:35

I really appreciate you sharing your story because I think that prompted everyone else who's listening to think about that for themselves. Yeah, I could probably do that more.

Philip Pape: 53:44

Maybe I have a little bit of a wall when it comes to that stuff, but it's all good, all right, cool. So I know there's a lot going on in your world. I would like listeners to be able to find you. I also know you have a program launching this month and normally we don't do big promotions on this, but for this specifically, I do want people to know everything you just talked about. They can get that kind of support, so tell us where they can find you.

Ali Shapiro: 54:05

Yeah, if people want to go to alishapirocom. And, like Philip said, my Truce with Food program, which this is actually the 14th year I've run it, or it'll be the 15th year, and it's been featured in all sorts of media. Well, my client's weight loss success has been featured in media, but it's a six month program that helps you author a new story around belonging to find food freedom. No white knuckling required. It's six months, 13 group coaching calls with me and a research-based client, proven framework Cause. Again, frameworks create choice, help you become more self-aware versus um.

Ali Shapiro: 54:37

I attract a lot of perfectionists who, you know, think it's like oh my God, am I going to have to white knuckle and perform this perfectly? And it's not that. And then we also do cover the food piece around blood sugar and gut health. Um, and so yeah, yeah, because it's an integrated program and it is life-changing and people can go to alishapirocom backslash truce with food group program and you can see a ton of testimonials. It's a very thorough page. I'm a very thorough, research-based person, but I also, you know, academia and theories can only take you so far, so you'll see the real world applications. So, for people who want deep and practical, this is like and really want to learn that consistency, staying on track, and to eliminate all, like free up all the energy that the food noise takes and puts that in a different direction for 2025. This is the program for them.

Philip Pape: 55:28

Awesome. I will encourage people to check it out and I'm going to include the exact link. We'll make sure we get the right link in there for folks, so take them right there from the show notes and I encourage you, if you're listening, if this sounds like something you could use the help with and reduce your emotional, get some more emotional rest, allie seems like the right person to go to. So, allie, thank you so much for having this amazing conversation, sharing your expertise, your wisdom, your positive energy. It was great to have you on.

Ali Shapiro: 55:52

Thank you, philip, for having me, and I'm looking forward to having you on Insatiable Me as well. Looking forward to it.

The 6-10 Biofeedback Model for Faster Fat Loss (Balanced Scorecard) | Ep 270

Book your FREE 15-minute Rapid Nutrition Assessment and get personalized guidance on which metrics to track for your situation

--

Your fat loss. Is. Stuck. You're even tracking your food and weight. But something's not working.

What if every plateau, stall, or setback could be prevented by knowing which body signals to monitor and how to interpret them?

Learn how to use the Balanced Scorecard approach to organize critical body feedback into a powerful dashboard for fat loss.

I'm revealing my 6-10 Biofeedback Model that I use with every client to identify issues before they happen to keep fat loss moving.

Main Takeaways:

• The 6 core metrics in your baseline fat loss dashboard to measure essential daily feedback

• The Balanced Scorecard framework to organize metrics in 4 categories

• The 10 advanced metrics that provide deeper insights when strategically tracked

• Using multiple organized data points helps prevent plateaus by revealing early warning signs across all aspects of health

Book your FREE 15-minute Rapid Nutrition Assessment and get personalized guidance on which metrics to track for your situation

Unlock Fat Loss with the 6-10 Biofeedback Model

Fat loss isn’t just about tracking calories and stepping on the scale. Your body is constantly sending feedback—signals that can help you break through plateaus, optimize your training, and achieve results faster. But are you listening?

In this episode of Wits & Weights, we dive into the 6-10 Biofeedback Model, a comprehensive system for interpreting your body’s signals. By combining six foundational metrics with advanced tools tailored to your individual needs, you can create a balanced scorecard for fat loss and avoid the frustration of flying blind. Let’s explore how biofeedback reveals the missing pieces in your fat loss journey.

The 6 Core Metrics You Should Track

Start with these six essential biofeedback markers to build your fat loss dashboard:

1. Stress: High stress disrupts recovery, ramps up cortisol, and stalls fat loss. Monitor your overall stress level on a scale from 1–10.

2. Sleep: Both quantity and quality matter. Poor sleep affects hunger, recovery, and muscle building.

3. Hunger: Use hunger ratings (1 = very hungry, 10 = no hunger) to gauge whether your calorie deficit is too aggressive.

4. Energy: Track daily energy levels to assess recovery and ensure your nutrition supports performance.

5. Recovery: How well are you bouncing back from training? Low recovery might mean overtraining or insufficient nutrition.

6. Digestion: Gut health affects nutrient absorption, inflammation, and overall well-being.

Applying the Balanced Scorecard Framework

Borrowing a tool from engineering, the balanced scorecard organizes biofeedback into four perspectives:

1. Physical Health: Focuses on physiological markers like digestion, hydration, and skin health.

2. Mental and Emotional Well-being: Includes mood, body image perception, and cravings.

3. Recovery and Adaptation: Tracks how well your body handles training stress.

4. Sustainability and Progress: Assesses adherence and how well your plan fits into your real life.

By categorizing biofeedback, you can identify imbalances and take action proactively.

The 10 Advanced Metrics for Faster Progress

For more complex cases or plateaus, consider these advanced tools:

Physical Health

1. Bloating and GI Distress: Identify food intolerances or meal timing issues.

2. Skin Health: Changes in complexion can reveal nutrient deficiencies or inflammation.

3. Hydration: Monitor hydration levels through urine color, thirst patterns, and skin elasticity.

Mental and Emotional Well-being

1. Mood and Mental Clarity: Fluctuations may signal the need for nutrition or training adjustments.

2. Body Image Perception: Track your subjective view of progress to reveal emotional patterns.

3. Cravings: Differentiate between hunger and emotional eating triggers.

Recovery and Adaptation

1. Heart Rate Variability (HRV): Indicates stress and recovery capacity.

2. Libido: A sensitive but telling metric for hormonal health and stress.

3. Menstrual or Hormonal Symptoms: Track cycle regularity and symptoms for better insights.

Sustainability and Progress

1. Lifestyle Flexibility: Rate how well your plan adapts to real-life demands.

Creating Your Fat Loss Dashboard

1. Start Simple: Track the six foundational metrics weekly.

2. Add Advanced Metrics: Introduce advanced tools as needed, based on specific challenges.

3. Look for Trends: Don’t react to single data points. Use patterns over time to guide decisions.

4. Adjust Proactively: Use biofeedback to tweak calorie intake, training, or recovery before hitting a plateau.

Biofeedback = Faster, Smarter Fat Loss

Tracking biofeedback transforms your fat loss journey from guesswork to precision. By listening to your body’s signals and responding appropriately, you’ll avoid burnout, sustain progress, and build the confidence to tackle any challenge.

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Transcript

Philip Pape: 0:01

If you track your food, your weight, a few other things, but you still feel stuck with fat loss and you wonder is there something I'm missing? This episode is for you. Most people focus just on the scale or a few other metrics beyond that, but your body is complex. It is constantly sending feedback that could speed up your progress if you know where to look. So today I'm sharing my complete 610 biofeedback system that I use with clients to show you how to learn about those signals that can unlock faster progress, to create sort of a dashboard for fat loss. Most importantly, you'll learn how to stop flying blind and start making Welcome to Wits and Weights, the show that blends evidence and engineering to help you build smart, efficient systems to achieve your dream physique.

Philip Pape: 0:57

I'm your host, philip Pabe, and today we're taking your fat loss game to a new level. We're going to harness the power of biofeedback, not just the basic tracking although we will establish that but a complete system used to organize and act on crucial data, especially when you're not quite sure what's going on from that top level surface feedback. Picture a pilot with all of his gauges or her gauges and instruments flying through the sky. I actually have a pilot's license I haven't flown in years, but we were taught to look at multiple instruments. I think there are at least six that we looked at, not just airspeed or altitude, and we're doing this because we want to trust the instruments but also correlate them and ensure a safe, efficient flight and kind of understand okay, if this instrument's broken over here, we can trust these other three to tell us what's going on and your body is similar, right, the scale is one of those many instruments your food, your lifting performance just a couple of those instruments. And when you know how to track and interpret all the other signals, especially the biofeedback during fat loss, that is how you unlock the knowledge of what's going on, the confidence of what's going on with your body, so you can make faster progress, and then that's what allows you to get through the plateaus and have fewer setbacks.

Philip Pape: 2:13

Now, before we get into it, if you want some help implementing what we talk about today and just chat about your situation and what's holding you back and where you want to go, book a free 15 minute rapid nutrition assessment with me. It is not a sales call. Anybody you ask and I could give you references knows that all I do is try to help you on the call, give you some clarity, send you on your way with some actions, and it's up to you. If you want to implement or if you want to reach out for more help, that's fine. Or go to our Facebook group or join our Physique University, I don't care. As long as I'm helping you go from this lack of clarity to a little bit more clarity and steps you can take. So if you book that call it's called a rapid nutrition assessment we can identify what metrics from today's episode you should focus on first and then help you create a clear action plan. If that's something you want to do, just click in the show notes to schedule your call, or go to witsandweightscom and click the giant button in the top right. All right, that's enough plugging for today.

Philip Pape: 3:10

Let's get into today's episode and break it down into three segments. First, I want to cover the core six biofeedback metrics that I recommend everybody track, no matter what. All my clients use this in our check-in forms and it's kind of that essential minimum foundational knowledge for fat loss. If you're not even tracking these, that is huge low-hanging fruit for you. Second, I'm gonna introduce the what's called balanced scorecard framework, something I learned in my engineering career and show how it helps you organize your tracking into some different lanes or different perspectives and make the data actionable for you. And then we're going to look at the 10 advanced metrics that can accelerate your progress when you strategically and that means you don't need them all you may not need any of them, but in some cases, individual circumstances call for pulling out the big guns, and that is why I'm putting these all together today six, 10, the six that everyone should track and 10 that you may want to consider for more advanced situations. All right, so let's talk about the six foundational signals that everyone should track during fat loss, and you, as an individual, might track other things beyond this. That's totally cool with you. This is what I want everybody to track as a start.

Philip Pape: 4:31

Number one stress your overall stress level. A scale of one to 10 for pretty much all of these could be helpful. Some of these metrics we talk about will have other ways to measure them or we'll have multiple sub measures that you could potentially use, but not to make it complicated, we're just going to go through each one. So stress high stress is one of the biggest saboteurs of fat loss. It ramps up your cortisol. It makes um fat, you know. It makes you store belly fat. It slows down recovery. There are so many reasons. Stress is the number one thing on this list because high stress is going to prevent fat loss, no matter how hard you cut your calories, how how hard you train, how hard you do anything else. So stress is number one.

Philip Pape: 5:06

Number two is sleep, so almost as if not more important than stress for a lot of people, both the quantity and the quality. And again, for my clients, I ask them to rate on a scale of one to 10, but I talk about both. Are you getting enough sleep? Are you getting enough quality sleep, restful? Some clients will go to a deeper level than that and track their, you know, with an aura ring and track REM and deep sleep and stuff. But just start at the top. How is your sleep in general? Because that impacts your hunger hormones, that impacts your recovery, your cognitive performance, your muscle building, everything All right?

Philip Pape: 5:40

Number three is hunger. So again, you can rate this one to 10, and when you are not in a deficit, hunger should be rated pretty high, as in you're not very hungry. One here is very hungry. A 10 is not hungry at all and you can tell if your deficit is too appropriate or too aggressive. Too appropriate is appropriate or too aggressive based on sometimes based on this alone. If I see a client's hunger trending downward, it's a proactive signal that we're about ready for a refeed, a diet break, or to let off the gas a little bit on the deficit. And it would behoove you to be very aware of that as you move forward, so that you can be successful and modify how you eat, what you eat and the dieting itself, all right.

Philip Pape: 6:27

Number four is energy. Now, energy is kind of a vague term, right, but what I'm referring to here is your energy level throughout the day, especially around workouts. Now, we all have that 3 pm. Well, many of us have that 3 pm crash. Right, it comes from cortisol and you're tired and you're working all day. But we want to distinguish the fluctuations in energy levels from the baseline and try to understand what is causing it to go up and down. Right, low energy signals, maybe too large deficit, not enough carbs, not enough food around your workout, you know, training too hard or too often All of that can be helpful. Too hard or too often, all of that can be helpful.

Philip Pape: 7:07

Number five is recovery. So I look at this as a corollary to energy, but frankly it's a corollary to sleep and stress as well. They're all related right. Hence my pilot metaphor earlier. These are all part of system. So recovery is how well you're bouncing back from training, how much or little soreness you have. I don't want people to be chasing soreness. Once you get into a program and you're consistent with it, you shouldn't have a lot of soreness and you should be able to recover and bounce back to the gym and really go after the next session.

Philip Pape: 7:36

Poor recovery means something with volume, something with nutrition. It could be because of a lack of sleep or too much stress. So again, it's all tied together. It could be because of a lack of sleep or too much stress. So again, it's all tied together. And then the last one here is digestion. Gut health is so crucial for nutrient absorption, for revealing food intolerances, for whether you have enough fiber. Are you eating a diverse variety of foods? There's a lot of things that our gut can tell us, and so when I say digestion, it's at a very high level. Are you bloated? Are you gassy? How are your bowel movements right, things like that. And then you can drill down from any of those. So it's pretty simple.

Philip Pape: 8:14

But a lot of you probably aren't even tracking these at like a weekly level and all you have to do is, on a scale one to 10, track these. That's what I, we want to be able to kind of organize and interpret all this data. Because it's one thing to have the data, that's step one. It's another thing to know what the heck to do with it, right, and what is important versus what is temporary. Let's say, for example, if you've got all your family over this week and your whole routine has changed and your whole food situation is different, it's going to affect all of your biofeedback measures, and yet it all may be irrelevant because the context, the environment, has changed for that brief moment. But if something becomes more chronic, that is more of an indicator. Similarly, something might decline, like hunger, might get worse during a dieting phase, and yet it's perfectly normal, or it's a trade-off that you're willing to make, right. Or if I'm your coach and I see hunger goes from no hunger at all 10, to a seven and it stays there, I'm not that worried, right. But if you start getting into six and five and four territory, okay, then we have to have the conversation of what needs to change.

Philip Pape: 9:26

So the engineering framework I'm going to bring into this today is called the balanced scorecard, and it's just a way to track performance across multiple dimensions. In the aerospace world we had something called the control tower, right, funny? You know fancy names, silly names for these things. Just imagine pillars or columns. If you're a spreadsheet person, you could just imagine these as being different columns of things that you measure and then the rows are the specific metrics. Okay, that's all I'm going to talk about spreadsheets today, I promise.

Philip Pape: 9:57

So why don't we apply this ourselves to fat loss? And we can use four scores or four perspectives, four pillars, let's say. The first pillar is your physical health. These are your direct physiological markers. The second is your mental and emotional well-being, that's, your psychological state, because that is very telling. The third is your recovery and adaptation. This is how well your body handles the stress. It's a little different from the physical or the physiological. And then the fourth one is your sustainability and your progress. These are factors that affect your adherence, which so many programs and people and podcasters neglect when they talk about things like weight loss is adherence. So if we have a framework like that. We can not just focus on one thing and get obsessed with it and neglect others. We think of it as a system and we can organize our thoughts.

Philip Pape: 10:52

So guess what I'm gonna do for you? I'm gonna share with you the 10 advanced metrics that I thought about as the ones that I most likely go to with clients beyond those six that you would find helpful. There could be 20 beyond this that I might reach to in advanced situations, but I think these 10 are very important and I'm going to break them down by the four pillars that we just talked about. So let's start with physical, and I'm going to give you three advanced metrics here. The first one is bloating and GI distress, and this is distinct from the digestion that we talked about earlier. This is actually a more advanced tracking of your meal timing, the combinations of food that you eat, and then the stress responses, all of which trigger discomfort. So you're really creating a correlational tracking mechanism to track, potentially, food intolerances and food combinations and whatnot.

Philip Pape: 11:50

And I've had clients who have advanced conditions where they can't handle certain types of foods. They need low FODMAP diets, low histamine diets, something like that, but rather than just restrict everything or go through a random elimination diet. We can actually go the other direction, so to speak, and actually start tracking what happens with your response as you eat what you eat, to really dial in on what might be causing the discomfort. So that can be helpful. I know it sounds kind of vague, but it is an advanced metric to identify hidden intolerances, to optimize your meal composition, your balance, for whatever the issue is for you. It might be nutrient absorption, right. It might be your gut health, it might be an intolerance or a condition that you have, so bloating and GI distress. Tracked against timing, food combinations and stress responses that trigger them. All right.

Philip Pape: 12:43

The second one, under physical, is your skin health. If your skin complexion changes or you have acne patterns or skin dryness, these can and they come out of nowhere. These can reveal some sort of systemic inflammation, autoimmune conditions, nutrient deficiencies, hormonal shifts, something like that. And oftentimes people will go to a band-aid for that, like I'm just going to have collagen protein or something. But we really want to understand when something changes with our body that there could be something going on. But we really want to understand when something changes with our body that there could be something going on.

Philip Pape: 13:15

And the third advanced metric here is hydration, not just the you know yes, you should drink sufficient water and monitor your intake but also look at signs like the color of your urine, your thirst patterns, your skin elasticity, and so that's why I bring this up along with skin health back to back, because your skin can also tell you a bit about your hydration. And, of course, hydration impacts your other top level biometrics hunger, energy recovery. So if we're having an issue there and all the other things are checked off, I'm going to look at hydration. And hydration can sometimes be more complicated than just the amount of water you eat. It could be what you drink. It could be what you're eating, your source of electrolytes when you're eating and drinking this stuff. Some people they might drink, quote unquote enough, but they do it all at one time of the day. There's a lot that goes on there.

Philip Pape: 14:02

So bloating, ngi, distress, skin health and hydration are three advanced metrics you could consider for physical, for mental and emotional. The first one here is a big one and some coaches I know have this as a top line metric. I actually have it as a slightly more advanced metric because and let me just tell you what it is it's mood and mental clarity, and I think a lot of times my clients will talk about this anyway as part of their wins, their challenges, their roadblocks, their energy, their recovery, and there's no need to ask yet. Another separate question about mood is what I used to have it in there and I actually got rid of it because of that reason. It was kind of redundant. But for some clients and for some of you listening, tracking things like your level of focus, your alertness, your emotional stability throughout the day you know that are that aren't correlated with things like a menstrual cycle or any other condition. Sudden mood changes, brain fog can signal that your nutrition plan is affecting what's going on, or your training or what have you before things stall and you can do something about it. And then the next two you're going to understand why these are all part of mental and emotional and some of these can be interrelated.

Philip Pape: 15:11

The next one, which is the fifth advanced metric, is body image perception. Uh, yeah, you can track that. You're. It's. It's your subjective view of progress, like how your clothes fit and how you look in the mirror and your progress photos and all of that how you feel about your body. You can track that. Now be careful, right this if, if you have, um, an existing issue with body dysmorphia or some unhealthy emotional patterns around body image, that's outside my scope of practice. I'm strictly talking about a self-rated perception to kind of get awareness on that and reveal whether that's tied to your patterns, like your eating patterns, and that's really all I'm going to say about that, to be honest. But it is something worth tracking.

Philip Pape: 15:54

And then the next one, under mental and emotional, is your cravings. Now, this is important because I just had a back and forth with a client the other day and we were talking about hunger and she kept saying, well, it's not hunger, it's not hunger, it's cravings. And I said, okay, I get what you're saying. There is a distinction there, absolutely Thank. Thank you for clarifying the language we want to use, because hunger, desire for something that's not necessarily food, that could be a craving, even though it could be food, so intense desires for foods or tastes for example, salty, sweet but also a desire for something to reduce the stress that you have, right, whatever the trigger might be. And this can indicate an emotional need that needs attention. It could also indicate the need for a strategy, a simple strategy in place, some level of tracking or pattern, interrupt or changing up your environment or having a food swap. I mean, there are a lot of different strategies for this. It's a whole separate topic, and I think I might even do a upcoming episode that goes through my hunger scale and diary to dive into the difference between physical and psychological hunger, which falls in this category. And then we get to the third pillar here, which is recovery and adaptation, and I have three here as well. So this brings us to overall number seven of the ten heart rate variability, hrv.

Philip Pape: 17:14

For those of you who wear a watch or a ring, you can measure your HRV, which is effectively a measure of your nervous system's recovery state. Low HRV can sometimes predict that you're going to have stress from overtraining before the performance actually drops, and so what it could tell you? And it's funny because your ring might actually say, hey, we noticed your HRV is low, you may not be in a great state to train Now. I take those with a big grain of salt, because the last thing I want you to do is you feel great, you've got energy, you're good to go, and your ring says, man, maybe you shouldn't train today, and then you don't train. That's the last thing I want to do it's more of correlating this with the other indicators of potential overtraining or excessive stress. And if you know, you've just been pounded into the wall by life stress, by chronic stress. It's good to be aware of that proactively, to see if you need to modify your training in some way to accommodate that, not necessarily skipping your training session, but modifying it in some way. And that's where a good coach can really help you figure out what that might look like.

Philip Pape: 18:20

Number eight, which is the second one in recovery and adaptation, is your libido, your sex drive, your sex function. And again, I used to have this as one of my main metrics, but it's very situational. Let's just say it's a sensitive topic, right, and sexual drive and function are an indicator of hormonal health, right? Testosterone, for example. And your stress load too. If you have too much stress or you're excessively dieting, you're getting burned out. That's going to affect your libido and it's tied to other things like energy recovery and so on. So it's a good thing for some of you to track. Many of you don't even have to. You know, uh, you know it kind of intuitively, but you can do it objectively.

Philip Pape: 19:00

And then number nine, which is the last one under recovery and adaptation here is your menstrual or hormonal symptoms. So this is men and women. For women, it's your cycle, you know, tracking uh, how regular it is and what symptoms do you have associated with it, either on a regular basis, like as your baseline, which can be helpful for you, or if you're working with a coach, to understand if any modifications have to be made or deviations to that, which is also really important. And then for all clients, for men as well, just monitoring any symptoms that are important to you that would suggest an imbalance with your hormones, understanding that during fat loss you're going to have a down regulation in all your hormones anyway. So again, you have to take it as part of the system. And then the last category here, and also the last metric. The last category is sustainability and progress.

Philip Pape: 19:49

And so the metric that I want you to track is lifestyle flexibility, how well your plan adapts to your real life. Now, I don't actually track this as a number with clients. I don't have clients tell me oh, I was an eight this week on lifestyle flexibility. We can tease that out from the other metrics and their reporting of how their week went and how we discussed their check-in. But when you do this yourself, why don't you create a separate metric on its own that scores you for that week and says based on following my plan, this is how easy or difficult it was to stick to the plan, given my life right Social events, dining out without anxiety, travel schedule disruptions, family meals, celebrations, work, stress, deadlines. And what's interesting about this is it's kind of flipping it around, isn't it? It's saying, okay, I have my plan, I believe it's the best plan for me, but this week it was like a three because life happened.

Philip Pape: 20:47

If your plan was a lot more flexible than when life happens, the plan may be rated higher than that, and so when you get a three or a four and if you get periodic or repeated versions of that low score, it tells you your plan is simply not flexible enough for you. Instead of trying to fit your life to your plan, try to fit your plan to your life. So that is the last metric. And what's super fascinating about all of this and again, I hope you don't feel overwhelmed like you have to use all 16 of these metrics. Use the first six to start and then get inspired by the other 10 and you may have your own that you want to use, but the goal is to reveal a solution to a plateau before you hit the plateau, like when my clients, when their hunger or cravings are increasing, or their recovery is increasing, or their recovery is declining or their energy is low and by low I just mean like one or two ticks lower than last time. It gives me a clue.

Philip Pape: 21:44

Now we might not have to change things, but there's a good chance. I'm going to say you know what, let's ease off on the calories or let's take a refeed or let's take a diet break. And oftentimes what happens is my clients tell me before I tell them, because they check in and they say you know what, based on having you know, you made me score this stuff and I noticed that all these numbers have ticked down. I didn't quite realize that that was the case. Maybe it's time for a little bit of a break. And then you come back stronger and you continue losing the fat while others crash into a wall and kind of beat their head into the wall over and over. And that's the power of having multiple data points that describe your overall body, your system, organized in a way that shows you how they connect. You're proactive instead of reactive with your fat loss All right.

Philip Pape: 22:28

So when we talk about physique engineering, that is what we mean Not guesswork, but being data driven. Not hoping what you're doing works, having concrete, specific data showing you what's working and what needs to adjust. If you're like that's too hard, well, you're just not going to get the result you want. There's a little bit of effort involved. You could also reach out for support. You could join a community like our free Facebook group. You can reach out for coaching. You can join our physique university, which is a more budget friendly group version of coaching for a lot of you who may not be able to afford or want to work with a one-on-one coach.

Philip Pape: 23:03

And the first place to start is just reach out for a 15 minute rapid nutrition assessment, because that is a call. That is not a sales pitch. Or we're just going to get on the phone. We're going to talk about the weather, and then we're going to dive in too, because that's what you always start with, right, and then we're going to dive into hey, which metrics or what data or what form of tracking or what kind of nutrition or training approach might you be missing? That will help you make progress. A simple, I'll say, two or three step action plan. That's it. I want you to click the link in the show notes to schedule that, or go to witsandweightscom and click the link in the top right and we'll have that call and you'll get some clarity. All right, until next time, keep using your wits lifting those weights and remember your body is always giving you feedback. The key is knowing how to listen and respond. All right, I'll talk to you next time here on the Wits and Weights podcast.

How to Eat Thousands of Calories to Gain Muscle and Weight (Not Just for Hardgainers) | Ep 269

Download my free Muscle-Building Nutrition Blueprint for the exact steps to structure your diet, calorie surplus, macros, and more to gain muscle at the optimal rate while minimizing fat gain or go to witsandweights.com/muscle.

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Do you struggle to eat enough calories to support muscle growth? Have you tried "just eating more," only to feel sick or frustrated when the scale won’t budge? What if eating more calories could actually be enjoyable—even with dietary restrictions?

Philip (@witsandweights) shares 12 proven strategies to help you break through plateaus and gain weight effectively. Inspired by listener Jim from Michigan, who tackles weight gain challenges while playing hockey in his 70s, Philip dives deep into strategies that fit any lifestyle.

Whether you’re a “hard gainer,” have specific dietary restrictions, or simply want to build muscle sustainably, these tips will transform how you approach nutrition. With practical advice like adding calorie-dense foods, leveraging liquid calories, and making your meals more appealing, you will be empowered to fuel your body for growth without the misery of force-feeding.

Today, you’ll learn all about:

3:34 Strategy #1: Adding calorie-dense food to your meals
5:08 Strategy #2: Incorporate liquid calories
6:17 Strategy #3: Enhancing meals with smart calorie boosts
6:50 Strategy #4: Focusing on the foods you enjoy
8:06 Strategy #5: Increase your meal frequency
9:15 Strategy #6: Don't drink water before your meals
9:52 Strategy #7: Embrace calorie timing
11:22 Strategy #8: Make your food visually and socially more appealing
13:28 Strategy #9: Have high-calorie snacks always available
14:26 Strategy #10: Sneak calories into drinks
15:43 Strategy #11: Plan your meals around fats
17:40 Strategy #12: Track and adjust by keeping it simple but systematic
19:43 Managing stress and recovery to improve appetite
22:59 Outro

Episode resources:

• Gain weight episode: The Most UNDERRATED Fat Loss Secret Making You FATTER (and Sabotaging Muscle Gain Too)

• Try MacroFactor for free with code WITSANDWEIGHTS
  

How to Eat Thousands of Calories to Gain Muscle and Weight (Not Just for Hardgainers)

If you’ve ever struggled to gain weight and muscle, you know the frustration of eating until you feel stuffed, only to see the scale refuse to budge. It’s even more challenging if you have a small appetite or dietary restrictions. Fortunately, there are practical strategies to help you eat more calories and enjoy the process without feeling miserable.

Whether you’re a hardgainer trying to pack on mass or simply someone looking to support your muscle-building goals, these 12 strategies will make a big difference. Let’s dive in.

12 Strategies to Eat More Calories Without Feeling Miserable

1. Add Calorie-Dense Foods
   Focus on foods that pack a lot of calories into small portions, such as avocados, nuts, seeds, and oils. These can be easily added to meals to increase calorie intake without increasing meal volume significantly.

2. Incorporate Liquid Calories
   Liquids don’t fill you up as much as solid food, making them a great way to sneak in calories. Think shakes, smoothies, or whole milk-based drinks with added protein powder, nut butter, or fruit.

3. Enhance Existing Meals
   Boost your current meals by adding calorie-dense ingredients like butter, cheese, or coconut milk. For example, cook eggs in butter or mix nuts into your oatmeal.

4. Eat Foods You Enjoy
   Choose foods you genuinely like to make the eating process enjoyable. You’ll naturally eat more when you enjoy your meals, which makes hitting your calorie goals easier.

5. Increase Meal Frequency
   If eating large meals feels overwhelming, try eating smaller meals more frequently. Instead of three large meals, aim for five to six smaller ones throughout the day.

6. Avoid Drinking Water Before Meals
   Water can fill your stomach and suppress your appetite. To maximize your ability to eat more, save your water intake for after your meals.

7. Capitalize on Hunger Windows
   Eat larger meals during times of the day when you’re naturally hungrier, such as breakfast, post-workout, or before bed. Use these windows to load up on calories.

8. Make Food Visually and Socially Appealing
   We’re wired to eat more when food looks good or is enjoyed with others. Plate your meals attractively and enjoy them in a relaxed, social setting to increase your intake.

9. Have High-Calorie Snacks Available
   Keep easy-to-grab, calorie-dense snacks on hand, such as trail mix, protein bars, or nut butter packets. These can help you stay on track when you’re busy.

10. Sneak Calories Into Drinks
    Add calorie-dense ingredients to beverages you already drink, such as whole milk or heavy cream in coffee or tea. This is an effortless way to increase your intake.

11. Plan Meals Around Fats
    Fats are the most calorie-dense macronutrient, with 9 calories per gram. Build meals around fatty foods like salmon, avocado, or nut butters to easily add calories.

12. Track and Adjust
    Use a food tracking app to monitor your calorie intake and make gradual adjustments. Start with a slight surplus and increase incrementally to avoid feeling overwhelmed.

The Secret Ingredient: Stress Management

It’s important to remember that stress and poor recovery can suppress your appetite and digestion, making it harder to eat enough. Prioritize relaxation, quality sleep, and manageable training to keep your body in an optimal state for eating and recovery.

Ready to Build Muscle?

If you’re serious about gaining muscle, download my free Muscle Building Nutrition Blueprint, which gives you the exact steps for setting up a successful muscle-building phase, including calorie targets, macros, and tracking tips. Head to witsandweights.com/muscle to get started today.

Eating more doesn’t have to be a chore. By using these strategies, you can fuel your muscle-building journey in a sustainable and enjoyable way!

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Transcript

Philip Pape: 0:01

Have you ever felt frustrated trying to gain weight and muscle where, no matter how much you think you're eating, the scale just won't budge? Maybe you've been told just eat more, but you feel stuffed and sick every time you try. Or maybe you're dealing with certain dietary restrictions that seem to make everything harder. Today, I'm giving you 12 specific strategies that make eating more calories not just doable, but actually enjoyable. You'll learn exactly how to break through your plateau without force-feeding yourself or feeling miserable. These are proven methods that work, whether you're 20 or 70, whether you have dietary restrictions or not. So if you've struggled to gain weight and build muscle, stick around. You're about to learn exactly how to make it happen. You're about to learn exactly how to make it happen.

Philip Pape: 0:52

Welcome to Wits and Weights, the podcast that blends evidence and engineering to help you build smart, efficient systems to achieve your dream physique. I'm your host, philip Pape, and today we're tackling a challenge that doesn't often get enough attention how to actually eat enough calories to support muscle growth. I want to give a special shout out to Jim from Wayne, michigan, who inspired today's episode. He sent in a text message and he wrote hey, philip, I've been listening to your Wits and Weights podcast for about six months. It's great. I realized that the majority of people want to lose weight. I've been skinny my entire life 5'9", 140 pounds. I'm still active. I play in an over 70 ice hockey league once a week. I was diagnosed with celiac disease 20 years ago. Not fun, but it could be worse. I know I need to be in a calorie surplus, but I usually struggle to eat 2,000 calories a day. Could you please do a full-length podcast on how to gain weight and muscle? So thank you, jim. This is exactly the kind of specific problem or challenge that I want to hear from you as listeners about, so I can deep dive into it. On the show, and while we recently covered some fundamentals of gaining weight to improve your body composition, that was episode 257 at the end of 2024. I'm going to link that in the show notes.

Philip Pape: 2:06

Today we're going to focus specifically on 12 strategies to get the calories in, just to be able to eat them all when you struggle with appetite or dietary restrictions. By the way, this could apply to anyone at any calorie level, not just hard gainers, even if you're, say, a woman who's trying to get back to maintenance for the first time and you feel like it's too many calories, these strategies can still apply. So before we get into it, though, you might be wondering okay, that's great, but why do I even want the calories in the first place? How do I build muscle? What is the strategy there? For that, I'm going to ask you to download a free guide that I have called Muscle Building Nutrition Blueprint, and that's going to give you the exact steps for doing that, for setting up your muscle building phase, from the optimal surplus and rate of gain to the macros, to what to track and even a specific example of a real bulk. So click the link in my show notes or go to witsandweightscom slash muscle to download that free guide, and that'll set up your muscle building phase for success. And then, when you're running that, you'll say okay, now let me listen to this episode to understand how to get all that food in, because it's not working for me quite yet.

Philip Pape: 3:15

All right, so I'm going to break down these 12 strategies into three sections. First, we're going to cover four strategies to add calories without feeling stuffed. We're going to cover four strategies to add calories without feeling stuffed, then four strategies for the timing and habits that could make eating easier. And then, finally, four strategies to implement it sustainably. So let's start with adding calories without feeling stuffed. Strategy number one is pretty straightforward, and that is adding calorie-d dense foods to your meals. This is about making every bite count, focusing on foods that pack in as many calories as possible into as little volume as possible, which you'll find that a lot of these strategies are the opposite of what you would do during fat loss. So keep that in mind in case it sparks some curiosity there. So I'll give you some example Add avocado to things, if you like avocado.

Philip Pape: 4:04

They're very calorie dense and we're talking mostly whole foods here. By the way, doing it with whole foods. Obviously, you can add in processed foods and we're going to touch on that occasionally here but there are calorie dense whole foods. So avocado, egg sandwiches. You can drizzle olive oil over just about anything, but I'm thinking vegetables or rice. You know, when you're making rice, add olive oil in there, or a tablespoon of olive oil is 120 calories. You can add butter when cooking, which makes it taste great anyway, like even better. I love putting butter on steak. When I'm cast iron, I'm frying it in a cast iron skillet and then I finish it off in the oven.

Philip Pape: 4:40

Always keep in mind saturated fat intake, of course, but again, we're trying to get more calories here. And then nuts and seeds, incorporating them into everything. You can put them in salads, you can put them as a side, you can eat them straight up. And remember that fat, as a macro, has more than twice as much calorie density as protein and carbs. It has nine calories per gram instead of just four for the others. So take advantage of that macro.

Philip Pape: 5:06

So that's number one is calorie dense foods. Strategy number two is to incorporate liquid calories. All right, liquids just don't fill you up like solid food. There's a reason for that they are effectively pre-digested. You think that's gross. I'm sorry, but that's. You know, when we're having liquid, anything that would normally be a food, you're taking a step out of the process and so you're able to eat more of it. So we're thinking shake, smoothies, whatever, and honestly I'm not going to be giving you a million recipes here but a base of some beverage like whole milk has a lot of calories.

Philip Pape: 5:39

I love whole milk, just in general. When you're trying to gain weight, it goes down easy. And then there's brands like Fairlife that have higher protein and Fairlife chocolate milk that has even more calories. So whole milk, a banana, some peanut butter. So that's our calorie density right there. A couple tablespoons of peanut butter. So let's see 150 calories for the milk, 100 calories for the banana, 200 calories for the peanut butter, and then whey protein. Even a scoop of whey protein is 120. So that's over 500 calories that you can drink in just minutes. And if you have dietary restrictions, like Jim's celiac disease, just make sure it's gluten-free, okay.

Philip Pape: 6:16

Strategy number three is adding extra calories to existing meals by just enhancing what you already eat with some smart swaps. So like cooking eggs right in a slab of butter instead of using a spray just to make sure you add those calories. Adding an extra slice of cheese to your sandwich, mixing nuts into your oatmeal, using coconut milk in whether it's a curry or a soup, something like that. So that's a very simple one of just like seeing how you can add calories that are almost unnoticeable and don't really fill you up in any way to existing meals. So strategy number four is to focus on foods you enjoy. Now, this might seem obvious, but it's one of the top factors of a sustainable diet.

Philip Pape: 7:02

No matter what you're doing fat loss or gaining You're going to eat more consistently when you actually like your food period. So it's one of the tenets Don't be guilty with what you eat. Make sure food satisfies you, make sure it meets your goals and make sure you enjoy it. So you don't want to force feed yourself bland chicken and rice if you hate it. I don't care if you're in fat loss or gaining right.

Philip Pape: 7:24

Force feeding of any kind is not going to be good and I hear oftentimes people say how do I get more calories? Or I feel like I have to force feed myself, or calories, or I feel like I have to force feed myself, or I need to force feed myself to get the calories. What do I do? And it's like no, you don't need to force feed yourself. Let's listen to this episode, all right. So that was it for strategy number four, just focusing on foods you enjoy, because that, mentally, is going to cause you to be able to eat more. Just a simple one there, in case you're trying to force feed anything. Now I want to move on to the second group of four, which is related to timing and habits. So strategy number five. And so, not to confuse you, but I'm keeping the numbering from one to 12, but I separate into four groups of or three groups of four.

Philip Pape: 8:05

Strategy number five is to increase your meal frequency. Just as simple as that. But again, a lot of people are not doing that. People get in a rut and the way you eat is just the way you've always eaten and it's based on your work schedule or how you pack your lunch or whatever. But you've got to be creative and say okay, instead of three huge meals, I'm going to have five meals. I'm going to have three modest meals and two small snacks, right, or six or even seven. I mean, you'd be surprised how many you could fit in if you're creative about it. And a lot of people are stuck in this, like intermittent fasting mindset or feeding window mindset, or not eat too early, too late. It's super flexible. It's super flexible. So meal frequency itself can be effective for you because you won't get too full on any one meal and, again, you won't feel like you're force feeding yourself. So if you're only eating three times a day and you're trying to gain weight, you're going to have to eat at least four or five, just almost across the board, no matter who you are. I'm still in my gaining phase now. I definitely eat six times a day, maybe seven, and it just makes it so much easier because then each feeding is reasonable in size, it goes easy on your stomach, it digests well, you feel great throughout the day, and so on. All right.

Philip Pape: 9:20

Strategy number six is don't drink water before your meals. Now, some people would advocate for this strategy in general for a number of reasons I'm not going to go into. But it's a good one here, because most people don't think about this. They just drink when they drink. Water fills your stomach. It reduces appetite. Drinking water before your meals could be a great technique when you're in fat loss, but to try to get in the calories it's going to be very tough. So just start with the food and then fill it in with the liquid, unless you're just having a liquid meal, like we talked about earlier. So don't drink water before meals is strategy number six.

Philip Pape: 9:52

Strategy number seven is to embrace calorie timing by taking advantage of your body's natural hunger windows. So what I mean by this is you're going to be hungry, even in a gaining phase, at certain times. You know when that is, and for a lot of people that is first thing in the morning. So don't skip breakfast, pre and post workout right Now you may not be that hungry before your workout, but you should be have some hunger after your workout. Take advantage of that to really gobble up the fuel. And then before bed, and you're like, well, that's shocking. Before bed, I don't mean like eat at 9pm and then go to bed at 10pm, I mean, like you know, 6 or 7pm, like as late as you can push it where it doesn't affect your digestion or your sleep, and it may be a smaller feeding, it may be an extra kind of dessert slot or a pre-bed meal, that's like two hours before bed. That's smaller, right. Think like Greek yogurt with berries, that kind of level. Or I like a casein pudding with almond milk protein, where it's kind of light but it's still got a decent amount of protein in there and some calories, maybe a couple hundred, 300 calories to finish up your day. And it goes well with the frequency thing, right, I mentioned eating more frequently, because then you might have, okay, first thing in the morning, pre-workout, post-workout, lunch, afternoon snack, dinner and then pre-bed, and that's like seven feedings right there, and that's on a training day. Maybe on a rest day you have one fewer feeding and then you have to just be aware of the fact that you need more calories per feeding. All right.

Philip Pape: 11:22

Strategy number eight is to make your food more appealing visually and socially. I would say we naturally eat more when food looks good, right. Why do you think we love going to restaurants and having somebody else make these nice plates of food? It comes out heck, even going to like a greasy diner, and it comes out. You're like oh, this looks delicious because you didn't make it right. Or when you eat off of somebody else's plate, somehow it tastes better.

Philip Pape: 11:49

We went to Montreal years ago and I was amazed at the delicious food there. But not just that, it's how they plated everything. I was like everybody is a chef, is a culinary gourmand over here. We would just go to a diner for breakfast and the fruit was like cut up into, was sculpted into fancy shapes. Everywhere we went was like this. It was like an expectation and we wanted to eat it. Let's just put it that way.

Philip Pape: 12:15

So when food looks appetizing, when we're eating with other people, when we're relaxed, when we're not rushing and even sometimes when we're distracted, which normally is a big no-no because we want to eat mindfully. But when we're talking about a positive distraction, I'll say, like eating with our family at the dinner table. We can potentially eat more that way. So how you take advantage of that is obviously, besides going to restaurants when you're at home is the food just looking good, being food that you enjoy, being a good, interesting combination, fun recipes and eating with other people, and making sure to kind of load up on the food when you're doing that, because that's kind of tricking yourself to eat more without realizing it. If you will, it's just very interesting. And even being relaxed and not rushing and being mindful, sometimes you can actually eat more naturally because of the lower stress. It kind of depends on the person. So make food visually and socially appealing is the overall tip there. So make food visually and socially appealing is the overall tip there.

Philip Pape: 13:16

All right, let's go to the final segment here, which is really about, I'll say, implementation and sustainability. So these are some more day-to-day practices that you can have. So strategy number nine here is to have high-calorie snacks always available, like to pre-prep to meal prep. High calorie snacks, simple right. Always have ready to eat calorie dense foods available trail mix, protein bars, nut butter packets, pre-made sandwiches there's so many things and, yeah, I'm okay with protein bars. You don't want to be eating five a day, but look for those opportunities. Trail mix is a great one, because then you can get like nuts, dried fruit, even throw in some M&Ms in there the kids' version of trail mix. Again, we're trying to gain weight here, so we've got this flexibility. Think about that and pre-make your snacks, just like in a fat loss phase, where I recommend that you pre-make high-protein, low-calorie, like lower-fat snacks. Same idea here Just prepare higher-calorie snacks for yourself and easy things to grab and pack and go on a hike with or throw in the car or whatever. All right, that brings us to. We got three strategies left.

Philip Pape: 14:28

Strategy number 10 is to sneak calories into drinks. So we talked about sneaking calories into food earlier. This is really when you have a drink that you're already having, like coffee, have it with whole milk. Now, if you like your coffee black, and that's just how you drink your coffee. But a lot of us put cream or something in there. Put the most calorie dense thing in there. Now, right, put whole milk or heavy cream. Put heavy cream in there there, actually, almost. I don't want you to go bulletproof coffee because I don't like that huge amount of MCT oil in there. But that's a high calorie beverage. You know. Protein shakes made with whole milk instead of water or almond milk, having juice juice is okay occasionally, right Between your meals, you know, combining this with the liquid thing that we mentioned earlier. So just sneaking calories into everyday drinks that you already drink. Now I wouldn't want to go to like regular soda, for example. I'm not going to go that far. It's more of, I'll say, whole food type additions to what you already drink. Actually, tea works for that as well. My wife loves having milk with tea, kind of British style. I actually joke with her. I'm like, oh, are you having some tea with your milk? And she knows that and it tastes great. I get it All right.

Philip Pape: 15:43

Strategy number 11 is to plan your meals around fats.

Philip Pape: 15:49

Because fats are the most calorie dense, I want you to build meals around them.

Philip Pape: 15:54

So salmon with butter sauce, pasta with cream-based sauce, nut-crusted chicken or fish Meaning. What I mean by that is, unlike the earlier tip of just like adding fat, this is making sure that you pick meals and recipes that are fat-centric, that are fatty, that are rich. You're like oh, that's what I'm hearing on this podcast is very interesting, right, because it kind of flies in the face of sometimes what you think about with nutrition advice, but it's about your goals, it's about your context. We're trying to get more food in here, so enjoy the rich foods you know. Eat like the French, let's say right, whole eggs are great during this time. So think about fat centric meals as opposed to the protein and carbs, because you're probably going to get enough protein anyway if you're already there when you're not gaining. And then the fats are where the calories come, and then the carbs are everything else. Your carbs shouldn't be low, unless you're deliberately on a low-carb diet. But people forget about the value of fats for increasing calories.

Shonnetta: 16:55

Hi, my name is Sharnetta and I want to give a big shout out to Philip of Wits and Weights. I discovered his podcast just a few short months ago, but I quickly realized how valuable his content is. With all the many fitness and nutrition influencers out in the world today, I often suffer from information overload, but Philip poses careful questions to his guests that get to the meat of the subject matter, while most everyone offers free guides to this, and that what I found most unique about Philip is his live training and weekly Q&A sessions. If I can't make it live, I can always catch the replay. I am very grateful to find someone I feel is so passionate and genuine to his purpose, while also being hands-on within the Wits and Weights online community. He is truly only a click away. Thanks, philip, for all you do.

Philip Pape: 17:40

And then the last strategy is to track and adjust by keeping it simple but systematic. I want you to think of progressive overload for your calories. Okay, first you have to understand your baseline. How many calories do you actually need? Hopefully, you're tracking and you know what your surplus is and you know what your maintenance calories are. So you know that you're burning, say, 2,600 calories and you're in a 300 calorie surplus. You're going to eat 2,900 calories and you feel stuffed when you eat even just a little bit above your maintenance. Well, aim for not quite the full amount on week one, right? Aim for 2,700 and then 2,800, then 2,900, right? Very simple thing. I do this with clients all the time. I give them a very achievable goal for the next couple of weeks before their next check-in so that we're not feeling like we're overreaching and feeling like we failed just because we didn't miss it. Focus on one meal at a time, right, and one day at a time and a really good way to do this is if you're using a food logging app like Macrofactor is to take what you normally eat and then, for tomorrow, pre-plan and pre-log one change to a meal or one additional snack or meal per one of the strategies we talked about today. So don't change everything all at once, just tweak and add, tweak and add and it might be adding more fat, it might be adding an extra feeding, might be adding a shake in there, whatever makes sense, so that you're not obsessing or worrying too much about doing all of this. And then you're gonna adjust based on how well you feel. This is where biofeedback can come into play, like your hunger signals, and it's the opposite of during fat loss. So our goal here is not to feel like we're force feeding, like we're stuffed. So anyway, that's really putting it all together. The way I categorize these in the three groups may be a little bit arbitrary, but I wanted to keep it organized for you as you go through this and then you could use the timestamps to find each strategy. We'll just list the strategies right there in the show notes for you to make it easy so you can dive in.

Philip Pape: 19:40

Now. The one thing that you might be missing that has nothing to do with food and I wanted to address it and it could be the best way to increase your intake is managing your stress and recovery, just like during fat loss, when you're in a gaining phase but you are chronically stressed or you're under-recovered, right, that might be due to a lack of sleep, maybe overtraining, although that's not usually the issue. Your body actively suppresses your appetite and digestion. Now I've told you many times the opposite, that it can cause you to have a higher appetite and actually over-consume. But remember, we're in the opposite. We're in the opposite world here, the mirror world, alternate reality of gaining, where everything kind of flips on its head and when you're really stressed you may actually have trouble eating and your digestion might be off your gut health, things like that. And so sometimes, if you can barely eat 2000 calories and then you go on vacation and you relax, you're like I had no problem putting away 3000 plus calories a day without thinking about it. Why is that? It's because you're relaxed, you're not stressed. So it kind of goes both ways and I want you to keep that in mind, which is great because it means we should always be striving to manage our stress and recovery that way. It's not like we have to change the principle during a gaining phase.

Philip Pape: 20:55

So I want to just recap the 12 strategies for you just to reinforce in your mind real quick. I'm just going to list them. Number one calorie-dense foods. Simple, very high-level strategy. Number two liquid calories. Number three enhance your existing meals. Tweak them.

Philip Pape: 21:13

Number four make sure you're eating things you enjoy. Number five add more meals or feedings. Increase your meal frequency. Number six don't drink water before meals. Number seven use the eating windows that you are already hungry with, like first in the morning, after your workout, before bed, you know, afternoon whatever Take advantage of those to add in the calories. Number eight make sure it's visually and socially appealing when you're eating. Number nine pre-plan or pre-prepare calorie-dense snacks, like think the trail mix, for example. Number 10 is to tweak your everyday drink that you already drink, like your coffee or tea, and add in some calorie-dense liquid to that, like heavy cream. Number 11 is to prioritize fatty foods in general. Just think of rich, creamy, fatty, nutty cheese, all those things. Prioritize those. And then the last one is to track and adjust systematically and use a form of progressive overload to kind of ease into this and work your way up.

Philip Pape: 22:15

Now do you remember Jim's question about struggling with celiac disease? Notice how all these strategies they work with any dietary restriction. It's about the principles, right? Not the specific foods. I gave you some examples, but we're not about specific foods here, so you can, no matter what you're dealing with. You can apply these principles All right. If you want to put all these strategies into action in a gaining phase, remember I have a free muscle building nutrition blueprint that builds on everything we covered today in terms of the setup, like what are the calories and macros, what is the surplus, what should I be tracking, what is the biofeedback, what are the measurements, and then an example of a real bulk. To get your copy, click the link in the show notes or go to witsandweightscom slash muscle to download that right now. Until next time, keep using your wits lifting those weights and remember, building muscle isn't just about lifting heavy, it's about fueling heavy too. This is Philip Pape and you've been listening to Wits and Weights. I'll talk to you next time.