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Philip Pape 1/7/26 Philip Pape 1/7/26

Lose Fat Without Hunger Using Protein, Fiber, and Appetite Control That Works | Ep 423

Always hungry on a diet? Learn how protein, fiber, food volume, and smart timing can flip the script so fat loss feels easier, not harder. Plus a 30-second pre-meal trick to cut intake by ~20%.

Try Calocurb natural appetite control (40% fewer cravings and 30% less hunger). It's prescription free, affordable, and fast acting. Get 10% off:
https://witsandweights.com/calocurb

Can you lose fat without all the hunger?

Maybe you're eating fewer calories than ever but somehow hungrier than ever, and it feels like a vicious cycle that prevents you from losing weight or stalls out your metabolism.

Discover the satiety hierarchy that explains why some foods keep you full for hours while others leave you raiding the pantry within minutes.

Learn the specific protein and fiber targets that suppress appetite at the hormonal level by triggering GLP-1 and PYY release, plus evidence-based meal timing strategies that can cut evening cravings in half.

Philip shares 4 practical (and natural) appetite control tools that work with your body's natural hunger signals.

This is 2 of our 8-part Appetite Series, and it's all about making fat loss feel less like a fight. Whether you're focused on body recomposition, building muscle while losing fat, or just trying to stick to your nutrition plan without white-knuckling through every meal, you'll walk away with tips to manage hunger naturally.

Plus, stay until the end for a pre-meal protocol that can reduce calorie intake by nearly 20% and takes just 30 seconds to implement!

Timestamps

0:00 - Why managing hunger matters more than hitting your macros
2:53 - The satiety hierarchy
7:28 - Energy density strategies to eat more food on fewer calories
12:10 - How to activate natural GLP-1 and satiety signals
14:02 - Front-loading calories and why breakfast size affects evening cravings
19:54 - 4 natural appetite tools
24:22 - Connecting satiety strategies to strength training and body recomp
27:18 - Bonus: 30-second pre-meal protocol to reduce calorie intake by 20%

Dieting fails most often when hunger overwhelms willpower, not when the math on the tracker is wrong. The good news is appetite is not random; it’s governed by clear signals you can influence. Start with a satiety-first framework: prioritize protein and fiber at every main meal, then use low energy density foods to load your stomach with volume for fewer calories. Protein triggers peptide YY and GLP-1 while suppressing ghrelin, which is why evenly spreading 25 to 40 grams across meals steadies appetite and supports muscle. Fiber adds mechanical fullness and, once fermented, produces short-chain fatty acids that further stimulate satiety hormones. Combine both with simple patterns like half your plate vegetables, fruit or legumes for carbs, and a lean protein anchor.

Food volume is where you “eat more to lose more” without actually eating more calories. Your stomach responds to stretch, not arithmetic, so meals built around high-water, high-fiber foods—salads, broth-based soups, berries, non-starchy vegetables—fill you up fast. Compare an apple to pretzels: same carbohydrate headline, very different fullness effect. Start meals with a big salad or a light soup and you’ll often eat 10 to 15 percent fewer calories without noticing. The sequence matters too: load the plate with greens, add protein, then whatever carbs fit, and test whether starting with vegetables or protein works better for you. None of this bans foods; it reorders and proportions them so your biology works for you.

Meal timing can curb the cravings that strike hardest at night. Studies show that front-loading calories—bigger breakfast, lighter dinner—raises diet-induced thermogenesis and lowers hunger through the day while reducing appetite for sweets in the evening. If late-night snacking sabotages your deficit, shift protein and calories earlier. Consider early time-restricted feeding, such as 8 a.m. to 4 p.m., if your lifestyle allows, since aligning with circadian rhythms improves insulin sensitivity and may blunt ghrelin later. You don’t have to force breakfast if you truly dislike it, but test a protein-rich morning and a fuller lunch to see if evenings get easier. Track hunger, cravings, and adherence to find your personal timing sweet spot.

Tactical tools can layer onto the fundamentals for quick wins. Water preloading—about 16 ounces 15 to 30 minutes before meals—adds volume and corrects thirst mistaken for hunger. Caffeine from one to two cups of coffee modestly suppresses appetite if you avoid loading it with calories. Capsaicin from chili peppers can reduce subsequent intake for some people and is easy to incorporate with hot sauce or spicy dishes. Bitter compounds—especially delayed-release hops extracts—activate gut bitter receptors that boost GLP-1, CCK, and PYY, amplifying the same pathways triggered by protein and fiber. These aren’t magic bullets; they align with physiology to make a calorie deficit feel less like a fight.

All of this supports the real goal: lose fat while protecting muscle. A sustainable deficit paired with resistance training and adequate protein preserves lean mass so more of the weight you drop comes from fat. Front-loading energy helps training quality and recovery, while lighter dinners often improve sleep and digestion. The pre-meal protocol ties it together: about 15 to 20 minutes before your toughest meal, drink a full glass of water and take in 25 to 30 grams of protein via shake, Greek yogurt, or cottage cheese. The water stretches the stomach, and the protein sparks satiety hormones in minutes, often reducing total intake by close to 20 percent. Use this consistently for one week, note changes in hunger and portions, and keep what clearly works. Appetite is a system; design meals and timing to guide it, and the deficit becomes manageable and repeatable.

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Philip Pape: 0:00
If you're eating fewer calories than ever, but somehow hungrier than ever, and you're wondering what the heck you can do about it, this episode is for you. Today I'm gonna show you exactly how to structure your nutrition so that fat loss happens with less effort because you're actually satisfied, not starving. We're gonna talk about natural appetite control today. How can we suppress appetite at the hormonal level through both food and other means, as well as a counterintuitive food hack that activates your gut's natural foldness signals within minutes? 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 we're talking hunger again today. We're talking appetite in episode two of our eight-episode series. And the reality most people will not tell you about fat loss is the deficit itself is not the hard part. Okay, hitting a number in your tracking app or with your macros is just simple math. What is hard is managing the hunger that comes with it. And if your current approach has you fighting hunger all the time or dreading meals because they're not what you want or losing control in the evening, I think you're doing it wrong. I think there's a better way. Not because you lack discipline, but because you're working against things that could be easier, like we alluded to in the last episode. So we're gonna fix that today. I'm gonna give you some more specific strategies backed by the research on satiety, on appetite hormones, to lose fat without feeling as much like you're so hungry, right? We shouldn't feel like we're starving and miserable. There's always gonna be a little hunger. This isn't about tricks, this isn't hacks, this isn't anything that promises a miracle or ramps up your metabolism, you know, like CLAN or something like that, or steroids or anything weird like that. We're not talking GLP ones either. It's understanding how your body regulates hunger and then trying to structure both your nutrition and using natural means to leverage those systems. And then I want you to stick around until the end because I'm going to share a specific pre-meal protocol that can reduce how much you eat at your next meal by nearly 20%, and it only takes 30 seconds. Hey, this is Philip, and today's episode is sponsored by CaloCurb. If you've ever been in a fat loss phase and felt like hunger was working against you, Calocurb's GLP1 activator is a game changer. Calocurb is a natural appetite support made from amerisate, a patented bitter hops extract that activates GLP1 and other gut signals to help you feel satisfied. Clinical studies showed a 40% reduction in cravings and 30% reduction in hunger within one hour. If you want to try it, go to witsandweights.com slash callowcurb for 10% off your first order. Link is in the show notes. That's witsandweights.com slash callowcurb. All right, let's start with the foundation, the satiety hierarchy, right? Why do some foods fill you up and others don't? Because this is really the crux of a lot of this. If you want to lose fat with less hunger, you have to understand why some foods leave you satisfied for hours, maybe all day, and others have you immediately hungry minutes or if not seconds later, right? And we're not talking about just ultra-processed foods either, although that's part of the equation along the spectrum. So I think I like to think of it as a satiety hierarchy or spectrum. At the top of the hierarchy, or I well, if we look at it as the hierarchy being the best thing at the top, at the top is the protein, right? Which is hands down the most filling macro per calorie. When you eat protein, your gut releases the hormones we talked about in the last episode, like peptide YY and GLP1, that signals fullness to your brain, suppresses graylin, your hunger hormone. And this is a very pronounced effect. It measurably increases your satiety versus higher carb or higher fat meals. It's also why I like protein to be distributed throughout the day, not because it gives you some far superior muscle protein synthesis. It's a tiny benefit to that, but it's really more the satiety side of the equation, the practical side. There's also something called the protein leverage hypothesis where your body has a built-in drive to consume a certain amount of protein. And so if your diet's low in protein, you're gonna want to eat more until the protein need is met, even if it means overeating, which, you know, shouldn't be a problem if you're deliberately aiming to get the amount of protein we talk about. But I think this is one reason why modern ultra-processed diets, which are obviously very low in protein, right? They dilute the protein or have very little in it, and instead use a lot of cheap fats and carbs, lead to overconsumption. Your body is chasing the protein. That's not the only reason, but it is one of the reasons. So protein's at the top. Then we have fiber. Again, talked about this in detail last episode, or not in detail. We alluded to it. We're gonna get into some more detail today. But there's different types of fiber. There's soluble fiber, the kind you find in like oatmeal, in beans, fruits, some of the carbs I really love, which also have fiber, and that absorbs water and that forms a gel in your digestive tract tract. That physically then slows down your digestion, it stretches your stomach, and it triggers mechanical satiety signals. By mechanical, I mean there are little receptors, physical receptors that get touched by these things by what you're eating that get triggered to say, hey, you're more full. But also, fiber gets fermented in your gut by your gut bacteria. And then it gets fermented into short chain fatty acids, which themselves stimulate the release of the same appetite-suppressing hormones, GLB1 and PYY. So, you know, you hear gut health talked generically, you hear fiber talked about generically. There are direct mechanical and physical implications of eating fiber that will help this whole process and will help with your fat loss. It is, it is such a game changer that it's one of the first things I start with with one-on-one clients is looking at their fiber. If it's not high enough, I'm like, let's jack that up. Yes, protein, I know you get it. But a lot of people, they, the fiber for some reason seems like this afterthought, like, well, it's for my health or for some other nebulous thing over here. But no, it's for the appetite, it's for the gut health, it's for the gut bacteria, it's all of this stuff. Hormonal suppression of hunger, mechanical fullness from volume, delayed gastric emptying that keeps you satisfied longer are super, super important in terms of the hunger side of the equation because so many of you are struggling with things like emotional eating, and there are tools along the way that will reduce the triggers and the circumstances in which you would succumb to emotional eating. And I think helping with your hunger signals is one of them. So the practical application here is simple. Every main meal should include a substantial protein source and at least a couple servings of fibrous vegetables or other high fiber foods. I love fruit. Fruit's super convenient. So fruit's great, but if you like beans, legumes, things like that, lentils, where there's a little bit of fiber and carbs in there and protein, that's great too. So we're talking for most people, it's gonna be somewhere like 25 to 40 grams of protein per meal, right? It's gonna be something like that, depending on your size, plus vegetables that are like half your plate. It's not complicated, but it's kind of a non-negotiable if you're not doing it already and you're trying to improve the situation for fat loss and hunger. All right, so the next thing I want to talk about is energy density, because that's where you can kind of game the system and eat more without more calories. This is where a lot of the uh mantra of eat more to lose weight, I like to, I guess, steal that phrase. When most people say eat more to lose weight, they're talking about literally eating more calories to try to increase your metabolism, which we know is a farce. There's no such thing, right? You can recover your metabolism, but it's not going to make allow you to eat more and lose weight at the same clip. Okay. Different topic. I like to say there is a way to eat more and lose weight, and that's to eat more food with the same amount of calories. And that's energy density. How many calories are packed into a given weight of food, right? A pound of pizza can contain 1200 calories. A pound of mixed vegetables and grilled chicken might be 300 calories. Big difference. You could even go to the store right now in the grocery store, look at two bags of popcorn, one that's like kettle corn with butter and sugar and salt, and one that's just a simple salted popcorn. And look at the serving size on the back. And what you're gonna see is they both have the same weight, right? Usually one ounce, 28 grams, but one's gonna have more cups for that weight, right? One's gonna allow you to have, say, three and a half cups of popcorn for 28 grams. The other one's only gonna give you like a cup and a half of popcorn because it's so laden with calories, right? And I'm not saying good or bad here, just saying those are the differences you can see when it comes to energy density. Your stomach doesn't count calories. That's the important thing. Your stomach, I think a lot of people misunderstand this. A lot of people think your body responds to just the energy level. It doesn't. It actually responds to physical stretch and volume. So if you fill your stomach with low energy density foods, you're gonna trigger your folded signals faster while consuming far fewer calories. Again, this isn't like a new diet trick for 2026. It's basic physics combined with how your gut works. I do think it's important to understand gut health because of these kinds of things, not the mysterious stuff that you know about the gut brain axis that people don't quite get that that gets a little bit technical, but just these very practical things. So, the what foods should you eat to help out in this situation? All right, non-starchy vegetables, like or yeah, non-starchy vegetables, leafy greens, berries, strawberries, blackberries, raspberries, awesome. Soups, I like vegetable soups, but even obviously soups with protein like chicken and salads. Okay, that's a basic setup in your kitchen because all of these foods have high water content, high fiber, which means they take up a lot of space without many calories. I mean, if you think of just a carb, you think of a fruit, an apple versus chip uh pretzels. Let's go with pretzels because pretzels are almost pure carbs, right? Just like an apple. Which one's gonna fill you up for far fewer calories? It's gonna be the apple because of all the water, right? The the pretzel's been processed because you have flour, and it's basically just flour, right? It's it's bread, effectively. And again, not good or bad. It's just comparing the two, you can see why this would happen. So, like carbs that have water, if you just think about what you're eating, is it a natural carb that hasn't been processed that has water? That's probably gonna be a lot more filling than something that has been processed. So, again, it's not about the carbs, is it? It's about the food volume. We do know from quite a few studies that like starting a meal with a large salad or a broth-based soup, so having that first can reduce your total meal intake in terms of calories by something like 10 to 50, 10 or 15%. And that's meaningful, right? Because over time, those kinds of reductions are going to add up and you're not gonna feel like you're restricting anything. You just switched around what and when you ate something. So a trick here is before your main meal, eat a big bowl of vegetables or broth-based soup, for example, right? Or load your plate with leafy greens and non-starchy vegetables first, and then add your protein, and then whatever else fits your macros, and kind of eat it in that order. Now, some people argue eat your protein first. I mean, it depends. Try both. Try them. That's all I can say is experiment. Not do your and notice none of this is eliminating foods. It's changing the order in proportion and then also adding in things that are gonna help. And yeah, I grew up in the 80s where you had to like clean your plate, but I almost never clean my plate. Even when we eat at home, my wife's totally cool with it because none of us do. We're all used to just starting with like a salad, maybe a soup, something like that, and then digging into the protein and the vegetables, maybe a little bit of the carb, and you have some left over. You know, and I generally might encourage my daughters, hey, I would encourage you to maybe eat that, finish the broccoli and the chicken before you go on to the quinoa, but it doesn't really matter as long as you are managing your hunger signals well. All right, we're about halfway through. I'm going to be talking about meal timing strategies next, some appetite control tools, and the pre-meal protocol that I mentioned at the start. Before we continue with meal timing, I do want to tell you about today's sponsor, Calicurb, because this is highly relevant to today's topic. We've been talking about how protein and fiber trigger the release of appetite hormones like GLP1 and PYY. And these are the same pathways that, for example, GLP1 medications target. It turns out there is a natural way to enhance these signals. And that's why I like Calicurb. Calicurb is a natural appetite support made from amerisate. Okay, go Google it if you'd like, nerd out on it. It is a patented hops extract developed over 15 years in New Zealand, and it works by activating the bitter taste receptors in your gut. Remember, we talked about mechanical activation of gut receptors. These, it's it's like you've eaten something bitter, and that bitterness triggers the release of the same satiety hormones we just discussed: GLP1, CCK, PYY. And clinical data shows a 40% reduction in cravings, 30% reduction in hunger, and 18% fewer calories consumed all within one hour of taking it. So I think of calllocurb as another powerful tool in the satiety stack. It doesn't replace protein and fiber and all the fundamentals we're discussing today, but it does amplify them. You know, you're still doing the work. This just massively helps your gut biology cooperate so you can eat even less if that is your goal. So if you want to try it, go to wits and weights.com slash calllocurb for 10% off your first order. I've included the link at the top of the show notes as well. Try it out for yourself before you commit to a subscription. Again, that's witsandweights.com slash calocurb. That's C-A-L-O Curb C U R B. All right, let's get into meal timing because I think that can meaningfully impact your hunger levels throughout the day. Again, I'm hammering home some of the things that I've mentioned in the first episode. And as we go through this eight-episode series, you're gonna hear things repeated and from different angles so that they really stick with you. Okay, this is part of the education I want to get across. There's a robust study that I want to highlight here where researchers compared two eating patterns: a large breakfast with a small dinner versus a small breakfast with a large dinner. Same total calories, the exact same foods, just distributed differently. And this is a cool one. I've heard others, I think like Brandon de Cruz talk about this one. It's it's been around the block. The large breakfast pattern produced two and a half times higher diet-induced thermogenesis. So that means more calories were burned just from the digestion. But I think more relevant to today's conversation, it also produced significantly lower hunger ratings throughout the day, especially in the evening. Ah, interesting, right? Even more interesting, I would say, is that the small breakfast pattern, right? So small breakfast, large dinner, increased appetite for sweets later in the day. So if you're someone who struggles with evening cravings, raise your hand, that's many, if not most of us, or you have late night snacking, then skimping out on your breakfast could be exacerbating this or even causing this. You know, or I don't want to say causing it, but you know, it exact it basically ramps up your cravings such that you are eating more because of it. And I think this aligns with what we know about circadian rhythms, where again, your body's more metabolically active in the morning and in the afternoon, your insulin sensitivity is higher, your nutrient partitioning favors muscle over fat storage, and kind of eating in alignment with these rhythms a bit and front loading your calories earlier in the day can possibly reduce your overall hunger, especially for those cravings later, while of course you're trying to improve your body composition. And here's here's something you're gonna find shocking for me to say. If you're thinking of intermittent fasting, many of you are doing it where you skip breakfast and potentially lunch and you kind of squeeze the window into the afternoon. What about trying early time restricted feeding where you can find your meals to an earlier window of the day, like 8 a.m. to 4 p.m.? And I know it's weird for you for a lot of people because we try to have dinners with our family and you know, maybe it doesn't work for you. Okay, fine. I mean, I think intermittent fasting in general for a lot of people is is is it's kind of forced. You're trying to force into it anyway, and it throws off like the typical meal schedule. But if you want to try it, 8 a.m. to 4 p.m., I believe there's research that shows a correlation with what we just talked about, where it like lowers ghrelin, it increases the evening, that PYY hormone, where you have less hunger at the times when people struggle the most. And you may actually consume, you may, you may, again, I'm not promising this, you've got to try it for yourself. You may actually more easily consume fewer calories in that time restricted window than in a later time restricted window. Now, I'm not saying you have to eat breakfast if you generally don't want to, okay? Everyone is different. Some of you are like, I just can't eat breakfast, I just don't feel hungry. Okay, I get it, I get it. And I know if you tried it for a while, you might adapt to it anyway. What I'm saying is that if you've been struggling with evening hunger, experiment. Just try shifting more of your protein and calories to earlier meals. Have a nice big protein-rich breakfast. Maybe make your lunch the largest meal and then keep dinner lighter and then see what happens to your cravings. All right, so let's talk about some appetite control tools because I like to get tactical sometimes beyond just the general philosophy of macro and timing. There are tools that you can use to actively suppress appetite. This is these are hacks, these are gaming the system, whatever you want to call them, but they work with what we know about biology and psychology, or mainly biology in this case. The first one is water preloading. And you've probably heard this one before. It's almost too simple. It's drinking like two cups of water, which is 16 ounces, a pint of water, a big glass of water, about 15 to 30 minutes before a meal has been shown to reduce food intake at the meal. And part of that is physical volume. Part of it is that we're often mistaking our thirst for hunger. So it's one, the other, or both. So if you feel hungry, it helps to have a glass of water when it's not mealtime. And then when it's coming up to mealtime, having that glass of water beforehand, totally free, easy, hack, save at works. The second one is caffeine. Coffee is a mild appetite suppressant. Research shows about one to two cups can reduce hunger for a few hours. It's probably suppressing your ghreline. Of course, if you're not compensating with tons of calories like sugar and milk or something, cream, not that I'm, again, against any of that stuff, just you have to account for it. But black coffee with a splash of almond milk or half and a half or something like that, if you're trying to keep it light, is a good thing to try. I wouldn't be surprised. I know caffeine, I know caffeine itself is a mild appetite suppressant, but the fact that you're drinking water as well has the physical stretching effect too. All right, then there's capsaicin. This is the compound that makes chili peppers spicy. And it has a modest appetite suppressing effect as well. A study found that adding chili peppers to meals reduced the subsequent calorie intake by 25% in some participants. That was just one study that I found. Again, you can cherry pick these things easily enough, but you've probably heard this before. If you like spicy food, easy win. Adding hot sauce or cayenne pepper or fresh peppers to your meals or cooking with them, a nice spicy chili, you know, really clears up the sinuses. Great, great idea. And the last tool I want to mention is bitter compounds. And this I've researched a lot lately. It's where things get interesting because certain bitter plant extracts, especially from hops, can stimulate the gut receptors that trigger the release of satiety hormones. It is why I took on Callocurb as a sponsor for this series. I think it's a really cool tool. That's kind of in between totally food related and the GLP1 medications. So it's appropriate for a lot of you. There have been quite a few independent studies on this that are legitimate. They're evidence-based that show that a delayed release hops extract can reduce hunger and cravings compared to placebo. And again, you've got to just try it out for yourself. The mechanism is similar to what happens when you eat protein and fiber, but it's activated through a different pathway. And I'm not going to go into all the biology. I think we're going to do that with some of our other episodes. So the theme here is these tools work with how your body works. They're not like magic or some special drug or special supplement. They're just natural things that go along with how your body works and then can respond to those. All right. So the last section here is I want to connect back to what we really care about here, which is building and maintaining muscle while we lose fat, right? How does this all align? Everything we discussed today is not just managing hunger for its own sake, but creating conditions where you can sustain a reasonable calorie deficit long enough to see real results. That might be for you 10 pounds of fat. It might be 30, 40, 50 pounds of fat. It might be that you need to lose 100 pounds and need a series of fat loss phases and a way to control appetite to get there without losing muscle, without tanking your performance, right? Without weird side effects. When you're in a deficit, your body wants to break down that muscle for energy, it's fighting back, it's doing all the things we talked about in the last episode. And the two defenses against this that are the biggest defenses are sufficient protein and resistance training, especially the resistance training. Okay, don't think that the protein is the most important thing. If you are not resistance training, you're gonna have a problem with all of this. That has to be in there. I'd rather you be resistance training and not quite getting enough protein than being perfectly fine on protein and not resistance training for sure. I would make that trade in a heartbeat. And we've covered protein's role in society, but the consumption of protein is, of course, also helping with your muscles, right? With the amino acids you need to resist the breakdown of those muscles so that when you lose weight, you're losing mostly fat. We don't want to lose muscle, we want to lose mostly fat. The fiber and the volume strategies we discussed also help you stay in the deficit without feeling deprived. So don't discount those as well because adherence is everything, right? The best diet's the one you can stick with. You've heard it before. You can't stick to the diet that makes you miserable and hungry all the time. That is what traditional dieting is. We're not doing traditional dieting, crash diets. We're doing it more sustainably. The meal timing piece also supports your training. Notice how this is all connected. If you front load your calories, it means you have energy for your workouts. Now it depends on when you train, right? Most people or a lot of people train in the morning, some people train in the afternoon. I mean, I think it's it helps to train fed regardless. But front loading those calories, having plenty of calories throughout the day is usually helpful. Keeping dinner somewhat light can often help with your sleep quality, with your digestion, things like that. So this is a satiety-focused nutrition approach that's gonna help with all of this. All right, now before we end the episode, remember that I promised you one specific protocol that can reduce your calorie intake at your next meal by nearly 20%. I'm gonna break that down in just a second. Hey, this is Philip. And a quick reminder about today's sponsor, CaloCurb. If hunger has been the hardest part of your fat loss phase, even when everything else is dialed in, check out CalloCurb. It's a natural GLP1 activating supplement with clinical data showing 40% fewer cravings and 30% less hunger within one hour, leading to 18% fewer calories, so you can stick to your fat loss plan. Go to witsandweights.com slash calocurb for 10% off your first order. Link is in the show notes. That's witsandweights.com slash callocurb. All right, here is that pre-meal protocol that I mentioned. Before your most challenging meal of the day, the one where you tend to overeat or where hunger is the highest. Do this about 15 to 20 minutes beforehand. Remember how we talked about drinking water beforehand can be helpful? Well, I want you to add a twist to this. I want you to drink a full glass of water with about 25 or 30 grams of protein. So for many of you, this is gonna be like a protein shake, but it could be a little bit of Greek yogurt or cottage cheese. Think of this as a little bit of a pre-meal appetizer, okay? Not salad, not bread. And the reason this works is you got the water stretching your stomach, which begins triggering the mechanical fullness. We already talked about that. Then the protein combined with that, which takes a little time to digest, it's gonna start releasing the GLP1 and the PYY almost immediately, so that by the time you sit down to eat, you've already significantly activated your satiety response. And this combination, water plus protein before a meal, can also reduce your calorie intake quite a bit. And you are, of course, you of course are adding calories with the protein, but you'll probably end up eating less total, again, unless you assuming you don't try to clean your plate, right? Because the pre-meal dose is far more satiating than what it displaces. And the bonus is it's a way to help you get to your protein goal if that's another thing that you are struggling with. This is really powerful before dinner, if that is when you tend to overeat, because dinner tends to be the biggest meal for most people as well. And this is just a good way to reduce those calories without even noticing you're doing it. I mean, just try it for a week, pick your toughest meal, do the protocol 15 minutes before, watch what happens, let me know. All right, that is a wrap for today. This was episode two of eight in our January Appetite series. So make sure you're following the show to get the next one. Until then, keep using your wits, lifting your weights, and remember you don't have to starve yourself through a diet just to lose weight. You can lose fat sustainably while managing hunger naturally. I'm Philip Pape, and I'll talk to you next time here on the Wits and Weights Podcast.

Philip Pape 1/5/26 Philip Pape 1/5/26

Why You're Always HUNGRY on a Diet (7 Mistakes Killing Your Fat Loss) | Ep 422

This episode kicks off our 8-part Appetite Series with the most common question I hear: "Why am I always hungry on my diet?" The answer usually comes down to one of these 7 mistakes that trigger your hunger hormones, tank your energy, and stall your results. You'll learn exactly why (and how) your body fights back during a diet through hormones like leptin, ghrelin, and GLP-1, and which mistakes you're likely making without realizing it.

Try Calocurb natural appetite control (40% fewer cravings and 30% less hunger). It's prescription free, affordable, and fast acting. Get 10% off:
https://witsandweights.com/calocurb

Are you constantly HUNGRY? Battling cravings, feeling like your body is pushing back hard?

You're in a calorie deficit, doing everything right (tracking your food, hitting the gym, staying consistent), yet you're ravenous and not sure what to do.

This episode kicks off our 8-part Appetite Series with the most common question I hear: "Why am I always hungry on my diet?"

The answer usually comes down to one of these 7 mistakes that trigger your hunger hormones, tank your energy, and stall your results. You'll learn exactly why (and how) your body fights back during a diet through hormones like leptin, ghrelin, and GLP-1, and which mistakes you're likely making without realizing it.

Whether you're trying to lose fat, improve body recomp, or just stop white-knuckling through every diet, learn the evidence-based fixes to work with your biology instead of against it.

Plus, stay until the end for a counterintuitive 2-week protocol you can start tomorrow to make hunger management dramatically easier, before you even cut a single calorie.

Timestamps

0:00 - Why your body triggers hunger during fat loss
3:11 - The hormones that control your hunger
6:50 - Mistake 1: Not eating enough protein to feel full (or build muscle)
9:48 - Mistake 2: Low fiber and food volume sabotaging satiety
14:00 - Mistake 3: How poor sleep and stress spike your appetite
18:27 - Mistake 4: Why too much cardio increases hunger
22:05 - Mistake 5: Chronic extreme deficits and metabolism adaptation
27:42 - Mistake 6: Meal timing mistakes that trigger overeating
32:04 - Mistake 7: The all-or-nothing mindset killing your fat loss
36:11 - Bonus: 2-week prep protocol to reduce hunger before dieting

Hunger during fat loss feels like sabotage because, biologically, it is. When you cut calories, leptin drops, ghrelin rises, and satiety peptides like GLP-1 and PYY decline. Your brain reads “famine,” slows metabolic rate, and nudges you to move less and eat more. That internal pushback is predictable, but it’s also workable. The goal isn’t to overpower these signals; it’s to design your plan so biology is an ally. Start by understanding the levers you control daily: protein, fiber, sleep, stress, training, meal timing, and mindset. Each lever influences appetite in a different way, and adjusting a few can transform adherence without harsher calorie cuts.

Protein is the highest-impact lever. It reliably reduces hunger, boosts satiety hormones, and helps you keep muscle in a deficit. A simple target of 0.7 to 1.0 grams per pound of body weight, front-loaded earlier in the day, smooths cravings and makes evenings calmer. Pair that with fiber and food volume: leafy greens, crucifers, watery fruits, hearty soups, and even humble popcorn. Volume slows digestion, fills the stomach, and engages gut receptors that amplify fullness. Contrast a calorie-dense snack with a big, colorful salad topped with lean protein and you’ll see why “eat more to feel less hungry” isn’t a paradox; it’s strategy. Most people underuse this lever and end up chasing snacks instead of building meals that do the work for them.

Recovery is another quiet driver of appetite. Short sleep and chronic stress push ghrelin up, leptin down, and your cravings toward high-reward foods. You’ll eat more without noticing, then blame willpower. Flip the script: prioritize sleep routines, protect rest days, and swap some “more cardio” for walking, lifting, and actual downtime. Cardio has its place, but long, frequent sessions often suppress appetite early and boomerang it back at night. A better pyramid is steps and lifting as the base, with optional, recoverable cardio and brief sprints as the tip. This keeps hunger steadier, preserves muscle, and maintains the energy to train hard.

Diet pace matters. Living in a deep deficit for months invites stronger adaptations, lingering hunger, and a mindset spiral. Moderate, time-bound phases with maintenance breaks guard against that downward drift. You’ll lose steadily, feel human, and maintain performance. Meal timing adds another layer: many people do better distributing food across the day, front-loading protein and volume, and avoiding the “skip breakfast, raid dinner” pattern that wrecks adherence. It’s not dogma—experiment for two weeks at a time and map hunger to your schedule and training.

Mindset ties it all together. Rigid rules fuel rebound eating; flexible structure sustains results. Plan treats, pre-log events, and remove guilt so decisions aren’t made at peak hunger. To kickstart momentum, try a two-week “add, don’t subtract” protocol before cutting calories: protein at every meal, a massive vegetable portion at lunch and dinner, and a 10-minute walk after those meals. Appetite settles, decisions get easier, and you’ll need less restraint when you finally lower calories. Fat loss gets simpler when meals do the heavy lifting and your plan respects how your body actually works.

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Philip Pape: 0:00
If you've ever been in a fat loss phase, in a calorie deficit, trying to lose weight, but you're constantly hungry, battling cravings, and feeling like your body is working against you, it probably is. Today I'm breaking down the seven most common mistakes that trigger your hunger hormones, tank your energy, and sabotage your fat loss results, even when you're doing everything else right. You'll learn why your body fights back during a diet, which mistakes you're probably making without realizing it, and exactly how to fix them so you can lose fat without feeling like you are constantly white-knuckling it. Miss even one of these, and you could be stuck in a cycle of hunger and frustration for months. Welcome to Wits and Weights, the show that helps you build a strong, healthy physique using evidence, engineering, and efficiency. I'm your host, certified nutrition coach Philip Hate, and founder of the Fitness Lab app. And today we're kicking off a special eight-episode series. I'm calling the Appetite Series. Eight episodes throughout January focused entirely on understanding and managing hunger so you can finally take control of your fat loss without the constant struggle. This is one of the most common issues that I hear from listeners and clients more than anything else, because we talk about going into fat loss and then you start to execute. And then the pushback is I think like I'm doing all the things right, but I'm always hungry. What am I doing wrong? Because the hunger itself is affecting your adherence and often preventing you from successfully completing the diet. The answer is usually one or more of these seven mistakes I'm gonna cover today. And once you understand the physiology behind why your body creates very powerful hunger signals during a calorie deficit, we're talking hormones like leptin, ghrelin, GOP1. And by the way, we're gonna dive into those hormones in a future episode in more detail. You'll see exactly why certain approaches backfire and others tend to work. Now, before we get into these, I want to give you a reason to stick around until the very end. I've started to include really cool tips at the end that are very practical and actionable and sometimes surprising. So after I cover the seven mistakes, I'm gonna share a tactic that can help you starting right away to make hunger easier to manage before you even cut a single calorie. These are the kind of tricks I really love because they help with hunger without having to increase or reduce calories. It's something I've seen transform how a lot of people approach this from a psychological perspective, and it's a real simple tip that you can use. Hey, this is Philip, and today's episode is sponsored by Callocurb. If you've ever been in a fat loss phase and felt like hunger was working against you, Callocurb's GLP1 activator is a game changer. Callocurb is a natural appetite support made from amerisate, a patented bitter hops extract that activates GLP1 and other gut signals to help you feel satisfied. Clinical studies showed a 40% reduction in cravings and 30% reduction in hunger within one hour. If you want to try it, go to witsandweights.com slash calocurb for 10% off your first order. Link is in the show notes. That's witsandweights.com slash callocurb. Now, before I get into the seven mistakes, you have to understand why hunger happens in the first place during a calorie deficit. Because once you understand the mechanism, the solutions become more obvious. So when you restrict calories for fat loss, your body doesn't just sit there and let you burn through your fat. That would be awesome, right? If you just said, I'm gonna cut calories, my body's body's gonna pull that from fat, I'm gonna lose. It's very it's purely mathematical. Calories in, calories out, we're done. No, your body is going to push back, it's going to respond with very powerful hormonal changes designed to get you to eat more. And they're also designed to get you to move less, believe it or not. And this is this is that survival programming we've hit on in the past. Your body doesn't know that you're trying to fit into your old genes, you know, and reduce your waste size. It thinks that there's something wrong with your food supply, that there's some sort of famine going on. So here's what happens physiologically. Okay, the first thing is your leptin drops. Leptin is the hormone produced by fat cells and it signals fullness to your brain. So when you diet, leptin levels decline in proportion to the aggressiveness of your fat loss and how much fat you've actually lost. Less leptin means less satiety signaling. Satiety is a word we're gonna use all the time. It means fullness. And so with less of that fullness signaling, you actually feel hungrier. Then to top it all off, we have ghrelin. Ghrelin goes up. Ghrelin is your hunger hormone. So you have leptin, which is your fullness hormone, goes down. Ghrelin's your hunger hormone, which is produced by your stomach. And that tells your brain, hey, it's time to eat. So during calorie restriction, ghrelin goes up and then stays elevated even after you eat, right? Because your body's trying to get you to eat more. You haven't eaten enough. You need to eat more. One study found that overweight participants who lost about 30 pounds had significantly higher ghrelin levels a full year after their weight loss. And then, so, so even a year later, there was some adaptation going on. Now, I'm not saying this is gonna happen. There's a separate issue we need to discuss with the aggressiveness of your diet and how you do it. But in general, this occurs when you die. Other satiety hormones also decline. So we don't talk about these a lot, but there are there's there's peptide YY, there's GLP1. Everybody knows GLP1 now because of the drugs that are the antagonist drugs or the agonist drugs for those, the weight loss medications. Colocystokinine or yeah, kinine, I think is how you pronounce it. These are all hormones that normally help you feel full after eating, and they decrease again when you're in a deficit to try to get you to eat more. So you're getting hit from both sides, more hunger signals, fewer fullness signals. And then to top it all off, your metabolism adapts, and this is correlated with the leptin. So as your leptin falls, your brain down regulates your metabolic rate to conserve energy. It's saying, okay, well, you're less full, so we need to use less energy and compensate. This is adaptive thermogenesis at its core. It's your body trying to defend its energy stores. It's trying to keep, it's not trying to keep you fat, it's trying to keep you from losing energy you've got and try to make the most of it. So now you're hungrier and you're burning fewer calories. And so that's when we talk about the biology that you're hitting up against, and it's very confusing for many, that's what we're talking about. The good news is you can work with these systems once you understand them. You can, yes, hack around them a little bit, but even legitimately work with them to minimize their effects somewhat, not completely, of course. But this whole episode appetite series we're doing, including today's episode, is we're gonna start with the mistakes, and then we're gonna dive into all the science and other strategies as we go for you to get better and better at understanding the complete picture. So let's get into mistake number one: not eating enough protein. This is the most common mistake I see. It's the one with the biggest impact on hunger, and for a lot of you, it is a game changer. If you're already eating enough protein, you can probably skip to the next one. This is so important. Protein is the most satiating macro. Okay, way more satiating than fat and carbs. There, there's definitely some mythology around fat being more satiating, but it's actually not true. Protein stimulates the release of satiety hormones like GLP1 and colocystokinin, and simultaneously suppresses ghrelin. So it has an opposite effect, the opposite effect that we want on these hormones that I just talked about, where higher protein intake leads to lower hunger and better diet adherence. But many of you are eating 50, 60 grams of protein, right? And there's a lot of discussion about low protein diets today and how you only need a minimum and people are eating too much protein. Look, if your focus is body composition and health, longevity, building muscle, holding on to muscle, and heck, just being more full in a diet, protein is going to be extremely important. And it can be harder for some people than others, depending on your diet. If you are have a higher fat diet and prefer that, or if you're vegetarian or vegan, or you're you just don't prioritize protein earlier in the day at breakfast and lunch and try to cram it all in later, there's a lot of reasons people don't get enough besides simply not being aware they need more or how much they're taking. So it's all important. And I'll say the fix is simple, but none of this is ever simple. I'm gonna tell you, hey, get 0.701 gram of protein per pound of body weight. That's your daily target. And practically it helps to just distribute it across your meals and usually front load it in the day. For other reasons we'll we'll hit on when we talk about hormones in this and other episodes. Because you want to keep those satiety hormones nice and happy so that your body at least thinks it's fairly full, which then of course prevents cravings and eating later on, which is what we're trying to do here, isn't it? It's not so much the hunger, it's what we do when we get hungry, right? So, you know, if you weigh, let's say 160 pounds, you're aiming for like 115 to 160 grams of protein a day. So you have a nice wide range. It doesn't have to be the full 160, but you shouldn't also be getting just 60, right? And it helps if you're an omnivore where you can get it from meat, fish, eggs, dairy, Greek yogurt, cottage cheese. But there's, you know, plants have uh plenty of protein too if you have the right types of plants, and soy-based products have a lot of protein, and you can get it from whey powder and other plant-based powders. So there's so many ways to do it. That's not an excuse. There's a way to plant it in and get that. Um, I have a client who's doing my rapid fat loss protocol, and she's she's at a very, very low calorie level, like sub 1000. She's very small, and again, this is a this is more of an extreme protocol that only takes two weeks, and she's still getting like 120 grams of protein. You're like, well, how's that possible? It's totally possible. If you do the math, it's possible. So that's mistake number one. All right, so if you're not doing that, put that at the top of your list. Mistake number two is then neglecting fiber, and the corollary to fiber is food volume. And I think these go hand in hand with protein to the extent that I sometimes put them side by side. Like, make sure you get enough protein and fiber. If you get both, you're solving a lot of issues. And again, that same client I was just talking about, she was wondering, well, how do I keep my fiber higher when the calories are really low? And we again we did the math, we looked at the foods, and there's ways to keep fiber, even in a very low calorie diet, right? And we're not talking about rapid fat loss today. We're talking about a reasonable fat loss diet where you're still eating something over a thousand calories. For many of you, it's closer to 2,000. But either way, it we're trying to get, you know, a certain amount of fiber in there to add bulk to your meals without adding significant calories. Higher fiber foods take longer to chew, they take longer to digest, they physically fill your stomach, and all of those send fullness signals to your brain. When we talk to Sarah Kennedy in a few episodes, one of my interview guests, you're gonna learn some really cool stuff about receptors we have along the lining of our gut, not just our stomach, but our entire digestive lining, that interact with our hormones and send these signals to our brain. It's it's pretty cool. And we know that high fiber diets increase satiety and reduce calorie intake as a result. And that's aside from all the other longevity and health benefits, which if you listen to the carnivore crowd, it's almost like they they somehow think you don't need fiber, which is extremely dangerous. We we know for a fact that higher fiber diets are correlated with better health outcomes than lower fiber diets. So that alone should be a good enough research. But we also know it has these other helpful effects, including the GI things that it resolves in terms of bowel movements and putting bulk in your stomach, et cetera. The mistake, however, with fiber, it's actually similar to protein. People are trying to save calories by eating small calorie-dense meals, for example, or eating small meals, but they tend to be calorie dense and more processed, and they don't have fiber. So it might be a 500-calorie smoothie, it might be a protein bar, maybe it's some nuts, and they don't really fill you up. And there's a time and place for those, and I'm not saying exclude all of that stuff, right? Nuts are fantastic for micronutrients. But you compare that to like a massive, what they call big-ass salad, right? With grilled chicken, a bunch of vegetables, you know, cucumbers, zucchini, peppers, all that kind of stuff, cruciferous vegetables in there, maybe some raw broccoli, and some reasonable dressing that's a low calorie dressing you like. It's the the if when you look at these side by side, and I'm sure you've seen this on social media, you'll have this tiny handful of something versus a massive bowl. And it's like the bowl of salad has the same or fewer calories. And it seems crazy, but it's true. And that is what's going into your stomach. And now your stomach is physically full. That's all that, that's all it's doing. It's so full that it is, you know, you you've got fiber slowing digestion, you've got water adding volume, you've got protein triggering your satiety hormones, and you've got other compounds and the fact that there's this much food in there also triggering hormones that say, hey, I'm full and I don't need more food, right? And so the fix for this one is, of course, to emphasize those things, to add in those high volume, low-calorie foods to your diet. And this is the kind of thing you can almost just add it without consequence, without even worrying about the calories. You know, again, unless you're trying to count 20 calorie differences. But for most of you, adding in leafy greens and broccoli, cauliflower, zucchini, berries, melons, soups, like vegetable soups, even popcorn, guys, like don't like just salted popcorn, believe it or not, can be a nice hack for some people. Yeah, there's some calories in there, but it's very bulky and it's got fiber. So all of these things are options to give you a satisfying quantity of food, you know, while still having the other more nutrient-dense things in there that you enjoy, while still having some indulgences in there. And it won't make your diet feel this small, skimpy bit of food that like you're starving like a little rabbit. Okay. That is a recipe for hunger. But if we add in fiber and food volume, which is essentially eating quote unquote more and still losing the weight or losing the fat, because you're not adding calories, you're adding bulk. Okay. Mistake number three is surprise under recovery. All right. Now you're like, well, we're talking about hunger, right? Well, yes, poor sleep and high stress are massive variables when it comes to hunger that people underestimate. We're gonna do an entire episode just about those, all right? They because they affect belly fat, which I know a lot of you are concerned about as you get into peri and postmenopause, ladies and men, you know, especially those of you who drink and maybe don't get enough sleep. And they affect hunger, they affect lots of things, as well as cravings, not just hunger, but like cravings for things like sugar and high density foods. Sleep deprivation is a itself a metabolic stressor and it drives overeating. This is clear. Research from 2023 showed that sleep restriction reliably increases the drive to eat, and people consume 250 or more extra calories per day on average. I've seen some studies that say 400 or 500. It's just a lot more calories inadvertently, simply because you had a poor night's sleep, because guess what? Your ghrelin rises, your leptin falls, and now your willpower, you either need more willpower, which we we talk about is not a thing you should ever rely on, your willpower to resist high calorie comfort foods is even further down because of this these hormonal pressures. Chronic stress does the same thing, just through a different pathway. We we know cortisol, right? The stress hormone, it's it stays elevated. It should be cycling and it should essentially fall throughout the day. But for many of us, it stays elevated because of our life stress, physiological stress, and perceived stress, work, finances, family, road rage, whatever it is. It increases your appetite. Okay, that ongoing highly elevated cortisol is gonna make you want high fat, high sugar comfort foods, just like a lack of sleep. Because your body is essentially preparing to refuel because it's in this uh sympathetic mode of your your nervous system is amped up, it perceives a crisis, and your body tries to respond by getting energy. That's it. That's what's going on. It's actually quite simple when you step back, but it's more complicated when we try to do something about it. I understand. The mistake, I think, is trying to push through a fat loss phase and beyond five to six hours of sleep while you're stressed out of your mind. And then you come to me and you say, Why can I not lose weight? I'm in the right calorie deficit. Do I just need to cut calories? I'm like, no, you just need more sleep and less stress, or, you know, at least one of these, at least make an improvement somewhere, right? And trying to push harder in a fat loss phase is just going to exacerbate it. The whole thinking is backward. Your hormones are working against you, and now you're just pushing them to work against you harder. So, of course, the fix for this mistake is to prioritize super high quality sleep when you can get it, building in your rest days from your training, right? Not over-exercising. For some of you, it just might be going from five days a week to three days a week and getting more hours of sleep on those other two days. Or adding in activities that reduce stress instead of more quote unquote exercise. Even if it is strength training, you might be doing too much and not giving yourself enough time to walk or meditate or breathe or just relax and play a video game. I don't care, just relax. Sometimes the fastest way to lose fat is just to improve the recovery and stress side of the equation, not cut calories further because remember, there's two sides of the equation calories in, calories out, and the calories out gets affected by both calories in and your life stressors. So when you're well rested, your hunger hormones stay more balanced and you can stick to your plan without feeling like you're constantly fighting it. Hey, this is Philip, and before we continue, let me tell you about today's sponsor, Callow Curb. I hear from listeners all the time who are doing everything right. They're hitting their protein, they're training consistently, they're prioritizing sleep, but hunger and cravings keep getting in the way. You know what to do, you just can't stop wanting more. Callowcurb is a natural appetite support made from amerisate, a patented, evidence-based hops extract developed in New Zealand over 15 years. It works by activating gut brain signals like GLP1 to help you feel full faster and stay in control. Based on clinical data, Callocurb can reduce cravings by 40%, hunger by 30%, and calorie intake by 18%, and it acts within one hour. And of course, you know I love science-backed tools that support everything else you're doing. If you want to try it, go to witsandweights.com slash callowcurb for 10% off your first order. Try it out for yourself before you commit to a subscription. Use a link in the show notes. Again, just go to witsandweights.com slash calllocurb. All right, let's get back to the episode. All right, let's talk about mistake number four, overdoing cardio. So this is a little bit of a segue from mistake number three, sleep and stress, because cardio is another form of stress. Doing more cardio is a common tactic people use to try to burn more fat or accelerate fat loss. And, you know, in a vacuum, more movement, more cardio burns calories. That's true, but it can backfire badly when it comes to hunger, let alone the adaptation from doing too much cardio. But let's talk about hunger. Because here's what often happens you do a long cardio session, like an hour of running or cycling or swimming or whatever. Right after that, right after that, your appetite might be suppressed. Many of you know what I'm talking about, right? Because exercise can blunt hunger temporarily. Strength training often does this for a lot of people as well. But then later in the day, your hunger hormones are going to surge up to compensate for all of that energy you expended earlier through the cardio session. And then you find yourself ravenous. And often it happens at night, and then you eat back all the calories you burned. And I hope you're not doing it on purpose, thinking that you're this is some sort of equation that makes sense. You eat them back, and then some most likely. And that's a huge problem. And we don't see the same result with people doing, you know, low and slow heavy resistance training, but we do see it with the chronic cardio. Overdoing cardio, also, as we mentioned before, the same thing as stress. It elevates your cortisol if you're, especially if you're not recovering properly, right? I'm not gonna say all cardio is bad. Short bouts of intense cardio can be amazing. Sprinting can be amazing. You know, medium intensity cardio, when done with plenty of recovery, can be amazing. But for many of you, you're doing so much of it and you're not recovering properly. And that ties back to mistake number three about the stress. The other issue is that too much cardio without enough resistance training. Well, now you're not prioritizing the right thing for muscle loss, and that has its own negative impacts on your fat loss phase. So don't just think in a fat loss phase, okay, I just need to do a ton more cardio, I need to do a lot of high rep strength training. No. You you still want to lift heavy, you still want to get that muscle stimulus, and you still want to have a reasonable recovery in there with the cardio if you if you need that much cardio at all. So I think the fix here is include cardio in a tiered pyramid, okay, where the the biggest part of the pyramid is walking, and then the next part of the pyramid is a little bit of cardio for enjoyment, if that's what you like, or if you play sports or something like that. And then the tip of the pyramid is for optimization, is sprinting. And we've talked about sprinting in the past. You can look it up in our library. The sprinting protocol, it's not hit, it's a very anabolic way to train for very short bouts of sprinting. And all of that is recoverable, especially if it's balanced with strength training and you have plenty of sleep. If this is eating into your sleep, that's going to be a problem. Now, if you notice your appetite shoots up on certain days, look carefully at how you're moving on those days. Look carefully at your activity. Ironically, being completely sedentary can also make you hungry. That's almost like the other side of the equation. So being generally active, moving, getting off your butt, walking a lot, and strength training is what I prefer for most people, with a little of extra cardio sprinkled in as needed to burn some more calories, that's fine. But too much of it can be a problem, right? And so pay attention to your body's signals and correlate it with your movement. Of course, you're also looking at your protein and fiber, like we talked about before. All right, mistake number five is staying in a chronic extreme deficit. Okay, this is not doing an aggressive deficit for a short period and getting out. I'm talking about people who often are highly motivated and highly disciplined and they have a decent amount of weight they want to lose. And they're like, well, if a moderate deficit is it is good, then an extreme deficit must be better, or an aggressive deficit, even if it's not so aggressive that I'm gonna lose muscle mass. And then I can gut it out. And I know people like this who could just gut it out. The problem is that the more aggressive the diet, the longer the period of the diet, that's gonna provoke the strongest adaptive response. Now that is a trade-off for sure. If you're okay with the response and eating less and less and still doing it and white duckling it and finally coming out the other end with the fat loss you wanted, that's your call. But for many of us, that's that's a miserable experience that is not sustainable. Your metabolism is gonna slow down significantly. Your hunger hormones are gonna go ramped up way more than they would otherwise. And then the problem here is also that a lot of these changes persist after the diet ends. Yes, you can recover. We talk about recovery dieting, bringing those calories back up to maintenance as quickly as you can, and you'll recover. But I do see these effects linger, especially for those of you who've been dieting for years. I have clients who get frustrated because they're like, I expected my metabolism to recover more than this. Why am I only burning, let's say, 1400 calories or 1600 calories? And for many of you, it's because of how long you've dieted in the past, which just means you need to spend more time not dieting for a while. That's the solution there. Rather than worrying about the metabolism, just stop doing the things that suppress your metabolism for a while and give it that time to recover. So we when we look at studies that have followed people on aggressive diets, there's one study that that looked at participants who lost 30 pounds and a full year later, their leptin was still suppressed, their ghrelin was still higher, and their appetite was 20% higher than before they started. Now, the caveat when I see studies like that is if you lost 30 pounds, you're gonna be burning fewer calories. You're a lighter version of yourself. And a lot of times we don't know if these people are resistance training. Many times they're not, and they've actually lost some muscle as well. If you hold on to your muscle and it's purely from fat, you're still gonna have some impact from being lighter on the scale. Like you're gonna burn up fewer calories, but you're probably you're gonna be in a much better position for body recomposition, building muscle and all of that. That's still gonna help a lot with the hunger and the fat loss, right? But the rebound weight gain, I think occurs in this population because aggressive diets, lots of weight loss, you throw off your hormones, the hormones don't recover that fast, and then you start to overeat and you body overshoot. Okay. So this is that spiral, that suppression spiral. Constant under-eating causes your body to conserve energy, your fat loss slows down, you feel terrible the whole time you're doing it, you're developing an unhealthy relationship with food because now you start obsessing over food, right? And dreaming of food, and none of that is healthy mentally or physically. So the fix here is a simple one. It's stop living in deep deficits for very long and definitely not forever, right? Don't always be dieting for sure, but even don't do deep deficits if you've had a history of dieting like this, if they go beyond, you know, a few weeks or a few months, right? You can do a rapid fat loss phase here and there. I've I've helped people do it, even people who've had a chronic history of dieting, but it's done in a very controlled way. And again, the duration is proportional to the aggressiveness. The more aggressive, the shorter duration. For most people, it's more effective to diet moderately and then do it in phases. Use a moderate deficit of, you know, half a percent of your body weight a week. And that's not even that moderate. I mean, that's a decent clip still. You're still gonna lose, you're still gonna see the pounds fly off. It's just not gonna be as fast as you want in your head, which is not sustainable. But then you do that, you incorporate diet breaks, you go back to maintenance for a while, and then you spend another, let's say, six, eight, 10 weeks in, you know, fat loss phases. Um, and let me see. This episode comes out in early January, closer to January 20th. I'm gonna be talking about a workshop we're doing in physique university called Get Lean in 45 Days. If you want to get ready for that, you can join, go to wits and weights.com/slash physique. We're gonna talk about the six-week mini cut. It's one of my favorite ways to lose fat that is a trade between both of these when we know that hunger is a big issue for a lot of you. So if you do it this way, moderate fat loss phases for short durations, and most of the time you're not dieting, that's gonna keep your leptin closer to normal, your other hormones closer to normal, give you a psychological breather, make each of the phases more effective and more desirable to do and then get out, right? So a slightly less aggressive deficit. I'm not saying you have to take years, but a slightly less aggressive deficit that you can stick to is always gonna beat a more aggressive deficit that you're gonna abandon or cause these other issues. Now, quick reminder, we're about halfway through the seven mistakes, or I guess we're more than that, right? I just gave you mistake five, so we've got two more. I've been saving something from the end of this episode. So after I cover the last two, I'm gonna share a simple two-week protocol that you can start tomorrow to make hunger management dramatically easier. And that's before you even start cutting calories. So it's kind of like a little bit of a prep for your hunger signals. So don't skip out before we get there. All right, mistake number six is poor meal timing and skipping meals. And for some of you, this is like mistake number one. Okay. You might be trying to get enough protein, fiber, and do all the other things. But when you eat can influence your appetite significantly. And don't listen to anyone that tells you it's this way or that way. It's going to be very dependent on you. Okay. I hope this is why you listen to wits and weights. Because of that nuance, I want you to understand everyone is different. We're not unique, special snowflakes, but there is a difference. There are different categories of people and how they respond to meal timing. The most common mistake I see is skipping breakfast and sometimes lunch to save calories. And then you're absolutely ravenous by evening. Now, some of you are saying, oh, that's intermittent fasting. I do it on purpose and it works great. You know what? If it works great for you, then that's your answer. It works great for you. For many people, they do it thinking there's some other benefit. There's not. There's not, guys. Intermittent fasting is only beneficial in that it helps with someone's schedule and adherence. That is it. That is it. There's no other benefits metabolically, longevity, you know, cell turnover, none of that stuff. Don't believe it. None of that is supported. The main thing is a tool for adherence. Okay. When we think about your day and the fact that we are 24-hour creatures with circadian rhythms, your willpower tends to be the lowest at night. Tell me that's not true for most of you, right? You have more energy in the morning and more willpower and more go get them in the morning, and it tends to decline at night. And there is a correlation with that and the fact that you've been doing things all day, you're tired, your cortisol has declined as it should by the end of the day. You should be winding down, but then you're hungry and you make food decisions while you're hungry, and that's when you overeat. Okay. And that's again when you are saving up calories, thinking you're going to eat less, and you end up eating more. That's the counterintuitive thing I'm talking about here. A 2022 randomized trial found something interesting that identical meals cause more hunger when eaten late in the day versus earlier, where eating the same calories four hours later than normal decreased leptin levels and slowed the metabolic rate. So it's interesting. For a lot of you, your body's gonna handle food better earlier in the day when you're more active than late at night. Now, again, I'm not saying that this is the be-all end-all. I already said that. You may be different. You may have a different work schedule that it throws it off. You may have different lighting, be it in a different hemisphere or latitude that affects some of this. I don't know. If you train in the afternoon or at night, it may also affect these things versus training in the morning. So the fix here isn't, oh, eat more during the day necessarily. It's to distribute your calories in a way that prevents extreme hunger swings. That's the principle. And so for most people, most people, that does mean probably three meals and like one or two snacks spaced throughout the day. Just spaced throughout the day, a little bit after you get up, all the way to a couple hours before you go to bed. And many people do find that front loading calories, eating more earlier in the day, which should be including protein and fiber anyway, and then less at dinner does lead to better satiety and fewer eating cravings. It's a very, very common pattern. So if you're not sure, guess what? Guess what I'm gonna say? I want you to try it out. I want you to experiment before and after. Do it one way for two weeks, or maybe the way you're already doing it, you you already know your body, right? And your hunger signals. Then keeping the same calories and food, shift it. Either get more frequent small meals, eat earlier in the day, whatever. Shift it and see how that affects your hunger patterns. Because if you're telling me that, oh, I like to intermittent fast, but I'm always hungry at three or whatever the situation is, maybe it's not intermittent fasting, but you know, I skip breakfast and then I can't get all my protein, but then I'm really hungry at you know, 5 p.m. That's a good indication that it could be a timing issue, assuming you're not under-eating, right? Undereating, of course, is gonna make you hungry too. All right, the last mistake I have here is on mindset. Okay, this is a psychological mistake. So maybe this is the most important one for some of you, and that is the all-or-nothing mindset, which usually means rules that are over-restrictive or or that are restrictive, right? Cutting out entire food groups, swearing off treats, thinking you have to be perfect on your diet every single day, viewing foods as good and bad, feeling guilty when you eat something off plant, all the things that are my boogeyman that I think are sabotaging a lot of you. And if you can't eat and not feel guilty, if you can't eat a little bit more or less calories than your goal and feel fine with it, if you can't eat carbs and know that you're actually gonna be fine, and they're probably better for you than not eating carbs for most of you trying to build muscle, then there's a problem there. And that could be your issue. So the reason this is, think about it, it's the forbidden fruit syndrome. Forbidden fruit, forbidden food becomes everything you think about, right? You're then you're then you have cravings for the thing you've told yourself you can't have. I can't have ice cream ever. So all I think about is ice cream. I can't ever have pizza, so I'm just dying to have that next slice of pizza. Maybe on my quote unquote cheat day, which you know, anybody who listens to this show know I can't stand that term. Uh, we don't do cheat days, okay? We plan, we plan ahead and we eat calories as we need them and we distribute them appropriately, okay? But life is gonna happen, guys. It happens every day. You're gonna eat something off plan, you're gonna be in a situation that you couldn't plan for potentially. And because your mindset is all or nothing, you feel like you failed with every single one of these little decisions. And that triggers the okay, might as well eff it effect. I already blew it, so I might as well keep eating and start over tomorrow. You know, I missed my training session, so I might as well just not train this week and start Monday. And we we have so much research that confirms this that I feel like I'm a broken record when I go on podcasts and I'm like, look, rigid versus flexible dieting, clear winner between those two. Rigid dieting is associated with more binge eating and less success in long-term weight management, period. Right? Because of the psychology, it leads to short-term weight loss for most people, right? Just like any calorie deficit will, but then the gains disappear. This is why 95% of people can't maintain the results. Whereas flexible dieting or flexible restraint is an is a term from the literature, which is where you have flexible flexibility and structure to maintain some level of restraint, but it's allowing in there plenty of indulgences or treats or things you like without being guilty about them and still hitting your goals and still sustaining your results. And it is one of the strongest predictors of sustained weight loss and fat loss. So the fix to this mistake is to work on that mindset. Easier said than done. I get it. It takes work. No food is truly off limits if you plan for it and account for it. And that's really what it comes down to is planning in the piece of chocolate, the weekly dinner out, the party with your friends, the birthday party coming up, the vacation, the business travel. Planning ahead. Okay. I have a client that I'm working with who her son, you know, loves treats. And when they go to a family event, he's going to have them. And she's like, what do I do? How do I get them not to eat them? Or, you know, whatever the question was. And I'm like, you plan them in and assume you're going to have this slice of cake and these chicken wings and this slice of pizza because that's probably what's going to happen. Right. Kind of plan for the worst case. And I don't even like to use the term worst. It's just, this is likely what's going to happen, assuming no control whatsoever. So if you plan them in, you know what you've done? You've just put a sense of control on there that makes it super flexible. And then you can plan the rest of the day and week around that. Right. And again, easier said than done. But when you think ahead, when you pre-log, when you use an app, when you use a piece of paper and think ahead and write it down and plan it in, then you're going to not have decision fatigue, emotionally driven decisions, and you're going to respond with curiosity when things don't go your way. And you're not going to be guilty about it. You're going to say, what did end up triggering this? And how can I adjust it next time? And then I'm going to move on. So that's the flexible approach that I really like that keeps your stress down. So this affects number mistake number three with your stress. It reduces your cravings over time. It dramatically improves your adherence. Whereas the opposite approach is just an ineffective, miserable way to live. Okay, so we've covered all seven mistakes, but I did promise you one more thing, and that is a counterintuitive two-week protocol that makes hunger management easier before you even start your calorie deficit. And honestly, if you're in a calorie deficit right now, you could even do it. Hey, this is Philip. And a quick reminder about today's sponsor, CaloCurb. If hunger has been the hardest part of your fat loss phase, even when everything else is dialed in, check out CalloCurb. It's a natural GLP1 activating supplement with clinical data showing 40% fewer cravings and 30% less hunger within one hour, leading to 18% fewer calories, so you can stick to your fat loss plan. Go to witsandweights.com slash calocurb for 10% off your first order. Link is in the show notes. That's witsandweights.com slash calllocurb. All right, here is the tactic I say for last, and you can start this today or tomorrow. Most people begin in a fat loss phase by cutting things out. And if you are currently in a fat loss phase, you probably have done this. You say, okay, I need less food, I need fewer carbs that because your protein stays high and the fats don't come down that much, so the carbs come way down. I'm not gonna have desserts, I'm gonna have smaller portions, right? And that psychology is already triggering your body's scarcity response, the hormones that we talked about, where your cravings go up and you start fighting them, even before there's any adaptation going on. So instead, I want you to do the opposite. What do I mean? I want you to start by adding things in. Before you subtract a single calorie, I want you to add three things. Okay, and if you haven't started your fat loss phase, take two weeks to do this. If you have started it, you can you can try that even during the fat loss phase. But spend two weeks, make this a plan that you follow. Protein at every meal, a massive vegetable portion at lunch and dinner, and a 10-minute walk after your meals, after your main meals, probably lunch and dinner. All right, that's it. I don't want you to think about anything else. And I don't want you to cut anything out. So if you're not in a fat loss phase, this is really powerful because the extra protein is gonna trigger your satiety, the vegetables are gonna fill your stomach with volume and fiber, the walks are gonna improve your insulin sensitivity, your digestion. And then without even trying, you're gonna naturally eat less of the other stuff. The snacks, the second helpings, the mindless eating, because you're satisfied. So I think it's really helpful before you start your deficit. If you're in one, you can come out of it for a while and be at maintenance and try this, or try to do it while you're in it. It's only gonna help, regardless, right? But this is what we talk about when we say habits that are sustainable and training your appetite and hunger signals. So at least give yourself more of an advantage psychologically and hormonally before that adaptation kicks in, and then see what happens to hunger levels. I think you're gonna be surprised. And again, I I've I've pitched my app before, Fitness Lab. I know we're past the holiday promotion, but one of the great things that that app can do is help analyze what you're eating and give you meal plans and give you advice to make these changes. So, again, the three things protein at every meal, a massive vegetable portion at lunch and dinner, and a 10-minute walk after lunch and dinner. All right, that's it for today's episode. I know we covered a lot, the physiology of why diets make you hungry, the seven mistakes that make it worse, and then some solutions along with along for the ride to help you out. I want you to remember that body recomp and fat loss, they're not achieved by starving yourself. They're achieved by setting up a structured, sustainable approach that works with your body and your biofeedback. And so everything we talk about here is intended to do that. If you can do them, fat loss, it's not just a thing that will happen, but a thing that can be done. Over time, repeatedly as needed in a much more sustainable way. So, this is episode one of the appetite series. On the next episode, we're gonna go a little bit more into ways to control appetite, including some that you may not even be aware of and may want to try. Until next time, keep using your wits, lifting those weights, and remember that your body is capable of incredible things when you give it what it needs. My name is Philip Hape, and I will talk to you next time here on the Wits and Weights Podcast.

Philip Pape 1/2/26 Philip Pape 1/2/26

Metabolism 101 (The Science Behind Fat Loss and Muscle Building) | Ep 421

Why do some people eat more and stay lean while others diet nonstop and still struggle? Is your metabolism actually slow, or have you trained it to fight you? I dive into the real science of metabolism, body recomp, and why most weight loss strategies fail long-term. The focus shifts away from eating less and toward building a body that can lose fat, build muscle, and handle more food without constant plateaus.

Get Fitness Lab (20% off through January 2), the #1 fitness app that adapts to YOUR recovery, YOUR schedule, and YOUR body. Now available for iPhone and Android. Build muscle, lose fat, and get stronger with daily personalized guidance:
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Why do some people eat more and stay lean while others diet nonstop and still struggle? Is your metabolism actually slow, or have you trained it to fight you?

I dive into the real science of metabolism, body recomp, and why most weight loss strategies fail long-term. The focus shifts away from eating less and toward building a body that can lose fat, build muscle, and handle more food without constant plateaus. I explain why chronic dieting backfires, how strength training reshapes metabolic behavior, and why metabolism is adaptive, not fixed.

I cover the four components of metabolism, why NEAT quietly drives fat loss, and why muscle is the biggest long-term lever for fat loss, muscle building, and strength training over 40. You’ll also hear about a zero-time habit that can add up to 9,000 calories of monthly burn without changing your schedule.

If you want evidence-based nutrition that actually works, this is where it starts.

Today, you’ll learn all about:

0:00 – Why metabolism isn’t genetics
3:02 – What metabolism really is
7:20 – The four components explained
11:55 – Why NEAT drives fat loss
18:34 – How muscle changes metabolism
24:19 – Why dieting backfires long term
28:12 – Recover before cutting
32:13 – Build metabolic capacity
39:03 – The zero-time calorie burn habit

Episodes mentioned:

Most people think of metabolism as a fixed number from a calculator, a mysterious score that decides whether fat loss will be easy or brutal. The truth is far more useful: metabolism is dynamic energy allocation under constraints. Your body constantly distributes incoming energy across survival, movement, digestion, and adaptation, adjusting on the fly to scarcity or abundance. That means the popular “eat less, move more” advice breaks down as soon as your biology starts compensating. Understanding those compensations—where they happen and how to work with them—can turn plateaus into predictable phases and give you control over the process rather than chasing hacks.

A clear way to see this is through the four components of total daily energy expenditure. Basal metabolic rate (BMR) is the largest share and scales with fat-free mass, especially muscle, so a stronger physique raises resting burn and widens your calorie budget. The thermic effect of food (TEF) is the cost of processing what you eat, with protein demanding the most energy and providing a small but real advantage. Exercise activity thermogenesis (EAT) changes with how you train and adapts as you get efficient, which is great for performance but reduces burn per session over time. Non-exercise activity thermogenesis (NEAT) is the dark horse—posture, fidgeting, walks, chores—and it can vary by thousands of daily calories depending on lifestyle, fatigue, and diet history. These levers are interdependent; pull one, the others shift.

When you diet hard and long, compensation shows up fast. NEAT drops without you noticing, hormones downshift, movement becomes efficient, and the same intake produces different results week to week. That’s why chronic deficits hit a wall and rebound weight gain is common once hunger surges and your body tries to refill energy stores quickly. Rather than doubling down, restore energy availability with a structured maintenance or slight surplus, train hard, sleep well, and let your system re-expand. This “recovery dieting” approach beats perpetual restriction because it normalizes NEAT and thyroid output, improves performance, and makes future fat loss responsive again. Shorter, sharper cuts—followed by maintenance—often work better than endless lukewarm deficits.

Muscle is the long game lever that shifts everything. It raises BMR directly and indirectly by increasing total body mass you carry through the day. It expands glycogen storage so carbs are used instead of stored, improves insulin sensitivity, and upgrades mitochondrial capacity so you’re better at burning both carbs and fat. Myokines from active muscle influence appetite and nutrient partitioning, nudging calories toward repair and growth. Over years, this adds hundreds of calories to your sustainable burn, widens your margin for error, and lets you live at a higher energy flux—eating more and moving more—without chasing extremes. Practically, prioritize progressive resistance training, periodize nutrition across build, maintain, and cut phases, and protect recovery. Then use a zero-time NEAT habit—stand and pace during calls, scrolling, or off-camera meetings—to layer on hundreds of effortless calories per day. It’s not glamorous, but it’s how physiology and consistency quietly stack wins.

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Philip Pape: 0:01
There's a reason some people eat more and stay leaner, while others restrict constantly and fight for every pound. It's not genetics, it's how they've trained their metabolism to behave. Today I'm breaking down the actual science of metabolism: how it works, why it adapts, and how to use that adaptation to your advantage instead of fighting it. You'll learn why chronic dieting backfires at the metabolic level, why muscle changes everything about how your body handles food, and a zero-time habit that can add up to 9,000 calories of monthly burn without changing your schedule. Get this foundation right, and everything else, your nutrition, your training, your fat loss, gets easier. Welcome to Wit and Weight, the show that helps you build a strong, healthy physique using evidence, engineering, and efficiency. I'm your host, certified nutrition coach, Philip Pape, and the founder of the Fitness Lab app. And this episode comes out at the beginning of the year. So if you are setting goals this year around body composition, fat loss, building muscle, getting stronger, maybe you're over 40, this is where we start. Not with a specific diet or with a training program, but with understanding the basics, how your body actually works, metabolism 101. Here's the problem: most people are not failing at this because they don't understand the basic information, like energy balance and calories. They're failing usually because they don't understand how their body is adapting and working within that system, right? The personalized approach to this and how the metabolism changes. Because at the end of the day, all the other issues around diets and hormones and training and everything else often come down to just understanding how your body handles nutrients and nutrition and calories to get it to do what you're trying to do. And so if you treat metabolism as static, as one-directional, as something fixed, which I hear all the time in people's language, they'll say, Well, I calculated my metabolism last year and it says I'm 60, I burned 1650 calories, as if that's the end of the story. And it's not. It literally changes every single day. And a lot of people also think it's outside their control. And so when you're shocked because eating less and moving more doesn't work, you think that you're, you know, broken or it doesn't work for you, or there's something else happening with hormones that's exotic or requires some optimization or supplement. And then it gets really frustrating because you're trying to chase that and it still doesn't necessarily fix the problem. And there's a lot of people in the fitness industry selling you on those kinds of problems right off the bat instead of the boring basics and understanding the model. So I want to replace that broken model with a more accurate one that gives you more clarity, that gives you more confidence. And so we're gonna step it back. I know you've probably listened to this or watched the show for a while, or maybe you haven't. Maybe this is the very first episode you're ever listening to. Either way, we're gonna go over the basics. We're gonna cover the four components, the four components of energy expenditure, aka your metabolism. Some nuanced differences there, but that's basically what it is, and why the old way of thinking about them doesn't hold today, right? We're gonna make a little more nuanced approach to this. We're gonna talk about why your body compensates when you diet. We're gonna talk about the research on metabolic adaptation and get into the more valuable aspects about muscle beyond aesthetics related to the metabolism. And stick around to the very end of this episode because I'm going to share a zero-time habit that can add up to 9,000 calories of monthly burn to your metabolism. You're probably already doing this thing, but maybe doing it inefficiently. And it takes about 30 seconds to explain. You can start doing this today or tomorrow. So stick around to the end of the episode for that. All right, let's get into it and start with what the heck metabolism actually is, because the word metabolism gets thrown around a lot. Most people don't know what it means. Simply, metabolism is the total rate at which your body expends energy to sustain your life, your movement, your digestion, and your adaptation. That is it. It's all the things your body does throughout the day to burn calories. It is not a number on a calculator of your metabolism. It's not a curse or a gift that's given to you genetically, even though people can vary slightly in their metabolisms in general. We're all about the same given the same, you know, body composition and size. It is a rate of your energy expenditure, and that rate changes based on a lot of things, including what you do, not just your movement, but other things that you do. It is not just energy expenditure, though. What I like to think of a metabolism is is energy allocation under constraints. So it is the energy you burn every day, but it's how all that energy coming in in the form of food, right? That's the only way we get energy as human beings, comes in and how it gets allocated given all of the constraints. So let me explain what I mean. Your body has a finite amount of energy coming in, again, from food. And it has to decide how to spend that energy. So some of that goes to keeping your organs running, keeping you alive, keeping your heart pumping, keeping you breathing, some goes to digesting food, some goes to helping you move, you know, uh consciously and unconsciously, and then some goes to building or maintaining tissue. So there's a lot of turnover, there's a lot of metabolic processes going on. So when energy is plentiful, when you have plenty of food coming in, your body spends freely. When that energy is scarce, such as when you're dieting, your body starts to make trade-offs. It starts to compensate, it becomes more efficient, it cuts back on things that are not immediately essential. And this is a survival mechanism that is just built into our DNA. It's how we evolved, and that is to protect us during famines, during times of lack of resources. You've heard of probably the feast or famine concept from, you know, ancient man, right? The problem is that most people are not accounting for this. And it's a bi-directional thing, isn't it? It's like what you eat and your metabolism both affect each other. The quantities affect each other, and then all these other things I talked about, digestion, movement, et cetera, affect the equation. And that's why people get confused, right? So it's not a simple math equation of calories in, calories out, is my point. Even though the end of the stream of thought, the end of the chain results in an equation of calories in, calories out that then decides how you gain or lose weight. There is so much happening before we get to that point. Okay. And that is the important thing. So it's not just calories and calories out, only because as humans, we have control over many other things that lead to that. But then it is calories in, calories out at the end of the day, right? So it's a it's yes and. So if we understand this, it changes how you approach things like fat loss and muscle building. And it explains why you can be doing a lot of what you think is the right stuff, but still hit a plateau. You it explains why some people seem to eat more and stay leaner. And it gives you some leverage to control the process instead of just hoping, right? Hope is not a strategy, as they say. So let's break down these components, the four components of TDEE, which is total daily energy expenditure. And I want to walk through each one because once you understand it, you could say, okay, how do I affect each one? Is it even worth going after that based on how big of an impact it has? So the first one, the biggest one, is your basal metabolic rate or BMR. This is the energy required to sustain your basic physiological function at rest, but even when you're not at rest, even during just during the day, right? There's resting metabolic rate and there's basal metabolic rate. So basal metabolic rate is when you're awake. That's it, just to simplify it. So we're talking about your organ function, your protein turnover, maintaining your cell membranes, like all the technical fancy stuff that keeps you alive that you don't have to think about, even if you just lay in bed all day. So your BMR is largely influenced by your fat-free mass. Okay, that's your body composition. So the amount of but muscle you have and the amount of fat you have. The more of the muscle you have, which is metabolically the most active metabolic tissue, the higher your BMR. And BMR usually represents around two-thirds of your total calories, but that that percentage of calories can change based on the proportion of the other stuff too. Going back to body composition, this is one reason why building muscle matters. Very important. We're gonna come back to that. And the other important thing here is that BMR is not fixed. It does on average stay the same from your 20s to your 60s, on average, but it adapts downward during energy restrictions, such as dieting. It adapts upward when you have more lean mass and also more energy available. So if your bulk, if you go on into a calories surplus, you'll see it go up. If you diet, you'll see it go down. So that and that's one way that it changes independent of the other aspects of what you're doing. So your body's always calibrating due to what we talked about before, this compensation effect. So that's the first component. The second component of your metabolism is the TEF or a thermic effect of food. This is the cost, the energy cost, like the amount of calories burned, digesting, absorbing, assimilating the nutrients that you consume. So, roughly speaking, protein has the highest TEF. It's about 20 to 30% of the calories that you eat from protein go toward processing that protein. Carbs are a moderate level, maybe five to 10%, and fat is lowest around zero to three percent. And this is a reason why high protein diets have a little bit of an edge, right? It's not a huge edge, like let's not overblow it, but you are actually burning more calories just by eating protein compared to the same calories from carbs or fat, especially fat. So I've seen people go from like a low carb, high-fat keto-style diet to a much higher protein diet. And without any other changes, their expenditure rises and they can eat more food or they can lose fat more easily. So this is one of the reasons protein can be very helpful. TEF also, like BMR, declines when your intake declines, okay, because you're eating less, you're in a diet. That means you are more efficient at extracting energy from food and you're not eating as much. So that's essentially another compensation mechanism. You're gonna notice that all the components of your metabolism, all four, tend to drop when we're dieting, either due to our own actions or unconsciously because of what's happening with our body. The third component is eat, exercise, activity, thermogenesis. And that's the energy you burn during intentional exercise, which is just anything that you plan in, like your training session, any sort of workouts, any sort of cardio or sports. There's a debate whether walking fits in this category. I tend to put walking in the final category we're going to talk about in a second. But eat, exercise activity, thermogenesis, is it varies a lot between people, of course, because some people do exercise, some people don't, some people exercise a lot. And it is also highly sensitive to these efficiency gains or losses over time. Because, for example, the more you do the same type of exercise, the better your body gets at it. And that can actually be a quote unquote bad thing when you're trying to burn calories because it'll burn fewer calories. It is great for performance, though, because the body adapts and gets really good at something, right? And it doesn't mean you should constantly change your exercise to make up for this, but it does lead to some interesting tips like if you're going to do different cardio sessions, maybe rotate between modalities because you might be less efficient and thus burn a few more calories. These honestly aren't the places where I'm looking to leverage our metabolism the most, but they're interesting. The fourth component is probably my favorite because it's probably the one you have the most control over short term. And that is neat non-exercise activity thermogenesis. And this is everything else we didn't talk about. So this is your posture, your fidgeting. This is walking around, your chores, your daily tasks. And again, some people argue that walking fits under eat, but I think walking is it's something we do all day and we do naturally, and we do it unconsciously, we do it just to live, we walk. So there's a logical reason to include it in this category. It also doesn't have the same stressful, intense, you know, potentially negative effects of exercise that are possible with, you know, cardio, for example. And neat, therefore, is all the spontaneous unplanned movement throughout the day, plus your deliberate walking, in my opinion. It's also massively underrated because it can vary by not only hundreds, but thousands of calories. I mean, there's a study, I don't have the details here. You know, Brandon DeCruz is good at bringing this one up, where like they compared sedentary people in terms of their jobs. They were sedentary or like a shop clerk and then manual laborers. And the said, and there was like a 2,000 calorie difference in neat between the two extreme groups. You know, it's like an 800-calorie jump and then a 1200 calorie jump to the manual laborers. And that's just from their job, like how much they move throughout the day, right? And it's low grade movement. So your neat can vary a lot just based on your lifestyle. If you tend to be active, if you tend to move around and walk around and go for those walks. It's also extremely sensitive to your energy intake, to your fatigue, to your biofeedback, like your stress, your sleep, your training load. People don't realize this, but this is the first place your body compensates during a diet because it happens pretty quickly. You might not even notice it. You just move less, you fidget less, you stand instead of pace, you take the elevator instead of the stairs. You might feel a little bit lethargic at times, tired at times, just move less. Even if you are tracking steps and trying to keep that step count up, there's other areas where you just don't notice it and it adds up. So the traditional model then combines all of these components, right? Your TDEE, your total daily energy expenditure, is your BMR, plus your thermic effective food, plus your exercise activity thermogenesis, plus your non-exercise activity thermogenesis. And each component adds up independently. I'll say in the traditional model, you increase your activity, you increase your expenditure. And I'll say that model works in a short-term capacity and it works within reasonable levels, but it sometimes ignores biological compensations, such as when we talk about the constrained energy model, like the work from Herman Ponser at Duke, I know Eric Treklar's working with him now on this stuff, where we see that your expenditure is regulated within a range where the more you do, for example, the more cardio you do, but up to a pretty large amount, not like I said, not a reasonable amount, your body will start to overcompensate and the amount of extra calorie burn gets less and less. It's not that there's a wall or a threshold or a cutoff where beyond that, your body's just not going to burn more calories. It doesn't work that way. Essentially, I think what we're seeing is the more you do, the more you burn. And then it starts to become diminishing returns. That's like a nuanced way to explain it. And we see cross-cultural comparisons. We see hunter-gatherer populations like the Hadza compared to Western populations where their activity levels are very different, right? Like we're very sedentary over here and they're moving around all day. And you would think they should burn way more calories, but the total energy expenditure is usually similar when accounting for size and body composition. And again, that doesn't mean exercise or movement or training is useless, not at all. I think that's one of the worst takeaways that gets misconstrued from that. It simply means that your body is reallocating energy, it is compensating across your systems. And hormones are a big part of that, of course, right? Your signaling mechanism from your thyroid to your reproductive hormones, your hunger signals are a function of this. But if you add in a ton of cardio, then you might find that what you thought would be an extra 500 calories a day is only an extra 200 calories a day. If you go too far, you might compensate in other areas where you're actually pushing the needle the wrong direction, right? So again, it's, you know, people are gonna say, well, wait, what about athletes who put in 60 miles a week and they do burn, you know, 5 or 6,000 calories a day? That's my point, is that it does work up to a point, but then there's a diminishing point of return and you have to compensate elsewhere with your recovery, for example. So constrained doesn't mean fixed, it just means flexible within bounds and adaptive and it responds to these chronic signals as opposed to just like one-offs. And so we shouldn't think in terms of one-offs. Right. So you can see this usually if you start a new exercise program where if you're tracking your expenditure, you might burn more calories right off the bat in the first few days or weeks, you know, as well as we can calculate this, like something like macrofactor can help us do this, or if you're tracking your weight and your food meticulously to see how this changes. But then as you keep doing it, you might notice that your expenditure, you know, drops a little bit back to not the original level, but something less than it was. And that could be both the compensation that happens inside the body, but the compensation you do subconsciously physically outside the body, like sitting more or fidgeting less or taking through fewer steps elsewhere. Right. And so your body's gonna reduce energy expenditure in other systems. So there's a lot of confusion on that because a lot of people think it's just this mysterious compensation that goes on in your body. No, some of it is actually you're compensating with your activity. So it's not fixed. I think that's the whole point. And it also explains why some people feel like they're doing more and more and not seeing the results. And that's just biology. And once you understand it, you can work with it. So this is the big reframe from metabolism 101 today, is that it's not just these four components added together and you can move each one up and down independently. It's a bi-directional system where everything you do with every one of these affects the others. And then the things you're doing, like dieting and building, your calorie intake actually affects it as well, and vice versa. So if we can simply handle our calories efficiently for most of the year, which my last episode really got into why building muscle most of the year helps this situation, um, we don't have to overthink it. We don't have to overthink it. So I want to talk about that for a second, right? If there's one thing I want you to take from this episode, it's that muscle is probably the biggest lever you have long term, fundamentally, in how your metabolism behaves. And there's a lot of reasons for this, so we're gonna just break them down, right? Structurally, structurally, muscle increases your basal metabolic rate. More fat-free mass means more energy required at rest because of how active the tissue is. It's about six to nine extra calories a pound. And I kind of beat this to death in the past, but it's worth mentioning again that the calories burned from having more muscle is more of a cascade. It's not just the tissue itself, but it's also the fact that you're usually carrying around more body weight. Most people that I work with, most of my clients who build five, 10, 15 pounds of muscle, they're not trying to keep a low level of body scale weight with this extra muscle because it's kind of harder to do that anyway. But they're leaner at the same or higher body weight, and therefore they're burning more calories just from the extra weight. You also burn more calories because the way you train, and you train really hard, and you're always in that anabolic state, that muscle growth state. So all of that tends to burn more calories than you think. And then your body has to feed those calories. Okay. So that's the food side. Muscle also increases your glycogen storage. Glycogen is the stored carbohydrate that's your body's preferred fuel for intense activity, which includes training and cardio really. Anything glycolytic, we call it. More muscle means more storage space for those carbs, which means you could eat more carbs without them spilling over into fat storage because you're using them more efficiently, right? When we talk about nutrient partitioning, that's what we mean. So muscle is massively helpful in that capacity. And that affects your metabolism as well. It affects how efficient everything is. And then related to this metabolically, muscle improves your insulin sensitivity. When you have more muscle, your body does a much better job of shuttling glucose from your blood into your cells. And that's where it can be used or stored as glycogen, again, not converted to fat. At the end of the day, this does come down to energy balance. If you have too much energy coming in, you're still going to store fat because you just have too much to use. You're not going to be able to use all that glucose. But there's a nice window here where it's highly beneficial. And that window usually is around maintenance calories up into a small surplus. Small is a whole separate discussion, but definitely not like a dirty bulk. There's also cellular impacts of muscle with mitochondrial density, with the function of your mitochondria, right? Mitochondria, the powerhouse of the cell, you know, which uses ATP. It means better oxidative capacity, where you become better at using fat for fuel. So now you're using carbs and fat for fuel just better. Systemically, we talked about this in the last episode. Muscle releases myokines. These are signaling molecules that influence your liver, your fat, you know, adipose tissue, even your brain. It improves appetite regulation, right? We all want to have better appetites. Well, guess what? More muscle, you're going to just feel like eating better food and have less cravings and feel like eating less quote unquote junk food in general when you have more muscle. It also improves nutrient partitioning, which is where the food actually goes, right? So muscle is hugely beneficial across the board when it comes to your metabolism and it increases the range of calories your body can handle. I don't want to just repeat last the last episode I dropped, but go listen to that if you want a deeper dive into this. All right. So I think the end result from your metabolism is that if you build enough muscle over several years, you're going to be burning several hundred more calories, probably. And that just gives you a lot more flexibility for the long term. And you have a wider margin, right? You can eat more, you get more food flexibility. You only need to diet occasionally. We talked about it in the last episode, dieting less than 20% of the year, if that. And then when you do, you don't have to go as low with calories, et cetera. So this is why I love the muscle first strategies, because they reduce the need for prolonged dieting and building, you know, you're building a body that requires a lot less effort to maintain long term. By the way, if you're finding this stuff helpful, I want to remind you that at the very end, I'm sharing a simple neat hack. It's neat also, but it's related to neat that can add up to 9,000 calories of monthly calorie burn without adding anything to your schedule. So for those of you who like time efficient strategies, you're probably already doing this to an extent, but we're going to talk about how to leverage it the most. I want you to stick around for that. Speaking of building a body that's easier to manage, this is what Fitness Lab is designed for, guys. I have to mention my app Fitness Lab. It's super exciting. We're getting a ton of great reviews on this since it came out in November. We're always improving it. It's an AI-powered coaching app that gives you tasks every day, personalized guidance on nutrition, training, biofeedback, sleep, stress, movement, all of it adapted to your goals, adapted to what's actually happening in your body day to day, whether you're building muscle, working through a fat loss phase, just trying to understand why your approach isn't clicking for you. The app is gonna meet you where you are right now, which is the most important thing, and then tell you here's what we're gonna do next. Today, as this episode comes out, is January 2nd, which means it's the last day of our holiday promotion where you get 20% off after today goes back to full price. So grab that while you can. Go to witsandweights.com slash app. That's witsandweights.com slash app. The link is also in the show notes. This is the easiest way right now with the technology and tools you have available at the cost to put the principles we're talking about today into daily practice and actually do them. Actually do them. Go to wits and weights.com slash app. All right, let's talk about what happens when you do not account for the adaptation and complexity of your metabolism because most people approach fat loss in a very simplistic way. You're gonna eat less, you're gonna move more, you're gonna repeat until you reach your goal. Tell me I'm wrong, right? And I see people commenting on YouTube videos and uh social media posts, like it's simple. Eat less, move more, you know, just so flippantly and so ignorantly. And maybe this is a 25-year-old who has no problems with any of this stuff and their body's responding just fine and they're not overdoing it. But that's not you, is it? Right? Progress probably has stalled on more than one occasion when you try this, and then you don't know what to do next. Because if that's the only thing that worked in the past and more of it won't work, what can you do? Right? What can you do? And we're that's just like scale weight. There's also the low energy, there's the hunger issues. And most people are giving up, you know, at some point on this journey, and then they regain more weight than they lost, and then it's just this loss cause, right? And this is a predictable result for many of you because of the lack of understanding of energy restriction of your metabolism. So when you're doing sustained diets, your body is gonna reduce neat subconsciously. We talked about that before. You move less without realizing. It's gonna down regulate your hormones, reproductive hormones, your immune function, right? People tend to get more sick when they're dieting. Your body decides, you know, these are not priorities right now because I just don't have enough energy coming in to begin with. Your thyroid hormone decreases. This is like your metabolic regulator. So then your metabolic rate slows down further. Your sympathetic nervous system output drops, right? You're a little bit more on edge, you feel a little sluggish at the same time and maybe less driven, more lethargic. It's kind of a not a great combination. The efficiency of your movement goes up, oddly enough, meaning your body is gonna learn to do the same things with less energy. And that's not what you want because you're trying to burn more calories, you're trying to lose fat here. And so all these mechanisms are your body keeping you alive with what it perceives as some sort of famine, right? That's low energy availability, energy restriction. And the math, therefore, by math, I mean calories in, calories out does not stay constant. This is the big insight I'm asking a lot of you to understand, to refresh your mind on is that your body's gonna compensate in so many different ways that whatever calories you started with are not the same calories that are gonna get you into that calorie deficit two weeks later, four weeks later, six weeks later. It's gonna constantly change and it's gonna change in almost unpredictable ways. So if you started in a 500 calorie deficit, but your body compensates by 400 calories, now you're only in a 100 calorie deficit, boom. That's exactly why you are seeing a big slowdown. It also explains rebound weight gain because after an aggressive diet, now you're at this significantly suppressed metabolism and your body is primed to store that energy and gobble it up once you start eating. So your hunger hormones get ramped up, especially if you've lost muscle because you're not training. That's a different issue. But you've got metabolism low, an increase in food intake that gets stored more efficiently because your body really wants it. And again, we don't like efficient in many of these conversations. We want to be inefficient. And so you get into this cycle and you think, okay, the metabol my metabolism never is gonna be in a state where I could actually drop the weight or drop the pounds or whatever, what have you. And for I'm I'm speaking to people at all different sizes and different goals. But I mean, even you ladies who are like 120 pounds and you're like, I gotta lose five more pounds, and it just never, ever, ever happens because you hit that wall constantly. That's probably what's going on. It's not that you can't, it's that there's a very strategic way to do it, and everything has to be really dialed in. What you have to do here is reverse these adaptations first. Restore your energy availability, rebuild your muscle, reduce your chronic stress, allow your metabolic system to re-expand, allow that pie chart of metabolism to get bigger again. And I know the fear is real of, but I don't want to lose, I don't want to gain weight. I don't want to gain weight. I just got a message from someone on Instagram that listens to the show, and she's like, I'm stalled with my lifts. I can't get more reps or weight, but I also know I'm probably not eating enough, but I fear gaining weight. And it's kind of that combination that I think a lot of you are in right now of you know you need to eat more, but you feel gaining weight. And I'm not talking about people who've already gone through this process, they're already at maintenance calories, and then some 25-year-old influencer is like, oh, you just need to eat more to lose weight. No, I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about fueling yourself and recovering so that you can build the muscle and strength and come back stronger in a better position to lose fat from a metabolically healthy standpoint, not I'm gonna raise your metabolism by 100 calories so you can eat more in your fat loss phase. It's not that. Okay. But this is why I'm an advocate for what I call recovery dieting. Well, I don't, not just me. I'm not the only one that calls it that, but I'm not a big fan of reverse dieting because that's guesswork. Recovery dieting is a strategic maintenance or building phase right after a period of restriction where you jump right to maintenance as quickly as you can, because the best recovery is the fastest recovery, even a slight surplus to help restore that metabolic function versus trying to diet year-round, because that is gonna pay off much more long term, even for fat loss, than constantly restricting. If you've been in a deficit for a long time, even six months, okay, your body has made significant adaptations to that. And I know this for a fact because pretty much every single client that I've helped track their data, they track their expenditure. I see it drop. My own expenditure drops four to 800 calories in a reasonably long but modest diet, right? It'll drop faster, but not as much in a short, aggressive diet. It'll drop less if it's a less aggressive, longer diet. In other words, it will pretty much drop the same for you, give or take, you know, 50 calories or whatever, based on the aggressiveness, based on the aggressiveness. So it's a trade-off. It's a trade-off. And if you try to jump into another diet, which really just means push your restriction down further, that is just gonna push the adaptations further. It's just gonna fight back more and more. It's not like you can quote unquote fix it all in the middle of the diet. But if you spend several months eating at or above maintenance while training, that's gonna help your metabolism recover, increase your neat, normalize your hormones, make your body more responsive. And then when you eventually need to diet again, it's gonna work better because you're starting from a restored baseline. And again, it's not a magic pill of, oh, I can eat way more food. It's that physiologically and psychologically, you're gonna be able to now, you know, push through a strategic dieting phase and actually get the result you're looking for rather than hitting yourself against a wall like you were before. And this is why body recomposition, losing fat, building muscle at the same time, is actually possible for a lot of people. It really is. Okay, don't believe this idea that, well, only new lifters can do this. Only new lifters can do this. If you're giving your body the stimulus and the fuel, it's gonna build muscle. And if it's around maintenance and not in too much big of a surplus, you're gonna have to drop some fat. Anyway, where does this all leave us? All right. Most people are asking the question, how do I burn more calories? And I think that's the wrong question. I think that leads to trying to move the needle, either the wrong needle or do it in the wrong way, through chronic cardio, you know, metronomic cardio, through the extreme diets, through fighting all these compensations we talked about, trying to do somehow the opposite to compensate. Like I'm just gonna get a bigger step count. I think the better question is how do I build my body in a way that it knows what to do with more calories? And just to steal a term from Brandon DeCruz and from the industry, it's energy flux. It's be able to eat more and move more, not eat less, move more to lose weight. It's eat more, move more, build a bigger metabolic capacity. That makes sense. So, what this looks like in practice is I'm sorry, but the boring fundamental basics. I'm gonna be a broken record on this for the rest of the time this podcast exists because it's never gonna change. These are principles. You've got to prioritize strength and muscle. Doesn't matter your age, you have to be resistance training. This is not optional. This is everything about your metabolism right there. Okay. Without it, you're operating in a tiny narrow band. And the best you can do is this, these chronic diets that are just miserable and give you very little results anyway. They probably cause muscle loss, just terrible. They don't have any benefit, right? So if you're jumping to a low carb or a keto or a carnivore, and that's all you're doing, you're not lifting weights, you're not doing anything else, you're just gonna be here again, wondering what to do. And I'm gonna say, hey, are you resistance training? Are you doing it, you know, three, four, five days a week, whatever makes sense for you, the right volume and frequency? Are you progressing over time? Because that's the most important thing. As far as the dieting side, we talked about this on the last episode. Fat loss phases should be strategic, time limited, and then followed by quickly recovering to maintenance or a slight building phase, right? Where you're doing that part of it like 80% of the year, four to one ratio, let's say, at minimum. Because if you're always in a deficit, you're always compensating, like we've talked about today. Being active, moving, taking the stairs, not sitting all day. You know, when we talked about the differences in neat, that's where a lot of that variance lives. And then sleep and stress, because recovery is also where you adapt. I had a uh person reach out to me and thought that they might be doing too much exercises and how much you're doing. She said, four to five hours a day. And I said, I don't even know, I have to know what you're doing to know that that's too much. You know, unless you're talking about going for a bunch of walking walks, which is not the case here, it's probably too much. You know, chronic sleep deprivation, high stress, all of these are going to slow things down. They're going to increase fat storage when you are gaining weight versus muscle, and they're going to cause extra compensation when you are trying to lose weight, lose fat. So I want you to think in phases going forward. I want you to use what's called nutritional periodization. Build muscle when the conditions are right, cut when necessary, but get in, get out. You maintain in between to solidify what you've got. And when you're maintaining and building, you're going to feel a lot better. You're going to eat more food. It's going to be more enjoyable. Right. And kind of got to fight against that scale obsession and that, you know, last two pounds obsession, because when you lean into those too much, you end up making the wrong decisions to actually solve the real root cause. When you lean into fuel and strength and muscle, you'll see that that problem probably goes away on its own. You may not even have to have a fat loss phase. You'll get a little bit of recomp over time. Right. So when you look at people who have a quote unquote fast metabolism, it's not genetics. They probably either have more muscle or they move more throughout the day. Maybe they have a busier job. Maybe they're not dieting all the time. Right. And I'm not talking about, you know, a 250-pound man versus a 150-pound woman. I'm talking about between two people of the same uh weight and body composition. Okay. Well, chances are they don't have the same body composition if one burns more than the other. Probably one has more muscle. That was my point. Right. And you can do that. You can do that. It just takes time. It takes time, guys. This is not a quick fix podcast here. All right. Now, I want to talk about the bi-directional thing that I mentioned before. Because a lot of people think, okay, calories affect your metabolism. And that's true, right? If you eat less, your metabolism adapts down, you eat more and it adapts up. But your metabolism also affects your calorie utilization. Meaning how your body uses the calories you eat depends on the state of your metabolism. So if you've been chronically dieting, your body actually wants to store more energy. And so your nutrients get partitioned more toward fat gain. Now that's blunted, of course, when you're lifting weights and you're focused on strength and muscle. Okay. But when you've been chronically dieting, the recovery's not there, the performance is not there. Even if you've been building, or if you've been building muscle, maintaining enough energy, I should say. So if you're not been chronically dieting, then your body's in a neutral state of using food, I'll say effectively, where nutrients will get partitioned toward muscle, your recovery is enhanced. It's not trying to fight and get you back to homeostasis and survive. But it's a really important thing to understand. This is also why, guess what? I'm leaning more toward shorter fat loss phases for a lot of people. And by short, I mean six to 10 weeks as opposed to like 12 to 16, uh, because of some of these issues, where, you know, the calories are the same, but the outcomes are different. This is why calories in, calories out is factually correct, but it's kind of meaningless because the whole equation is dynamic and changes based on you and your activity and everything else. All right. So I think I beat it, beat all that to death. But I hope you understand that eating less isn't always the answer. Sometimes the path forward is eating more, but it's eating more while building the muscle and restoring your metabolism. You know, creating conditions where your body can really thrive. So as we start this year, or whenever you're listening to this podcast, I want you to think about your metabolism differently. Don't ask or stop asking why is my metabolism so slow, or I have such a slow metabolism, or I'm a fully grown man or woman, and yet I only burn this. Ask instead, what have I been doing chronically that my metabolism is adapting or responding to? You may, okay, I'm sorry to say, you may on average have a lower metabolism than somebody else genetically, but there's only things, there's only some things you can control. And that's not one of them. What you can control is the leverage points that we talked about today, the inputs, that will affect your system. Am I saying it's gonna add a thousand calories to your system? Of course not. But you're gonna do your best and forget the rest. So I heard that years ago. Do your best and forget the rest. Build muscles, stop chronically restricting, move consistently, sleep well, manage stress, right? These aren't hacks. These are like the boring basics. They work for any age. All right. So before I let you go, I promised you something at the beginning of this episode: a zero-time habit that adds up to 9,000 calories of monthly calorie burn without adding anything to your schedule. And I'm gonna share that in a second. Before we do, if you want to put all this into practice, muscle building, nutrition, daily guidance, that is what my app, Fitness Lab, is for. The app adapts to you, whatever you're doing, whatever exercise or training you do, whatever supplements you take, whatever your age, whatever your diet restrictions, it doesn't matter. It's gonna tell you what to do next based on your data, your biofeedback, and your goals. You literally get up in the morning and it has created the new activities for the day based on overnight analysis of your data. And it says, here are the activities for today. And you can chat with it, you could ask questions. It's awesome. Today is the last day as this episode comes out to get 20% off with the holiday promotion. Go to wits and weights.com slash app. That's witsandwaits.com slash app. All right, here is that habit that I promised this invisible neat multiplier. It is very simple and you're gonna think, this is stupid, but if you reflect on your daily activities, you're probably not doing this. Every phone call, every Zoom meeting where you don't need to be on camera at your desk, every time you're scrolling social media, even every time you you watch streaming on a handheld device, I want you to stand up and pace. That is it. The average person is spending, and you, and you know, this is probably you. This is probably you, whether you want to admit it or not, two to three hours or more every day on these activities. And if you have a job where you're you know on the phone all day, you might be spending many hours a day. But even just doom scrolling social media, catching up on the news, streaming, just phone calls and texting friends, whatever, all of that stuff, you can pace while doing it. Pace around your house, pace your office or wherever you are. Pacing versus sitting is gonna burn an extra hundred calories an hour. I'm not saying you're gonna do this for hours on end, but if you did it for two to three hours a day, kind of add it up throughout the day, that is two to three hundred calories a day, which is up to 9,000 calories a month. And I've seen this in my step count. I've seen my step count go up multiple thousands of steps on a day where I intentionally made sure that I paced with these activities. I know not everyone can do it. Everyone has a different job, a different situation. But if you can, okay, do it. Because here's the thing you're probably already doing some of these activities, but you're sitting down on the couch or you're sitting down on a chair. In fact, that's another way to think about this. Think about every time you're sitting on a chair doing something that, you know, doesn't require a computer or anything like that. Can you just get up and pace while doing it? This is the highest leverage neat hack because it requires zero extra time. It's habit stacking with what you already do. You don't have to remember to go for a walk. You don't have to schedule anything, just change where and what you do, while you do these things you're already going to do. That's it. Your phone, scrolling Instagram, you know, the Zoom calls, all of that. Because as I mentioned before, neat is the most manipulable part of your metabolism. And many of you are just sitting all day and not getting up. So tomorrow morning when the phone rings, stand up. When you're gonna go check Instagram, stand up. That's it. That's whole habit. Start right there. All right, until next time, keep using your wits, lifting those weights. And remember, your metabolism works for you when you give it the right signals. I'm Philip Pape, and I'll talk to you next time here on the Wits and Weights podcast.

Philip Pape 12/31/25 Philip Pape 12/31/25

7 Ways to Lose Fat That ACTUALLY Work | Ep 420

Everyone says their diet is “the one.” The data says otherwise. We break down 7 science-backed rules that make fat loss stick, without cutting whole food groups. Want results you can keep? Listen now.

Check out the new Fitness Lab app (iPhone and Android) to get personalized guidance on your fat loss, nutrition, and training... all in one place, with 20% off through January 2nd: https://witsandweights.com/app

Most people fail at fat loss not because they lack willpower, but because they're following strategies that don't work (or that backfire).

In this replay of one of our most popular episodes, discover 7 evidence-based fat loss principles from 70 years of research and how to apply them without cutting out your favorite foods or living in the gym.

Whether you're starting fresh in 2026 or breaking through a plateau, these proven strategies will help you lose fat, build muscle, and create lasting results without extreme diets or endless cardio.

The goal is simple: protect muscle, manage hunger, move more, and use a moderate deficit you can sustain.

Deep Dive…

Decades of research have stripped fat loss down to a few principles that always win: energy balance, adequate protein, resistance training, daily movement, adherence, muscle mass, and sustainability. This isn’t about trendy plans or villainizing carbs or fats. It’s about using the same levers elite coaches and researchers return to regardless of the diet brand. When calories are controlled, diet type matters far less than people think. Your body still obeys thermodynamics, and the path you choose should match your life, your culture, and your preferences, so you can keep going long enough to see change and keep it.

The foundation is simple: a calorie deficit is non‑negotiable for meaningful fat loss. Metabolic chamber studies and large trials show matching calories erases most differences between low fat, low carb, and everything in between. That doesn’t mean food quality or macros don’t matter; it means they matter for reasons beyond the scale, like hunger, performance, and health. Hormones and medications can nudge appetite and energy, but they still act through energy intake and expenditure. The practical move is to set a modest deficit, track progress weekly, and adjust with small changes rather than swinging between extremes that trigger plateaus and burnout.

Protein sits at the center because it does three jobs at once: preserves lean mass, tames hunger, and raises the thermic cost of eating. Aiming for roughly 0.7 to 1.0 grams per pound of body weight supports muscle while dieting and makes meals more satisfying. You don’t need perfect timing; total daily intake matters most. Spread it across meals because that’s easier to execute and helps satiety. Combine protein with strength training and you send a clear signal to keep muscle while your body taps fat for energy. Skip either, and you risk shrinking your engine along with your waist.

Strength training beats cardio for body composition. Cardio can help create a deficit and build work capacity, but lifting protects muscle, shapes your physique, and keeps metabolism resilient. Think three to four weekly sessions built around compound moves—squat, hinge, press, row, pull—with progressive overload. You don’t need marathon workouts; you need consistent, challenging effort that nudges performance up over time. For older lifters or tight schedules, two high‑quality sessions can still work if recovery is prioritized and sets are taken close to hard effort.

NEAT—non‑exercise activity thermogenesis—is the stealth lever most people ignore. It’s the stairs you take, the steps you accumulate, the fidgeting you do, the chores you finish. NEAT varies wildly between individuals and often drops when you diet, quietly shrinking your deficit. Counter that by tracking steps and aiming for 8,000 to 12,000 most days. Walk after meals, stand during calls, and bake movement into your routines. A few hundred extra calories burned daily can be the difference between a frustrating plateau and steady progress while keeping your food intake more comfortable.

Muscle is your long‑term insurance policy. Each pound doesn’t torch thousands of calories, but muscle improves glucose handling, nutrient partitioning, insulin sensitivity, bone density, and the ability to eat more while staying lean. Across the year, cycle phases: maintain, build, and cut. Add muscle with a small surplus and high‑quality training, then reveal it with a moderate deficit while protecting strength. You’ll end up leaner at a higher scale weight with more flexibility, better health markers, and less fear of regain because your habits and physiology align.

Finally, sustainability beats speed. Extreme deficits strip muscle, spike fatigue, and amplify rebound. Moderate deficits of roughly 500 calories a day, diet breaks, and maintenance phases reduce adaptive slowdowns and keep training quality high. Skills—meal planning, protein anchoring, daily steps, strength sessions—compound like interest. When you stop chasing hacks and start mastering these basics, fat loss becomes repeatable and maintenance becomes normal life. The result is confidence, resilience, and a body that works with you instead of against you.

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Philip Pape: 0:00
If you're starting the new year ready to finally lose fat and keep it off this time, you need to know what actually works versus what the fitness industry keeps selling you. Because after decades, 70-ish years of research, thousands of studies, science has identified seven principles that determine whether fat loss succeeds or fails. These aren't trends, these aren't theories, they are evidence-based strategies proven over and over in controlled studies, in real-world applications. And today I'm going to break down all seven with a very popular replay from earlier this year so that you can stop spinning your wheels. You can start building the leaner, stronger physique that you want here in 2026. Now, before we get into it, if you're looking for personalized guidance to do this on your fat loss journey, whether that's dialing in your nutrition, tracking your progress, figuring out what to adjust when the scale solves, and really, what do I do today? Check out my fitness lab app. It's like having a coach in your pocket who adapts to your data and tells you exactly what to do next. And right now, through January 2nd, you can get 20% off at witsandweights.com slash app. That wits and weight, that's wits and weights.com slash app. Now let's get into those seven fat loss strategies that actually work. 70 years of fat loss research, thousands of studies, millions of participants, and you could boil it all down to a few key principles that determine whether you succeed or fail. So today we're going to give you seven tips from those 70 years of research, not trends, not theory. It's based on conclusions from major studies, NASA's studies in the 70s, landmark trials published in major journals like the New England Journal of Medicine, metabolic chamber studies. You'll discover why the biggest loser contestants regained all their weight six years later. How one factor can swing your daily calorie burn by 2,000 calories, and why the diet that works best has nothing to do with cutting carbs or even counting macros. I'm your host, certified nutrition coach Philip Pape, and today we're gonna cut through seven decades of research to bring you the only fat loss strategies that really rise to the top that actually matter. And I get it, the fitness industry loves to overcomplicate fat loss, talk about optimization and new diets, new supplements, new exercise protocols. There's always something promising to be the answer, the shortcut, the magic pill. But when you step back and look at the seven decades of high-quality research from metabolic chamber studies to landmark trials involving thousands of participants that have held up over this entire duration, there are clear patterns that emerge. There are things that we just know work. And today I'm gonna share what those are seven principles that have stood the test of time, that are backed by studies upon studies upon studies. And as much as science can never be perfect, we can never fully prove things. There are things we just know that work because at any level of the evidence, from scientific research to coaching practice to anecdote to individual experimentation, we know that these things go far beyond hypothesis, opinion, theory. They are as close as we could get to what we call facts or truth that are derived from investigating the key questions around fat loss. Now, before we get into these seven tips, I want to give you something that will make implementing them just a bit easier. I have a guide that's been around for a while. It's a really solid, one of our most popular called the Ultimate Macros Guide. It's actually an e-book that breaks down how to set up your nutrition for fat loss, preserving muscle, long-term success, but it also talks about a lot of aspects of nutrition and supplementation and periodization, all of it. It's completely free. It includes the approach that I use with clients and the philosophy we're discussing today that, again, is backed by the evidence. Just go to witzawaits.com/slash free or click the link in the show notes to grab your copy of the Ultimate Macros Guide. And by the way, it's been edited over the years as I've gotten feedback from many of you who have either challenged me on things that were kind of on the edge of evidence-based, or who just wanted their questions answered. So go get your ultimate macros guide today. Link in the show notes. All right, so seven tips from 70 years of research. I'm gonna give you the science, the practical application, and then most importantly, why this matters for your results. So let's start with principle number one or tip number one. A calorie deficit is non-negotiable. Now let's let's talk about the elephant in the room, right? Energy balance, calorie deficits. And I know some of you are rolling your eyes thinking this is obvious, this is simplistic. I've been listening to your show for a while, Philip. Of course, calories in, calories out works, thermodynamics make sense, but there is so much nuance behind that, and it is always worth repeating and understanding what the evidence says over that 70 years of research. So the science behind this was first quantified using metabolic chamber studies in the mid-20th century. If anybody is as old as me, they've been around since that time. I was born in 1980, just for reference. Now we're talking about metabolic chambers are controlled environments, and researchers are able to measure what is eaten. Every calorie that's consumed and burned, they use all sorts of equipment to figure this out. And the first law of thermodynamics, you probably heard about it before from physics, it is the principle of the universe that energy cannot be created or destroyed. It can only be transferred. And that's really important to understand because we still have to validate that when it comes to human beings and our food consumption, our energy. There's a study by Hall et al. It was a landmark study in 2011 in science translational medicine. And they took people and put them in a controlled inpatient setting. Think of it like a laboratory for humans. And when calories were matched, low carb and low-fat diets resulted in identical fat loss, identical. And we've seen time and time again where calories are controlled, no matter what the macros look like, we tend to see almost identical results. Doesn't matter if you're fasting, it doesn't matter. When it's controlled for calories, we have the same results. Very important. Why this matters is any argument about this versus calories, hormone, it's my hormones versus calories, are missing the point. In fact, the whole GLP1 Ozempic craze now is proving the fact that it is about energy balance because those medicines cause only one thing, you to eat less. And when you eat less, you lose weight because you go into a calorie deficit. This is just a law of physics. Yes, hormones influence how much you want to eat and how much energy you expend, right? And that's the other side of the equation. We have to think about when we say calories in, calories out, the calories out side is highly influenced by so many complex factors, including calories in. So even what you eat and how much you're taking in it affects how much you burn. And so we can't override thermodynamics. You know, again, the new GLP1 medications reduce appetite, which reduces calorie intake. And that's a great uh modern proof of this principle. So the takeaway is for fat loss to lose fat, you have to be in a calorie deficit. Now, of course, people are gonna say, what about body recomposition where you gain muscle and lose fat? That is a very tiny corner case, which does exist, where you're taking in enough energy to pack on some muscle while also losing fat. But you're losing fat because you don't have enough net energy to support your current fat stores, and therefore your fat is lost. But when we're talking about meaningful fat loss, right? More than a few pounds, you're trying to lose fat, you have to be in a calorie deficit. The method you create that deficit with, whether it's your food choice, your meal timing, how you train, how you move, even medication, that part is far more flexible than people realize. And that's one of the messages of wits and weights is that there are many roads to get there, which is very empowering when you know that your food can be flexible. It's just the guardrails around calories and then macros for other reasons besides weight loss that come into play. So principle one is calorie deficit isn't non-negotiable. Tip number two is that protein preserves muscle and controls hunger. This is an important principle from fat loss research, because if you're not eating enough protein, you miss out on not only lots and lots of side benefits of eating protein, but the very purpose that protein, the that the very reason that we consume protein, which is the metabolic advantage for our muscle building and our muscle preservation while we're losing weight so that we don't lose muscle. Now, there are lots of advantages of protein. One of them is the thermic effect of feeding, meaning that the energy cost of digesting and processing protein is highest of all the macros. It's about 20 to 30% of calories consumed compared to 5 to 10% for carbs and close to zero for fats. So if you eat 100 calories of protein, your body's gonna burn 20 to 30 calories just processing the protein. Perhaps more importantly for a lot of you though, when it comes to fat loss, is how protein affects your hunger hormones. Paddon Jones and his colleagues showed in 2008 that protein suppresses ghrelin. That's your hunger hormone. It then increases GLP1, PYY, and CCK, which are your satiety hormones. You literally feel fuller and more satisfied. So it's kind of the natural GLP1. Never like to overstate the effects compared to very powerful medications, but it's important to understand how protein increases fullness, satiety. Also, this is what I alluded to as perhaps the most important reason we eat protein, is during a calorie deficit, right? Tip number one, your body wants to break down tissue because it needs energy. It's looking for energy. And protein, especially when it's combined with resistance training, is telling your body, let's preserve muscle tissue when you're seeking out those energy sources. Let's not go after that because that's important. Let's pull it from your fat stores instead. If you're not eating protein, if you're not strength training, the body's like, well, I'm gonna take it from where I can get it. And that includes your muscle mass. This is why people on GLP1 lose massive amounts of muscle for the most part when they're not training and eating protein. And they're obviously crashed dieting is effectively the result. Again, when lifestyle is not controlled for. We've said it before, but I'll say it again. Studies show we need about 0.7 to one gram per pound of body weight of protein, or about 1.6 to 2.2 grams per kilogram of body weight. And that's a super optimal, well-supported range for the vast majority of people. Now, Eric Helms, you guys know him, he's been on the show a couple of times, and his research team, they found that lean individuals in extreme deficits might need higher intake, up to, say, three grams per kilogram. But for most of you, the 0.701 gram per pound, and I'm sorry, I'm such a between metric and imperial here, is the sweet spot. So when it comes to protein, it's pretty simple. It doesn't matter when you get it as long as you get your total. It's helpful practically to try to spread it across your meals. It also is good because of the satiety. And there's a tiny optimal effect for muscle building and preservation when you spread it out, but it is very, very small because your body can utilize protein very intelligently no matter how you eat it, even if it's in large, what they call boluses, like you eat a lot at once, but practically it helps to spread it throughout the day. So that's tip number two. Tip number three is that resistance training beats cardio for body composition. Now, this is important because some of you are gonna say, wait, I've heard recent studies that say cardio is actually really helpful for fat loss. And yes, it can be to an extent. Moving your body, increasing calorie burn can help. But we're not talking about just dropping fat. We're also talking about holding on to the muscle while doing that. I should, I should reword what I just said. We're not talking about dropping weight. We're talking about holding on to muscle while dropping weight so that what you drop is mostly fat. And that's where resistance training is by far the perhaps most important principle for how you actually look when you reach your goal weight. Because it's not about the weight on the scale. It's about losing fat, building muscle, becoming fitter, becoming leaner. And so resistance training absolutely is non-negotiable for that. So it is one of the three non-negotiables, besides protein and recovery, for fat loss. Go look up my episode called the three plus three optimal model of fat loss. And that is one of the three non-negotiables. Now, back in the 1970s, NASA was studying what happens to astronauts in space. And they discovered that without the mechanical loading, right, without the resistance training against your muscles, which we get from gravity here on Earth, muscle breakdown accelerated dramatically. I mean, we know this now that in people in outer space, and this is one of the challenges of potentially going to Mars, is the significant muscle loss and what you have to try to do to hold on to that. And it was one of the first major clues that resistance training provides a unique signal that you can't get from cardio. And that's why astronauts are expected to use resistance of some form, right? It's not definitely not going to be a barbell when you're up in the space station. There's there's bands and there's all sorts of rigs that they have for this, but it's a a great way to show how resistance training is necessary. There was a 2015 meta-analysis by Strasser and Schobersberger, and it looked at dozens of studies. This is a study of studies that compared resistance training to aerobic exercise for body composition. And no surprise, they found that resistance training preserved lean mass better than aerobic training every time. And there was a recent study done by Dr. Bill Campbell that I believe showed the same thing. In his study, they showed what some people found surprising, which is that yes, cardio can actually be quite effective for fat loss, but resistance training was better at preserving lean mass. So that's why when we talk about body composition, you need both. You definitely need the resistance training. And then moving through walking and through some strategic forms of cardio help move the needle a bit more on the being able to burn more calories without having to eat less, so to speak. When you're dieting, your body is in an energy deficit, right? Principle number one, it needs to get energy from somewhere. And weight lifting or lifting weights, training, sends what we call an anabolic signal. Anabolic means build. We need to, we need this muscle tissue and we need to build muscle tissue to replace the tissue that's breaking down because we're in this energy deficit. Without that signal, your body happily breaks down the muscle for energy because muscle is metabolically expensive to maintain. And you don't need to live in the gym. You don't. You can train as little as two, and even some approaches you can get in, get away with once a week. But for most people, it's gonna be three to four. For older individuals, let's say over in their 60s, 70s, sometimes I see two being more effective because of recovery. But for most of you, it's gonna be three to four sessions per week focused on the big movement patterns, squatting, deadlifting, pressing, rowing, pulling, right? That's deadlifting, but other types of pulls as well, which work multiple muscle groups, right? We call them compound lifts. They work multiple joints, multiple muscle groups, they give you the biggest bang for your buck. And you are progressing, you're using progressive overload, which is a gradual increase in weights or reps and/or sets over time. You're challenging your body more and more over time. And if you are not getting stronger, if you're not able to push harder, you're not providing the anabolic signal your body needs, with the caveat that while you're in fat loss and potentially losing weight, your relative strength is probably more important than your absolute strength because you don't have as many resources coming in. But what I like to tell people is just train as if you're able to get stronger and build muscle. And that should be sufficient to hold on to that muscle. All right, tip number four is that diet adherence beats diet type every single time. And for those of you newer to the show or to the philosophy we we espouse here, this might surprise you, especially if you're caught up in all the debates online about the right diet, keto versus plant-based versus carnivore versus intermittent fasting. There's something new every day, especially with you know, TikTok and social media, you've got people inventing diets left and right. You know, the sugar diets, I mean, all sorts of things that are all based on a type of diet, like exactly what you eat. But we know that that actually doesn't matter. What matters is are you able to adhere to your diet? Because if you can adhere to it, it's sustainable. And then once it's sustainable, you can tweak the levers to get to the goal you need and actually be able to do it. There was a landmark study called the Diet Fits trial published in JAMA in 2018, and it followed 600 people for 12 months. Half of them did low carb, half of them did low fat. Guess what? No significant difference in weight loss. I alluded to this in principle one, tip number one about a calorie deficit. No difference. The A-Z trial did something similar. They compared Atkins, Zone, Ornish, and learn the same result. No meaningful difference when you look at the big picture and control for calories. The SAC study in the New England Journal of Medicine tested different combinations of macros, of protein, fats, and carbs. So it wasn't really about the food specifically, just different macros. Again, no significant difference in fat loss when calories were controlled. Okay. And you might say, well, wait, what about you talk about protein and this and that? Again, we're talking about what moves the needle versus what's optimal. Yes, you need a sufficient amount of protein, but you don't need massive amounts of protein. Most people are getting too little protein. But when calories are controlled, that alone is going to have the biggest lever when it comes to the rate of weight loss. So what actually matters? Well, it's adherence. Can you adhere? The diet that works is the one you can stick to without feeling deprived or feeling restricted. These elegant, scientifically designed diets, the ones in the beautifully polished books on the shelf or on Amazon or whatever, your Kindle, they're all worthless if you can't follow them. Now, if you can follow them, they can be very helpful tools. They really can be. I'm not arguing that. I'm not arguing that a well-prescribed set of foods and meal plans and recipes that give you some structure and direction that you can stick to because you enjoy it. I'm not arguing that that can't also be successful for you because of the adherence factor. In fact, I was on paleo for years, and part of the reason I was able to stick to it so long is it was flexible enough to have all the foods I enjoyed. It had meats, vegetables, fruits, I think, yeah. It just didn't have grains. It had other forms of carbs, right? Fruits. And it had there was no dairy in there, but there's it depends on the version of paleo you follow. But anyway, I was able to eat a lot of variety of foods, and there were a bunch of great recipes that I would make. And so I was okay with it compared to how I eat now. It wasn't nearly as flexible as how I eat now, because now I can enjoy just about any food, which is awesome. And so this should be liberating. That's my point. You don't have to cut out entire food groups. You don't have to eat foods you hate, and you can eat foods you love. And you can build your fat loss plan around those and around your cultural preferences, your family, your schedule, your lifestyle, your vacations, your travel, all the things that life has for us that are amazing. A lot of them are around food. Just a quick reminder because I don't want to get off too off track here, but if you're finding value in these fat loss principles, I'm willing to grab my ultimate macros guide. Go ahead and pause the episode, go to wits and weights.com slash free, or click the link in the show notes. You're going to see a lot of these philosophies put out into practice, you know, explained in actual step-by-steps of what to do. It's going to help you implement what we're covering today. So you might want to follow along. Go grab the ultimate macros guide, click the link in the show notes, or go to wits and weights.com slash free. All right. Tip number five. Neat can neat. I'm going to explain what that is. Neat. And I'm not saying neat for those of you who are Manipathan fans. Neat can make or break your deficit. What is neat? Neat stands for non-exercise activity thermogenesis. It is a component of your metabolism. And I still believe it is the most underestimated factor in fat loss success. There is research by James Levin published in Science in 1999. And I love this study. I love this study because it's eye-opening. It showed that neat can vary, your non-exercise activity, thermogenesis, how much, how much, how many calories you burn from non-structured activity throughout the day can vary by up to 2,000 calories per day between individuals of the same size. And it seems unbelievable, right? That's it sounds like a massive number because some of you are saying, well, I burn 2,000 calories. How is this possible? Because that's the difference between, you know, maintaining your weight and losing two pounds a week, for example, or whatever the math comes out to be. Neat. So what does neat include? It includes everything that's not structured, exercise or training. So it includes, yes, walking. Some people argue that, but it does include walking. It's fidgeting, conscious or otherwise. It's standing, it's doing chores. It's even how much you move your hands when you talk, like I'm doing right now on video if you're watching the YouTube. So it's all your spontaneous movement throughout your day. And yes, even walking, which is not always spontaneous. Sometimes it is, sometimes it isn't. And the I'll I'll say the insidious thing when you are restricting calories and you're trying to lose fat is that your body then does a double whammo and subconsciously reduces your neat to conserve the energy that you're depriving it of. Right? People don't realize that that, oh, I'm in a fat loss phase. I should, the weight should start flying off. And all of a sudden I'm hitting this plateau. And it could be because you're not moving as much in all these different ways. Rosenbaum and Liebl's research from 2010 show that during weight loss, your body implements what is called adaptive thermogenesis. Okay. And I'm just mentioning one study that refers to this term in the last 15 years. This is a concept we've known about for a long time. It is the idea that your total, your metabolism, your daily energy expenditure drops because you of the unconscious reduction in your movement. That's what it is. There's a there are other reasons your metabolism drops during fat loss. One of those being that you're losing weight and you weigh less, and the other being the hormones, the hormone down regulation. But the fact that you're simply moving less due to your knee dropping and much of it is unconscious is also a significant factor, and you might not realize it's happening. You might like take the elevator instead of the stairs. You might sit more, you might fidget less, you might walk slower. And the tiny changes then add up. They accumulate up to hundreds of calories a day, potentially, right? And so I think the solution is awareness of these things and tracking things like step count, right? I think step count is a great proxy because all these things I just mentioned generally are reflected in your steps. And so if you notice your steps go from 8,000 a day to like 7,000 a day, yeah, maybe it's only a thousand steps, but on average, you're now giving yourself, making yourself a little bit harder to lose fat. And if you could aim for around seven to nine or 10,000 steps a day, you know, 10,000 has always been touted in popular media, but it's a good number. It's a good round number to remember. I always encourage clients to go for 10 to 12,000 if they can, really hit that 12,000 mark because that extra 2,000 calories or steps a day, which is like a mile, can make a difference, you know, just the right amount of difference between continuing with your dieting phase and feeling fine versus like feeling like it's you're too hungry and not eating enough, right? It's it's finding that threshold and letting move your little bit of extra steps and movement push you past, push you up into that higher regime where you could eat just a little more and still lose at the same rate. And so if you're tracking your steps, that's great. But then you could also trigger yourself to change your behavior. Walking after meals is awesome. Love it. It's great for blood sugar, right? It's great for recovery, insulin sensitivity, all that great stuff. It's one of the best times to walk if you're gonna pick a time. Using a standing desk, pacing during phone calls, all the fun hacks, and just remind yourself to do it. Set reminders, set yourself calendar notices, things like that. The goal is really just to maintain or increase your movement when you're in a calorie deficit. So if you're able to do this ahead of time before you go into your fat loss phase, and you know, hey, I'm getting 7,000 steps a day, I definitely don't want to drop when I go into a deficit. If anything, I want to try to ramp it up a bit. So that's tip number five is is neat and what a huge factor it can have in your metabolism. Now, just to caveat the 2,000 calories, I believe that that difference was between sedentary people and then the most active jobs you can imagine, right? Construction or what have you. And so realistically, we're not expecting you to increase your metabolism by that much. You're gonna be probably somewhere in the middle and you can bump it up by a few hundred calories, is what I would, the way I would frame this. All right, tip number six out of seven from 70 years of research is that muscle mass is an insurance policy for fat loss, right? Now, we all love muscle for how it looks. We love it for its strength and function, but it also is a huge metabolic insurance policy. I've talked before about how the industry, the fitness industry, overplays the fact that muscle is an expensive tissue and it burns a bunch of calories because it does, but it doesn't. It burns calories, but it's like six to at most nine calories per day for each pound. Now, if you have an extra 10 pounds of muscle, that's up to 90 pounds a day. When you think about it, you're like, okay, that's decent, but it's not this huge game changer that people talk about. Build muscle and you just ramp up your metabolism. But muscle does so much more that then downstream actually does increase your metabolism and make a lot of things easier. For example, your muscle is a huge sink for glucose. It improves glucose disposal. And that means that you can handle carbs better. And I mean better by a mile, by you know, infinitely better to where you can consume massive amounts of carbs and make them go to good use. And you then you open up the flexibility in your diet as well, and all the other benefits that come along with carbs, like reduced stress, better nervous system, more anticatabolism where you hold on to protein or you hold on to muscle tissue, like just so many benefits. Muscle also enhances nutrient partitioning. More calories then get directed toward muscle tissue rather than fat storage. So it's like a virtuous cycle when you have muscle mass. And of course, it provides a huge buffer against sarcopenia as you age, by definition. Sarcopenia is the loss of muscle mass, and that is the root of many of the age-related problems, diseases, frailty, injury, and ultimately pharmacology, which is being on multiple medications, and death. And I don't mean that to sound dire, and yet it is. I'm a huge advocate of a muscle-centric approach to all of this. Yes, we need to manage our body weight for sure, and our body fat, but muscle's part of that equation, so we might as well also try to maximize that. Now, there's a lesson we can take from bodybuilding. Since the 80s, bodybuilders have shown us that muscle can be manipulated pretty tremendously through bulking and cutting. Now, whether they're on gear or not, right, whether they're on anabolic steroids or not, it's a model for the fact that you could eat a lot more food during a muscle building phase without getting that fat. You know, if you eat it at the right rate, you can put on a lot of muscle and not too much fat. And again, I'm even when you're natural, when you're not taking special drugs to gain this system, I've worked with many, many, many clients, and I've done it myself now, probably five times in the last five years, muscle building phases where you are deliberately gaining weight and you're putting on muscle and you don't gain that much fat. You gain some fat, and then you diet down fat loss to lower body fat levels and preserve the muscle mass. And of course, bodybuilders do this to an extreme, right? They have the off-season, the improvement season, they call it. They pack on all this muscle, they might gain 20, 30 pounds, and then they go into fat loss for a pretty long fat loss phase, way beyond what any of us need to do. But again, it's an example of the extremes of what happens, and they go to extremely low, like vascular levels of quite lean body fat levels, and yet they're able to preserve their muscle mass. And that's because they're building this metabolic engine. They're focusing first and foremost on the muscle mass, and then only using the fat loss to reveal that muscle. More muscle means you can maintain a leaner physique, probably at a higher scale weight while eating more calories. Don't we all want all of that? More muscle, more food. And when I say higher scale weight, I know you're thinking, I don't want that. But what it means is you can be leaner at a higher scale weight than you think, which gives you more flexibility regarding scale weight for how to live your life and sustain all of this, and then eat a good amount of food. You have metabolic flexibility, you have better hormonal profile, you have higher insulin sensitivity, you have stronger, denser bones. And what does this all translate to? Right? Not just looking good, better long-term health outcomes, period. Right? All the things we hear people complain about online and wondering what the fix is for, if they were just lifting weights and building muscle, the vast majority of those things would go away or be significantly mitigated, including many, many, many people who think it's their hormones. So this is why resistance training is not optional. It is the foundation of sustainable fat loss. I wish people would not think of fat loss as like dieting. I want people to think of fat loss as having muscle, right? And supporting your metabolic engine. And then you can manipulate your energy stores as needed to reveal your muscle. That to me is fat loss. It's not losing weight. All right, tip number seven, the last tip from 70 years of research is that sustainability beats speed every time. Now, we talked about adherence earlier, how the diet, the adherence of a diet is more important than the type of diet. Well, this is related in a way, but it it also related to the concept of quick fixes and impatience in our modern world and the way things are marketed. And it might be the most important one for your long-term success. There was a study in 2016 by Fothergill and colleagues following up the biggest loser contestants. Now, I did a separate episode just on biggest loser follow-up. You can find it in my feed. But they were looking at what happened six years later, after the biggest loser contestants lost all this weight in this comp, it was a TV competition. And most had regained their weight and had very significantly suppressed metabolic rates compared to where they were before the show. And this is six years later, right? And for sure, our metabolisms can recover, but it's a matter of degrees and how much you've beat it up over the years tells you how long it's then going to take to recover. It's kind of a symmetrical curve here. And the reason here is because they used very aggressive dieting, very excessive amounts of cardio. And that's exactly the opposite of what I've been discussing today that is supported by the evidence. Rapid weight loss is going to increase your adaptive thermogenesis. It's going to increase the muscle loss. It's going to increase your psychological stress. And that creates the perfect storm for the rebound weight gain, right? And then the cardio and the lack of muscle and all of that stuff. Research shows, conversely, that moderate sustained deficits of about 500 calories a day. 500 calories a day, which is a nice round number. It comes out to be a pound of weight loss per week. For a lot of people, that's about a half to 1% of their weight, right? It depends on how much you weigh, of course. That moderate deficits around 500 calories are associated with better long-term outcomes. We know we know smaller deficits than that, the problem is they're not enough to move the needle meaningfully, and your body might even adapt into them. And then we know that much larger calories per day, it's just not sustainable. It ends up causing all the problems we saw with the biggest loser, and maybe not to that extent, but to some degree along that spectrum. And it's it's not just the physical side effects. They're, you know, the when you have a sustainable rate of loss, which I'm a huge advocate of finding out, you know, what's the rate of loss you need to stick to the diet and don't care about the amount of weight you have to lose. Let the rate of loss tell you how much you lose over a certain time frame. And then you can say, okay, at this rate of loss, I'm gonna end up at this weight by this date. And what are you gonna do also when you're at a sustainable rate of loss? You're gonna preserve your muscle mass. It's huge. You're gonna maintain energy for the training itself because you're trying to preserve muscle mass via training. And if you feel wiped out because you're crash dieting, you're not gonna have that energy. It's gonna allow you to have a social life because now you're not saying no to everything that gets put in front of you. You can still enjoy going out to eat and parties and things like that with some self-restraint, obviously. It also helps you to learn skills and habits, sustainable habits. What even does that mean? So many of you are listening. You've never had that in your life. We, you know, I and I feel you because I used to be there. The up and down, the crash dieting, the extreme approaches, the next quick fix. You get to learn sustainable habits. In fact, I just had a call with a client who we we went through a fat loss phase. We did our pre-diet maintenance phase, we did the fat loss phase, and now we're at a sustaining phase. And she's like, I don't even want to do anything different for a while because I realize that it takes skills to even sustain your result. There are skills you have to put in place. And if you're constantly trying to diet, especially do it aggressively, you're never gonna build those skills. And then, of course, you're gonna avoid the psychological stress, the fatigue of the extreme dieting. It's the white knuckling, it's the crash, you know, like I'm in diet mode right now. I have to say no, I'm on a diet. Like all that language effectively goes away when you're only in a moderate deficit. A moderate deficit is just, you know, some good meal planning, some tweaks, a little more protein, more whole foods, it's just some tweaks. A crash diet is a whole game change or a whole change in your entire lifestyle that doesn't make that's extreme. So if you use things like diet breaks along the way, if you use maintenance phases, if you use periodization, if you use refeeds, all of those can reduce the physiological and psychological fatigue, even on top of the fact that you're going at a moderate rate of loss. So think of fat loss as a series of strategically designed phases. It's not a sprint to the finish line, I gotta get, I gotta lose weight. If your mentality is, I gotta lose weight, you're already screwed and you're not ready for fat loss, to be honest. Because the goal isn't to lose weight as fast as possible. It is to lose fat while building the lifestyle where you can maintain that fat loss long term, involving all the tips we just talked about today. So tying all these together, it's really isn't just about fat loss, is it? It's really optimizing the way you live, right? And when you do these things, you don't just lose fat. You start to build a relationship with your body that is based on trusting yourself and rather than punishing yourself, rather than having guilt and a low sense of self-worth. You trust yourself, you have confidence, you develop skills that then compound over time. It is a form of personal growth and development. And you become someone who understands how your body responds to the different inputs. What it's what we're all about. Because you know what? No matter how much science you look at, it doesn't matter until you try it out for yourself and see how your body responds. Because I guarantee you're gonna be an outlier with something. And that's okay. And you figure it out. You'll figure it out doing it. I've worked with clients who've implemented these principles. And for years later, you know, obviously they they eventually fire me because they're like, okay, you just taught me everything I need to know. Not everything I they a lot of them come back because there's there's next levels of knowledge here and optimization. But still, they they have a confidence and a freedom that they can go forward and maintain the results and continue to approve, improve. They may have come to me listening to the podcast, understanding the science, and still not quite getting how to make that work for them. And when you put these all these principles into place, the sustainability, along with yes, the calorie deficit and the training, the protein, and the adherence, all of it, you know, doing at a reasonable rate of loss, et cetera, then you become physically and mentally stronger, you become more confident, and you have sort of a toolkit for your life that's going to carry you forward forever. And remember, the research we've covered today, I deliberately wanted to go back as far as I could and say, how long have we been looking at fat loss? And it's like anywhere from five to seven decades. It's thousands of studies, millions of participants, it's decades of human experimentation, but it's more of a roadmap than anything. It's a starting point. Yes, you're gonna become strong, you're gonna become lean, you're gonna become healthy, that is what it's all about. But you've got to try these things for yourself. And the big irony with all of this, with everything that we talk about all the time on wits and weights, is if you focus on sustainability and principles instead of the next quick thing, you're probably gonna achieve your goal faster, right? Because you're not constantly failing and starting over. So there you have it. All right, seven tips backed by 70 years of research. Your calorie deficit is non-negotiable, but how you create it is very flexible. Protein is your secret weapon for preserving muscle and controlling your appetite. Resistance training is gonna beat cardio for body composition every time. Diet adherence is going to matter more than diet type. Neat can make or break your results, that's your movement. Muscle mass, I'm up to number six, two hands here, is your metabolic insurance policy. And sustainability always beats speed. And these work, guess what? Whether you're 19 or 79, whether you have 10 pounds to lose or 100. Whether you're just getting started or you were advanced, these principles work just to different degrees and different levels of customization to the application. All right. If you're ready to implement these in practice, grab my ultimate macros guide. It covers everything. Witsandweeig.com slash free, or click the link in the show notes, gives you formulas, steps, explanations, the science behind this, all the things you need to care about, I'll say, to put in place what we've covered today and put it into action because knowledge, binging content without implementing it, this is just entertainment, folks. It's just info that's gonna go in one ear and out the other. And I want you to get results. I want you to put this stuff into action. And until next time, I want you to keep using your wits, lifting those weights. And remember that when science speaks, smart people listen, but it's up to you to put it into practice. I'll talk to you next time here on the Wits and Weights podcast.

Philip Pape 12/29/25 Philip Pape 12/29/25

The Case for Building Muscle FIRST in 2026 (Why Cutting Alone Won't Work) | Ep 419

Tired of dieting from January to March and quitting by spring? Learn why building muscle first makes fat loss faster, easier, and rare. Short cuts, long gains. Listen now and decide whether to build or cut (or both?) in 2026.

Join Physique University to get fat loss coaching, community support, and access to the "Get Lean in 45 Days" workshop on January 20th, a complete framework for executing a short, aggressive, muscle-sparing cut that actually works:
https://witsandweights.com/physique

Every January, millions start cutting calories. By March, most have quit... frustrated, tired, and no leaner than before. The problem isn't discipline. It's that they're trying to diet their way into a body they never built.

Learn why muscle is an asset while cutting is just maintenance, how chronic dieting destroys your metabolism and body composition over time, and why people who build muscle first end up needing to diet less often for the rest of their lives. Discover the structural advantage that strength training provides, not just for how you look, but for glucose disposal, nutrient partitioning, and long-term metabolic health.

Whether you're stuck in the yo-yo dieting cycle, considering GLP-1 medications, or simply want to lose fat without grinding through months of restriction, this episode gives you a step-by-step framework for designing a muscle-first year.

Plus, learn about the Mini-Cut Accelerator, a counterintuitive approach that lets you lose fat faster while protecting more muscle.

Episode Resources:

Join Physique University to prep for the "Get Lean in 45 Days" workshop on January 20: https://witsandweights.com/physique
Try Fitness Lab AI-powered coaching for 20% off through January 2nd: https://witsandweights.com/app

Timestamps:

0:00 - Why your 2026 fat loss goal will probably fail unless you do THIS
2:23 - The cutting-first trap
5:45 - How muscle improves metabolism, insulin sensitivity, and nutrient partitioning
12:20 - Why short cuts beat long diets for body recomp
17:02 - How to design 2026 for a muscle-first approach
24:10 - The Mini-Cut Accelerator to lose fat faster without losing muscle

Most people start the year by slashing calories, adding cardio, and hoping the scale will unlock a new body. By spring, progress stalls, fatigue rises, and the cycle repeats. The core flaw isn’t effort; it’s strategy. Cutting reduces total mass, but without a base of muscle you don’t improve nutrient partitioning, work capacity, or metabolic resilience. Two people can lose the same 10 pounds and look radically different; the one who starts with and preserves more muscle looks defined and athletic, while the chronic dieter ends up smaller yet still soft. The goal is not to get better at dieting but to build a physique that requires dieting less often. Muscle is the asset; cutting is maintenance.

Muscle functions as metabolic infrastructure. It’s the primary sink for glucose disposal, improving insulin sensitivity and enabling higher energy flux without adverse weight regain. While muscle’s resting calorie burn is modest, its real power is in nutrient routing: more carbs to glycogen, more protein to repair, less spillover to fat. Myokines released by contracting muscles improve metabolic flexibility across the body, influencing liver, adipose tissue, and even the brain. Over time, a muscle-first approach allows you to eat more, train harder, and look leaner at the same or higher body weight. This is how long maintenance phases can slowly recomp without an intentional deficit, especially when paired with adequate protein, sleep, and steps.

Sarcopenic obesity—low muscle and high fat—predicts poor outcomes in aging more than either alone. Chronic dieting without resistance training accelerates this phenotype: you lose muscle during deficits and regain primarily fat after, degrading body composition year after year. The fix is not endless restraint but a reframe of the training year. Spend 80 percent or more at maintenance or a slight surplus to build strength and muscle while living a fuller life. Then, when desired, deploy brief, targeted fat-loss phases to refine definition. This structure reduces metabolic adaptation, preserves training performance, and keeps identity anchored to building, not restricting.

Designing a muscle-first year starts with assessment: training age, current muscle, recovery capacity, and lifestyle constraints. Commit to six to twelve months at maintenance or a slight surplus, adding roughly 0.3 to 0.5 percent of body weight per month. Train three to four days weekly with progressive overload, 10 to 15 hard sets per muscle group, and a mix of compounds and isolations taken close to failure. Hit 0.7 to 1.0 grams of protein per pound of body weight, prioritize seven to eight hours of sleep, manage stress, and keep daily movement high. Track loads and reps to ensure steady progress; if numbers aren’t moving, muscle isn’t growing.

When it’s time to cut, go short and deliberate. Six to ten weeks at about 0.5 to 0.75 percent body weight loss per week will drop enough fat to sharpen definition while minimizing fatigue, performance loss, and lean tissue risk. Many lifters benefit even more from a four to six week mini cut targeting roughly 1 to 1.2 percent loss per week, protected by the brevity of the phase and anchored by high protein and hard training. The point is to get in, remove the fat, and get out—then return to maintenance or building. Over years, body weight may trend slightly up from added muscle, yet you’ll appear leaner, stronger, and more capable, all while needing fewer and shorter diets.

Medications like GLP-1 agonists can help with appetite for those who need them, but the principle stays the same: resistance training and adequate protein are non-negotiable to prevent muscle loss. Tools that blunt hunger without strength training risk leaving you lighter yet metabolically fragile. Anchor your plan to muscle, use diet phases sparingly, and let performance drive the process. Build first, diet less, and create a physique that maintains itself with far less effort.

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Philip Pape: 0:00
Every January, millions of people start cutting calories to lose fat. By March, most have quit. Frustrated, tired, no leaner than before. And the problem isn't discipline, it's that they're trying to diet their way into a body they never built. Today I am flipping the script on how you approach 2026. You'll learn why muscle is an asset, while cutting is just maintaining what you have. How to escape the cycle of chronic dieting, and why people who build muscle first end up needing to diet less often for the rest of their lives. Welcome to Wits and Weights, the show that helps you build a strong, healthy physique using evidence, engineering, and efficiency. I'm your host, certified nutrition coach, Philip Cape, also the creator of Fitness Lab. And as we head into a new year, into 2026, I want to challenge the default mode that most people are operating from. The assumption that fat loss is the goal, that cutting is the strategy to get there, and that everything else falls second behind that. Today's episode is about a fundamental shift in thinking. The idea that muscle is the asset and cutting is just maintenance. I want to kind of flip around how you think about both cutting and bulking. The goal is not to get better at dieting, it's to build a body that requires dieting less often. So we're going to cover three things. First, why cutting alone keeps failing you, even when you do it right. Second, the structural advantage that muscle provides for your metabolism, your fat loss, your long-term physique, and your longevity. And third, how to design 2026 so that fat loss becomes short, infrequent, and almost effortless compared to what you've experienced before. And then I want you to stick around until the end because I'm going to share a specific rule about cutting that most people get backward that will let you lose fat faster while protecting more muscle. It's counterintuitive, but it could change how you approach all of your fat loss phases from here on out. So stick around to the end for that. All right, let's start with the problem with this cut first mentality, this fat loss first mentality. And it's a pattern that I've seen hundreds of times where someone decides, hey, I need to lose that 10, 20, 30 pounds of fat, and I'm gonna go in a calorie deficit. Then you start seeing some results, then progress stalls, then you cut calories more, maybe you add some cardio, progress stalls again. Eventually you're eating very little, exercising a ton, maybe exhausted a lot, and then barely losing anything. And this is men, women, all ages, all sizes, all hormonal situations, right? I see it time and again. And so then you take a break, then you tend to regain the weight because you're not tracking, or it just was too restrictive. And then the cycle starts again next year. And you know, we see a pattern throughout the year as well between the seasons, especially as we get toward the holidays, which we're just finishing now. So this is a great time to reset this pattern. And for some people, this has been going on for decades, right? People in their 50s and 60s who've been doing it since their 20s. We know that on average, women try over 100 diets in their lifestyle, for example. And then you're just losing and regaining, I'll say the same 20 pounds, but it's not even the same 20 pounds. It's you're losing muscle and gaining fat in addition to the fat that you've lost and gained, if that makes sense. So you're actually getting worse and worse body composition over time. And then the frustrating thing is these are often very disciplined, smart people. They listen to this podcast. They're not, you know, failing because of uh willpower, as we've talked about before. It's because of the system and the structure. And I call this the cutting first trap. You guys, not you guys, but a lot of you listening fall into this. A lot of you are desperate to lose weight, are so obsessed with the scale, and that's the thing holding you back. And understanding this requires looking at what dieting actually does and what it doesn't do, right? So the core problem here is when you cut calories and you just don't have enough muscle mass, yes, you're reducing your body weight, but you're not improving your body's capacity to handle the energy coming in, the food that's coming in. You're not building metabolic resilience, right? You are not creating a more efficient machine. What you're doing is getting smaller, which you might say, well, that was my goal. But then you're getting weaker and you're actually getting worse body composition. The research on this is pretty clear that energy deficits absolutely are gonna reduce your body mass, that's thermodynamics, but they don't improve your strength. They don't improve your work capacity, they don't improve your metabolic health on their own. Now, I've I've given the caveat before that if you have a lot of weight to lose, if you're like three, 400 pounds and you lose 100 pounds by almost any means, you're probably gonna have a net improvement in your health, but you could have a much better improvement in your health and the ability to sustain that health with what we're gonna talk about today, which is resistance training, sufficient muscle, so that dieting does not lead to losing that lean mass, reducing your training performance, lower energy flux, worse body composition just because the scale is lower, because the the end goal is not to have a lower scale weight, is it? And if you think it is, keep listening to this episode. Two people can lose the same amount of weight and end up with radically different physiques depending on how much muscle they started with and how much they held on to. One person can look very lean, very defined, very athletic. The other looks smaller but still soft, what people call skinny fat. We've talked about that before. And many of you have lost weight and then you're not happy, and then you think the answer is to lose more weight. Stop, stop. That's not gonna get you there, right? It's not the weight loss. This is why cutting alone is not gonna work. Not because cutting itself isn't useful, it's very useful, but cutting without the structural foundation of muscle is extremely inefficient. And you're somebody put it best that you can't sculpt a pebble, right? You can sculpt a nice slab of marble, but you can't sculpt a pebble. So the first shift here is stop thinking of fat loss as the primary goal. As much as I talk about fat loss on this episode as a goal, don't think of it as the primary goal. Start thinking of muscle as the asset, the thing you're building, the thing that you're gonna keep around for a long time that's gonna make everything easier. And then cutting is this little task to maintain that asset from a better state, whether that state is better muscle definition, physique, health, what have you. You've got to have the muscle there. So that leads me to the next point I want to talk about, which is muscle as this infrastructure for your body, not just for the for aesthetics, even though that's a wonderful side effect for many of us, right? It's not just about looking like you lift, even though that's a great selling point. Muscle is not just cosmetic, right? It's a major aspect of your health and of making fat loss easier. From a physiology standpoint, skeletal muscle, this is a major site, for example, of glucose disposal. When you eat carbs, muscle tissue absorbs a significant portion of that glucose. More muscle means better glucose handling, which means better insulin sensitivity. This is why strength training is probably the number one recommendation for people with blood sugar issues. I go on diabetes podcasts, I talk about pre-diabetes, type 2 diabetes, and people ask me, like, what's what's the first recommendation you have, or what's the highest priority? And I usually say it's strength training because a lot of people with blood sugar issues know about walking. Walking is also important, sleep is also important. But if you're not strength training, that could be the biggest issue because muscle is a metabolic sink. It has somewhere to put that glucose instead of storing it as fat. And the insulin-triggered uptake of glucose, the first place it's going to go is skeletal muscle, or I should say 80% of it's gonna go to skeletal muscle. So if you have more of that muscle, you're able to dispose more of it. Another thing muscle does is releases compounds called myokines that influence your fat tissue and your liver, also other organs like your pancreas and your brain. These are signaling molecules that improve your metabolic flexibility. And that's your ability to burn different sources of energy, right? Carbs and fats, whatever, depending on how you're consuming your food and moving at the time. The metabolic value of muscle is far less about how many more calories it burns and more about things like nutrient partitioning and tolerance for what you're eating, how much you're eating, the types of food you're eating. People love to talk about how muscle burns more calories at rest, and it does maybe six to nine calories per day extra, which matters over time. It's not nothing, but it's not the main benefit. The real benefit is that you can eat more food with fewer negative downstream effects. You can have your carbs go more toward muscle glycogen instead of fat storage, your protein going toward muscle repair instead of oxidation, right? And so if I see this with clients, I see this with a lot of you listeners who are doing this the right way. You focus on building muscle, you build, let's say, 10 pounds of muscle over a year. Totally doable for men and women, right? Men could probably build a little more, but doesn't matter. And their scale weight might be the same, might be a little higher, depending on how they approached it. Did they do a bulk? Did they do it closer to maintenance? But they're probably eating more food. Their metabolism has gone up, their energy is better, they're training stronger, they look leaner. That's the power of nutrient partitioning without even having to do a fat loss phase. And that's why two people can eat the same diet and have different body compositions. And that's why you see people complain that, you know, I can't eat as much as this other person. Now, we shouldn't compare ourselves to each other because some people just have genetically lower metabolisms on average, but they can still move the needle, right? It's the people with more muscle are gonna be able to handle the fuel a lot better. And it's gonna affect all these other things, which then become more critical as we age. Think about sarcopenic obesity. This is the combination of low muscle mass, high body fat, reduced functional capacity as we age. This is a phenotype, right? Low muscle and high fat. That is probably the most associated with the worse health outcomes, than either of them alone. Meaning, if you have a lot of muscle mass, you're gonna significantly blunt that effect. If you have low body fat, even if you don't have a lot of muscle, that's gonna be a benefit as well. But having both is extremely beneficial. It affects your mobility, your metabolic health, your longevity. And then chronic dieting all the time, especially without resistance training, accelerates this phenotype again of high body fat and low muscle mass. Where even when you lose weight, you're losing the wrong kind of weight. You're losing muscle and then fat comes back, muscle doesn't come back because you're not doing anything to bring it back. So from this lens, cutting without first building muscle, it's not just a matter of being inefficient. It is highly counterproductive. You're setting yourself up for this awful phenotype of aging, of sick aging, I'll call it, that creates the most problems down the road. So muscle's not optional, guys. Like anytime I hear someone say, Yeah, I'm not resistance training, maybe I'll do it. It's not my focus right now. I'm like, what are you doing? Get your act together. We have to resistance train. Doesn't mean lifting weights in a very specific way, but it does mean following the principles of resistance training to build strength of muscle, which we're gonna touch on a little bit later, right? It's not a nice to have. Muscle's the foundation that makes all of this work together. Now, before we move on to talking about how and when you should cut, if you're planning out your year, if you want personalized guidance on building muscle and optimizing nutrition and knowing when and how to cut and what to do on a daily basis. You want to wake up and know here are the few things that I should do to continue moving the needle. The Fitness Lab app is what I built to do exactly that. It's an AI-powered coaching app that is a game changer. It gives you daily briefings, it gives you daily activities based on your data, based on your training and your nutrition patterns, your biofeedback. It's not generic advice. It's highly adaptable and personalized to you. You don't have to go to ChatGPT and figure stuff out. It will literally tell you here's what to do today, and here and then tomorrow it'll tell you what to do tomorrow based on what happened today. So it adapts to what's happening to you in your body. And through January 2nd, just a few days left, you can get 20% off as part of our holiday promotion. Just go to wits and weights.com slash app. The link is also in the show notes. That's witsandweights.com slash app. All right. Now let's get into the part most people miss, which is why short, infrequent cuts are probably the best approach for most people. And then quick reminder at the end of this episode, I'm going to share what I call the mini cut accelerator. All right, this is a specific approach that lets you lose fat faster than conventional cuts and still protect your muscle. And it's counterintuitive, but it's a nice balance between speed and sustainability. So stick around after for that toward the end of the episode. All right. So let's talk about cutting. If you're cutting most of the year, you're probably doing it wrong. If you're cutting most of the year, you're probably doing it wrong. Now, this doesn't, this is not speaking to someone who has like 50 or 100 pounds or more to lose and is doing this slowly over a long time because that is their priority. This is the vast majority of you who are more concerned with 10, 20, 30 pounds of fat to lose. Muscle is slow to build, but it's very durable once you have it. It's actually kind of easy to maintain. Fat is actually pretty easy to cut off. You might hear that and say, Oh yeah, right. Get in my body and tell me that. But it's it's relatively easy to cut off when you've built the muscle. This is my point. With reasonable training and nutrition, you can maintain muscle mass with as little as an eighth of the effort that it took to build it. So that's what I mean by it's an asset, it compounds. It's like once you've got it, it's pretty easy to hold on to it. Even if you lose it because you stop training for six months, it'll come back very fast. Amazing how the body works. Fat loss is different. It's very fast, it's a lot faster than muscle building, but it's kind of fragile, right? It's easy to reverse and it's hard to maintain without ongoing effort. The moment you stop a deficit, the body is going to return to its previous state. I don't mean you're gonna gain all the fat back, but it's going to want to get to some level of homeostasis. If you're not careful, that could then also mean creep up in weight. And then the deficits accumulate a lot of costs to you and your body and your psyche. Diet fatigue, physical fatigue, reduced performance, hormonal disruption, downregulation, increased hunger, decreased motivation. It's not great to be in a diet for very long. Let's just be honest. There's no, there's no like good diet in terms of a dieting phase. So if your default state is that level of restriction, then something structurally is not going to work long term. It's off. You're paying these costs in you're paying costs to try to maintain something that you don't even have yet, instead of being in a more fueled state and building something that's then going to allow you to cut without the same level of cost. So it's I to me it's a win-win to do it this other way. So, what does that look like? What does a well-designed year look like for most people? In my opinion, rule of thumb, 80% or more of your time is spent at maintenance or a slight surplus, focused on building strength, on you know, building muscle mass, on recovering, on enjoying food, on living life to the fullest and not worrying about dieting at all. In fact, I just had a client reach out to me who's been in maintenance for a while now. She's getting stronger, and she lost she lost a bunch of fat initially together, and then we went back to maintenance. And a little doubt in her mind was like, I feel like I have to lose another couple pounds, but I'm loving what I'm doing. And people say I look great. And and then, and it was like, look, you answered your own question. Like, this is not the time to cut. If you have, if you want to cut two or three pounds at some point in the future, we could do it very strategically. But let's be honest, you're loving this life, and that's where I want most of you to be, dear listener. That's where I want you to be. So 80% or more of your time spent in maintenance or slight surplus, and then maybe six to 10 weeks at most, either two short phases or one medium to long phase at most, and some of you just a very short phase of intentional cutting to remove any accumulated fat for whatever goal you have, which for many people is like in the spring leading to summer, get a little bit shredded. I hate to use the word shredded because it implies extreme leanness, just to get a little get a little bit more muscle definition when you, you know, have your shirt off or you're wearing a bathing suit, whatever. And that's it. Shortcuts, infrequent cuts, the rest of the time you're building or maintaining what you've built. Now, what kind of lifestyle is that? It's that's an awesome one. And compare the style most people operate, where they try to cut for four to six months or indefinitely, let's be honest, and then they might break the cut for a few weeks to recover or because they just can't do it anymore, and then they keep going and they're always in a state of metabolic adaptation. They're always restricting, spending 70, 80% of the year in restricting, restricting, restricting, wondering why they never actually look better and get the result they want, and thinking this stuff just doesn't work, or even that calorie deficits don't work. Here's why the muscle first approach works so much better. I mean, guys, this is my opinion, but I think it's very well supported by evidence and what I see with my own clients, those using my app, those in the group program. Physiologically, short cuts, okay, doing a cut for a short period of time, what's it gonna do? It's gonna limit how much lean mass you lose, how much muscle mass you lose, if any, because the longer a cut goes, the greater risk you have for losing muscle mass. Your body adapts to that restriction also, right? Your metabolism will slow down slightly. This just is gonna happen. It's totally normal. Your hunger is gonna go up, your training performance is gonna drop. And again, shortcuts are gonna minimize this. I don't want to call it damage, but this not so great living state of you know, low energy because you're not giving your body time to adapt to it in a shortcut, which is a good thing, right? Like a shortcut is gonna maybe dip into that regime a little bit, but then you're done before you know it. Psychologically, living mostly outside a deficit is gonna reduce burnout. It's gonna improve your adherence over the long term. The S-word, sustainability. It's gonna reinforce also your identity as a lifter, as an athlete, someone who's building, someone who's operating at a high level of performance, not as someone who's always dieting and saying no and restricting and feeling, you know, emotionally stressed by all of this. And then here's a counterintuitive observation that I've seen repeatedly with clients. Many people with sufficient muscle mass just naturally lose fat over time while they're in maintenance phases for a long time. And they're not even intentionally doing it, they're not restricting. It's just because that higher energy flux, they're eating more, they're training hard, they're moving more, they're not packing on a bunch of fat from being in a big surplus, but they're just slowly recomping over time. And that creates an environment where the body naturally wants to be leaner, right? That's recomposition. Now, the the most optimal or quickest way to build muscle is to go into a slight surplus. And by slight, I mean really slight. But for many of you, just being at maintenance, living with enough muscle that your body handles the energy more efficiently can get the job done. So, the goal I want you to internalize here is not to become a better dieter. I think a lot of you are trying to develop this skill of dieting, which to be fair, we give you the tools here on the show to try to do that because at some point you do go through a cut and there's tools for that. But what I want you to internalize is building a body that requires dieting less often. Then fat loss is just these brief, almost routine maintenance tasks. And I see it all the time. People I've worked with for a while who've spent the time to build the muscle, they're like, yeah, I'm just gonna do a quick fat loss phase, gonna take four or five weeks, cut a few pounds, boom, then get back to it. That's far better than this exhausting year or years long struggle that most people experience. So I went. briefly connect this to the GLP1 era we're in now as well. Stick with me. Okay. I don't think this is going to be controversial. I'm going to I'm going to apply some nuance to this. Medications like semaglatide or zepitide, you know, are wake are making rapid weight loss very accessible to millions of people. And many of you are probably taking these. And I have clients who take these. All good. For some people, they are genuinely helpful tools that address real physiological challenges with appetite regulation. Okay. We had Jamie Selzeron talked about that exact thing and he's doing it the right way. Love it. I'm not anti-medication. Okay. The concern is this that rapid weight loss without the resistance training is what creates the scenario I've already described. And it tends to accelerate it the reduced muscle mass, the lower metabolic capacity, a physique that is lower on the scale but may not be improved or feel different the way you want it to be. And many people are taking these medications need to lose weight for health reasons. And so it's an independent goal, let's say. And then when you stop the medication or when your body adapts, then you, you know, you get back where you're started. And many people on these medications then are worse off and they end up gaining the weight back and they're gaining more body fat. And then it's kind of this vicious cycle to the extreme. And that's why I think the muscle first philosophy matters today more than ever, to be honest. So whatever tool you use to manage appetite, which we're going to have a whole series on appetite starting next week throughout January, we're going to talk about lifestyle-based appetite management, natural appetite suppressants, pharmacological, we're going to talk about all those tools. Whatever tool you use to do that or to create a deficit, the strength training piece is still non-negotiable. The solution is the same no matter what tool you're using. Resistance training, adequate protein to preserve and build muscle during weight loss. Right. So this again this is just the cut side of the equation. So if you're already if you're you know considering using these meds or you're already on them, make sure to double down on strength training. I don't mean do double the strength training I mean double down as in do it, make it a priority, make muscle and strength a priority. Let the medication handle the appetite piece and those two can work together really, really well because the goal isn't just weight loss. It's building the physique that's durable, that's functional, that's sustainable and that requires muscle. All right so how do we design 2026 as your muscle first year and not worry about things like getting too bulky or gaining too much fat. All right. How do you do this? I would first assess where you're starting from how much muscle do you have? Have you never lifted before or have you lifted for two decades? Two different populations, right? How well do you recover? What is your training age? How long have you been lifting consistently? Because if you've been cutting a lot for many years without any time building at all, then you probably have very little muscle to work with and that means your first priority is absolutely to build muscle, not to cut. If you look like you lift right now, whatever that means to you and the answer is not really, I don't, then you probably want to build because you're not going to just by continuing to cut. So that's that's the first one. Step two is you have to commit to this. And by commit I mean eating at maintenance or a slight surplus for six to 12 months. We're not talking about a dirty bulk that's that's 1990s where you gain excessive fat. I'm talking about a control building phase where you add muscle slowly while staying relatively I'll say relatively lean or whatever your leanness is now and you're just going to get leaner because you're adding the muscle right it's very hard for people to grasp this, but you could actually gain a little bit of weight and be leaner because more most of that weight is muscle. Now how much of a surplus? In terms of percentage body weight a week I'm going to say anywhere from 0.3 to 0.5% body weight a week all right which for a lot of people is like maybe a half to a pound a month maybe more than that for men maybe it could be two pounds a month no more than that. It usually amounts to a hundred to three hundred calories above maintenance. So you could do this with macrofactor you could do this by by hand you could do this using my app. It doesn't matter just that you are intentional about it and making sure you're not dipping into constant restriction like before step three is of course you're training you've got to train for this that means enough volume, right? Typically 10 or 15 hard sets per muscle group per week. Use progressive overload which means you're gradually increasing the weight or the reps or sets over time but generally the weight training within one to three reps of failure on most working sets, using compound movements combined with isolation work, all that fun stuff we've had several episodes recently about training, about training volume. We did an episode about strength versus hypertrophy. It's all in the library if you need something specific reach out. How about find me on Instagram at wits and weights and send me a message this is the part that requires consistency and this is the part that a lot of people screw up because they're like okay I'm going to go into a slight surplus and then I'm going to train and then I miss a training session and then I miss another one. You're probably going to want to train three or four days a week and you're going to want to track your progress. So again there are multiple ways to do this you can use an app, you can use a notebook, you can use Fitness lab, it doesn't matter. If you've been using the same weight for months, the same pink dumbbells that's I'm sorry if that's derogatory but that's it kind of gets the point across. If you're doing the YouTube circuit training workouts, if you're doing the CrossFit style workouts and nothing's improving, you're not building muscle, right? At best you're maintaining something and being a little bit fit, but you're not actually building maintaining muscle. Then of course you've got the protein and the nutrition side. And so we we talked about being in a surplus but part of that surplus is having sufficient protein up to a gram per pound of body weight. For most people it's 0.7 to one gram per pound. So take your body weight and get kind of close to that like just a ballpark it I weigh about 180 so I try to get 160 to 180. If you weigh 200 it's 180 to 200. If you only weigh 150 pounds you're trying to get like 120 to 150 something like that. And then we've got sleep and stress sleeping at least seven to eight hours managing your stress also getting enough steps all that stuff. We're not going to go through all these pillars again today but whatever you're doing in fat loss to maintain your energy and metabolism you're still going to do that when you're building muscle it's not like you give that up you still want to be active you still want to move around you're not going to sit around all day. And then and then only then so we're talking six to 12 months of building when you then decide to cut you to make it short and deliberate. I would honestly just do the whole building phase continuously and then do a focused six to 10 week cut at around a half to 0.75% of your body weight a week. We're going to talk about a different option later in the episode that might be even more strategic for some of you, but that's generally what I recommend. And then you're going to get back to maintenance or building so you're not going to stretch the cutout. You're just going to not chase a lower number on the scale you're going to get in, remove the fat, get out. Understand that your overall body weight may actually trend kind of slightly up over time. You know it's going to go up and down with the building and the fat loss but then the net effect is probably slightly up because of muscle. And that's a great thing because you're going to be leaner, higher body weight higher metabolism more food all that jazz. And then just repeat this going forward and most of your ears are going to look like this long periods of building or maintenance brief periods of cutting you're going to accumulate muscle you're going to improve your metabolism the cuts are going to be really short and easy. And that is what I mean by becoming a person who rarely needs to diet that will be your identity as you you perform you're an athlete you lift you train you eat you fuel and occasionally you drop some fat. And it's not being genetically blessed. It's because you're working on building this infrastructure of muscle. So we've covered a lot all right before I wrap up I want you to stick around I'm going to share what I call the mini cut accelerator. It's a specific approach to fat loss where you can push a little harder finish a little bit faster and protect more muscle than conventional cutting that I just talked about and it might change how you approach your cuts. But a lot of you are looking for tools to help you do this. So if you need a tool to help implement any of these approaches whether muscle building executing a strategic mini cut and you're looking for support from human coaches and others in a community physique university is where we coach people through this. And what's cool is coming up on January 20th we're going to do a workshop called Get Lean in 45 days. It's going to be a complete framework for executing the kind of short aggressive muscle sparing cut that I'm about to describe in a second. It's the exact setup it's the macros it's training we're going to have a specific training program for the 45 days how to transition out without rebounding. And again that's going to be January 20th but if you join physique university now you'll have a few weeks to do some of the prep work because you want to be ready for this. This is not for everyone you can't just jump in. This is not a quick fix. You have to have your nutrition a bit dialed in you have to have your baseline your training things like that dialed in but we can get you some of those resources in advance only if you join physique university or if you're already in and if you're ready hit the ground running then in January 20th that's how you can do it. So go to wits and weights.com slash physique link in the show notes go to wits and weights.com slash physique join us in physique university for the get lean in 45 days workshop. All right so let's talk about that strategy the mini cut accelerator most people are going probably too slow for too long which sounds anathema to what I talk about because we are all about sustainability. The problem is a 12 or 16 week moderate deficit even though it sounds sustainable because the rate of loss is less it tends to be psychologically hard on some people it really is. 12 or 16 weeks on paper doesn't sound like that long. It's three or four months but in reality it starts to feel kind of fatiguing and kind of tedious right and again not everybody. For some people it's perfect but for others I've found that something like a four to six week mini cut is going to be extremely effective and it's a balance between very rapid fat loss. That's a different protocol that I've that I teach and kind of a standard cut that we talked about earlier. And in a four to six week mini cut you are pushing about one to 1.2% of your body weight loss a week right so it's a little bit faster than that typical half to one percent recommendation. And because it's short, you're still not risking any muscle loss. So this brevity the shortness is what protects you. You know you again going back to my earlier points about your metabolism will start adapting, your hormones start to downregulate, you don't really get much time to hit that phase, which is a good thing. And then psychologically you can push harder knowing that there's a clear end date. So for a lot of people this is really powerful. Let's say you're a 180 pound person that might look like 1.8 to 2.2 pounds a week for four to six weeks which is eight to 12 pounds of fat. This is a very common archetype especially a lot of men that I work with who are eating a decent amount of calories and they weigh around that 180 to 200, they can lop off like 10 pounds of fat. If you are let's say 130 or 40 pounds, you could still get you know four to eight pounds of fat. It's all relative, right? Compare that to someone who kind of has to grind away for like four months for 16 weeks and there's this little bit of hunger and fatigue the whole time it's not a lot but it's enough to make it feel like a grind even though on paper it seems more conservative and sustainable. The problem or the key here is it only works if you've built the foundation first. So this doesn't happen next week or in two weeks as we start the new year. This is either during a long building phase or after. And so I mentioned early earlier I recommend doing these after you do have the option let's say you're planning to build for 12 months let's say after six months you do a mini cut and then you get back in it and finish the year out strong. So you're kind of sandwiching the mini cut in between two maintenance two building phases. And really that's all it is. So you've got to get that in place first and that workshop I mentioned the get lean in 45 days that's exactly what we're covering a full framework for executing this. So if you want to get access to that and do the prep work join us in physique university go to witsandweights.com slash physique and we're going to help you execute that 45 day mini cut and learn all about it. All right until next time keep using your wits lifting those weights and remember that 2026 is your year to build not just to cut I'm Philip Pape and I'll talk to you next time here on Wits and Weights

Philip Pape 12/26/25 Philip Pape 12/26/25

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

Chasing the scale is making you smaller, not better. Learn why building muscle flips your metabolism, improves insulin sensitivity, and makes fat loss easier. Ready to trade pounds for power? Listen now.

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

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

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

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

Today, you’ll learn all about:

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

Previous episodes mentioned:

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

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

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

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

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

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Philip Pape: 0:01
When you focus on losing weight, you get smaller. When you focus on building muscle, you get better. Most people chase the scale. They cut calories, they add cardio, and they try to watch that number drop. But then six months later, they're frustrated because they still don't look like they lived. And their metabolism is worse than when they started. Building muscle completely changes the math. It improves how you partition nutrients, how much you can eat, how easily you lose fat, and how good you look at any weight. Today I'm breaking down why muscle is the primary driver of body recomp. Not despite weight, but regardless of it. You'll learn what actually changes your body composition, why weight loss can backfire, and the exact path to follow if you want to transform how you look and feel. Yet, many of you, most people, obsess over that number, that scale number, like it's the only thing that matters. I'm gonna show you today why building muscle is far more valuable than losing weight for body recomp, for health, for longevity, for metabolism, not because muscle magically melts fat, it doesn't, but because muscle changes every equation in your favor to make all the other stuff so much easier. So if you've been frustrated that all this hard work in the gym, in the kitchen isn't showing in your physique, this episode will help you reframe all of it and stick around to the end, where I'm gonna share one daily habit that accelerates muscle growth without any additional training. And it has nothing to do with supplements or meal timing or any of that. And it even surprised me when I first discovered it. All right, let's start with the obvious problem. The scale measures total body mass. That's it. It is the pull of Earth's gravity on your body. It doesn't distinguish what's inside your fat, your muscle, your water, your glycogen, your bone, all of that. When you lose 10 pounds, the scale said you lost 10 pounds. But if five of those pounds were muscle, you just made your body composition far worse, not better. Now, most traditional weight loss advice ignores this in the interest of admittedly selling a program or selling quick results or selling what the industry has sold for many years, and that thin is somehow better. And the typical advice is simplified in its finest is eat less, move more, create a calorie deficit, just be consistent, all the platitudes we hear all the time. Now, none of that tells you what you're actually losing. Okay. Yeah, you're losing weight on the scale, but in chasing weight loss alone and getting smaller, you won't necessarily get leaner. You won't necessarily get stronger. You're definitely not necessarily getting healthier. Now, the little caveat to that is if you have a lot of weight to lose and the excess body fat or body weight in general is putting you in a state of poor health, almost any form of weight loss is going to be a net positive from where you're at. But it's still even better to focus on doing that while building muscle. Research shows that up to 30 to 60%. It's a big range. You know, I you can cherry pick studies to find all these numbers, but even as little as 25 or 30% of your weight loss on a typical diet is lean mass, muscle. That's not great. Like that's not what we're trying to do. Especially we see this in older populations, you know, women and men over 40, anyone under-eating protein, anyone for sure who is skipping resistance training. In fact, that is the biggest reason this happens. And we see this a lot today on the GLP1 medications when it comes to the whole muscle loss argument. They don't cause the muscle loss, but they cause rapid dieting in people who are not resistance training, which leads to muscle loss. And when you lose muscle, why do I care about this? Why do I talk about this on the show so much? Why are there arguments between muscle and fat? I don't think they're mutually exclusive or muscle and weight loss. I think they both can happen and help each other. But what happens when you lose muscle? It's not good. First, you know, your metabolism is going to be lower. You're going to have poor metabolic health, not just from the calorie deficit, but because you are losing this very expensive, we call it metabolically active tissue. Muscle requires a lot of energy to maintain. If our body had its druthers, it wouldn't try to keep muscle because it costs so much and you're trying to survive. You're trying to store energy. You're trying to store fat. Your body would much rather you sit on the couch and just store fat and live for another day in terms of uh not starving, but it's definitely not the same as living a good life and thriving. So less muscle simply means a lower daily energy expenditure, you're burning fewer calories, and of course, you know down the line how this can make other things harder. The second thing that happens when you lose muscle is of course your strength drops. Now, this sounds, I guess, contradictory in the sense that building muscle requires building strength. Building strength builds muscle. So obviously, when you lose muscle, you lose strength. And conversely, if you drop strength because you're not training, you're gonna lose muscle. Anyway, the point is this affects everything in your life. It affects not only how you train, but even if you don't care about training, which we should have a talk, it's how you move through your life. You become weaker, you become less capable, you become more fragile. And you know what? Other people now, you have to depend now on other people. Do you want that? Especially as we get older. I'm not talking about 25-year-olds. Okay, if you're a little bit less strong or more strong at 25, it's probably not gonna make as big a difference. But when you're 60, 70, 80, that becomes a massive quality of life concern, a health span concern. And that's so, so critical today when we look at what happens with a decline into age, with age-related disease, with, you know, assisted living and frailty and all of that stuff, right? You just become weaker and more fragile, which is definitely not what you want. And then the third thing that happens when you lose muscle is your insulin sensitivity worsens. And I wanted to point this out specifically because muscle is where your body stores glucose. Muscle loves carbs. This is why we talk about the value of eating carbs on this show versus the narrative out there of about low carb and losing weight and all that. Muscles love carbs. When you lose muscle, you lose that carbohydrate storage capacity. And then what happens? Well, that means more of that glucose from the carb stays in your bloodstream or gets stored as fat, which is why we have to distinguish hey, are you sedentary and not lifting? In which case, eating a lot of carbs is not going to help you, or are you lifting weights? Uh, in which case it's fantastic, and it improves your insulin sensitivity, which improves your metabolic health as well, inflammation, all of that. So the question is not, how do I lose weight? The correct question is, how do I change my body composition? All right, that's really what we're trying to do. Now, there are deeper reasons we're doing this. We're not addressing here. That goes to mindset and identity, and maybe I'll touch on it here and there. But at the end of it, you know, when we think mechanistically, are we trying to lose weight? No, we're trying to improve our body composition because of the other things we just mentioned, especially metabolic health and longevity, which a lot of people are get surprised about when we talk about muscle because they're thinking bodybuilding and strength and lifting. They're not thinking the wonderful health results that that gets you, plus the food side, right? What it allows you to eat in terms of flexibility and enjoyment in life, personally. So, weight loss, here's the thing. So they're not mutually exclusive. Weight loss can improve your body composition, but it can also destroy it depending on if you are also losing muscle. Muscle gain always improves your body composition, just period. So that's the first, I guess, insight may or may not be surprising you, but it's it's interesting to think about that way in that weight loss is neutral at best, because even if you are training, you're lifting weights, you're eating protein and holding on to your muscle while you lose weight so that it's fat loss, that's beneficial. That is beneficial. I'm not gonna say it's not, but it's I'll say neutrally beneficial because it's the best you can do in either direction until you add more muscle. Whereas gaining muscle is a net positive by definition. In other words, it shifts the whole equation up. So let's get into some of the details related to the power of muscle here. Most people think muscle boosts metabolism. I hear it all the time. I know coaches talk about it on social media. They're like, yeah, you build more muscle and you burn more calories. Now that's technically true that muscle tissue burns a little bit more at rest than fat. It burns about six to nine calories per pound per day compared to like two for fat. So usually I tell people, okay, assume an extra five calories per pound of muscle, upwards of maybe 10 at the most, but let's say five. So if you add 10 pounds of muscle, you're burning an extra 50 to 100 calories a day. It's not nothing, but it's not the sole reason we do this at all. It's also not the real story, however, because I did an entire episode of this in the past that you do technically burn a lot more calories when you build more muscle beyond just the resting calorie burn from the tissue. The real metabolic benefit is what muscle does as a cascade into your entire metabolic system. This is what makes it really powerful, why I love it so much. First, muscle increases your carbohydrate storage capacity. We've already mentioned this. Every pound of muscle you add gives you more glycogen storage, which means less glucose floating around in your blood or getting shuttled into fat cells. Second, muscle improves insulin sensitivity. Also, something that I've mentioned. When your muscles are active, when they're growing, they pull that glucose out of your bloodstream more efficiently. That lowers your blood sugar, that reduces your insulin spikes. Now, I don't have any problem with blood sugar spikes. Those are natural when you eat carbs, for example, but it levels everything out more. And then along with a good balanced diet with plenty of fiber and protein, it just makes fat loss easier. It reduces energy, crashes, it makes you not have to worry at all about your blood sugars. You shouldn't have to use a continuous glucose monitor at all. Okay. None of my clients do. I don't. You don't need to if you're lifting weights, if you're living a healthy lifestyle. And I'm not talking about the diabetic population, totally different situation. Third, and this is an interesting one, okay? The act of building and having muscle increases your nutrient partitioning. Now, this is just a fancy phrase. We like to throw around these phrases of saying that your body preferentially sends those nutrients that you consume toward muscle growth instead of fat storage. And the more muscle you have, it feeds into this process. The more likely the calories you eat are used to build and repair tissue rather than get stored as fat. And again, stick around to the end because I have an extra tip that is going to accelerate this process massively in a surprising way that you might not realize. Just stick around. It's pretty exciting. All right. Fourth, muscle allows for higher training volume. So again, this is an upward spiral. The more muscle you have, the stronger you have, the more weight you can lift, and the harder you can push in the gym and the more volume and can lift. And it feeds on itself because obviously you need more volume and you need more stimulus to build the muscle, but you also can do more with the muscle. It also means you recover better, you tolerate more work. We call that work capacity. It's kind of like a form of cardiovascular health from your lifting and your muscle. You know, people who have more muscle tend to be just more athletic in general, even if they're not endurance athletes, and they can go longer sessions in the gym. And that means more calories burned as well through training over time. So it all feeds on itself. All right. The fifth thing here about muscle as a powerhouse is it supports your daily movement. When you're stronger, you tend to move more. You tend to want to move more, you have more energy. You take the stairs and see the elevator. Sometimes you even want to show off, right? You're strong. So you're going to help carry the groceries or you're going to lift the water bottles. You know, I've had 65-year-old female clients who tell me stories about, you know, men in their lives who she offered to carry the big thing of water bottles for them. Oh, don't do that. It's too heavy. She's like, What are you talking about? I can lift more than you. Okay. You know, you carry all your grocery bags in one trip, you know, with all the fingers. You know what I'm saying? Like two bags per finger kind of deal. You can play with your kids or grandkids without getting exhausted. Like these are lifestyle things. These are functional things. Okay. Having more muscle and training, it increases your knee in general. In fact, just the training sessions alone are like a form of steps you're getting that other people aren't getting. And that burns more calories every day as well. Okay. So if you add it all together, muscle doesn't just burn a few extra calories of rest. It transforms how your metabolism functions, really, your whole identity. It makes you more athletic. And this is why people with more muscle can eat more food, they can stay leaner, they have better health markers, even at the same body weight as someone with less muscle. And that's really important. I've had clients who have a lot of muscle and they're technically overweight, and they might actually have a decent amount of body fat that they really need to lose for other reasons. And they might even be kind of sedentary other than their lifting sessions. But because they have all that muscle, all their blood markers are better than another person at that same weight just because of the muscle. And that's why I think it has a net positive and shifts the whole equation up. And then body fat is just this extra thing that you may or may not need to shift to put you into the best health of all. All right. So now let's talk about what happens when you chase weight loss without prioritizing muscle. Now, hopefully, if you're listening to this podcast, you understand the value of resistance training. Although I have seen people come into our Facebook group recently or like, I'm having issues with XYZ. I'm trying to eat more nutrients, I'm trying to eat more fiber. What do I do? I'm like, are you lifting weights? Are you resistance training? No, no, I'm not. Like, okay, let's put that in there and you're gonna see everything else shift for the better. If you don't do it, if you don't resistance training, and sometimes I say lift weights and resistance training as interchangeably, as interchangeable, I really mean resistance training, putting mechanical tension or resistance on your skeletal and muscular system. But for many people to do that beyond a few weeks and months means getting some sort of weights or machines involved to get the loads needed to keep progressing. Even if you're 80 years old, you're still gonna have to get some light dumbbells or something at some point to start progressing. If you don't, what happens? Well, you're gonna end up smaller, softer, weaker, hungrier, metabolically compromised, you're gonna have less energy, you're gonna have fewer food choices, and you're going to have a lower quality of life. How can I paint the picture any clearer? Like the issues we have today with obesity, which come from overconsumption of food, are only compounded by the lack of muscle. And when someone starts to prioritize muscle, it accelerates the process of losing that fat and getting better metabolic health, as I've mentioned multiple times on this episode. But even just the idea of losing a bunch of weight on GLP ones and not lifting weights, or just going on an aggressive diet and doing, you know, carnivore or a vegan diet or keto or whatever, low carb, and then you drop a bunch of weight, you drop 20, 30, 40 pounds, but you're not lifting weights, you're gonna fall into this skinny fat trap. You may not like the term skinny fat, but you know what I mean. You lose weight, the scale drops, everyone congratulates you. Maybe that's what you're looking for. Maybe you congratulate yourself and you're proud of yourself, and that's great. It's good to be proud of an accomplishment that you worked at. But when you look in the mirror, you don't see what you want. You don't see muscle definition, you see loose skin, you see a soft, flabby midsection, you see flat shoulders, you see weak arms, you feel terrible, you're tired all the time. If this is triggering you, then good. Because I want to be there with you in the idea that, you know, we need to kick ourselves in the pan sometimes and take advantage of that self-love we have for ourselves to think about the long term and our metabolic health and our function for the rest of our life. And so these are symptoms that you're not doing that, right? Maybe you're cold, you're irritable, your workouts suck, you can't recover, you're constantly hungry, and you're stuck and feel like you're gonna make it worse because if you eat more, you're gonna gain fat right away because you know your metabolism's kind of suppressed and you don't have muscle and you're not lifting. If you keep dieting, though, you're gonna keep losing muscle and feel worse, and you're gonna have to diet on much lower calories. All right. This is the cycle that I think most people experience with traditional weight loss. Tell me if I'm not correct. Like I would love somebody to reach out to me and say, no, you know what, I lost a bunch of weight and I didn't lift weights and it improved everything and I'm better for it. Okay. And again, I think there are corner cases where people had a lot of weight to lose, and losing the weight improved their health dramatically. I'm not talking to those people. I'm talking about once you've dealt with that and you're kind of in the area most of us float in where, yeah, I have 20 or 30 pounds to lose, maybe 40 pounds to lose. That's where the muscle part of the equation is going to make a huge difference in and of itself. Okay. Now, why does this cycle happen with us? Why does this happen in the world to so many people? I think it's because weight loss encourages the exact behaviors that make fat loss harder later. And that is low calories, sometimes low protein because you're not thinking about protein. You're just trying to drop food out of your diet, no resistance training, lots of cardio. Okay, that's going to make fat loss harder later for sure. If that's a surprise to you, we can get into why. You create a big energy deficit and your body adapts by lowering your metabolism. It increases your hunger hormones, and it's going to start breaking down your muscle for energy. It's got a couple of places to grab energy, your fat cells and your muscle. Well, if you're not training, it doesn't need your muscle. Beautiful, expensive tissue. It can just, when I say break down, it's not like it like destroys your muscle. It's just your muscle starts to get smaller and not rebuild. And instead, that energy gets reserved for your body because you're in a deficit, right? You lose weight, but you also lose that tissue that makes fat loss possible and sustainable. You're not just losing fat, you're losing muscle. The research on this is clear. I've mentioned before the biggest loser study is an example of the extreme where contestants lost hundreds of pounds through extreme calorie restriction, through tons and tons of exercise. It looked like torture. But because they also lost so much lean mass, their metabolisms tanked hundreds and hundreds of calories. And then years later, most had regained the weight, but their metabolisms were still suppressed because they lost a ton of muscle. All right. And because they had done it for so long. There was another study that found people who diet without resistance training lose significant muscle mass, even in moderate deficits. I often talk about 500 calories as a reasonable deficit below which you're not going to lose muscle, but that assumes your resistance training. If you're not resistance training, you're still going to lose some muscle mass. And then when you regain the weight, guess what happens? You it becomes comes back mostly as fat or pretty much entirely as fat. So if you lost 20 pounds and 10 of those are muscle, and you gained the 20 pounds back, all 20 pounds are fat. You've just now lost 10 pounds of muscle. And your body composition ends up worse than before you started. This is why I don't. Recommend aggressive weight loss, or there's a protocol I have for rapid fat loss, very specific terms, unless you're doing everything possible to preserve muscle. High protein intake, you know, and it's high by the standards of average society, but it's not high by reasonable standards for what's necessary based on the evidence. But high protein intake, progressive overload with your resistance training, right? Training with good intensity so that you actually build muscle, plenty of recovery, keeping your deficit moderate. If you're going to lose weight, lose it the right way. Do it that way, right? So you're then it's fat loss. Otherwise, you're setting yourself up for failure. Now, before we continue, I want to share something that has been getting incredible feedback from listeners and viewers. If you're realizing that tracking your training, monitoring your biofeedback, staying consistent is a hard thing to do, right? Because life is so crazy and life is so busy. I built my Fitness Lab app for exactly that type of person because that is me. Okay. I use it myself. Fitness Lab is an AI-powered coaching app trained on all my content, all my philosophy. It gives you personalized, evidence-based guidance on your workouts, your nutrition patterns, your recovery, all through what I call conversational coaching. It feels like you are texting your trainer or your nutrition coach. It is not a workout logger generator. It's not a meal planner. It's not a generic food logger. It is much more intelligent than that. It's kind of like that intelligence layer in between what you log and what you do that will adapt to what's happening. It learns your habits, it looks at your biofeedback, it helps you stay on track, which is great. Now, right now through January 2nd, you can get 20% off with our holiday and new year promotion. Go to witsoweights.com slash app and you can learn about the app before you buy it. So I would check that out. Wits and weights.com slash app. Right now, as we end the year, this is the perfect time to set up your system for 2026 to hit the new year strong. Go to Witsaweights.com slash app. All right, let's get back to why building muscle beats weight loss for body recomp, because that's what we care about, right? Not just weight loss. So one of the biggest myths in fitness is that you can't build muscle and lose fat at the same time. We call that body recomposition. Or that building muscle makes you bulky, especially for the women. Oh, well, I don't want to look like that. I don't want to build muscle and look like that. You're not going to. I'm going to say that right now. Or that focusing on muscle means you have to accept higher body fat. Like you have to do these big surpluses. But that's not true either. All right. So these are all myths that I like to burst on a regular basis or bust, whatever the word is. Because building muscle makes fat loss exponentially easier. Okay. It doesn't make fat loss harder, it makes it easier. And it's going to lead to the ability to do both more easily, the ability to get stronger and leaner, not bulky, and the ability to do it without necessarily going into a big surplus. All right. Here's why. First, muscle increases your training capacity. I alluded to this already, but when you're stronger, you can lift heavier weights, you can do more volume, you could push harder in your training sessions and your workouts. That means more calories burn during training, and higher post-exercise energy expenditure, which is a phenomenon that a lot of you may be familiar with from some of the research on high-intensity interval training. Well, you get the same thing when you're training hard with weights, which is awesome. Okay. But yeah, you can get it from sprinting and hit as well. Second is that muscle improves recovery. Okay, cool, right? Like the training of the muscle is a stimulus that can create fatigue and you need to recover from it. But as you build more muscle, you have more recoverability. You have better nutrient delivery, faster tissue repair, greater resilience to training stress, in fact, to stress in general and mental stress, believe it or not. You have uh a better uh mindset when it comes to attacking problems in life. You know how to deal with hardship a little better, and this actually improves your sanity just a bit too, right? And offset some of the other stress in our life. And so you can train more frequently without over-training, the more the better you get at it. Third is that muscle preserves your metabolism during fat loss, which is should be obvious, but a lot of people just don't realize this. Or I shouldn't say it should be obvious. Obviously, you're trying to preserve muscle during fat loss, but people don't realize that when you diet and don't have the muscle, your metabolic rate is probably dropping a little faster, not just from the calorie deficit, but because you're losing lean mass. Whereas when you hold on to the muscle or you've built more muscle, you tend to have a higher metabolic rate during the fat loss phase relative to what it would have been, not to other people, but to your own baseline. And I've seen this in my own life over the last five years. Every time I've gone through a bulking cycle and built more muscle, it's been a little bit easier to do a dieting phase. Is this universal? I don't know that that's necessarily true, but on average, that is true. The fourth thing here is that muscle makes it easier to stay consistent. Why is that? Well, when you're strong, when your training is progressing, you feel great, you have energy, you want to keep going, you're getting PRs. These are mentally intrinsically rewarding. Intrinsic motivation is so far more powerful than anything else, than willpower, discipline, whatever. The word discipline maybe is the outcome of having this kind of motivation, but it's definitely different than willpower. You don't need it. You just need to get progress from your actions, and that will motivate you. Fifth, muscle allows you to eat more food. Come on, we love this. I should have led with this one, guys. You know, because of the metabolic benefits we discussed earlier, better insulin sensitivity, higher nutrient partitioning, greater training capacity. You can maintain or lose fat generally on higher calories when you have more muscle, you eat more carbs, you just eat more food in general and more of the types of food you want to eat. You know, very flexible diet. So if I gave you a concrete example with numbers, you have two people and they both weigh 150 pounds. Person A has 100 pounds of lean mass, and person B has 120 pounds of lean mass. So person B has gained 20 more pounds of muscle through their training. Person B, the person with more lean mass, can eat probably three to 500 calories more per day and maintain the same body fat percentage as person A because they have more muscle driving their metabolism. And the fact that they have more lean mass at the same weight also means they have less fat mass, right? So when both people decide to lose fat, person B can create a deficit on higher calories and can eat more. Person A might have to drop further to see the same rate of fat loss. And you tell me who's gonna be more successful long term. So it just makes it easier, which is also why I have I have episodes coming up, or at least one episode coming up as we get to the new year about why I think building muscle first might be the way to go for a lot of you. So stay tuned for that. Make sure you're following the podcast to get that episode. But who's gonna be more successful? Who's gonna feel better during the process of fat loss itself? And then who's gonna maintain the results after the diet ends? I don't even have to say who it is, right? So if you do want easier fat loss, for many of you, it is gonna be to build muscle first. And uh remember, I've got a surprising daily habit for you at the end of this episode that is going to speed up muscle growth without any extra training. All right, let's keep going. I'm packing a lot into this episode. I want to talk about body recomp specifically. Body recomp is the process of simultaneously gaining muscle and losing fat. It is what some would call the holy grail of physique development because you are improving body composition without changing scale weight. And why that's a holy grail is because people say, okay, I don't need to diet, which nobody likes dieting, and I don't need to gain a bunch of weight that comes along with some fat. I don't want to do that either. I want the sweet spot in the middle. Most people I think are doing it wrong though, okay? They usually focus on losing fat and hope that the muscle follows when they're thinking body recomp. They still have in the back of their mind, like, okay, but I want to lose fat as part of this process. And I think that's backward. I think effective recomp starts with biasing toward muscle building. And, you know, as you're developing that muscle, the fat loss becomes a natural byproduct of all the things we just talked about: the training capacity, better metabolism, nutrient partitioning, muscle protein synthesis, all of that. And the research does support this, where even trained lifters, even trained lifters, yes, can gain muscle at maintenance calories if they're eating enough protein and following progressive overload. And we know this because there are some very jacked, very strong people out there who are big proponents of not having to go into big surpluses. Okay. There is a certain level of surplus that will speed up the process. But if you're looking for a fairly quick process without the extra fat gain, body recomp is totally possible, but it has to be biased toward building muscle, which means biased toward maintenance or slightly above maintenance rather than a slight deficit. Some people will argue with me. Some people say, look, if your goal is really to lose fat and body body recomp is the side effect, then you focus on fat loss. True, true. But if your goal is body recomp itself, including the muscle gain and you want to ensure muscle gain, I think you need those resources coming in. You don't need a big surplus. You, especially if you're beginners, uh a beginner or you're detrained, you're gonna respond really well to that stimulus from the training. And then if you are more of an advanced trainee, it's just a matter of making sure you've got enough of that fuel coming in, you know, at least maintenance or very slight surplus, which is what I call aggressive maintenance. Some people call it lean gaining, but I'm talking about very slight, like 50 to 100 calories at most, maximum, over your current maintenance, where you're not trying to bulk, you're not trying to cut, you're optimizing for, we'll say the highest quality muscle gain with the lowest possible fat gain within that time span so that you don't need to cut off the fat. If you want faster muscle gain, yeah, ramp up that surplus a bit more, get a little fat for the ride, and then cut it off later. But not everybody wants to do that. So the key variables with all of this, kind of to tie it in a bow, are going to be that high protein intake, 0.7 to 1 grams per pound of body weight, progressive resistance training, right? Focused on the big compound movements and progressing in weight reps and/or sets over time, adequate recovery, sleep stress management, deloads if you need them, listening to your body and your fatigue, calorie intake that is at or slightly above maintenance, enough to fuel training and recovery, but not so much that you are gonna have excess fat gain. And that is gonna be the sweet spot for body composition, even when the scale doesn't move. And maybe the scale drifts up slightly, but it's gonna be so slow it shouldn't matter. And it's probably coming because you're gaining muscle. What you should see is that you lose inches around your waist, your clothes fit better. You see muscle definition, you feel stronger, you feel more capable. And then six months later, because this doesn't happen overnight, six months is not that long, guys, with the years and years you've been spinning your wheels. When someone asks you if you lost weight, you can say, Hey, you know what? I didn't. I built muscle and I got leaner, right? That's that's kind of a cool thing to be able to say. Like, I don't want to. People might see it as you lost weight because you look better. And that's what people are expecting, but that's not really what happened, right? You actually built muscle, you got leaner. Um, and that's what body recomp is. So, what should you actually do if you want to prioritize muscle for body recomp? Number one, we mentioned protein. I would achieve this by prioritizing protein in every meal. If you can have protein in every meal, that's gonna be a great start because many of you aren't even doing that. And if you're eating three, four, maybe five times a day, probably three or four, then it's gonna be a great start to getting the muscle or getting the protein that you need. The second thing is related to your training program. I'm gonna suggest that three days a week is plenty for a beginner. For those of you who are a little bit more advanced, four days is usually plenty as well. A lot of you like to train five days, that's fine. But getting your squats, your deads, your presses, maybe some form uh uh, you know, some back movements in there for sure, forms of rows, pull-ups. I don't care if you use barbells. Machines are fine too. You know, I love barbells, of course, because of the progressive objective nature of them, but machines can be very effective as well. As long as you're tracking and aiming to add weight or reps every week. And again, my app, Fitness Lab, can help you do that. It can write you a program or it can help assess your current program. Step three is about the eating side of it. You know, if you're new to training or you're carrying extra body fat, you can eat it maintenance and still build muscle while losing fat, as I mentioned. Um, tracking your food, weighing and measuring your food, identifying how many calories you're actually eating and comparing that to your weight is gonna give you a good idea. Are you roughly where you need to be? Or are you actually losing weight? You don't want to be, because that means you're not resourced enough to build the muscle, and we need to bring those calories up, you know, or do you want to make it where you go into a very slight surplus and really um ramp up that muscle growth without the fat gain? And then, of course, recovery. I mean, we we we can't emphasize enough the power of sleep, of having sufficient sleep, of managing your stress, of managing your fatigue. If your low back is constantly fatigued from your lifting, you've got to look at something. It could be your form, it could be your recovery, it could be your food. We don't want to add to that fatigue. We want to manage it well. And of course, you're gonna track all the right things when it comes to body comp, not just your scale weight. So measurements, photos, strength progression, how your clothes fit, and biofeedback as well. And ultimately, you just want to be patient and strategic about this. Okay. Building muscle takes time. I usually suggest something like six to nine months of building, where if you're gaining a half to a pound of muscle per month, you're probably doing great. I know a lot of you are like, I'm gonna gain 10 pounds in the next six months. As a beginner, maybe over a year, you know, six to 12 pounds of muscle is totally reasonable. You know, men and women, obviously, men can probably gain more absolute uh quantities of muscle because of their weight, but men and women can gain muscle at the same rate, percentage-wise. Just keep that in mind. So if you're a large larger woman, I don't mean large, like big or heavy, I just mean scale weight-wise, you know, let's say you're 160-pound woman versus 120-pound woman, um, you're gonna gain the same rate of muscle as 160-pound man. That's my point. Okay. And that's gonna completely transform your physique. And then, you know, being strategic about all of this and planning it out is gonna really serve you well. Listening to this podcast, you'll get a lot of tips on how to do that. All right. So we talked a lot about physique and performance, but let's just take a quick pit stop here to talk about health and longevity, because muscle mass is one of the strongest predictors of long-term health outcomes. Sarcopenia, which is the loss of muscle mass and muscle function with age, is a stronger predictor of mortality than obesity. People with higher muscle mass have lower risk of cardiovascular disease, have better glucose metabolism and insulin sensitivity, they have stronger bones and lower risk of osteoporosis, greater functional independence as we get older, what we talked about before, lower risk of falls, fractures, frailty, one of the leading causes of death, not proximal causes, but it, or what's the word I'm looking for? It leads to the chain of hospitalization and polypharmacy that ultimately leads in death for many. It's sad to say, but it's true. And of course, having more muscle is better recovery as well from illness and injury. You know, people who are stronger tend to get through sickness faster. You know, they can recover faster from injuries, recover faster from surgeries. So muscle is like that metabolic retirement plan. I think I've used this analogy before. You know, it's it's like those deposits in the bank that compound over time. So it's never too late to start. Start right now. You're not just going to improve how you look. I know a lot of you want to chase that, but really you're setting yourself up for decades of better health, more independence, better quality of life. Especially important for those of us who are already over 40. I'm I'm 45. I started doing this properly, properly as in lifting weights, eating in a flexible way to support my health and training when I was 40, like around turning. I was 39 going on 40. So if you're over 40, and if you build your muscle now in your 40s, your 50s, your 60s, wherever you are, you're gonna create that massive buffer against age-related decline that everyone else experiences. You're gonna be in the elite small percentage of people who others will not have to, or who you who will not have to depend on others when you get when you're 70 years old. You know, maybe when you're 95 or 100, you have to depend on some people for a few things, but you're gonna be among the small percentage with who turn it around, who start to build the muscle back, who avoid the muscle loss, who is going to make the fat loss easier if that's what you want. And you're gonna be far off than your peers at that age. And that's where we want to be. That's why I'm so passionate about this topic. I see it with parents and grandparents. I see it with others who are in the older population, the decline happening with those over here versus those who get into lifting weights and resistance training, even when they're already 70 and they've never done it before, and all of a sudden things start to turn around. It's it's a beautiful thing to see because muscle's not just about aesthetics, is it? Right? It's living that strong, capable, independent life for as long as possible. So here's what we've covered today the scale doesn't measure what matters. Muscle drives your metabolism. Weight loss without muscle is going to backfire, and building muscle makes fat loss exponentially easier. If you take nothing else from this episode, remember this stop chasing weight loss and start building muscle. That is a foundation everything else builds from. Now, before we wrap up, here's the strategy I promised earlier the daily habit that accelerates muscle growth without adding anything else to your training. Before I do, let me tell you about something that can help you implement everything we just discussed. If you're ready to build muscle the right way, if you want personalized coaching that adapts to your schedule, your preferences, and your goals, but without the price of hiring a coach, check out Fitness Lab. It's my AI-powered coaching app. It gives you workout guidance. It can actually write your program for you and adjust based on your biofeedback, insight on your nutrition, feedback on your meals, recovery strategies, movement, sleep, all of it, all through a conversational interface that is really smart, that learns from you and it gets smarter over time. Right now, through January 2nd, you're getting 20% off of their holiday new year promotion. Go to witsandweights.com slash app to learn more, take the two-minute quiz, see if it's right for you before you even buy. Go to wits and weights.com slash app. All right. Here is that muscle building accelerator I promised. Wanna know one of the fastest ways to speed up muscle growth? Add 30 minutes of walking per day. Walking doesn't build muscle directly, obviously, but it enhances recovery, which is where muscle growth happens. Daily walking increases blood flow to your muscles, it clears metabolic waste products, it reduces your cortisol levels, it improves sleep quality. All of these factors amplify your body's response to training. Studies show that people who walk eight to 10,000 steps a day build muscle faster than those who don't, even with identical training programs. The best part is that walking does not interfere with recovery the way that some higher intense forms of cardio do. It is low impact, it's low stress, and it actually speeds up the repair process. So my recommendation is to add a 30 minute walk after lunch or dinner. It will aid you in your digestion, it's going to lower your cortisol, it's going to improve your blood. Sugars, it's gonna improve your sleep onset if done after dinner, and it will set you up for better recovery overnight. So I started walking a lot more back in 2021 after I had back surgery, and I noticed how much it helped with my strength training and my recovery and my overall movement. It also made fat loss easier and eating easier because it improved, increased my expenditure without changing anything else. It helped my joints feel better, it helped my sleep, and of course, it improved body composition. So if you're training really hard but not recovering as well as you'd like, and your steps aren't up there, or you're not taking those daily walks, add the daily walk. If you're already walking a lot, the other hack I have for you is to stand up and walk around for two minutes every 30 minutes during the day. These are the simplest interventions that actually work without adding anything more to your training. All right, until next time. Keep using your wits, lifting those weights. And remember the scale doesn't measure transformation, but muscle does. This is Philip Pape, and I'll talk to you next time. Beer on Wits and Weights.

Philip Pape 12/24/25 Philip Pape 12/24/25

How Much Training Volume You REALLY Need to Build Muscle Over 40 | Ep 417

Still training hard with little growth? The missing piece might be your volume. We break down 12 rules to find your sweet spot, cut wasted sets, and build muscle that shows. Ready to rethink your sets and reps? Listen now!

Check out the new Fitness Lab app (iPhone and Android) to get personalized guidance on your training volume, recovery, and nutrition... all in one place, with 20% off through January 2nd:
https://witsandweights.com/app

Most lifters are either doing too little volume to stimulate muscle growth or piling on so much that they're just accumulating fatigue without results.

If you're hitting the gym consistently but not seeing the gains you want, your training volume is probably the problem.

In this replay of one of our most popular episodes, learn the 12 evidence-based rules to make training volume work for muscle growth, especially for busy lifters over 40.

Learn exactly how many hard sets per muscle group you need each week, why proximity to failure matters more than total reps, and how to find your personal volume sweet spot, especially if you're over 40 and want to build muscle efficiently without burning out or wasting time.

Whether you're doing too little and wondering why you're not growing, or doing too much and feeling exhausted, this framework will help you dial in your volume for your body, goals, and lifestyle. Stop guessing and start engineering your strength training for maximum hypertrophy.

Episode Resources:

Prefer community support and live call for your training and fat loss? Join Wits & Weights Physique University for just $27/month with training templates, course library, and community support (podcast listeners get a free custom nutrition plan with code FREEPLAN)
Read the Stronger by Science article on training volume by Greg Nuckols

Timestamps:

0:00 - Why volume determines muscle growth
5:54 - Rule 1: Hard sets per muscle group
7:16 - Rule 2: Train near failure
9:00 - Rule 3: Understanding diminishing returns
10:14 - Rule 4: Optimal weekly set ranges
11:40 - Rule 5: Does rep range matter?
13:10 - Rule 6: Strength vs. hypertrophy
15:24 - Rule 7: Periodize your volume
17:00 - Rule 8: Recovery sets your ceiling
19:02 - Rule 9: Eliminate "wasted" volume
20:20 - Rule 10: Compound vs. isolation lifts
21:35 - Rule 11: What to track?
23:00 - Rule 12: The MOST important rule

Many lifters train with grit yet stall because training volume is either too low to stimulate growth or too high to recover from. The central idea is to treat volume as a variable you can engineer: measure it as hard sets per muscle per week, push close to failure, and periodize across blocks. Most folks over 40 also juggle stress, sleep, and limited time, so the aim is the minimum effective dose that still grows muscle. The framework here relies on evidence from strength science while staying practical: choose effective rep intent, manage fatigue, and align frequency with recovery so progress compounds without burnout.

Hard sets are the backbone because they standardize effort across loads and rep ranges. Tonnage can mislead by inflating work with easy sets, while hard sets capture the stimulus that recruits high-threshold motor units. Proximity to failure is the lever: most sets should land within one to two reps in reserve, with big compounds sometimes further to manage fatigue. This is why hypertrophy can occur from five to thirty reps when effort is high. The rep range becomes a tool for stress distribution, not the driver of growth; use lower reps for compounds and higher reps for isolation to balance joint stress and systemic fatigue.

Volume responds like a dose with diminishing returns. If six sets build more than three, it doesn’t mean thirty beats twenty by much, and it may even regress results by overwhelming recovery. For many, 10 to 25 hard sets per muscle per week is a useful band; beginners thrive nearer 10 to 15, intermediates 15 to 20, and advanced lifters may flirt with the higher end based on tolerance. Splitting that volume across multiple weekly exposures often yields better performance and less fatigue than cramming it into a single, brutal session. Frequency is a cheat code for quality reps at a high effort.

Strength adaptations are load specific, so if you care about numbers and not only size, lift heavy periodically. A top-set plus back-off strategy lets you touch heavy loads for neural gains and accumulate submaximal volume for hypertrophy. Over time, periodize volume: run higher-volume accumulation blocks, then lower-volume, heavier intensification blocks. Your joints, motivation, and nervous system get a break while muscle keeps progressing. This undulating approach prevents staleness and teaches you how different blocks tax you, shaping smarter decisions each mesocycle.

Recovery sets your ceiling. Sleep, calories, carbs, stress, age, training history, and even sex differences change how much you can handle. Watch for overreaching: persistent soreness, poor sleep, dipping motivation, and sliding performance. Reduce volume or improve recovery inputs before chasing more sets. Cut junk volume, defined as sets too far from failure or done with sloppy form, which add fatigue without stimulus. Lean on compounds for systemic stimulus and use fewer sets there, while isolation lifts can take more volume. Track performance trends and biofeedback rather than freestyling set counts daily; adjust loads and reps session to session and progress volume over blocks. Finally, individualize using volume landmarks: minimum effective volume to spark growth, maximum adaptive volume for best gains, and maximum recoverable volume as the upper limit. Find your sweet spot, then nudge it with intention.

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Philip Pape: 0:00
If you are lifting weights but not seeing the muscle growth you expect, the problem might not be your effort. It could be your training volume. Too little volume and you're leaving gains on the table. Too much and you're just accumulating fatigue without the results. Today I'm breaking down the 12 rules of training volume that will help you find your sweet spot, especially if you're over 40 and want to build muscle efficiently without wasting time in the gym or risking burning out. Before we dive in, if you want personalized guidance on your training volume, recovery, and nutrition all in one place, check out my Fitness Lab app. It's like having a coach in your pocket who knows your schedule, your goals, your equipment, and your body. And right now, through January 2nd, you can get 20% off at witsandweights.com slash app. Now let's get into the 12 rules that will transform how you think about training volume. A replay from one of our most popular episodes this year. If you're hitting the gym consistently but still not seeing the muscle growth you want, you might be making one critical mistake with your training volume. Most lifters either do way too little to stimulate growth, or they pile on so much that they're just spinning their wheels and burning themselves out. Today we're gonna break down 12 evidence-based rules of training volume that separate the muscle builders from the muscle stragglers. You'll discover why your current approach to sets and reps might be holding you back in the one rule about proximity to failure that will transform every set from here on out. And today we're applying that systematic engineering thinking to one of the most misunderstood aspects of muscle building, and that is training volume. Volume, the V-word. You know, as engineers, as people who like to think through these things, we don't just throw more resources at a problem and hope that it works. We optimize, we find the minimum effective dose that produces the maximum results. And that is what we need to do with your training volume. Whether you're doing too little and wondering why you're not growing, or you're doing too much, wondering why you feel burned out, you're always tired, exhausted. Today's episode is gonna give you a framework to dial in your volume for your body, your goals, your lifestyle, and your training. Before we get into those 12 rules, I do want to share something pretty exciting that just happened recently. And that is that we just launched the new Wits and Weights Physique University. And I'm happy to say it's at a far more accessible price point at just $27 per month. It was 87, it's now 27. We do have an 87 option for more direct access to our not one but two coaches in there, myself included. And this $27 price point now still gives you access to the complete course library, our private community, our training templates, and really so much more in there, monthly QAs, live calls, but without the pressure of weekly check-ins or constant cadences that some of our members were saying was just a little too much. This is for those of you who are looking to get support and get an education to know what to do and how to do it, with some kick in the butt along the way, but without it feeling like it's taking over your life. Because I know we're busy. And here's the best thing for podcast listeners. If you join by the end of July using the special link in the show notes, it's the only link that'll get you this. You'll get a custom nutrition plan from me, absolutely free. I think I just butchered my words. That's a custom nutrition plan, which is normally a $47 add-on, but I'm going to throw it in for free and create that for you when you use the special podcast listener link in the show notes. And that's the same plan that I create for my private clients, now available to you in the program. And I'm giving it to you free as a podcast user for early access to the new WWPU launching in August. So you've got to take advantage of that by the end of July. Go use a link in the show notes, and we're gonna help you build that physique and create the healthy lifestyle you want. So let's talk about training volume. But first, I want to give credit to where it is due because today's episode was inspired by an excellent and not surprisingly highly thorough, well-researched article called The New Approach to Training Volume by Greg Knuckles at Stronger by Science. Shout out to you, Greg. Greg is one of the smartest minds in the strength and conditioning world. And I'm gonna include a link to that article in the show notes because it's completely worth reading. And when I work with folks, when I work with clients, yes, I'm a nutrition coach, but training, strength training is a huge part of this. And I see the same patterns come up over and again. They come to me confused because they've tried this program, that program, high volume, low prog low uh low volume, maybe German volume training, I don't know. You know, the minimalist routines, everything. And nothing seems to be working for them or working consistently. And that's because I think there's some fundamental principles that govern how volume drives muscle growth. We talk about intensity a lot, about load, weight on the bar. There's definitely a almost dogmatic thinking around intensity versus volume in some circles. But I want to give volume the place that it deserves today. I want to treat volume like a training variable. That's all it is. It's a training variable. I don't want to treat it like that. It is that. And it produces a predictable output when you apply it correctly with the inputs, right? It's not a mysterious art form. Yes, there seems to be some level of art, let's say, when it comes to lifting, but it really can be broken down into some principles that you can test and experiment with to see what works. So let's start with it. Rule number one volume is best measured in hard sets per muscle group. So right off the bat, I probably surprised you because you think of volume as total sets, period. But I think the most important concept here is how we measure volume. Most people think of it in terms of tonnage, sets times reps times load, or just pure sets, right? But what really drives muscle growth, hypertrophy, is the number of hard sets performed per muscle group per week. And we know this, it's well established in the literature. We're not talking about training to failure, we're talking about training in some proximity to failure, regardless of whether you're doing five reps or 15 or 20 reps, whether you're using 135 pounds or 405 pounds. And this matters because tonnage, tonnage is not really super helpful because it can be inflated by submaximal work that doesn't actually produce the tension that you want for growth. But hard sets are objective, they actually standardize for effort. They standardize for effort. So when we talk about training hard and being close to failure within a few repshire of failure and getting that muscle tension, that is what drives the adaptation we're looking for. And you simply have to have enough of it per week, period. That's rule number one. Very important rule. Rule number two proximity to failure then determines a set's effectiveness. So this is going to build on rule one. A set's growth stimulus depends on how close you get to failure. The final reps before failure are often referred to as effective reps. And whether you believe that the reps before them are junk volume or not, all the reps are necessary to get to that point. And those reps toward the end create the most mechanical tension and motor unit recruitment, which is why they tend to be the ones giving you the most stimulus and thus quote unquote effective, not to minimize the other reps. But more and more research supports this idea. And we know this because of supersets, because of myOREPs, because of failure type training, et cetera. And the mechanism is that as you approach failure, your body is forced to recruit more high threshold motor units. And these are primarily fast twitch muscle fibers, and those have the greatest growth potential. And so the guideline here is pretty simple. Just train most of your sets to within one to two reps shy of failure. I'm gonna say for big compound lifts, it might be even three or four. If you're using an RPE scale, that's eight to ten. If you're using RIR, that's zero to two reps left in the tank. Again, bigger lifts can maybe get an extra rep shy from failure. But most of you are probably not even training in that regime anyway, even if you think you are. I'm just gonna be honest. And also, this doesn't mean that every single set has to be a grinder. Sometimes you have to grind, it happens, but it shouldn't be that way for the vast majority of your volume. It should just be highly challenging. So that's rule number two is proximity to failure, is what determines how effective a set is. Rule number three is that more volume equals more growth, but only to a point. There's a dose response relationship between volume and muscle growth. And like any good engineer will tell you, returns diminish past a certain point. Diminishing returns. It's a law of the universe for most things. If you do six sets per week for a muscle group, it's gonna be better than three, but 20 isn't necessarily much better than 15. It might be a tiny bit better, but not much. And then at some point, 20 or 25 or 30 sets might be worse for you because of the overall fatigue for the week and the lack of recovery. The research shows us that hypertrophy plateaus or regresses when volumes get too high, right? 25 to 30 plus sets per week for a single muscle group is to put a number on it. And then you're creating, again, more fatigue than you can recover from. So the practical takeaway is push volume gradually, see how you respond, monetary recovery. You might be a hyperresponder, a lower responder. You might need more or less, right? On average, women need more volume than men. You're gonna need more volume when you're well fed and well nourished than when you're in a fat loss phase, right? So it's gonna be contextual. And more, again, is not always better, especially if it means you can't recover between sessions. Rule number four, most lifters thrive on 10 to 25 hard sets per muscle per week. Now that's a big range. And what I usually, if I go on a podcast and somebody asks for, I'll usually say like 10 to 15, because for the average person with the average busy lifestyle, going four days to the gym, it's it's perfectly solid, optimal place to be, or practically optimal place to be, I should say. But the sweet spot is really broad, 10 to 25 sets. And where you fall in that range is gonna depend on your training age, on your ability to recover, and again, your individual responsiveness. So if you're a beginner, just start with 10 to 15. If you're intermediate, you might need 15 to 20. If you're advanced, you might need even more than that, but it's gonna depend on the lift and your recovery and all that, right? And if you spread the volume over multiple sessions per muscle group, so you have maybe upper, lower, upper, lower is a classic split, a four-day split, where you're hitting your biceps and your shoulders and your chest and your back a couple times a week, directly and indirectly, you're gonna get probably better growth because of the frequency and then less fatigue because of the rotation and splitting it up compared to trying to cram it all into one brutal session or just a few sessions. Rule number five the rep range doesn't really matter for hypertrophy, but your effort does. And this might be surprising, right? But I've seen and I've worked like with my coach Andy Baker, he's a genius at this stuff. He will throw in there into his programming, especially the bodybuilding style, tons of different rep ranges. And it almost doesn't seem to make any rhyme or reason until you go a level deep and you look at some of the other training variables, like the order of the lifts and whether it's a big compound lift or not, et cetera. But here's the thing as long as sets are taken with proximity to failure, and again, not total failure, please don't consider this failure training. That is not what I'm saying. In fact, that could be a terrible idea to take everything to failure. We don't want to do that. And there are plenty of people walking around jacked, strong, you know, with great muscle development, that always train several reps away from failure and not to failure. So please. But as long as you do that, muscle growth is going to occur across a wide range of reps. And it kind of makes sense based on what we talked about before. Whether it's five reps or 30 reps, it's getting that tension, right? Getting that fight motor fight, motor fiber recruitment. Research from Schoenfeld, great guy, I like to reference all the time, shows that hypertrophy is pretty much the same whether it's low rep doing three to five reps or high rep doing 25 to 35 when both groups trained close to failure. And so a practical way to do this is use lower reps for compound movements, higher reps for isolation work, and it balances fatigue management with things like joint stress and systemic stress, systemic fatigue, central nervous system fatigue. So the rep range isn't as important as we think, guys. That's my point. But the effort's really important. Rule number six strength gains are load specific. Okay, so now if you're this is this is giving you a little bit of a break in the last rule in that if your goal includes building maximal strength, not just muscle size, you have to understand that strength gains are load specific. If you want to build maximal strength, you have to lift heavy loads, probably in the one to six rep range. Referring to my episode strength versus hypertrophy, we talked about roughly 65% of your max and higher gets you into that strength regime, which then by definition gets you into these lower reps. And that's going to improve your neurological or neuromuscular adaptation, which is like the coordination between and within your muscles that connects to your nervous system and your brain, and your movement patterns. So if you're focused on both hypertrophy and strength, you're you're going to want to have a mix of the two. And that's why I like methods like top set back off, where you start with a heavy set in, say, four to six, and then you drop the weight 10%, maybe, and then you go, you know, eight to 10. And that's where you then accumulate volume. Um, I ran, I've run several programs that were set-based, that were volume-based, that did a great job of going sub-maximal to accumulate the volume, and then going heavy to push up the numbers and the strength peak, right? And that's this philosophy. All right, so just a quick break here. We're talking about programming a lot. We're talking about strategically thinking about how you lift. We're talking about principles. This is what we teach inside physique university. And that's why I think it's so important. We get into the nitty-gritty of each of these separately in chunks that are easy to digest and think about. And the new tier I just talked about at 27 a month is going to give you access to not only the training templates that apply these principles, but the whole course library that breaks down the science behind these decisions. And of course, access to me and our other coach and the community. And remember that podcast listeners get a custom nutrition plan free if you join by the end of July. Please take advantage of this. It'd be silly not to at the new low price and getting that for free. Use the link in the show notes. People pay a lot more for this stuff, and you're getting it as part of a community because I want it to be accessible and affordable. So check that out. Wits and weights physique university, 27 a month, free nutrition plan. If you use the link in the show notes, all right, let's get to rule number seven, which is to periodize volume over time for long-term gains. So you want to periodize your volume. Ah, well, we've heard of periodization before. We talk about that in the nutrition context. But when it comes to muscle building, it's not going to be a line. It's not going to be a straight line. You're not going to just grow linearly and, you know, pack on two pounds of muscle a week, a month forever. Well, a week would be nice, a month forever. And then training shouldn't be linear either. Once you get past the novice linear progression, which even itself isn't always perfectly quote unquote linear, right? Because the load doesn't necessarily go up the same from session to session. Your tolerance for volume is going to improve with time. The more you practice the movement patterns, the more tolerance you're going to have. So your body's going to change into a different beast than it was in how you handle volume and how it benefits you. And so cycling between higher and lower volume blocks is going to enhance your adaptation and prevent your burnout. I do this myself. I go between an undulating, periodized, set-based program where I'm packing on lots and lots of submaximal volume, and then I'll switch over to a very minimalist kind of strength program and everything in between, you know, hypertrophy blocks, et cetera. So this would be like if you did six weeks at a pretty high volume, you know, 18, 20 sets a week. And then you switch to what did I say, six weeks or eight weeks at much lower reps, much lower volume, but you're going heavy. And then you're pushing the numbers. And this is going to alternate between the strain you put on your joints, the fatigue you feel physically, mentally, allows your body to adapt properly. I was going to say supercompensate, but that word is very loaded today. So I'm not going to use that word. But you can adapt and hit weak spots, improve movement patterns, improve hypertrophy, improve strength, improve all of it. Rule number eight: your recovery capacity is going to determine your volume ceiling. This is super important. This is where the engineering piece comes in you've got to figure this out through testing and measuring. Volume is only productive if you can recover from it. And your ceiling depends on your resource stack, your metabolic stack. What is that? That's sleep, that's nutrition, that's carbs, that's your stress level. Yes, even your age, yes, even your training history, your injury history, et cetera. All of that stuff stacked on top of each other is your recovery capacity, even your genetics, even your gender. Because again, I said before, on average, women tend to recover better than men and need more volume. In this context, not everything, because women do other, tend to do other things like too much cardio, et cetera. I'm not gonna get into that. I want you to watch for the warning signs of what we call overreaching. Okay, none of you have to worry about overtraining. It's just not gonna happen. But overreaching, this is where you have soreness that's persistent, it doesn't go away. This is the poor sleep. You'll you never feel like you can get enough. This is where you don't feel motivated, right? So mentally you're not there. Your regression, your performance regresses, okay? And if you see any of these signs, your volume has exceeded your recovery capacity. And of course, it's gonna get exacerbated when you are depriving yourself of calories. And maybe you're doing it on purpose in a fat loss phase, or maybe you're doing it because you're not quite confident yet in how to eat and how much to eat, or you don't know what your metabolism is, and so you're under-eating without realizing it. Even if you're not losing weight, you still could be under-eating. So, what you want to do here is pick a baseline that's reasonable and then increase your volume gradually and assess your recovery. Measure your biofeedback, measure your energy, your recovery. You could just use a one to 10 scale and say, what am I this week? Am I a three? Am I a seven? Am I a six? And correlate it with the other things you're doing and your whole metabolic, your stress stack, your sleep, your nutrition, your stress, your blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. All right. You can use RPE tracking if you want. You can use other biohacking metrics or biometrics like HRV, you know, if you have an aura ring. You could just use subjective scores like we talked about with the biofeedback. Really up to you. In physique university, we have what's called a biofeedback and physique tracker, and it has a bunch of these laid out for you with a drop-down for scores, and it's lined up with your measurements. So you can kind of track week after week how these are trending against all the other things, and then voila, you understand your recovery capacity. All right, rule number nine out of 12 junk volume sabotages progress. Now, I was hesitant to even use this word or this phrase, but I'm gonna define. Define it. And I think in this definition, it is a real thing. And that is sets that are too easy, sets that are too far from failure, or sets that are poorly executed, that all they're doing to you is they're adding fatigue without giving you the benefit of the adaptation. Notice that I said sets. I didn't say reps because I don't believe there's junk reps. I think even if you're doing 20 reps, the first 10 reps aren't junk. There's a benefit to those. Whole different topic for another day. I'm talking about sets. If you do a set that is just too easy, and I'm talking far submaximal or nowhere close to failure, and unless that was your intent for some other reason, other training variable like speed work, for example, it's not going to give you a benefit, right? If a set is poorly executed, even if it feels hard, it's not going to give you benefit because you're probably compensating or you're going to twinge or tweak something, you're going to injure yourself, you're not going to get the direct benefit you're going for, right? And that's a problem too. And that could even come from loading up too heavy, like beyond what you could actually handle right now and ego lifting. Every set should have a purpose, right? Get rid of those filler sets that aren't doing it for you. Right. If you're doing, if your program calls for four sets and three of those sets are junk, you're probably better off with two really hard sets or a hard top set and a hard back off set. In fact, I like it for that reason for many people. It saves time and it gives you the mental fortitude to push toward failure because you know it's only two sets and it's two different weights. It's a great strategy, guys, if you want to try it. Right. And remember the warm-up sets, that is just for preparation and warming up. That doesn't that's not for accumulating the volume. The volume comes to the working sets. All right, rule number 10 is that compound lifts demand fewer sets and isolation work. This should go by definition by definition, but let me explain what I mean. Compound movements that use multiple joints recruit multiple muscle groups, they generate higher systemic fatigue. They require thus fewer sets per muscle group to be effective, period. Right? Three sets of barbell squats are gonna sufficiently stimulate quads, glutes, hamstrings, but you're probably gonna need maybe four, five, six sets of bicep curls or leg extensions to create the same growth stimulus because the isolation movements create lower systemic fatigue and of course are just hitting those muscle groups. So don't go crazy with your sets for your big lifts, is all I'm saying, especially something like a deadlift. You know, sometimes one set could be enough, one or two sets. It depends on, depends on your goals, depends on the rep range, et cetera. Rule number 11, I want you to track progress, not just volume, because volume is just it's a variable and it's a tool. And honestly, I don't even track it per se. I guess the way I would put it is that a program should be written inherently to add sets or add volume if that's the point, but then it's written in for you. You're not like winging it and saying, oh, maybe I'm gonna add another set today and I'm gonna progress in sets. It's not like that. I think reps are a little more on the fly, load is a little more on the fly. Although, again, you still want to be intentional about thinking, what did I do last time? What's my capability now? How am I feeling in my warm-up? You know, what should I be able to uh express today? But volume is more fixed into the program, if that makes sense. If anybody disagrees, let me know. I've never understood anyone who, not understood, I've never heard of anybody who says, I think I'm just gonna add extra sets today. Okay, now I actually take that back a little bit because for isolation work, you might have in your program, you know, do anywhere from four to six sets of these bicep curls. And then it's kind of a choice, right? But even then, I would recommend picking one and sticking with it as you progress for the next block, right? Like if it's four to six in your program, go it, pick one, like five, and do five every time. This is in contrast to a set progression-based program that says, okay, we're gonna go three sets and four sets and five sets, then we're gonna reset at a higher load and go three sets and four sets and five sets. That's different. So, yes, you should probably limit adjusting one variable at a time, and that's usually load or reps. It could be both. It's rarely, I'm going to say, volume, but you will adjust volume over longer blocks of time. And you will also be trying to get better at doing hard sets. That can definitely, I'll say, progress. And when you move to a new movement, let's say six weeks later, you rotate out of movement. It is not uncommon that that first session, you're not quite optimal. And so you're gonna become more efficient the next few sessions. That makes sense. All right, rule number 12, the last rule for today is that volume is individual. You have to experiment and adjust. There is no one size fits all number for volume. There just isn't. I don't care. Look at all the research, and it's all over the place. Genetics, muscle fiber type, lifestyle, stress, food, all the things we talked about influence your volume tolerance and needs, and your own volume ability will change with your training age, with how you've trained, with your fatigue, et cetera. Fat loss, muscle building in terms of your diet. So start with the guidelines I give you today and then tweak it and test it. If you're trying to figure out what volume works for you and you have a range like we talked about, if there's a four to six, start at four. Start at four and then do that a couple weeks. Then go to five, see how that makes you feel, then potentially go to six, right? And see where it goes. You know, if if I don't know, if you get a better pump, if the soreness is manageable, if your lifts progress, you feel like you're in the sweet spot, great. That's where we're trying to get to. Now there's a really cool concept in the research called volume landmarks. Not sure if you've heard of this. And research suggests that there are three of these: your minimum effective volume, your maximum adaptive volume, and your maximum recoverable volume. And this is a more advanced thing. I'm just going to touch on it real quickly, but this has to do with periodizing your training. Your minimum effective volume is the smallest amount that produces growth. Your maximum adaptive volume is that sweet spot where you get the best gains, right? So it's not, it's a higher volume than your minimum, and it gives you the most gains, but then your maximum recoverable volume is the upper limit before you start going backward. So the magic here happens when you can identify those landmarks for you. So it's really just the range and the sweet spot in the middle, right? What's the lowest, what's the highest, what's the sweet spot in the middle? And then you can push up toward that maximum to get even more gains, but with diminishing returns if you have a high recoverability. Conversely, if you have a low recoverability, you might need to get closer to your minimum effective volume, like for example, a fat loss phase. It's pretty cool when you can kind of identify that and intuitively feel it out over time. So training volume, I don't think it has to be this mysterious, complicated thing that requires years of trial and error and being a master programmer to figure it out. I think your body's gonna tell you what's going on. And I think you just can't jump all over the place. You have to be systemic and take your time and be patient, stick with one thing for a while, document what's going on, change a variable, try it again, you know, whether it's your frequency or the volume, and just be an engineer about it. You have inputs, you have outputs, you have feedback mechanisms, use them systematically, and you're gonna be good. You're gonna be good. But if you need help, that's what other people are for. And you know what? Having people to lean on to get form checks to talk about programming accelerates your results. So definitely join us in the new Wits and Weights Physique University. Again, just 27 per month. That's a steal. Um, you get access to training templates, the principles, lifting lessons. You get all the stuff on nutrition, our whole course library. I mean, there's a lot of stuff in there, guys. I don't even want to over overwhelm you, but there are courses on macros, on metabolism, on calories, on menopause, on mindset. I'm working on a couple courses on how to use AI and how to set up your nutrition phases. There's just more and more coming in with lots of great people in there, super smart, trying to help each other out. And don't forget that you as a podcast listener get an exclusive bonus today of a custom nutrition plan absolutely free instead of paying the add-on. If you join by the end of July and use the special link in the show notes. If you want to stop guessing, if you want to get clarity on all this stuff, join us. We'll help you out. Until next time, keep using your weights. Actually, keep using your wits, lifting your weights. And remember that volume without intelligence is fatigue. But volume with the 12 rules I talked about today is how you get some serious muscle growth. I'm gonna talk to you next time here on the Wits and Weights podcast.

Philip Pape 12/22/25 Philip Pape 12/22/25

"I'm in a Calorie Deficit and Can't Lose Weight" Is NEVER True (What's Really Happening) | Ep 416

Think you’re in a calorie deficit but the scale won’t budge? We break down the 3 buckets that explain every plateau and the exact fix for each. Plus a weekend-friendly strategy to stay on track. Which bucket are you in?

Get personalized AI-powered coaching that identifies your exact fat loss plateau and gives you the specific fix you need. Try Fitness Lab (20% off through January 2nd) at:
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You cannot be in a true calorie deficit and still not lose weight. It's physiologically impossible.

If you're eating less than you're burning but fat loss is not happening, something's disconnected between what you think is true and what's actually happening in your body.

Discover the 3 possible reasons behind every "I can't lose weight" plateau and how to identify which one you're in.

Plus, get a simple calorie strategy that lets you enjoy weekends without sabotaging your fat loss.

Stop guessing and finally understand what's really holding you back so you can make consistent progress toward your body composition goals.

Episode Resources:

Try Fitness Lab (20% off through January 2nd)
Episode mentioned: How the "Weekend Diet" Accelerates Fat Loss and Preserves More Muscle (Strategic Refeeds)

Timestamps:

0:00 - Why being in a deficit but not losing weight is impossible
4:31 - Reason #1: Tracking accuracy and measurement errors
14:00 - Reason #2: Water retention and body recomp masking fat loss
18:00 - Better metrics beyond the scale
21:00 - Reason #3: Your deficit disappears after metabolic adaptation
24:28 - Bonus: The simple calorie strategy for weekend flexibility

Fat loss stalls are rarely about broken bodies and almost always about broken assumptions. The law of energy balance has not changed: a true calorie deficit leads to fat loss over time. What does change is our measurement and our biology. If you believe you’re eating less than you burn and nothing is happening, the cause nearly always falls into one of three buckets: your deficit doesn’t actually exist, your fat loss is real but hidden by short-term factors, or your body adapted and erased the gap. Understanding which bucket you’re in is the difference between weeks of frustration and steady progress. Let’s unpack the practical tools to diagnose your situation and move forward with clarity.

The first bucket is tracking accuracy. Even careful eaters underestimate by 20 to 40 percent, and professionals are not immune when they eyeball. A tablespoon of peanut butter that is really two, a pan spray labeled zero that adds 40 calories, a “bite” of your kid’s leftovers, or a database entry that lists a lean burrito when you ate the chorizo version—all of it adds up. Over a week, a few hundred daily calories of drift is enough to erase a planned deficit. The fix is a short, rigorous audit: weigh foods in grams, include oils and condiments, verify app entries, and track every bite for 7 to 14 days. Don’t link intake to wearable “exercise calories,” which can be off by 80 percent and encourage overeating. Then track daily weight and review the moving average; if it’s flat across weeks, you’re at maintenance and must reduce intake or confirm errors.

Bucket two is when the deficit is real but the scale hides it. Water retention from training, sodium, stress, poor sleep, or the menstrual cycle can mask two to five pounds. At the same time, recomposition can offset fat loss with lean mass gain, especially if you’re lifting and hitting protein. That’s why the scale alone can mislead for two to six weeks. Use multiple markers: waist and hip measurements, progress photos, strength logs, biofeedback like energy and recovery. If clothes loosen and lifts rise while weight holds, fat loss is likely occurring. Expect whooshes—steeper drops after flat periods—when water releases. Patience matters, but patience without data is guesswork; combine a weight trend line with measurements to see the truth beneath daily noise.

Bucket three is adaptation. As you lose weight, your basal metabolic rate falls because a smaller body burns fewer calories. Non-exercise activity often dips unconsciously—you fidget less, sit more, take the elevator. Your body also becomes more efficient at familiar exercise, and prolonged aggressive dieting can suppress thyroid and sex hormones while elevating cortisol. The deficit that worked at the start can vanish as expenditure slides to match intake. Signs include a recent run of fat loss followed by a stall despite adherence, rising hunger, poorer sleep, lower training performance, feeling colder, and fewer steps. The fixes are targeted: take a one to two week diet break at maintenance to restore NEAT and morale, or add a modest 2,000 to 3,000 daily steps to raise expenditure without stress. Improve sleep and stress management to normalize hormones. If needed and still reasonable, trim calories further, staying under about 1 percent body weight loss per week to avoid digging the adaptation hole deeper.

A powerful strategy that makes all of this stick is weekly calorie budgeting. Instead of rigid daily targets, keep a weekly total and “bank” a small amount Monday through Friday to free up the weekend. For example, if your daily target is 2,000, eat 1,850 on weekdays and enjoy an extra 375 on Saturday and Sunday while keeping the weekly total unchanged. Alternately, run maintenance on weekends and spread the deficit across weekdays. Flexible structure reduces all-or-nothing weekends, preserves adherence, and smooths the weight trend so the data you collect reflects your real behavior. Combine this with precise tracking, diversified progress metrics, and smart breaks, and you convert mystery into mastery—no more guessing, no more defeat, just a plan that adapts as your body adapts.

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Philip Pape: 0:02
You cannot be in a true calorie deficit and still fail to lose body fat over time. It's physiologically impossible. So if you're convinced you're eating less than you're burning and nothing's happening, one of three things is going on. Either you're not actually in the deficit you think you are, you are losing fat but the scale's hiding it, or your deficit disappeared because your body adapted. Today we're identifying exactly which bucket you're in, why it matters, and the specific fix for your situation. Welcome to Wits and Weights, the show that helps you build a strong, healthy physique using evidence, engineering, and efficiency. I'm your host, certified nutrition coach Philip Pape, and today we're tackling one of those very frustrating statements that I hear often. Quote, I am in a calorie deficit, but I'm not losing weight. This phrase gets thrown around all the time on social media, and it creates confusion because on the surface, it seems to defy basic physics. But what is actually true is that you cannot maintain a genuine calorie deficit and not lose fat. It's impossible. And the problem isn't that thermodynamics suddenly stops working. It's that somewhere in the chain from what you think you're eating to what your body is doing, there is a disconnect. When someone tells me they're in a deficit but not losing weight, I approach it like a detective. I want to debug the system for you. I want to trace the inputs. I want to look at the outputs. I want to find where the data doesn't match reality because that's going to give you the power you need to push through and to break through that issue. And then the fix becomes obvious. So today we're going to systematically work through each scenario so you can identify yours and then exactly what to do about it. And I want you to stick around to the end because I'm going to show you a simple weekly calorie strategy that will let you enjoy your weekends and make fat loss so much easier. So again, I'll share that at the end of the episode. All right, when someone says that I'm in a calorie deficit and not losing weight, they're making a claim about energy balance. And I love how people on social media they make assumptions or they immediately go to the gaslighting, like, well, you're not tracking your food and you're not actually eating the calories you think you're eating. And I'm gonna give you more credit than that. I'm gonna give you credit as an intelligent person who has thought through this at least to some extent. Maybe you've listened to this show, maybe you haven't, but you know that there's more nuance to any of these things. And after working with hundreds of people stuck at this kind of plateau, I found that every single case seems to fall into one of three buckets. Just three buckets. Okay, I'm gonna simplify this for you today. And they are mutually exclusive. So you're probably in one of them, not multiple. And even if there is some overlap, focusing on the biggest one for you right now is probably gonna help you get unstuck. So bucket one, and we're gonna go into these in detail, but just at a high level, bucket one is that the claimed deficit doesn't actually exist, right? The numbers you think you real aren't think are real are not matching reality. And it's not about, again, saying that it's your fault. It's more of an accuracy issue that we're gonna get into. Bucket two is that the deficit is real and fat loss is happening, but you may not think it's happening. It may be masked by other things. And then bucket three is that you were in a deficit, but the deficit has disappeared because you've adapted and your expenditure has reduced to match your intake. And that's it. Those are the three buckets. But obviously, there's a lot of detail under the surface. So everyone who says I'm in a deficit but not losing weight is probably in one of these. No one person is maintaining a true deficit long term without losing fat. That's impossible. And that's empowering as well. So that's a good thing to know. And you know what? Let's just before I continue, the extreme of this would be if you just stopped eating altogether, where you're absolutely in a deficit and you starve yourself, you would eventually die. Now, I hate to I hate to use an extreme like that, but it's it's evidence, I guess, uh that that thermodynamics exists between where you are now and where the extreme is, and we're trying to find that middle ground that actually works for you. So let's work through each of the three buckets, and we're gonna start with the most common one where probably 70 to 80% of people land. And this is basically that you think you're in a deficit and you're just not in a deficit. And it's not about your willpower, you're not trying hard enough. It's really measurement precision, and it's also a lot of human psychology around food tracking. The average person is going to underestimate their calorie intake a lot, 20 to 40%. And I a long time ago, I learned that even nutrition experts, nutritionists, dietitians, people who've tracked for a long time, if they were to just estimate on their own, they would still be off by 20%, even with lots and lots of training. And that's well documented in the research. It's not that you're intentionally lying to yourself, it's just the cumulative effect of tracking errors that add up and just the human's brain's inability to estimate this stuff. So even if you are logging calories, but you're not, say, weighing your food, or you know, if you're estimating, or you are using, let's say, cups and teaspoons and tablespoons instead of grams, you are logging what you think you're eating, but your intake is higher. And there's a lot of ways that this happens. Even when you're tracking with something like macrofactor, chronometer, whatever, you know, if you don't weigh the peanut butter, but instead you use a spoon and you call it a tablespoon, but it ends up being two tablespoons, right? Or if you put oil in the pan to hook up some vegetables and you eyeball it, or here's a mistake I see people make the spray oil will say zero calories because it falls under the threshold for rounding errors. But if you use enough of it, you actually have 20, 30, 40 calories. Or you graze or you eat handfuls of this or that throughout the day, handful of almonds here, a bite of your kid's plate over here, or you forgot the third glass of wine. You get what I'm saying, right? And this is not, again, this is not that we're doing it intentionally. This is something we all do, and it's easy to get wrapped up in it. And then there's an error that accumulates. And if it's like a 50 calorie day error, that's not a big deal. But if it's five or six hundred calories, which I have seen a lot with folks, here's another example. You do log, you do weigh, but the entry that you select in your food app is not the right entry. You selected, let's say, a turkey burrito instead of a chorizo burrito. And maybe that's too far off, but something close to that where there's a lot more fat in what you're actually eating than what you actually than what you logged. Or you do a raw versus cooked version or what have you. And I see this all the time. And then what happens is you cut is you copy and paste and you just keep propounding the error over time. And so you might be off by a few thousand calories for the week, right? And a fat, a fat's worth of energy, a pound of fat's worth of energy is 3,500 calories. So if you're off by, you know, half of that for the week, that's a half pound that you're off, where if you thought you were at maintenance, you're actually gaining a half pound. Or if you thought you were in a half pound deficit, you're just maintaining. So it can easily happen to any of us, to the best of us. Okay. And if you add in the fact that most people also overestimate how much how many calories are burning. And if they're not using something like Macrofactor, they're just thinking they're they're using estimators or calculators, or they think they burn more than they are. And maybe you eat back some of those calories, even, which is an awful thing to do. I would never recommend that. But a lot of people are in that mindset of like, oh, I just burned 500 calories according to the treadmill machine in the gym. And so I can eat that 500 calories, but you're actually compensating for a lot of that activity and not burning nearly as much as it says. At the end of the day, what matters is your total calories for the day, right? Not all these little activity things that you have going on. And then the airs, the air adds up on that side as well. And I know some apps, I think like MyFitnessPanel and others, actually allow you to eat back your activity, which is, again, a terrible, terrible precedent because they shouldn't be linked. The two things shouldn't have anything to do with each other. I do get questions all the time, like, does my app use activity to calculate your calories? No, because you don't want it to. All you want to do is say, hey, am I gaining weight or am I losing weight over time? Or fat, I should say, but scale weight is the easiest way to tell. Am I gaining or losing over time? If so, I'm either in a surplus or deficit, and now we could adjust how much we eat accordingly. So, how do you know if you're in bucket one? Well, you're gonna have to audit your tracking and think about the things I've just mentioned today. Are you weighing and measuring everything? I would do that. Weigh and measure everything with grams on a scale. Don't use ounces, don't use tablespoons, don't use cups, just use a food scale, log everything, including if it's a spray oil, condiments, every bite that goes in your mouth. And what's what's nice about this is sometimes it will get you into an awareness mode where, well, let's say you have kids and you tend to graze and you're thinking, I need to log this, you're gonna start either not eating those extra things because you really realize you don't need them, or you'll put them in a little bowl and you'll log them and then you'll start controlling your portions as well. Same thing, you know, if you have alcohol, if you have just random snacks. So that's the first thing is to really audit and start weighing and measuring everything if you're not already doing that. I'm also as part of that audit as you weigh and measure and then log it, is double check the entries in your food app to make sure it passes the sniff test. You know, reach out, use AI, use my app, go to our our Facebook group and just ask the question like, does this make sense? So that's the first thing is really just auditing all of that for at least seven days, if not two weeks. The second thing is don't use exercise calories from wearables at all as part of this whole calculation. Okay, first of all, the error is tremendously large, up to 80 or 90%. So it's not even trustworthy data, but also it's not something you eat back anyway, and it shouldn't be part of that connection. The third thing is I want you to be tracking your weight every day and looking at the average over time. I like a 20-day moving average, which takes three weeks to get to, but even after a week or two, if you are truly not actually dropping body fat or dropping even scale weight over time, okay, not the day-to-day. It's gonna go up and down a lot, but over time, then you aren't in a deficit. That's just the fact of it. That's more like your maintenance. Okay. So the fix for bucket one is straightforward. Tighten your tracking precision, stop guessing things, guessing, double check, you know, what you're logging, be honest about what you put in your mouth and track everything. Because if you if you don't track certain things, that's the problem right there. And a lot of you do that, I know, uh, including your weekends, including your alcohol, all this stuff. And just double check it all. And if you find out that, hey, I've been tracking 1800 calories a day on average, and now I double checked everything, and it's guess what? It's still 1800 a day on average, then that's not your issue. The issue isn't the calories itself, but what but what that lets you do is confirm, oh, I'm tracking 1800 calories and I'm not losing or gaining weight. So I actually am burning 1800 calories then, right? And now you know to go in a deficit, you would just have to eat less than that. All right, bucket two, so that's bucket one. Bucket two, let's say that you are tracking accurately and all that's good. You've done the audit, your numbers are tight, and you now know that to be in a deficit, you have to eat, you know, 300 calories less than that maintenance value. And or let's say 500 calories if you want to lose a pound a week, but the scale isn't moving. All right, this is bucket two, where you are in a deficit and fat loss may be happening, but it's being massed. Now, when I say the scale isn't moving, I'm talking short term, okay, because over a three or longer week period, it will be dropping by a pound a week on average if you're in a 500-calorie deficit, going back to bucket one, or just the general principle of this episode. What I'm talking about here is in the short term, we get a lot of issues that are happening with water retention. Water retention can mask as many as two to four pounds of fat loss. If you're a woman, hormonal fluctuations during your cycle can swing a water weight by five pounds or more. If you started a new training program or you increased your volume, your muscles are holding water and glycogen for recovery. If you had a high sodium meal, if you're stressed and your cortisol's up, if you didn't sleep well, if you're dehydrated, all of these drive water retention that hides fat loss on the scale. So over two weeks, let's say you might have legitimately lost two pounds of fat, but then you're holding three pounds of extra water and the scale shows a one-pound gain, you think nothing's working, but it is, and it just isn't showing up yet. So this is more of a time factor. Okay. Now, that's that's just if you were purely losing fat. Now, body comp recomposition is the other major factor as part of this bucket because you know, if you're lifting weights, you're eating enough protein, especially if you're newer to training or you're really doing this right for the first time with progressive overload, you can simultaneously lose fat and gain muscle. And again, the scale's not gonna move. So, what's weird here is that you may start to eat less to try to induce, you know, you're you're like, here's my maintenance, I'm gonna eat less to lose fat. But then you also start training at the same time, and now you start to build muscle. The muscle offsets the fat loss, the scale doesn't move. That's super frustrating because you're looking at the scale, you're like, okay, this Phillips line, like energy balance doesn't work. But what what you have to do here now is look at other things. How do you your clothes fit? Is your waist going down? Is your strength going up? Are you able to infer your body fat percentage from these to see that it's actually dropping even while the scale stays the same? And I have this challenge with a lot of clients who come to me and they want to lose weight, they want to lose that 20 pounds. And at the end of four or six months working together, they've lost, let's say, 14 pounds, but it looks like, but they've actually gained like five or six pounds of muscle. And so they've actually dropped 20 pounds of fat, but they've gained five or six pounds of muscle. So their net loss is only 14. But they're thrilled because they look great, they feel great, they're stronger. That's the whole point of not being fixated on the scale because you're gonna miss all of those wonderful wins. Now, how do you know if you're in this bucket? Well, first you've got to be tracking things beyond the scale. You've got to take your body circumference measurements, take your photos, track your strength. If all of these are improving, but the scale is flat, then you're probably in a recomp phase and we're not as worried about the calorie deficit, at least right now. Now, this is usually not gonna happen to such an extreme that you just directly offset fat and muscle. If you're in a big enough deficit, you should still have a gradual trend down, but it might appear like you're not burning as many calories because your scale is being offset, and then eventually you should break through that over time as your body adapts to that and you no longer have such massive muscle gains and the scale will start dropping. Now, also you want to look at this over time. You want to look at your trend over four or six weeks, not day to day, and not even over, say, two weeks. We really have to go past that. And this all assumes that you've done your audit from bucket one, and now you're focused on, okay, over time, is this actually working? Because the water fluctuations are gonna smooth out, and the trend will show fat loss if you're in fat loss. And it might come in weird bursts. You might have a drop of like three pounds one week and then it flatlines for two weeks and then drops again. The third thing here is your biofeedback because the biofeedback can change the whole equation of how many calories you're burning and how your body utilizes your nutrients. Are you recovering well? Is your energy stable? Are you sleeping okay? If yes, you're probably in a legitimate deficit. You just need the patience for the scale to catch up. But if not, any one of those things could have just slowed you down, which is actually gonna be related more to bucket three, we're gonna get to in a second. So the fix for bucket two is guess what? It's patience and it's better metrics, like more metrics. Something that, for example, Fitness Lab can help you with. That's my app. I'm always gonna plug it because I've designed it with all these things in mind. And I think it could be really helpful for you if you're looking to do that. There's a weekly check-in where you calculate and enter these things. And then it helps you figure out, okay, this is what's really happening. Like, hey, your scale might be flat for the last couple of weeks, but guess what? Your waste has gone down an inch. That's awesome. Like that's what you want. So stop obsessing over the daily scale weight, even though you want to track it and you want to track the trend of the weight, and then trust the process, keep doing what you're doing, keep lifting, getting your protein, and give it like four to six weeks, and the scale will reflect what's happening underneath. All right, just a quick reminder. I want you to stick around to the end because I've got a really practical tip on how to build weekend flexibility into your deficit, which I know is one of the biggest challenges for many of you. That way you don't have to white knuckle it. It's one of the most powerful tools that I've found people are using to make their fat loss phase so much easier so they can stick with it. All right, bucket three. This is this is where things get interesting from a physiological perspective, right? What's happening in your body? Let's say you were in a real deficit, you were losing fat, the scale was moving, but now you hit a plateau. It's stalled for several weeks, and nothing is budging despite all the other things we talked about being solid, right? You're adhering to everything, you're tracking everything, and you know, lifts are going up, all of that. Well, this is probably adaptation going on, metabolic adaptation, which we've talked about on the show quite a few times, and it often gets misconstrued, but it's a completely normal thing. Your body doesn't want to lose fat, it wants to hold on to fat because it's a nice reserve of energy. It's stored energy, and your body's directive in existence is to survive, right? You're a you're a living being who wants to survive. So when you reduce food intake, when you increase energy demand with your training, with your walking, with everything else, your body essentially fights back by compensating, by reducing your energy expenditure. It sucks, right? Because it's like just when you're trying to take advantage of energy balance, your body is gonna make it harder. Well, it does this through a combination of mechanisms. One is the fact that you're just losing weight. When you lose weight, your basal metabolic rate, your BMR, right, that's like your resting or your baseline metabolism that represents roughly two-thirds of your metabolism every day. It's just gonna be lower because you need fewer calories just to exist. It's it's it's one of those like harsh realities of if you lose 20 pounds and now you're gonna be lighter for the rest of your life, you're just gonna burn slightly few calories from that. Beyond that, however, your non-exercise activity thermogenesis, your neat, also drops unconsciously. You fidget less, you might make unconscious choices, like taking the elevator instead of the stairs because you feel a little more tired. Maybe you sit more, maybe you move less throughout the day without realizing it. And a lot of people argue this and like, well, but I increased my step count, right? I increase my step count. The step count is a pretty good proxy, but it doesn't necessarily capture everything. It's pretty good, though. I mean, it is pretty good. So I definitely agree with that strategy, but there's so many other ways internally, even within your body, where you're just doing less. You're that's so that's the second one. Now, your body also becomes more efficient at exercise, at training, right? And this happens in general. This happens in general, but just keep in mind that as you're getting into a routine, if you're also coinciding that with fat loss, you may start burning a fewer calories because you've adapted to the moving movement pattern. Now, this is not an excuse to hop around and to constantly change the way you move. It is an interesting phenomenon though, because there are things like if you're doing a little extra cardio, I I've talked before, I think Brian Borstein introduced this concept of you know rotating through some different modalities of cardio to make your body a little bit less efficient so it burns a few more calories. I don't know how big of an impact that has, but it's an interesting thought. And then there's the fact, and this is the big one prolonged dieting, especially aggressive dieting, can suppress your thyroid function. It reduces your sex hormones, it increases your cortisol, it of course affects your hunger hormones as well. But all of those, the Thyroid, the reproductive hormones, and your cortisol, this is going to reduce your metabolic rate. And this could be the biggest factor for a lot of people, especially if it's a very aggressive diet. And the result is that the deficit you had four weeks ago when you started doesn't exist anymore because your calorie intake is the same, but your expenditure has dropped to match it. And now you're at a new maintenance level and you haven't changed your diet or training. And it's awful. I know people don't like it. It's one of those things you have to deal with and understand. But when you understand it, then you can make a choice, a fork in the road, let's say. So how do you know if you're in this bucket? Well, the first way you know is you have a history of fat loss. You know, the last few weeks, let's say, I don't mean like years ago, the last few weeks you've been losing fat, but then it's stalled for a few weeks and you haven't really changed anything. Like biofeedback's good, everything's the same, right? That's a good way to know. Secondly, your biofeedback is off. So this is where your biofeedback is the effect of the diet, not the cause. In other words, your diet itself is now making you a little more tired, giving you lower energy, maybe interfering with your sleep a bit. It's causing you to lose some absolute strength in the gym. Maybe you're feeling more cold. I find this when I'm dieting, I'm cold, right? I don't, I'm hot when I'm eating in a surplus and I'm colder when I'm not. And and so that's a really good sign of adaptation. And third, your activity levels have dropped without you noticing, and your step count might be down if you're not intentionally trying to keep it up. The fix for so those are three things, right? That you can tell. Really, hunger is is probably one of the biggest ones for for many. The fix for this is to get back to the deficit you need to be at. But the problem is, how do you do that? Do you do it by eating even less? Well, maybe, maybe, if you're not already in an aggressive deficit, if you're, let's say, 300 calorie deficit and you increase it to 500 or 600, or you're already at five or six and you go to seven. As long as you're not going past the 1% body weight per week, you might be okay eating less, depending on where the total calories are. And that depends on your metabolism. Because if you're down at like 800 calories, that could be a problem in general for anyone. But if you're still up at like 1800, it may not be a big deal. However, for a lot of people, eating less is gonna dig you deeper into adaptation and make it go faster. So I would say you have two primary options here besides that. The first one is just take a diet break, raise your calories back up to maintenance for one to two weeks, let your metabolism recover, your hormones normalize somewhat. Again, it's not maybe not all the way. Your neat might come back up, you're just gonna feel better, and then you go back into a deficit. Okay. Now, people are like, people, people think this is magic. It's not magic. It's not like you're gonna raise your whole metabolism, but psychologically you're gonna help yourself out. And then there will be some physiological recovery that probably allows you to, you know, push a little bit further into your deficit when you get back to it. Option two is to increase your activity. And I always hesitate on this one because there's some of you out there where you're already doing a lot and you're trying to do a lot of cardio and running and hiking and just tons and tons of activity, especially in fat loss. And that could be a problem and make it harder and actually make you compensate, make you more stress. I'm talking about adding some more steps. Let's say two to three thousand steps a day. So if you're getting eight, go to 10. If you're getting 10, go to 12. That can be really helpful. That can burn an extra 50, 100, 150 calories a day, which could be just enough to take the edge off and help you get back into that deficit. So walking more, moving more, getting off your chair more, this is gonna increase your expenditure without adding stress. Now, you can also optimize recovery. If your biofeedback is low because it's just on you, right? Remember, I mentioned that biofeedback could be an effect, but it could also be a cause. If it's the cause, like you're just not sleeping enough, or you don't have a good sleep ritual, or are not managing or reacting to stress very well, these are the kind of things that can restore some of that energy, right? And hormonal balance and your improve your metabolic rate. So the key here for bucket three is it's not permanent damage. It's not a broken metabolism. It is a normal adaptive response that can be recovered by removing the stressor, which is chronic dieting and restoring homeostasis equilibrium. And if you don't want to remove it because you want to keep losing fat, that is a trade-off you make. And then you have to take into account the various factors we just discussed. Now, if you're trying to figure out which bucket you're in and you want some coaching in your pocket that adapts to your real life and all these things, check out my lab, my app called Fitness Lab. It's an AI-powered coaching app. It's trained on all my content. Almost it's trained on my personality, honestly. And it helps you navigate fat loss without guessing on a daily basis. So whatever's happening in your life, you can talk to it and say, this is what's happening, and it's gonna adjust. I just had surgery and I told the app, hey, I'm having surgery. And every day after surgery, it's focused on recovery and like taking things in just the right measure to get back to it. So right now through January 2nd, you can get 20% off at wits and weights.com slash app. You just go straight to that link and the discount's gonna be there. It's a holiday new year promotion, wits and weights.com slash app. And with Fitness Lab, you get personalized guidance on everything, on your nutrition, your training, your recovery, mindset, sleep, stress, movement. You can tell it what you need and it will create new activities for what you need. It is incredible, all in one place, like having a coach in your pocket for far less, who actually understands your schedule, your lifestyle, your goals, totally on demand. Go to witsandweights.com slash app. All right, before I let you go, I promised you that simple weekly calorie strategy to give you weekend freedom without killing your deficit, without killing your deficit. And I want to show you how this works. Instead of trying to hit the exact same calorie target every single day, think in terms of weekly averages. So let's say your daily deficit target, okay, your target is 2,000 calories. I don't care what the deficit is, but that's your target. And so that's 14,000 calories for the week. Now, the strategy I recommend starting with is called a weekend diet. You simply eat slightly lower Monday through Friday. So maybe you're eating 1,850 calories instead of 2,000. That's 150 calories per day for five days that you're effectively banking up for the weekends. And that gives you 750 calories for the weekend. And then you split that across Saturday and Sunday, and now you've got an extra 375 calories each day to enjoy your meals out. You know, if you enjoy drinking, whatever makes your weekend feel normal to you while staying in your deficit. An alternative for this is to go all the way to maintenance calories on the weekend and then see how many calories are left and distribute those across five days. This is a little bit more extreme strategy, but it actually might feel less extreme because you are totally refueling on the weekend. So either of those strategies can work. You'll still be at your target for the week, which in this example was, for example, 14,000 calories. There's a little math to be done, but it's not that big a deal. You figure out what you want on the weekends, you give the rest of the weekdays. And I actually covered the weekend diet strategy in episode 324, where you can learn all about this. Because I don't think flexibility has to mean that you have a cheap meal or you sabotage yourself or you make it unfettered access to food. You actually plan it in. And again, if you want personalized guidance on implementing strategies like this, along with training, recovery, everything else, check out Fitness Lab at wits and weights.com slash app. Until next time, keep using your wits, lifting those weights. And remember, your body isn't lying to you, but your assumptions might be. So figure out which of the three buckets you're in, and you'll be successful. This is Philip Payne, and you're listening to Wits and Weights. I'll talk to you next time.

Philip Pape 12/19/25 Philip Pape 12/19/25

Training Through Injury and Adversity Without Losing Progress (Anthony Bryan) | Ep 415

Are injuries holding back your body recomp goals? How do you keep lifting weights when strength training never feels perfect? I sat down with Anthony Bryan, a Guinness World Record holder and double world champion in para athletics, to unpack what nutrition and fitness look like when you are never at 100%. Anthony trained his entire life with left-side paralysis after a childhood stroke, and his approach to strength training, recovery, and mindset applies to anyone dealing with injury, aging, fatigue, or stalled weight loss.

Get Fitness Lab (20% off through January 2), the #1 fitness app that adapts to YOUR recovery, YOUR schedule, and YOUR body. Now available for iPhone (with Apple Health integration!) and Android. Build muscle, lose fat, and get stronger with daily personalized guidance.

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Are injuries holding back your body recomp goals? How do you keep lifting weights when strength training never feels perfect?

I sat down with Anthony Bryan, a Guinness World Record holder and double world champion in para athletics, to unpack what nutrition and fitness look like when you are never at 100%.

Anthony trained his entire life with left-side paralysis after a childhood stroke, and his approach to strength training, recovery, and mindset applies to anyone dealing with injury, aging, fatigue, or stalled weight loss.

We discussed auto-regulation, unilateral training, and why evidence-based fitness matters more than chasing perfect workouts. Anthony shares how to adapt lifting weights, manage recovery, and stay consistent when motivation dips. This conversation connects strength training, metabolism, and long-term muscle building in a way that supports longevity and sustainable progress.

This is Wits and Weights at its core. Evidence-based training that works in the real world. Tune in to learn more.

Today, you’ll learn all about:

0:00 – Training when not at 100%
2:46 – Do limitations build resilience?
3:51 – Proving doctors wrong
10:46 – Support systems and belief
12:39 – Reframing no pain, no gain
20:22 – Adapting lifts with injuries
27:36 – Unilateral training benefits
33:37 – Auto-regulation and recovery
39:31 – Sleep, hydration, performance

Episode resources:

Anthony Bryan on Instagram: @thenolimitsathlete
YouTube: @antbryanfitness

Training when you’re not at 100 percent is not a detour from progress; it’s the road itself. Most of us cycle through soreness, work stress, family demands, minor injuries, and the creeping doubt that we’ve lost the thread. The conversation with world champion paraathlete Anthony Bryan shows how limits can become leverage. Diagnosed with a childhood brain tumor leading to left-side paralysis, he built a career by reframing constraints into strategy. The shift began with role models who challenged “can’t,” then accelerated when competition exposed both weaknesses and opportunities. The big unlock was identity: he stopped hiding difference and used it to drive consistency. When your story changes from “I can’t” to “how can I,” every session has a purpose, even when conditions are messy.

Practical adaptation starts with curiosity. Anthony trains one side and one limb to unlock the cross-education effect, keeping the nervous system engaged while an injured side heals. He leans on unilateral patterns—split squats, single-leg leg press, one-arm presses, and strap-assisted deadlifts—to fight asymmetry and build sturdy joints. Creativity is the multiplier: narrow versus wide stances, tempo and range tweaks, fly-to-press supersets, machine eccentrics with partner resistance, and isometric holds that obliterate comfort zones while sparing joints. When you don’t have both limbs, you find angles; when you do, you still benefit from those same angles. The point is not novelty for its own sake, but designing the constraint into the plan so it becomes productive stress instead of random strain.

Auto-regulation ties the system together. Not every day calls for a PR; most days demand intelligent effort. Anthony rotates methods—supersets, trisets, isometrics, and density work—to progress even when load must stay flat. Ten rounds of wall sits alternated with leg extensions punish the quads without heavy axial loading. For pressing, light-to-moderate weights with longer time under tension grow muscle when joints are cranky. Range comes before weight, position before power. This approach doesn’t reject progressive overload; it refines it. You still chase progression, just across more dials: reps, sets, tempo, holds, positions, and technical precision. The win is momentum that survives fatigue, travel, and the unexpected.

Recovery is the quiet engine. Hydration gets more lip service than practice; checking urine color is a simple and effective habit that most ignore. Sleep drives performance, mood, and pain tolerance, and the pre-bed routine matters as much as total hours. Anthony reads physical books—often mindset and self-improvement—to prime a calmer nervous system and avoid the agitation of blue-light doomscrolling. He often trains fasted to make fuel during competition feel like a performance boost rather than a crutch. Cold exposure isn’t magic for hypertrophy, but before a race it can heighten alertness and sharpen the fight-or-flight response. Layer these with mindful deloads and you’ll arrive at sessions able to push hard when it counts and hold back when it’s wise.

Mindset turns the crank. The 40% rule—when you think you’re done, you’re often not even halfway—becomes real only when you test it. Competition can help. Anthony frames every event as a duel with his last personal best; podiums are a bonus, not the purpose. That outlook dissolves intimidation and builds focus. Community closes the loop: find a training group or local event where effort is normal and support is expected. The fastest way to change how you train is to change who you train with. If you’re sidelined by a shoulder or prepping for surgery, train the other side, hammer legs and core, and visualize lifts to keep neural pathways primed. The question is never “Can I train?” It’s “How can I train today?” Ask it often enough, and your limits will start working for you.

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Philip Pape: 0:01
If you train consistently and push yourself hard, but injuries keep throwing you off, or you feel like you're always fighting your body instead of working with it, and you're wondering if there's a way to keep making gains even when you're not at 100%, this episode is for you. Today I'm talking to a Guinness world record holder and double world champion in paraathletics, who spent his entire life figuring out how to train with left side paralysis from a childhood stroke. What he's learned about training through limitations, managing recovery under extreme constraints, and building consistency when your body says no applies to any of us dealing with injury, aging, fatigue, or just the reality that training conditions are never perfect. Your biggest limitation might just be the key to your next breakthrough. 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 talk about something that most lifters face, but few know how to handle well. And that is training when you're not at 100%, which let's be honest, that's life. My guest is Anthony Bryan, who at age six was diagnosed with a brain tumor that led to a stroke, leaving him with paralysis on his left side. Doctors told his family he'd never run or live an active life. Instead, Anthony went on to set a Guinness World Record for the fastest marathon with hemoplegia, I think I said that right, at the 2024 TCS London Marathon, and he's a double world champion in the 800 and 1500 meters in paraathletics. Anthony has spent decades solving problems that everyone, everyone listening, eventually faces. How do you keep training when your body has real limitations? How do you manage recovery when fatigue is constant? How do you stay consistent when motivation disappears? And Anthony, I'm about to have rotator cuff surgery next week. So it's great timing for me to have this conversation with you as well. Uh, because these principles that you use to train with your limitations, which maybe you don't even call them that. We're gonna get into that. You're the no-limit athlete, right? And they're the same ones you need when dealing with any limitations, injuries, aging, work stress, poor sleep, any constraint that keeps you from doing things perfectly, which is honestly not even a real thing. Today we're gonna explore how limitations can make you stronger, how to auto-regulate what you're doing without losing momentum, and how to build the kind of mindset that keeps you showing up even when progress feels slow. Anthony, Anthony, so great to meet you. Welcome to the show.
Anthony Bryan: 2:37
Thank you. Thank you for having me on today. It's great.
Philip Pape: 2:40
So the question I I have right off the bat is do you think your paralysis has made you a better athlete?
Anthony Bryan: 2:46
It's it's made me more resilient, it's made me think outside the box because I've had to think outside the box. Because I was told you will never do this, you'll never do that, you'll never walk, you'll never run. And then I had to realise myself that actually I can do that. And I think what I learned was people in in life will always tell you what you can and can't do, but it's up to you to prove them wrong. In the end of the day, if you want to achieve something, it's always down to you. And everyone's gonna try and keep you in your box, but you gotta go out there and just see what you can really do.
Philip Pape: 3:21
Everyone's gonna keep you in your box, man. This is so relevant. Uh, this is relevant to me personally, even recently, because it was something related to the healthcare industry, kind of like you said, where a doctor will say, like, you're never gonna do this again, or you shouldn't do this. I've heard some ridiculous advice, even like stop taking the stairs because your knees hurt. You know, just silly stuff like that. But um, how did you do that? Like, people want to know, okay, people tell you you can't do this, can't do that. How do you even know you could do those things?
Anthony Bryan: 3:51
It is through trial and error. Because this, I I had a brain tumor when I was a child, and um straight away doctors tell my parents we'll never do this, we'll never do that. And it wasn't until I actually met this bodybuilder, and he was he was a guy in the gym, and he had a stroke himself in the age of 20. And when my parents spoke to him, he looked at me and goes, That's absolute nonsense. I'll show you how you can how can you can and can't train. And he showed me all these exercises, and he said to me, I want you to remember this phrase no pain, no gain. Whenever you feel the pain, you're always gaining something. And ever since then, I just always remembered that saying it's on my wall in my hallway as well. And ever since a child, I always threw myself into everything. And I think what one of the big mind-blowing kind of realizations for me was when I was at school, we had to do a fitness running test, and I was the only disabled child in the whole school, and I just remember thinking to myself, we had to do a 12-minute run, and it's how far can you get in 12 minutes? And I just remember thinking to myself, there's no way I could come last, not behind the overweight, lazy kids. That would just be too embarrassing for me. So I just went off as hard as I could, and I just kept going and kept going and kept going. At the end of the um this test, I ended up coming. I was I came 15th out of 30 kids, and I was the only one with disability. And my teacher came over to me and just said, How did you do that? I was like, I don't know, I just didn't want to come last, it's too embarrassing. And he said, Have you ever thought about going into the Paralympics? And I was like, No, what's the Paralympics? And he said, It's like the Olympics, but for people with disabilities, you would be amazing. And my reaction was no, that's something I definitely don't want to want to do. Why'd I want to do a sport that shows off my disability? I'd hate that. Um, so he called my parents into the school and he said, Get that boy in a running club, just get that boy in a running club. And this was the first time that actually someone has told my parents, get him to do this, instead of he can't do that, he can't do this. So they threw me into it and I gave it a go. And I went to my first um power race, and I I won a gold medal in the 100 metres and the 200 metres, and for once it's opened up my eyes to other athletes with disabilities achieving incredible achievements. They might be missing a leg, might be missing an arm, but they're going out there to do their absolute best. I was like, this is incredible. So I thought I want more of this. So I went and went away and joined a running club and I trained. And slow slowly and slowly, I started realizing that actually I could build more speed. I played for a um a football team, a soccer team, and one of the coaches said to me was instead of telling me I can't do something, I can't couldn't do this or that, he went to me, yeah, you might not be able to do this because you can't use your left side, but let's not focus on what on what you can't do, let's focus on what you can do. And that was from that moment, I just focused on everything that I could do, and I could use one side of my body more than anyone else. So I had a really strong right arm and a really strong right leg. So when I would kick a ball, I had the most powerful shot of anyone. So I started being a top goal scorer because I was shooting from left, right, and centre, scoring goals, and gradually I just became more confident in myself and finding that I could do things, and then I started doing competitions and winning more medals, and slowly by slowly I started realizing that I can push myself a bit further, I can push myself a bit further. Started going to the gym and doing weights. Then I got to the Paralympic trials for the 100 metres and the 200 metres, and unfortunately I finished fourth, so I just missed out being selected for the Paralympics. But I thought this was incredible. I want to be at the next one. So I went away to my coach, I was like, I want to train hard, I want to push myself more, I will be there next time. And she said to me, Okay, so you're slightly slow off the line because of your weaker side, but why don't we try something a little bit longer distance because you're really quick once you get going? And she said, Why don't we try 800 meters or 1500 metres? And my reaction was 1500 metres. That sounds like a million miles. I can't run that far. And she said to me, How'd you know you can't run that far if you've never tried? Give it a go. And if you still hate it, you can always go back to doing the sprinting. But she said, Give it a go because you never know what you could achieve. So I gave it a go and I hated it, it was really hard. I was out of breath, I wasn't used to endurance races, and I I joined this group of runners, and again, I was the only disabled runner in the whole group, and we were doing 400 meter reps, and all I remember was even the little girls that were like seven, eight year olds, were flying past me about half the size of me, and they're flying past me. I was at the back of the group, and I was like, This is so embarrassing. But I just kept doing the reps, kept going and going and going. And my coach said to me afterwards, So how did it go? And I said, Awful. Even the little ones were going past me. This is not for me. I'm used to being a sprinter and being fast and doing this and doing that. But she said to me something that I really kind of thought, yeah, you're right. She said to me, You can't go in there and expect to be the absolute best when you have even put the work in. They might be younger than you and half the size of you, but they've been training for the last few years. She said, Give it a go for the next few months, and if you still hate it, you can always go back to sprinting. So I gave it a go, and she was right. After the next few months, I started getting fitter, started getting stronger, started getting more used to it. I started going from the back of the group to the middle of the group and keeping up with the others. And I think what made me realize I could do this was just belief. Because I've been doing it over and over and over, I've realized that actually I can do this, gotta just push a little bit harder. And then when then voices come into your mind saying, give up, this is hard. You've got to override that and just keep pushing, keep going. And after doing that for just under a year, I got selected to represent Team England at the power world championships, and I ended up winning gold medal in the 800 and 1500 meters. So I'm gone from thinking it's impossible to run that far to now being a world champion.
Philip Pape: 10:46
Man, so that whole thing, I want to break this down from beginning to end because this is great. If you started at the end, people would say, okay, he's successful, must be really talented, born that way, genetics, this and that, right? But you gave us a breakdown. I got at least five lessons I want to break in for the listener here. All right. The first one that's a really recurring theme is you had support along the way and people to maybe help you reframe and motivate you. And I, right? I mean, and I think that's super important because I could imagine if you were alone that whole time, you never had these figures in your life, do you think it would have turned out the same?
Anthony Bryan: 11:18
No, you listen to those doctors and that told you you can't do this, you can't do that.
Philip Pape: 11:23
Yeah. So having somebody like the bodybuilder, I think is awesome, right? Who had a personal experience, just like you now telling our listeners about this experience that they might relate to, that hey, this is insane, this is nonsense. And honestly, I I've gone through a philosophy of life now that I say, if I'm weird, if I'm in the in the 1% of people who are thinking very differently than the other 99%, there's probably something to it. Kind of like the um, what's his name? Mark Twain, who by the way, uh lived here in Connecticut. Uh, and he had that famous quote, you know, when you're on the side of the majority, it's time to stop and reflect. And that's kind of like, you know, bodybuilders and and coaches who train elite athletes are probably in the tiny minority of people who really know what's capable, and you absorb that from what I can hear. So that's a good one. But I like something you said. You used the phrase no pain, no gain, which has become, I guess, a trope almost or like trite over the years, where it used to be a big thing as an inspirational mantra, and then it became something to reject, right? Like, well, no, you shouldn't train through pain. Don't do that. Like, you're training too hard. I like that you you framed it as a positive. Dig into that for us just a little bit so people understand like how to use that mantra in a healthy, you know, positive way for themselves.
Anthony Bryan: 12:39
So for me, it would be when I feel that burn and I'm running, don't stop and slow down because you're gaining experience, you're gaining something, you're gaining speed, you're gaining an achievement. Like, for example, I'll talk about this later. When I was in the marathon, I had cramp in both legs, and everything was telling me to stop. And I just thought, I need to keep going because if you're in your comfort zone all the time, you're never gonna achieve those great goals that you dream of. You have to go through those tough moments, and that and that's the pain. It's not exactly like metaphorically pain, but if you don't go through those tough times, you will never achieve those incredible things. You have to be outside of that comfort zone. If you're in your comfort zone, you're not gonna achieve those incredible goals.
Philip Pape: 13:33
Yeah.
Anthony Bryan: 13:34
Try something new, try something different. It might be challenging yourself to do something new, and it's uncomfortable, maybe not maybe more uncomfortable and painful. You'll push through that uncomfortableness and great things will happen.
Philip Pape: 13:47
Yeah, yeah, I was thinking the same thing, right? People get hung up on language and say, Well, you mean you mean discomfort, don't you? But there is an element of pain, man, like especially in physical pursuits sometimes. And it's it's not a you know, pain is a spectrum, it's not uh a sharp, like you're breaking something pain. It's a I'm doing my fifth squat at 90% RM and this shit sucks, and I need to stop right now because it's so hard, but I'm gonna do it anyway.
Anthony Bryan: 14:13
It's like if if I'm not aching the next day from a gym session, I'm really annoyed of myself.
Philip Pape: 14:18
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Anthony Bryan: 14:18
If I'm absolutely aching like DOMs everywhere, I'm like, I'm gaining something right now.
Philip Pape: 14:24
Yeah, right. So everybody has their own version of that because you said metaph not metaphorical. I was gonna, I was only gonna challenge that in the sense that I know there's a lot of mental discomfort too. That that is, I guess, metaphorical in a sense, but I know what you mean. That it's the physically pushing your comfort zone or expanding it, and you're not gonna grow from that. And man, there are a lot of impatient people I see every day. I I actually feel really bad when somebody reaches out and says, What do what do I do here? And I'm, you know, I don't say like by my program. I say like here, try this thing out. And they want to give up in a day, you know, because oh, it's too hard or it's too much work. Um, and you're just sad for them because you're like, Man, you're just never gonna achieve anything with that attitude.
Anthony Bryan: 15:06
Yeah. It's it's about never giving up. It's yeah, it's a constant journey. Even when you achieve things, it's like, right, what's next? Grow again, grow again, go again.
Philip Pape: 15:17
Yeah.
Anthony Bryan: 15:18
Everything. So for me, it was once I went to the world championships and won the gold medals, that that was a massive light bulb moment for me. I thought, I was told I'd never run or be very active again. And I've just I'm now a world champion. So then I thought, how much further can I go? How much further can I prove them wrong?
Philip Pape: 15:37
Yeah, and I bet everyone has their own level of what world champion means to them, is what I would say. In that, I guess the lesson that I take from you there is you did something that was hard, pushed through that metaphorical pain, you got a result that gave you confidence you didn't have before, expanded that comfort zone now, and the identity of yourself grew effectively. Like the person you were at that point was different than what you were maybe six months or five years or 10 years before. And now you're like, oh, I'm gonna do this endurance thing where the little girls are passing me, but I know I did something before and I adapted and grew, and I'm gonna do it again. And like that, that's another really good lesson because people who've done, I mentioned the heavy squats, right? Like people who do physical pursuits that are hard and then get something, they tend to want to do more of it or they tend to have less friction to jump in to more of it. So that's confidence you talked about, right? That's that's the confidence. Yeah.
Anthony Bryan: 16:29
Self-belief. Yeah, over and over and over. I believe actually I can do this. I'm not gonna combust. I'm I can do this, yeah.
Philip Pape: 16:38
And so speaking of the can, because you said that as well, not what you can't, what you can. And people get annoyed with me, call me a positivity Nazi or whatever sometimes because I will I have an optimism bias, right? Like I think the good is gonna come no matter what. And when you say what can you do, to me, that's reframing, that's like a psychological technique. How much are you into psychology and mindset like academically, or is it all just from experience where you talk about this stuff?
Anthony Bryan: 17:05
Um, a big role model to me would be uh David Goggins.
Philip Pape: 17:09
Oh, I knew you were gonna say that, man. He he's he's controversial in in in a way, but yes, yes.
Anthony Bryan: 17:15
But and well, I I I read his book in lockdown, and that was another light bulb moment for me as well. Because there's two chapters that really kind of hit home with me. One was Be the Only. And that I read this chapter, and he told this story of how when he lined up on the on the start line of the um triathlon, he looked to his left and he looked to his right, he's like, Yeah, these guys, they all train hard, they're fit, they're in good shape, but no, not one of them really stands out to me. No one does what I do. And then he looked over the other side and then he saw this guy in a wheelchair, and he's just perched on the edge, ready to dive into the water, ready for the race. And he looked at him and went, There he is, that guy. That guy is the only. He's in the same league with me. And when I when I read that, I thought, yeah, that's me. Every single race, everything in my life I've ever done, I've always been the only disabled person doing it, but I've I've always shied away and been embarrassed with my disability. So I shouldn't shy away and I should go out there and own it. And I was like, and that's when I started kind of showing my training on social media, like my weightlifting, my running, and otherwise I would have just been embarrassed of it. So that was a big confidence moment for me. And the other chapter was the 40% rule, and that rule was he said in that chapter, when you think you're done and finished, you've got nothing left, and you've really hit that limit. He said, You're actually only 40% done. He said, if you keep pushing, you start to unlock a compartment of the brain that will be like, oh god, this guy's not gonna stop. We need to keep him alive by giving everything we can, and then it's only then that you start realizing you can push further and keep going.
Philip Pape: 19:07
I wonder how many people ever experienced that in their entire life. Like I've thought, I know I'm prone to want to things to be easy sometimes, right? Like many of us wanna take it easy, we want to relax. I used to do CrossFit, and I remember some of the wads were so grueling, but because you had this clock and competition, your brain was like, okay, I gotta keep going. I it feels like I'm done, but keep going. Not that I'm a huge fan of CrossFit for other reasons, but that's a different story altogether. I think it's worth anybody listening, and I've had guests on the show that talks about this, to have some goal, some challenge, some race, some competition, something like that. Like you sound like you did Hans constantly to push you to have to do that almost. Like otherwise you're gonna be disappointed in yourself, who is the only person who cares, really, right? Is yourself, let's be honest. And so the Goggins thing is really good. I know some people the controversy is like, you know, what when he's like bleeding and You know, stuff coming out of us. You know, but but the general principles are still good. So then like let's make it practical for somebody listening. You know, maybe they don't have a disability, but like we all get, let's say, disabled at times or have an injury or pain or something that just sets them back or stops them. Well, like, what's a good reframe? And I'm sure it happens to you too, right? You get injured or whatever. What's your reframe?
Anthony Bryan: 20:22
Yeah, so for example, I can only use one arm and one leg, but I train just as hard as anyone else, if not more. Um, I can do deadlifts, I can do as cane and press with one arm, I can do pull-ups. And people just look at me and go, how do you do that? And I just think I think outside the box, if I have an injury, how can I train my body best effectively? And then every single exercise you in the world is adaptive. You can do it just in a different way to make it work. So, say you've broken your arm on one side, how are you gonna work your biceps? So, how I would do it is I would get a strap around the part of the arm that's not broken, and I would cut. If I've broken an ankle, how would how would I do squats? I would put a box out and I would do single leg squats until my leg other leg is recovered. Everything you do, there's always an adaptable way to do it. For example, um, I went to the uh adaptive CrossFit Games last year, and I I came eighth in the world of the CrossFit Games, and in the finals I was up against guys using two two arms, and I can only use one arm, so when it came to the snatches and cleans, they're just like this, and I was struggling really hard, but I just didn't want to stop and give up because that's just demoralizing. So, my advice would be there's always a way, there's not one set way to do things. Find a way, find an adaption. Look on Instagram, there's I have so many friends. Um, one of my friends is everything he does is on crutches, so he can't use his legs very well, but he's done an Iron Man on his crutches, he's done a marathon on his crutches, and it's just the body is an incredible machine. If you push it outside of its comfort zone to do a new thing, it will find a way to do it.
Philip Pape: 22:24
Yeah, yeah, yeah. If you lose a sense, you lose a limb, you lose something. We had someone on a long time ago, Kevin McShann, in a wheelchair, um, I think in a form of like cerebral palsy, so he could only do limited upper body stuff. Man, he was so passionate about what he could do and like what he did every day and just came right through. Uh, and by the way, I the reason I uh for the listener kind of tiptoed around CrossFit is because of what because of what Ezy just said. He's an athlete and a competitor in that space, which is, in my opinion, a different world than just the everyday goers who go to CrossFit. But uh let's let's dig in on that. You know, it's funny because I'm having surgery next week on my rotator cuff. Last time I did this, uh, I tried some things like a deadlift harness and I used a safety squat bar and things like that because I couldn't use an arm. And, you know, anybody listening, the surgery thing is definitely a big reason people often ask for help, right? Because they're like, here's how it's quite phrased. What do I do? I'm having surgery, the doctor's not gonna clear me for however much many number of weeks, which in some cases you can lift before that, but that's not for me to say. I'm no not a medical expert. And then what do I do because I'm not gonna be able to train for X? And it's like immediately the excuse of I'm not gonna be able to train, so what do I do? as opposed to how do I train? Yeah, which I I prefer that question. So maybe dig in a little bit more. Like, obviously, they can go check you out. They can go go on Instagram, chat GPT, heck. I mean, there's like so many ways now to look up. I don't have an arm for 12 weeks. What do I do? Maybe let's start here. What do you know about the benefits of let's say you only have one arm because of surgery, the crossover effect? Like, do you know much about the the cross? You know what I'm talking about? Cross-education effect where like training one side helps the other?
Anthony Bryan: 24:06
Yeah, it does because um it wires the brain. Um say you you've broken an arm, you have another arm, you have legs, you have core. Keep yourself fit, healthy, and strong, so that when your body your arm does recover, the the rest of the body's ready to go, and this one just will catch up.
Philip Pape: 24:27
Yeah. Um stay stay strong before the surgery or two if you can, if you know that's what it is.
Anthony Bryan: 24:33
Yeah. But the the whole body is wired together, so if you train one arm, it will still have an effect on the other arm. Um, I don't know if you have you heard that um where you can visualize training in the gym, and it uh you can increase muscle by by two to three percent if you just visualize working out in the gym.
Philip Pape: 24:54
Because your body's gonna adapt yourself physiologically to that desire.
Anthony Bryan: 24:59
Yeah, and your subconscious.
Philip Pape: 25:00
That's incredible. Yeah.
Anthony Bryan: 25:02
So I read this in the book the other day. If you just lie down, visualize, and think about training in the gym, your subconscious will believe that you are actually kind of working out, and it will it's not gonna have the same amount of games than when you are in the gym, but it will give you a small percentage of strength.
Philip Pape: 25:21
I wouldn't be surprised because I used to be I'm skeptical, right? But and not skeptical of that, I'm skeptical in general of life and everything. Uh I'm just that type of guy. But like simple things like not sitting all day has known to increase muscle protein synthesis by like 30%. So I could imagine something mental like that could have a similar or even not as much of an effect, but still an effect, right? So that's incredible. Let me ask you when you do something like, since you've got one side of your body to work with, when you do a deadlift with one arm, how does that change the mechanics? How does that change your approach? Is it are there a lot of resources about those kinds of things, or is this the kind of thing where you really have to experiment with it? I'm just curious, you know.
Anthony Bryan: 26:05
Um, so I would have a strap on um this side, which is like a harness, and I would attach it to the bar so it kind of evens me up a little bit. Because I'm lifting of one side, yes. It also all the weight and pressure comes down one side of my body. So obviously the muscles around the pelvis and the spine get really tight. So I then have to have sparse massages and see osteopaths and chiropractors weekly. But yeah, lift lifting deadlift, I'd have to lift from the center of the bar. Try it next time you're in the gym, just do a light deadlift one arm. You will feel all this pressure and weight just go through one side of the body.
Philip Pape: 26:49
And the balance is tough too.
Anthony Bryan: 26:50
Yeah, so try and even up. I use a harness around this shoulder and attach it to the bar. Gives me a little bit a little bit more even tea.
Philip Pape: 26:58
Okay, yeah, and I was just curious, uh, because I've done the harness with no arms, right? How you can do it like just with using your uh torso, and then the one arm definitely creates that asymmetry, which is interesting because yeah, now you're gonna have side effects you have to think about and kind of train around that. Really cool, man. So asymmetry now comes up as a topic. I'm this is great. Like I'm throwing away all my questions because we're just this is good stuff. Okay. I guess when you see people doing stuff in the gym, you know, do you have advice for people on like just training more efficiently given what you've learned that most people don't learn because they don't have to go through, you know what I'm saying? Does that make sense?
Anthony Bryan: 27:36
Yes. So what I've realized is when I see people training in a gym, that everyone's doing the basic things that they've seen online, and I'm like, let's break it down a bit. I'm really good at thinking outside the box, and I make up different exercises, and they're like, Whoa, I feel that way more. How did you learn that? It's just like just thinking about it differently. So I would say I see a lot of people bench press, but when you bench press, naturally everyone's a little bit stronger in one arm, so they're pushing slightly more with one arm. So to counteract that, a dumbbell dumbbell press is way better because then both arms doing doing their own work. Yeah, um, things like that. Um I see a lot of women, all they do is kind of leg kicks on on the cables and things like that. Or hip hip thrusts, that's that's all they do. And I'm I just I'd say say to women, Bulgarian split squats is so much better for you because it's single leg, you're single and doing it. And I say if you're doing a leg press, do a single leg leg press, because again, if you're doing leg press with both legs, only marginally, but one leg's gonna be pushing more than the other. So I'd say build each leg up separately, and then think about them separately, then you can bring together, you can be even stronger. So I'm always thinking single single, and a lot of time in the gym I see people doing double things, but then when I break it down for them, like whoa, I feel that way more. Yeah. But I find thinking outside the outside the box really kind of makes a difference because everyone thinks about training the same way.
Philip Pape: 29:14
Man, this is good stuff. The but two things there. You talk about unilateral training and being creative. So the unilateral thing, I think a lot of people just find it hard, right? And it's hard for a reason. And if it is hard, ask yourself whether that maybe is why it's worth doing. That's what I always tell myself when I'm doing a walking lunge and I haven't done those in a while. And I'm like, holy crap, after just like 18 of these in a row, I will feel like I want to fall over, you know, and I wanted to get 25 or whatever. It's super important. And the idea that it's it's weird how the physics works. When you do something bilaterally, you can generally handle more than twice the load as the two individual limbs, and you have to think about why that is. There's like systemic support you're getting, right, from other parts of the body, which sometimes you want that, like you're trying to do that to develop the movement patterns. But in your case, what you mentioned is hey, there are weak spots you're not getting because you're not loading the thing individually and hitting its weakness, like you said, because one is taking for the other.
Anthony Bryan: 30:10
And then what's doing individually, you bring it together, gives it even more strength.
Philip Pape: 30:14
Yeah, exactly. And then it pushes the overall side. I I agree. It's a great, great point. And then the creative side, you know, a lot of us don't figure that out for a while until think I'm raising my hand here because I used to be the guy who was like, hey, I don't know what to do, so I'm gonna do the basic pet movement patterns or the basic lifts that you tell me to do, which is a great foundation, right? If you don't even lift at all, but the idea that you can use infinite types of grips and widths and like range of motion and disadvantaged positions, everything, right? Yeah. Are there are there like a top three type of change someone should experiment with next time they go in the gym? Like just in general, if they're using a press, pressing movement or squatting, what kind of thing should they maybe experiment with?
Anthony Bryan: 31:01
Um, narrow squats versus wide squats. Feel the difference in that for the quality. Well, I like is um for the shoulders, I will always do a tricep and I'll do front raises, then I'll do lateral raises, and then I'll do front raises with thumb up, and then I'll do a shoulder press. So that hits the front side top. And you don't even need to go mad heavy. If you go maybe five kilograms, you do things in pounds, but uh uh kilograms over here. Um, you should go nice and light, you will feel the craziest burn in those shoulders instead of just going super heavy. Because I find when a lot of guys going super heavy, they're not getting that full range of moving, they're jerking it, they're kind of half-repping it, or just momentum lifting. Sometimes when you go lighter and get the movement patterns of each muscle, what I've learned is you've if you learn the movement patterns of the muscles and just really get them working, you don't need to go super heavy and you can strengthen them really, really, really well.
Philip Pape: 32:06
Again, some great points, right? Because uh my coach Andy Baker is always he he's this big, massive, strong guy, right? And he's always telling the guys in doing lateral raises, don't go so heavy, man, because he sees them coming up halfway and it's just like rounting, you know, right? And it's like just and you're right, and there's so many ways there's scaption raises, thumb up, thumb down, you know, like because of my shoulder issue, I've realized like palms up sometimes, you know, supinated, whatever you call that, helps. Uh, like if if your goal is hypertrophy, right? We've talked about this on the show before. If you're at least 30% of your max, as long as you train close to failure, you can grow muscle, right? Like that's the general numbers. Whereas if you're going for strength, it's 60%, or if you're going for like super heavy, you know, it's like 80, 90%. Yeah. So yeah, that's good stuff, man. Um, yeah, I love this. I love talking about training. So auto-regulation was the next one I wanted to ask you about because uh some of us are in the fixed mindset of like, I have to go up on the bar, I have to increase my weight, I have to increase my load, and we or my reps, and we do have to have progressive overload. Sometimes, though, people have a limitation again from fatigue. It could be, you know, it could be you're just not eating enough lately and you have a lot of stress from your kids and your family, right? It's the holidays, and you're just like wiped, even if maybe you are eating it, whatever, and all of a sudden you don't have the same capacity. How do you feel like you're still getting a good uh training session and you're still making progress? Like auto-regulation comes to mind, but what are your thoughts?
Anthony Bryan: 33:37
Yeah, mix it up, try new things. I love playing about with um supersets and tri sets and things like that, and just try different things. Um, don't always have to go super heavy max reps kind of thing. What's super effective is um what I love is isometric holds, and then um so for some of my people that I train, try this session one day. So you do a wall squat holding the wall squat for 20 seconds, then you do 10 leg extensions, then you go back to the wall squat, 10 leg extensions, 10 reps, 10 rounds, that's a hundred overall, and that is absolutely soul destroying.
Philip Pape: 34:28
Taking back a CrossFit, man. Nightmares, but yes, it's good stuff. 10 by 10 or 10 by 10, man, with the squat, 10x10 squat day was like brutal.
Anthony Bryan: 34:40
But massively strengthen you those legs.
Philip Pape: 34:42
I know, I know. It's incredible. Yeah, I love this stuff. Thinking differently, you know, it brings to mind concepts like mind muscle connection, which is is a completely valid thing that I think people aren't tuning into. I saw a good video years ago on YouTube. Oh, you would know the guy. Man, what was his name? He always has his shirt off, of course, like a lot of the bros, right? But he was talking about back training, and the back is so complicated, it's got so many muscles, so many muscle groups. It's a beautiful thing. And when you go for a massage, right, they take like, you know, 60% of the massage is on your back because of that. Uh deadlift, squats, everything hits it. But for me, as with the shoulder issue, I'm like trying to strengthen my back and scapula and rhomboids and traps and everything. And I, for some reason, my entire life, I never did standing, narrow grip cable poles, right? And it was just one of these things you stumble across because you're trying to be creative. And that's the thing. If you get in that mindset that Anthony's talking about of like, what else can I do to hit something just a bit different? And then all of a sudden you find something and you do it and you're like, Nirvana. I mean, it felt so good because you just felt this squeeze and like you can almost visualize the muscles rotating and squeezing, and you're like, okay, that's my lift. And for the next guy, maybe it's useless. Like, like it's it depends. What's what's like what's your favorite? Like, I don't know, two or three things like that that you're just maybe you discovered them by accident, or maybe whatever, you know, somebody told you about them.
Anthony Bryan: 36:06
So I'm always thinking about how can I put exercises together? What really burns. So I love super setting a chest, for example. I would I'll get um I'll go on a bench and I would fly, not too heavy, but heavy enough, then straight into chest press. That will get you on the sides and then straight into the middle afterwards and fatigue you beat time, things like that.
Philip Pape: 36:31
Uh one of the things is that is that a fly with dumbbells or like a machine fly?
Anthony Bryan: 36:35
Dumbbells, yeah. Yeah. And then if you wanted to try set, I would add another exercise in. Uh maybe cables and fly them in underneath the body, and that really gets you, or a pec fly machine, really good as well. I had this uh bigger guy, and he was doing I said to him, Do you ever like get DOMs the next day after doing flies? He's like, Nah, never. I was like, Alright, let me try this with you. Um, so have you heard of like net negative training?
Philip Pape: 37:03
Yeah, net the the negative, the eccentric. Yeah, where you all know.
Anthony Bryan: 37:06
So I got I got I got him to do 10 heavy pet flies, and then I said to him, Hold the the um the machine into the middle really, really hard, and I want you to keep it there for 10 seconds, and I'm gonna pull this machine out. He's like, Okay, go. So I'm pulling the machine out, and he's like holding it in. But then after that, he's like, mate, when you pull that machine out, feels like you're tearing the chest bit by bit. I was like, technically, that's what we're doing, and it it's gonna give you that massive extra bit of strength. He's like, Oh, amazing!
Philip Pape: 37:39
Awesome, man.
Anthony Bryan: 37:40
Yeah, so if you can um bring negatives into some of the exercises, well, that's it, it burns and it's hard, but wicked effect.
Philip Pape: 37:48
Yeah, yeah, that that's one of those things you have to think about. You have to sit down like the day before, right? And really look up on YouTube and figure out how do I make that happen? Because most machines or setups are not designed for negatives, right? Like a bench would be super dangerous for a negative if you don't, you know, like a bet like a barbell, you know.
Anthony Bryan: 38:06
And there's one there's one that I made up. I made uh woman do leg extensions on the machine, and then on a tenth one, I said, hold your legs up there and keep them there. So she held them up, then I would come on top and I'll try and push the legs down so the quads are burning and holding. That's another one where you could do as well. So legs in the knob.
Philip Pape: 38:25
It makes total sense, man. It makes total sense. I mean, when you every time you do a deadlift really heavy, you're you're kind of doing an isometric hold in the middle, you know, you're you're for for a couple seconds, aren't you? Like with the the erectors, right?
Anthony Bryan: 38:37
Right with the sponda, yeah.
Philip Pape: 38:38
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Um, yeah, it's crazy to think about all this stuff. And and anyone listening, like if you're feeling overwhelmed, if you never lifted before, this is all new to you, you know, don't get overwhelmed. Just put it in your back pocket and just when the time comes, come back and listen to this episode. You have it. Just make sure you're trading. If you're not trading, you gotta be trading. All right. So another thing we talk about a lot on the show is we say listening to your body, but in an objective way, like in a data, a data-based way, not necessarily biohacking, but like, you know, paying attention to your recovery. I know you mentioned DOMs and soreness. You know, we kind of go back and forth on that. If we're talking about strength type movements where you're not necessarily chasing that versus more hypertrophy and supersetting and high rep stuff, but what kind of signals do you like to track, pay attention to for performance, for biofeedback, even nutrition? Like what are your what's your bag of tricks for data?
Anthony Bryan: 39:31
Um, hydration, um, watching, watch out for the color of your urine. That that's a big one, I think. It's a good one.
Philip Pape: 39:37
Yeah.
Anthony Bryan: 39:38
Yeah, because everyone kind of skips that and that gives you energy. Um, makes you feel awake. Um, sleep. Sleep's a good one. You have to get those hours in. Don't don't be staying up all hours and then having five hours of sleep and going getting up. Makes a massive difference. And you'll make a massive difference through a gym session, whether you're tired or not. Even pre-workout gels. I I try I try to stay away from pre-workout.
Philip Pape: 40:04
Like you mean actual pre-workout compact substances? Like but do you eat you do you feed do you eat do you uh train faster or fed?
Anthony Bryan: 40:13
If I've got a big competition I'll be I'll be fed. But I try and work out faster.
Philip Pape: 40:20
Oh interesting.
Anthony Bryan: 40:20
Alright. Because I want my muscles to push themselves without that energy source so that they're like working harder.
Philip Pape: 40:29
You know that that is that's like the only legitimate reason other than schedule that I've ever heard and I like it. I like it Anthony because you know there's a lot of claims about facet training that aren't true right but the idea that you are using it as a challenge as a deficit almost right as an eccentric training form let's say I want my body to train with that without that energy source. And then when I give it the energy source for the competition it's like oh I can do that now because it's got that makes sense man I'm feeding it yeah no no that makes a lot of sense it it's like when I've been in a fat loss phase for 16 weeks and then I have a huge buffet Sunday night before I train Monday all of a sudden my deadlift like you know goes up 20 pounds right uh it's like because I I stay away from caffeine yeah then when when I have like um a big race I might have an energy drink before and then I'll be like whoa during the race and I feel like get where what does energy come from? That's a really great point is the tolerance factor because a lot of us are hooked on caffeine myself included.
Anthony Bryan: 41:30
I mean I have coffee and pre-workouts and so you could have caffeine you could have the energy before and it worked no effect.
Philip Pape: 41:36
Yeah yeah yeah yeah it's it's it's you've got to make that trade off if you're gonna do it right like um you mentioned sleep of course we're always gonna hammer home on sleep I heard a podcast recently I think it was actually next level university uh who's um Kevin Palmer he's one of my podcast producers so I always like to give him a shout out him and his business partner Alan and they were talking about sleep uh they talked about a story this professor said about or not a professor but motivational speaker he said imagine going to a college campus and the big thing there is everyone smokes cigarettes right everyone's smoking cigarettes they love it it's like the big thing you've got to smoke cigarettes crazy idea right like crazy idea imagine you go to another one and everyone is just shooting up heroin like everybody in the campus that's the thing they do they all shoot up heroin we'd shut the campus down overnight right now go to another campus and every kid is falling asleep during the day taking Adderall or taking whatever and you're like wait a minute that is college campuses right and his point was they're all almost the same level of health detriment over the long term being sleep deprived smoking taking drugs they're all like let's say toxic to you I don't know if you agree with that I just want to share that because I recently heard it and I'm like it's a good way to frame how important but neglected and accepted poor sleep can be what are your thoughts on sleep man lay it on us like how do you get good sleep besides the number of hours it's tough one um I find what makes me sleep better is re reading a book before before I go to bed.
Anthony Bryan: 43:08
Love that because I I found I'm reading after about 20 pages I'm like oh my eyes are stinging now and then as soon as you close your eyes you're like don't sit on your phone before bed uh scrolling because that's gonna they've got I've read this it's got it's got that blue light or something that and that's designed to kind of keep you awake. Yeah so what helps me is reading and that that sends me off to sleep. Not in a bad way but a good way.
Philip Pape: 43:36
No I I actually it's funny you mentioned that we're we're kindred spirits my man because like I'm reading a post apocalyptic fiction novel right now and I read it every night in bed. Now I have a Kindle but what I do is I wear red I wear amber tinted blue blocking glasses and then the Kindle is on black mode so it's like only the text is white and I'm just sitting there uh with the lights off because my wife needs to sleep she goes to bed earlier than I do. And you're right after about 20 minutes if that you're just like you might even fall asleep with the book and you're good. Do you read like a physical book with a light or how do you read?
Anthony Bryan: 44:09
Yeah physical book yeah and I try and read self-help books and because okay because I I watched another thing that um anything that you kind of comes into your your process before you go to sleep kind of goes into a subconscious and you start thinking about it. So a lot of people before they go to bed they'll watch the news and it's all negative like war poverty and it's like doom and gloom doom and gloom so put a bit of positivity into your mind by reading it and I don't know if it's true or not but it kind of brings that into a subconscious kind of thing. So I kind of read positivity self-help books before I go to sleep.
Philip Pape: 44:49
So the listener needs to pay attention here because Anthony is full of like tons of wisdom. I get the sense man that you've just learned this through the school of hard knocks a lot of this stuff. Yes the way you talk is like supernatural it's just something I learned whereas a guy like me who are like studying this stuff and trying to make it for a podcast, you know, it's it's a little more like um kind of learned from a book, right? But what you just said again is something something I learned not long ago. Now you've you've known it just naturally to not stress yourself out with what you're reading and experiencing before bed. Like don't watch a highly stressful movie or TV show for example. Don't read terrible news. Now I told you I read post apocalyptic novel to me that's relaxing but I guess it's all it's kind of like for me playing a video game that's violent actually relaxes me but it's not necessarily the case for everyone right so I wouldn't do that before bed though. So yeah guys listen up this is this is really great wisdom. All right what else so sleep we covered sleep what about so that's that's a big part of recovery is there anything else any other recovery practices that you like so recently um one of my one of the guys I know actually um kind of helped me get into this um ice baths ice bath oof yeah okay horrible horrible thing but what what I found was um so I started having ice cold showers before my races and then I found that my my running was going really well and I kind of looked into it and basically instead of having a hot shower um so I would have a hot shower first and I'll have a cold shower after and what I was doing was um I was firing up my fight or flight system straight away in the morning so then it's basically turning on all my muscles and my fight or flight system getting ready to go to go fight or go to run that race and I found that my performance level just went up another level I hate it but now every time I compete I'll have a cold shower before I go and I just find I I'm more alert um I can I perform better my muscles are sharper and that's that's something I learned along the way. Yeah it's it's funny you mentioned the performance aspect because I did an episode not long ago about like all the things that are overrated and one of them on on the list was ice baths but I said in that episode except if you're using it on like a performance day or between you know your max lifts on a powerlifting meet or something because you're right that like that uh hormetic effect I guess is the word or that like acute effect is powerful but there's not really a long-term benefit if you're trying to get more jacked or something you know it doesn't necessarily help with that so I'm glad again you you've got natural wisdom my friend like this is good stuff and I I totally have heard that ice bass can be really powerful for competition right that's cool that's good yeah so speaking of competition man um a lot of people have no experience with the level of stage you've been on and I'm just curious like what that experience is like for you how especially your first maybe your first one I don't know maybe it just was a daze because I know you were younger but you know what is that like and and is there a lesson there for people who may be interested even a small like local powerlifting meet or something like that.
Anthony Bryan: 48:03
It's it's gonna be nerve wracking um you're gonna get those butterflies but give it a go and what I've what I've learned is you're gonna go into these competitions and you're gonna look at the the top people and think I'm awful I'm nothing like them but what I've learned is go to that competition and give your absolute best whatever you can do and that's that's a PB and then every time you go to a competition you set your benchmark as that now you gotta beat yourself if you against you beat yourself don't don't focus on how much they're lifting or what they're doing because the real the real achievement is you're getting better and better and better. Every competition you do write down your PB and be like right I'm coming for you you're my competition today and that's what I do every time I go for a race I don't focus on all the other people that flying past me. I'm going out there to beat me and that and that that's that's my main kind of mantra every time I go out there. I'm gonna go lift in CrossFit I'm gonna go out and beat me this weekend I'm I'm doing a high rox race so I'm I'm going out to try and beat myself this weekend.
Philip Pape: 49:15
Good luck or break a leg or whatever we're supposed to say beat yourself beat yourself um so is that is that 100% true my man or you gotta have some sense of competition right though oh a hundred percent yeah if um if if I'm if I'm near the front leader I'm I'm chasing them now I'm going for them but it's like those who are just getting started. Yeah yeah you everybody can't expect to be the winner uh especially right out of the gate yeah yeah yeah but if if I'm going in to be the best I'm I'm gonna guns blazing I'm going for it. Yeah I always wonder competition's interesting and I know there's a difference sometimes between the sexes men and women I'm just gonna say it I'm just gonna say it you can hate on me but like there you know from all the messages I have all the time it's my guy buddies who also lift weights and we we kind of push ourselves through metaphorical competition all the time from afar. And it's like you know we rag on each other for our numbers sometimes but we know hey you're a hundred pounds more you weigh a hundred pounds more than me dude so like of course you're gonna you know bench more than I do. So and we can joke about it like guys, you know, a good sign of friendship is that you could sarcastically make fun of each other, right? And like be cool with it. But I I think it's interesting with competition because you want to be pushed by things around you. And I think like the CrossFit world is a good place where that happens. I think community it happens but there's like a healthy level of that that pushes you to ultimately do what you're saying, which is beat yourself. What am I trying to get at here is like how can people find a community that can push them and help them because throughout this whole conversation it's been like you've had coaches and trainers and friends and people to learn from and lean on yeah how what if somebody feels alone out there and like trying to go alone but you don't really want to go to loan how how do they find that community you need to go out to to the the club the the training clubs need to get to go online look up CrossFit look up weightlifting get down there meet people find a circle of people that are doing the same thing as you because surround yourself by people that are doing the things you want to do and you'll learn from them and you'll grow together in everything with cycling groups running groups um I found massively um a lot of my friends a lot of pi you you find friends in these groups and then you'll find yourself grown because you that you're learning from them and doing new things and yeah just keep pushing yourself to try new things go online find a group and just join in. And what is the new thing you're trying now?
Anthony Bryan: 51:45
Pyrox uh okay that's your new thing all right yeah all right so that's your very first race ever right tomorrow or this weekend this is my second yeah and so so um when I for when I did my first one I came uh I ranked second in the world so now this weekend I'm trying to chase that guy in the first in the world oh my god okay I didn't I didn't realize that I I did a lot of research on you but I couldn't get all the accolades because there's so many this is all new this happened last month and the last one okay now wait is that what like what's the what's the like what does what's the class or the group you're in I'm just curious I don't know how it's organized. Um so it's it's neurological so anyone has had um like a stroke or a brain injury um so it's a bit like separal pausy separate is a brain injury and um what I've found is like I've found this whole new community of people it's athletes that just want to push themselves and I put a video of me doing burpees of one arm and one leg and on Instagram it blew up to like 3000 hits.
Philip Pape: 52:43
I was like whoa and I'm finding this new community of people that are like you're smashing it man keep pushing and I think high rocks it's it's a it's a competition of people they just want to push themselves from elite athletes to your everyday athlete and it kind of brings them all together and crossfits a bit more for your elites right yeah yeah yeah that's awesome man that's awesome no we're root we're rooting for you um and I want people to go check out all your content and check out you because if nothing else they could be inspired but if more than that it take action based on what you've shared with us today.
Anthony Bryan: 53:22
This has been truly a pleasurable and and enlightening conversation for sure and I mean that in all the honest ways that I try so where can people reach out to you Anthony so they can check out you your content connect with you find some community um so you can find me on Instagram at the no limits athlete um or just type in my name Anthony Bryan I also have a YouTube channel where I do exercise classes for people with disabilities or mobility issues and that's called Ant Brian Fitness.
Philip Pape: 53:50
All right so just to clarify we'll put those in the show notes for everyone the no limits athlete is Instagram and on YouTube it is at Ant BrianFitness. So that's Ant Shore for Anthony BrianFitness those will be in the show notes everyone don't worry about it if you can't find it and man thank you for coming on Wits and Weights it's been a pleasure meeting you talking with you I feel pumped myself like I gotta go do something now and not sit on my ass when we're done yeah man thanks for coming on thanks for having me great great to see ya

Philip Pape 12/17/25 Philip Pape 12/17/25

How to Adjust Strength Training for Fat Loss (Build Muscle While Losing Weight) | Ep 414

How do you train for fat loss? Most people screw this up by making disastrous training adjustments like switching to high reps, dropping intensity, or adding excessive cardio. Then they wonder why their muscle and strength drop. Discover how to preserve every bit of hard-earned muscle while losing fat by keeping load/intensity high, reducing volume (strategically and if necessary), and using auto-regulation to manage recovery when it's your most limited resource.

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Discover how to preserve every bit of hard-earned muscle while losing fat by keeping load/intensity high, reducing volume (strategically and if necessary), and using auto-regulation to manage recovery when it's your most limited resource.

Learn why lighter weights and high-rep "fat burning" workouts destroy body recomp results, how to time carbs for better performance during a deficit, and why HIIT could be sabotaging your strength training and muscle preservation.

This evidence-based approach to strength training during fat loss will help you lose fat without sacrificing muscle, maintain lifting performance in a calorie deficit, and come out of your cut looking lean, strong, and ready to build muscle again.

Episode Resources:

Fitness Lab AI Coaching App - 20% off December 17-January 2, available on iPhone (with Apple Health integration!) and now and Android too

Timestamps:

0:00 - Training for fat loss (not fat burning workouts)
2:52 - The myth of high reps for fat loss
5:20 - Understanding strength vs. muscle during a deficit
9:32 - Intensity (weight/load, % of 1RM) and volume
13:12 - Auto-regulation strategies that work during cuts
20:24 - Recovery is your limiting factor
24:10 - How Fitness Lab helps adjust training for fat loss
26:43 - Carb timing strategies for better performance
30:00 - Too much cardio?
33:12 - Simplifying assistance (accessory) work
36:00 - Exercise selection and joint care during cuts
39:20 - Realistic expectations and mindset during fat loss

Most people start a fat loss phase by changing the exact thing that should stay steady: their strength training. They drop weight, chase high reps, shorten rest, and stack cardio, then wonder why strength craters and muscle fades. The truth is simple and uncomfortable: nutrition drives fat loss, training preserves muscle. Your goal during a cut is not to set PRs; it’s to keep enough mechanical tension to tell your body that every ounce of muscle is still required. That means holding intensity high while trimming total work. Think 75 to 85 percent of 1RM on the main lifts with fewer hard sets, and accept that absolute strength may dip while relative strength improves as body weight drops. This shift guards the physique you built while the deficit uncovers it.

Intensity anchors the plan because mechanical tension is the primary signal for muscle retention. During building phases, you might push 10 to 15 hard sets per muscle each week; during a cut, most lifters do better with 6 to 12, sometimes less for joints or lifts that linger sore. Use rep ranges to auto-regulate—three sets of four to six instead of three by five—so you can adjust load on back-off sets without abandoning effort. A top set plus one to two back-off sets works well when energy is uneven. Train within one to three reps of failure, but avoid grinding singles and marathon sessions that spike fatigue. Assistance work stays in, just lean: one to two hard sets of focused accessories to maintain patterns, not chase pumps. Prioritize squats, hinges, presses, and pulls; keep novelty low and form familiar to reduce cognitive load and injury risk while recovery is tight.

Recovery, not willpower, becomes your limiting factor in a deficit. You’re eating less, storing less glycogen, and sleeping lighter, so fatigue accumulates faster. Reduce volume first, then frequency if needed—four days to three can work wonders. Layer in recovery habits that actually move the needle: seven to eight hours of consistent sleep in a cool, dark room; stress management with walking and breathwork; steps to lift NEAT without beating up your CNS; and protein at 0.8 to 1.0 grams per pound to protect muscle and control hunger. Carbs are underrated glue here. Even when total carbs are lower, timing them around training—pre and post—improves performance, reduces perceived effort, and speeds recovery. If calories are tight, shift fats down modestly to keep at least 100 grams of carbs when possible; if you must go lower, protect the training window with a banana or quick carbs pre-lift.

Cardio needs a purpose. Too much high-intensity work competes with lifting, drains glycogen, and spikes systemic fatigue, especially when carbs are constrained. Favor low-intensity methods—walking, easy cycling, conversational rowing—that raise expenditure without compromising strength. Sprinkle in brief true sprints if well-recovered, placed after lifts or on separate days, never before heavy sessions. Keep your eye on outcomes that matter: body weight trend, waist, photos, energy, sleep, and mood. A flat bar speed or small load dip is normal while cutting; the win is stepping lighter onto the scale with the bar still moving in familiar ranges. Set expectations, hold intensity, trim volume, manage recovery, and time carbs—and you’ll end the cut looking dense, defined, and ready to build again.

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Philip Pape: 0:01
Most people make one critical mistake when they cut calories to lose fat. They adjust their training incorrectly. They switch to high reps to burn fat. They drop the weight on the bar. They add a bunch of cardio, and they wonder why their strength tanks, their muscle disappears, and they end up looking like a smaller, weaker version of themselves. Today I'm showing you exactly what needs to change in your strength training during a fat loss phase and what absolutely can stay the same. You'll learn why dropping intensity could destroy your results, how to adjust training volume while keeping load heavy, and why most fat loss training and advice costs you some of that muscle. This is a topic I see people messing up all the time. They will dial in their nutrition pretty well, they'll create the calorie deficit, they'll start losing that weight on the scale, but then they make some often disastrous adjustments to their training that don't make any sense. They drop the weight on the bar, they switch to high-rep fat-burning workouts that they see on YouTube, they add tons of cardio thinking, well, I'm stuck and that's what I need to do, and then wonder why their lifts crash, why they're exhausted, why, despite working so hard, they're still not getting the lean muscular look they were going for. Then they're done with the fat loss phase and they're like, hey, it's not revealing what I thought, or I can't even get through it the way I intended. The problem is not the calorie deficit itself. The problem is they're adjusting their training in the wrong way. Thinking that fat loss requires lighter weights and higher volume, for example, when oftentimes it requires the opposite. It's very contextual, it's very personalized, but there are principles behind all of this that I'm going to walk you through today. What are the adjustments you have to make to training during fat loss? What happens to your body during a cut that affects your training? How do you maintain intensity while reducing volume if needed? Why auto-regulation is so important and what the heck I'm even talking about, and how to manage recovery when that is your most limited resource during fat loss. I will also, as always, bust some of those often heard so much on social media common myths about training during fat loss, including why certain forms of cardio could be holding you back and why you should never be afraid to lift heavy. All right, let's get into it. Sometimes on episodes, I do like to throw in a little testimonial or feedback that I've gotten from a listener, or in this case from a Fitness Lab user. Real quick, Beth writes in, I've been using Fitness Lab for 18 days now. The AI in the app is always there to answer questions and work through any struggles you have. Oh, by the way, she started by saying, I just want to mention how much I love the app. It's crazy how it feels. Like you are chatting with Philip. Looks at the data with a very human-feeling connection, not generic advice, but advice using my data for the advice. P.S. I was not paid for this endorsement. LOL. Okay. I hope she doesn't mind me sharing. I didn't give her last name away. But that is the kind of feedback we're getting on Fitness Lab. And that's all I'll say about that now. I'll probably mention it at some point in the episode, like I always tend to do. Let's talk about training for fat loss and start with what most people get wrong when they start a fat loss phase, because if you understand this, it's going to set everything else up for a much better time. You've probably heard lots of advice, right? Part of our mission here on the show is to cut through that and try to clarify what makes sense versus what doesn't, what's nonsense, what's silly, that's not going to work. And when you're trying to lose fat, the biggest advice that I always see that is flat out wrong and can be counterproductive is that you need to lift lighter weights for higher reps to tone up to burn fat. Maybe you've been told to do more cardio, especially HIT, high-intensity cardio, and that's gonna accelerate fat loss and fasted training and use intermittent fasting. There's so many things about, you know, we burn more fat doing this. Maybe it's cut carbs to nothing at all and you're gonna burn more fat. All of that stuff. Maybe even things like cut your rest periods shorter because that keeps your heart rate elevated, burns more calories, right? All of this is everywhere. It's in fitness magazines, if you even know what that is. We'll say YouTube, Instagram, all of that. It's what the trainer at the gym who doesn't know what he's talking about might tell you. And that's what we're here to correct. So when people start a cut, when you start a cut, you're in a calorie deficit. And I would say, look, if you do nothing else, doing what you're already doing when you're not in a deficit, if it's effective, might be just fine. And that's it. And that's the end of the episode. You don't even have to listen. Okay. But for a lot of us, especially as we're over 40 and we have other recovery issues at play, there are things you have to think about. So what a lot of people do is they drop the weight on the bar, the dumbbells, whatever. I say the bar colloquially, but they drop the weight because they think lighter weights with higher reps is gonna help them burn more fat. So where they were doing a five rep program or, you know, even like five to eight or eight to ten, now they start doing higher rep programs. Maybe they cut the rest periods down, they do more circuit training, add more HIT, all of that kind of stuff. And and many times it's a mindset of, okay, now I'm in fat loss. I've got to go harder on everything, right? I've cut the calories, now I need to move more. It's that old mindset that doesn't work, although the logic seems at the surface level to make sense. But what happens instead is you're going to lose your strength because the main stimulus for strength is that intensity, that weight, that on the bar, right? That high level of percentage of your max. And then you're going to lose some of that muscle without the stimulus and you're going to get more exhausted, more depleted because your mode of training is going to be more like cardio. And now you're maybe adding more cardio on top of that. And so the irony is that trying to burn fat this way is going to just backfire in all the ways we don't want to backfire. You're going to look worse when you're done. You're going to maybe even plateau with your weight loss because of all the stress that's now causing your metabolism to adapt even further. You lose muscle, right? Our goal during fat loss when we're in a calorie deficit is we want to lose weight, sure, but we want to do it all from fat. We don't want to lose muscle. And so ironically, you end up losing muscle and getting more skinny fat and less definition and smaller, weaker, all of that stuff because you're doing something counterproductive. You're effectively throwing out what works about training. So you don't lose fat by changing how you train during fat loss. You do it by being in a calorie deficit and continuing to get that stimulus. Your nutrition creates the fat loss. Period. Your training's job during a cut is to send a signal to your body that says, keep the muscle, because we still need it, so that that weight loss comes from fat and it does become fat loss. Okay, we the extreme case of this today is weight loss medications when people are not lifting weights. They're gonna lose a bunch of muscle. Now you're saying, well, I am lifting, I'm just doing it a different way. Well, the problem is if you don't do it the right way, keeping the intensity at a reasonable level, at least enough to maintain your muscle, then you're gonna have a problem. So that's the first one. The the second one is this uncomfortable reality about what happens to strength and what happens to muscle. Let's clarify this right now. If you're gonna be successful during a fat loss phase, you are not going to linearly gain strength while losing body fat. And the only exception, the little asterisk on that footnote, is if you're brand new and you're just starting this for the very first time, but if you're doing that, why the heck are you in a calorie deficit right off the bat? You're not, you haven't listened to the show, obviously. I can point you to an episode like your very first cut, which we did, I think earlier in 2025. Maybe that was last year. But you should not be in a deficit right off the bat. Anyway, you should be working to build strength and build a foundation, not gain weight, not lose weight, and then go into fat loss phase. Anyway, enough of that rent. My point is you're not gonna, your goal isn't to gain PRs and gain strength in absolute terms while losing body weight. And I know that's not what you want to hear because you want body recomp, don't you? But being in a big deficit to lose fat, that's not the goal. And if you understand that reality, it separates you the people who do this successfully, lose fat, build muscle from those who don't. So when you're in a calorie deficit, several things are happening that affect your training performance. Your energy availability is, of course, lower because, well, you're eating less. Your recovery is compromised because your body has fewer resources to repair tissue. Your glycogen stores are depleted because you're not eating as much and you're probably not eating nearly as many carbs. And that affects your ability to produce the force on those, you know, in those lifting sessions. And if you're losing body weight, your leverages literally change, which can make the same weights feel heavier. And you're just lighter. You're lighter. You can't, you don't have as much cross-sectional area to produce the force that you did before. And of course, we're trying to get lighter, so that's okay. That's a trade-off that we make. Now, my coach, Andy Baker, fantastic strength coach, has been on the show at least, what, three times? He talks about this all the time that lighter lifters lose more strength when cutting than heavier lifters. That's that's uh kind of a side tangent on this that's important to understand. And if you think about the physics of it, it makes sense. A 150-pound person who loses 10 pounds is losing a bigger percentage of their body weight than a 220-pound person who loses the same 10 pounds. And oftentimes the amounts of weight loss are kind of similar, even when the person's baseline weight is quite different between two different people, and that's where we get these discrepancies. So, what's the goal during fat loss? It is not to PR your strength. Your goal is to preserve your muscle. That's a different thing, it's a different goal. So when we accept that, we can then accept that absolute strength will probably dip during a cut, and that's normal. But relative strength may actually increase. What do I mean by that? If you're squatting 225 for reps at 180 pounds body weight, and then you cut to 165 while maintaining 225, well, what is just happened? What just happened? Your strength relative to your body weight went up, even though the absolute number didn't change. And this could be a mental challenge to grasp because it feels like we're we're regressing or we're only holding. When in fact we're getting relatively stronger, but it's because we're losing body weight. So the real win during a cut is maintaining your muscle mass. You're going to look dramatically better when you do that. That's the goal. That's the body comp goal. You'll be leaner, you'll be more defined, you'll have kept the hard-earned muscle you built during your building phases. Exactly what bodybuilders are trying to do all the time. They're trying to spend an off season training super hard, eating a ton of food, building, building, building, building, improving. And then they want to efficiently cut that off. Efficiently and quickly, but not so quickly, that they lose muscle and reveal that hard-earned muscle. And that's why I tell people to think of a fat loss phase as a maintenance phase for muscle. You're not trying to grow, you're trying to hold on to what you have while your nutrition handles the fat loss. And that changes how you train. We're going to get into that now. And one of the ways it changes how you train is that it takes a lot less volume to maintain muscle. So you don't have to worry as much about the volume if you don't have the recovery for it. All right. So let's let's, if you take nothing else from this episode, remember this. During fat loss, try to keep your intensity high while reducing your volume. That is, I'll say, almost a universal principle that works for almost everybody. And that's the way I'm going to put it because nothing is absolute, right? If we're going to be nuanced about things. This is the opposite of what most people do. A lot of people keep volume the same or they increase it thinking more training, more fat loss, and then they're exhausted, their lifts crash, they lose muscle. No, we don't want to do that. The research is clear on this. Training intensity of about 75 to 85% of your one rep max maintains muscle beautifully during a deficit, right? You don't need high volume to maintain muscle. High volumes have diminishing returns because your recovery capacity is limited. What why is that? Well, volume is total number of hard sets per muscle group per week. And during a building phase, you might do upwards of 15 to even 20. I mean, that's really the high end, but I'll say 10 to 15 hard sets per muscle group to per week. During a cut, I would just drop that to about 10 to 12, maybe even below 10 for some muscle groups. Because again, we're thinking in terms of maintaining here and balancing the stimulus to fatigue, given we have limited recovery. So the key is keeping the weight on the bar heavy. Again, when I say weight on the bar, I just mean whatever weight you're pushing for whatever reps for whatever machine or implement you're using. Okay. I love barbells, I'm using that predominantly, but there's obviously a bunch of other things. And it also means training close to failure. That does, that never changes. That's a principle. And there, therefore, you're sending the signal to your body that it needs this muscle. High intensity, and intensity means percentage of your one rep max, means weight on the bar. It doesn't mean sweating and volume. And we say intensity, we mean load here. It tells your body this muscle is still necessary. Lower volume then reduces your systemic fatigue, which is a big factor on how well you recover and reduces soreness, gives you more energy, allows you to make best use of your nutrition and your sleep. So for something like your main lifts, you're still gonna stick to, say, your three to six or three to eight rep range. For your accessories, you're still probably gonna be around six to twelve. But maybe you're doing fewer sets. Maybe, not always. Interestingly, there are some really effective fat loss programs that I've run that use a set-based progression where you're increasing sets, but you're not increasing the load and you're just keeping the load reasonably high the whole time. You know, anywhere from roughly 70 to 90% of your max ish, maybe as low as 65%, but you're still in that regime. So a lot of people struggle mentally when it comes to this because more, more, more feels productive. But during a cut, more is often counterproductive. And in fact, more is often counterproductive no matter what. One of the biggest, I guess, counterintuitive things about this about fitness. So your margin of error for overreach, overtraining, overreaching shrinks in a deficit. Now, I'm not worried about any of you really overtraining in the classic sense, because most of you are just not training hard enough, but you might be overtraining in the quantity and fatigue sense, if that makes sense. Right. And then it just smashes you and then it's counterproductive. So during a building phase, for example, you might be hitting a lift twice or three times a week, say four, five, six working sets per session. If we're doing like accessories in there plus the main lift, let's say, and it comes out to 12 sets a week. During a cut, you might drop sets or you might drop frequency, or you might not and just maintain, but you don't get you don't get more volume than that. If anything, you might drop it. And so your overall volume for all your lifts across all sessions might be the same or less, generally. You're you're generally not gonna increase it, is my point. And you're always training within one to three repshi of failure. Classic mechanical tension principle that we care about for progressive overload. Understanding you're not gonna keep increasing your strength linearly here. That's what gets confusing to people. So that brings us to the next topic. See, I'm segueing naturally from one to the next. The next topic is auto-regulation. Auto-regulation. During a building phase, so when you're not into deficit, you can get away with pushing through when you're tired and hitting the reps you're trying to hit because you have other reserves usually from your food, for example, or even just the fact that you've been eating means you can slack off in other areas and still have enough recovery capacity. Maybe, hopefully. But during a cut, you definitely do not for the most part. If you're in a reasonable cut, if you're in a very, very, very light cut or you're aiming for body recomp, you know, that changes the game a little bit. But let's just assume a normal cut where you're cutting, say, 500 calories a day, and this is where auto-regulation becomes really helpful. Auto regulation means you're gonna adjust your training, you're gonna regulate your training based on how you feel and perform on any given day. That's the auto part. Auto, not meaning automatic, but auto as in it happens based on you on that day, right? I'm not very good at explaining the word itself, but it's adjusting your training based on how you feel perform rather than sticking to the exact, we'll say, loads and volumes. And this is where having your program set up in a way that just naturally uses auto-regulation so you don't have to think about it is helpful. Now, a lot of people will say, okay, that means RPE or RIR, rate of perceived exertion or reps in reserve. I actually prefer just using rep ranges for this. Like for me, auto-regulation comes from rep ranges. It can also, though, come from, let's say, testing a 1RM and using a back-off from that, for example, where the one RM, the one rep max, is that day's one rep max, not an all-time one rep max. And this is the way to tell on that day where am I? Another way to do this is using AMRAP, as many reps as possible on a final set, so that the next session you know what you're capable of. That is a little trickier and more advanced. So I'm not going to get into it too much. But for the most part, if you're using a rep range instead of sets across, so instead of three sets of five, it might be three sets of four to six. And that way you have a little bit of flexibility in there. And I would also say on your second and third sets, if you need to drop the weight to stay in the rep range, go ahead and do it. That because of the auto-regulation, right? Because you feel you need to do that. And you'll become more and more experienced with this over time. This is not an excuse to back off and not train heavy and hard. You still want to get within one to three rep shy failure. It's just getting there may require a little bit of a trade-off versus just linearly pushing it like you would in the past. Right. So on a good day, oh, you're feeling great. Maybe you're doing one of these weekend diet approaches I recommend where you're refueling on the weekend and then going back into the deficit on the weekday. Well, Monday, you may feel really good and get everything that you planned and everything's like a two R R I R, right? Two reps shy from failure. Perfect, great. But other days, in fact, most days in fat loss, you're probably going to be more fatigued. And if you hit the same weight, it might feel like one rep shy of failure. So you either do that, or if it's a grind, because you don't really want it to grind, you know, you drop off the weight for your back off sets, right? So you kind of have to feel it out a little bit. But if it's built in with rep ranges and with back offs and things like that, you can you can do it really well. Speaking of back offs, I do love back off sets and fat loss, where you might do two sets of your lifts. The first set is at a lower rep range, the second set is a little bit higher, but you drop the weight. Boom. It's a great way to deal with this. So the key here is being flexible, but not using excuses. It's kind of a fine line based on your load selection and based on the percentages and the rep ranges, right? You're not married to hitting exact specific numbers. It's auto regulation. So with the top set back off set approach, by the way, it doesn't have to be two sets. You could still do three sets. You could do two or three back off sets. Or you can do what we do in like the Westside style conjugate program, which Andy Baker introduced me to, where you test a 1RM and then you back off from that. You do, let's say, 90% for two to four or 80% for. Or three to six or something like that. And this approach then naturally adjusts to your readiness and fatigue level on that day, where the goal is to keep training hard enough to maintain your muscle, but not so hard that you dig yourself into a hole that you can't recover from. Because remember, again, what is your most limited resource during a cut? It is your recovery. So now let's talk about that. Again, another amazing segue. I'm proud of myself, guys. It doesn't usually happen this way. Recovery. This is where most people fail during fat loss. When you're in a calorie deficit, recovery capacity is far lower than it was when you weren't. And even lower than you might think. And guys, ladies and gentlemen, for those of you who've been dieting for a long time and need to just spend some time out of a diet, this doesn't apply to you. I don't want you to take this advice from that position. I would rather you recover, get to maintenance, fuel up, spend there, developing your foundational habits and your behaviors, then do a fat loss phase from a good place. Okay, that was a side tangent. So recovery drops, which means you accumulate fatigue faster and it takes longer to dissipate that fatigue. And some of that is very ever-present, literal fatigue, like your low back is just feeling achy from your Romanian deadlifts or your squats or something, and it's just not going away. And you got to listen to that because that's like bending before it breaks, right? I don't mean break like you're gonna break your spine. I just mean from an ability to hold on to things and progress and really train the way you want. So the first lever is reducing volume, which we already covered. The second lever, if you need to do it, is to reduce frequency, where instead of doing four days a week, you do three days a week. I love this move. It gives you an extra day of sleep as well. It gives you a little less pressure, and then you can kind of focus on some really good, efficient quality sessions. Now that doesn't mean you can't go the opposite direction, and three or four days a week becomes five or six, but very tiny sessions, because that's another way to switch things around without necessarily changing the frequency or just splitting things up across the week. Anyway, you have to figure out what's what works for you. And you also have to optimize the other things that support recovery. So, what would that be? Well, sleep. Come on, guys, sleep. If you weren't getting good sleep out of a deficit, oh damn, you really have to get good sleep during a deficit, right? If you're getting six hours, you probably need seven or eight, right? That's gonna affect your recovery and your hunger and your performance. Do the things, get your room dark and cool, stick to a consistent schedule, all the things. Stress management matters more during a cut as well. Chronic stress elevates cortisol, it promotes muscle breakdown, promotes fat storage, right? We're not trying to do that. We're trying to lose fat. We're trying to call on our resources the right way. We want to manage our stress through walking, through breathing, whatever works for you. Protein intake, people don't realize this. Oftentimes it needs to go up during a cut. If you're already hitting 0.7 or 0.8 grams per pound at least, stay at least there, but try jacking it up to up to one gram per pound and see if that makes a difference to your hunger, for example. Okay, and for your ability to stick to this. Not everybody needs to do that, but it's you definitely need to have that minimum, if not more, during fat loss. And then I want to I want you to consider adding light movement for recovery. This is gonna live you give you a little boost to your neat, non-exercise activity thermogenesis, and might actually help with the calorie burning side of the equation anyway. This is your, I'll call it, optimal form of cardio if we're gonna add cardio, and that is walking, easy biking, some mobility stuff that you enjoy. Maybe it's yoga, right? Nothing that's interfering with your lifting or adding more stress, things that increase blood flow without adding fatigue. Okay. Recovery is not just about the rest, it's supporting your body's ability to adapt the whole time during fat loss because you have fewer resources. Now, speaking of managing all these variables, because I know it sounds a little overwhelming when you're during a cut. And that's why, that's why people struggle with this sometimes. But if you're ready to do this, then do it the right way. So I want to tell you about something that can make this entire process dramatically easier. Some of you know, and if you don't, I'm telling you now, I've been working on an AI-powered coaching app called Fitness Lab, designed specifically to help with situations like this. If you're in a fat loss phase, you've got to adjust these things properly. Your training, your nutrition, you're not sure if you're doing too much or too little. Fitness lab is gonna figure that out with you and for you. It's a coaching intelligence layer. You tell it what you're trying to do as you go because it prompts you, it has conversations with you. There's a chat feature and it knows what phase you're in and it will help you make those smart decisions to pivot and to adjust to your training. Not make excuses, not back off. It still does a great job of prodding you in a good way to keep you accountable, but it looks at your biofeedback and your sleep and your stress. And by the time this episode comes out, we should have the Apple Health integration turned on, which levels it up even further. And by the way, we're coming out on Android as well. So again, depends on when this episode comes out, when this stuff is available. But the app is already out and it's incredible. The feedback we're getting about how helpful it's been, it's like having a coach in your pocket. Some people say it's like having Philip in your pocket. I hope that's not a terrible thing. Uh, if you like the podcast, it sounds weird to me, but it is what it is, right? If you log that you're feeling fatigued, if your biofeedback scores are low, if your last workout was logged as feeling harder, because it's gonna ask you that did this feel harder than last time? And you're like, yeah, actually it did. Fitness Lab's gonna take that and suggest something to change. It might pull back on the volume and adjust your load for the session based on that feedback. So you can still hit it hard, but not feel like past the point of no return with your fatigue. If you're being consistent, hitting targets, feeling good, it might push the progression a little bit, even during fat loss, because you can handle it. So, in addition to it being able to pull in your data, sleep, your steps, your heart rate variability, your rest, resting heart rate, all of that stuff with Apple Health, all of that, plus everything you tell it is going to give you extremely personalized coaching. Really like nothing you've ever been able to have before because of technology. So the app is now available. And from December 17 to January 2nd, you can get 20% off. Go to witsandweights.com slash app, check it out. There's a two-minute quiz that will give you a plan before you even decide whether you want the app. So that'll tell you, hey, yeah, this thing's for me or not. All right, no pressure. Witsandweights.com slash app. All right, let's get back to other adjustments you make to your training during fat loss. Let's talk about carbs and fuel because an underrated aspect of training during a cut is carbs in general, as well as the timing of the carbs. Carbs, carbohydrates, one of the three macros, of course, along with fats and protein, fuel your glycolytic lifting. They support your central nervous system. They do help protect and spare muscle, they reduce your perception of effort, they improve recovery. You guys know how much I love carbs. And if you didn't know that, and you know that now, and you're wondering, really? I thought carbs are bad, stick around. We love carbs on widths and weights because they are magical. And they're magical. During a cut, carb timing is also important. And the strategy here, because the carbs are lower. So here's the thing. Here's the thing, guys. In a cut, your calories are lower, but your protein's the same or higher. Ergo, or as they say in Latin, QED, or the three little dots, if you ever did geometry proofs, uh talking to my nerds out there. Ergo, the carbs have to be a lot lower. If protein's the same and calories are lower, the carbs have to be a lot lower. So in that case, you're down to 150, 100, maybe 70 grams of carbs, depending on where you are. Where do you put the carbs? Well, put them around your workout. If you train in the morning, load your carbs pre-workout, post-workout in the morning. So that's like maybe that's breakfast and your midday meal or lunch. Depend depends on when the timing, right? If you train in the evening, your carbs at lunch and dinner, meals further from training can be lower carb. They can have protein and fat, vegetables, low to almost no carbs potentially, right? We we still like some balance, but you can do that. And vegetables are a carb, and they're because they're fibrous, they will help balance out the digestion of blood sugars and all of that. But I would have your carbs around your workout because that's when it's most beneficial for your performance, for your recovery. So that's a strategic way to do it. And if you don't do it that way, if carbs are low, if they're poorly timed, if you train fasted during fat loss, your training might feel awful. Or if you're like, my training's okay, and now you try having a banana before you work out, tell me the difference. If you don't feel great, then that's you. The vast majority of people are like, whoa, that is fuel. That is like nitrous oxide. Nitrous oxide? Yeah, yeah. What is the stuff that when you're driving a non-street legal sports car and you want to go faster, right? Nitrous. So if you don't do that, you're gonna feel more flat, you're not gonna have a good pump, you're not gonna push as hard, all of that. You're gonna have a better performance, most likely, if you time your carbs around your training. And you know, I do I never suggest extremely low carb, even during a cut. If you can get at least 100 grams of carbs, that would be ideal. I know many of you can't because your calories are down to like 14, 13, 12, maybe 1100 if you're really petite, even lower than that. So it really is trading off one macro for the other. And oftentimes that's trying to keep fats reasonably low so you can do that. Not super low, just reasonable, like 20% instead of 30% of calories. All right. So one more mistake, I guess, I want to address is cardio itself. All right, a lot of people add cardio, just the big umbrella term cardio, to quote unquote accelerate fat loss. And it sounds appealing, right? Cardio can be intense, it can feel productive, it's exercise. Sometimes it doesn't take that long. Many of you hate cardio, but some of you don't. Some of you like it. Not many. Maybe that's my own bias putting on the on the population listening to the show. But during a deficit, when you're also strength training, cardio has to be very, very strategic because too much high-intensity cardio can be too stressful. And I mean like a lot of running, even a lot of high-intensity other cardio, like biking or something like that, like too much of it can interfere with your glycogen stores because you just don't have that many carbs. If you lift, if you do it before lifting, you're really gonna screw up your training. If you do it after lifting or in between your training sessions, you've got to think about when so it doesn't impact your recovery too much. And this is where the frequency and when you train and all of that can make a difference. So, cardio, especially at high intensity or lots of volume, can increase your systemic fatigue because it does tax your central nervous system. It can also do a little bit of muscle damage. And I don't mean that as a like scary thing, it's just preventing the muscles from adapting or recovering as fast if you do something like running, for example. And then it's gonna increase your overall stress. Now, again, exercise and training always increase stress a little bit. That's okay. It's a hormetic stress, but if you're doing a lot of it, it could increase more your chronic stress. And then that does the opposite of what we want. It promotes, it promotes a catabolic environment, which means breakdown of muscle, especially when you're in a calorie deficit. So, what do I recommend instead? Well, anything lower intensity, like walking, easy cycling, rowing at a conversational pace, and also the occasional sprinting can be fit in there. But I mean the anabolic sprinting, like we talk about on the show, that's very, very short, very high percentage of your capability for a short period, because those are highly that's still highly recoverable and will support your metabolism, not going to interfere with appetite. They're gonna increase your need a little bit still, they'll burn some more calories and they won't interfere with your strength training and your recovery. I would also do it after you lift, at least several hours, maybe on your off day. You know, you got to be smart about it, keep it low intensity. It's a tool. And I have talked to many lifters on the show who are big fans of a decent amount of cardio, but it's all relative. It's relative to your recovery capacity. So, really, that's all it is. Remember your deficit, your calorie deficit is what is driving fat loss, period. Right now, your cardio may up your expenditure a bit so that you can eat more and still be in the deficit, and that's okay. So, in that case, cardio should always support your goals. That's it. It should support your goals. It's contextual. All right, a couple more things to cover because this is becoming somewhat of a definitive episode. I want to talk about assistance work briefly. Assistance work meaning the non, you know, you've got your main lifts and then your assistance work, which is the higher volume accessory work. Now, when you're in a building phase, you're gonna have a ton of that, probably, right? Like you might have five or six different exercises every training session, and you're accumulating all this volume and you're creating all this metabolic stress because you're trying to grow your muscles and your strength. During a cut, think about the fact that you are not trying to add to your muscularity or to your strength. It'd be nice if we could, but it competes with the goal of trying to lose fat, sometimes to a big degree, where it's not even possible. Now you're doing neither. So the guideline for assistance work is probably something like one to two hard sets each, maybe five to eight reps. Make sure you're rotating movements over time. I don't mean every session, but you know, you're going through training blocks, let's say, so you don't have repetitive stress, depending on how stressful the lift is. And that's it. You know, it's probably not the time to be experimenting with lots of drop sets and supersets and pump work and finishers and all that, because it's just not gonna have the payoff. It's just not gonna have the payoff. Now, some people might disagree with me. There's some really great lifters out there who might say, no, you know, it's okay to do all this stuff. I'm not saying it's not okay. I'm saying you have to pick and choose based on what your goal is. It's less important than your main lifts, in my opinion. During a cut, recovery is limited. Dedicate your resources to the lifts that matter most. Keep those, the squat patterns, the deadlifts, the pressing, the pulling in place. Keep those patterns in place. Maintain all those big muscles with efficient movements that take less time, and then use the isolation work to just fill in the gaps. You also have to think about joint health, avoiding injury. You know, when you're fatigued, you might not be lifting as carefully or with as much focus. All that comes into play as well when it comes to these things. And that leads to the next thing, which is exercise selection. I would stick with what you know during fat loss. I would say fat loss is not the time to introduce a whole bunch of new exercises and learn a whole bunch of new movement patterns because you may not remember I mentioned before your leverages are different, your body's changing. Like it may not actually pay off to even learn certain things in this time because it's not going to feel the same when you're eating more again. So I would stick with things you're proficient at where you have good form and know how to load. That doesn't mean you can't switch them around, right? Over over over cycles, even if you haven't, it's not that it doesn't have to be the same thing you were just doing, but it's something that you already have some neuromuscular knowledge of. And of course, that should include all the basic movement patterns we've been talking about, squats and deads and presses and pulls and all that, and then some simple accessories. You know, don't start learning Olympic lifts during a cut, for example, if you've never done that before. That's all I'm talking about. Okay. It's stressful to do that. It's mentally and physically stressful, requires more focus, requires more practice sets, more warm-up, more volume. And then that could increase your injury risk. Maybe I'm being too cautious here. Let me know. You experienced trainers and coaches out there, if I'm full of it, let me know. But this is my observation. I think a fat loss phase should be very targeted at what you're trying to accomplish. And in my opinion, when you do that, it doesn't have to be as long because you're doing it efficiently and then you get through it in say eight weeks instead of 12 or 16. Now, I mentioned joint stress briefly. I do want to mention this because if certain movements start bothering your joints during a cut, which can happen because recovery is compromised, it's okay to modify the movement. You know, switch to a high bar or safety bar instead of a low bar. Use different grips, different widths, different potentially ranges of motion, depends on what we're talking about. I would say fat loss phases should be kind of boring from an exercise selection standpoint, where you're not trying to be creative. And if you're chasing programs that are like fat loss programs, that's a red flag for me, to be honest. All right, let's quickly talk about the psychological side of training during a cut. Just be realistic here, just like with the diet side of things, it's not gonna feel as good as during a building building phase. You're just gonna feel kind of flatter. You're not gonna feel the pump, most likely, because you don't have the calories and the carbs and all that. Your strength is gonna dip, as we mentioned. Your sleep is probably gonna be harder to come by, you're gonna have more hunger. All of this is normal. It's the cost of being in a deficit, and I don't want to sugarcoat it for you. So the mindset shift here is you are not chasing performance during a cut, you're maintaining your performance. If even though I do want you to think of, you know, I'm I'm see, this is tough. Depends on how your mind works. If it helps you to have a stretch goal and say, look, I'm gonna try to get stronger and build muscle, even though I might not, great. That actually does kind of work for me. For some people, it's very discouraging because then when they see the numbers staying the same, they feel like they're failing. So it's kind of setting those realistic expectations. If your strength is the same, but you lose 15 pounds, that's a massive win, right? Don't compare your current cut also to a previous building phase or someone who's not in a deficit. Stay in the lane and trust the process for you and compare yourself to yourself, right? And not to yourself when you were building. It's it's temporary discomfort, and it's just that it's temporary, but it is gonna happen. You are gonna have discomfort. And then when you get back to maintenance or surplus, your strength is gonna shoot back up. You're gonna look incredible because you preserved everything during the cup. And of course, you're gonna track a lot more than just a few things. You're not gonna just track weight on the bar, you're gonna track your body weight trend, your body composition, your clothes, your sleep, your hunger, your energy, your mood. Because if your strength dips slightly, but all the other things are pre good, you're losing fat, you're sleeping okay, you're not miserable, you're not that hungry. You're doing great, you're doing great, it's okay. All right, so let's recap the key adjustments. Accept that strength will dip slightly. Your goal is to maintain muscle, not gain strength. Keep intensity high, at least 75% of your max, but probably reduce the total volume. Maybe as much as 30 to 50%, but that really depends on your response and how aggressive the deficit is. Use auto-regulation, whatever that means for you. Rep ranges, top set, back off sets. Manage recovery aggressively. Now that that's sounds counterintuitive, right? Be aggressive with your recovery. Sleep, stress management, protein, the low intensity movement, all of that. Time your carbs around training, avoid too much high-intensity cardio, keep assistance work minimal relative to your main heavy lifts, stick with familiar exercises and set realistic expectations. And if you follow these guys, you will preserve muscle, lose fat, and come out of your cut looking lean, strong, and ready to build again. So before we wrap it up, I want to mention Fitness Lab one more time because this is exactly the kind of situation where having an AI coaching layer that I've spent blood, sweat, and tears developing for you guys with all of these philosophies and principles can make a huge difference. When you are managing a fat loss phase, things are stressful. You're juggling a deficit, your training, your biofeedback, your recovery, your macros, all that stuff, and it can feel overwhelming. And sometimes it's hard to know if you're on track. That is why I developed Fitness Lab. It helps you make those decisions with confidence. It kind of takes the stress off of you. It does a lot of that thinking for you, it takes some of the emotional stress. I know it's a machine, but until you try it, don't knock it. Try it. And you've got to give it a little bit of time. You've got to give it at least, you know, a few weeks just so that it starts to learn from you. Because it's going to take your data and your progress and how you're feeling and tell you what to do next. It's going to suggest it and you can chat with it. It's now available on iPhone and Android, integrates with Apple Health, and you get 20% off from December 17th through January 2nd. Go to witsandweights.com slash app just to learn about it. Take a two-minute quiz so you can see if it's right for you. You don't even have to buy the app until you decide it's right for you. Witsandweights.com slash app. All right, that is it for today's episode. I hope this gave you a clear framework for how to adjust your strength training during fat loss so you can preserve every bit of muscle built. Until next time, keep using your wits, lifting those weights, and remember to always train with intention. I'll talk to you next time here on the Wits and Weights podcast.

Philip Pape 12/15/25 Philip Pape 12/15/25

5 Nutrition Mistakes That Kill Body Recomp (Calories vs. Macros vs. Micronutrients) | Ep 413

Most people build their nutrition from the top down: calories first, macros second, micronutrients as an afterthought. That approach works from a pure energy balance and weight loss perspective but often collapses during body recomposition when you're trying to lose fat and build muscle. Discover why the traditional nutrition hierarchy is backward and the 5 specific mistakes that prevent successful body recomp. Learn the bottom-up framework that makes simultaneous fat loss and muscle gain actually work.

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Discover why the traditional nutrition hierarchy is backward and the 5 specific mistakes that prevent successful body recomp. Learn the bottom-up framework that makes simultaneous fat loss and muscle gain actually work.

You'll understand why micronutrients drive metabolism and energy production, how flexible dieting fails without nutrient anchors, the fiber sweet spot for body recomp, why perfect macros can't overcome poor training performance, and how to use biofeedback instead of just tracking calories.

This episode gives you a practical system to optimize nutrition for strength training, muscle building, and sustainable fat loss without feeling hungry, weak, or stuck on a plateau.

Timestamps:

0:00 - Flipping the nutrition pyramid for body recomposition
2:52 - Micronutrients and body recomp
7:12 - Constraint theory and metabolic bottlenecks
12:16 - Carbs, fat burning, and ATP
17:11 - Building nutrient-dense meal patterns for muscle gain
20:36 - Flexible dieting with nutrient anchors (not just IIFYM)
25:56 - The fiber "sweet spot" for digestion and metabolism
31:20 - Macro targets that support strength training performance
36:12 - Meal timing and tracking gym performance
40:10 - Using biofeedback over blind calorie tracking

Most nutrition advice starts with calories, then macros, and leaves micronutrients for last. That order works for simple weight loss, but it fails when the goal is body recomposition. Recomp demands two jobs at once: release stored energy while protecting and building muscle. Your physiology runs on enzymes and pathways powered by vitamins and minerals first, which then allow macros to do their jobs and make calorie balance meaningful. When micros are low, hunger spikes, training drags, and recovery stalls, even when macros look perfect on paper. A bottom-up approach begins with nutrient sufficiency, then optimizes macros for performance, and finally uses calories to drive the outcome.

Micronutrients enable energy production and tissue repair. B vitamins, magnesium, and manganese help turn carbs into ATP; carnitine and CoQ10 support fat oxidation; zinc, magnesium, and vitamin D are critical for protein synthesis; selenium, iodine, and zinc support thyroid conversion. If these are insufficient, you can eat “right” and still feel wrong. That’s why diverse, nutrient-dense foods should anchor every meal: fruit, vegetables, legumes, root vegetables, whole grains, dairy, eggs, shellfish, and yes, red meat. Flexible dieting works only when built on these anchors. Otherwise you risk the modern paradox of being overfed in calories but undernourished in cells, with cravings, flat workouts, and inconsistent results.

Fiber sits at the center of gut health, satiety, and steady energy. Too little fiber leads to hunger, blood sugar swings, and poor digestion. Too much too fast can cause bloating and reduce mineral absorption. Most lifters still undershoot fiber, making 20 to 30 grams a practical target, adjusted by size and tolerance. Increase gradually, hydrate well, and get fiber from varied whole foods. A simple weekly heuristic—the 721 rule—keeps variety high: seven plant colors, two seafood servings, one organ meat or nutrient-dense alternative. This diversity delivers polyphenols and cofactors that quietly raise metabolic efficiency, which makes deficits more tolerable and surpluses more productive.

Macros should support training, not just math. Many lifters hit protein and calories but underfuel carbs around workouts, then wonder why reps drop and soreness lingers. Performance-friendly macros pair high-quality proteins (eggs, Greek yogurt, fish, red meat, tofu) with nutrient-dense carbs (potatoes, oats, fruit, legumes) and balanced fats (olive oil, nuts, avocado, fatty fish). Simple pre-workout fuel—like a banana and protein—often restores drive and volume. Track lifts weekly. If performance stalls, adjust carbs, meal timing, or recovery before slashing calories. Training is the engine; macros are the fuel; micros are the ignition system that lets the engine fire.

Data is only useful with context, and biofeedback provides that context daily. Hunger after meals, digestion, energy, sleep, mood, libido, training progression, stress response, and fluid retention are real-time signals. If multiple markers trend down for a week or more, change inputs: more nutrient density, a fiber tune-up, or a carb shift around training. Micronutrient insufficiency itself acts like metabolic adaptation, lowering resting energy output and making deficits feel harsher than they are. A practical framework is the bottom-up “recomp plate”: each meal includes a micronutrient anchor, a protein anchor, and a carb or fat that fits training demands. Review your log weekly for color diversity, seafood, and nutrient-dense choices. Build from the bottom up, and your physiology will finally cooperate with your plan.

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Philip Pape: 0:01
Most people build their nutrition from the top down. Calories first, then macros, maybe micronutrients as an afterthought. That approach breaks when your goal is body recomposition. You might hit your calorie targets, you might dial in your protein, macros might be on point, but if you're hungry, if your training feels flat, if the mirror isn't changing, something is obviously off. Today I'm showing you why the traditional nutrition hierarchy is often backward and the five mistakes that prevent successful body recomp before it even begins. Welcome to Wits and Weights, the show that helps you build a strong, healthy physique using evidence, engineering, and efficiency. I'm your host, certified nutrition coach Philip Pape, and creator of the Fitness Lab app. And today we are going to flip around the nutrition pyramid. You've probably been told that there is a hierarchy where calories are on the bottom, they matter the most, then macros, then everything else. And in fact, I've created pyramids just like this because in many cases they make the point that energy balance, if you're trying to control weight, needs to take precedent, or else the other things aren't going to matter. You eat in a deficit to lose fat, and then you hit your protein, and the rest of it is less important. The problem is what I find people doing when they take that as approach is they go to an extreme. And then when they're trying to lose fat and they're trying to build and hold on to their muscle, there's cracks in the model because they are not looking ahead to the other things that are actually more important in the moment. Like, hey, my hunger signals are telling me I'm always starving. What is going on, even though I have my calories and macros on point? So even if you are great at tracking, even if you know how to induce a deficit or maintain or surplus, even if you know how to hit and maintain consistent protein, and yet your body doesn't cooperate or you feel weak in the gym or you're always hungry or your recovery isn't great. And then week after week, month after month, things aren't changing the way you expect. From a nutrition standpoint, as it impacts your physical results, something is going wrong in that process. And that's because your physiology is complicated and it has to be equipped to handle what you are trying to do, your specific goal, which your goal is not weight loss. Your goal is fat loss, building muscle, improving your health, improving all of these things at the same time. And your physiology runs on nutrition, aka micronutrients first, then macros, and then calories. And I'm gonna explain why today, why that's a different way to think about it. It doesn't necessarily up-end the traditional pyramid, but it's complementary to it, or it's a different angle on the same thing that might be more helpful to people. So today I'm gonna break down five mistakes that I believe are holding back successful body recomposition, not to add complexity, but about putting the right thing first if you're the type that is struggling when you've tried the traditional approach. So, mistake number one is thinking that calories and macros matter more than micronutrients, because after all, they're in the bottom of most of these pyramids. Let me start with constraint theory. This is from engineering, and I talk about it all the time in the context of figuring out your root cause. In any system, performance is going to be limited by the narrowest bottleneck, right? If you optimize everything downstream of that bottleneck, but haven't addressed the constraint, nothing improves. And in fact, you put a lot of effort and work into something for it not to improve, which is even more frustrating. Or then you put up your hands and say, this doesn't work, and that's not really the reason why it's not working. And so most people approach nutrition what I'll call top-down. You know, you've listened to podcasts, you've read all the great books, you follow great evidence-based people like I do, and then you conclude, okay, I need to figure out calories for my goal. Am I trying to lose weight, maintain, gain? Then I need to set my macros to balance everything out the right way: protein, fats, carbs, and then maybe think about the types of foods and the qualities of food sometimes as an afterthought, because you may have heard people say, well, once you've got your macro, once you're hitting your macros, you're inevitably going to have the right foods. Well, this works for a simple weight loss approach, but body recomposition, you know, trying to lose fat, trying to build muscle, whether you're doing it at the same time or over the long term with cuts and bulks, there are a lot more needs and demands that you have to understand metabolically for the most part. But that also includes things like hormones. You're asking your body to do two things at once. You're asking it to release stored energy, but you're also trying to keep it strong and build or maintain muscle. And they're they're kind of, I'm not gonna say they're contradictory, right? Because we do do both at the same time, but you have to understand how it all works. Building muscle, of course, requires protein synthesis. This is at the crux of both why we strength train, but also why we focus so much on protein when we are losing weight so that we can hold on to that muscle. Losing fat specifically requires efficient energy metabolism, right? Is what the way the word I like to use. It's not just weight loss. Recovering from training requires that you repair your at the cellular level, right? You have to repair your tissue and recover. All of this actually depends heavily on your micronutrients, your B vitamins, your magnesium, zinc, iron, manganese, copper, and dozens of others. Without them, your body can't run the biochemical pathways needed for recomp or do them efficiently, even when macros are quote unquote perfect. So micronutrients are determining how you feel, regardless of your body weight. You might lose some fat and you might gain some muscle, but if you feel terrible, if you are exhausted, if you're irritable, mood swings, bloated, weak, constantly hungry, your biochemical foundation isn't there. And I see this at all different types of goals. In other words, I even if someone's in a muscle-building phase with a surplus, just because they're eating enough food doesn't mean they have enough micronutrients. When that foundation is missing, then the adherence is the first thing to go. That is where you quit or you binge or you program hop. It's not because you lack discipline, but because your body is fighting you because you're not giving it what it needs. So if we were to flip this around and have a bottom-up model, not a reprioritization, understand, but it but ensuring that each of these blocks are accounted for, I think you have a higher chance of being successful. So, what does that look like? Micronutrients first, build that biochemical operating system, making sure you actually have them in there, because otherwise a lot of the other things are gonna hit a wall fast. Then your macros, you're gonna fuel your system with the right protein, carbs, and fats, and then your calories, using energy balance to drive the fat loss or muscle gain. And the reason I like it in this order now, where I used to be very dogmatic about saying calories come first, is because everything downstream will work better. Your hunger will be better regulated, your training will improve, you'll you'll recover faster, and body recomp becomes easier and more frictionless, frictionless while you still have to understand that calories are at the foundation of energy balance, and then macros are at the foundation of things like muscle protein synthesis and hormones and energy and recovery from a macro basis. So let me give you some examples because this could be confusing. Your body's ability to turn carbohydrates into usable energy, and by the way, we should be eating our carbs. If you found this podcast for the first time and you're like, why is he talking about carbs? Low carb, right? No. Should be eating carbs, requires for your body to use it as energy, it requires B vitamins, magnesium, and manganese. That's those are examples. If you're low in these, your body can't efficiently extract the energy from carbs, and that'll make you a little bit sluggish. Even if you're eating a lot of carbs, that affects your workouts. And it also affects your cravings because down to the cellular level, mitochondria, right, powerhouse of the cells, you're not getting what you need. Fat, what about fat burning? Fat oxidation. Well, you have to have B vitamins and carnitine and coenzyme Q10, right? CoQ10. And fat oxidation, you know, is a complicated subject because we're not talking about burning fat in and of itself as being some superior thing. We're just talking about your ability to burn fat at all in an efficient way in the context of the energy balance that gives you that deficit. Okay. Protein synthesis requires zinc, magnesium, vitamin D, and of course protein, but we're talking at the micronutrient level. So if you're deficient in some of these, and most people are deficient at least in magnesium and possibly vitamin D, you can eat a ton of protein and still struggle to build muscle as well as you think because your body can't use that muscle, that protein efficiently. What about thyroid hormone conversion, T4 to T3? You need selenium, iodine, zinc. We all know that, right? Like iodine and selenium come up a lot in thyroid discussions. And so low levels of those foods can then affect your thyroid conversion and that tanks your metabolic rate. And then you think you have a thyroid issue when in fact you just have a micronutrient issue, micronutrient issue. Even if you're eating plenty of food, okay, that's why it's not just a calorie thing. Obviously, if you are under-eating and you can fix that, it gets that variable out of the way. But you might have a micronutrient deficiency, which we've seen in the evidence can drop your resting metabolic rate by as many as hundreds of calories a day, where you might think you're in a calorie deficit because you're eating, you know, quite a low amount of food that's not satiating you. But if your metabolism is kind of keeping down along with that low eating, then you're actually at maintenance, but you don't feel like it. You feel like crap, right? Like you feel like you're not eating nearly what you should be. And that's why people say, you know, my macros are perfect, but I'm always hungry. Or I'm hitting my protein, but I don't feel like I have enough energy in the gym. Or I'm eating healthy, but I feel terrible, right? The problem isn't the macros in that case. It's that the body doesn't have the micros to run your, you know, metabolic pathways as efficiently. And I'm not one to fear-monger. I'm not saying everybody has just massive nutrient deficiencies, but we've had some folks on the show, like Sarah Ballantine, who do talk about this as super important, right? For things like gut health, microbiome diversity, satiety, how you feel, lots of things in your body doing lots of different things. And really, it's about diversity here. It's not about having to get a specific food or another, although certain foods are powerhouses of certain nutrients, and it's good to be educated on that. So making sure every meal includes at least one micronutrient-dense food as a priority is the way to go here. It's it's actually quite simple. You know, fruit, vegetables, nuts, legumes, root vegetables, whole grains, dairy, eggs, even organ meats and shellfish. You notice it's not just fruits and vegetables, not just plants. All of these things have a lot of nutrition. And provide and yes, even red meat. I've I've had people comment on YouTube videos being like, oh, did you know red meat? That causes diabetes. I'm like, where are these people learning their information? Diabetes is caused by excess consumption and obesity, and not by sugar or red meat. So all of these nutrient-dense foods provide the vitamins, the minerals, and things that are not on the label, like phytonutrients, right? These are compounds and plants that your body needs to run efficiently. Your metabolism is affected by these guys. So even if it's even if it hits you as, hey, I want to increase my metabolism, it could be a lack of micronutrients that's causing you to have a suppressed metabolism. Now, that doesn't mean you can't have flexible foods. Notice the list I just gave you was a huge list of foods to begin with. It just means you anchor your diet with nutrient density and then build flexibility around that. And then you're gonna feed that into, okay, how does that meet my macros and my calories? You see, you see this, you see that why this approach makes a lot of sense. So this brings us to make mistake number two. Mistake number two is using flexible dieting, but without nutrient anchors. So, what do I what do I mean by this? Well, I'm a huge proponent of flexible dieting. And that's the ability or flexible eating is another way to call it, the ability to fit foods that you love into your plan because that is what makes nutrition sustainable, period. Like that one rule is near the top of the list. It doesn't mean binging on ultra-processed foods, it means having flexibility and not telling yourself that certain foods are quote unquote bad when they are perfectly fine in some level of moderation or context in your dietary pattern. But flexible dieting only works when you build it on nutrient density. And I've had episodes in the past where I compare flexible dieting, if it fits your macros, to a more flexible, flexible approach, if that means, where you're really expanding what this definition means, because most people do it backward. They start with, oh, I can eat anything as long as it fits my macros. But then they feel terrible, they can't recover, they hit a wall, their hormones, all the things, right? And I would say there are three gaps or three problems with this approach, this macro-centric approach only, that affect fat loss, that affect recomp. The first one is that you're just not getting enough of the nutrients, what we just talked about. The second one is that gut issues or low stomach acid, medications, poor digestion, are preventing some of the absorption of the nutrients you do eat. So a lot of people have issues with nutrient absorption. We don't talk about that a lot on the show. And I'm remiss if I don't, as obviously a nutrition coach. And then I'll say the utilization gap is the third gap where the inflammation in your body, and I'm talking about blood marker-based, legitimate inflammation, right? The cellular response of your body to stress, including the stress itself, and toxins, which would be things like, you know, smoking, alcohol, drugs, potentially some environmental toxins, although I don't want to overplay those. Maybe missing cofactors that prevent using the nutrients, even if absorbed. It could be some genetic things as well. But anyway, the you know, intake, absorption, and utilization of nutrients. And so if you have a flexible diet, but you're not thinking about nutrients, you're gonna have big gaps like this. You might hit your protein using just chicken breast and whey. And you might hit your carbs with just white rice and bagels, and you might hit your fats with just butter and cheese, and then hit your macros perfectly. And you know what's ironic here or not ironic, but you can take a pizza and make the perfect macro-friendly pizza. But think about how you're gonna feel every time if that's all you ate. So micronutrient intake is often very poor in what I see. And this is why with my own like one-on-one clients, I get all their data. Most of them use macrofactor and all the nutrition data is in there, but maybe use chronometer, maybe track yourself. Doesn't matter. The the micronutrient, I will see things that are way lower than they need to be. Potassium, magnesium, zinc, B vitamins, fiber. I know fiber is a weird one because it's it's a kind of a macro or it's part, it's a type of carb, but I consider it a nutrient as well. Polyphenols, you can't really track, but if you have diversity in color, this is why I like, I do like color. It sounds like old school, but having enough color on your plate often takes care of some of the polyphenol and compound concerns. Everything your body needs to feel good, to perform well, to actually build muscle while losing fat. And by the way, this is why fad diets and restrictive diets, any kind, whether it's vegan and vegetarianism on one hand or carnivore on the other, are really missing out. You're really missing out on all this stuff. And to claim that you don't need them is really shameful and honestly dangerous. Because micronutrient status is poor in this kind of diet, your metabolism downregulates from that. Your hunger then goes up. You're you have the low energy, you have the poor training. You see where I'm going with all this. It's a repeated pattern. And then you might be craving more of that. We'll just call it junk food, but you know what I mean, ultra-processed foods, because your body is literally starving for nutrients, even though you're eating enough calories. So you just go for whatever you can to make up that difference. So the paradox of flexible dieting done incorrectly is that you could be overfed on calories but undernourished down in your body at the at the cell, down to the cellular level. So the solution here is nutrient anchors. A nutrient anchor. And I by the way, I think I learned this from this phrase, I think I'm taking it from Vitality Blueprint. They're the the company I partner with for performance blood work. I think they, I think the they've used this phrase. Okay, but I've also used anchors before in terms of like protein and fiber anchors. But this is a nutrient anchor, a high-quality micronutrient dense food that you have in most of your meals. So even if the rest of your diet is flexible, you're always hitting your micronutrient needs and you're kind of rotating through these. So this is actually pretty simple, and a lot of what you want to eat anyway is gonna mat is gonna satisfy you. So, for example, Greek yogurt instead of a low-fat processed form of dairy, or potatoes instead of rice cakes, or legumes instead of protein bars, right? Or red meat or eggs instead of only chicken breasts, or fruit instead of some other dessert. Now, some of these swaps are a little, I'll say harder for folks. So you're going from like a really yummy processed food like ice cream, and I'm telling you to eat fruit. I'm not saying all the time. I'm just saying think about those kinds of swaps. It's not that the calories or macros change, it's that you're picking something with more nutrients potentially. And anything processed is probably just gonna have fewer nutrients, even if it's quote unquote clean or has quote unquote clean ingredients, like some good protein bar that you like. Okay, I get the convenience, but just remember the more that you have, the less you're gonna have of the micros. So protein fat carbs are often checked off, but then where are the vitamins, the minerals, the fiber? Right? So it this is not about cutting things out. Do you see? This is really anchoring and being intentional. So, what is what does a meal plan for this look like? Well, simple breakfast, Greek yogurt, berries, granola, maybe oatmeal, maybe eggs with egg whites. A lot of options there. Lunch, a burrito bowl with rice, beans, chicken, veggies, cheese. Snack could be an apple with peanut butter. Simple. I love apples for fiber. That's your anchor. Dinner, steak, roasted potatoes, a salad, right? Again, you got your potatoes, your salad, your fiber, maybe, maybe a some sort of cruciferous vegetable. Dessert, whatever fits your macros. Ah, see what I did there. That's the flexibility. So you're getting nutrient density at every meal, but you still have flexibility. You don't have to eat bland food like chicken and broccoli. I mean, chicken and broccoli can be delicious. I don't mean to criticize those specifically. You're not eliminating food groups. You are making sure the foundation is there, and then flexible dieting works so beautifully. Then you feel good, then you recover well and train well, and the body recomp becomes easier because your body has what it needs. All right, before we get into mistake number three, I want to tell you about something that I think will make this entire process easier because everything we're discussing today micros, macros, training performance, biofeedback, it all comes together in one place, and that is my new app, Fitness Lab. Fitness Lab is an AI-powered fitness coaching app. But, guys, it's nothing like you've seen before when it comes to AI because it is trained on all my podcast content, coaching. And yes, even my personality, I've given a lot of guidance on how to convey things and how to be compassionate and empathetic. If you can believe that or not, AI is able to do that. It's now available on iPhone. And if if it's not already, shortly it'll be out on Android and it's gonna have full Apple Health integration on iPhone. It's like having a coach in your pocket who understands this nutrition model based on micros, macros, and calories. It doesn't just tell you eat less or track your macros, it's a lot more intuitive and nuanced and helps you. Build a system. It'll look at your specific meals and look for color and micros and fiber and balance and calories. It looks for all these things and gives you feedback so you can nudge your diet in the right direction. And as we continue to integrate with Apple Health, it'll be able to pull in things like your sleep metrics and even your nutrition metrics if you use another logger like my macrofactor or my fitness pal. You get conversational coaching. If you've never done that before, it's it's incredible. People are writing in saying, I can't believe it like understands me and can answer my questions. It's like I'm talking to you, Philip. It gives you analysis of your meal patterns. What are you missing nutrient-wise? Training guidance. It could either give you your program and form checks, or it can help you reflect on a program that you're already following. So all of this stuff, it's so adaptable and it evolves every day. You can tell it what you'd like it to focus on or not, and it will follow that. Right now, through the end of the year, you can get 20% off with our holiday promotion. Now, I think this episode comes out a couple days before December 17th, in which case I'm gonna include a link in the show note to give all my listeners early access to 20% off. It's a different link, it's a secret link I have, but it's the same result. 20% off your subscription to the app. All you have to do is click the link in the show notes. Don't go to the app store and look for it. Use the special link in the show notes to claim that, get the discount. That link will help you walk through a two-minute quiz. It'll create a custom plan before you ever pay or do anything to understand if it's right for you. And then you can jump in. And then there's even a refund period. So, guys, there's no risk at all. Go to with no, go to the link in the show notes to claim that. All right, let's talk about mistake number three, which is mismanaging fiber and gut health. Okay, fiber deserves its own category because too little of it is a big problem. And too much of it can be a problem as well. Most people don't have that issue. I know people who eat a lot of fiber and it just is not too much. So I don't worry about that as much. Kind of like with protein, you can almost never have too much. You can definitely have too little, and that's the usual issue, especially if you're on something like carnivore, then you're not getting any at all and you're somehow believing the claims, the false claims that somehow you don't need fiber. And you're gonna pay for that, you know, later on. You're not paying for it this month or next year, but you're gonna pay for it. So if you're eating as little as, say, five to 15 grams of fiber, which is shockingly common among this community, even people that lift weights, who are eating lots of protein and focusing on this stuff, you're still not getting enough fiber. I know this for a fact because almost every client that comes in with me, they could have everything else dialed in and still, they don't have enough fiber. And you're gonna have issues. You're gonna have potentially poor digestion. So if you already do have poor digestion and you add a bunch of fiber and you might find that that takes care of the issue. You might have a lot of hunger that you shouldn't have because a little more fiber will make you a lot fuller at your maintenance calories. You might have some issues with blood sugar because you're not balancing your meals, so you get all the energy crashes from blood sugar. I'm not saying you need to wear a continuous glucose monitor and keep blood sugar from spiking. No, blood sugar spikes are normal. It's the crashes that happen because you have in unbalanced meals that then cause your energy to energy to fluctuate and make you crave food. Okay, and that's really the issue. And then you eat too many calories. On the other hand, if you massively ramp up your fiber because you were low and you went from 10 to 60 grams of fiber with like the wheat starch breads or psyllium husk supplements or something, metamusle, something like that, be careful. You might have bloat gas, you might reduce absorption of key minerals. And I sometimes people come see see people complain who've gone from a low carb or carnivore type diet, and then they add in all this fiber, like, oh, I felt horrible. It's just all and they did it for like three days, you know? Guys, you've got to let your body adapt. You're changing a lot of things physiologically and in your gut. All right. Fiber is so critical. Research shows that phytic acid, which is found in high fiber foods like whole grains, legumes, nuts, and seeds, that can reduce magnesium absorption by half. So if you're already low in magnesium and then you eat a ton of fibers, you could make the deficiency worse. So this is why I say not to jump up so much in fiber. And this is also some of the critic, the critique of like, oh, too much fiber is bad. No, too much fiber is not bad. It's you need fiber and you need other things. So when you go from a standard American diet or a Western style diet to quote unquote clean eating overnight, you could feel issues, to be honest. Like you start pounding oatmeal and brown rice and whole wheat bread and beans and vegetables, which are quote unquote healthier, but then your gut isn't ready. And that's where the bloat, the lack, the discomfort, the nutrient depletion comes from. So take that in mind. That's that's the reasonable, nuanced approach. For most people, 20 to 30 grams a day is the sweet spot. Women need a little less, men need a little more, but it's really based on your size and how much you're eating. It's enough to support digestion, stable blood sugars, satiety, gut health. Those are the big buckets. And it's not so much that it causes bloating or mineral malabsorption. Now, I know people that eat 60 or 70, but they've gotten adapted to it. Somebody that really loves apples, you know who you are. She will know who I am. And there's nothing wrong with that. It's fine if you can handle that. Okay. So increase it gradually. If you're at 10 now, you know, add five grams next week every day, and then five a day again, and just get up there. And then the other key here really is getting it from food and getting it from variety, diverse foods. Don't just eat the same high fiber foods every day. Mix it up. Different fibers feed different gut bacteria. Different plant foods have different polyphenols and phytonutrients. So there's a really cool framework that you may have heard of called the 721 rule. It's seven plant colors a week, two seafood servings a week, and one organ meat or nutrient-dense alternative a week. So the colors are just all the different colors: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple, white, so that you get your phytonutrients. The seafoods would be for omega-3s. So I know a lot of you are taking a fish oil, but really having both, you know, having those fattier fish like salmon, uh, it's a great idea. Selenium, iodine, zinc. You can look up which foods are high in those. If you eat shellfish and things like that, it's great. And then the one organ meat or nutrient-dense alternative, you know, like liver, but a lot of people don't like it. I would say chicken liver is milder than beef liver, but have but eggs, shellfish, fortified dairy are all in that category too. And that's very common for people looking at protein anyway, right? So it's it's that rotation of foods that covers your bases. And when you get this right, when you're in that 20 to 30 gram range and you have a lot of variety, you're probably gonna find things improve. You're gonna have better hunger, better blood sugar, better digestion, and you're just gonna feel better, which then impacts mistake number four, which is macros, macro targets that don't support your training performance. All right, so this is setting macros that look good on paper because you're following some rubric, including ones that I might share as like a starting point, but then they're not optimal for you and your performance. And that's frustrating, right? Because a client will tell me, hey, I'm hitting my macros, my protein's high, my calories are where they need to be, but I don't feel great in the gym. I don't have energy. I'm losing reps. I I don't, you know, I can't recover as well. I'm feeling sore. And then when I dig into it, I'll I say, okay, you know what? You are hitting your macros very consistently, but it's really not best for you right now. We're gonna need to tweak them. And that that's where the self-experimentation and the biofeedback are so important because it isn't, it is, even if it were just about macros, it still has to be the right macros for you. Makes sense, right? Body recomp is highly dependent on your training. You can't lose fat and build muscle without good high-quality training. And that requires energy. Yes, energy. We we just don't talk about this enough for whatever reason. I'm not talking about just calories, although that's important, but even in a fat loss phase where you're in a deficit, you could still optimize your energy. And I'm talking about ATP here. That's the molecule your muscles use to contract adenosine triphosphate, triphosphate, ATP. You can't efficiently create ATP without micronutrients. Oh, okay. So here's the pattern. We're getting back to pat to mistake number one: B vitamins, magnesium, manganese, iron, copper, alpha lipoic acid. You don't, again, you don't have to like be a nutrition scientist. It's just understanding that without the right micronutrients, your body will struggle to turn the food into usable energy, and that impacts your training, right? That's where you can't hit the reps and you feel like you can't progress, you can't push hard enough to create the stimulus, you feel tired in the gym. And then if you're not creating that stimulus, you're not building muscle. If you're not building muscle, then you're just potentially losing weight and not, or you know, best case, holding on to your muscle and never quite able to add more and defeats the whole purpose. And you just feel stuck. And that's why people say, hey, my macros are perfect, but X, you know, I feel weak or whatever the thing is they feel. So that's the bottleneck, right? If training performance is the thing that really pushes the muscle side of the equation, macronutrients are important and we want to fix that. So make sure, first of all, that you're not just hitting protein, carbs, and fats in isolation, that the foods you choose are nutrient-dense. We've already discussed this a lot today. But to break it down by macro, for protein, you want to have a good variety: eggs, red meat, fatty fish, Greek yogurt, not just chicken, breast, and whey. And for those of you who are somehow against red meat or pork or something like that, just for health reasons, okay, I'm taking off the table value-based reasons, the food supply, factory farming, all those moral and ethical issues, because that's outside the scope of what I'm talking about. That's up to you. That's a self-imposed restriction. But from a health perspective, all of these animal products are fantastic, and having a variety of them is great. So, those of you who just eat one type of meat, like chicken breast, heck, try chicken thigh and then expand into some, you know, red meat, turkey, pork, fish, fatty fish, but even white fishes, and then there's Greek yogurt, there's cottage cheese, there's things like that. So that's protein. For carbs, potatoes, love potatoes, fruit, so many fruits. I mean, you could just go to town rotating through all your fruits. Oats, legumes, you know, not just rice, not just bread, quinoa, there's so many things. For fats, oh, there, I mean, pretty much anything you add for a little extra flavor, you know, nuts and seeds, avocado, olive oil, you're probably using with your cooking and through dressings and things like that. Fatty fish, which also checks off the protein, checks off your fats, right? Not just butter and cheese. And I have nothing against butter and cheese. Um, you obviously don't want to be doing bulletproof coffee. Like if you're still doing that, why? You're just consuming tons and tons of saturated fat for no reason whatsoever. It doesn't give you any benefit, and it probably has negatives in terms of risk for cardiovascular disease. And yes, that is well supported by the evidence. So that's the first one. Make sure that the foods you choose, even for the macros, are nutrient dense and have variety. Second, I want you to pay attention to meal timing around your training. This is the big one. For some people, this goes at the top of the list because they are doing pretty well with their food selection, but then they're timing it really poorly. And you don't have to overcomplicate this. If you train fasted or you're on very low carbs and you're always not feeling it, that's probably a signal that your body needs more fuel. Very few people do really well training fasted or on low carbs. That's just the fact of it. Some people might. It's just very rare. And so, a simple pre-workout, my favorite being banana and protein. Banana digests well, it has electrolytes, it's a fruit, has a little bit of fiber, but not too much, lots of nutrients, and then protein, which could be whey protein, could be a food-based protein, depends on how much time you have. It's fine. That can make a massive difference. So that's it for the for the meal timing. Just gonna keep it simple with pre-carbs pre-workout predominantly, even if you can't get the protein. Third, I want you to track your performance in the gym. Are you not doing that, guys? Are you not doing that? If you've listened to the show for a while, you definitely should have already been doing that. Not just your food, but now you have to track your lifts. Are they going up? Are you maintaining reps week to week? Are you hitting your volume targets? Those kinds of things. It doesn't have to be in a spreadsheet form. It could be just the big lifts or the whatever lifts you are focusing on for your program that you are indeed progressing. If performance is dropping, something is off. Nine times out of 10, it's either nutrient nutrient density or recovery, believe it or not. I mean, it's sometimes also the meal timing, like we talked about. And so when you prioritize performance, all these other things we've already talked about on the show today are gonna be important to you because that's you're gonna want to maximize your performance. And, you know, while, yeah, you're gonna lose fat through a calorie deficit, but if you can't train hard enough to create the mechanical tension to hold on to muscle, you're not gonna just lose fat, you're gonna lose muscle. So that's why all this is important. Micronutrients unlock the ability to train hard. Macros fuel the training, and then calories drive the overall outcome. So that's what I mean by bottom up. Even if on a pyramid, calories have the biggest impact, in a sense, when it comes to the outcome, you still need the other things, or the pyramid's gonna be a lot smaller, if that makes sense. All right, let's talk about mistake number five: tracking calories, but ignoring biofeedback. This is a good one. This is a powerful one. I love tracking. I track my own food, I teach clients to track, I tell you guys to track. I now have my own app which tracks in a totally innovative way that works even better when you complement it with your other stuff, especially now that we're gonna be able to pull in data for you guys. Data is incredibly useful, but data without context is useless. Keep that in mind, guys. Data, lots and lots of data is useless without the context to use that data. You can hit your calorie target every single day and still be in a terrible place physiologically if your body is telling you something's wrong. So biofeedback, that's all we mean by that. Bio, biology, feedback is information from your body. Is your robot, it's like your body's report card on whether your nutrition is working. Not just nutrition, but training. But today we're focused on nutrition. So what are those signals? Well, if you're constantly hungry after your meals versus I'm always pretty satisfied, that's a signal. What about digestion? My gut's working fine, or I'm bloated, I'm gassy, I'm constipated, or the opposite problem from constipation that we're not gonna go into graphic detail on. Energy. What about energy? Are you energized throughout the day? Now we all have energy fluxes, or I shouldn't use the word flux in this context. We have energy variation throughout the day, right? Many of us are pretty energized in the morning, not everybody, but some people are dragging by the afternoon. There are going to be subtle differences. The question is to what degree are you lacking energy that you feel you should have? Sleep, oh, huge one. Are you falling asleep easily? Are you staying asleep? Are you waking up a lot during the night? Right? This is more about quality, but of course, quantity matters too. Mood, are you is your mood pretty stable? Are you pretty positive in general? Or are you irritable? You have a lot of anxiety, are you, you know, in a bad mood all the time? And I recognize some of this isn't relative to your, let's say, personality, but I do strongly believe that you can cultivate an optimism bias. You can cultivate a positive psychology by reframing things in a positive way, not delusionally so, but in a what can I do about this? How can we get better and learn from this? Okay, enough about that. What about your libido, your sex drive? Is it there or is it gone? What about your training progression? This is part of biofeedback. You know, are you progressing like we just talked about in the last mistake and maintaining strength or hitting new PRs? Or is it going backward? Are you just stuck? What about your stress response? And I say it that way intentionally, not just stress, period, but your response to stress. How do you handle it? How do you perceive it? Or are you overwhelmed by everything? What about fluid retention? I don't talk about that as much. I do talk about hydration, but are you bloated and puffy? Are you like peeing out water in a normal way and retaining it in a normal way? And the urine looks good and your body feels good from a hydration perspective, right? So if all of this is good, your nutrition's probably good. Who cares what the scale's doing? That's a great place to be, from which you can now do the other things. If your biofeedback, on the other hand, is the opposite, it's terrible, something's wrong with your nutrition. And if it's in the middle, it could be a little this, little that, right? Even if you're hitting your calorie target, even if you're hitting your macros. So the the the kicker, as Chat GPT would say, isn't that funny? Like, we used to say, here's the kicker, like as a just colloquialism. And now I feel like that's one of those things that you know AI would just say. Micronutrient deficiencies will reveal themselves in your biofeedback pretty quickly, even before they show up in, let's say, blood work, which is which is important too, because a lot of you are like, well, I got my labs and magnesium looks good, but this stuff fluctuates all the time. And, you know, if if your sleep isn't great, your stress response isn't great, you've got muscle cramps, you might have low magnesium, you know, migraines too. Some people have migraines because of low magnesium. Uh low zinc might be a sign where you feel it in, you know, you get getting sick, right? And your skin, your sex drive, your recovery, B vitamins usually affect energy, mood digestion. You get the idea, right? I'm not gonna go through all the nutrients today, but it's really important because studies do show that micronutrient insufficiency is a form of metabolic adaptation. Isn't that interesting, right? It's not just that your metabolism slows down because you're dieting, it's because your body is not as efficiently producing energy because it doesn't have those raw materials. And by the way, if you do have good nutrient sufficiency, but then you go into a diet and you cut your calories, you may become nutrient insufficient because your calories are low as well. And you have to be more careful about it. But we look at something like zinc deficiency, that's a big one. It can drop your resting metabolic rate by hundreds of calories per day, right? And and that's just zinc holding you back. Crash dieting itself reduces your metabolic rate by something like 15 or 20% within weeks, and then that just delays your fat loss, right? That that's more on the calorie side, but it's worth mentioning. And this is why I like the bottom-up nutrition approach when we're thinking of body recomposition and we're gonna do fat, use fat loss phases and set ourselves up for success to limit how much your metabolism downregulates, even when your calorie targets, your macro targets are on point. So when it comes to biofeedback, you track it just like anything else. Fitness Lab does this for you every day. At the end of the day, you have an evening reflection and it gives you one to 10 rating scales. What I like about those are they're quick, take like 30 seconds, and it will use that data the next day. You get up and it'll say, Hey, I notice a pattern of stress being pretty high. I'm gonna suggest an activity to help you respond better to your stress. Which which one do you want to do? And it'll do things like that. Anyway, that's just a side tangent. You can do it for yourself with a quick mental check in every day. How did I sleep? How's my digestion? What's my energy like? How's my mood? Am I holding extra water? Things like that. You can do it on paper. You can use, we have a tracker in physique university, it does the same thing. And one or two days, no big deal, that's life. But if multiple signals are consistently poor for at least, let's say, a week or more, right? Maybe two weeks or more, something needs to change. Maybe you need more carbs for your training and your sleep and your stress. Maybe you need more fiber for your digestion and your hunger. Maybe you need more nutrient dense foods. You probably do. We all do for every reason we talked about in the show, including energy and your metabolism. Maybe you just need a diet break to get everything back to homeostasis. Listen to your body, guys. It's always giving you real time feedback about. Whether your nutrition is working. So use it. Use it. This is not about weight loss and getting skinny. No. It's about feeling great, performing our best, having a good sex drive, being strong, having muscle, living a long, vibrant life. Isn't it? Isn't it? And so when you have good biofeedback, solid training, smart nutrition management across all three things we talked about today, body recomp is going to happen because now your physiology is super aligned with what you're doing. So we've covered the five mistakes. Now I want to give you a practical framework real quick. You could start using today. I call it the bottom-up recomp plate. This is a nutrition tip. Yes, from me. I know I don't do this a lot. Every meal, every day, includes three things: a micronutrient anchor, a protein anchor, and a carb or fat that supports your training. So the micronutrient anchor, I usually simplify this to just fiber, but I'm expanding that a little today. Anything that brings you vitamins, minerals, fiber, phytonutrients. And so that includes fruits, vegetables, legumes, root vegetables, whole grains, eggs, dairy, nuts, seeds, shellfish. All right. I definitely think a few of those should definitely be fiber focused, but think of it in terms of micronutrients. The protein anchor, animal or high-quality plant protein, if you don't need animal products, eggs, meat, fish, Greek yogurt, cottage cheese, tofu, tempeh, legumes, you know the drill. And then a carb or fat that supports your training. Notice I don't say both. In general, if you're focused on hitting macros, you're going to put them in anyway. And so this is again more of the type you select. Is it a starchy carb like potatoes, rice, oats, a fat source like avocado or nuts or olive oil, or both? And that's it. Three components per meal: micronutrient, protein, and carb or fat. It's a framework you can use. Take it or leave it. Okay. Maybe it's too much for you right now. Maybe you do it for one meal a day. And then at the weekly level, you kind of want to look back at your food log and ask yourself, did I have enough color? Did I have seafood? And did I have nutrient dense foods? So all the colors, the seven colors, the two seafoods, the one nutrient dense food. Don't overthink it. If you're if you're close enough, that's great. If you're far from it, that gives you data point. So try this for just one week and track your biofeedback alongside it, see how you feel. That's kind of the input output. The input is the plate, the food, the output is the biofeedback. And then I think you're gonna be surprised if you actually take action on this. So let's just recap the five mistakes real quick. Mistake number one, thinking calories and macros matter more than micros. They don't. Micros are the operating system without them. Nothing works as efficiently. Mistake number two, doing flexible dieting without nutrient anchors. Okay, it's not if it fits your macros. You have to have the diversity in the nutrients in there. Mistake number three is mismanaging fiber. Too little is usually the issue, but too much can cause problems, especially if you ramp up. Aim for around 20 to 30 grams per day with tons of variety. Mistake number four, setting macro targets that don't support your training performance. Your training is the engine of all of this. Fuel it properly. Mistake number five is tracking calories but ignoring biofeedback. Your body is giving you tons of amazing real-time feedback that you should be using. So micronutrients, macros, and calories, bottom up. When you do it in that order, everything will become easier. Hunger will be more manageable. Your training should improve. You should have faster recovery and get what you want. If you want to help building this system for yourself without having to think too much about it, with a lot less stress, my app, Fitness Lab, makes it easy. The app walks you through this approach we talked about today. It analyzes your meal patterns. You just upload a photo, that's all you have to do. You don't even have to log it or look it up in a database. Just take a photo and it's gonna identify where you're missing nutrient density. It's also gonna adapt your training based on your biofeedback as well as your nutrition. It's gonna give you conversational coaching that feels like having Coach Phillip in your pocket. It's available now, it's on iPhone, it should be on Android as well. If not, it will be very soon. It should have the Apple Health integration turned on. Again, I'm saying all shoulds because I'm recording these before my surgery, but these are the timelines. So don't hold me to it. But all of these things are gonna be out shortly, if not already. It will be 20% off through the end of the year, starting December 17th through January 2nd. But if you're listening to this before that, use the link in the show notes. It's a secret link to get you the 20% off now ahead of time. And you can take advantage of that. Use the link in the show notes. Until next time, keep using your wits, lifting those weights. And remember, build from the bottom up, and your body will cooperate. This is Philip Pape, and I'll talk to you next time here on the Wits and Weights podcast.

Philip Pape 12/12/25 Philip Pape 12/12/25

THYROID Markers Your Doctor Ignores That Stall Metabolism and Fat Loss (Eric Osansky) | Ep 412

Why does body recomp stall even when you lift weights, track macros, and eat for nutrition and fitness? What if your thyroid is slowing metabolism, limiting muscle building, and making it harder to lose fat? Dr. Eric Osansky breaks down the real markers lifters should watch, why lifters may see unique symptoms, and how autoimmune issues like Hashimoto’s and Graves develop. We talk hormone health, stress, overtraining, environmental toxins, and what actually supports strength training, longevity, and nutrition and fitness goals.

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Dr. Eric Osansky breaks down the real markers lifters should watch, why lifters may see unique symptoms, and how autoimmune issues like Hashimoto’s and Graves develop. We talk hormone health, stress, overtraining, environmental toxins, and what actually supports strength training, longevity, and nutrition and fitness goals.

Eric also shares natural strategies that align with evidence-based training so you can make smarter decisions for your metabolism and body composition.

If you want to optimize your thyroid and unlock better body recomp results, tune in to learn more.

Today, you’ll learn all about:

0:00 – Hidden thyroid factors in weight loss
2:43 – Why Eric pursued thyroid health
3:36 – Thyroid basics for lifters
8:01 – Eric’s Graves diagnosis story
14:02 – Lifestyle stress vs true dysfunction
20:42 – What labs actually matter
24:17 – Autoimmune triggers explained
29:33 – Top environmental toxins to avoid
39:25 – Treatment options and natural support

Episode resources:

Save My Thyroid Podcast
Book: Natural Treatment Solutions for Hyperthyroidism and Graves' Disease
Healing Graves' Naturally Community: savemythyroid.com/healgravesdisease
Healthy Gut Healthy Thyroid Newsletter: savemythyroid.com/newsletter
YouTube: @NaturalThyroidDoctor
Instagram: @drericosansky

Many lifters hit a wall where fat loss stalls, muscle gain lags, and recovery craters despite precise training and nutrition. The easy answer is “work harder,” yet the smarter question is whether thyroid dysfunction is quietly steering metabolism off course. Thyroid hormones touch every tissue, shaping energy production, lipid metabolism, heart rate, bone health, and how your body responds to strength training. While routine checkups often stop at TSH and sometimes T4, athletes benefit from a fuller picture that includes free T3, free T4, reverse T3, and thyroid antibodies. Free T3 is the active hormone driving performance and recovery; it can be low even when TSH looks “normal,” leaving you cold, brain-fogged, or weight-loss resistant. Understanding the feedback loop between the pituitary (TSH) and the gland matters, but the bigger story is conversion—how well you turn T4 into the T3 that powers your training.

Autoimmunity is another blind spot. Hashimoto’s (often low thyroid) and Graves (often high thyroid) are immune-driven, and antibodies can rise years before overt dysfunction. Three markers guide clarity: TPO (thyroid peroxidase) and thyroglobulin antibodies point toward Hashimoto’s, while TSI/TSH receptor antibodies tilt toward Graves. Many people carry antibodies without symptoms, which is a crucial window for action. Triggers commonly cluster in four groups: food, stress, environmental toxicants, and infections. Gluten and other common allergens can raise gut permeability; chronic stress shifts immune signaling and suppresses sIgA; endocrine disruptors like BPA, phthalates, PFAS, and microplastics interfere with thyroid signaling and immune tolerance; infections such as H. pylori, Epstein–Barr, and even post-viral states can nudge the immune system toward attack. None of these factors acts alone; loads accumulate until performance slips and labs lag behind symptoms.

Practical moves start at home. Filter your water with high-quality reverse osmosis or choose spring water in glass; avoid plastic bottles and microwaving plastics. Improve indoor air with true HEPA filtration and ventilate while cooking; swap harsh cleaners, cosmetics, and fragrances for verified low-tox options using resources like EWG’s databases. This isn’t about fear or perfection—it’s about reducing the daily dose that nudges hormones in the wrong direction. On the training front, stress is not the enemy but a lever. Overreaching feels productive until it isn’t; finishing every session floored, breathless, and unable to recover is a sign to scale intensity or volume. Aim to leave the gym feeling like you could do more. Many lifters build faster on three focused strength sessions per week than on seven grinding days with minimal recovery, especially when sleep and life stress run high.

Nutrition and timing also matter. Prolonged aggressive deficits depress T3 and raise reverse T3; mini-cuts are useful, but months of deep restriction or daily 20-hour fasts can blunt thyroid output and stall progress. Periodize your intake to match training cycles, ensure adequate protein and micronutrients, and break up long fasts with phases of normal eating. If hypothyroid, medication may help, but insist on data: a low free T3 with adequate T4 suggests a conversion issue, not necessarily a T4 deficiency. If hyperthyroid, conventional care includes antithyroid drugs, radioactive iodine, or surgery; some patients can complement care with botanicals like bugleweed or motherwort for symptom relief and consider L-carnitine and selenium under medical guidance. Low-dose naltrexone may modulate autoimmunity for some, though it won’t fix root causes.

The theme is clarity over guesswork. Get the labs that match your goals—TSH, free T4, free T3, reverse T3, and antibodies—then align training, stress management, and environment with how your body actually responds. The payoff isn’t just a better number on paper; it’s steady energy, strong lifts, faster recovery, and real fat loss that sticks. Your thyroid doesn’t need extremes; it needs enough signal, enough substrate, and fewer obstacles.

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Philip Pape: 0:01
Let's say your metabolism has slowed to a crawl, and despite training hard and eating right, your body composition won't budge. Maybe you suspect your thyroid. But every doctor you see runs basic labs, tells you everything's normal, and sends you away with advice to just eat less and exercise more. Meanwhile, you're exhausted, your recovery is shot, and you can't figure out why lifting weights and tracking isn't working anymore. My guest today reveals why standard thyroid testing misses the real problems blocking your fat loss and muscle gain, which markers matter for people who lift weights, and how autoimmune thyroid conditions like Hachimoto's develop so that you can protect and optimize your thyroid to support your metabolism and fat loss goals. 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 explore why thyroid dysfunction could be a hidden barrier preventing you from building muscle and losing fat despite doing all the right things. My guest today is Dr. Eric Ostansky, a functional medicine practitioner who specializes in thyroid health, particularly hyperthyroidism, graves disease, and autoimmune conditions like Hachimoto's. After being diagnosed himself with Graves disease in 2008, Dr. Ostanski achieved remission through natural protocols and has since focused his practice on helping people address root causes. We love root causes. Those are important. The root causes of thyroid dysfunction rather than just managing symptoms with things like medication or even irreversible treatments. He's the author of several books on thyroid health and hosts the Save My Thyroid podcast. Go follow that podcast if you're into that or if you have thyroid condition and want to learn, please follow Save My Thyroid. Because your thyroid, very important, it controls a lot of things: your metabolic rate, your energy production, your recovery, how your body responds to things like strength training. And for those of us focused on building muscle, losing fat, optimizing performance, thyroid health often gets overlooked until it becomes a serious problem and then it stalls your progress. So today, you're going to learn how thyroid dysfunction shows up differently in people who, for example, train like we do, which lab markers might matter beyond the basic TSH testing, how training stress and lifestyle factors can trigger autoimmune thyroid problems, and some practical tips, as always, that you can do to protect and optimize your thyroid while still pursuing all of these fun goals we have for body composition and health. Eric, glad to have you on Wits and Weights. Good to see you again and welcome to the show.
Eric Osansky: 2:43
Yeah, thanks so much, Philip. Really excited to have this conversation. Yeah, definitely check out my podcast because you're also on the podcast. So people need to listen to me interviewing you.
Philip Pape: 2:53
There you go. I let you make the plug because if it comes up, it comes up. So definitely check that out. All right. So I've been having a lot. Every time I have an expert on like you these days, these days, as in the last few months, I really have started off with trying to define some basic things. Because I think we gloss over that sometimes in these conversations. Not you, but the listeners, like, hey, I haven't heard a thyroid expert in a while. What's going on with a thyroid? Exactly what is it? What is that gland? Um, they might not even know it's a gland. What does it do? Oh, it produces hormones. What hormones? Just so we have a basic understanding of biology as really important foundation before we dive into dysfunction and optimization. So lay it on us, 30,000-foot level, describe the thyroid gland and everything about it.
Eric Osansky: 3:36
Yeah. So thyroid gland is a butterfly-shaped gland in the in the front of the neck. And uh it, as you mentioned, it's responsible for the production of different thyroid hormones. The most well-known T4 and T3. There are other T1, T2. We still can't test for those in the blood, uh, even though there are like T2 supplements that some recommends uh for like weight loss. And but yeah, so the thyroid gland produces mostly T4 or thyroxin, uh, approximately 90%, and then approximately 10% T3. Uh so most of the T3 is actually produced by the conversion of T4 into T3. And T3 is the active form of thyroid hormone that actually binds to the receptors. And then you actually have a pituitary hormone called TSH, thyroid stimulating hormone. So again, that's accreted by the pituitary gland, and um, and that communicates, that stimulates the thyroid gland when uh to produce thyroid hormone, or in the case of hyperthyroidism, the opposite, the pituitary gland will slow down the production of TSH because you have too much thyroid hormone. So, yeah, and then you know, what we could talk, I guess, a little bit later about antibodies and autoimmunity. Um, but as far as the actual thyroid, um, yeah, as you mentioned, I mean the thyroid thyroid hormone, there are thyroid hormone receptors um pretty much everywhere, just about every cell and tissue in the body. So if you have too much or too little, that's not a good thing. And um, yeah, it could, you know, obviously the focus here is going to be more on um, you know, weight loss, muscle mass, but yeah, like cholesterol, just to give an example. Like uh if you have high cholesterol on a blood test, not to say it's always related to the thyroid, but if you have low thyroid, that also plays a role in cholesterol metabolism. And unfortunately, a lot of medical doctors will just resort to statins to lower the cholesterol, but it it's possible it could be thyroid, it could be a low thyroid. So, and um, you know, it could affect bone density, of course, affects the the heart. I mean, again, you name it thyroid, thyroid hormone definitely could um play a role in controlling.
Philip Pape: 5:53
Yeah, and and it's just coincidentally in kind of the center of the body, too, which you know gives you this visual of how connected it is to everything. Uh just to nerd out for a second, like in the evolution of our species, you know, like what why would the thyroid evolve? Like, why do we really have it? That I it's a fundamental question. What's important about the thyroid? Because we talk so much about it being too high or too low and affecting these things, but like, why do we even have it?
Eric Osansky: 6:16
Yeah, I mean, it's a good question. Um, nobody actually asked me that specific question as far as why we we have the thyroid.
Philip Pape: 6:22
That's called going off script right there.
Eric Osansky: 6:25
But anyway, it's a good question. But um, I mean, the pituitary gland actually is the master gland. So I will say this like some people call the thyroid gland the master gland, but the pituitary gland controls the thyroid, controls the you know, the adrenals, controls the sex, like communicates with the sex hormones. But again, like uh, you know, the thyroid gland, we all the pretty much every cell tissue in the body needs the thyroid hormone. And and again, it you know, it's it gets even deeper, like down to cellular level. But you know, I mean, metabolism is huge, of course. There are times when we need, you know, to slow down our metabolism. There are times um in a nutshell when we need to you know increase to to speed up our metabolism. So I guess trying to make it as as basic as as possible, um, as far as uh, you know, the why we have like evolutionary wise, you know, why we have a thyroid gland.
Philip Pape: 7:20
It's um so so like homeostate. It sounds like it's a homeostatic regulator, right?
Eric Osansky: 7:24
Kind of, yeah, exactly. So like balance, yeah.
Philip Pape: 7:28
Yeah, keeps you in the zone. Okay, no, that's good. All right, now you you personally had, I I alluded to in the intro, had Graves disease yourself. Definitely would love you to explain what that is, um, because there are definitely a lot of autoimmune conditions across the spectrum, even beyond thyroid, that are there's misinformation about, I suppose. But um, when you what is that? What happened with you and your metabolism and your you know physical health, fitness, all of that, and how did that connect to uh systematic things that you then started exploring and going down the rabbit hole with thyroid health?
Eric Osansky: 8:01
Yeah, so graves disease is um like Hashimoto's, Hashimoto's is the most common, more of the common thyroid condition, and it's autoimmune. So graves also autoimmune and um involves hyperthyroidism. And I mean, I don't so you want do you want me to talk about my story, like how I was diagnosed with graves or just kind of what it is, like what yeah, a little bit of what it is, but I've absolutely want to understand how it affected you, you know, like yeah. I mean, because actually what prior to being diagnosed, I was trying to lose weight. I was uh, you know, 182 pounds, usually like to be like between 165 and 170. And so I was dieting, I was detoxifying, I was over-training. I didn't really, I should have known better, but I wasn't really paying attention and listened to my body. And so I was losing weight. And then, you know, eventually losing losing a lot of weight. Little did I know was some of it at least related to the hyperthyroidism. And then over uh eventually I was walking around in a retail store. They had one of those automated blood pressure machines. I took my blood pressure, which was normal, but my resting heart rate was a little bit high, it was 90 beats per minute. And I was just thinking, well, maybe it's because I'm just walking around, but then I measured my heart rate the next few days, and it was anywhere between 90 and 110 beats per minute. And I'm like, okay, something's wrong here. And then uh went to a primary care doctor, got diagnosed with uh with hyperthaurism initially, eventually went to an endocrinologist, got diagnosed with graves. And so, yeah, like the hyperthaurism in my case, it increased my resting heart rate, caused palpitations, uh, lost 42 pounds. So I dropped down to 140, which again um a lot less than I wanted to be. Uh, had an increased appetite uh and um increased bowel movements. Uh just uh I mean, I didn't have anxiety, but a lot of people have anxiety with the elevation and thyroid hormones. Um hair loss is common. Uh so um, so yeah, but I mean, again, the the weight loss was big. And a lot of, I mean, it's funny, it's funny and not funny, not funny, because most of the people I work with are women, and that's sometimes is the one benefit, you know, that they're like, well, at least I lost weight. And then some people don't lose weight with graves, you know, for different reasons. And when they don't lose weight, they're frustrated because it's like it's bad enough having graves, but I can't even like lose weight. One uh quote unquote benefit of it, right?
Philip Pape: 10:28
Yeah, I see. Yeah. Well, I mean, it it follows logically in general when we talk again, hype hyper overproduction with graves versus hypo, like Hashimoto's underproduction, where you hear there's like weight loss resistance because the thermic regulator, your metabolism is t dampened and in graves, it sounds like it could be accelerated, but that's not necessarily a great thing because then it higher heart rate, all those other things.
Eric Osansky: 10:51
Exactly.
Philip Pape: 10:51
So is that was that kind of the trigger for you to learn about this and then eventually expand your own scope of of knowledge? Is that what led to why you do this today?
Eric Osansky: 11:00
Yeah, definitely. I mean, prior to this, I really had no experience with graves at all. Yeah, I was uh my background is a chiropractor and I was just uh practicing regular chiropractic and and just you know, just even though chiropractic goes beyond uh neck and back pain. But yeah, uh really um, but I will say for my CE credits, uh I always used to attend and even currently it's attend nutritional and functional medicine seminars rather than like chiropractic technique seminars. So when I attended some of the CE cred uh the seminars for my CE credits, I learned about like there were a few functional endocrinology seminars that focused on thyroid health. And they of course focused more on hypothyroidism Hashimoto's and um also spoke about adrenals, not just thyroid, but um, but they did talk a little bit about graves and hyperthyroidism and just um by attending those seminars, uh look back. So it wasn't it was 2008 when I was diagnosed, and it was probably just a couple of years prior to that when I attended at least the the last of those seminars, and uh, and I realized that there was hope, there was a way to address it naturally, to manage the symptoms naturally, and to uh again to address the root cause, but I didn't have any experience of that. So I was at the same time kind of skeptical, skeptical, and just was like, yeah, you know, I have nothing to lose. I mean, I don't want to just take anti-thyroid medication for a prolonged period of time. And then the other two options are radioactive iodine, which is ablating the thyroid cells, or thyroid surgery. So I decided to uh change my diet, my lifestyle, and uh not as extreme as I did prior. Um, but yeah, and then took certain supplements, did um some testing, and um, yeah, long story short, was able to uh restore my health. And yeah, and that was the driver, that was the motivator. I was like, there's so many people out there with thyroid and autoimmune thyroid conditions. And unfortunately, most of them, I mean, this isn't a bad thing, but I was gonna say most of them focus on hypothalamus Hashimoto's, but unfortunately, there's not a lot that focus on hyperthaurism in graves.
Philip Pape: 13:03
Got it. So you mentioned a few things I want to touch on because I think people need to first know if they even have a uh concern, right? And I assume it starts with symptoms and or different types of labs and blood work that we want to get into, like beyond just the typical labs into antibodies and things like that. But let's just start with the fact that, for example, everyone listening, when you go into a fat loss phase, if you're in a calorie deficit, we know things like that, stress on your body, will cause changes in your hormones, including thyroid. We know it drops. I don't know if you know exact numbers. I've seen stuff like 6% with a 500 calorie deficit is kind of an average ballpark for an average person with metabolic adaptation. And so, first of all, how do we distinguish where whether somebody is just having symptoms from their lifestyle versus an actual condition? And for those listening, like, do they need to do some prep work first? Like, can a poor lifestyle show itself as a condition or can you diagnose a condition independent of the lifestyle? Do you know what I'm saying?
Eric Osansky: 14:02
I mean, really, the official diagnosis is probably with tests. I mean, you could tell, like if I think back for, you know, with my symptoms, I could have put the piece like now looking back, it's like, okay, I was the symptomless. Yeah. I mean, the the the more extreme weight loss, the increased appetite. Again, that's not always related to, of course, you know, hyperthyroism. But then obviously with the increased resting heart rate, you know, and and then combined like the palpitations, I honestly didn't notice until after the blood test, until I still realized I had um hyperthourism. But yeah, I mean, and with hypothyroidism, it's I mean, a lot of people, there's other could be other causes for fatigue, like fatigue, weight gain are two of the more common symptoms. Obviously, there are other ones like coldness. If someone has coldness uh along with those symptoms, then they could maybe start putting the pieces together. But if they're just having the fatigue, the brain fog, you know, the weight gain, it could be other things. They might say, well, but it's just perimenopause, you know, if they're in perimenopause, or I mean, it could be adrenals, or of course a lot of people just blame it on poor eating, not enough sleep, which also, you know, could could cause many of those symptoms. So sometimes it is hard hard to, I guess, as far as diagnosing without testing, at least in my you know, my opinion, I I guess most people that come and see me or remotely work with me, they've already been diagnosed. But if someone if someone has come to me and they, you know, they haven't yet had blood tests. I mean, yeah, you could get in some cases a good idea if someone has hyper or hypo, but but again, there could be overlap with other conditions. So usually, you know, you do want to do some testing, um, at the very least, a basic thyroid panel, but um usually I like to go beyond that.
Philip Pape: 15:50
Okay, yeah, and I guess that's you're hitting on two populations, right? People that have already been diagnosed and people that haven't. And I guess people listening, let's start with the people that haven't, um, but they're having some issues. Maybe it's it's an inability to lose fat and they're doing all the things that that's one of the ones I see a lot, right? Is just we try to go in a calorie deficit and their adaptation is really fast. Um, where even if they're tracking their calories and everything, it's like they have to keep dropping calories really fast and something's off. And sometimes it's like, like you said, it's other hormones or it's perimenopause and other things happening at the same time. So I guess the question is should like everybody listening get a thyroid, a basic thyroid panel soon if they've never had it? That's the first question. Like, just in general, should people be getting that? Because there's certain things I feel like like testosterone for men, I feel like not enough men are getting it checked early just because the medical establishment doesn't require that at the moment, right? So that's my first question. Should everybody get their thyroid checked at a high level? And then when should they be more concerned to do the testing that I want you to explain beyond that?
Eric Osansky: 16:52
Yeah. So to answer the first question, yeah, absolutely. You know, I think just like you know, most medical doctors, like if you go in for a physical, they're gonna do a CBC complete blood count. Um, they'll do a comprehensive metabolic panel, maybe a lipid panel. And many times it just stops there. But uh, yeah, I mean, obviously there are other markers like vitamin Z, I think everybody should get. You're right, like as far as like looking at test, you know, um testosterone and you know, sex hormones. Yeah, so I think that everybody should get not just TSH, um, because again, some some medical doctors will, as part of the physical, will look at TSH, thyroid stimulating hormone. But at the very bare minimum, should look at TSH, T4, and T3. And uh some doctors unfortunately look just look at T TSH and T4, but again, T3 is that active form of thyroid hormone, and you could your TSH might be within the lab range. Again, there's maybe not within the optimal range, but the medical doctor is just looking at the lab range. And again, we could talk more about that. But but so they'll look at TSH, they'll look at T4, both of them are within the lab range. They don't test T3, and again, they conclude everything's okay. Yet if someone has a low T3, and and again, even if they honestly if they tested T3, T3 might be on the lower side, but still a lot of times it's within the range, so they still might blow it off and say, Oh, that looks good too. But your T3 might be like a 2.3, whereas like optimal in the United States, like for free T3 would be between between like, in my opinion, like 3, 3.5. Some will say a little bit higher. But point is like 2.3 would be low on the lower side, but within the lab range of most labs. So again, getting back to the original question, yeah. I think at the very least, TSH, free T3, free T4. I mean, should everybody get, I mean, it's like reverse T3, there's antibodies. Should everybody get the whole gamut of thora tests? I mean, of course, I'm gonna be biased and say like it's uh you know, I mean, the antibodies, autoimmunity typically, I mean, it develops before it impacts the thora. There's like the silent autoimmune phase, especially with Hashimoto. So someone could have those autoantibodies for five, 10, 15 years. So we can make the argument that if we're gonna choose between thyroid a thyroid panel and antibodies, maybe we should test the antibodies first. But realistically, most medical doctors aren't gonna going to do the whole thing just because you asked them. Many probably won't just do the whole thyroid panel because you asked them, they might do again a TSH, maybe a TSH uh T4. So most people listening will probably have to do it on their own, which again is fine. I I pay for tests on my own, you know, like again, because I don't expect insurance to cover everything. But so yeah, I I would say, especially if you're experiencing like what you mentioned, if like you're having issues losing weight, gaining muscle, you know, have maybe having low energy. Um yeah, I mean, I would say not just don't just do TSH, free T3, free T4. I would say also look at reverse T3, look at the thyroid antibodies. Um
Philip Pape: 20:00
Um look, if you're listening, we've talked about performance blood work in the past. Like if you if you have if you can afford it and have access to it, get everything tested, like in my opinion. But you kind of answered that, that the antibodies are precursor, is what you suggested, to the flare-ups or the full condition occurring. So chicken and egg, would you just jump right to that? But try to at least get the main panel. I think you answered the question. You also alluded to ranges. And so how would people know? I know you mentioned numbers here on the podcast, but is it mainly in the functional medicine world that they're gonna get access to like what a good range is and getting these tests, or will some traditional doctors work this as well?
Eric Osansky: 20:42
Most of the time you'll have to see a functional medicine practitioner. I mean, every now and then there'll be a doctor that looks and sees, well, you know, your TSH is kind of on the higher side, but what's still within range. But most of the time they're just looking to see what's out of the range. And then if your TSH is like 3.5, which is within most lab ranges, but most functional medicine practitioners agree that's outside of the optimal range. So yeah, it's usually functional medicine that'll like tell you what the optimal ranges are or look at those optimal ranges.
Philip Pape: 21:14
Okay. And then for the antibodies, I'm I'm definitely familiar with uh some of the um like the rheumatoid arthritis and um sclerosis and kind of those conditions where you do the ANA titer, and then if that's positive, then you go to the next level. And I personally have a weird, undiagnosed mixed connective tissue disease that's like antibody only with no symptoms. So, and I've had it for years and years. So is that the process, or what are people looking to test for thyroid specifically?
Eric Osansky: 21:43
Yeah, no, typically you don't. Um, I mean, some people with Hashimoto's graves might have a positive ANA, but it's not like some other, you know, autoimmune conditions, like lupus. Typically, you want to do an ANA first, shogun's, I mean, then yeah, some others with what graves, Hashimoto's, usually, and this is just my approach, this seems to be the approach of most endocrinologists as well, where they're just gonna jump into the antibody testing if they do it at all. Against unfortunately, some of them just that they're not doing anything for the immune system. So some of them will just look at the thyroid numbers and that's it. They won't do any um, but but again, you like to think most of them will at least want to get a diagnosis that okay, the person has Hashimoto's, the person has graves. Um, so yeah, usually my my approach, if if the and let's say if someone didn't get the testing that they needed, um, yeah, I wouldn't necessarily say you know that everybody needs an ANA, but um, but yeah, I definitely would recommend to look at the um the antibodies. And when it comes to um thyroid autoimmunity, there's three types of thyroid antibodies. Um, the most common thyroid antibody, which you probably heard of, um TPO or thyroid peroxidase antibodies, which uh more commonly associated with Hashimoto's, but a lot of people with graves also have those antibodies. Um, thyroid peroxidase is an enzyme that's important for the production of thyroid hormones. So it is more closely associated with damaging, like so it's more people are more likely to become hypo if they over time if they have those TPO antibodies. You have also thyroidglobulin antibodies, and those are more specific to Hashimoto's. And then you have thyroid stimulating amnoglobulins, which are a type of TSH receptor antibodies. So they bind to attack the TSH receptors of the thyroid, and that leads to the excess production of thyroid hormone. And those, of course, are the ones that are associated with graves. And quickly, it's also worth mentioning that some people have all three antibodies. So it's not uncommon for people to have antibodies for both Hashimoto's and graves.
Philip Pape: 23:46
Interesting. Okay, so thyroid peroxidase, TPO, thyroid globulin, and thyroid stimulating immunoglobulin that we just TSI. Ah, look at that. Good thing I'm writing my notes as we talk. I love this stuff. All right, great. So that kind of autoimmunity, then I think you talk sometimes about like there are triggers for this, right? It's not like how much of it is genetic and kind of unexplained versus we know there are triggers potentially where someone isn't there at this point, they can do something about it, say with their lifestyle diet or what have you.
Eric Osansky: 24:17
Yeah. I so I wrote one of the books I've written, Hashimoto's triggers. Um you know, again, there's it's it's almost what is it, like 500 and something pages. So again, there's a lot of a lot of different triggers, but to make it easier, I talk about four categories of triggers. So food, stress, environmental toxins, intoxicants, and infections. Um, some people say, well, how about nutrients? Well, nutrient deficiencies to me are more like underlying imbalances. I don't really like call them triggers. I guess you could call them triggers, but but either way, like food, such as gluten, um, is probably the most common you hear um most functional medicine practitioners, especially those that uh work with a lot of um autoimmune thyroid patients, uh and glute, you know, gluten. Not everybody has a sensitivity to gluten, um, but even if they don't, studies have shown, at least one study 2015 showed that it can can increase permeability in everybody, even if you don't have a sensitivity. Um, I mean, obviously, if someone has celiac disease, yes, they definitely want to be strictly avoiding gluten, even like cross-contamination. But while someone's healing, especially, I would say you want to avoid gluten. I mean, I recommend avoiding common allergens, gluten, taking a break from dairy, taking a break from corn, um, foods like that or food categories. But um stress. So I mentioned so I mentioned overtraining. So there could be either emotional or physical uh stress and um, you know, stress dysregulates the immune system, causes a pro-inflammatory um state. It um decreases secretory IgA, which lines the mucosal surfaces of the of the gastrointestinal tract, making someone more susceptible to infections, which is one of the other um triggers that I mentioned. Uh and um also, I mean, this isn't a trigger, but um, and we can talk about this after one way also as far as weight gain, stress, you know, affecting like cortisol, affecting conversion of T4 to T3. So if you have a lot of chronic stress, that could lead to lower T3 levels, which also could um cause weight gain. So, yeah, stress and again, overtraining, over-exercising, you know, also could be a stressor. Uh, environmental toxins, toxicants, uh, huge in this day and age, um, something we can't completely avoid. And they um and some of them, some of them are autoimmune, potential autoimmune triggers, heavy metals such as mercury. Now, xenoestrogens are fun, you know, because they they could also, again, this is just opinion, but in the literature, they also could affect autoimmunity, but they also are endocrine disrupting chemicals too. So, um, so for bisphenol A, BPA, microplastics can directly affect the thyroid gland, uh, disrupt the thyroid gland. And yeah, so it could disrupt the thyroid gland, causing low thyroid, could cause autoimmunity, being a factor with graves, Hashimoto's. Um, there's mold, mycotoxins that fall within the category. Uh, you know, then infections, different infections, viruses, uh, bacteria such as H. pylori, Lyme disease, uh, I mean, getting back to viruses during the pandemic, we definitely had a lot of people, a lot more people than usual with graves. And I think Hashimoto's too, um, but again, we saw a lot more with graves, but that's also because we focus more on seeing people with graves disease. But I think even if you look at the research, like in PubMed, you'll see with COVID, um, greater likely to develop graves compared to Hashimoto's. Um, Epstein Barr, there's that relationship for both graves and Hashimoto's is potentially being a trigger. Yeah. So again, those are um the four categories and some of the different um things within those categories that could um be triggers.
Philip Pape: 28:08
Yeah. Uh, and everything you just described sounds like it's associated with all the things that the fitness industry is either trying to get more into and understand or fearmonger about, depending on the the side of the industry you're on, right? Because we you could hear that list and say, like, oh, geez, I shouldn't even just go out in the world at all because I want to get an issue. Things like environmental toxins, right, are interesting because I'm trying to learn more about that myself, Eric, because there has been a lot of misinformation in that world and there's detox and there's there's lots of buzzwords that aren't like scientifically defined the right way, in my opinion. But like you mentioned, heavy metals and you know, chocolate has a lot of natural cadmium in it. And people don't realize stuff like that. And you're like, geez, even kind of things that we don't consider quote unquote unhealthy. I mean, people, you know, milk chocolate, a lot of sugar, somebody might say maybe you should be eating that. But even just pure cocoa has cadmium from the ground or from the tree, right? From the cocoa bean. And then um, you know, our cookware and and our uh beauty products, and like you just hear stories, it's like, where do you even begin with all that? And I like you said, you can't avoid it all. So the question with something like that is what's your 80-20 approach to dealing with that without just like throwing everything out of your house and living like a nomad in the woods, right? So just on environmental toxins without making a whole separate episode, Eric, like if you had to pick the top three that most people are exposed to, that's a simple change in their life, what would they be?
Eric Osansky: 29:33
Yeah, I mean, definitely pure water, you know, just uh and not out of plastic water bottles. Um, so just uh, I mean, we have reverse osmosis. And I mean, that's controversy because it removes the minerals, but you could always add back minerals, but it also removes pretty much all the toxins and toxicants. But you know, you could also get a good quality spring water out of a glass bottle like Mountain Valley Springs. I mean, that's another option. But either way, you don't want you want to avoid tap water, you want to avoid water out of plastic bottles. So that would be number one, the the biggest change they they can make. And then um, I mean, you mentioned, I think you mentioned like um cosmetics, like cleaners, cosmetics. I mean, those are also the second change and um that people can make um because most of most of our exposure is within our own home. I mean, obviously we get also exposures outside, but even so, there's so only so much we could do once we walk out of our home. But you know, we I guess depends on the person how much time we spend in our own home. So, but again, the cosmetics cleaners that we use every day, they're our natural altern alternatives. I mean, yeah, they're gonna be a little bit pricey, but you could also make your own. And again, it's not like food. I mean, or obviously organic food, you know, you could go through that really quickly. But if you with your cosmetics, I mean, you're probably maybe not the best discussion with me and you because we're guys and we probably don't use as many cosmetics compared to like woman, but I was gonna say that.
Philip Pape: 30:55
Like, I just keep it simple. That's my that's my solution. Just don't do it, use many of them.
Eric Osansky: 31:00
Yeah, but but again, even you know, my wife, I mean, it's not like she's ordering. I mean, she probably is ordering every week, but they're different ones, like whatever she, you know. But again, like use natural shampoos, natural, you know, again, use you know, body creams or whatever you use. I mean, there's again a natural option. And start, I mean, just start with one or two to begin with, if you have to. Again, if you're like, you know, if you're using like 15, 20 different ones, I know it's you're probably not gonna swap all of them at once. Maybe use one or two that you use the most. And um, and you can visit um environmental working group, I think ewg.org, um the skin deep website, um, like to see like if the because again, just because it says natural doesn't mean it you gotta also become an expert in reading ingredients, but you can use uh labels. Yeah, so exactly. So um, and then I mean there's a few different things. I mean, I guess we could say pure air, like you get a pure air purifier or a couple of air purifiers in your home, depending on how big your home is. But even again, if you just start with one, like a HEPA air purifier and put it in the room where like you know, I guess if you have kids and all that, it's it's hard because again, you want I I was gonna say the bedroom is where you probably spend most of the time, like at least hopefully seven, eight hours. But then again, if you have kids, you're probably gonna, but you could if you could only start out if if you could only afford one, you could also rotate it, like put it in your, you know, like your kids' room one one night, you know, put in your room another night if you absolutely have to. I mean, the ideal situation would be to have multiple air filters, but yeah, I would say, you know, clean clean water, cosmetics, air, again, not necessarily in that order. We could say air maybe before the cosmetics. I mean, so yeah, and then a fourth one, and again, not necessarily in number four, we can bump this up to, but I mentioned the food, like maybe trying to eat more organic food, less especially fruit, vegetables, and and meats. And um, yeah, so I would say those I'll say that those are my top four.
Philip Pape: 33:06
Yeah, no, it's great. Like you said, if there's if it's 500 pages of triggers and each of these categories, you probably have like 20 episodes on each on your podcast. You know what I mean? It's just so, so detailed. So we're not gonna solve all of that today. It's more of an awareness so that people understand that there are multifactorial reasons to care about what's going in your mouth, what you're doing, managing your stress. I like that you mentioned, you know, both the emotional and physical stress, because I think stress also is a big catch-all. And I feel like, I don't know, 20 years from now, are we gonna have much more nuance when we say stress? Because there's like the stress response itself is so complex and like fundamental to the human body that there's even perceived stress, Eric. Like the more I work with clients just like you do, I'm sure the way people frame things and their psychology around stress and things in their life tend to affect the stress response inside their body. Right.
Eric Osansky: 33:59
Oh, yeah. Well, I yeah, and I think that's I mean, that's even more important than the stressor itself, because you're right. I mean, you have two people with identical stressors, and it's really does come down to the perception of the stressor if someone is, you know, just uh more laid back, and you know, the whole saying don't sweat the small stuff, but even if, again, even sometimes like big stressors, I mean, that there some people just do a better job of handling the stress. And again, their perception of the stress, everybody's perception of the stress is different. So, yeah, that's an excellent point.
Philip Pape: 34:28
And and where is that line of stress when it comes to what we call the good stressors, right? The hormetic stressors like training uh and exercise, where you know, your message of not overtraining is also one that I have a lot. And very often uh I'll see a client with adrenal issues, with stress issues, they're medicated, and they just have to strip out a lot of what they're doing and just simplify. And all of a sudden it unlocks a new era of low stress, growth, better hormones, uh, and even the building muscle. They go to the gym now three days a week instead of seven, and they start building more muscle because they're not so stressed and underrecovered. So, where's that line so that people can self-diagnose or figure out where that is?
Eric Osansky: 35:11
Yeah, I mean, it's a good question. You know, I mentioned earlier a lot of it comes down to listening to your body, you know, like they're you know, so because again, sometimes it is hard to know like, are you overdoing it? And um, and and and again, this is also where your expertise comes in. So, and I think I asked you when you're on my podcast, like, how long should people train for? Like, if someone's, you know, at the gym for or even at home working out, you know, for like two hours straight, that might be a little bit too much, in my opinion. Now, maybe maybe for some people it's not, but I mean, I guess when I dealt with graves and I was, or actually before, prior to my graves diagnosis, and I was over exercising after my workout, and I wasn't working out for two hours, you know. I was maybe working out for an hour, so which is what kind of what I do now. The difference is I was doing more cardio than than you know, uh and high intensity, not not necessarily high intensity interval training, but just high intensity, like just going all out, you know, on the rowing machine and running, you know, just on just and just yeah, I was wiped out. So that's not a good sign, too. Like, you know, it when you're done with your workout, in my opinion, you should feel like you could do more. That doesn't mean you necessarily should do more, but you feel like, you know, I feel good, I feel like I got a great workout in. But you know, if I had to go another 20, 30 minutes, I could do that, you know, and also it's a good sign when you work out. Like again, I I I do most of the time I go, I do have some equipment at home, but most of the time I go to the gym. And when I'm done, I could just walk out. I don't have to like sit down and rest and you know, and and catch my breath for for a few minutes before heading out, so which again ties into the first one where you could do more. So that's so so there are obvious signs. I mean, sometimes it might not be that obvious, but I think those, I mean, and again, I love to get your your feedback with this, but I think again, just really listening to your body. Not I'm not against cardio, I do cardio, but just again, not I think that's more people do it with overdo it with the cardio. But I'm sure you also see people doing it overdoing it with um maybe weight training too, and just again, maybe doing an hour and a half, two hours of weight training. And again, may some people might be fine doing that, other people not fine.
Philip Pape: 37:25
Yeah, yeah. I mean, it depends on the mode and and like an hour and a half for some of the big, you know, powerlifting type guys is is not a big deal because they're taking so much rest. But yeah, I like your litmus test actually there for how do you feel at the end of your workout? Because I personally did CrossFit for like eight years, and I would say 10% pro, 90% con out of that experience. Um, number one, because I probably got some long-lasting injuries and nagging things going on because of high reps, constant muscular endurance, never taking a break, and then doing things with terrible form in the interest of speed, you know, can all exacerbate your stress on your body as well. But if you're falling down and you have to like lay on your back for 10 minutes before you even move after workout, that's probably a good sign it's over stressful. I think of that like if you're competing, you know, or if you're powerlifting competition or whatever, that's where you're pushing a max, and that's like an extreme, right? Or if you did a marathon, that's an extreme. That's the few and far between, not the every single training session. So listen, listen to what Eric is saying because that just is a very simple metric where next time you go to the gym, if you're just completely wiped, think about what that means and and where you could potentially dial back. So I agree. Other than that, it's like, are you able to go into the gym the next session feeling pretty fresh? And are you not feeling overly sore? Because you shouldn't be chasing soreness either. That's a different, a different thing. Anyway, you're my guest on the podcast. I don't want to do all the talking here, but yeah, yeah, no, that's good stuff. So what else about thyroid? There's a lot about thyroid we could talk about. Um, I think you hit on earlier the treatment for thyroid. I think it's important to touch on because you talk about you know natural approaches, which we love here. Um, but I know there you there's radioactive iodine, there's surgery, there's things that just destroy or remove the thyroid, right? What's the spectrum look like in terms of treatment options? Which ones are you more, you know, in favor of if people can do it, versus cautious of?
Eric Osansky: 39:25
Yeah. So, and of course it varies depending on whether someone has hypothyroidism Hashimoto's or hyperthyroidism grave. So, like with Hashimoto's, it's um or low thyroid, typically it's um thyroid hormone replacements, is what most conventional medical doctors recommend. And and also a lot of functional medicine doctors. There definitely is a time and place for thyroid hormone replacements. But you know, just um as I mentioned earlier, it depends on what's going on with the thyroid. And sometimes they just look at the TSH and they make that determination. TSH is is elevated. So let's just give You some levo thyroxin, which is synthetic T4. And again, they might not look at maybe they will also look at the T4, um, but they won't look at the T3. And if the T4 is looking good, T3 is low, giving more T4 isn't necessarily the answer. Now, you could say then there's also synthetic T3, like cytomal, that you could give, or you could give desiccated thyroids, such as armor, um NP thyroid, you know, are two of the more common um prescriptions uh options out there. There's also like thyroid glandulars, too, that have some T4, T3 that you could kind of get on your own without a doctor's prescription. But either way, I mean, there's a time and place for that. But you of course want to try to address the underlying cause of the problem, even if you do need thyroid hormone replacements. I mean, if it's Hashimoto's, you want to address the autoimmune component. Some people will still need to remain on thyroid hormone even when addressing the immune system. But some people actually could get off of it or might need a decreased dose. But again, most medical doctors just say be on the thyroid hormone. They're not doing anything for the immune system in the case of Hashimoto's. And then again, when it's like non-autoimmune and you have that conversion problem, T4 to T3 conversion, it's like, well, why do you have the conversion problem? Why do you, you know, rather than just again, even if they give T4 and T3 a desiccator, that's covering both bases. And again, maybe the person doesn't need T4 if it looks good, but still they'll typically give it. The TSH is high. Um, they usually won't just give T3 alone. But yeah, anyway, so that's typically what we're looking at with hypotharism Hashimoto's as far as treatment. Uh with um with hyperthaurism graves, I mentioned the three options antithyroid medication, radioactive idiot and thyroid surgery. But what I didn't mention is when I dealt with graves, I actually took an herbal approach to symptom management while adjusting the cause of the problem. So I used uh an herb called bugleweed, which I don't know if you ever heard of. It's not one of the more popular herbs out there, but um, so bugleweed is an herb that has antithyroid properties. And um I took that and it and I noticed it helping probably within the first week. Um, I mean, symptom-wise. So that's where you're asking like symptoms versus testing, and I didn't know for sure, you know, if um if it like I didn't know like what my thyroid, of course, looked like, but when I took it, I was measuring my resting heart rate, and I noticed my heart rate was decreasing while taking a bugweed. I was still having some palpitation, so I also added another herb called motherwart, which is uh kind of like a natural beta block, or not exactly. I mean, it hel helps support the cardiovascular system, um, has other functions as well. But um, but yeah, so I took bugoweed as well as um motherwort. And then those are what I took, but you you're probably well familiar with L-carnitine. So I wanted to bring up L-carnitine too, because there are some studies uh related to hyperthaurism. Usually it's not, you know, like when you hear about L-carnitine, it's like to support like fatty acid oxidation and other benefits. But yeah, there are some stuff, there are actually a few studies. Uh, there's one, actually a few older studies, um, and not like really old, but showing that higher amounts of L-carnitine, like 2,000 to 4,000 milligrams, could block the entry of thyroid hormone into the cell. So it could actually act as like kind of antithyroid. Um, and then a more recent study from August 2025 showed that taking just only 500 milligrams of L-carnitine when combined with selenium, and this was specific to Graves patients, show that these people needed less thy less medication, less um methymazole in their cases, and then um also helped with the thyroid antibodies. So L-carnitine, another option. Lemon balm is something else, another is an herb that commonly recommended for those with hyperthyroidism has kind of like a calming effect. Um, so there are definitely natural options. And then um one other thing I'll I'll throw out there, which you might have had other um guests speak about, maybe uh LDN, low dose naltrexone. I don't know if um so which uh for both graves and Hashimoto's and other autoimmune conditions, it can modulate the immune system. And uh, I mean it's not doing anything for the cause of the problem, but neither is anything else that I just mentioned. I mean, we're just talking about more natural options, they're not doing anything for the cause. But you know, so LDN, the good news, it's it's helping to modulate the immune system. The the bad news is if like someone's taking LDN and they're also trying to do things to improve their immune system health, like lower antibodies naturally, it might be hard to know if they're taking LDN because LDN could lower the body. Yeah, I see. So but as soon as they're off the LDN, they usually the antibodies will eventually increase.
Philip Pape: 44:46
All right. So along those lines, I was actually thinking um you talked about triggers and uh food and diet and exercise and training. Is be is being too lean a problem for someone with higher thyroid issues, or can it cause it? And I mean like being excessively lean, like bodybuilding stage lean.
Eric Osansky: 45:07
Yeah, I mean, yes. I mean the answer, I mean, if you're if you're too lean, that um definitely could um be a problem from uh from a thyroid standpoint. Um also an adrenal standpoint, too. We really haven't spoken much. I I did mention a little bit of cortisol, but um, but yeah, you you know, we this day and age, of course, there's a lot more talk about like obesity and prompted obesity, which obviously that's that's an issue. But yeah, you know, when I uh I I'll I'll say though, in my practice, when I see I see a lot of that, but it's mostly not people being too lean from like working out or dieting. But again, in my case, I see it like in my situation, like hyperthyroism. There's a lot of work with a lot of women where they're and that's not good either.
Philip Pape: 45:52
That's uh like uncontrolled weight loss, right? Is what you're saying. A little bit different, but you're talking about actually like it's not somebody who's deliberately being lean, and and and in some cases there's a situation where they you know they're afraid to gain weight or don't want to gain weight, they want to stay lean, but then they have a thyroid issue, and you know, my first thought is gain some weight and let's see how that helps.
Eric Osansky: 46:11
Like intermittent fasting. I mean, that also like I'm I don't have anything against intermittent fasting, but if someone's doing like a you know, like 20, like a four-hour eating window, you know, every day, it's just 20 hours stressful, right? And that, you know, could be responsible for like the thyroid getting lower and not you know, just um, so yeah, that could that I don't know if you'd say trigger, I guess you could say trigger, like underlying cause, you know, so not like a trigger like autoimmune trigger, but as far as a factor causing the you know, like the low thyroid. So, yeah, certainly if someone is um like really restricting calories, that could be a big factor. I mean, you sometimes we see that with um again, I'm not that I have a lot of people that follow a ketogenic diet, but ketogenic diet can can have that uh impact on thyroid.
Philip Pape: 46:55
Yeah, no, I I ask because it is an avatar that's out there, and it's like we know we know that thyroid is is downregulated through a calorie deficit itself, but that's kind of a normal response. It's once you've leaned out and and then you try to stay lean. I I know there are negative set, and we know that from the physique world, but you know, I think some people are in denial that they should just gain weight and maybe that will help, you know, kind of recover. Uh, and there's there's sometimes reasons for that body dysmorphia and other stuff that we have to deal with. But the fasting thing is an interesting one because I'm seeing more online now about a recent big meta-analysis that came out. And I first came to my attention from Alan Aragon because he posted about it that showed uh, you know, inflammatory markers measured by blood, you know, can go up with prolonged fasting, which is not a huge surprise. We many of us know that it's a stressful thing, but there's such a narrative about fasting being this wonderful thing for reasons that are not supported that it's important to mention the downsides. So uh last thing, Eric, uh, is I was thinking you're an expert in the space, you've been in it for uh a long time now, like 15 years plus, I want to say, right? Uh since you're a condition, basically. You've written books, you host the podcast. Is there something you've heard a lot? Okay, so you've heard a lot. Is there something about thyroid health that either people are not talking about or not acknowledging enough, or you wish more people knew, if that makes sense?
Eric Osansky: 48:21
Yeah, that's that's a that's a really good question. I mean, most of what we spoke about here. I mean, the triggers are well that's true. I mean, that's um, yeah, I mean, you know, if I had to like pick one, because there are a lot of things, again, I I'll go back to you know, the toxins and toxicants. I mean, you do hear more like in the functional medicine space, of course, about the plastics and the microplastics, but you know, the glyphosate, things like, you know, so but unfortunately, you just still see people like you know, um, people still don't pay attention. I mean, even at the you know, like you go to the gym, for example. Again, I don't know if you work out at home or at the gym, you work out at home, right? I think at home, but I've been to gyms. But if you go to the gym again, you'll see a lot of people still carrying their like plastic water bottles that might be, you know, either sometimes just regular plastic water bottles that you know have the BPA, sometimes it's the BPA-free um water bottles that also have like the BPS, the like they have other structural analogs that act like BPA, so they're still endocrine disrupting chemicals. And then not the gym I go to doesn't have this, but you know, some like you know, when cleaning the machines, they have like the sprays, like you know, so people are spraying all over. Like I so I guess the big thing, and again, this probably is going beyond the thyroid, but I guess the point is like a lot of these things are endocrine disruptors, thyroid disruptors, um, also other hormones too, not just the thyroid, but since we're focusing on the thyroid, but but again, like I said, they they have dual effects, they're not only disrupting the thyroid. Well, actually, I should say more than two effects, because some of these like microplastics, um, bisphenol A. So I mentioned endocrine disrupting chemicals affecting thyroid directly and other hormones. Um, I mentioned also being potential trigger for autoimmunity, but they also could increase permeability of the gut, you know, as well.
Philip Pape: 50:11
Um which is linked to the thyroid and many other things. Yeah.
Eric Osansky: 50:15
Disrupt the gut microbiome, which yeah, affects the thyroid, but affects like again, if you have another thing too, if you have one autoimmune condition, more likely to develop other autoimmune conditions in the future. So I mean, I'm I'm going off on a tangent here, but I guess the chemicals is still something that you know you don't hear enough about. You don't see, you know, you still you see people do, I mean, people I think are definitely eating cleaner. A lot of people are eating cleaner, and you do see, I guess, people at least trying to attempt to drink cleaner water. But again, too much are too many people are buying water by the case, you know, still like plastic water bottles by the case, and you know, still um, you know, spraying their lawn with, you know, using things that have glyphosate in there. And again, the cosmetics too. I mean, a lot of people are are switching to natural cosmetics, but still, I mean, most of the people I know, like when I just meet people randomly, you know, like outside of the functional medicine space, they're usually not doing that. And, you know, they're fascinated when I have conversations about these things, and it's like, yeah, just uh so so not enough. So I would say that's one thing that I talk about all the time. Um, one of the things I talk about all the time that still most people aren't doing.
Philip Pape: 51:27
Yeah, what what comes to mind? This is just anecdotal, because you said it's not talked about outside functional medicine. First of all, the incentives we have in place and the environment we have in place is always a huge force, right? Including our food environment. We know that there's so much pressure and economic incentive. And I don't mean that in a conspiratorial way. I just mean like you're gonna buy the case, the tub of water because it's cheaper and it's more readily available. So that's an economic incentive. People are tired and not wanting to think about this stuff, too, as much as, you know, I think another thing is they don't see the results. This is one of those things that's mysterious and I'll say has like, I guess, longer-term impacts on your health that are harder to measure. Whereas like you go to the gym for a few weeks and you look better in the mirror, you know, that's going to be a self-reinforcing pattern. So if we can connect some of these behaviors to the blood work, the thyroid, the things that are measurable, perhaps that'll be a way to do it. I did an episode not long ago about um cookware in the kitchen, like talking about the PIFAs in your non-toxic pans, because my wife hasn't wanted to use non-toxic pans for a long time. And I used to be the guy that was like, eh, it's, you know, and then the more I looked into it, the more of holy crap, this is this stuff is is so I just made eggs today in my uh the chef's foundry was one of our sponsors. So I got some pans from them, and they're like the not the ceramic, you know, non-top non-stick um without the stuff. Uh, but yeah, what so glass water bottles, um, glass, if you're gonna microwave using glass, like I think that's a good idea. Uh, all that stuff is important. It's just a matter of awareness and the pocketbook and how important it is to you, and how important you think it's actually make moving the needle, right? All what we're trying to do, right, Eric?
Eric Osansky: 53:06
Yeah, exactly. Uh, I I do agree.
Philip Pape: 53:08
So, anyway, where can people find you? Because it's been a cool conversation. I want to, I'll definitely um send them to your podcast. And uh, where else do you want them to look you up?
Eric Osansky: 53:18
Yeah, so yeah, the the podcast. Um, there's um, I mean, my books, uh, the I think you mentioned them in the beginning. Three, I have three books on Amazon, two of them related to hyperthourism, um, one of them related to Hashimoto's. Uh, we're chatting a little bit before um interviewing. I have uh a community uh on the platform School Healing Graves Naturally, which uh save my thyroid.com forward slash heal graves disease. Um so that's um that's growing pretty quickly and there's a lot of engagement in there. And um yeah, I also have a newsletter, Healthy Gut Healthy Thyroid. Um, so help with Savemythhour.com forward slash newsletter. So um, so yeah, those are some of the places you could check me out.
Philip Pape: 53:59
So it sounds like if we we include the link to the podcast and your website, the website can get them to the books and the community and everything else. It's all connected there.
Eric Osansky: 54:06
That should be true, but it's not at the books, yeah. Actually, the books, um like the books, my YouTube channel, it does, but but actually I need to actually include links to the newsletter and the community. But if they actually visited the newsletter, they there are a lot of other resources. But I yeah, I actually probably thought those are new things this year. So my website's been around for a few years.
Philip Pape: 54:27
All right. So thank you so much, Eric. Guys, check out the Save My Thyroid podcast. You'll also hear our discussion on there. Um, you'll have to hunt around depending on when all these episodes come out. Go to save my thyroid.com. We'll throw all these links in the show notes. Eric is the man. If you want to learn about thyroid, you know, natural approaches, triggers, what to test, what to do. Uh, a lot of our stuff is very much aligned. So if you have a question, reach out to him or me about this topic and we'll help you out. Eric, thank you so much for coming on Wits and Weights.
Eric Osansky: 54:55
Thank you so much, fella.

Philip Pape 12/10/25 Philip Pape 12/10/25

2 Psychological SKILLS That Determine If You'll Stick to Lifting and Nutrition | Ep 411

Even if you know what to do for nutrition and strength training, you keep stopping, falling off, and starting over. Discover why this has nothing to do with discipline, willpower, or motivation, and everything to do with two trainable psychological skills that predict whether you'll follow through or quit.

Join the 3-Week Strong Finish Challenge to build self-efficacy and self-regulation through the hardest 3 weeks of the year. Get coaching, accountability, custom nutrition plans, and strength training templates to end the year strong:
https://live.witsandweights.com

Even if you know what to do for nutrition and strength training, you keep stopping, falling off, and starting over.

Discover why this has nothing to do with discipline, willpower, or motivation, and everything to do with two trainable psychological skills that predict whether you'll follow through or quit.

Episode Resources:

Try Fitness Lab for an AI coaching app that gives you microactivities and psychological wins. Special link for podcast listeners to get 20% off.

Timestamps:

0:00 - Why you keep starting over with strength training and nutrition
8:36 - Skill #1: Self-efficacy (believing you can execute the next step)
13:58 - Small wins and progressive overload for confidence
14:40 - Join the 3-Week Strong Finish Challenge
15:55 - Skill #2: Self-regulation (following through when life gets messy)
20:22 - 4 tactics to build self-regulation
24:04 - Related psychological models explained
26:18 - Practical steps and identity shift for lifters

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Philip Pape: 0:01
Even if you know what to do, you've listened to podcasts, watched to videos, maybe hired a coach, you know how to eat, how to train, how to lose fat, build muscle, and yet you still keep stopping, you keep falling off, you keep starting over. Today I'm gonna show you why this happens and why it has nothing to do with discipline, willpower, or motivation. You'll discover the two trainable psychological skills that predict whether someone follows through or gives up and walk away with specific tips to build these skills. Welcome to Wits and Weights, the show that helps you build a strong, healthy physique using evidence, engineering, and efficiency. I'm your host, certified nutrition coach, Philip Pape, and today we're gonna talk about the psychology of adherence, specifically what the research tells us about why people stick to strength training and nutrition and why most people don't. This is one of those episodes that is about mindset and how you think about consistency. And we're gonna go beyond typical advice and probably beyond things that I've even discussed on the show because I recently came across a research review, it was in mass, that examined the factors related to long-term resistance training adherence specifically. And they challenged some of my own assumptions, they confirmed some others, and I'm always learning and trying to apply what I've learned for you guys and to our programs and to the Fitness Lab app, and really just make sure we're using the latest uh knowledge from the evidence to help us out, myself included. What struck me most from this review is that the psychological mechanisms that determine whether someone sticks to their training and nutrition, they're trainable. I guess it didn't surprise me, but it was really cool to see the validation that these are skills that you can develop. They are skills. They're not personality traits, they're not, you know, stuck in your permanent identity. They are skills. So let's get into it. Let's start with what the evidence shows about why most people quit, but why some people don't. And that's going to give us a clue about what we can do. So here's the thing about sticking to anything really, but specifically your training and nutrition, is that I think we're focused often on the wrong variables. It's kind of like when we talk about energy balance and we talk about calories and calories out. And calories in, calories out are variables, but they're usually the wrong variables because most people, even if you understand that, have trouble getting the right calories in and producing the right calories out. And it's like, what upstream do we actually care more about in terms of variables that get us to those other variables being what we want? And you've heard lots of these methods. You've heard of smart goals, for example, you've heard of finding an accountability partner. You've probably heard, hey, you've got to make it fun, you've got to remove friction. And I've talked about all of those. And some of it can help. These are all, I'll say, tools more than anything, but none of them actually explain why two people, if you put them side by side and they have the same environment, the same program, the same knowledge, one of them sticks to that for years and the other one might quit after three weeks, right? And they may have some of these tools in place and still it's not working. So what's going on? Well, the research tells us that the factors that drive long-term adherence, they're not external factors, they're internal factors. They're psychological constructs that are operating beneath the surface. Now, I want to make something clear up front. We don't have a ton of direct evidence on long-term resistance training adherence specifically. As is the case with most of these studies, they're looking at acute responses, short-term outcomes. Maybe they're looking at aerobic exercise, not strength training. And so the research I'm drawing from today looks at psychological models that predict health behavior more broadly and then connects those to what we know about lifting. But I am quite confident that to say that, like when we talk about principles, principles apply to lots of different contexts and situations. And so these models make a lot of sense to me. And that's what we're going to talk about, right? These are I'll say universal mechanisms. The same psychological factors that predict whether you stick to walking or running or health behavior should apply to training and nutrition as well, because we're talking about human behavior, right? The principles don't change just because you're doing one thing instead of another. So, what are these factors? Well, the research points to a few key items here. Positive, effective response is one. That's how you feel after training. Interesting, right? Positive, effective response. Self-efficacy is your belief in your ability to execute specific behaviors. That's how much you believe in yourself and your confidence to do something. Intrinsic motivation is doing something because you genuinely want to do it. And then self-regulation is the ability to follow through on your intentions despite obstacles. Interesting, right? Your ability to follow through despite obstacles. And so these four things are working together in a kind of like a system, and they interact, just like many things interact, right? You can't necessarily separate them. And when we understand that, then we can engineer our approach to try to maximize them. So I want to start with the one that surprised me a little bit in the research. And this is this is the emotional payoff of training. What the data shows us that people who lift weights usually feel better afterward. All right, that sounds obvious, and that I could get on board with. That's not the surprise. I agree. I tell people that all the time. Like, you may not feel like lifting. It may feel, it may be hard. Once you do it, you're gonna love it. You're gonna do it, you're gonna feel great afterward. But in this case, there was a there's research, right? So a 16-week study looked at recreational adults, and it found that uh feeling scale, uh, a score on a scale of how you feel, right? How good you feel, increased consistently from before to after training. The interesting thing though is the highest positive feelings came after strength-focused sessions like deadlifts, squats, etc. Compound movements produce the most positive emotional response. That's pretty cool. Okay. Now, what does this mean for you? Well, if you've ever felt like training should be a slog or punishment or suffering, you know, you have to suffer through it. Research is telling us otherwise. You don't just have to take it from me anymore. Training, especially heavy compound lifts, actually make you feel good, better than before you started. And you know what? I can buy this for sure. It's not until I started lifting that way that I really started to enjoy lifting. And I try to get that message across to people who are like, well, I don't like to work out, I don't like to, you're not doing it right. And I think this matters a ton because of something called hedonic theory. And that's the idea that people are going to repeat behaviors that feel good at the end, right? It's an incentive. There's a there's a famous study where people stuck their hands in cold water, and one of the conditions was cold water for one minute, another was cold water for one minute, plus an additional 30 seconds where the temperature was raised slightly. And then when they were asked which condition they wanted to repeat, most people chose the longer one, even though it involved more total cold exposure because it ended better. And this has implications to our training because if you're crushing yourself to the point of feeling awful at the end of every session, which I don't recommend, you're fighting against your own psychology. You know, you might think I'm being hardcore and this, you know, I think of my CrossFit days. Man, I was like, at the end, I don't know if I felt great or not. Like maybe hours later I did, but right afterward, I felt pretty terrible. I like I wanted to die. And we often put that on a pedestal. But you're actually programming your brain to not like training when you do that. So the takeaway is leave the gym feeling good, not destroyed. Whoa, pretty cool, right? Like research supports this, where you know, progressive overload matters, training hard matters, but there's a difference between a challenging session where the weights are heavy and one that like crushes and destroys you and demoralizes you. There is a difference. And usually the former is going to end up being the more effective workout anyway. So that's that's feeling capable after because you've done something. But now let's connect that to the next factor, which maybe is the most important factor, at least in my opinion. And that is related to self-efficacy. I think self-efficacy, it comes up a lot. I hear people, well, I guess I don't hear people use the phrase a lot. I've used it a lot since I met Dr. Eric Helms years ago and he used it. And there's something called self-self-motivation theory that it's part of. But a lot of people, I think, confuse self-efficacy with motivation, and they're definitely not the same. You know, motivation is wanting to do something. And I heard someone say recently, hey, anytime you do something, you were motivated to do it. So if you're doom scrolling on your phone on the couch, you were motivated to do that. Motivation gets you to do something. Whatever, it doesn't matter. Good, bad doesn't matter. Self-efficacy, on the other hand, is believing you can do it. Specifically, it's believing that you can execute the next step successfully. It's a level of confidence, isn't it? And here's how I like to think about it. So motivation is saying, do I want to go to the gym? Self-efficacy is saying, can I complete today's workout successfully? There's a difference, right? Do I want to go to the gym? Motivation. Can I complete today's workout successfully? That's self-efficacy. That's more on the confidence side. And the research is clear here as well. Higher self-efficacy is associated with more positive feelings after training, as well as greater intention to continue training or exercising, and even better self-regulation around food choices. So it is a predictor across multiple domains. And what I find super powerful about this is that self-efficacy, it's not just believing you can achieve some umbrella long-term massive goal, right? It's not. It's granular, it's down to the process level, skill level. It's can I hit my protein today? Not can I master flexible dieting? Can I do this workout? Not can I become a competitive lifter or can I get jacked in six months, right? And the cool thing here, we're going to tie it into the first thing I talked about, is what the research found that lifting heavier loads was related to great, greater self-efficacy. And if you think about it, it makes logical sense because every time you add weight to the bar, every time you hit a PR, even if it's Rep's PR, yes, you're making physical progress, but it's also psychological progress. You did a hard thing and you've done it. And now you say, your brain says, I can do this because I did it before and I can do it again. You're collecting data points that reaffirm your efficacy. And this is also, if to take a highly relevant tangent, this is why progressive overload is also so important beyond what it gets you. It actually builds that self-belief. Because every time you have a successful extra rep or higher load, when you complete a planned workout that you intentionally designed to be slightly more challenging than last time, that is like a deposit into your self-efficacy bank account. And that's what's also really powerful, where I see people change from I hate working out to, oh my God, I can't wait for my next session because I want to see if I'm stronger. There is a difference there. Now, you have to build this intentionally. It's a skill. You have to engineer your wins. You have to bring them from nowhere into existence, not fake wins, but real wins that are achievable. So that means they have to be something you can achieve because you have to start with the self-efficacy, self-efficacy you have right now, which if you've never lifted weights at all, is going to be quite low compared to somebody who's even done one gym session and knows that they can do a lift. Does that make sense? So you're starting where you are, and you want to guarantee what I'll call technical success, which means starting with a minimum that you absolutely 100% can hit rather than some ideal that's like you're not sure how challenging it's gonna be, and then there's a chance you're gonna miss it. This goes back to the always get your reps philosophy that I originally learned in starting strength. And it's a super powerful psychological model because it means you need to track in a way that shows that you progress to give your brain evidence that you did progress, but you have to progress. So rather than fail, because it kind of breaks the loop or breaks the chain, if you will. Okay. And that's starting with a target that's slightly above where you are now. That's why I'm a big fan of the small wins and the small steps. Same thing goes with protein, calories, whatever. If you're not eating very much protein, don't double your protein. Pick a goal that's a little bit more than that, and then a little more, and you hit that, and then a little more and you hit that. And then within weeks, it doesn't take long, guys, it doesn't take long for any of this stuff. Within weeks, now you are at a level that you thought in the past was impossible, but now you totally believe you can do it because you've done it. It's like when your squat goes from 95 to 135 to 185 to 225. And a few months later you look back, you're hitting 275, and you're like, oh my God, remember that time I did 95? That seems like nothing. 275 would have felt impossible. And now you're like, when am I getting a 315? Right? And your brain is gonna predict success based on past data. So you have to feed it good data, good meaning data that emphasizes you can do this and have the self-efficacy. So quick break here because we're talking about self-efficacy and self-regulation. Today is Wednesday, December 10th, and we are just kicking off our three-week strong finish challenge today. If you haven't had a chance to grab a spot and sign up, you can still do so at live.witsandweeets.com and you can get the replay from our kickoff two days ago and all the resources, the strength training templates, the custom nutrition plan, access to our coaches, accountability, all of it. And that challenge is designed around what we're talking about today, about proving to yourself that you can maintain or even progress with your training, your nutrition, your recovery, even in the hardest weeks of the year. And this is exactly relevant because we're gonna show you how to have that achievable level of success rather than a wishful thinking that you fail at. And that framework is what we call the flex framework, right? It's about setting minimums and then also having bailouts. And even the bailouts give you a psychological win that you're not manufacturing, but you're actually achieving. And that helps you build the evidence that you can do this and follow through no matter what's happening around you in the hardest time of the year. And that's exactly how you build self-efficacy, aiming to prove that you have a floor that you can always count on no matter what. There's still time to join. The challenge runs through the end of the year. So join now. If you're seeing hearing this a couple days later, it's we're just getting started. You have plenty of time. Go to live.witsandweights.com, register, jump in. You'll get all the resources. I'm not going to go over those again. Just go check it out. You can read about it. If it doesn't look interesting, don't have to join. Live.witsandweights.com. And then by the end of the year, you'll know what your sustainable baseline is. Not what you hope you can do in some random perfect conditions, but what you can actually maintain when life gets super, super chaotic. And that knowledge is so invaluable. That is the self-efficacy that we want to build. All right. Live.witsandweights.com to join our three-week strong finish challenge, whether you're trying to lose fate, fat, or just maintain your results. All right. Let's get back to the psychology of adherence. And I'm going to talk about the second trainable skill that determines whether you follow through. So the first one was self-efficacy. I know I talked about feeling good after a workout. That wasn't really the skill. The skill was tied to self-efficacy itself. The second one, so self-efficacy is about believing you can do something. Now I want to talk about self-regulation. So self-regulation is actually doing it, but when life gets in the way. This is the whole point. Think of it this way: self-efficacy is the foundation. Self-regulation is what keeps the building standing up when the wind starts to pick up. Does that make sense? It's doing it when life gets in the way. And the research defines it as the ability to control your behaviors, your feelings, and thoughts in service of a goal. Right? So self-regulation is the ability to control your behaviors, feelings, and thoughts in service of a goal. Notice that's not a habit. A habit is automatic. This is a skill. It's what allows your behavior to match your intentions despite obstacles. And that despite obstacles part is the crucial part. It's what we've been talking about since day one on this podcast when we talk about sustainability, flexibility, and all of that. Because here's the reality. You're going to have days where you're tired, you're stressed, you're busy, you're traveling, you're dealing with family stuff, right? And the older we get, the more of that stuff there is just it's not going to go away. Work emergencies, in my own case, a surgery a week after a colonoscre. Come on. Come on, world. Right? Self-regulation is what allows you to make a useful choice in those moments. A useful choice in those moments instead of abandoning ship. So, what does this look like in reality, in practice? Well, it looks like choosing a shortened version of your training when time is tight instead of skipping the training. Or moving it out a day instead of skipping it. It looks like logging your food even when you don't eat like you intended, because the data still matters. It looks like adjusting your dinner because your lunch was bigger than you planned. It looks like lifting while you're on vacation, but using a minimalist plan in a local gym instead of pretending the gym doesn't exist till you get home. Now, that last one's a little of if you choose to do that, right? That's if your goal is to continue training on vacation. Now, the research, as always, shows these cool little insights that if you're not paying attention, you don't realize this stuff, and then you just hear the same thing everybody else says on podcasts, which isn't always reality according to research. Self-regulation can transfer between domains, going back to our idea of principle, our idea of principles and universal mechanisms. And what I mean by this is improving your regulation in one area like training can improve your self-regulation in another area like nutrition. Pretty okay. Now this is interesting. I didn't mention when we were talking about self-efficacy, a thought that I had, which is that the more I've become confident as a lifter, the more I become confident in other areas of my life. Same thing applied to my confidence of public speaking. And self-regulation is the same thing. It's connected. It's like upward spiraling. When you build the muscle of following through in an area, that strength, that confidence carries over. The person who learns to adjust their training when time is limited is probably more likely to adjust their meal when their circumstance changes. It's the same skill, which is super powerful because it means you don't have to learn 20 different skills. You learn one skill and you apply that principle to multiple areas. So, how do you do that? How do you build self-regulation? Well, again, we're going to look at the research. What does it say? Because I'm not an expert in this area. I'm learning like you guys, but then I try to bring this to my clients and uh, you know, the app that I have, Fitness Lab, I actually put those principles in this app so that you can benefit from it. So I'm gonna give you four tips to build self-regulation. The first one is to use action plans and implementation intentions. So, what do I mean? This means deciding in advance what you'll do when an obstacle arises. This is the if-then strategy. That's all it is. It's not figure out when I get there. It's if X happens, I will do Y. If I'm traveling and the hotel gym only has dumbbells, I will do this dumbbell workout. If I wake up late, I will do a 20-minute session instead of my full 60-minute session. Now, not every scenario has to be accounted for, just the ones that you feel are common to you. And what I like to do with clients is say, what scenarios have hit have bothered me a lot? What have gotten in the way a lot? I'm gonna make strategies for those first. That's the first one. So implementation intentions, if then. Second, it's is something called pre-commitment. It's like pre-planning, but you're actually doing something, like you're actually doing a thing. For example, packing your gym clothes and your gym bag the night before, right? So you're doing something to make the situation easier, lower friction, et cetera. Pre-logging your meals in your food app and then just executing. Same thing with your workouts. Setting up your environment so the default is the best choice for you, like your kitchen, your cabinets, your fridge. That's what pre-commitment is. You've already committed to the thing by taking action ahead of time. The third tip I have for you is habit strength. Habit strength. Now remember, I mentioned earlier, habits are automatic things. Working out is not a habit. Working out is part of your lifestyle. It's a series of habits and intentions and behaviors, et cetera. But a habit is automatic. So the more automatic a behavior becomes, by definition, the less self-regulation it requires. This is why I love systems. Systems are always going to be superior to a decision. Decision can be, can cause fatigue and stress and can interfere with your emotions, et cetera. A system, I won't say makes it automatic, but it helps all the automatic things happen on a regular basis. So if you're training at 6 a.m. and that's just what you do because you've you've done the pre-commitment with your gym bag, you've developed the habits of just getting up at 6 a.m., it all leads to you ultimately training, being the person that trains at 6 a.m. Do you know what I mean? So you don't have to regulate yourself into it. This is a little more complexity when we talk about habits and how habits build up into behaviors. Okay. And then the fourth tip I have for you is tracking micro winds. Very common theme on this show. Every time you successfully do anything where you've adapted in some way, and that could be physical adaptation, but more likely psychological or habit adaptation. Every time you do one of these intelligent pivots because you have high self-regulation instead of quit, you know, you find a way around the obstacle. That is data and that is evidence. And you should track that in some way, whether that's a habit streaker, some sort of app. This is, I love my app for this. I'm just gonna toot my own horn. Fitness lab is all about this because you get little microactivities every day and you can build wins. And it's always asking you, like, what do you feel about your choice? What would you win here? What would you win here? And then it reinforces that for you. And that builds that self-regulation as well as the self-efficacy, right? So, self, what is self-regulation not? It's not white knuckling your way through life. That's not what we're doing. It's building a system that reduces the willpower that you need in the first place. All right, so in my notes, I was gonna start going over some different psychological models behind all of this. I don't want to make this episode longer than it needs to be. I'm gonna quickly list them out. There's actually seven of them that explain health behavior and adherence. And you can look them up and look, if any of these are ones that you want me to dive into on a future episode, reach out to me on Instagram at Wits and Weights or go to wits and weights.com slash question. Reach out to me and let me know. Here they are. Self-determination theory, that is, that's what I meant to say before when I said something else. I said it wrong. Self-determination theory. That's when you have autonomy, competence, and relatedness. And that helps you develop intrinsic motivation and that leads to greater adherence. Okay, related to what we talked about today. I'm not going to get into it, but self-efficacy is related to competence and capability. So it's very important here. Second is the theory of planned behavior. That's when you have a strong intention to do something and increases your odds of doing it. The third one is the integrated behavior model, which takes that further and says, hey, external factors can get in the way. So this is where you have to use self-regulation to control your environment, resources, context, everything like that. The fourth one is social cognitive theory, which emphasizes self-efficacy and your belief in something. And when you believe in something, you're going to more likely do it. And then there's three more. Those are, or what are how many? I mentioned four. I'm just going to stop it though. Those are my four favorite. They all overlap with what we've already talked about. You don't have to pick any of these models. I just thought it'd be cool to understand that there's hard science behind a lot of this. You just have to build competence through these winds. You have to create autonomy by giving yourself choice within this structure. It helps to find community that can reinforce this identity of yours as someone who trains and eats well, and ultimately design a system that makes it easy to follow through, easier to follow through than not follow through. You're stacking the deck in your favor using this psychological knowledge. So the last thing I'm going to mention is how do you put this into practice, like literally practically? All right. Self-efficacy, you want structured wins. You want things that are repeatable, which we already alluded to when it comes to your training, of picking something achievable, but that's still growth. That's an example. For nutrition, self-efficacy again comes to wins like hitting your protein, eating one more serving of vegetables than usual. Some sort of micro win like that. So that's self-efficacy. For self-regulation, you just want to reduce friction. So that's pre-logging, that's packing your gym bag the night before, that's doing meal prep, that's having your workout template ready to go, or you know, your training template ready to go. The less that you have to decide the moment, which means less to regulate by definition. And then what are your fallback plans? What's your minimum viable when something happens? What's your bailout, which is what we talk about in the flex framework, which we're what what our challenge is all about. And then all this connects to your identity. Seeing yourself as someone who trains, someone who prioritizes good food and protein, someone who adapts, who doesn't quit. That's a very powerful thing. So if you're if you're gonna take one thing out of all of this to start from, I'm gonna say look at your strength training. If you're not already doing strength training in the way that we've alluded to today, focus on that because it's a backbone of everything. If you can start training and making progress and building strength and muscle, it's gonna give you self-efficacy and self-regulation that translates to all the other stuff. It's pretty powerful. All right. And then remember, if you want to put this into practice right now, during the hardest three weeks of the year, join us in our three-week strong finish challenge. It's still open, live.wits and weights.com. We are building these skills, your self-efficacy, your self-regulation, using a structured challenge that have minimums, bailouts, and of course, community and coach support. Go to live.witsandweights.com. Prove to yourself that you can maintain and grow through the holidays. Enter 2026, knowing exactly what you're capable of. Go to live.witsandweights.com or click the link in the show notes. All right, until next time, keep using your wits, lifting those weights. And remember, self-efficacy and self regulation aren't gifts that you're born with. They are skills that you build. One rep, one meal, one successful adaptation at a time. I'll talk to you next time here on the Wits and Weights podcast.

Philip Pape 12/8/25 Philip Pape 12/8/25

How to Lose Fat Without Giving Up Foods You Enjoy (The 20% "Eat Anything" Rule) | Ep 410

If your fat loss strategy involves eating "perfectly clean" and you find yourself swinging between strict dieting and weekend blow-outs, you're stuck in the perfection trap. Discover why chasing 100% compliance is sabotaging your fat loss progress, how the 20% "eat anything" rule creates sustainable flexibility while still driving body composition changes, and why this middle ground beats both extremes of all-junk and all-clean eating. Learn the psychology and physics behind why rigid dieting fails, how to define your 80-20 split in practical terms (daily vs weekly), and the crucial guardrails that keep flexibility from becoming chaos.

Join the 3-Week Strong Finish Challenge to end the year stronger while everyone else backslides. Get coaching, accountability, custom nutrition plans, and strength training templates to maintain progress through the holidays. Kickoff call Monday, December 8 at 5pm Eastern, challenge starts Wednesday, December 10:
https://live.witsandweights.com

If your fat loss strategy involves eating "perfectly clean" and you find yourself swinging between strict dieting and weekend blow-outs, you're stuck in the perfection trap.

Discover why chasing 100% compliance is sabotaging your fat loss progress, how the 20% "eat anything" rule creates sustainable flexibility while still driving body composition changes, and why this middle ground beats both extremes of all-junk and all-clean eating.

Learn the psychology and physics behind why rigid dieting fails, how to define your 80-20 split in practical terms (daily vs weekly), and the crucial guardrails that keep flexibility from becoming chaos.

This evidence-based approach to nutrition helps you lose fat, build muscle, and maintain strength without guilt, restriction, or the all-or-nothing mindset that derails most people during fat loss phases, especially around the holidays!

Episode Resources:

Join the 3-Week Strong Finish Challenge - Kickoff today, starts Wed Dec 10: http://live.witsandweights.com/
Try my AI coaching app Fitness Lab for personalized nutrition tracking and coaching. Special 20% off link for podcast listeners.

Timestamps:

0:00 - Why you're struggling to lose fat
2:50 - A more flexible (and sustainable) approach
6:30 - What to include in your 20% flexible eating
10:38 - Why this works for fat loss (psychology and physics)
16:26 - The 3-Week Strong Finish Challenge
21:35 - Guardrails for flexible eating (protein, calories, intent, etc.)
27:48 - How to apply to fat loss, maintenance, and muscle building phases
32:37 - Travel, holidays, and weekends
36:24 - 4 common mistakes to avoid with flexible nutrition
40:44 - Identity, mindset, and next steps

Have you followed the podcast?

Get notified of new episodes. Listen on Apple, Spotify, or all other platforms.

Then hit “Follow” and you’re good to go!

Philip Pape: 0:01
If your fat loss strategy involves eating quote unquote perfectly clean, and you find yourself swinging between strict dieting and blowing it on the weekends, this episode is for you. Today I'm gonna show you why rigidity is sabotaging your fat loss, how the 20% eat anything rule actually gives you sustainable flexibility while still hitting your body composition goals, and why this middle ground beats both extremes of all junk and all clean eating. I'm your host, certified nutrition coach, and the founder of Fitness Lab, Philip Pape. And today we're tackling something that I see as one of the biggest derailers of fat loss phases, and that is the all or nothing approach to eating. It's a pattern that comes up in all of us, and even if you know that flexibility is the way to go, there's always a pressure toward trying to be cleaner or eating higher quality food, you know, avoiding what we might think of as junk or bad food. And when you do that, you inevitably slip up. You feel like you've then ruined your plan, and then things start to fall apart, especially this time of year around the holidays. Or maybe you've seen the it if it fits a macro, if it fits your macros crowd, right? Who eat the Pop Tarts and pizzas and donuts, and they're like, you could just eat anything and lose fat and live that way, and it's great. And you're like, that can't be right either, can it? And so the 20% eat anything rule, the idea of 80-20 from a whole foods to anything goes perspective, still stands up as a really good practical middle ground that works quite well for those of us who live real life, who are busy, who we still want the results, we still want to lose fat to build muscle, we still want to have a life. And it connects directly to our philosophy here, this physique engineering we like to call it, where we use evidence-based, flexible strategies that are backed by research to make sure the whole process is sustainable. And sustainable just means you can sustain it for months, years, or potentially the rest of your life. That's what we want to do. And I see so many comments on the YouTube videos and in Spotify about clean eating and well, I cut out all this stuff. I cut out all sugar and all this, all carbs, whatever, and I feel great, and that's the way to go. And usually my first reply is do you enjoy that? And is that working for you long time? Long time. Is that working for you long term? Right. And that's what sustainability is. So I'm gonna give you a quick preview of what we're gonna cover today. The first thing is why chasing this is a problem. Okay, what psychologically and based on this the evidence, what it what it prevents or what it holds us back from. Secondly, what the 20% rule truly means, right? If you want to put it into practice daily and weekly, what it looks like. And then third, are the guardrails that you need so this doesn't turn into a free-for-all, a binge restrict, emotional eating, cheat days, all the things that I see this devolve into often. And then I'm of course going to end up with troubleshooting when things aren't working to keep it really practical. So let's start with the why behind this. Why is this concept of eating clean or perfect eating or all high-quality foods killing your progress? Because I do still see on social media even some people I respect who kind of lean toward this as if any junk food at all is somehow a problem or opens the door to everything falling apart. And I think it's the opposite. I want to start with a hard truth. If you're trying to eat perfectly, you are absolutely setting yourself up for failure. Maybe 1% of people can do this, maybe with a lot of quote unquote discipline and willpower. And even them, I wonder if they're completely miserable doing it. That's a separate issue. But I've definitely worked with hundreds of clients at this point, thousands of people through listening to the podcast and telling me their stories. And I see this pattern all the time. So anecdotally, it's there, but in the evidence we see the difference between rigid and flexible dieting presents this as well. And that usually looks like this: you want to lose fat, so you have all the motivation in the world. And then you decide I'm gonna do it by cutting something out. It's always a either a quick fix magic pill approach, or these are the foods I can eat, these are the foods I can't, right? And for many people, that's no sugar, no more sugar, no more alcohol, no more eating out, clean eating only, the word clean. And for a week or two, maybe three, maybe four, you know, you crush it, you do it, you stick to it. But then that one Friday night rolls around, or the holiday, or there's a work event, or a family dinner, or just a long, stressful week, or, or, or you have a drink and some appetizers. And in your mind, you failed, right? You're already like, ooh, the door is opening now to, you know, blowing this thing, and I might as well keep going, at least for this dinner, and then I'll start again tomorrow. Now, I'm all for starting tomorrow, but I'm not for sabotaging yourself now because you're thinking ahead to, well, I can start tomorrow. And so, what was one drink or one appetizer or one snack or one piece of candy or one whatever think thing you think is, you know, a bad choice becomes an entire weekend of eating without any structure because you've already set in your mind that you didn't follow what you intended to do. And so why continue, at least for now? And then by the end of the weekend, you've undone most of the week's deficit if you're trying to mean a calorie deficit. And this is what happens very commonly. This is the perfection trap, right? The belief you have to be 100% compliant or adherent, or you failed, and it creates a false dichotomy. It creates a binary, binary thinking that doesn't actually exist in reality, because your body doesn't care about perfect days, right? Like it doesn't care that the entire day you ate quote unquote clean. It just cares about the overall inputs over time, the accumulation of it, the compound interest, let's say, your energy balance, your protein, your training stimulus, all of the little behaviors that add up over time, even when they're not perfect. They're far better than zeros, they're far different than what you would have done in the past as a sedentary non-athletic individual. And this is where the 20% rule comes in. And honestly, 20%, an 80-20 philosophy can apply to a lot of things in life. We've talked about the 80-20 rule for the Pareto principle, where 20% of the effort produces 80% of the results. We see this ratio a lot in reality. And whether it's 20% or 15% or 25, that's not the point. The point is instead of chasing 100% of something and then inevitably falling short, right? You build flexibility into the system from the start. And therefore, you're never really breaking a rule, are you? When you have dessert, when you have that ice cream, when you have that slice of pizza. You are using the flexibility you planned for. You have a buffer, you're operating within that already. And so that connects back to what I've talked about on the show regarding like all junk versus all clean eating, right? Both extremes fail. The all-junk approach, where you just eat whatever you want and track your macro, track your macros and calories, while technically possible for weight loss, for energy balance, it tends to leave you starving, low energy, nutritionally depleted, not feeling great, not great digestion, et cetera. Whereas the all clean approach that leads to rigidity, stress during social situations, and eventually you just blow up or blow out, right? And so the middle ground is to build in some of that. If you want to use the word junk, 20% junk, 80% clean, fine, but I wouldn't even use the labels. I would say the whole thing together, the idea of 80% whole foods and 20% other, which we're gonna get into next, is itself a healthy approach or nutritional pattern, dietary pattern, right? It's not about the individual foods. So let's move on to what the 20% rule means specifically. Let's define it clearly. It means that roughly 80% of your weekly intake, this is calories if you want to turn it into numbers, comes mostly from nutrient-dense, higher protein, we'll say minimally processed foods, generally things you get in the produce aisle or the meat department or the dairy department, right the edge of the grocery store, that supports satiety, that's keeping you full, supports your performance, like lifting and you feeling great, your biofeedback, and of course your body composition at the same time. The remaining 20% can be foods you enjoy simply because, now here's a shocking concept: you enjoy them. That's it. As long as your total calories and protein targets are still met. So I don't like pigeonholing that 20% into your macros per se. I want to make sure that you are on track to hit your calories, macros, micros, all those things with the 80% so that the 20% truly has maximum flexibility. Now, let me be very direct about what this is not. It is not 20% of the time going completely off the rails. It is not an excuse to ignore energy balance. So it's not like you're saying, well, 20% of my week in terms of, I don't know, time or number of meals, I'm just gonna go hoggle out and eat thousands and thousands and thousands of calories. No, it's it's 20% roughly of the calories for your week are taken up by this flexible framework that still respects the hierarchy, right? Still calories first, protein second, food quality third, timing and preference fourth, and not always in that order, right? So think of it like a system with built-in margin. When we design systems, we did we don't build them to handle exactly the expected load, right? We don't design a bridge to handle just the expected amount of traffic. We build in safety factors for real world conditions. So the 20% is your margin of error for being a human with a social life, stress, cravings, everything else that comes with it. Now let's turn it into numbers. So let's say you're in a fat loss phase eating 1800 calories. All right, and you can just scale this up or down depending on who you are. 80% of 1800 is 1440 calories coming from nutrient-dense staples. Lean proteins, vegetables, fruits, whole grains, fat, you know, fats from whole foods. The remaining 360 calories, that's your 20%. Now, 360, this is in a given day. That's not nothing. That's still a decent amount of calories to allocate. And, you know, whether you drink alcohol or not, that's part of the calories. Maybe it's a small dessert, maybe it's a slice or two of pizza, a couple slices of pizza could fit in there, alongside, you know, your lean foods, whatever. And you can think about this either daily or weekly, depending on your personality and your schedule. If you're very routine-oriented, I think daily 80-20 works great. You know that each day you've got that buffer. And then if your life is a little bit more variable, if you tend to shift calories around, if you have a lot more challenges on the weekends, let's say, if you have social events that are clustered on the weekends, like many, then thinking weekly could make more sense, where you hit the 80% mainly during the weekdays. And then the 20% is more on the weekends. And that works for a lot of people. And again, I want to think of cheat days here. Cheat days are like unfettered, nonstop, zero control. This still has a sense of control to it and planning and intention. Now, here's what belongs in the 80% versus the 20%, just to give you specifics. The 80% is gonna be lean meats, eggs, Greek yogurt, cottage cheese, whey, heck, tofu, if you're you know vegan or you like tofu, and that's where you get protein. Your fiber and micronutrient sources like vegetables, fruits, legumes, whole grains, your fats like olive oil, avocado, nuts, fattier cuts of meat, all the foods that keep you full, that support your training, that help with the hormones and digestion, that make hitting your targets practical in terms of your macros, your calories, all of those things. That's the 80%. It's still a lot of delicious, amazing foods. And for many of us who start to eat that way, we almost don't feel we need the 20% as much because of the 80% tasting so good. The 20%, however, that would be ice cream, pizza, burgers, fries. And again, there's there's some wiggle room here. Like when I say burger, I mean a little bit more on the greasy spoon fast food side, right? If you're making your own burger at home, it could still fit into the 80%, depending on what's in there, right? How processed it is, etc. So French fries, candy, chocolate, chips, pastries, maybe alcohol for some people. Again, I discourage alcohol as much as possible because we know it has no benefits, but it's part of many people's lives. And so I put it in this category. Uh, restaurant meals that are more indulgent. And I say it that way because some restaurant food or meals, you know, still may fit in your 80%. So whatever you actually enjoy eating that doesn't fit the nutrient-dense category, the key is to fit these into your framework, and that's calories, macros, micros. You're not adding them on top, you're just keeping room or space for them. So I hope that helps define the 80-20. Now, I want to get to the next section on how why this works so well, why psychologically and physiologically this actually works just fine. And you've got to stop listening to the extremists out there who are like, nope, I cut sugar, that's gonna solve it. Nope, diabetes is caused by too much red meat. I don't know. Nonsense claims that you hear online all the time. Just insane claims that are either you know patently incorrect or they are inferring from something and interpreting the research incorrectly. So, does this actually work for losing body fat? Absolutely, absolutely. I mean, if look, if eating just Pop-Tarts can lose for work for losing body fat, even though it's not at all optimal for many other reasons, then we know anything less extreme than that can also work. And when we talk about fat loss, we're not just talking about energy balance. We're also talking about the process of going through that deficit over several weeks or months. And can you do that successfully mentally, physiologically, and practically? And so the answer is yes, AD20 works, and it usually, in fact, almost always works better than a more restrictive approach in either direction. And here's why. First, energy balance is at the end of the chain what drives fat loss, not how clean or high quality or quote unquote good your food is. The type of food actually doesn't matter just for pure fat loss. Okay, you can eat the cleanest diet in the world. And if you're in a surplus, you're gonna gain fat. You can gain fat eating too much of anything. You can include less than optimal foods, and if you're in deficit and you have enough protein, remember, protein's still important here, you're gonna lose fat and preserve muscle. That's the physics of it. Calories always determine whether you lose weight, whereas protein and lifting determine whether you keep the muscle while losing fat so that you change your body composition. So that's that's a simple thing to understand. But second, and maybe most more importantly, is the psychological sustainability. And that's as, if not most important as the precision of your diet. In fact, I'm coming to find over the years that if you can get this part right, it often takes care of the first part, the energy balance, the calories, the macros. Believe it or not, you can shift your diet to be sustainable and feel great. And then naturally it's a lot easier to hit the calories and macros. And so this is something that I emphasize all the time. If I'm going to go back to positive psychology, the perma model, I did a whole episode on this in the past. Oh man, what does that stand for? I'm not gonna go through it here, but the perma model where basically positive emotion and enjoyment are part of any plan that lasts. And if people say, Oh, you you shouldn't think of food as enjoyment, right there, you've lost me. I'm sorry, you've lost me. If you're, and by enjoyment, it doesn't mean it, it doesn't mean hedonism or unfettered indulgence, right? There's a difference between that and thinking of food as a positive aspect of meaning in your life because we eat food every day. We need it to survive and to thrive. So if your fat loss approach doesn't include some element of reward and pleasure, it is not going to stick. That I am unequivocal about. And the 20% bucket is your built-in positive emotion lever. It lowers the guilt, it reduces the all or nothing thinking, and it supports your long-term adherence. Right? We're not talking about 100% compliance, we're talking about adhering to what you've set up for yourself, where if you set up an 80-20 approach, it's gonna be a lot easier to adhere to that and to be quote unquote compliant to that. And then the third piece here, so we we, you know, first was energy balance, second was psychological sustainability. The third piece is that this adherence over time, this consistency, right? Not perfection, but just consistency, is what compounds into your real body composition changes. A moderate deficit that you stick to for 12 weeks is always gonna be an aggressive, restrictive diet that you can only maintain for three or four weeks before you have inevitably have that binge episode. And the 20% rule increases your probability of sustaining the approach. That increases your probability of reaching your goal. You see how this all ties together so nicely. Now, I want to be clear, this is not permission to be sloppy. The 20% still fits within your structure. If you're eating 1800 calories for fat loss and your 20% eat anything foods push you to 2,500 calories regularly, well, you're not doing the 20% rule, are you? That 20% has now become a bigger percentage of the total pie because you're just overconsuming. You're eating without awareness. The flexibility exists within the boundaries, not instead of them. Does that make sense? So it's always like intention, flexibility, and planning, but the flexibility is built into the plan. So speaking of flexibility within structure, I think this connects perfectly to something that we are kicking off today. All right, we're kicking it off today. It technically starts Wednesday, but we're kicking it off today. It's called the three-week strong finish challenge. This is specifically designed to help you make progress, be focused, maintain your strength and body composition through the rest of the year, through the holidays, from this Wednesday the 10th through the end of the year, right before New Year, when everyone else is backsliding, right? And it's perfect with this topic today, because instead of trying to be perfect during the craziest time of the year, the highest chaos time of the year, when everybody else is starting to gain all their weight and get off track and everything goes out the window, we're using what I call the flex framework. Talked about it before, not gonna go into it here, but it's having three different levels optimal, minimum, and bailout to keep you moving forward no matter what December throws at you. Plus, you're gonna get two coaches that are gonna coach you. You're gonna have accountability, weekly check-ins, lots of great resources, strength training templates to lose fat and build muscle. All of these things are included in this challenge to end the year. And the kickoff call is today, Monday, December 8th at 5 p.m. Eastern. Now, if you're hearing this too late for that, the there is a replay that you will get if you register anyway. So we're giving you a couple day buffer before the challenge starts. And heck, even if you're listening to this Thursday or Friday this week, you could still join because it's a three-week challenge. Okay, the kickoff calls today, live.witsandweights.com. The actual challenge starts uh Wednesday, so we're gonna get you all the resources and answer your questions to get ready for that. You've got two days then to join us, grab one of the 50 spots, and watch the replay if you can't make the live call. Live.witsandweights.com. This challenge is about proving to yourself that you can maintain and even gain new progress at the end of the year, even when life is messy. And we're not gonna make you do a restricted diet. We're not gonna make you do a fat loss phase if this isn't the right time, which for most people it's not, with all the holidays happening. You're not trying to have three perfect weeks. That's the whole point. We're trying to help you build the system to survive the imperfect conditions. So go to live.witsandweights.com to register for the challenge. Kickoff is today, Monday, December 8th at 5 p.m. Eastern. But if you can't make it, the replay will be there. And the actual challenge starts Wednesday. You're gonna have full accountability and support in our community. It's a private community just for people who register at live.wits and weights.com. Link in the show notes, and you'll get everything you need to succeed, including direct access to coaches, a custom nutrition plan, strength training templates designed for this time of year, including if you have limited equipment or are traveling, all of that, live.witsandweig.com. All right, now that we've covered the what and the why, let's talk about these guardrails. Let's talk about this idea of structure with flexibility, because without the guardrails, the 20% can become 40%. And then you're confused about why you're not losing fat and why I just did what Phillip said and it's not working. The first guardrail is that protein and calories are still gonna rule the day when it comes to energy balance and holding on to muscle. Your 20% flexibility exists within those targets. So you'd still have to know generally what calories you're hitting. Now, I've mentioned before, even if you're not tracking calories and protein and you're making sure that you are eating predominantly whole foods that are high satiety, high nutrients, you're gonna naturally be able to hit calories and protein anyway. But of course, I'm a big fan of tracking as much data as you want or need. So if including the dessert means you're over 400 calories for the day, that's not the 20% rule working for you. That's just adding extra food. So let's be clear. The hierarchy doesn't change. Okay, we have the energy balance, it is really the first driver weight loss. Protein is the driver of body composition, and everything else supports that. The second guardrail is this is a starting point. It's not a law. I know I've used the word rule, but in this case it's colloquial. It's not a law that you have to stick to 20%. For some people, 10% might be better, right? Because they just love eating whole foods and 10% is more than enough, and that's all they need. For others, they might want to creep it up a little bit, 25 or 30%. We're still not talking 50, 60% processed foods like the average American. We're still talking far more shifted in the direction we want to be. The principle, remember, what is the principle? Is that most of your intake is aligned with your goals, and the minority of the intake is very, very highly flexible. And let's be honest, even the intake that's aligned with your goals, the 80% is still super flexible. There's a lot of foods that fall under there. You're not cutting out any food groups or macros, right? You can still have bread and pasta and other potatoes and fruits and stuff like that in there, but that more highly processed stuff fits into your 20%. You get to choose, really. And it's an experiment. You treat it as an experiment, and then you adjust based on the actual results and how you feel. Okay. And if you're in our challenge, if you're in a three-week challenge, that's a great place to test and share with the world what's happening and get feedback. Like, hey, I'm having trouble sticking in this 20%. It's creeping up much higher than I expected. What do I do? And we can give you some great ideas. The third guardrail is to just distinguish between this deliberate flexibility and what I'll call chaotic eating. So eat anything within your system means you choose foods that you enjoy and you account for them and you adjust your day around them accordingly. So again, there's planning and intention. Maybe you want a 400-calorie slice of cheesecake at dinner. So you look at where 50 to 60 grams of carbs and 10 to 15 grams of fat come from your day and make it work, right? Keep the protein high because now obviously the protein's not going to be in the cheesecake. Well, it'll be a little bit, but not very much. And that's how you are deliberate about it. So this idea of eating anything is deliberate and it's not chaos. Chaos is when you're not tracking or thinking, you're not aware, you're using it as an excuse, etc. And that's the classic, you know, I was in a deficit Monday through Thursday, and I undid it on the weekend. Pattern that we're trying to avoid. All right. The fourth guardrail is if you are someone with a history of binge eating, emotional eating, very rigid kind of mindset or dieting, the 20% might need extra structure. And what this looks like is pre-deciding, pre-planning what the 20% is. Maybe it's one dessert per day, right? A lot of us are in that mode. I'm often in that mode because my wife cooks dinner and we like to have a little dessert most days. And so I just plan it in. Maybe it's two indulgent meals each week, right? You get to decide what that 20% is. And then you eat those fun foods mindfully. You know, you sit down, you eat them, you portion them out, whatever makes sense, you put them in a bowl. You know, you don't just chaotically graze and say, well, okay, I'm up to my 20% now. Where's the bag of Cheetos? Let me just start eating. It's not that. So you can start with a smaller percentage if it helps you feel more structured. If you have a history of this, start with 5% or 10%. If you're a classic, like clean eater and you always try to eat clean, maybe for you mentally, it's better to not jump right to 20% because you might feel like you lose control. Just titrate it up to the right level for you. And for some people, it might always be 5%. You just love to eat a lot of Whole Foods. It's fine. I know farmers and ranchers that eat that way. This connects to what I've discussed in other episodes about hidden triggers and emotional eating. We want to use data and awareness to diffuse those triggers. We won't want to create new triggers. And then a quick note for special populations like if you have celiac disease or severe food allergies or medical conditions that limit food choices. And I've spoken to a lot of you out there who I feel really bad, right? Because there's a lot of foods you just can't eat. Your 20% still exists, but it's within your safe options. You're not going to just use the 20% to say, well, now I'm going to eat the thing that I don't usually feel great with, but it's my 20%. Well, that by definition, you're not going to enjoy that, are you? So the principle of flexibility remains even when your specific foods happen to be constrained. So let's make this all practical. Let's tie this up into some practical guidance for some different situations, which I know people have been asking about with these podcasts. So in a fat loss phase, we're going to do fat loss maintenance or body recomp, muscle building, and let's say chaos like travel and holidays coming up. Okay. In a fat loss phase, the 20% rule is going to help you stay on that deficit and not feel as deprived, right? Your calories are already lower. So by so math-wise, the 20% portion is still smaller in absolute terms than when you're not in fat loss, right? The actual calories are less because it's still 20% of a smaller amount of calories. And that's fine. It just means that your flexible foods are going to be a smaller amount of stuff or a smaller portion of the ice cream, or you know, it's not a pint, but it's a small bowl, etc. It's the psychology of knowing that you can have something you enjoy that's more valuable often than the actual food itself. Let's be honest. Now, you can just quick side tangent. You can almost trick yourself here by picking something that you find enjoyable that's actually not a 20% food, let's say strawberries with some homemade whipped cream, and it's really not that many calories, but it actually psychologically feels like part of the 20%. That's a really cool trick to use for yourself as you start to shift and make swaps, especially in fat loss when the calories are lower. Okay. So you're still kind of thinking 20%, but some 80% stuff's leaking over into that 20% if it makes sense. All right. Now, what about if you're at maintenance or what if you're doing body recomp? Well, you obviously have more room to work with because the calories are a little bit higher. So your 20% is a little bit more generous. And this is a lot of times where people find their sustainable long-term eating pattern, kind of that routine that they can stick with for a long time. They're not restricting for fat loss, right? They're not keeping the calories tight. They're also not pushing calories and trying to eat extra for muscle gain. You're just living your life while maintaining your physique. This is a nice place to try this out and see what that is for you. Okay, because effectively you should be able to do it without tracking eventually and just maintain your physique that way and your weights. Well, it may not be your body weight. Your body weight's gonna flex up and down. And then during a muscle building phase, the 20% helps with that. Coherence as well, but in a different way. Because when you're eating more food in general, it's easier to hit your protein and then still have room for enjoyment. Right. Because that's a little bit more of a challenge in fat loss. When you're doing the 20%, you're like, but I still need to make sure I get my protein in. The challenge during a surplus is making sure the 20% doesn't creep up just because you have the calorie budget for it. I've seen this with, you know, some people struggle to get enough food, but a lot of people will get enough and they'll actually start eating more and more and more and kind of feel like the there are no more guardrails because, oh, well, I need so many calories. I'm not going to exceed my calories. So I'm just going to eat more, you know, chips ahoy cookies and more ice cream and more Pop-Tards and more of these snacks. And it ends up being just a lot more processed food in your diet than you really want long term, because it's going to be hard to back off from that. And I'm not saying there's not more room in general for that stuff. There is, just numbers-wise. But you still want 80% of your intake to support your training, performance, and recovery because you're trying to build muscle and you're trying to partition those nutrients to the best place in your body, right? You're still moving, you're still building, all of that. And then the last scenario here is travel, holidays, just busyness in general. And again, as we end the, as we end the year strong here, joining our challenge is a great way to test all this out. But this 8020 really shines during this time of the year because if you think of it as a week, you know, think of it on a weekly basis over the rest of the year. You know that you have, for example, a work dinner on Thursday and a family event on Saturday. Well, maybe those two days become your 20% for this week. And then you have the Christmas holiday here and the New Year's thing here. Those are your 20% for that week. Or, you know, Monday through Wednesday, you're at 90% nutrient dense, and then you're at like 70% on the weekends, right? So as long as it averages out over the seven days. So what what about how do people mess this up? Because I want to tell you about four mistakes, actually, that that um I see a lot. The first mistake is I've alluded to this already, but it's the 20% turning into 40%. And this usually happens when you're not tracking or when you've jumped into this for the first time and kind of not even sure what 20% is, if that makes sense. You don't even know how many calories you should be eating. And then you rationalize a lot of your choices that are you're not super happy with as part of the 20%, and then it ends up blowing up. So the fix here is simple. Just measure. Just measure. Okay. If you're eating 2,000 calories a day, that's 400 calories of foods. And you don't have to do this forever. Like measure for a bit, for a few weeks. You know, use my app Fitness Lab or use MacroFactor or just do it manually, it doesn't matter. And track everything and see where it falls in terms of the percentage. Okay. Is it 20%-ish or are you creeping much higher than that? All right. Mistake number two is using the 20% as an emotional coping tool instead of genuine enjoyment. And this is why I mentioned positive psychology earlier. I think there's a difference between meaningful positivity and enjoyment and hedonistic emotional coping type, where you say it's enjoyment, but it's not really. That is emotional eating that's dressed up as some sort of strategy. Don't let yourself fall for it. The 20% should be deliberate choices that you make for enjoyment, not reactive eating to numb your feelings. So if you're if you're if you're aware of this pattern, as I say it out loud, be honest with yourself that that's what's happening, because that'll allow you to disconnect the two. All right, mistake number three is not adjusting when the data says that your progress is slower than you're expected. So, for example, if you're doing the 20% and you're trying to lose fat, but your weight trend is pretty much not changing, like you're not losing fat, then something's off with energy balance. Okay, either your total calories are higher than you think, or your 20% estimate is actually more calorie dense than you think. I have seen this interesting phenomenon where it seems like it's you could be more accurate tracking whole foods than tracking processed foods. You would think it's not the case because of barcodes and such, but it happens. It happens for a variety of reasons, because of extra bites, because of mislabeled packaging, and you're you end up eating a lot, if you're eating a lot more processed foods, it tends to throw the error off even more. So if it's not working for you, don't blame the 8020. Look at energy balance and tracking and some of the other things, right? Look at the data and figure out where that gap is. All right, and then the last mistake, number four here, is using cheat day language. Please don't do that. Please don't. I don't like the word cheat at all because it implies you're breaking a rule. Well, with the 20% rule, you're not cheating. And again, maybe this is a problem of even me using the word rule for this. You're actually using flexibility built into your system. And I mentioned already it could be 10%, 15%, 30%. It's not really a hard and fast rule, is it? It's just a guideline. Cheat days, however, come with a different mindset. It's like a permission mindset. Like, oh, I have permission to do this, and uh, and then that leads to excess. Whereas the 20% rule keeps you in control even with flexibility. So if you didn't pick up what I'm putting down, notice that this isn't about food. The 20% rule is not about food, it's about your identity. It really is. Because when you follow rigid diets and rules, which are the vast majority of diets promoted in the space today, I mean, have always been, then your identity is I'm someone on a diet. I am on a diet. And diets end. And when you use a flexible system instead, your identity becomes, I'm someone who knows how to manage my nutrition, or something like that. That's a permanent thing. Whereas a diet is a temporary thing. The person who can have a slice of pizza at their kid's birthday party and log it or at least be aware of it and plan for it, and then adjust their day around it, and then be move on without any guilt or anxiety. That person has a very different, fundamentally different relationship with food than the person who skips the party or eats half the pizza because they already blew it, or even goes to the party and deliberately withholds from eating pizza, thinking it in terms of a guilty pleasure or something that they cannot do. All right. So that's why we do what we do build building systems that work for real life. Right. It's a it's like a pressure valve. It keeps the whole thing sustainable because you got a pressure release valve. And then when you combine that with the right lifestyle, lifting weights, adequate protein, moving, getting your steps, right? Those basic things that take work and effort, they do, they're not automatic. Nobody's gonna do them for you. And then you track some level of data that gives you that awareness. And then guess what? You adjust based on that data and feedback. That's how you build yes, a body, but also a relationship with food, with yourself that is going to serve you for the rest of your life. So here's your action for this week. Just look at your eating pattern and estimate what percentage of your intake is genuinely nutrient dense versus flexible. Because if you've been trying to be 100% clean, then think about what it would mean to build in 20% deliberately that's maybe not so clean, if I'm gonna use that word, even though I don't like that word. And if you've been all over the place, start tracking, see where you land, and then adjust from there, right? There are things that are gonna move the needle that you have to be aware of calories, protein, food quality, flexibility, they all work together. And this is exactly again why the three-week strong finish challenge is going to happen. All right, kicking off today starts Wednesday. We are heading into the hardest three weeks of the year for most people, trying to at a minimum maintain what they've got. And for many, they don't want to backslide, but most people do. And so instead of pretending that you can be perfect this holiday season, we're giving you a system that works when things are messy and chaotic like they are. And you'll get coaching from human beings, you'll get training programs, custom nutrition plan, you get all that great stuff, along with the accountability, the ability to check in and say, hey, how are we doing? Are we winning here? So that we're ready for the new year. And no guilt, no shame. You're gonna feel great about yourself, you're gonna have more energy, be super, super confident. So the kickoff is today, 5 p.m. Eastern. Challenge starts Wednesday, but definitely join at live.witsandweights.com so you get in in time and get all the resources and figure out, hey, what strength training program do I want to follow? If you're not already following one, we can give you some guidance on that. And by the end of the three weeks, you're gonna know your sustainable baseline. You're gonna know it. You're not gonna wonder about it and think that you have to white knuckle it in the new year, because you'll be ready to go. Go to live.witsandweights.com, link in the show notes. Let's finish the year strong while everyone else backslides. Go to live.witsandweights.com. Until next time, keep using your wits, lifting those weights. And remember, the best approach is not the strictest one. It's the one that you can sustain. This is Philip Tape, and I'll talk to you next time here on the Wits and Weights Podcast.

Philip Pape 12/5/25 Philip Pape 12/5/25

Why BONE Strength Is As Important as Muscle for Longevity (Dr. Doug Lucas) | Ep 409

Have you ever wondered if your skeleton can actually support the muscles you work so hard to build? Or how bone density affects the way you lift weights, lose fat, and build muscle for long-term strength? We break down why bone health is the real foundation of nutrition and fitness, what happens to bone metabolism as you age, and how lifting weights, optimizing macros, and supporting hormone health directly impact bone density and muscle building.

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—

This conversation with orthopedic surgeon and bone health expert Dr. Doug Lucas completely reframed how I think about body recomp, strength training, and longevity.

We break down why bone health is the real foundation of nutrition and fitness, what happens to bone metabolism as you age, and how lifting weights, optimizing macros, and supporting hormone health directly impact bone density and muscle building.

Dr. Doug also shares why women’s fitness, men’s health, and strength training over 40 all depend on resilient bones that respond to training stress.

If you want evidence-based fitness strategies that support metabolism, weight loss, and long-term performance, this one is packed with takeaways.

Today, you’ll learn all about:

0:00 – Why bone health shapes long-term strength
4:13 – How bone metabolism really works
7:19 – Why Dr. Doug left surgery for prevention
10:25 – At-risk groups and early bone loss
14:07 – What lifting heavy means for bone strength
16:33 – Bone density vs bone quality
21:19 – Lifestyle factors that build stronger bones
23:30 – When to use impact training
29:30 – Medications, risks, and limitations
32:55 – Hormone health and skeletal strength
40:42 – The 4R Method for reversing bone loss
46:39 – A real success story of reversing osteoporosis
53:39 – Lifting safely when you have osteoporosis

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Get notified of new episodes. Listen on Apple, Spotify, or all other platforms.

Then hit “Follow” and you’re good to go!

Philip Pape: 0:01
If you're someone who takes your health seriously and wants to build muscle and strength that lasts decades, but you've never thought about what's supporting all that muscle tissue or whether your skeleton can actually handle the load you're putting on it, this episode is for you. My guest today is an orthopedic surgeon who left his surgical practice to focus on bone health. He's going to explain why your skeleton isn't just scaffolding, it's the limiting factor for how much muscle you can build, how hard you can train, and how long you can keep lifting. You'll learn how to optimize bone density without drugs, what hormone optimization has to do with skeletal strength, and why bones aren't passive structures, but active organs that respond to training stress. If your goal is to build a physique that's strong on the outside but resilient on the inside, you're gonna enjoy this one. Welcome to Wit and Weight, the show that helps you build a strong, healthy physique using evidence, engineering, and efficiency. I'm your host, Philip Fape, and today we're gonna talk about something that doesn't come up as often as I'd like to see it in physique and strength training discussions, but could be the most important foundation for long-term performance, and that is bone health. My guest is Dr. Doug Lucas, a double board certified orthopedic surgeon and osteoporosis specialist who stepped away from the surgical practice to focus on a mission that he's passionate about, and that is proving that osteoporosis is not only preventable, but often reversible. He's the founder of the Osteocollective, an online community supporting bone health education and lifestyle change. He's the author of two best-selling books on osteoporosis and hormone optimization and host of the Dr. Doug Show podcast. I invited Dr. Doug on the show because of his perspective on how bone density, hormone health, and strength training intersect. For those of us who lift weights and care about building muscle, that lasts, that gives us longevity, aka everyone who listens to this podcast, understanding the role of skeletal integrity is at least as essential as, say, getting jacked. So we're going to discuss why your bones should be a priority, how strength training builds bone density, you know, mechanistically, what our over 40 lifters need to know about hormones and skeletal health and steps you can start taking today. Dr. Doug, welcome to the show.
Dr. Doug Lucas: 2:21
Oh man, that was such a good intro. That just like so many things to talk about in there. Happy to be here.
Philip Pape: 2:26
Good, good, good. Hopefully we can remember them all. Because I know you're an expert in bone health, but you also have these other angles that relate to our listeners. And before we get into those, I like to define some things. I want to nerd out with you on the anatomy, the physiology, the system-level interconnectedness. Because I know we're talking more about, you know, there's buzzwords like osteosarcopenia, the kind of portmanteau of two different things, so that we have that foundation for the rest of the discussion. So let's just start with defining bone health.
Dr. Doug Lucas: 2:56
Yeah, man. Well, so I wish it were just that simple. You know, when most people think bone health, they think osteoporosis, they think old people, hip fracture. And that is true that all that's exists. And I love talking to that population too. But bone health really, for me, has taken a turn over the last five years as we've been creating, you know, clinical programs, community resources, and I'm on stages across the, you know, right now, the globe, talking about bone health. And what's happened to me is that I think that we really need to just redefine bone health. Bones in general are such a great organ to look at because they're telling us a story, not loudly, quietly, but through imaging, through blood markers. And we know that on average, people will lose bone as they age. But I think we've got it backwards where we say, oh, if you lose enough bone, you have a disease. But actually, I think we need to be looking at bone health as a biomarker of longevity. If you're losing bone, something's wrong. And that's how we need to change this perspective of bone health. Because bone health is really just imbalanced bone metabolism when it's wrong, and it's balanced bone metabolism when it's right.
Philip Pape: 3:59
No, I love that term, bone metabolism, because that I haven't heard. Let's let's dig into that. I like that bone can be a biomarker. It's it's a changing thing, right? I think people maybe think of it as this fixed structure and it's super dynamic like everything in the body. So, what do you mean by bone metabolism?
Dr. Doug Lucas: 4:13
Yeah. So imagine this. Every 10 years, especially as younger adults, we are replacing our entire skeleton. So, you know, go back 10 years ago. The skeleton you had then is completely different than the skeleton that you have now. Bones are not just static, you know, framework for our body that our muscles attach to. They are, as you said, dynamic. They are living, they're making cells. They actually are full of stem cells. They are really, really cool organs that are communicating to the rest of your body through hormones, just like everything else. And so when I say bone metabolism, what I mean is how much bone are you breaking down at any one time? How much bone are you building at any one time? And then what is that balance? So you mentioned, you know, cells earlier. So osteoblasts are building, osteoclasts are breaking down. There's always a balance between the two. And if you break down more than you build up, you'll lose bone. And if you're building up more than you break down, you're gonna build bone. And that bone metabolism is what we need to be looking at when we start talking about bone health.
Philip Pape: 5:11
So is there a proxy or I should say an equivalent for muscle protein synthesis then in the bone world?
Dr. Doug Lucas: 5:16
Yeah, that's interesting. Um, I don't know how you measure it with muscle, but yes, the idea is that you want to stimulate bone. There's not a cool process like bone protein synthesis that I'm aware of. Um, you know, maybe there is. I'd love to learn about it. But we can measure it in bone, which is different than in muscle.
Philip Pape: 5:32
Got it. And I know for some context for the listener, right? You were an orthopedic surgeon. Uh, I've dealt with several of those. I had back surgery and rotator cuff surgery, and some are awesome and some, you know, I wouldn't see again. And, you know, just like anyone else in the healthcare industry. Right. But you then pivoted into more functional medicine focused on bone health. So, what's the context behind that transition as it relates to your passion for this today?
Dr. Doug Lucas: 5:56
Yeah, man, I love the OR. You know, when I went into medical school, I didn't know, I didn't know what I wanted to do. I think like a lot of medical students, and I was just fascinated by the operating room. I loved the, you know, the power of the literally power tools, but the power of what we could do in the operating room, we could make something that is so broken, so much better quickly, you know, and just it was so clear, so black and white. Loved operating, did that for, you know, a decade or more. But what I realized too is that when I got into practice, yes, we could do great things in the operating room, but really the most powerful thing is preventing what we were operating on in the first place. So I got very interested in a lot of the stuff that you talk about. We talk about the right nutrition that's right for you, the right type of movement, resistance training, you know, what kind of supplements based off of what biomarkers. I just went down all these rabbit holes and I realized that I wasn't as excited about seeing patients anymore because I realized that they were, it was already too late. You know, they'd already gone down the, you know, this path based on either their own bad decisions or somebody told them, likely their doctor told them to go down. And I was really just cleaning up the mess of metabolic disease, especially as a foot and ankle surgeon. And so I was very fortunate. My wife uh is also an entrepreneur and runs a company. So we were able to tolerate me stepping away from a relatively high-paying W-2 job, getting additional training, hormone fellowship, you know, anti-aging, you know, functional medicine fellowship, and then starting my own telehealth practice and getting to where we are today.
Philip Pape: 7:19
Okay, that makes a lot of sense. And um, there's more of that in this industry, especially as a podcaster, getting to interact with cardiac surgeon, urologists, uh, all sorts of doctors who have done a similar thing as you, I think, because they almost feel frustrated that they have come so late in the process. Yeah. Right. Just as well, GPs, um, you know, you've got the Dr. Spencers of the world who are trying to integrate as much preventative stuff into their practice as possible. Okay, so that that's really important, right? Because that's what we're focused on on this show. So when someone hears osteoporosis or bone density, and I know there are a lot of different terms. In fact, I heard you on Karen Martell talking about some that are a bit maybe archaic now. I think osteopenia is used less now. Yeah. And they think either you think, okay, this is an old person's problem, right? Like this is something to worry about years and years from now. I know are are much more cognizant of it now, especially those that listen to these types of shows. But you work with people from across the age range. So one important question, speaking of preventative, is when do we start doing something? And I know the question's obviously like you should lift weights, guys, as soon as you're able to, like, you know, you're 14, start lifting weights. That's fine. But, you know, what does the spectrum and the timeline look like where the risk just starts to accumulate in that timeline? Yeah.
Dr. Doug Lucas: 8:30
You know, this is this is one of the things I talk about most, actually, because I I try to get in front of younger audiences. The part of my mission, which is educating about how to reverse osteoporosis, I love that part. And it's really important because there's a lot of there's a lot of anxiety and fear, and unnecessarily so in those that have the diagnosis of osteoporosis. But I think the bigger part of this is who needs to be screened, when, why, with what, and what does it mean? And so if you think about bone density, the bone density increases as you go through childhood into early adulthood. Bone density will peak, your peak bone mass will occur in your late 20s, early 30s, both men and women. Arguably because we are no longer that physically active as young children, as adolescents, more screen time, more games, more school, you know, less running around, jumping off of stuff, banging our bones around. We are seeing young adults with lower bone mass to start with. This is a big problem because on average, all women and men will lose bone density as they age. I don't think it has to be that way, but that's the average. And especially women as they get into perimenopause and menopause are going to see a rapid drop. If you don't know what your starting point is, you don't know what you should be doing. So, right now, I'm telling every young adult with any risk factor whatsoever for bone health, and I'm happy to go through them, but I can just shorten it by saying that you all have them. Everyone should be screened to see what their bone density and hopefully quality are, depending on the screening modality, to know what your starting point is, especially certain populations at risk. So, just a couple of things there. Young women who are involved in endurance sports, all should be screened. I've had so many patients, young women in their 20s and 30s, that have not even low bone density osteopenia, outright osteoporosis. It's frightening. And I think it's rampant in that age group, that subgroup of athletes, and they don't know it. Nobody's talking about it.
Philip Pape: 10:25
And real quickly, why is that?
Dr. Doug Lucas: 10:27
Yeah, well, I think it has to do a little bit with uh, you know, how much stress they're putting their body through. I think there's some, you know, there's body dysmorphia in there, there's eating disorders in there, and then there's hormonal disruption in there. So a lot of women who are in, you know, endurance sports, especially as young women, either will never develop a normal menstrual cycle or will lose it and then not worry about it because they're told that, oh, that's okay. Totally common for you know long distance runners to not cycle, but it is a big deal and it is not normal. So if you're not cycling as a woman, you are losing bone by definition.
Philip Pape: 10:59
Okay. So that's one, that's one at-risk population. Young women endurance sports.
Dr. Doug Lucas: 11:02
Yeah. So and then the other group that I think is, I mean, nobody ever talks about this, but I think, you know, young men, the more and more we see young men either with low testosterone and then subsequently low estrogen, either naturally or they're on testosterone replacement, but they're using an aromatase inhibitor like anastrazole, and they're bottoming out their estrogen just because that's what they're trying to do to increase their testosterone. If you don't have estrogen, as a man, even a young man lifting heavy weights, you're still losing bone. And so I've seen, you know, this, I don't know how common this is, but I've seen men, 20s, 30s, on TRT, but on too high a dose of AI that are losing bone and they have osteoporosis and they look, they're jacked, right? They're lean and they jacked, they look amazing. They look like Superman, but they have osteoporosis.
Philip Pape: 11:46
Are they on TRT for physiologic replacement or or to get performance enhancing, you know, up into the thousands of testosterone?
Dr. Doug Lucas: 11:54
Yes, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, but both, right? I'm not prescribing it at the the super physiologic levels, but you know, but either way, even if you have a testosterone, it's you know, 3,000 total T, but you're on a you know, a large dose of AI and your estrogen is zero, it doesn't matter. You're still losing bone.
Philip Pape: 12:10
Okay. So then that raises the question that for people who are training for strength of physique, let's say beyond these at-risk populations, which right there, we're going to include them in the list of absolutely get checked and baselined early and monitor this. You know, what do we take out of when we talk about bone density, bone quality, whatever the metrics are, and prioritizing them in and of themselves, right? So I guess we can talk about the metrics that need to be screened. And is there anything you're doing specifically that you're not already doing for muscle and health anyway? Because I love the fact that we get two for ones when we talk about this stuff. If you're lifting weights, you're gonna solve a lot of issues. So you're good. But in some cases, like is it the at-grist populations or maybe a need to pay attention to bones specifically for one reason or another? So help me understand that.
Dr. Doug Lucas: 12:56
Yeah. So I think it changes the way you train and it might change the way you eat. You know, so I mean, let's go back to that, like the young athletic, you know, endurance athlete woman. I'm not saying that she has to stop running, but she should pay attention to how many calories are you getting, what is your total body fat? You know, if you need to be super lean for competition, can you get less lean in your offseason? You know, let's figure out can we create a way where you're not losing bone? Because again, if you're losing bone, something's wrong. And then if you're truly osteoporotic in your 20s as a woman, I mean, this is this is, you know, red flags, warning signals, like we got to build bone. And then if that's the case, then maybe you're gonna have to back off of your long distance training, add more resistance, build more muscle, and do some kind of impact training as well.
Philip Pape: 13:40
And speaking of building muscle, this is another thing that comes up strength versus muscle. And I say versus loosely, because right, there's a lot of overlap, obviously. But the idea that lifting heavy and heavy is another subjective term, because do we mean training close to failure for muscular tension, or do we literally mean low reps up in a high percentage of your max? So just let's resolve that real quick. And then I do want to dive into some of the how do you scan for this and and other stuff. Lifting heavy, like what are your thoughts on that?
Dr. Doug Lucas: 14:07
Yeah. So I mean, when I say it, I say we need to lift heavy. But what but what do I mean by that? And I and I get I have some some interesting exercise physiology people out there in like the longevity space that will give me negative comments to say, like, you don't have to lift heavy or, you know, I mean all these different like subjective terms, right? But what I mean is when you look at the literature, there are studies looking at what's called high intensity resistance. So they're talking, you know, 80 to 90 percent of one rep max. That's heavy, regardless of what your starting point is, you know. So that's what I mean by high intensity, heavy. We know that those studies, those protocols are going to have a better response to either slowing down bone loss or potentially even building bone if they are mixed with impact. So when I say heavy, I don't mean go out there and try to deadlift 225 pounds if you've never done it. Like, please don't do that. But if your starting point is, you know, a band and your wanderet max is like, you know, whatever this color band is, then you know, go 80% of that. Like that's heavy. So you could do that with pink dumbbells if you needed to. It just depends on your starting point.
Philip Pape: 15:32
100%. Uh, my mother-in-law, we we were getting her for Christmas a set of you know, arthritis-friendly dumbbells and a wrist wrap, because for her, that's super heavy, and I'm excited for what she's gonna get out of it, right? Um, yeah, no, that's a that's a good qualification because I'm going forward, you know, some of these recent talks I've had, and now you're only reinforcing that, is I think there's these different regimes of percent max that kind of have different goals, right? There's the hypertrophy regime, which is extremely wide, and there's the strength, which is a little bit higher up, like 60%. And then maybe we say, okay, the the super necessary bone health population is 80%, right? And that is what, five, five uh reps-ish, I think. Right. I forgot my.
Dr. Doug Lucas: 16:11
I mean it's five by five-ish, right? Yeah. Five reps.
Philip Pape: 16:14
Yeah, exactly. Which is a beginner program like starting strength or something, is gonna be in that range. So that's perfect. Um, okay, so then before we get into the scan discussion terms here, bone density, that's pretty self-explanatory, but we can describe what we mean by that, you know, uh physiologically. Bone quality, like what are the different metrics of how we measure bone health?
Dr. Doug Lucas: 16:33
Yeah, so we talk a lot about bone density because the definition of osteoporosis is based off of density from the imaging modality of DEXA, which is not a great imaging modality, to be honest. You know, we can use DEXA for a lot of things, body composition, bone density. It's okay, but it's just a two-dimensional x-ray. So your output is only as good as your input. Uh we're not gonna get away from DEXA anytime soon, though, because it is the gold standard, even though it's not, there's nothing gold about it, but it's the standard and it's widely available. It's covered by insurance under many circumstances. So with DEXA, you know, you're gonna get this thing called a T-score. It measures, well, for older individuals, T-score is gonna measure your bone density compared to a younger version of your sex and ethnicity. And that's what we use as a definition of osteoporosis. Now, for younger individuals, there's a thing called a Z-score. You also get from DEXA, it compares you to your age-matched peers. That's valuable for individuals younger than the age of 50. And that's just comparing you to somebody who's like you, but maybe has different bone density. So we can use bone density from that perspective. But what we really want to know is what's your fracture risk. Now, maybe not in a 20-year-old athlete do we want to know your fracture risk, although if you have low bone density, I want to know your fracture risk. But as we get further along, we want to know what your fracture risk is. And then that question is really a combination of bone density and bone quality. Because we see a lot of issues with bone density when you start predicting fracture risk. In fact, most fragility fractures, and there's clear definitions there, but most fragility fractures occur in those without osteoporosis. They have low bone density, not osteoporosis, partially because there's just more of them. But it's not necessarily just a density problem, it's a quality problem. So then how do you measure quality? Well, this is not super clear. There are modalities out there that are not DEXA. So ultrasound device called RAMS from the company Echolite out of Italy, that device has a fragility score. It's measuring quality and comparing it to a database of people who have or have not fractured. So that's kind of cool. Um, CT studies, quantitative CT can do it as well. So, quantitative CT, you can look at different ways that the computer can calculate strength. It's usually calculated as strength. Um, and so there's a quality metric there, but CT is not a great thing to use because you can't use it continuously over time. Like you don't want to go CT your body every six months or 12 months to look at your bone density and quality. It's just too much radiation. So you're kind of stuck between the ultrasound device, the RAMs, or what else you can do on DEXA. There's a couple other things you can do on DEXA. One's called TBS or tubecular bone score, one's called 3D Shaper that just got FDA approved. But neither of those are are adding any additional inputs to DEXA. It's just different ways to calculate on the output side. And again, DEXA is an old school two-dimensional x-ray. So how good could it be? So this is one of the challenges with imaging and bone is that there really isn't a great tool to say that you can accurately say what your bone density is, what your bone quality is, and then ultimately what your fracture risk is.
Philip Pape: 19:31
Well, that's discouraging, but but you made me my you made my brain go to AI when you mentioned obviously the uh ultrasound and having the comparative, the correlational analysis and where is that all going? Like I imagine they're looking at taking the imaging and like you said, correlational machine learning uh comparisons. Are we on the cusp of something there? Are there any breakthroughs about to happen? What's going on?
Dr. Doug Lucas: 19:54
So the company Echolite and I have not worked together, but I just imagine, I mean, I know so many business owners that have these devices. The scanned data, after you get a scan, all of that data is owned by Echo Lite, by the parent company. So they'll download from these machines, you know, these thousands and thousands of scans. Their database is massive. So, yes, could you use AI to come up with a better calculation based off of these inputs that are coming in from Ultrasound? Absolutely. I hope they're doing that. I don't know for sure that they are, but yes, you could certainly use AI learning to better predict this. And I think that is where we're going.
Philip Pape: 20:30
Yeah, that's pretty cool. Um, yeah, I have an app coming out just to show that that's based on AI. And I'm surprised myself at what it can do because we almost don't have full control of some of the things these this AI can do. Uh, it's insane. All right. So if so let's say someone is uh assessing their density and quality with one of these measures or a combination of these measures over time, maybe they're at risk, maybe they're not, but they want to know what to do on a daily basis. And of course, we love to start with lifestyle uh first here. And I think a lot of people assume that if they're lifting weights, fairly active, not doing anything overly stressful, like the at-risk populations and not under-eating. Like, so we're saying all the things that they, a lot of things they should be doing that maybe they're not doing. What would you say are the big hitters besides lifting weights? Or are you like, hey, lifting weights is 80% of it? And then here are the other ones.
Dr. Doug Lucas: 21:19
Yeah, I mean, I think um, not to pander to your audience or anything, but I mean, yeah, like the resistance training part is huge. But we we kind of build it like this. Like we have a pyramid, the foundation of our pyramid is just like every other functional integrative practitioner out there. Nothing special about it, right? It's exercise, nutrition, mindset, and sleep. There's nothing special about those categories, except that when it comes to nutrition and bone health, just like with muscle health, you have to eat enough calories. And there's just no way around that. You have to get enough of the basics, you have to get enough protein. And for those that have osteoporosis, it is a sign that they have had inadequate protein, either consumption or absorption, one of the two. But either consumption or absorption, they've had inadequate protein for a long time. You know, and I used to get on stages and I used to, you know, preach about my beliefs about food. And then I realized like nobody cares what I think about food outside of the things I can prove in research, which is more protein in population studies, better bone density. It is hands down clear. Same thing with muscle mass, right? Like you have to reach this muscle protein synthesis threshold. We don't know what that threshold is for bone, but it's somewhere around the same thing because it just gets you anabolic. It's just that simple. Yeah. And then exercise perspective, we we kind of talked about it, hit on it. The resistance training, high intensity, fantastic. The difference is impact training because most of your listeners are probably not doing intentional impact. It hurts, it might not be good for your joints if you're doing it wrong, but it does provide a good stimulus for bone. Resistance training has not consistently shown benefit for bone health in the literature. In fact, usually it's it just slows down bone loss. It does not build bone. If you want to build bone, you need to add additional impact, either through something like a box jump, some kind of plyometric thing, heel drop, or some kind of simulated impact like whole body vibration or osteogenic loading as a device that's there's some devices that are out there as well that could potentially do it. But something that adds more than just resistance to that exercise piece.
Philip Pape: 23:15
I want to hit on that. That's interesting because you said um lifting at best preserves your bone density, which of course itself is important. For those listening who want an excuse not to do impact training, then I want to talk about doing impact training. Okay.
Dr. Doug Lucas: 23:29
Yeah.
Philip Pape: 23:30
If they've been living a healthy lifestyle since, say, their 30s, is it a big concern that they're not doing impact training or is it kind of like you're okay? Or is this a non-negotiable almost?
Dr. Doug Lucas: 23:39
Well, and this is where you screen, right? Like you screen, and if you're if your bone entity is great, cool. Like you're probably fine to not do it. But if you have osteoporosis, you need to start figuring out how to do it in a way that your body can handle it.
Philip Pape: 23:50
Okay. And that's not unlike some messaging I've had from some other good coaches in the space I respect. Like Megan Dahlman is really big into bone health, and she's she talks about impact training, but she's like, not everyone has to do it. But yeah, if you're trying to recover bone, so that's really good. So box jumps, you mentioned whole body vibrations. So are we talking about things that some of us make fun of because some people use it as like their only form of exercise, thinking it's gonna, you know what I'm talking about? It's the vibrates your whole body. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The plates and everything. Yeah.
Dr. Doug Lucas: 24:16
Yeah.
Philip Pape: 24:17
Okay, okay, interesting. So there's a good use for that then.
Dr. Doug Lucas: 24:20
Yeah. So I so I'm a big fan because I have a lot of a lot of my, you know, community members, they have such a low starting point that their resistance is, their resistance training is very, very minimal, right? Or they have significant arthritis. I mean, there's we have all cumbers from different health perspectives. So we have some very sick people. Something that is passive could be absolutely beneficial if it works, right? So it's got to work. The evidence behind whole body vibration, if done correctly, meaning on the right device. So the the company we utilize is power plate because their devices are very, you know, they're powerful, hence the name. Um, they're powerful and they are predictable and they're commercial grade or even healthcare grade. So they have home devices and it moves up and down the certain amount. So that's hertz, 30 to 40 hertz. And then it's up and down, not like side to side, like you know, the pivot one side to side that just make your sacrum looks like it hurts. Um, so the up and down version is what you need, and it has to go up and down enough to actually create enough gravitational force. And that's you want that three to five Gs, and or that's two to four millimeters. And so if you have the right device, stand on it for 10 minutes, you can actually see bone mineral density increase and multiple studies demonstrating that.
Philip Pape: 25:28
That's incredible. Okay. Yeah, I'm learning something here for sure. I didn't I didn't know that. I'm gonna, this is gonna be pinned in my notes for personal reasons for people that I know in my life, but also to share this. So I thank you. Thank you. Always always looking to learn something.
Dr. Doug Lucas: 25:41
Yeah.
Philip Pape: 25:42
So, okay, so we've got lifting weights, we've got impact training, we've got not undereating, eating enough protein, huge. I'm a big fan of that messaging in general. Even people who want to lose fat, we talk about the importance of the majority of the year being spent at maintenance or potentially in a surplus building muscle, and you're gonna be much more healthier, you're gonna feel great. What about vitamins, minerals, and fiber and their correlation? Because there's a lot of confusion about calcium over the years and vitamin D, et cetera.
Dr. Doug Lucas: 26:07
Yeah, so um so minerals are super important. So uh we talk about, we hear about calcium all the time. Oh, you have osteoporosis, you need to take calcium and vitamin D. Hopefully they say vitamin D. The thing about minerals, though, is that like they don't exist in a vacuum. So your bones, yes, the most prominent mineral is calcium by volume and by weight, but it's so much more than that. And if you're gonna lay down calcium, you need magnesium. In fact, you need more magnesium than you need calcium. You also need potassium, you also need boron. You like you need it all. And so when I see people taking just big doses of calcium, essentially chalk, right? Calcium carbonate is chalk. If you take a big dose of calcium carbonate, first of all, your body's not gonna absorb very much. But secondly, osteoporosis is not a calcium deficiency problem. Osteoporosis is a you know multi-factorial thing. And so if you're gonna consume calcium or other minerals, it has to be done in a way where uh you're consuming them all together. That could be through supplementation, preferably through diet, but you need them all together. It's not just a calcium vitamin D deficiency. And then from a vitamin perspective, yes, vitamin D does help with the absorption of calcium, it does help with utilization, but you can almost get yourself in trouble. And this is where the research is actually pretty clear. If you take a huge chunk of calcium and you add vitamin D to it, you will absorb it. But then what? And so then you see these spikes of blood serum calcium. And when you do that, so you also need vitamin K to help to put it where you want it to go. So it's again, it's like we try in in medicine to simplify things because we need to do it at scale, right? We need to do this for 280 million Americans. Great. But we need to be realistic too. Taking a thousand milligrams of calcium plus 400 IU of vitamin D seems to not be dangerous, but is it really helpful? The research doesn't really support that. Even go back to the women's health initiative from 2002. What was the benefit of those things? It was pretty minimal. If you start stacking them, so you get multi-mineral, right? So you get calcium, you get the magnesium, you get all the things together. And then you start adding vitamin D, vitamin K. You also need A to make the D work in the cell. Like you have to start putting a list together, then you start coming up with a comprehensive stack that can help you to build bone.
Philip Pape: 28:18
Got it. And is this comprehensive stack currently sold that way in in different markets? Or like is it readily available at Walmart or Amazon, like the osteoporosis stack?
Dr. Doug Lucas: 28:27
Yeah, so it is. Like if you were to go on um, you know, if you're going to Amazon and shop, you know, whatever, whatever product you're looking for, right? You'll find a bajillion supplements. The challenge is how do you put it together? Because there's not a single product. And even in companies like there's companies I work with that are very specific to osteoporosis. So even in those companies, uh, you have to stack multiple products depending on your starting point. And this is what I always say about supplements is to say, look, depending on where you are, your genetics, what your biomarkers show or your deficiencies are, and maybe even functional testing, you're going to have a different stack than the person next to you. So there really isn't a one-size-fits-all approach.
Philip Pape: 29:07
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. All right. So in addition to that, um, what about medications? And oh, I actually want to start with is there anything people should be avoiding? Because, again, some like Boniva has been around years and I've heard horror stories about that. I mean, what's the latest state of things that are, you know, ancient and to be avoided, still around that should be avoided and things that are sometimes recommended?
Dr. Doug Lucas: 29:30
Yeah. So the pharmaceuticals and bone health are tough because in the conventional system, you know, we have this, we have this system that is really good at some things, right? It was designed to treat infections and to, you know, treat trauma and do surgeries as all that developed. But what it's terrible at is treating chronic disease. So whenever you're talking about making a drug, a specific pharmaceutical for something like osteoporosis or dementia or even heart disease, you know, like cholesterol, different story, but even like the chronic heart disease thing. Like it doesn't do a great job of that. And bone health is certainly no exception here. So the drugs that are designed for bone health are designed to be a single solution that will reduce fracture risk. To do that, there's kind of two different ways to do it. And they they all work off the same bone metabolism thing that I was just talking about, right? So if you want to reduce fracture risk, you can either slow down bone loss or you can build up bone. Which is the same thing I do. I just use different tools. The drugs that slow down bone loss, you mentioned Boneva. So there's kind of two main classes here: there's bisphosphonate drugs. So that's phosmax, boneva, reclast, all of these drugs that are bisphosphonates and work by essentially poisoning osteoclasts, those cells that break down bone. Prolia is a similar drug. That one also works by shutting down the osteoclast different mechanism, but you're still slowing down bone loss. The challenge with that is when you slow down bone loss, you also slow down bone building. Bone metabolism, neither side works in a vacuum. And so if you shut down one side, you shut down the other. And we can measure these things in blood. So there's bone turnover markers. This is what I meant. Like you can't measure this in muscle, or at least not well. In bones, you can actually measure it in blood. So we see the marker for bone loss drop. We see the marker for bone building drop as well. That's okay in the short term, especially if you are at high risk of fracture. And uh if you're at high risk of fracture, you might have to take one of these drugs. There's a time and a place for these drugs. So I'll come back to that. Um again, perlea, same thing. Slows down bone loss, slows down bone building. You can't do that forever. Now, the other side of that equation is drugs that increase bone building. Those drugs are called anabolic drugs. They push bone building up. So you're push pushing up that side of the equation. And the other side of the equation rises too. So now both sides are doing more. And those are actually my preferred drugs if you're going to use a drug. The challenge is none of these drugs you can take long term. So the bisphosphonate, the recommendation is three to five years, depending on your risk. The anabolic drugs, it's one to two years, depending on your starting point and your risk. None of those things make sense if you're 50 years old or even 60 or even 70, right? Pro Lee is a little bit different. That one is there's safety data out to 10 years, recommendations to continue on kind of mixing up drugs after that, but we don't have a long-term plan here. Unlike the other things that we talk about, resistance training, the right diet, the sleep, the mindset, potentially hormone replacement, which I know we'll get to, those things you can do for the rest of your life, or at least hopefully.
Philip Pape: 32:30
Perfect segue. Um, hormone replacement, which I was gonna talk about next, because you're right. Let's put that into contrast of the things that are that are there for the long term, that are uh positive practices that we can do and fully control without medication. So hormone, both optimization, I'll call it, hormone balance via your lifestyle, but also hormone replacement are big topics for our population. So where do we start in the context of bone health here?
Dr. Doug Lucas: 32:55
Well, I guess let's start at do you want to start at the end or the beginning? You want to start at the, you know, the as hormones start to get wonky in midlife, honestly, both for women and men?
Philip Pape: 33:03
Let's start there.
Dr. Doug Lucas: 33:04
Yeah. Yeah. So um one of the things you didn't mention that I do professionally is that one, my clinical practice got acquired by a larger company, LifeMD. I now work as their VP of health and hormone optimization. So my job is to build programs, both for women, mostly women right now, but for women and for men that are set up to help optimize hormones. Again, through potentially lifestyle, but also through replacement. So very deep at these topics. Like you said, one of my books is about hormones. Huge advocate for hormone use, replacement, optimization. For women, as they start to get into this perimenopause midlife phase, it is the wild, wild west. We'll talk about postmenopause and you know how challenging that space is, some things that have changed recently, actually, as of you know, this week, that we can talk about. But perimenopause, there's very little data, very little research, very few guidelines, and yet wildly symptomatic population who's searching for an answer. So it's a it's a really tough space. But the good news is there is hope for all the women who are looking for answers because there is a lot of research going on right now.
Philip Pape: 34:10
And you know, real quick on that, it's a very vulnerable population because of that. And I don't say that's a fearmonger, but I've seen that in the industry, it's it's rife for taking advantage of. And this is why we have to be all of us, including those of us giving the information, super nuanced and respectful of truth. Is it not even a word you can use today uh and have any meaning. But uh, you know, what what's best supported by our our latest information and the scientific evidence? Yeah.
Dr. Doug Lucas: 34:38
So I mean, I think this is this is where I see this challenge, especially in social media, between, you know, doctors talking about perimenopause versus coaches talking about perimenopause. And you have coaches saying it's not your hormones, work on your lifestyle. And you have doctors saying it's not your lifestyle, work on your hormones. You have women in the middle pulling their hair out uh or losing their hair, depending on the situation, right? And it is, it's it's tough, and it's really hard to figure this out, even as a provider who understands that both sides are actually true. Where do we start? And so I'm a huge advocate for testing, especially in perimenopause. There's different ways that you can do that, and we can get into some of those details, but ultimately we need data. We need data to understand what's happening with your hormones. Is this more of a lifestyle thing? Is this actually a hormone dysfunction? You know, and it gets, it can be challenging because you have to get into some of the things that our our society and our culture are not comfortable talking about. We have to talk about cycles, menstruation, symptoms. We have to talk about sexual dysfunction. Like we have to get into these things in order to understand what's happening with your hormones and your symptoms. Only once you uncover all these things can you actually create a plan to move forward, potentially with hormone replacement, maybe optimization, maybe supplementation, you know, maybe all through lifestyle. Yeah.
Philip Pape: 35:47
So it's lifestyle and hormones is kind of what you're saying. And it's it's some somewhere along that spectrum for each individual. So then still talking about this population, and we can include men in there too with testosterone, because you briefly mentioned TRT before, as it relates specifically to bone health. Are there any concerns? Are there, you know, is it just a matter of if you need replacement, that will also happen to help with your bone health?
Dr. Doug Lucas: 36:11
Yeah. So TRT is a really interesting topic. I love talking to men about hormones and testosterone replacement. It's, I think it's been, you know, fortunately, like we're not in the same, we're not in the same problem with men as we are in women, but it's still not good where we are with men. With women, I mean, there is no, there is no testosterone product to even talk about commercially, which is just wild because it's such a huge market. But for men, you know, at least we have products. The question is, how do we do it and who do we do it in? Um, I just redid the testosterone protocols for Lyph MD. When they were done originally, they were very strict, treating only the strict diagnosis of hypogonadism, as some of the guidelines would recommend. But more and more research is coming out showing that it's not just total testosterone that matters if your doctor is even checking it. It's total testosterone, it's free testosterone, and it's symptoms. Now, both for men and women, we kind of get trapped having to talk about sexual function, dysfunction, libido, et cetera, which is fine. We can talk about that. But I also find for men that low testosterone is associated with all of these other potential symptoms too, like depressed mood, fatigue, less vitality, vigor, inability to maintain muscle mass. Like a lot of these things have other causes too. And this is why the research is difficult here. But when you find a man who is symptomatic, the biomarkers fit, and you put him on TRT, nine-day difference. And it's it's awesome. But it still has to be done correctly. There's still this, you know, this recommendation generally from especially the physique world of like using AI to block estrogen so you have more testosterone. And I think that's a mistake for your bones. I used to use aromatase inhibitors and uh not at big doses, just to try to kind of balance things out. But as I got more mature in my practice, I realized I don't have a single patient that I have them on now at all. Like not one. Because there isn't, there hasn't been a patient that I couldn't just adjust their dose or adjust something else with their metabolism, their detox of the hormones to help balance out their hormones. So I think it just has to be done right, but it is massively powerful for men.
Philip Pape: 38:14
Okay. So that's really clear. I mean, and it's consistent with when, you know, men have these numbers total, free, uh low in general, and have other issues related to strength training, for example, where again, we say it's not just the lifestyle. I know I've seen men who, you know, tick up their testosterone, maybe 50, 100 points through that, but then they're still 300 or 400 shy on the total. Right. Moving kind of up the chain to the younger population, then, because we started there. What what do we want to talk about with hormones? Is there something preventative that people need to be doing?
Dr. Doug Lucas: 38:44
As you go younger, you mean?
Philip Pape: 38:45
Yeah.
Dr. Doug Lucas: 38:46
Yeah.
Philip Pape: 38:46
Benjamin Button style. Let's do it.
Dr. Doug Lucas: 38:48
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. So then uh yeah, I mean, as we go younger, I mean, I see low testosterone in men, well, and women, but if we just talk men, you know, into their 30s and 20s. I think there's a really challenging problem happening with our, you know, in our modern culture, the environment that we all live in is so toxic. Too much stress is rampant, poor sleep is rampant, we're all exposed to toxins all day long. A lot of these are hormone disrupting. And so I, again, I see men, you know, in their 20s with low testosterone. I mean, it's insane. So we know that on average this is happening in the population. I'm probably in a biased space because I'm a, you know, I'm a hormone specialist. So I see people who have are symptomatic with low hormones, but there's too many of them. So I think I would encourage testing. If you have symptoms of low testosterone as a guy, or if your hormones feel off, you're not cycling regularly as a woman, let's get some data, right? We need to know what's going on. And then what do you do about it? Well, I wouldn't at that age prefer to start replacing testosterone. There's so many things we can do when it comes to lifestyle, you know, optimizing all these things that we've talked about already, and potentially some other treatments, you know, things like clomophene that it's off label, like things where we can help to sort of hijack the system, get it going, and then hopefully not need a pharmacologic therapy as you get into midlife.
Philip Pape: 40:06
Yeah, that those are good guidelines in general, right? The younger you are, hopefully there's more you can intervene with naturally. Right. If that word can be used, uh lifestyle. So you have a framework, because I do like frameworks and helping people understand timelines here. And you know, when you go from scanning to intervention, and I understand this changes by age. I know you have a framework here for our method, right? Recognize, reverse, retest, revive. Maybe we can tie that into a process. Yeah. Um, folks listening here, they like to collect data, figure out things, experiment. Um, how does that fit into this? And what do timelines look like, maybe for a I'll say typical person listening to this show in their 40s?
Dr. Doug Lucas: 40:42
Yeah, absolutely. So this framework was really developed for people that have, you know, some low bone density, osteopenia, osteoporosis. They want to figure out what's going on. One of the biggest challenges in the conventional system with osteoporosis as a diagnosis is that once you have it, there's really no specialist in osteoporosis in the conventional system. Thinking about orthopedic surgeons before, like, they're not specialists in bone health, really. They're specialists in putting implants in bones, you know, endocrinologists, rheumatologists, internal medicine, like nobody wants it. And there are specialists in bone drugs, but they're not really specialists in bone health. And so it's a really interesting space. And so, you know, what happens is when you start talking about, you know, okay, I have low bone density, I have osteoporosis. What do I do about it? Your doctor says, well, you either are or are not a candidate for a drug, and that's it. They might do some additional tests to make sure that you don't have something like a parathyroid tumor that would result in bone loss. You know, some of these clear things like celiac disease, you know, do you have symptoms of that? Should we test for that? Because that causes osteoporosis. But once you get those things off the table, then they just say, Well, I don't know why you have bone loss. This is part of aging, and you either are or are not a candidate for a drug. I think that's a huge mistake. And I don't blame the doctors. This is how they're trained. And, you know, they're again, they have drugs and surgery to use. But if you want to do this naturally, if you want to do this from a comprehensive perspective, you need to sort of take a different angle. So this is where we created this four-hour method. And the first R, as you said, is to recognize why you're losing bone. Why are you losing bone? Go back to the longevity conversation we had at the beginning of this talk. If you're losing bone, something's wrong. What is it? Is it a dietary thing? Is it an absorption thing? Is it a gut health thing? Is it a hormone thing? It could be a lot of things. And the way you figure that out is by asking the right questions and getting the right data. And then once you do that, then we oh gosh, what's the second R? Recognize reverse. Thank you. Goodness. I usually have it in front of me when I talk about it.
unknown: 42:40
Oh, good.
Dr. Doug Lucas: 42:40
Uh the second R is to reverse. So then you want to reverse those causes of bone loss. And this is actually what I talk about when I'm talking about reversing osteoporosis is reversing the causes of bone loss. Eventually your T-score will get above negative 2.5. That's the threshold that the WHO set as the diagnosis. But that's actually, I'm not that worried about that. Right. If your T-score is negative five and you go from negative five to negative three, you are reversing your osteoporosis. And I'm excited for you about that. So then you have to make that plan. And that plan is going to be like we just talked about. I have that pyramid, it's lifestyle, it's hormone optimization, it's supplementation. And then and only then, once you've done those things, potentially move on to like a peptide or a drug. Right. So that's the second R. And then the third R is to retest. I can't tell you how many times I've seen women and men who get a diagnosis, they decide to do something. Maybe it's a supplement, maybe it's an exercise program or whatever. And then they just stick their head in the sand and they don't retest. That is such a mistake because they're going to get a DEXA again in two years or maybe more, maybe like four or five years, and realize that their plan didn't work. There's so many things that we can measure, right? So if you identify that a vitamin deficiency, like your vitamin D deficient, okay, that's an easy fix. But then you need to retest that and make sure that you're headed the right direction. Same thing with hormone dysfunction, hormone deficiency, postmenopausal woman. Let's get you on HRT if you're a good candidate for that. But do you have enough estradiol in your system? Are you absorbing it well enough through that gel or that patch in order to actually have the impact on bone that you want to have? We can measure these things. So let's test it.
Philip Pape: 44:11
I'm sure it depends on the intervention, but what test cycles are we talking about? Three, six months, a year?
Dr. Doug Lucas: 44:16
Yeah, it does depend. So something like, you know, a hormone, if you were to start estradiol as a, let's say a woman who starts an estradiol patch in an oral micronized progesterone capsule, I can check her hormone levels next week, you know, and they're going to be different. I wouldn't, that's too soon, but just give you an example. But if you're talking about bone turnover markers, you're going to want to give it a couple of months. If you're talking about, you know, some of the things are going to take longer, like how long does it take for magnesium to come up? How long does it take for homocysteine to go? Like it just depends on what you're looking for.
Philip Pape: 44:43
Okay, great. Yeah. Just wanted to clarify it's and it's not like four years, you know.
Dr. Doug Lucas: 44:47
Right. Well, that and that's the thing, is that's too long because that's DEXA, right? So DEXA is recommended every one or two years. And two years is way too long, in my opinion, to A, do any intervention without knowing it's working, and B, just like that's a long time. So for sure. All right. Yeah. Yeah.
Philip Pape: 45:02
So go on to the last R and revive.
Dr. Doug Lucas: 45:04
So the fourth R is to revive your life. And I just I love this one because even as an orthopedic surgeon, watching my patients have a hip fracture go through the process of recovery. And remember that not all of them survived, right? A third of those patients on average are going to die. Two-thirds of them are going to lose their independence. This is a big deal. So watching them recover is difficult from a surgical perspective. But watching them recover from their fear and anxiety if they didn't fracture, that's much more rewarding, honestly. But it's also much easier to do because you still have your body intact. And so this is the this revive your life so you can live without the fear of fracture. Get away from that fear, that anxiety that you're going to sit down in your car and break your back, that you're going to pick up your grandchild and you're going to break your spine or your hip, right? You're going to be out hiking on your own, you're going to fall, break your hip, and you're going to die out there overnight. I hear these things every day. So that fear and anxiety is real. So that's what we want to get you to is to get back to the things that you love to do to create the memories that you're here to create.
Philip Pape: 46:04
That's the message here, man. That's awesome. I mean, I think osteoporosis puts fear in some people's heart as this binary precipice that you fall off of, and now you're you're ruined for the rest of your life. Your bones are beyond repair. And this message that you can reverse it and not only reverse it, but do it fairly quickly if you do the interventions and start to see that is a very empowering and very, you know, uh optimistic. And so I guess maybe to wrap up here, because this is a great message to end on. Is there a story or an avatar that you could share with the audience? You know, I you work with people all the time, but just so they can kind of viscerally feel what that looks like.
Dr. Doug Lucas: 46:39
Yeah, sure. Yeah, one of my favorite stories, uh, I talk about her a lot. She was actually on stage at my uh last live event in February. Her name's Robin. And so she was one of our, one of our earlier patients. So she came in right at the age of 51, had gone through menopause. I believe she had a family history of breast cancer. So she was decided she was not going to start on HRT. I forget why she got screened for osteoporosis, but she got adexa and she had pretty significant osteoporosis of her spine. Hips, low bone density, not terrible, but still she was blown away. I mean, just changed her life, right? Young, active, I mean, very young at heart. I mean, you've if you look at her, you would think that she's probably 30 years old. Entrepreneur, great family, you know, two young daughters. And this totally changed her life. Fear, she didn't know, you know, could she do all the things that she wanted to do? So she came and worked with us. This was clinically as a patient, and we did all the lifestyle stuff that you and I've talked about. And she did a great job, improved her stress. Again, entrepreneur, how do you do that? It's difficult. Um, improved her sleep, stopped drinking, really changed things around, worked on her gut health. We did start her on HRT because I reassured her that a history of breast cancer in an immediate family member is not a contraindication to starting on HRT. And so we started her on HRT. It took us a while to get that optimized. But in the first 12 months, with just those interventions, we saw her hips improve, I believe 6% and 7% left, right, which is a lot on ADEXA. That's a ton on ADEXA in 12 months. It was amazing. And I love the story because her spine actually got worse. So her spine actually went down by about 4%. And I share the story, not to show my failures, but to say that we said, okay, well, my goodness, you seem to be doing all the things. What are we missing? And this is great for your audience because what we were missing was she didn't tell us that she had back pain. She had an old back injury. She was afraid to load her spine. So we were talking about loading her spine, you know, talking about putting a barbell on her shoulders, but she wasn't doing it. So she she worked with our exercise physiologist and like, okay, let's figure out how to load your spine without hurting it. So she was able to do that. And then the next year she went from a negative, she was at negative three, two at that point. I think she went from negative three, two, it was something like negative two, four. I mean, some massive leap. It was almost 20% on inner bone mineral density. And it was just amazing. Because we clearly had all of the pieces in place, right? She called me when she left the imaging center. This is back when I used to give my phone number to all my patients. She called me when she left the imaging center. I mean, just bawling because she felt that all of that fear, all of that anxiety was gone. It's gone. And then what's cool is that now, so we have now another year of data, and her DEXA continues to get better, right? So now she's definitely no longer osteoproduct. She has reversed her osteoporosis. She's barely even osteopenic at this point. She will, if she'll continue on this trajectory, she will have normal bone density in the next couple of years. So she has taken this thing, this precipice, like you said, she was on the other side. She was falling into the crater and just climbed right back out of her own will. She just needed the right information. And she climbed right back out and she has recovered. She has lost that fear, that anxiety, and is back to living her life.
Philip Pape: 49:46
That's awesome. Yeah. And it sounds like, you know, the information was great. And obviously the support you guys gave her and kind of recognizing that she was afraid of part of that, which is a very, very common fear we talk about all the time, which is you have pain, back pain, especially, um, is one of the most common. And there's a fear that doing anything with your back is going to make it worse. So I love that you guys were able to support her through that and say, okay, this the data is telling us something isn't working. We know this stuff does work. So what's missing? And then go ahead and do it. Right. Really love that. Everybody listening, I'm sure, is hopeful, especially the women who, you know, write in with concerns about uh bone health. And I'm I'm always telling them, hey, just go lift weights. Like I have no problem. I don't feel like I'm taking a risk doing that because I know how valuable it is. It's just doing it right and having right form and building into it. So is there anything I didn't ask you in this whole context that's super important that you want to?
Dr. Doug Lucas: 50:36
So I think this is a really important one because we probably have some audience members who have osteoporosis that are afraid to lift weights. And so I I'd love to talk about this. It it kind of gets me in trouble. But I just had a community member today. She was uh talking about another uh another provider who's actually talking about pelvic floor health. And this pelvic floor provider was talking about doing, you know, like cat cow exercises of the spine and then how that relates to the pelvic floor. But she said, Oh, well, I was told with osteoporosis I can't do cat-cow. Right? And I'm like, wait, like you can't bend your spine. I mean, I understand you don't want to load in a flex position. There are some things that would not be wise that could potentially put you at risk. But cat cow is just a that's a I mean, this is a normal range of motion thing of your spine. Like if you are that fragile, then you would fracture just standing up.
unknown: 51:28
Right.
Dr. Doug Lucas: 51:28
And so it this is really hard because doctors will scare people once they get the diagnosis to say, don't lift more than whatever their arbitrary number is, five pounds, 15 pounds, don't lift more than 15 pounds, you know, take calcium and vitamin D and take this drug. And that's what they tell them. And then they're afraid to do anything. But what we know so clearly is that if you're gonna build bone, you have to load it. Then how do you do that safely? And we actually used to back away from exercise in our program because it's all virtual. And you know, I was hesitant, like somebody's gonna fracture, you know. But what we realize is that we can't back away from it. We just need to, you know, face it head on. And so we have a program that is very fundamental, very rudimentary, because we have so many of our community members who have never lifted a weight ever in their life. So they can come in, but there's so many things that you can do safely, right? Watch a video, you can lay down, you can lift something, you can do it in a way where your spine is neutral and you start somewhere. Pick that point carefully. But once you start there, then it's just all about progressive overload, just like everything else, right? And so, have I ever seen a fracture? I had one person recently who did have a fracture, and it wasn't because she was following and just fractured um accidentally. What she did, she was doing a barbell back squats. You can imagine she was already pretty advanced, right? She was training with her husband. She didn't take her husband's weight off. Well, she said he didn't take his weight off. So I'll let them figure that one out. But she she unracked it and then didn't rack it back. She just said, well, well, you know, I guess I'll try it. And then it was clearly way too heavy for her. Uh, and so she did actually end up with a fracture of her uh somewhere on her spine as a result of that. But that was just bad decision making. That wasn't because of exercise, right? And so, you know, I have watched women who have never lifted a weight, work their way up to doing barbell deadlifts, barbell, you know, overhead press with severe osteoporosis. Like that's the only way that you're gonna get better. But I know that somebody's gonna listen to this and go do something and have a fracture. So, you know, doctors need to say what they need to say to protect themselves. But uh, if you are trying to improve your bone, you need to understand that you have to pick a safe starting point and progressively overload. It's the only way you're gonna do this naturally if you're trying to do it naturally.
Philip Pape: 53:39
Exactly it. You have to ladder your way up, listen to what Dr. Doug is saying. Go check out our episode with Dr. John Russin as well that we did a few weeks back. Same concept. We talk about it here. It's like heavy isn't heavy in absolute terms. It's heavy for you, which could be, you know, a dowel, right? It could be a body weight. So start where you're at and build from there. Okay, awesome. Uh, this has been a great conversation, Dr. Doug. Tell us where folks can reach out to you. I know there's like 10 different things that you you've got going on. So, what's maybe one or two of the best places to take our listeners?
Dr. Doug Lucas: 54:10
Yeah, I think uh two things. So if you want information about osteoporosis, I would just check out the YouTube channel. So the Dr. Doug show, Bones, Hormones, and Healthspan, this is all about bone health and hormones. And we're really trying to double down on that content. So this is the place to go if you want to learn about anything specifically through the lens of osteoporosis. If you're looking for support, we're still building out our bone health programs at LifeMD. So clinically, I don't have anything to offer you right now, but our community is all that probably most of you need if you have the problem. You just need the right information and the right resources. That's the osteocollective. And you can just go to osteocollective.com, check it out there. You can join our free masterclass. You could do, you know, all the stuff that we have out there available. Would love to see you in our community if you have osteoporosis or concerns around it.
Philip Pape: 54:56
Awesome. So the YouTube channel, which I think is at dr underscore Doug Lucas, which we will include in the show notes. So you can just tap it. If you're listening to the show, just tap it. And then Osteocollective will also include that as well. You can Google it or go to the website that Dr. Doug said. All right. So that was a fantastic conversation. Great guest. I really appreciate your time, Doug. Um, I learned a lot, which is selfishly one of the goals when I have a guest on, and uh then I can spread it to everyone else in future episodes. So thank you so much for coming on the show, my man.
Dr. Doug Lucas: 55:24
Awesome. Thank you, Philip. Appreciate it.

Philip Pape 12/3/25 Philip Pape 12/3/25

Why NOT Lifting Weights Is the WORST for Your Health (Especially in Weight Loss) | Ep 408

If you're trying to lose weight by focusing on diet, cardio, and steps but skipping the weight room, you're not just leaving results on the table. You're actively suppressing your metabolism, wrecking your body composition, and almost guaranteeing weight regain with more body fat.

Join the 3-Week Strong Finish Challenge to build strength training momentum and end 2025 strong instead of waiting until January. Kickoff call December 8th at 5pm Eastern. Get direct coaching, the flexible framework, holiday nutrition strategies, and travel workout templates you need to protect your metabolism through the holidays:
https://live.witsandweights.com

Discover why strength training isn't optional during fat loss... it's the primary metabolic lever that determines whether you end up lean and strong or skinny, weak, and fighting your metabolism.

Learn why up to 30% of weight loss without lifting comes from muscle (not fat), how muscle acts as your metabolic engine for insulin sensitivity and longevity, and the minimum effective dose of lifting that protects everything you're working for.

You'll understand the hormonal consequences of diet-only weight loss, why building muscle is your retirement fund for healthy aging, and how resistance training transforms your identity from "someone on a diet" to "someone who trains." This evidence-based approach shows you exactly how to build muscle, lose fat, and create sustainable body recomp, even if you're over 40 and starting from scratch.

Episode Resources:

3-Week Strong Finish Challenge - Kickoff December 8th at 5pm Eastern: https://live.witsandweights.com

Timestamps:

0:00 - Why skipping strength training during weight loss is terrible
2:50 - How losing muscle creates the weight regain trap
6:30 - The body composition truth: looking lighter but weaker without lifting
10:24 - Hormonal consequences and metabolic adaptation during fat loss
14:26 - Minimum effective dose for building muscle and preserving strength
21:17 - Strength training for longevity (not just vanity)
24:52 - Why muscle compounds like retirement savings
28:42 - Becoming someone who trains is a permanent identity shift

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Philip Pape: 0:01
If you are trying to lose weight and you're focused on steps, your macros, your carbs, your sleep, your cardio, but you're not lifting weights, you're not just leaving results on the table, you are actively making things worse. Today I'm going to explain why skipping strength training during weight loss massively suppresses your metabolism, wrecks your body composition, and almost guarantees you'll regain the weight and probably more body fat. You'll learn why muscle is your metabolic engine, why diet alone leads to looking lighter but softer, and the minimum dose of lifting that protects everything you're working for. Welcome to Wits and Weights, the show that helps you build a strong, healthy physique using evidence, engineering, and efficiency. I'm your host, certified nutrition coach, Philip Pape, and creator of the Fitness Lab app. Today we are addressing one of the most common and damaging mistakes I see in attempts at fat loss, and that is people who focus on diet, cardio, and steps, but they skip the weight room. I alluded to this in the third trap of Monday's episode of our last episode about the three weight loss traps. And I want to dive in deep on this one. I'm not gonna sugarcoat it. If you're trying to lose fat without lifting weights, you are actively sabotaging your results. You're not just leaving gains on the table. I think you are digging a hole that becomes harder to climb out of with every pound you lose. So listen up. Whatever age you are, you've got to start this. This is a wake-up call. This episode is for anyone who's been told that weight loss is just eating less and moving more. For anyone who wants to strength train but hasn't been doing it consistently, for anyone who hears mixed signals in the fitness industry about whether you need to lift weights, all of these theories have some tiny bits of truth where they're coming from, but they're mostly dangerously incomplete. Because how you lose weight determines whether you end up lean and strong or skinny, weak, and fighting your metabolism and making all of this more and more frustrating. So let's jump into it. And let me set the stage here with a scenario that I see a lot, and that is that someone decides they want to lose weight. Probably the most common scenario in existence right now, right? I gotta lose weight, I gotta lose 10 pounds, 20, 40, 50, 100, whatever. And they do something, they dial in their nutrition, whatever that means. Dial in could be calories, maybe they're cutting and restricting, but in their mind, they're dialing it in. Maybe they're eating quote unquote clean whole foods, whatever. Maybe they're walking more, maybe they add some cardio, and then the scale goes down, and then you think you're making progress. But what's probably happening with the vast majority of people who lose weight, which is accelerated today because of the weight loss medications, is that without the stimulus of lifting weights, your body has zero reason to preserve muscle. So as you lose weight, a significant portion of that loss is lean mass. How much? Well, research shows that without resistance training, up to 30% of weight loss during dieting can come from muscle. It's the classic biggest loser effect. And now we see it as the GOP1, somagatides, terzepatite, all the weight loss drugs affect as well. I mean, I've seen numbers up to 40% even. And I think it has to do with how fast you're losing weight. It's not the meds, it's not about the medications, it's about the approach, right? And this is where the math turns against people because muscle is so, so valuable, and we're already starting to lose it in our 30s and beyond. And now you're just making the problem even worse. And you get things like body fat overshooting, where when you regain the weight, which 95% of people apparently do, you're actually gaining more fat than you had before. And you end up at the same or higher scale weight with even more fat and less muscle, which is just the opposite of what we're trying to do. Muscle is an engine, it definitely is like the amount of muscle you have in your body. Think of it as your engine. We want a massive gas-guzzling engine, is what we want. Super big, powerful engine that also burns a lot of calories. Okay. But, you know, physiologically, it does burn calories, but also handles glucose. It also oxidizes fat. People forget that like the muscle itself translates to the fat loss side of the equation as well, and to the insulin sensitivity and how you, you know, handle your carbs. When you lose that wonderful tissue of muscle, a lot of things happen in the negative direction that lead to the ultimate decline and frailty of aging that we are, I guess, used to, unfortunately, seeing in the world. That is, but that is not inevitable. So, yes, your expenditure drops, right? Your maintenance calories, that's one thing, one small thing that happens. It's not the worst thing, though, even though it does make mean you know, you don't have as much room to eat while you're in a deficit, for example. But worse than that is when your diet is over after you've lost weight and muscle, let's say you've lost 20 pounds and your metabolism has adapted downward, right? Now what happens is because your metabolism has dropped even more than you probably expected, you're more ravenous, you're hungry, you're craving food. Now you start to eat back the calories, right? And and that's okay, right? We want to get back to maintenance. And even if you go just to maintenance, the problem is now you're what you're regaining once you start gaining more weight back, is fat, almost exclusively fat. And it's usually more than what you lost because if you lost 20 pounds, and let's say five of those pounds were muscle and 15 of those pounds were fat, but now you gain 20 pounds back, you're gonna gain back 20 pounds of fat. And so the net effect is you've lost five pounds of muscle. This isn't hypothetical. This is what happens to most dieters who do not lift weights. And the cool thing is it's totally preventable. That's why you're listening to this show. That's why you're looking for the help and support on this journey. It's what I had just couldn't discover until my 40s. I always wondered why during my CrossFit days and doing paleo and doing diets and all that, lots of cardio, why I would lose weight and and look worse and worse. And I thought, ah, it's genetics. It's my age. Like I'm skinny, fat, and then I'm fat. And then I'm skinny, fat, and like, how do I actually look the way I want to look? I don't, I don't get it. So here's the piece that matters, even more than what I just talked about, is you are not trying to lose weight. Like I thought I was trying to lose weight and that was the goal. No, you're trying to look better, aren't you? It's not just about the physique, but let's start there. Let's let's be honest with ourselves. Let's start there. You want to see muscle definition. You also want to feel strong and quote unquote functional. That word is kind of a buzzword today, but you know, you want to function in your daily living at any age. So maybe you're in your 60s or 70s and listening to the show, having trouble getting off the couch, right? And that's a real thing that happens. Okay. And you want to be able to do that, you want to spring off that couch and have no problem with it. And you want to also look like you put in the work, right? You don't, you kind of look around and you see what happens with aging. When your friends, when you get into your 40s and 50s, you see them on Facebook, you're like, wow, what has happened to them? And it's not a matter of judgment and saying, oh, this person's fat. No. It's a matter of, are you doing the things that support your health and your body because you love yourself? You do, right? We all love ourselves. So we want to give ourselves the best shot in this world. We also don't want people to depend on us when we get older. And so that outcome, as much as it somewhat depends on maintaining a healthy level of body fat, for most people, that end result of managing body fat is helped tremendously and almost exclusively by being able to build muscle, at least over the long term. In the short term, you can drop a bunch of body fat with energy balance alone. You're gonna lose muscle. You might be in a healthier state than you were before because you had a lot of fat. I'm talking about people who have a lot of weight to lose, right? But once you get to that point, you've got to build muscle. Body fat percentage is like it's more like geometry, whereas scale weight is like arithmetic, right? We need to focus on the geometry of the body. Geometry as in like the the space, the spatial distribution, because if you lose a pound of fat, but you also lose a pound of muscle, that's not a win. You've lost two pounds on the scale, but that's that's setting, that's going backward. That's becoming a smaller version of the same shape. Lighter on the scale, but softer in the mirror. It's it's that deflated look that happens when people diet without lifting. You see it with the weight loss meds when people aren't lifting. You're like, whoa, they lost a lot of weight, but they don't look great, right? It's just the instinct we have in our head. You might not say that out loud. I'm saying it out loud for you. And let's be honest, that's what we're thinking. And we see them shrink, but they're not, they don't look healthier. And healthy is a good word for this, I think. Vibrant, healthy, right? We don't have to say, not everyone's gonna be chiseled, jack toned. We all have different body types and body shapes, right? I'm kind of devolving a little bit into the whole body image thing here. But when you do maintain or build muscle while losing fat, then your body composition changes. So from an objective standpoint, that's what I'm talking about. And objectively, what this looks like is hey, your waist gets smaller because you're not carrying as much of that visceral abdominal fat, which is not healthy for you. Your shoulders look broader, your arms have shape, you know, you weigh the same or more than someone who just dieted, but you look dramatically different. You look healthier. And if it does, even if it is about vanity and physique, which again is fine if that's what one thing that drives you. Most people's ideal physique, believe it or not, requires 10 to 20 pounds more pounds, 10 to 20 more pounds of muscle than they currently have. Let that sink in. That's a that's like a really good number. 10 to 20 more pounds of muscle. So if that's the case, your goal really isn't to get smaller, is it? It's to reshape. And you can't reshape without resistance training. All right. So let's talk about another layer here that gets overlooked. The hormonal consequences of dieting. Dieting is a stress. Your body perceives a calorie deficit as a threat and it responds accordingly. Your hunger goes up, your neat goes down. I know you're you're like, hey, Philip, no, I'm getting more steps and fat loss. Yeah, you might be getting more intentional steps, but you'd be surprised at the unintentional, unconscious movement that goes down, even inside your body. Your leptin drops, your recovery gets worse, your whole system starts pushing back against the deficit. It's a stress. You may do it intentionally, yes, but it's a short-term stress. And that's called metabolic adaptation. That's why fat loss gets harder over time. And if you're not strength training, these adaptations will hit harder and faster. I've seen it in people's numbers. Your body has less reason to hold on to metabolically expensive tissue like muscle, so it dumps it. And so even those of you doing the UTAL YouTube workouts or the P90 or those types of workouts, Pilates, and you're not making any, you're not progressing, you're not increasing in weight or reps over time, you're not actually getting stronger. And then you go into a fat loss phase, you're not really doing much for yourself. You may, if you're lucky, hold on to some of your muscle, but you're still probably gonna probably gonna lose some muscle. At best, you're never in a period where you're gaining new muscle tissue, if that makes sense. And going back to my comment where most people need to gain 10 to 20 pounds of muscle, and that's beyond a baseline that I would say is when you're 30. So if you're already 40, 50, 60 years old, you've lost some of that muscle too. The goal is to get it back and then add those 10 to 20 pounds. When you lift, you blunt the compensatory mechanisms. Okay. Resistance training signals your body that muscle is essential, that it's being used, that it should be preserved. You keep your need higher, you maintain strength, you support insulin sensitivity, you stabilize your mood and sleep. Yes, even during fat loss, it makes it a little bit easier, and you're doing the most important thing, which is holding on to that muscle. And I definitely have seen stark differences between people who are not lifting properly or at all. They they try to lose weight, and it's just this fight. Whereas people who lift, they're like, we're gonna go in a moderate deficit, I'm gonna do all the right things, I'm gonna eat a high satiety diet, plenty of protein, and I'm gonna train. And it actually feels, I'm not gonna say it feels easy, but it doesn't feel that bad at all. You got a little bit of hunger, a little bit of stress, and you get through it in six, eight, 10, 12 weeks. And now you've lost fat and you move on to the rest of your life being at maintenance or above. This is a big distinction that changes how the whole process feels and how sustainable it becomes. Now, before I keep going, I want to mention something for those of you who are ready to take action on this as we end the year. If you've been putting off strength training or you know you need more structure heading into the new year, we are starting, we are running a three-week finish strong challenge designed to help you build that momentum and end the year strong instead of waiting until January. It's not, hey, let's do a diet at the end of the year or let's do a fat loss phase at the end of the year. That's gonna self-destruct, isn't it? No, this is about getting the fundamental behaviors like strength training in place now and also having a flexible framework for doing so, no matter how stressful or chaotic the holidays get, or any time of year. Because if you could get through that time of year, the rest of the year is gonna seem like a breeze. It's building that foundation that protects your metabolism, your metabolic health, sets you up for real progress in 2026, even if, yes, even if you want to have a New Year's resolution to lose fat. So you can sign up right now for that challenge. Go to live.witsandweights.com. The kickoff is on December 8th, but the challenge starts a couple days later. So December 8th is a Monday at 5 p.m. Eastern. It would be great if you could be on the live kickoff, but if you're not, it's okay. The replay will be available shortly thereafter. And you'll have about a day and a half to watch it, to download the guide, to download all the wonderful resources that Carol has made for dealing with the holidays and all the situations you find yourself in, like at the airport, at the gas station, at the hotel, to download our minimum and bailout workout templates for hotel gym travel. If you don't have access to a full gym, all of that stuff is included, as well as the replay. Go to live.witsandweights.com. Link is in the show notes, so that you can join the challenge and get started for the final three weeks of the year. That's live.witsandweights.com. All right, let's zoom out for a second because this isn't just about looking good at your goal weight, is it? Right? I I kind of have alluded, I've danced around the fact that physique, which by the way, I define physique as much more nuanced than a lot of people do. To me, physique is everything about your body and mind. But still, even if it's a vanity goal, we need to couple that with something more meaningful about our future self, our identity, so that we have it all, we have the whole package. And that will really drive you to want to do this. This is about the rest of your life. Without lifting, sarcopenia, the loss of muscle mass, accelerates. And I recently heard a podcast, gosh, I think it was Docs Who Lift. They talked about, or was it barbell medicine, talked about how sarcopenia, we we often talk about it as a loss of muscle mass, but really it's a loss of function with our muscle, loss of strength. And I think that's just as important, if not more so, than the muscle itself, because there's there's a reason we want to have that muscle. And it's not just the look of it or to say we have more muscle, right? So when we go through this age-related, but also functional muscle loss after 30, and that occurs because you're not doing something about it, it doesn't just affect how you look, does it? It affects things like your bone density, your risk of falling, your ability to carry groceries when you're 65, to get up off the floor when you're 75, to live independently when you're 80 and above. So at the end of the day, today's episode is a longevity episode in disguise. Because there is no healthy aging without strength. That's the statement I want you to remember. Quote it. Put it on Instagram, I don't care, put it on your post-it note, share it. There is no healthy aging without strength. Your quality of life in your 60s, 70s, 80s, beyond depends on the muscle and strength that you build and preserve now. And I say now, I was gonna say in your 30s, 40s, 50s, it doesn't matter. Now, starting now. If you're already 70, start now. If you're already 80, start now. Testosterone, growth hormone, IGF 1, all of these track and they correlate with muscle mass. When you let muscle go, your hormonal health spirals with it. Whereas when you build and you maintain muscle, you support that hormonal environment that keeps you healthy and functional. And I know there's a lot of talk about hormones today and hormone replacement therapy, but really it has to start from lifestyle. I mean, the lifestyle has to be there regardless, is is is the way to think about it. So this isn't just vanity, it's about remaining capable, remaining independent, remaining alive in a meaningful sense for as long as possible. Lifespan, health span, and mind span. Now, you know I think about this from an engineering standpoint. I talk about engineering in the intro. Some of you guys that are new to the podcast are like, where does engineering fall into all of this stuff about fitness? I think it's a really important lens to use when we think about our body and how it ages over time. For example, cardio. It gives you some benefits today. You burn some calories, you get some cardiovascular conditioning, but then it's done. It's short term. Tomorrow you have to do it again to get the same benefit, right? Cardio is very short term. Muscle is gonna give you benefit today, tomorrow, and the next decade once you add it. That's incredible. If you add 10 pounds of muscle in your 40s, that tissue continues to burn calories, support your metabolism, keep you strong for years. You can kind of coast for a while and still be far better off than someone who never built it. I know people who've built a lot of muscle through their lives, and just about everything they're doing is suboptimal. They may even be sitting all day. And still their health markers, their biomarkers, based on their blood work, are far superior than the average person their age simply because they have extra muscle. And then when we work on things like walking more and a little bit of cardiovascular health on top of it, they get incredibly superior numbers without becoming an endurance athlete, right? Just by a little, a little walking. Now, the opposite is a pretty horrible situation. If you lose 10 pounds of muscle because you're not lifting, then you're gonna spend the rest of your life fighting your body. You're not gonna be able to eat as much. Every time you want to do something that's physical, it's gonna get harder and harder. Every time you do try to lose weight, it's gonna feel harder because you're not doing the right way and you're losing muscle. Muscle compounds like interest. Nothing or not lifting is like pulling money out of the stock market at age 40 and then wondering why you can't retire. I always think it's a great analogy to think of muscle as like a retirement fund for your body. Right? That investment you make now is gonna pay dividends for decades. Investment's not just financial, it's just lifting and eating the right way, et cetera. Right? So this is the uncomfortable truth about diet-only fat loss, which isn't even fat loss, it's just weight loss. It creates more hunger, worse cravings, higher dropout rates, more weight regain, less satisfaction with your appearance. When you diet without lifting, you're stripping away everything that makes the diet sustainable, believe it or not. Like the lifting is almost exclusively what makes it sustainable in that it drives everything else around it, right? You don't, because without it, you're not gonna have that food flexibility, you're not gonna use the nutrients in the best way, and you're gonna end up at a body weight that requires eating less and less just to maintain. Whereas with strength training, you're building a buffer, you create the physique you want to maintain, it changes your relationship with the whole process, you feel progress every week, and it reframes what lifting is. And when people say, Well, I don't like to lift, we've got to change that somehow. We've got to change honestly, getting the result from it tends to be enough to tell somebody this is something I've got to do that's part of my identity that I want to do. And so that's a good segue into the next thing, which is that some of you are thinking, you know, I'm busy, I don't have time for a routine, or I'm worried about doing too much. I guess most people aren't worried about that last one necessarily, but I want to push back on all of this gently. Most people listening to the show are probably undertrained, not overtrained. I'm gonna repeat that. Most people listening to this show are probably undertrained, not overtrained. What you're actually doing is probably less than the minimum effective dose. So you're worried about doing too much when you haven't even started. Now, the too much might be in the form of cardio running, cardio endurance machines, but from a strength training perspective, three to four sessions a week is pretty much all it takes to preserve every ounce of muscle during fat loss. Even two sessions is dramatically better than zero. So the minimum effective dose to preserve muscle is actually shockingly low. It's it's a quarter to an eighth of what it takes to build muscle. It's pretty low. So even starting there is a great place to be. That's what I'm saying. Better than zero infinitely. So that's 45 minutes to an hour, three or four times a week. You probably spend more time than that scrolling, doom scrolling, watching TV, Netflix, right? The barrier for most people is not time. I know if you're a busy mom, single mom, you've got kids, still, I found that there are plenty of other things that are far less effective than strength training that you're doing that takes a lot of time that can be supplanted by this wonderful thing of lifting weights. And a home gym can be a really helpful thing for that for a lot of you. It should be the priority because once you understand what's at stake, the priority itself becomes obvious. And I hope today's episode is helping you frame that, right? What message are you sending your body? Without lifting, you're sending the message that your muscle is expensive and apparently I don't need it. Let's dump it, let's hold on to the fat. You're getting fatter. When you lift, the message changes. This muscle is important. It's necessary for my survival, it's essential. And when I need extra energy, I'm gonna pull from fat instead. You're telling your body what to do and keep and how to reshape itself through your actions. So that's the game. Resistance training is the signal, it's communication with your own physiology. And if you're not sending that during fat loss or really any time, your body's gonna make the wrong choice, or it's gonna make the natural choice, the one that you don't want. All right, I have one more angle today, and this one is psychological. When you show up in the gym, let's say three days a week, you start to see yourself differently. You're not just someone on a diet, you are someone who trains. You're an athlete, or at least you're becoming an athlete. That identity shift is what changes everything else outside the gym. You make better food choices because guess what? Athletes fuel their training. You prioritize sleep because athletes recover. You think long term because athletes build over years, not weeks. Whereas not lifting weights totally removes that anchor from your life. Without the gym, you're now relying just on willpower, on restriction, on low-carb diets, on fasting, on all the gimmicks, all the supplements, all the things that are shortcuts. And then willpower, of course, is gonna run out. Restriction is gonna create all sorts of backlash that you're not gonna like. Whereas with that training, with the gym, you have a practice, a ritual. I will say it's a habit, but not really. A habit is something automatic automatic. This is more part of your identity, an identity-based set of behaviors which stick. They're very sticky. All right, they stick a lot longer than something that's goal-based or outcome-based. This is process-based, identity-based. And I see this again and again. Those who lift consistently are not just getting the physical result. They're transforming their self-concept, right? And that and that is what makes the results last. And by the way, in my app fitness lab, I worked really hard to incorporate this idea of identity transformation from day one. After you onboard and start within a day or two, you're gonna get an activity that helps you develop the vision of your future. Very simple. A few simple prompts. And the app is gonna use that to reinforce this meaningful drive that you have for your identity, which is a really cool part of the process. All right, I'm gonna close with this. After about the age of 35, things change, don't they? Right? Anabolic resistance increases, which means you need more protein. Muscle protein synthesis slows down, recovery definitely becomes more important. You know, your connective tissue is a little bit less pliable, life is a little bit more stressful, neat tends to drop, hormones start to shift in your 30s and 40s, don't they? And lifting weights is the antidote to every single one of these, at least partially, if not completely. It's not that you're getting older, it's that your training has to match the physiology of aging. You might need more deliberate stimulus and more intention to build and maintain muscle. You might need more attention to recovery and your protein. You might need a system that works a little more subtly with nuance for your body, which means you have to have a feedback loop. All of the things we talk about on the show, that's what the engineering side is. The good news is that it works. People in their 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s can still build muscle. You can still get stronger, you can still transform your body composition. The research is quite clear on this at this point. But this is the big butt. It doesn't happen by accident, right? It only happens because you show up and you lift weights and you send the body the signal that muscle actually matters. So the conclusion, of course, is lifting is not optional. It is the infrastructure that makes everything else work. So here are your actions from today. First, if you're not lifting at all, just start with two sessions a week, which is dramatically better than zero. I would encourage you to have three sessions. But if two is the bare minimum that you could possibly get and you're gonna just utterly fail trying to go in for three, start with two. Second, if you're already lifting, making make it make sure that you're training, I'll say hard enough. And that's a whole topic. I've done multiple episodes on this, but basically it's getting within a few reps shy of failure so that you get the appropriate mechanical tension and that you're going up in weighted reps each week to stay in that regime so you actually build the muscle. Third, I want you to prioritize protein. Your muscles need the materials that you get from protein. So you've got to have that to go along with your training, aiming for 0.7 to one gram per pound of body weight. Fourth, progressive overload. I kind of alluded to this already in my training hard enough. But not only do you have to train hard enough, you have to lift a little bit more over time to be able to train hard enough, or else it'll start getting easy and you'll stop making progress. That's the adaptation that your body gets. And then fifth and finally, be consistent. And so this is the identity-based behavior change. This is where uh something like a system or an app or program that keeps you consistent can be helpful. Speaking of, if you want personalized guidance that adapts to your training and goals, helps you create the identity, helps you create those behaviors through daily activities, and has a coach built in in your pocket who can answer all your questions, check out the fitness lab app at witsandweights.com slash app. This is like a coaching intelligence layer that I built based on my years of coaching and my content and the podcasts to help you navigate exactly what we talked about today. How to structure your training, your nutrition, your phases over time. It gives you personalized recommendations, it adapts every day. If you're having trouble in some area of your life, it will notice that and it will start adapting the activities for that. And that is how it helps build the behaviors without replacing whatever other tools you already use. It complements other tools quite well. So Fitness Lab is great whether you're starting out or you've been at this for years, whether you need a workout program or are following your own, whether you're tracking your own food or want the app to do it for you. It helps you make those smart decisions faster. Go to wits and weights.com slash app or click the link in the show notes. That is Fitness Lab, witsandweights.com slash app. All right, until next time, keep using your wits, lifting those weights. And remember, your body is capable of incredible things, but it needs that signal of lifting weights to do it. Send that signal by showing up in the gym and getting your training done. I'm Philip Bates, and I'll talk to you next time here on the Wits and Weights Podcast.

Philip Pape 12/1/25 Philip Pape 12/1/25

Stop Making These 3 Weight Loss Mistakes if You Want Fat Loss | Ep 407

If you're tracking food, stepping on the scale, pushing hard in the gym, but hitting a wall with fat loss, this episode is for you. Maybe scale isn't moving, or you're making panicked decisions like slashing calories or adding more cardio, and nothing's working. Discover the 3 weight loss traps that derail motivated people trying to finish 2025 strong, and learn exactly what to do instead to build a leaner, stronger physique heading into 2026.

Get your free 14-Day Rapid Start Fat Loss Guide to set up your nutrition and strength training for effective fat loss without extreme restriction or guesswork:
https://witsandweights.com/fatloss

If you're tracking food, stepping on the scale, pushing hard in the gym, but hitting a wall with fat loss, this episode is for you.

Maybe scale isn't moving, or you're making panicked decisions like slashing calories or adding more cardio, and nothing's working.

Discover the 3 weight loss traps that derail motivated people trying to finish 2025 strong, and learn exactly what to do instead to build a leaner, stronger physique heading into 2026.

Learn to use evidence-based strategies that work with your body's adaptive system, not against it, so you can lose fat while building muscle and maintaining your metabolism.

Episode Resources:

Free 14-Day Rapid Start Fat Loss Guide
Fitness Lab App - AI-powered coaching for tracking signal weight and progressive training. Exclusive 20% off link for podcast listeners.

Timestamps:

0:00 - Hitting a wall with fat loss despite tracking and training
2:09 - Trap 1: Reacting emotionally to daily scale fluctuations
9:29 - Trap 2: Overcorrecting with extreme calorie cuts and restriction
20:13 - Trap 3: Thinking strength training is not required
24:52 - How muscle building transforms metabolism and body recomp
28:52 - Debunking "bulky" fears and "waiting to lift" myths

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Get notified of new episodes. Listen on Apple, Spotify, or all other platforms.

Then hit “Follow” and you’re good to go!

Philip Pape: 0:00
If you're in the mode of trying to lose weight, maybe you are tracking your food, stepping on the scale, pushing yourself in the gym, but you hit a wall. The scale isn't moving. Or worse, you're making panicked decisions like slashing calories or adding more cardio and it's still not working. This episode is for you. Today I'm breaking down three weight loss traps that derail even motivated people right when they're trying to finish the year strong, and how you can avoid each one so you can actually build a leaner, stronger physique heading into 2026. Welcome to Wits and Weights, a show that helps you build a strong, healthy physique using evidence, engineering, and efficiency. I'm your host, certified nutrition coach Philip Pape, and the creator of Fitness Lab, and we are in the final stretch of 2025. I know a lot of you are determined to make progress on your body composition before the new year. Maybe you started strong this year, you hit some bumps along the way, and now you're trying to figure out what is working versus what is all the noise out there. So today I'm going to cover three specific traps that I see people fall into this time of year. And in my teaser before the music, I mentioned the phrase weight loss. I think I mentioned it twice. And I did that for a reason because a lot of you are in that mode of weight loss. And in the past, we've talked about the difference between weight loss and fat loss and body composition, which we're going to touch on that a little bit. And I'll say that these are not obscure edge cases, edge cases. These are the mistakes I'm talking about today are the big ones that kill momentum for the majority of people that are trying to do this, that are trying to improve their health, lose fat, improve their physique. And then I'm going to give you what to do instead. So if you're trying to just lean out, lose that last few pounds of fat, or you're getting started right now on your fat loss journey, stick around because avoiding these three traps could be the difference between continued frustration through the holidays and entering 2026 leaner and more confident than you've been in years. All right, trap number one is misreading the scale and then making emotional decisions as a result. This is the biggest one for sure. It probably causes the most, I'll say, unnecessary stress. And that is treating every single time you step on the scale like it's a performance review. Okay, you step on the scale, and what happens? You look at it's a number, it's up two pounds from yesterday. And immediately your brain goes, I gain fat, I'm bigger, I'm heavier, why can't I lose the weight? I'm gaining weight, my metabolism's slowing down, my diet stopped working, I need to cut calories, I need to add more cardio, whatever thought goes through your head in that moment. And maybe take a pause and think about what that is for you right now. The trap here is the big misunderstanding of the difference between signal and noise when it comes to scale weight. Scale weight is tough, guys, because on one hand, I very much encourage using it as a tool. On the other hand, it gets highly misused as something far from a tool. So if you've listened to this show, you've heard me talk about this before, but I want to drive it home because it trips people up constantly. Your body weight fluctuates a lot, a lot. And almost none of that day-to-day fluctuation is actual fat gain or fat loss. And I want you to think of it this way. Okay, if you to gain two pounds of fat overnight, you would have to had eaten roughly 7,000 calories above your maintenance. I talked about this on the last episode, I believe, right before Thanksgiving, about the numbers and the math behind this. Did you actually eat 7,000 calories more than your maintenance yesterday? No. So what's actually happening? Water. That's it. It all really comes down to water in all its different forms. I know we like to have these long lifts, lists, but it really is fluid. It's water. Water can shift a lot due to things like stress, from stress or poor sleep, uh, higher sodium intake. So you had the Chinese food or pizza last night, training fatigue and muscle inflammation, right? Draws in fluid into your muscles, changes in your step count, even, where you are in your menstrual cycle, if you're a woman, carb intake, if you've been low carb, now you're eating more carbs or you're going from fat loss to maintenance. If you started taking creatine, if you're digesting less or more and there's more or less food in your gut, so many things. And it all comes down to water. And these things can swing your scale weight by multiple pounds in a single day. This is the tough thing. None of that is fat, and yet we're trying to use the scale to measure fat along with some other things. So, what do you do instead? Well, from a weight perspective, you've got to look at some sort of trend. And where a lot of people get this wrong is they'll take individual data points, like every Sunday they weigh themselves. That's not a trend that is, I'll say, responsive enough to give you good data. In fact, that could be even more misleading because every Sunday maybe a high point or a low point. What if you're slowly losing fat over time? But this Sunday it's a low point, and next Sunday is a high point. It looks like you gained weight. It's the opposite of what's actually happening fat-wise, even though that is reality of hey, you've got some more fluid in your body next Sunday, so you look heavier, but you're not really, but you don't actually have more body fat. So this is where an app like Macrofactor uses a 20-day exponential moving average. And this is a publicly known, you know, equation. It's it's super simple. I like moving averages, and I especially like this version of it. This is over three weeks. It's exponential, meaning the most recent data points matter the most. So it takes your daily weights, it smooths them out. You could see the actual direction and the pressure, I like to say, over time. And by pressure, it means, again, whatever's happening most recently gets more weight, pun intended, I guess. Rather than getting whipped around by every daily number, you're looking at that over time. So if you're using that app, or if you're using my app fitness lab, I basically steal the same concept for exponential moving average. In fact, here, this might be frustrating for some folks using the app. In the first 20 days, I've designed the app to be smart enough not to even tell you a number yet because it can't be relied upon. It'll say, hey, good job entering your weight. We're still processing your signal weight. It's what I call it, signal weight. And so stick around. After 20 days, we're gonna have good data to work from, which kind of reinforces the patient part of this process, the fact that this takes time. And if you're too impatient to do that, if you're trying to just lose weight quickly, go ahead, lose water weight, cut carbs. You're not losing any fat, you're not improving your body composition. So what's the point, right? If you want to do this the right way, you've gotta, you've gotta take a trend. Now, if you're not using an app, you could do this yourself on a spreadsheet, or you can take just even a regular moving average over time. I would still take at least, let's say, seven to 10 days worth of weights in a row and average them at least, and then compare that to the ongoing average, and that's the signal in the noise. That's why I call it signal weight, by the way. And when I work with clients, I'm always telling them, hey, the scale's data, it's not a verdict, it's information you're collecting collecting, just like your training log or your food log. You don't emotionally react to how many grams of protein you ate yesterday, do you? I mean, usually not, right? Like, okay, I ate this many grams of protein. It's not like, I only ate 20 grams of protein. It's like just data. You you just note it and then you adjust if needed, and you treat the scale the same way. Now, why does this matter so much? Because when people make emotional decisions based on anything, but especially based on a weigh-in on the scale, they do things that hurt their progress. Then they're they cut calories impulsively, they add in more unnecessary, stressful movement like running or cardio like that. They jump to another diet because this one isn't working. And all of that creates instability in your system. And when I work with clients, this is tough because in the first few weeks, you know, I'm promising some sort of results if you do the work, right? Which is which you will get. The problem is that result doesn't come immediately. And sometimes individual markers like scale weight can give you the impression of the opposite happening. We have to kind of talk off the ledge and use these numbers. And as an engineer, I think of metabolism like a control system. If you keep jerking the inputs around based on this short-term noise, the system's never gonna get stable. You need consistent inputs over time. It's the same thing with your strength training. You're not gonna get jacked in a week, right? It takes time. You make small deliberate adjustments based on the data and you look at the data as just that. Hey, information. So here's your action for this one. For the next two weeks, I want you to weigh yourself every day at the same time under the same conditions. That's usually in the morning, after you use the bathroom, before you eat or drink, and try your best. Okay, I know it's easier said than done. Try your best to not emotionally react to the individual number and just record it. Okay, if you're using Fitness Lab, you do that in the morning metric log. If you use another app, they have a different way to record it, or you can just record it on your own. At the end of the week, I want you to calculate the average and compare it to the previous week. Okay, so again, we're doing it at least two weeks. So you have two kind of after the after seven days, you have like a seven-day moving average, if you will. And then seven days after that, you have a new seven-day moving average. See what the difference is. And you'll see that they're not, they're probably not that much different, to be honest, because your weight's not going to change that much in two weeks unless you're drastically off with your you know energy balance. All right, so that's trap number one, reacting to scale noise instead of waiting for the signal. Trap number two is actually connected to this because it's often what happens when people do react emotionally. All right. So it's important. We're like, okay, let's say we do react emotionally, then what? Well, trap number two is overcorrecting with restriction instead of adjusting the system. And this again, I see constantly because it's it's it's a sneaky thing because you feel like you're being disciplined and taking control and doing something to solve a problem, right? It's this false sense of productivity. When progress slows down or stalls, our immediate instinct is that I need to do more. I need to cut the calories more. I need to cut one of my macros, but usually carbs, I need to fast longer, I need to eat cleaner, quote unquote. Try to add even more steps when you're already exhausted, jumping to a new program or new diet, because this one is clearly not working. And I get it, I get it. When you're not seeing results, doing more feels like the logical answer. You're checking a box, you're changing something, you're solving a problem. But that is the trap because doing more often destabilizes that system rather than optimizing it. So that now you can see why it's kind of connected to the first trap. I want to explain what I mean. When you aggressively cut calories beyond what's sustainable, which many of you are doing, and you might be in that prop mode right now, especially with the holidays. You're like, I need to cut or I need to be on a diet. A few things happen when you cut calories beyond what's sustainable. Your training quality drops off a cliff because you don't have the fuel to push hard. Your neat, that's non-exercise activity thermogenesis, basically, all the movement you do outside the gym goes down because your body conserves energy. Your hunger hormones get off track and they go haywire. You start to get hungry, cravings, starving. Your recovery tanks. So then it's even harder next time to get into the gym. You might start losing muscle if now the calories are so low, you're not only training poorly, you're not getting enough protein, and it's a vicious cycle. The irony is that all of that can make your scale weight stall even more because your body's now more stressed holding onto water, and you've compromised the very things that drive fat loss in the first place. So for all of you reaching out to me on Instagram or email who are like, hey, I've cut calories, I'm eating as little as I can and I'm still not losing weight. There's a problem behind that that's not about the calories. It's probably about the approach. You're probably doing too much and doing too much of the wrong things, and now you've destabilized and stressed the heck out of your system. Because your body's adaptive. That's the important thing here. It's not a fixed machine. It's adaptive. It is not a simple input-output. When you push too hard in one direction, it pushes back. So what you have to do instead for this trap is make small, measured, very boring adjustments. Don't be a hero. And this is where sometimes, again, my clients they get frustrated because they're like, that's all you want me to change that one thing, but I want to do more. I need to do more of this, more that, more that. And actually, the coaching part comes into saying, let's not do those because you've done that in the past. You see how well that worked for you. Let's do this very deliberately. And it's kind of like in Fitness Lab and my app. I had people, you know, sign up, and then literally in one day the cancer, like, oh, this is not, this is not doing for me what I expect. Well, yeah, it's been one day. Like that's the whole point, is you have to have the patience to do the daily boring things that are really going to pay off well. And that's the point of this trap. If fat loss has stalled, let's say for two or three weeks, based on the trend weight we talked about in trap one, right? Not based on one weight in that you had that you popped two or three pounds, but based on the trend, then you look at the data and you make a small change. Maybe you do drop calories. There's nothing wrong with dropping calories if you're in that sustainable range of a deficit. And many times you have to do that because your metabolism adapts a bit and things get a little tougher in terms of your deficit, tougher as in, you know, your body's not responding as well and you drop calories, maybe 100, 150 calories. Maybe you do add a little bit of walking in, an extra mile of walking, that walk after lunch or dinner that you weren't doing. You add those 2,000 steps in. Maybe you do look at whether protein is where it needs to be, because sometimes when you're in a deficit and calories are low, people let the protein slip. And really, you probably need more protein than when you're not in a deficit. And that alone can cause some issues, right? Because then you're more hungry, maybe you're not retaining as much muscle mass. The point is that one variable at a time, a small magnitude of change, and then you wait and see what happens over another, say, two to three weeks before you make another adjustment. So if you're out there saying, I'm gonna start creatine, I'm gonna start supplements, I'm gonna change my training, I'm gonna increase my protein, I'm gonna go in a deficit, stop right there. You're going to hit an issue. You're going to run into a wall because you're going to have no idea what's causing what, and you're going to definitely get frustrated. A good, a good metaphor here for those of you who play guitar, for example. I don't play guitar, but I can still relate to this. It's like tuning a guitar. You ever hear someone who's like ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding? They're trying to tune the guitar, right? You don't, they they turn the little tuning pegs at the top. You don't crank it all the way around, right? You make that a little bit adjustment, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, to try to get into tune. And I would think of that as your body. You're just trying to make that slight adjustment without snapping the string, right? To get in tune. I don't know if that helps you guys, but there's another version of this same trap that I did want to mention, which is the plan hopping mentality. Any kind of plan or program, right? You're on a program for three weeks. Maybe it's your training program, maybe it's a nutrition or a lifestyle plan, maybe it's using my app, whatever. And you don't see these dramatic results. And you're like, the program doesn't work. So then you switch to a different program. Three weeks later, same thing, switch again. And maybe it's not three weeks, maybe it's three months, maybe it's one month. It doesn't matter. You haven't made those minor adjustments along the way to actually make sure it really works. And you're not giving it time, time. Okay. I remember a South Park episode from years ago where Cartman was in the hospital and his mom asked the doctor what's wrong. He said, He just needs more time. She's like, Yeah, but what's wrong? He needs more time. He needs a time transplant. I thought that was hilarious. So sometimes you need a time transplant to make sure you're giving it time to work because the physiological adaptation, that's your body changing. It takes time. Fat loss takes time. Every time you switch, you're essentially restarting the clock. So a good rule is as follows commit to a structured approach for at least eight to 12 weeks before making major changes. How's that? Eight to 12 weeks. I just gave you a protocol. And within that time frame is where you make those little adjustments as needed. That's important, based on data. You're not doing it for the whim or the heck of it. You're doing it because data tells you it's worth experimenting. And you don't know for sure that that change is going to do what you expect. You might have a certain level of confidence because let's say you listen to wits and weights, or you're using my app or working with a coach, or you just uh have learned enough about this, but you're not gonna blow up the whole approach because you're impatient, right? Small, measurable, boring adjustments are always gonna beat these drastic swings every time. That's how you work with your body being so nuanced and adaptive instead of fighting against it. All right, before we get to trap number three, which might be the most important one, because it's the thing most people are underestimating. I want to mention a free resource that ties directly into what we've been talking about. I love to give free things away all the time. I have lots of fun, helpful guides. If you're trying to lose fat, if you want a structured starting point, if you're like, I don't even know where to start, right? I don't want one of Philip's like huge 30-page guides that give you the whole thing. I just want to know where to start. I have a free guide I recently created called the 14-day rapid start fat loss guide. Notice this is not rapid fat loss. This is a rapid start fat loss guide. And it simply gets you started. It walks you through how to set up your nutrition and training for effective fat loss within a 14-day window to get you going with this approach, without the extreme restriction and all that other nonsense out there. The very uh subtle, nuanced, patient but effective approach. Go to witsandweights.com slash fat loss. That's witsandweights.com slash fat loss or click the link in the show notes to grab it. It's free. It's free. It'll give you a clear starting framework so you're not guessing, you're not doing more than you need to. Again, that's witsandweights.com slash fat loss. All right, so we've covered reacting to scale noise and overcorrecting with restriction. Now let's talk about the trap that I think is the most underdiscussed in the mainstream end of year, like let's finish the year strong type content. And it has to do with where you're putting your effort. So trap number three is treating strength training as optional instead of the central driver of fat loss. Now, if I've I'm losing you already because you listen and you lift and you lift all the time, you are far ahead of the vast majority of people. You still may need to hear this message. If you're listening and you don't lift weights regularly or consistently, you're not doing it in a way that you feel is giving you results, listen up. What most people believe fat loss requires, or let me take that back. Most people think in terms of weight loss, losing weight. I don't do that. I think I like to talk about fat loss because what are you trying to do? Drop body fat. You're not trying to drop muscle too, are you? No, you're trying to drop body fat and get leaner and healthier, not just get skinnier and weaker and lose muscle. So a lot of people believe you need diet, cardio, willpower, and maybe some supplements. Notice in that list is not strength training for a lot of people, again, a lot of people out there. That is often an afterthought. I see it in articles. I see it when people talk about heart health. I see it on commercials for weight loss medications. They may not even mention it, or they'll say, like, I'm doing everything. I'm in the gym. I'm hitting it hard in the gym. And they'll mention that one time. And you're like, what are they actually doing in the gym? And I'm not saying that they don't need the medication. It's just always an afterthought. It's something you do if you have extra time, right? It's like the phrase when see, well, walking is enough. At least get moving, right? At least get moving. Walking should be enough. No, it's not. No, it's not. And a lot of people will think, okay, I need to go strength training because I want to bulk up or tone up or get muscular. It's not about that either. Or I'm going to wait till I've lost the weight, then I'm going to start strength training. All of that, that belief is the big trap here because strength training is not a supporting element of fat loss. It is the primary metabolic lever of fat loss. Period. You could be deficient on protein, even carbs. You can be not walking very much. You could have a lot of stuff not going super well. But if strength training is in there, that is the massive anchor for fat loss. And you can still be moderately successful, even if all those other things are suboptimal. But if you're not strength training, all those things can be optimal and you're not going to lose fat. That's my point. You're going to lose muscle. You're just not going to lose fat. You have to be strength training. And it's not just about muscle and fat loss, it's metabolism and metabolic health. And if you're not treating it that way, you're leaving a massive amount of progress on the table. It affects your health span, your lifespan, your mind span, all of it for the rest of your life. Let me explain why. Just let's let's revisit this together, guys. When you lose weight without strength training, a significant portion of that weight is going to come from muscle. Your body simply doesn't need it because you're not using it. You might see the scale go down, but you end up softer, weaker, more frail with a slower metabolism than when you start it. Skinny fat is a term, you may not like it, but sometimes called that, or you're lighter on the scale, but you're not leaner, you're not healthier. When you strength train while losing weight, you send the signal to your body, hey, this muscle is important, don't break it down for energy. Go after the fat stores instead. That's what it does. And then your body listens. You preserve and even potentially build muscle while losing fat. If you're newer to this, that's body recomposition, which means you end up looking like you've transformed, which is what we all want, rather than just shrinking. But as I've alluded to several times, the benefits go far beyond just preserving muscle during a diet because muscle tissue, it's metabolically active. The more you have, the higher your resting metabolic rate. So that's pretty cool. You burn a few more calories just existing, and you're probably gonna be able to carry more scale weight at the end of the day and still be lean, and that burns more calories. You also burn more calories because you're training more and you're using your muscle and you're moving all day or most of the day. Over time, this is gonna make fat loss even easier and allow you to eat more food while staying lean. It's kind of like having your cake and making it and eating it and having it again too. I don't know if that makes any sense. It's not about the cake, it's a metaphor, guys. Okay. Muscle also improves insulin sensitivity, which is a hot topic these days, probably for good reason. It means your body handles carbohydrates better. It stabilizes your appetite hormones, your hunger hormones. It shapes your physique in ways that cardio never will, never, never, never will. Don't think that running is a thing that makes you lean and muscular or toned or whatever. It doesn't. The definition in your arms, the curves of your shoulders, those delt caps, the strength in your legs, that defined back. None of that comes from running. Strength training also enables you to eat more food during fat loss and then afterward during maintenance, especially. Some people are surprised at how much food they can eat now. In fact, they feel like they have to eat more food than they really want. And there's tricks for that. It's called calorie density, because you have more muscle driving your metabolism and you don't have to live on a lighter metabolism like you used to. Now, I'm not saying it's gonna go up by hundreds and hundreds of calories necessarily, but you should be able to feel like a normal human being when it comes to your food and not be dieting most of the year. Now, a lot of you have these misconceptions or quotes in your head, like I don't want to get bulky or just try to lose fat first, then I'll lift. I want to address both of those especially. Okay, the first one, you're not gonna actually accidentally get bulky, guys and ladies. Building significant muscle takes years of dedicated training. Eating in a surplus, many of those years, optimal programming, somewhat, right? But it's really the time put into it. It doesn't happen by accident, especially not for women, and especially not while you're constantly dieting. What will happen is you're going to look tighter, more defined. You're gonna look stronger when you add muscle. That's it. And I always joke that as a man with a decent amount of testosterone in my 40s, I have a very, very hard time trying to quote unquote bulk up. Second is waiting until you've lost weight to start lifting. And that is totally backward. Like lifting should be number one. So I still hear health professionals, a lot of this is in the wellness space, people that aren't really experts on strength and lifting. Maybe they don't even do it themselves as much as they should. And they they somehow imply that lifting isn't like the most important thing. Or, you know, you could do Pilates or you could do yoga. It's not true. The lifting is what ensures that you lose fat and not muscle. It's what shapes the body you're revealing as you get leaner. And if you wait, you're just gonna end up at your goal weight looking nothing like you imagined because you lost the muscle, as we've said several times already. Now, I would go so far as to say that for people over 40, and you know, that's not a magic number. It's just around the age when, you know, things start to go downhill for people. And so honestly, for anyone who wants sustainable results, strength training is the single highest ROI that's return on investment. It's the highest return activity you can do for your body. Far higher than cardio. In fact, cardio could have a negative return in some cases, far higher than any diet trick, even though nutrition and calorie balance does control how much fat you're storing. Still, I would say strength training is a higher return than anything. Definitely higher than any supplement. Supplements are way down there for return. So if you're only doing two or three things for your health and body composition, strength training should be one of them. Full stop. And you don't have to live in the gym to see these benefits. Three days a week, even two if you have to, I would say three is a good minimum. Just focused, progressive resistance training. Right? The main lifts, it could be a home gym, it could be, you know, you're going to the gym. It doesn't matter. I just mean you don't have to live in the gym. You could do it with a fairly minimum effective program to build significant muscle and transform your physique, maybe three to four hours a week total. And compare that to the hours people seem to spend on cardio machines or obsessing over their diets. I think strength training is going to give you more return per hour invested than almost anything else in life you can do. And it will pay back financially, confidence-wise, career-wise, relationship-wise, everything else as well. Not to mention long-term health and longevity. So let's connect these three traps because they are all related. Trap one is about reacting emotionally to short-term data instead of making decisions based on trends. Trap two is about overcorrecting when you see a stall and making drastic changes that destabilize your progress. And trap three is about misallocating your effort, putting energy into cardio and diet hacks when the real lever is strength training. And when you fix all three, then you get a great system that works for you. You can collect data without the emotional attachment. You can make small, smart adjustments when needed. And then you can prioritize the very activity that builds the metabolic foundation for long-term. Leaness, that is how you finish 2025 strong and set yourself up for 2026. Now, before we wrap up, I want to leave you with one more thought that might reframe how you're thinking about all of this. Most people approach fat loss as something they need to survive. Like you're, it's a period of deprivation that you have to get through so that you can enjoy your life after it. Like a period of suffering. But what if it wasn't? What if fat loss is something that you use, that it's a very powerful tool? Think about it. A fat loss phase is a period where you're in a calorie deficit, your body's primed to tap into stored energy. And that is creating conditions for change. So the question is, what kind of change are you what you used to think of as suffering through? But in this case, we're going to reframe that. If you're just cutting calories and you're doing more cardio, the change is that you get smaller, probably weaker, and your metabolism adapts downward and probably doesn't come back until you, you know, do something different. If you're strength training, eating enough protein, managing your recovery, the change is different. Now you are, for lack of a better phrase, sculpting your body. You're revealing muscle that you've built. You're teaching your body to be efficient and strong. And fat loss becomes a tool for transformation instead of a period of restriction that you have to endure. And it doesn't have to be very long either. So when you approach it that way, the experience changes, right? It's not the white knuckling, it's not a quote unquote diet. I'm dieting, I have to be hungry, I have to be fatigued. No, you're still training hard, you're eating well, you're recovering, you're doing this in a moderate way, and you're watching your body change in ways that excite you and motivate you to keep going for the short period that it is. That's the mindset shift I want you to make heading into the end of the year. I don't necessarily want you to be doing a fat loss phase going into the end of the year. That's your call. But stop thinking about how much you have to take away and start thinking about what you are building. All right. So if you want help putting all this into practice with structured training, education, support, accountability, I really have two options for you. I'm gonna today talk just talk about physique university for a second. That's the community-based program that we have. So people have been asking, what's the difference between the app and physique university? Well, Fitness Lab, the app is, you know, it's on your own, but it's a lot of support and prompting via AI, where it gives you your training, your nutrition support, it gives you daily activities, it gives you an AI coach to talk to, all of that. Whereas Physique University, what I'm talking about now, is community based, right? We have Coach Carol and I are in there responding to you, you know, human beings responding directly through not only the community itself, but also live coaching calls and workshops and challenges. We actually have a challenge starting December. 10th. I'll be talking about that more in the next few episodes. But it's a strong finished challenge to keep you accountable for the final hardest three weeks of the year. But if you're looking for some strength training templates or workout programs, tools to track your physique, you know, how much muscle am I building, how much fat am I losing? You want to reach out to other students going through the same process. You want to reach out to coaches and join live calls, plus check out some of our curriculum. That is what's in there to help you lose fat, lean out, get stronger, feel great, and put in place a sustainable system for you. So go to wits and weights.com slash physique and learn about it. I'm not saying you have to sign up. Go check it out. We've got a demo video there. We've got videos from other members. It explains everything. So I would just go check it out. Witsandweights.com slash physique. Link in the show notes. Until next time, keep using your wits, lifting those weights, and remember that your body is capable of incredible transformation when you give it the right signals and time to respond. I'm Philip Pape and this is the Wits and Weights Podcast. I'll talk to you next time.

Philip Pape 11/28/25 Philip Pape 11/28/25

A Cardiologist's Guide to Hormones, Peptides, and Labs for Lifters Over 40 (Dr. Abid Husain) | Ep 406

What if your blood work is missing the markers that truly predict long-term cardiovascular health? Can you build muscle, lose fat, and stay strong after 40 without risking your heart? And which biomarkers, hormones, and peptides actually move the needle for longevity and performance?

Ready to go beyond standard cholesterol panels and track what actually matters? Get your comprehensive performance bloodwork analysis at witsandweights.com/bloodwork (code VITALITY20 for 20% off)

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I bring on Integrative Medicine & Cardiology Physician Dr. Abid Husain into the conversation, and we get into the evidence behind cardiovascular health for lifters, especially if you're focused on body recomp, strength training, weight loss, nutrition, and fitness. We cover the labs most people never get, how inflammation and metabolism shape heart health, and why tracking APOB, CRP, and oxidized LDL matters far more than total cholesterol. We also break down hormone health, HRT safety, muscle building over 40, and the peptides that actually support recovery and longevity.

If you care about lifting weights, performance, and living longer with evidence-based fitness, this one gives you a clear roadmap. Tune in to learn more.

Today, you’ll learn all about:

0:00 – Defining cardiovascular health
3:40 – Mechanical vs biochemical heart health
7:42 – Obesity, genetics, and heart disease
12:10 – Key biomarkers to track
18:55 – Inflammation patterns and risk
23:20 – Cholesterol, genetics, and LDL nuance
28:40 – Hormone health and HRT safety
35:20 – Peptides for recovery and performance
49:55 – Calcium scoring vs CCTA imaging

*Episode resources:*

Website: boulderlongevity.com
Dr. Abid Husain’s Instagram: @dr_abidhusain
Boulder Longevity Institute's Instagram: @boulderlongevityinstitute
YouTube: @boulderlongevityinstitute
Facebook: @BoulderLongevityInstitute

Have you followed the podcast?

Get notified of new episodes. Listen on Apple, Spotify, or all other platforms.

Then hit “Follow” and you’re good to go!

Philip Pape: 0:01
If you're over 40 and wondering about blood work for cardiovascular health, the effect of hormone therapy on your heart, or which peptides actually work for recovery and heart health, this episode is for you. My guest today is a functional cardiologist who works with lifters and athletes. He's going to reveal exactly which labs and biomarkers you should be tracking beyond things like cholesterol, the real cardiovascular risks and benefits of HRT, and which peptides have actual evidence behind them for recovery and heart health. You'll also learn whether calcium scoring is worth it, how much lifestyle changes move the needle, and the latest misconceptions about lifting and heart health so you can focus on what matters. 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 get specific about what you need to track and monitor for cardiovascular health. What is cardiovascular health, especially if you're over 40? My guest is Dr. Abid Hussein, a triple board certified cardiologist specializing in functional and integrative medicine at Boulder Longevity Institute. Unlike, I'll say, conventional cardiology that only looks at very specific measures like cholesterol panels, I believe Dr. Hussein is a bigger thinker. He's a systems thinker. He uses advanced diagnostics. He works specifically with athletes and lifters like us to optimize performance and longevity. He's also an athlete himself. So in this conversation, you're going to learn which specific biomarkers, labs, things like that matter beyond the basics. You're going to learn the risks and benefits in terms of heart health for things like hormone replacement therapy from someone who prescribes it. We're going to learn which peptides have legitimate evidence because there's so many out there. And things like calcium scoring, is that worth it? How to think about the balance between lifestyle and therapeutic options. So you're going to come away with a practical roadmap to monitor and protect your heart while still pursuing the things we love when it comes to fitness. Dr. Hussein, welcome to the show.
Dr. Abid Husain: 2:11
Thank you for having me, Phil. It's great to be here and uh happy Halloween.
Philip Pape: 2:15
Happy Halloween, yes. Yeah. It's uh it's a supernatural kind of day. And we're gonna hope hopefully ground it in things that are super and natural today. That's right. And I want to start, I always like defining terms, right? So we use engineering thinking here. We want to be very objective and data driven. And when we talk about a healthy cardiovascular system, I was grossing out my daughters the other day. We saw a video of the heart like unraveled. And I understand it has kind of this spiral shape when you unravel the entire muscle and they were kind of grossed out. I find that so fascinating. Of course, I even talk about where our food comes from and they get grossed up. But uh, what do we mean physically and mechanically? What does a healthy heart and cardiovascular system look like? And then I guess at the system level, what does it mean to have a healthy heart in a way that can be measured or observed, if that makes sense?
Dr. Abid Husain: 3:07
Yeah. Well, I love that you started with that analogy of the heart uh unraveling and uh having a spiral sort of uh topography or morphology to it. Uh that's not something that's really well talked about or well known. You know, the the heart, it's certainly a pump, but it is an incredibly efficient, chemodynamic and mechanical system. And the way it's put together, that it's got cross fibers of muscle. And in the placement of those cross fibers, the torsion optimizes the ability of the heart to get the most amount of squeeze per amount of movement. It's incredibly fascinating. Uh so it's not just a mechanical pump like uh a piston sort of a thing that we might imagine from a car. It is a really dynamic torsion-based system that spirals the blood out. So if you start thinking about how just the hemodynamics of the heart, the way the heart is put together with the rest of the system is like that. It's not just a binary sort of you know serial addition of components. There are additive components that amplify or reduce risk, and this is what combines with our systemic, you know, circulation and inflammation, uh, metabolism, all of these things. They're not just additive, they're they either amplify in a logarithmic fashion or not. So it's a it's a really incredible organ. And uh, you know, there are when we think about it that way, it's really naive to think that we can assess heart health based on one marker, which is cholesterol. You know, that's what the the uh the traditional viewpoint is. Go to your doc, cholesterol is high. Okay, you're screwed, put you on a statin. You know, that's not the way the heart works. You know, we've got to look at it potentially mechanically, but biochemically with risk amplifiers or risk reducers.
Philip Pape: 5:04
Okay, I love that you took it there. And yeah, I agree. Having talked to a few other heart experts and seeing the state of the healthcare industry and people who have issues with their heart and being in the life, the world of lifestyle where I understand the benefits of things like strength training for all this, yeah, I know there's a more complex interconnected web of systems. And you mentioned uh bio, I think you said biochemical, right? You said not just mechanical, but biochemical. So kind of tie that together to the term health when we say heart health, because people get confused between cardio health, like with running and movement type of health, VO2 Max and resting heart rate versus heart attacks and plaque and arterial blockages and statins. And like how does it all come together when we think cardiovascular health without getting too complicated and overwhelming?
Dr. Abid Husain: 5:52
Yeah. Well, you know, when we look at VO2 Max and we're looking at performance, those are indicators of heart health, but they don't necessarily give us an indication of what's going on at baseline. You know, those are peak performance indicators, and they have specific roles in helping us understand what capacity a person has, you know, what we can push them to. It doesn't necessarily give us a, and it is associated with all-cause mortality, uh, cardiovascular events, but that's at a certain level, and then it can start to be a uh a J-shaped curve where if we go too high or if we push ourselves too far, they we can start to get uh degradation. Now, how do we measure that? How do we look at that in a more day-to-day baseline status? That's when we take a look at things like more of the biochemical markers, things like C reactor protein, uh, myeloproxidase. Uh, there are, you know, there are we can look at the cholesterol profile actually and see the morphology of the LDLs and see if they are going to a more pro-inflammatory state or a less inflammatory state. And that's simple, some simple calculations looking at LDL and APOB. You know, when you look at really extreme athletes that push themselves really hard and too far to the point of extreme fitness, they actually have the same biochemical makeup as people on the other end of the spectrum who don't do anything. So we see similarities in their blood panels, you know, on either end of the spectrum. So that's why, you know, those markers like a VO2 max or performance markers are great to understand how we can push them and develop their performance. But when we look at vascular health, cardiovascular health, it's important to tie in those biochemical markers to see how far we're pushing them.
Philip Pape: 7:42
Okay, I love that. And I think I heard a podcast by Brad Kearns recently talking about elite marathon runners and how they have like symptoms, measurable biomarkers of heart of a heart attack after they're done with their race, and it, you know, and the body adapts back and recovers and like everything's usually okay. But we know it's a highly, highly stressful thing. We're gonna assume that the listener is maybe not in the elite regime right now and they're just concerned about day-to-day heart health. So there's a couple of topics I want to unravel. One will be more about the biochemical markers. But before we do that, is it true to say that heart disease, which again, we can define what that means because I understand there's different elements, yeah, is a disease of obesity primarily, or because I get into these debates with some people, is there a subset of the population where it's genetic, where it has nothing to do with obesity? Like help us understand that.
Dr. Abid Husain: 8:31
Yeah. I think that uh, so when we talk about heart disease, what we're really talking about is atherosclerosis. That's the number one killer, the development of plaque in our coronary arteries or in our brain, anywhere in our body, really. That's the number one killer globally. That's what causes heart attacks. So let's that's what we're talking about primarily in this sort of in this part of the conversation. Other cardiovascular issues like hypertension, arrhythmias, they do have some crossover with these same systems, with these same pathophysiologies, but this is about uh mostly about atherosclerosis, because that's what kills us. When we talk about obesity, it's not necessarily a it's about caloric excess. It's about energy excess. You know, obesity is that's what we're talking about when we're looking at obesity. And when our system is flooded with excess amounts of calories, energy, we're gonna store it and we're gonna store it in fat, but it also that trickles down to oxidative stress that happens on a molecular level. Our body has an ability to manage energy very well when it's done in balance. If we have excess, that excess energy starts to leak into areas that it shouldn't, and then our body has to figure out how to manage it. Is that part of obesity? Definitely. Uh, and it's part of what we're eating too. It's part of the macros. If our energy is coming from sources that are highly refined and glucose rich, carbohydrate rich, that's gonna challenge our ability to uh to metabolize those. And we metabolize those with a higher toxin load. And that leads to the obesity part of it is not only about the higher energy component, but it's about uh managing, it's about the uh the toxin that that builds up. We end up putting on fat to try and manage that. So that is the majority of what we see because we live in an overly nourished society. There is a genetic component to it. There are people that do have a predisposition, and if they know about that, then it's even more vital for them to take care of what they're putting in to manage at least these energy management systems. So is it a problem exclusively obesity? I mean, when you talk about obesity, then you gotta talk about type 2 diabetes, type 1 diabetes, you know, the genetic component, type 1 diabetes, is what we see predominantly when we're looking at uh the genetic part of uh glucose intolerance. Some people do develop type 1 diabetes in adulthood, and that's uh an emerging condition also. But the majority of what we see is type 2, and that is associated with obesity, but it doesn't have to be. You know, those are people that because of inflammation, maybe it's inflammation specific to the liver, they may have uh liver and pancreas, then they may have uh development of uh of glucose intolerance and sort of this type 2 pattern. So we do see thin people with diabetes. So it's it's there is an overlap. It's not primarily a disease of obesity, but obesity is part of the characteristics of what we see show up.
Philip Pape: 11:38
Yeah, no, I always like to ask that because I care about the autonomy and the self-efficacy of the listener in terms of what they can do, right? And obviously, we can't control our genetics. And if there was a narrative that heart disease is this random thing that can be highly influenced by genetics, that would be kind of a scary thing. Whereas I think in reality, if you went back a hundred years pre, you know, massive obesity, you would see far less heart disease. So, you know, not to say that you don't see any at all, which means means that's powerful because we can do do something about it with our lifestyle, which is what we're gonna get to eventually here. Okay. So plaque and arteries, that's heart disease, but we also have markers along the way we want to look at. Now, you mentioned some of the inflammatory markers. So C reactive protein, you also mentioned APOB. You did say cholesterol panels are still helpful in context. So help break that down. If we want to track these things, the listener's like, I want to get labs tomorrow and start measuring before and after. What would they be looking at?
Dr. Abid Husain: 12:37
The panels that we look at look at high sensitivity C reactive protein. We look at APOB, APOA, and along with that goes the uh the LDLs and the HDLs, triglycerides. And then when we when we go back to the inflammatory markers, there are a few additional ones that can give us some insight into what's going on into the vascular system. That's uh there's one called LPPLA2, sometimes also known as PLAC plaque, and then there's oxidized LDL, myeloperoxidase. These are like a list of inflammatory markers that can give me an idea of what's happening in the vascular lining as well as what type of metabolic situation is going on uh systemically to create the cholesterol. Uh because cholesterol is is really in it's an energy delivery tool. It's got it's used for so many different things, and it when we try and look at how it's being made, like the body makes it for a reason and it's gonna make it at a higher a higher amount for a reason. Usually it's delivering fuel to something, like the immune system, like cells that need it for their membranes. So it's doing it and it's delivering it at a higher amount because maybe there's inflammation, or the the uh liver is cranking it out in a capacity or in a way that it can't do it efficiently and it's got to just pump out smaller, more dense particles. So that's what we're that's what I'm looking for. When I look for what kind of uh what kind of metabolic profile a person has, I take a look at LDL and APOB, and there's a ratio. The LDL to APOB ratio, the cutoff is 1.2. If it's below 1.2, this is this means that you have a predominance of small dense LDLs. If it's greater than 1.2, you have a predominance of large buoyant LDLs. Why is that important? They're at two ends of the spectrum. Small, dense LDLs are like cannonballs. So you've got little dense bullets, cannonballs bouncing around inside the arteries, causing damage, digging into the lining, and creating what is the beginning of plaque. Large buoyant LDLs are beach balls, they bounce around, deliver cholesterol energy where it needs to go to, and then don't penetrate and oftentimes get back to the liver and get recycled. So that's part of the problem. When we have a lot of these small, dense ones, there's a lot of problem problems with it. It's not just that they're prone to getting under the lining, they get inflamed faster, they get clear, it's more difficult to get them cleared, they stay in our system longer. And then these become, you know, these are the characteristics of inflammatory metabolism. And then when we add something like a C reactive protein to that, ideally a pie sensitivity C reactor protein, I want less than one. And uh that is going to give me an idea of how much inflammation is associated with these LDL particles. Um, now this is now C reactive protein is a global inflammatory marker, so it doesn't give me an idea of specifically what's going on in the lining of the artery, and that's where things like uh MP uh myeloperoxidase, plaque, and oxidized LDL come in handy. You know, oxidized LDL is the inflamed LDL, and and it will oftentimes be uh elevated in the wall if there's inflammation, but maybe not in the serum. But if I do see elevations of oxidized LDL, I'm guaranteed that it's in the wall as well as in the serum. So when you look at if C-reactive protein is elevated, if oxidized LDL is elevated, these are risk amplifiers. I know this person has high degrees of inflammation. So we got to track these, bring them down. The other what creates oxidized LDL is that plaque, LPPLA2. It's an enzyme that converts the LDLs into something more inflamed and atherogenic. Uh and and then it in the plaque, it can also create what's what are called the foam cells, which expand the uh the inflammation and the size of the plaque. So if we see that, that's actually a really good lifestyle indicator. Sometimes if patients have that elevated, it means it can be elevated with smoking, high carbohydrate diets, inactivity. So, you know, this is and sometimes LDLs themselves can elevate it. So, you know, there are multiple things that we can look at to kind of tease apart what a person needs to do more of or less of. Uh, and then lastly, the myeloperoxidase also looks at the lining of the artery, a little bit more of a vascular inflammatory marker. It's sort of the first uh the first responder of the immune system because it's it's an enzyme that's associated with the neutrophils. And if there is acute inflammation or inflammation that's just beginning in those in the lining, sometimes we see myeloperoxidase elevated. So I can, you know, by looking at those and tracking those, I can see where uh it things are either improving, reducing, maybe dial in, what else needs to be done? The you know, when we look at uh, as I said, with the LPPLA2, there are medications that will reduce that and then activity, exercise. Well, that's a lot of lifestyle changes can impact that, C reactive protein, basically all of these markers.
Philip Pape: 18:06
Yeah, okay. A lot going through my head because one question I had as you were saying that is which of these are leading versus lagging indicators? Like obviously the cholesterol, once it shows up, that's kind of a lagging indicator. But you meant, I think you said the myeloperoxidase maybe is a leading because it tells you your lifestyle. So I like that you know, there's a pattern to these things, and as each of them get progressively worse, as you get toward that end state of like before it becomes too late, let's say, I imagine you see the pattern shifting toward that, and then you can shift it back with your lifestyle and maybe medications we'll get into. You mentioned neutrophils, you mentioned CRP. A lot of people have autoimmune conditions, which I know uh present themselves through a lot of these markers. It sounds like, and this could be a simple yes or no question or may require explanation. Sounds like when you take all of these markers together, that's how you're playing detective to piece apart that the CR, the global CRP is related to this and not that. Is that a fair way to put it?
Dr. Abid Husain: 19:02
It is, exactly. Yeah, because if I will if I have patients that have autoimmune conditions, and certainly patients will show up with elevated CRPs because of a temporary illness, you know, and so that's when they got their labs done. So it can be something chronic, it can be something acute, but there is a global uh inflammatory burden, but it doesn't affect their vascular system as much. So their plaque and MPO may not be elevated, oxidized LDL may not be elevated. So these are really good uh tools to tease that apart. Uh and and it and they change in a day-to-day, sometimes hour-to-hour fashion. Like C-reactive protein will change within a few days. And uh, but something like uh well, something like plaque, maybe a little longer, oxidized LDL, a few days longer. So, you know, these do have a time frame to them, also, which helps.
Philip Pape: 19:56
All right. I do want to ask one more thing about cholesterol. Well, maybe a couple. One is I know there's a big genetic component to cholesterol. There are just people that have higher baseline LDL, let's say. And I I definitely have seen debates on this, even among medical doctors, of whether a high LDL, if it's your normal baseline, is as much a concern as someone whose LDL got to that point over time. So I guess let's give you a thought experiment. If you had a 15-year-old come in who one, let's say two 15-year-olds, because I want to I want to start young here. One is got excess body fat, right? And one seems healthy in terms of body fat, and they both have elevated cholesterol. And that could be elevated total, elevated LDL, even even HDL, even though we call it the good, you know, could be high, uh, say 220, 250. I don't know what the number would be where you'd be get concerned. How would you what's kind of your first thoughts about those two different patients?
Dr. Abid Husain: 20:52
I go back to those markers. I see what the breakdown is, what the APO B numbers are, and I look at the uh Apo B to A1 ratio, because that helps me determine how well the system is calibrated to remove the cholesterol that might be getting deposited. Uh so if there's large fluffy LDLs, not too much to worry about. If there's dense LDLs, then I then something to be addressing. Um if they have borderline inflammatory markers, someone that age should not have any real inflammation. So there are definite ways to tease apart who is at risk and who isn't. And if the finances are available, do genetic testing on them to see if there's any any uh uh issues with protection of the lining of the artery. Uh, because there are specific gene SNPs that show deficiencies in compounds like nitric oxide, which are vital for the the anti-inflammatory effect and relaxation effect of the endothelium, the lining of the artery. So if they have deficiencies in that, that's important. I'm gonna look at their diet, I'm gonna look at their activity level, all that stuff. Yeah. Um, you know, I think a big part of the debate uh right now is there's an interesting subtype of people that are called lean mass hyper responders. And these are athletic, lean individuals that have extremely high elevated LDLs. You know, and we're talking about in the 200s or more, not total cholesterol. I'm talking about LDLs. Uh and then their but their HDLs are equally elevated. The the curious thing is when they go into a keto diet, they sh their their LDLs go even higher, and their but their HDLs uh tend to stay flat. So they don't do real well with a uh with a keto diet. But the question is, do we need to treat them with statins or lower that cholesterol? And you know, the the studies show that even these people with that super high LDL, they may show an accelerated amount of plaque in a small period of time. So there is something to be said about just being cognizant of higher amounts of LDL. And this goes back to that statement I was making about energy. You know, if LDL and cholesterol is an energy delivering tool, delivering too much energy on its own can still be a problem. You know, we need to our system works best in a window in homeostasis. So when we go outside that window and each individual has a different window, then we can create a problem that's maybe you know a more hyper energy type of problem that creates inflammation.
Philip Pape: 23:33
Yeah, yeah, it makes total sense. I mean, there are lots and lots of issues when we have a hyper caloric. I always get them wrong. Too many calories and uh store body fat, and then there's the visceral fat concern as we get older. And if you're sedentary, not using those calories, it gets even worse. So actually, let's hit on that real quick because you mentioned keto, you know, I know you listened to a little bit of this podcast, and we're you we're we're diet agnostic. We're we're, you know, obviously diet is highly personalized, it's got to be flexible and depending on your goals too. So when we're talking with athletes or people who lift weights, you know, they seem to respond really well to moderate to high carbs versus somebody who's not using those carbs, right? Uh and conversely, I'm pretty sure high saturated fats is definitively now linked with high LDL. But just reiterate that for us or tell me that I'm wrong.
Dr. Abid Husain: 24:21
You know, the the debate about saturated fat is uh, you know, it started way back in the 50s with the seven country study, you know, and that's been difficult to reproduce. So, you know, the question about Ansel Keys?
Philip Pape: 24:35
Yeah.
Dr. Abid Husain: 24:36
Yeah, that's right.
Philip Pape: 24:37
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Right. With all the selective cherry picking of data, yeah, I understand.
Dr. Abid Husain: 24:40
Yeah, and so and even the follow-up data that tried to reproduce it actually showed that it was not the issue. And you know, saturated fat is not necessarily the demon that they thought it would be, and uh sugar is the problem. So, you know, if we look now at what is saturated fat really associated with atherosclerosis, I think it really depends on the individual. You know, there's certain there's certain genotypes that do don't do well with uh high amounts of saturated fat. And these are Apo E4 genotypes. Okay. Um, and that's a pretty easy test to get. They also have a higher risk of of Alzheimer's because what happens is they don't manage, they don't have the cholesterol transport mechanisms as well uh as robust as the rest of the population. And so the cholesterol tends to get a little more inflamed. The reservoir with the most cholesterol is our brain. So that's how the association with Alzheimer's occurs. But these patients, these people don't do well with a saturated fat diet. You will see their cholesterol jump up and then their inflammant inflammatory markers will start to change also. So it's very individualized. So I'm very cautious to make like a an overarching uh uh blanket statement about diet. And but I don't, as long as the fats are wild caught and not uh and farm-raised, organic, then I'm okay with saturated fat. And I'm gonna follow those markers because I don't have a full genome uh assessment on all my patients. I don't necessarily need to, and I can let them adjust their diet and we can do that together and follow some of these markers uh and then track what's going on and make sure that it's working for them.
Philip Pape: 26:25
Yeah, the genetic component's interesting. I've talked to a few folks on the show from different companies because I know it's it's a little bit of Wild West still, but there's some interesting work happening. And uh I have had some of those tests done myself and uh the APOE four, you said, right? I believe I have isn't there two SNPs, and you can have one or you can have two, and having two is like the highest risk, and I think I have one or something. Um, so I think I'm I'm susceptible to that. But I also have found personally when I measure blood work, dropping body fat tends to move everything in the right direction, and then you know, and building muscle moves everything in the right direction. And I've seen that with clients as well. And so I I do like the idea of it is personalized, you should experiment. I would say if anything is like way out there, let's say it's saturated fat and 50% of your fat is saturated fat, that could be a concern and you want to try, but same goes for too much sugar or too much anything else. Um, not too much protein, though, guys. I think you're good there. That's right for the most part.
Dr. Abid Husain: 27:19
We gotta hit our protein goals.
Philip Pape: 27:21
So, okay, all right. I want to move into a couple other topics and then kind of tie them together a little bit more deeply because we we also wanted to mention um hormone replacement therapy. This is not a very good segue, but maybe it is. A lot of folks listening are older and we talk a lot about bioidentical uh HRT, uh, especially a lot for women in peri postmenopause and for men with testosterone. And people are concerned about always concerned about risks. A lot of it probably comes from misinformation, like the women's health initiative. Exactly. You know, and and uh conflating, you say, synthetic with biodential and animals versus humans and stuff. So, what are the actual risks from a cardiovascular perspective of any of these, if there are any?
Dr. Abid Husain: 28:02
Yeah. The risks are actually when we have deficiency of the hormones. So when we look at individuals with, you know, testosterone, specifically, these were studies we're done in men with uh testosterone below, I think, or around 250 total, they have a significant increase in all-cause mortality and cardiovascular death. Not only that, but they also have an increase in risk of prostate cancer, particularly aggressive prostate cancers. So, and then when we when we kind of uh take that one step further and look at deficiencies in estradiol, progesterone, again, associated with adverse outcomes. So when we're replacing testosterone, estradiol, progesterone, doing it to physiologic ranges is perfectly safe. And in fact, in in my mind, it's therapeutic. You know, we are we are replacing deficiencies that the body has lost, but the the body is incurring over the years. You know, the hormones are our original regenerative tools. This is why we can bounce back when we're young. This is why we can develop muscle very quickly, because we have the hormones to stimulate muscle protein synthesis. We have the hormones to protect our vascular lining. As we get older, because of you know, mitochondrial deficiencies, because of just stress uh oxidative stress, wear and tear, whatever you want to call it, these systems start to become less efficient. And the most sensitive systems are our hormone systems. We lose those first. So as we get older, the first thing you're gonna lose as a male is testosterone, testicular function. That's why your libido drops when you're stressed because you don't have the reserve and it's gonna take away that accessory function. So um replacing testosterone to physiologic and even maybe super mildly superficial. Physiologic levels is safe. The caveat here is we want to look at dihydrotestosterone levels. Those, you know, that has some mixed data, whether elevated levels are beneficial, benign, or if, you know, there is it associated with other cardiovascular issues. We know dihydrotestosterone is an anabolic hormone. It's gonna, it's involved with protein deposition, with muscle development. And that way we want it there. But when it's in excess, it may contribute to LVH, left ventricular hypertrophy, maybe arrhythmias. There's a few studies that allude to that, but don't necessarily say it. And it doesn't give us a specific cutoff. You know, we also know that elevated dihydrotestosterone is associated with male pattern baldness. So, you know, multiple reasons why we want to just kind of keep that in check and maintain it within a physiologic or mildly superphysiologic level. But wholeheartedly, I support the use of bioidentical hormones. I don't see a risk from a cardiovascular standpoint. If we take a step back and look at what it's doing to the vascular system, not only testosterone, but estradiol improve nitric oxide and enos nitric oxide recruiting systems. They improve the endothelial health and the ability to stimulate endothelial progenitor cells, which are those endothelial stem cells. So if you get damage done to your vascular system, you can repair better when you're on these hormones. And they also help uh regulate your, you know, your that cholesterol metabolism, you know, like the the that that cholesterol that goes to small and dense, part of that is hormones being deficient.
Philip Pape: 31:46
Yeah, it's all interconnected. So I'm glad you brought it to that. Well, you mentioned physiologic ranges that therapy is perfectly safe once we're in there. I guess there's confusion about what those ranges are because we've seen the quote unquote normal ranges on like your GPs labs uh change over the decades. You know, I I know there's some misinformation about oh, men produ are just way lower in testosterone than they used to be. I know there's some, there's some half-truths there. Maybe we can get into that, but I know the population range seems to have either broadened and dropped or whatever. You can help us clarify that. And then there's like performance ranges, and then there's like guys who want to get jacked and hope it's really up here. So I have to get TRT ranges. That's a difference. Yeah. Well, what do we make of that? And for women as well. Like for all the hormones, what range can we trust? And what does that mean? Physiological, you know, because a doctor might say, Oh, you're 300 testosterone. Well, that's right in range. That's fine.
Dr. Abid Husain: 32:38
Yeah. You know? It goes, it comes back to what your goals are.
Philip Pape: 32:42
Yeah.
Dr. Abid Husain: 32:42
Yeah. Like you said, it's if you're wanting to get big, then we've got to push those not only your total testosterone up into 1500s. You know, I I will say that what we look at less, we don't look at total, we look at free testosterone levels. So that's uh, you know, the the total is what everybody kind of keeps in mind in that ranges, in those ranges, but it's the free that we really want to focus on because that's what's available for your muscle protein synthesis and development. And the same thing for women too. Uh, and it's it's highly subjective, and it depends on your goals. Uh, you know, women are a perfect example of this. I have women that can tolerate a total testosterone in the 500s and don't have any problems with hair growth, hair loss, you know, acne, and they feel fantastic, and they will kill me if I reduce that dose. And then I have women that that are, you know, I'll put them on a minimal dose and they will start to get acne, and it will be in and their test total testosterone might be touching 100, and their free is touching five, you know, and it's it's highly subjective. So it's hard to give a a generalized sort of range, but I will say that for the most part, I like to shoot for a free of about 30 to 35 in men, maybe 25 to 35 if picograms per milliliters, yeah.
Philip Pape: 34:08
Okay, 20. You said 20 to what? About 20 to 35, depending on their goals. I have personal interest in this, that's why I'm asking. Yeah, because I think mine's around 20, so you know, which is not bad, but it's no, it's not.
Dr. Abid Husain: 34:19
And so, you know, you can if you're looking to put on masks, then it's gonna be in a higher range. If you want to just stay fit and uh and all this is is is a healthy range. It's okay for your cardiovascular system. If you want to uh just maintain, maybe stay a little lean and muscular, then stay on, you know, you can hover in that mid-range. Uh, women, I tend to go up to about a free of 10, maybe a little higher. Uh, and when I go higher than that, then you know, that's more often than not, there might be some symptoms, but it's around that range. But uh again, highly subjective and depends on your goals.
Philip Pape: 34:55
Okay, cool. All right. So, some other things that the community is really interested in is peptides, uh, and also rife with information, misinformation out there. Um, even I'm trying to sort it all out, and I see requests from supplement companies all the time, and just everybody's pushing their peptides. I I want to I want to get the story from you about the evidence and how we can kind of focus this and think what are these? What's the benefit? Yeah, why would we use peptides?
Dr. Abid Husain: 35:22
Well, I mean, I guess just to give you a little bit of background, I mean, I've been working in the peptide industry for probably seven to ten years, you know, and so very steeped in it and use it on a daily basis on most of my patients. So it comes with a lot of experience. I love working with peptides even more so than supplements. Uh, I feel like peptides are very they're incredibly bioactive compounds. You know, the the promise of what we think is going to happen with supplements doesn't often happen, but it happens with peptides. So because they are compounds that our body knows how to use and it gets into the cellular space where it's supposed to, where where the action happens. That's why I think they're so fantastic. You can imagine them, you can conceptualize them as like mini hormones. Hormones large molecules that need middlemen, you know, receptors to do to send their message and do the action that they do. Usually it's something on the cell surface, binds a hormone, transmits it downwards. Peptides don't need a middleman, they can go into the cell and talk directly to either uh DNA or pathways that are in the cell, which is why they're so powerful. You know, the in this community, I would say the peptides that uh should probably get the most attention are the basic ones. It's BPC157, thymus and beta-4, and then the secretagogs, GHRHs and GHRPs, growth hormone releasing hormones, growth hormone releasing peptides. The most common combination that you guys see in the in that category is CJC and ipamerelin or tesimerolin, ipamerelin. So let's unpack all three of those. BPC is derived from gastric juice, but it stimulates so many different gene pathways. It stimulates a nitric oxide pathway, so it preserves vascular function. It can actually improve blood cell formation. It works on the cellular cytoskeleton. So it helps the immune system uh deliver compounds to where it needs to go, deliver immune cells to where it needs to go, and it strengthens the cytoskeleton. And it does it, so this is why it's so good when you're healing. It lays down parallel collagen as opposed to disorganized collagen that might happen to form scar tissue. So it's a magical compound that works in so many different places, everything from brain health down to uh you know ligamental health. Thymus and beta 4 is a great addition to that because it also works on the cytoskeleton in a different compound, but together they are really potent in helping heal from any types of injury. And uh and it is also so thymus and beta 4 focuses more on immune cells, platelets, uh, and actually BPC does on platelets too, but uh more on immune cells, but also but definitely plays a part in that cytoskeleton. Uh and then when you're looking at the secretagogs, those so CJC and ipermoralin, they influence growth hormone. And you can think of those like one of them is filling the tank, filling the amount of growth hormone you have to be able to release, and the other one increases, optimizes how much you release. And so by improving growth hormone, you improve IgF1, which is our major healing hormone. So many like trickle-down effects of growth hormone benefits.
Philip Pape: 39:00
Yeah, no, that was that was a good summary. I was definitely familiar with a couple of those, like BPC 157, which I briefly took from my shoulder. I don't know personally that it was overly beneficial, but I had other mechanical stuff going on that I'm still dealing with. But are these still um because some of the logistical issues were like, well, they're injectable and and it's hard to like find practitioners you can work with and to get it legally because there's this whole underground of buying the powder and getting it mixed and all that. What's the state of that today, both with access and also form, you know, form? Because I'm hearing about liquids and and and oral and all this stuff now.
Dr. Abid Husain: 39:34
Yeah, yeah. This is this is a hot new market right now. Um, there's a lot of companies that are trying to bridge this gap so so that we don't have to use injectables. And you know, the problem with this industry of injectables is that there's all these internet companies that are research only, you know, and when you get a research-only peptide, you are getting no guarantee that this is a safe compound. In fact, it will say on the label, not for human use. For human use. And not for veterinary use, not even for use on your pets. Okay, so be careful if you're getting that. I mean, they're they claim that the sources are reliable and they will have third-party testing, but ultimately they're not being held accountable for any adverse events. So, and that's dangerous when you're injecting something. When you're doing something orally, you could probably get away with a little bit more, there's a little more flexibility there because it's only getting into your gastrointestinal tract and you'll be able to get it out. It's not a sterile situation. There are a host of companies that are now creating oral forms. Some are liposomal, some are uh buckle-derived oral strips, and some are just you know uh capsules. Most peptides, unless they have specific binders to them, and we don't know actually, most peptides do not survive the gastric environment. There are a few that do. BPC is one of them, and we still don't have a definitive way to make most of those survive the gut. There are some technologies that are trying to keep them preserved and deliver them through the gut lining better. And then there are some claims that liposomal technologies preserve it so that it can get through into this into the circulation better. Problem is we don't have any real data to support if that's actually happening. We don't have uh pharmacologic data or biochemical data to see if it, you know, what the levels are, you know, after it's absorbed. And part of the problem is the nature of peptides. Peptides are such short-lived compounds, most of the time their peak action occurs within less than an hour, 20 minutes. So it's really hard to measure levels in the system. Uh, you know, there the wada screens for peptides in all their athletes. The reality is that I don't even know if wada has a definitive way to measure peptides.
Philip Pape: 41:54
So the short half-life. Yeah.
Dr. Abid Husain: 41:56
Yeah, because it's such a short half-life. So making uh, you know, a randomized control study to actually verify that is very difficult. There are some companies that are looking at that right now. My advice would be if you're gonna get it, try and get it through a practitioner that uh knows what they're doing. It uses a compounded pharmacy that has a tracking method as well as guarantees sterility. And if you're gonna try orals, you know, you could give it a shot, but know that unless it's BPC right now, the data is is not out there, and you'll have to decide on your own by trial and error if it's working. You know, there are many different uh delivery mechanisms that are being tested right now. And I'm I'm curious to see which one kind of pans out. And I'm excited too, because this actually makes access for all of these much easier.
Philip Pape: 42:46
So, related to the ones you mentioned, you said it would be relevant to this audience and you gave a little bit of an overview.
Dr. Abid Husain: 42:51
Yeah.
Philip Pape: 42:52
What's the context for these? Because, you know, one one message that I always have is 8020, right? Like, like fix the foundations, work on the big things. Don't try to just get 10 different solutions to a problem in parallel, right? Like build your lifestyle, lift weights, move. Like there's some big hitters that will move the needle a lot for individuals. Yes. Uh, before necessarily going to even supplementation, but at the same time, there's certain supplements that I would say, hey, from day one, this could be helpful, whether that's creatine or fish oil or magnesium if you're deficient. And I imagine peptides have a similar story where, you know, I know there's a recovery and rehab piece of it, an injury rehab, and then there's a performance. Like, when should someone say, This is the decision point when I should consider peptides?
Dr. Abid Husain: 43:39
Anytime you got an injury, consider a peptide. Okay. All right, because it will improve your recovery time. That combination, BPC, TV4, and then some sort of secretagog, that will do a lot. Uh if you're cycling up to prepare for an event, that's a time to consider using peptides as long as you know that they're not testing. Or if it's a substance positive event, so to speak. You know, if you're a recreational athlete, they're not going to test you, and you can use peptides to increase your performance, increase your increase your personal times. And then if you may want to use it periodically, uh just to within your down training cycles, because it will they help recovery. I mean, when do you want to start? It really depends. So I'll say this start using peptides when you start feeling like your system is not recovering the way it used to or the way you want it to, to meet your goals. If your goals are you have a race or a competition coming up, then that's a great time to start using it as you're training up because then you can allow yourself to be more resilient. If you have an injury, then definitely a time to use those as options because they're readily available now. So I, you know, it's really it depends on where you are in your trajectory. Yeah. I can tell you for myself, about five years ago, six years ago, I mean, I've I've been an athlete my whole life, and I just started noticing uh a downward trajectory in a lot of my performance, or it kind of plateaued, and um I started saying, okay, I've never really used supplements and these tools. It's probably longer than that ago, about 10 years ago. Yeah. So uh once I started feeling that, I said, okay, I've got to support my system. How am I gonna do this? I started with the basics, I started with the right supplementation, tried that, that didn't work, or if that held for a little while, then I went to hormone replacement therapy and then added on peptides. So go in stages, start with the tools that have the widest benefit. And that would be first starting with testosterone, basic hormones, and then add on to those afterwards.
Philip Pape: 45:58
Okay, so that's interesting because that it sounds a little ambiguous to me, no offense, right? Like there's not like blood mark blood tests that would be like you should take B2PC because of this blood test. Yeah, maybe we'll get to that. But you that's an interesting comment about the testosterone. So, what about a guy like me? Because this is what I love about podcast interviews, is I get some free coaching. Um no, seriously, where I think my total testosterone is 600, my free is 20, decent. You know, I'm 45. Um, it's actually gone up a little bit over the years naturally, which is cool. But you say use testosterone or use consider TRT. Am I a candidate where I'd be like, hey, there's a performance element here that I care about and it's still safe to have TRT, or is it like, look, I don't have symptoms, libido is good, all that. Like, jump to peptides, or maybe I don't need either because recovery is fine. Like, where would a 45 or 50 year old like that is fairly healthy fall on that spectrum?
Dr. Abid Husain: 46:50
What's your goal? That's I guess that's the question.
Philip Pape: 46:53
I'm building muscle, keeping lean, you know, performing. I don't have any sports personally that I'm into, but um, you know, I have kids, just want to be healthy.
Dr. Abid Husain: 47:00
Yeah, what I would do for you is give you something to stimulate your system's ability to make a little bit more testosterone, and then see how that works for you, see what kind of changes you have, and then add on a couple of peptides, you know, because the performance aspect of testosterone is significant, and you don't have to jump to using testosterone replacement. There are plenty of ways to optimize what your body can do as long as it's still functioning, and yours is. So every cell in your body, except for your sperm, responds to testosterone. There's a reason for that, and uh, and so that's why I feel like that is a useful foundational tool. And we don't have to sacrifice your ability to make testosterone. We can actually just amplify it a little bit and then see if that gets you a little more muscle, gets you some PRs. And if it does, great. And you don't have to do it permanently, you can do it in cycles. See how you do for three months. You know, somebody that's is already an athlete will respond pretty quickly to it.
Philip Pape: 48:04
So now the listener's like, what the heck is he talking about? What stimulates testosterone? Because there, there again, is another area rife for taking advantage of people, right? Because there's been testosterone boosters for years that are that are BS. Let's be honest. Um, what are you talking about?
Dr. Abid Husain: 48:19
I'm talking about uh enclomebe, talking about HCG, I'm talking about uh the ones that are over the counter that are that are supplement-based or herb-based, you're at best gonna get maybe a 150-point increase in your total testosterone, and that doesn't guarantee that it's uh it's increasing your free. So marginal benefits with those. Mostly what you get you what if you're gonna do that, you've got to work with you with uh pharmaceutical agents. Yep. Okay. HCG is injectable and clomophene is oral, but uh and that's a uh second generation of Clomid. But these are used by fertility fertility clinics and they help improve sperm count as well as testosterone production. So interesting.
Philip Pape: 49:03
Yeah, yeah, clomid. Uh that that that takes me back to some some dark days uh my wife and I with on on her end, but anyway. Okay, no, that's good that's good for people to know, and that's why we're talking through all this because there are a lot of options I think people aren't uh familiar with, and also you guys need to seek out professionals who understand this and who do this in a controlled, like you said, there's sterile methods that are necessary, there's some medical knowledge that's necessary in some cases. Obviously, we're gonna I'm gonna pump you up as we end the show in a bit and have see where people can reach you, Dr. Hussein. But a couple other things on my notes that people were wondering about. Yeah, one was the calcium scoring, because I had one of those years ago. It costs like a hundred bucks at an imaging place. My wife was told to get one, and I I even told her, I said, I don't know, we're in our 40s. I've heard that like it's not gonna tell you anything unless it's, I guess, really bad. Like if it's a non-zero high score when you're that young, maybe it's not worth it. But what's the deal?
Dr. Abid Husain: 49:59
Yeah. So if we take this back to the beginning of our conversation and talk about what I would do in addition to or what needs to happen in addition to those lab markers, you need to get imaging. You need to get some sort of assessment of your atherosclerotic burden and the coronary arteries. Why is that? Because cardiovascular disease is still the number one killer globally, cardiovascular disease meaning atherosclerosis. And of that, the subpopulation that dies the most is the sudden cardiac death portion of it. That's 50% of the population that dies of heart disease, of atherosclerosis, never makes it to the hospital because they didn't know they had dangerous plaque and they died before they could get help. So, keeping that in mind, when you're getting an assessment of risk, blood tests will only go so far because even though it's 2025, we are still in a barbaric age of medicine. We don't have all the pieces, we don't know how to connect it all together, we have an idea of what's going on, but we can't get a definitive marker, you know, a definitive pass-through, like line through of the process. So that's why you got to take pictures. We got to see what's at the end of the line. The two options right now are calcium score and a CT coronary angiogram. If you told me 10 years ago, you were if you asked me 10 years ago, should I get a calcium score? The answer unequivocally was yes. Get a calcium score because at least we get some information. We can see if you have a lot of calcium, then you are a high-risk person and we need to treat you aggressively. Calcium scores look at only the calcium portion of plaque. There is that whole other portion of plaque that's not that's being missed, and that's the cholesterol portion. What's in the plaque that's cholesterol is what causes heart attacks, and that's what's being missed when you get a calcium score. So if you have a high calcium score, you probably have a lot of cholesterol, you're at risk. If you have a low calcium score, yeah, you don't know.
Philip Pape: 52:06
You don't know.
Dr. Abid Husain: 52:07
You don't know. So that's why right now we have, you know, and and this has taken years for the CAT scan technology to come to speed up to speed. It is now up to speed, and on top of that, we can do we can take those images and process them with AI software. There's multiple companies that do it now to really get specific granular details about the plaque composition and the severity. That is so that CCTA, and and then the one that is used very commonly is called Clearly. There's other ones that are going to be available, Carrie Heart, Heartflow. All of these companies do an AI-based processing that looks at plaque and tells us exactly how much calcium, cholesterol, and inflamed cholesterol there is. So uh, and that's where it's important because when we see cholesterol and inflamed cholesterol, if I see that, I know that's a person at risk, and I can correlate that with lab data and say, okay, this is where I'm connecting the dots. I can start these therapies and then track the lab data as time goes on, repeat the scan in a year, two years, what have you, depending on the severity. So if you have a choice, get the CCTA because it gives us a much more uh uh robust assessment, it gives us a global assessment, and it tells us if you are one of those people that's at risk for a sudden event.
Philip Pape: 53:39
So is that uh something anybody at just about any age should get a baseline, or is there a minimum that you would do it, or if you're at risk, like who should do that baseline?
Dr. Abid Husain: 53:50
I think at uh if there's family history or risk, I would say do that as a baseline and probably do it before your 40s. Because if you get an assessment before your 40s, and and that will be probably before you there, it's severe, but it'll tell us that stuff is building up. We need to do it early. If you don't have uh risks, if you you know, like a family history or no no and and your lifestyle is pretty well managed, ideally I'd say in the 40s, but I like everyone to get it by 40.
Philip Pape: 54:20
Okay, well, I missed that window, but still. Yeah. No, no, that's good, that's good. Yeah, I've done I've done episodes where it's like, when should you think about menopause in your 30s? And all the women are like, I'm already it's okay. It's okay. We're just talking about you know what you can do when give it starting where you're at. Yeah.
Dr. Abid Husain: 54:36
All right. So one thing I will add, there's there are some concerns about radiation with the with this CAT scan. Done in the right hands, it's the equivalent of two mammograms. And if you don't have to do it, you know, once every what five to ten years, then it's minimal overall. But the information is important.
Philip Pape: 54:56
Good. No, that's good to know. Is that done with contrasts?
Dr. Abid Husain: 54:59
Yes.
Philip Pape: 54:59
Yeah, okay. Is that the galadium contrast or the one that people are concerned about? More iodine-based iodine. Okay. All right, cool. All right. So, really to tie this up, the one thing we didn't get much into, but is really important to the audience here is the lifestyle versus the therapeutic. We've talked a lot about uh peptides and hormones, and you mentioned briefly some medications, right, like statins. Where is the balance between all of this and lifestyle? And from a medical professional's perspective, you know, we know that the vast majority of the population is just does not live a healthy lifestyle. Sadly, that's just the case. Where what's the escalation process? People who are listening who are trying to clean their life up a little bit right now, where should they, what should they prioritize, in your opinion?
Dr. Abid Husain: 55:46
I would prioritize movement and I would prioritize the quality of food. Okay. All right. If you can start with those two things, that will take you very far. Adding to that would be stress management and stress management and emotional well-being. I think that uh that gets under underrepresented and it has a significant uh effect on our overall health. The movement aspect of it is going to improve not that's one of the most powerful tools we have because improving muscle health will improve glucose management. The muscle itself releases a host of anti-inflammatory myocines. You know, I think the audience here knows enough about this. I don't have to go into that. Um, but muscle is the currency of health. So movement is gonna develop that. We need to develop that, and then it also helps with energy management. So moving, say, after you have a meal, just light movement, you know, it helps to digest the food, helps to reduce the glucose spikes, uh, and help manage energy a little bit better. And it's gonna keep you more resilient as you get older.
Philip Pape: 56:52
Yeah, let's sit on that for a bit because the audience has heard I've talked their year off about muscle mass and strength training and all that. So we don't have to go into masterclass about that. It's super, super, super important. The movement side, I've been kind of surprised the more I've learned about that, not just the walking after meals being so powerful for like blood sugar regulation and insulin sensitivity, like compared to even diabetes medication. I wish my dogs weren't barking right now. Um, but then the uh the thing that I learned about like movement snacks, you know, not sitting, like not sitting as an independent risk bearable. And I'm telling people all the time, get up every half hour, not even every hour, get up every half hour, walk for two minutes. Yep. And because there was an actual study that looked at that specific intervention and showed just a whole swing in everything muscle protein synthesis, you know, how you use glucose, nutrient partitioning, insulin sensitivity, and then even uh the myokines and the inflammatory markers kind of inverting when you just move a little bit. So I mean, tell us about all that because people need to understand how it's easy and powerful to do.
Dr. Abid Husain: 57:54
Yeah, yeah. The you know, it's it when you access the muscoskeletal system, when you just start moving and engage the ability to pull glucose in, reduce your glucose spikes, and then improve uh your I mean you're improving blood flow. There in every aspect, you're improving your your global metabolic health. It's from multiple systems. So, like you said, it's it's from your muscle functioning better. It's giving your because when the muscle is uh and when your system is sedentary, then at baseline, uh you're going to potentially develop you know the toxins may build up, you may get infl some inflammatory burden. The idea of sitting and uh and just sort of uh being in and being inactive, it's not what our system is meant to do. And so by just amping it up slightly, we get these little pulses of activity that don't cause any breakdown of tissue, but help manage, say, inflammatory load, stress, you know, all of these little burdens that occur while we, and especially in this in in the modern era where when we're sitting, we're probably looking at something, we're doing something, engaging our emotion, our our sensory system that is creating some sort of stress, work, some sort of burden. You know, these little exercise snacks serve as a like a pop-off valve to purge some of this and allow our parasympathetic nervous system to be more regulated, heart rate variability to go up, to get blood flow to the muscles, improve nitric oxide without having to do a you know a high-intensity interval workout. You know, these help maintain baseline health more than just you know the high intensity hour that we get from working out. Because going back to what we talked about in the beginning, that's the performance aspect of it. That hour of pushing ourselves improves our performance. The exercise snacks improve, it lifts the baseline so that our General health is better.
Philip Pape: 1:00:01
Yeah, I love that. I love the baseline of health and longevity. Built on that is the performance. And then you could even widen that baseline of performance because your health is better. And it's kind of a nice cyclical, or you know what I'm trying to say, thing. So, okay, let why don't we end on there's so many topics we could get into. I've enjoyed this conversation. End on the emotional well-being because people know I can be like almost delusionally optimistic. I have an optimism bias, but I own it. And I actually encourage people to try to be like optimistic about things to a fault because I think I think there's better health outcomes for well-being between that and having social connection. Totally. And of course, the physical health leads to the mental health as well. There's so many things. So tell us about that. And again, cardiovascular health and emotional well-being and what the connection is to finish here.
Dr. Abid Husain: 1:00:49
Direct correlation between stress management, emotional health, and cardiovascular health. If I want to draw an easy through line, think about it this way. Every time you think about something bad, you get stressed, you get depressed, you're going to release epinephrine and norepinephrine. Epinephrine and norepinephrine are stress hormones that make your blood vessels contract. They are pro-inflammatory and they will reduce your heart rate variability, increase your heart rate, increase your blood pressure. I mean, the idea is that they are designed to be used during stress situations so we can perform better for short periods of time and heal if we need to. All right. In our current society, in our current lifestyle, it's constantly being activated. And by doing that, we create an overall higher inflammatory burden that then trickles down to our vascular system, our brain health, cortisol, because if we release enough epinephrine constantly, then we're going to release cortisol that goes along with these stress hormones, and that will affect our brain health as well. So it's a it's a cascade. And we have the ability to manage that on some level by understanding, okay, I don't need to get worked up about this. I can have a positive attitude about this. I can reframe this thing that happened into looking at the positive things that have come out of it. You know, in and these are really powerful tools. I I can I can go and spend time with people I love because that calms me down and it reduces the sympathetic burden. So, you know, there there are therapies that you can do to help get you to that place. There's neurotherapies, there's injectables, there's psychedelics, there's, you know, there's so much that you can do. But at home, every day, I think keeping a positive attitude, regulating your emotions, and knowing that that really helps your your overall health is so powerful because that lifts the baseline, makes you more resilient, and I mean, it just makes life better.
Philip Pape: 1:02:59
I love that. It makes life better, it gives you meaning and purpose and physically allows you to function. And honestly, anybody out there who who has family and others they depend on, because we don't live in a vacuum. Yeah, that's part of the social fabric that allows us to be there for others and live a long life and not be a burden to others as well, if that's a goal of yours. So uh, Dr. Hussein, this has been incredible. I think we got it. There's so many topics we could dive into like as separate episodes practically, but uh, where do you want folks to reach out to you for either education or to contact you or anything else?
Dr. Abid Husain: 1:03:29
Yeah. Um let's see. I'm at Boulder Longevity Institute. So um I see patients there three days a week. You can email me there and uh look for me if you want to connect. Uh, I also do a lot of education in uh different lectures with the organizations. Uh there's uh New BioAge and then um Vibrant Health. And so look for me there if you want to get some some other ways to connect with me.
Philip Pape: 1:03:58
All right, cool. We'll we'll definitely include that stuff in the show notes for listeners to find you, and and anybody who wants to reach out to uh Dr. Sane can also let me know and I'll connect to with them. Yeah. Thank you so much for coming on. I mean, this is important information.
Dr. Abid Husain: 1:04:11
Hey, thank you. This has been a real pleasure. I appreciate it.
Philip Pape: 1:04:14
It's been awesome. Thank you.

Philip Pape 11/26/25 Philip Pape 11/26/25

3 Ways Thanksgiving WON'T Ruin Your Fat Loss (No Matter What You Do) | Ep 405

Worried that Thanksgiving (or any holiday) dinner will undo months of fat loss progress? It won't, and the math proves it. One day or even one week of holiday eating cannot physiologically derail your results when you understand how your body ACTUALLY responds to overfeeding. Learn why your body's built-in safeguards protect you from rapid fat gain, how strategic refeeds during the holidays can actually support your fat loss goals, and why the mental reset matters more than the calories.

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Worried that Thanksgiving (or any holiday) dinner will undo months of fat loss progress?

It won't, and the math proves it.

One day or even one week of holiday eating cannot physiologically derail your results when you understand how your body ACTUALLY responds to overfeeding.

Learn why your body's built-in safeguards protect you from rapid fat gain, how strategic refeeds during the holidays can actually support your fat loss goals, and why the mental reset matters more than the calories.

You'll discover the one calorie reality check that eliminates holiday anxiety, how metabolic flexibility works in your favor when you eat MORE carbs, and the critical psychological skill that separates long-term success from yo-yo dieting.

This evidence-based approach to nutrition during the holidays will help you build muscle and lose fat sustainably... WITHOUT the stress, guilt, or compensatory behaviors that actually cause problems.

Whether you're strength training over 40 or just want a healthier relationship with food, this episode gives you the framework to enjoy Thanksgiving and stay on track with your physique goals.

Timestamps

0:00 - Why Thanksgiving can't ruin your fat loss progress
2:08 - The 3,500-calorie reality check for weight loss
4:31 - Why your scale weight jumps
6:05 - How your body handles overfeeding and carbs
8:13 - Strategic refeeds for metabolism and performance
10:55 - Avoiding compensatory behaviors after holiday meals
12:15 - How to adapt to your choices and biofeedback
14:40 - Managing leftovers and the long holiday weekend
17:07 - Weekly energy balance for sustainable fat loss
19:55 - All-or-nothing thinking vs. psychological flexibility
22:45 - 3 tips for holiday eating (not what you think!)

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Get notified of new episodes. Listen on Apple, Spotify, or all other platforms.

Then hit “Follow” and you’re good to go!

Philip Pape: 0:01
Alright, Thanksgiving is tomorrow here in the US. You might have seconds on your turkey, that third slice of pie, and you get stuffed and you convince you've just undone months of fat loss progress. But look, you haven't. I'm gonna show you exactly why one day or even one week of holiday eating cannot actually derail your progress. You'll learn why your body's built-in safeguards protect you from rapid fat gain, how strategic refeeds can support your goals, and why the mental reset matters more than the calories. If you're worried about Thanksgiving ruining your physique, you need to hear this. I'm your host, certified nutrition coach, Philip Pape. And if you're listening to this when this comes out, Thanksgiving in the US is tomorrow, Thursday. If you're listening to Afterward, everything I tell you today still applies to any holiday or even week of holiday-like activity that could be travel or vacation or anything like that. And I see the same anxiety always popping up when it comes to the holidays. Now, Monday's episode, we talked about developing your flex framework. Today is going to be a completely different concept we're talking about. And that is the mindset around the holidays and how this can help you if you if you're aware of it. Because I, again, I see the anxiety on social media, I see it in my inbox, I see it on our groups and in our programs. People asking, how do I stay on track? Should I make up calories? Should I fast the day before Thanksgiving? How do I calculate macros for this and that? And they're kind of trying to apply the full-on, what we talked about, optimal approach to these holidays that doesn't necessarily work. But I think you're asking the wrong questions because Thanksgiving isn't a fat loss problem, nor is it part of your fat loss plan. It's a mindset problem, like any holiday, any time off, anything that gets off of your goals or plans on purpose or otherwise. And today I want to walk you through three specific reasons why one day or one week of holiday eating cannot physiologically, not just mentally, but physiologically it can't ruin your progress. And this is gonna help you psychologically. Stay with me, okay? We're gonna cover the math. I know how much all of you love math, but seriously, I think I think math is the universal language of the universe. And it's important to understand it, but you don't have to do the math. We're just gonna cover it basically, and you'll see a tick, some techniques that I use with clients that really helps connect the logic with the emotional side of the brain and really help push through some of these issues and reframe them. So the logic and the math behind why a single calorie, high calorie day isn't gonna equal fat gain, which this also correlates to fluctuations on the butt on the scale, by the way. How your body responds to overfeeding. So, yeah, let's say you do eat a ton of calories on Thanksgiving, what happens, and why the psychological piece is probably the most important part of all this, anyway. All right, so let's start with some math because numbers tell a different story and help us take a step back, especially when there's a lot of anxiety. And I see it all the time. So to gain one pound of fat, you need 3,500 calories above your maintenance calories. So if your maintenance calories are 2,200 and you ate 5,000 calories in one day, like Thanksgiving, that is 2,800 extra calories, which guess what is not even a full pound of fat. Now, most of you are probably gonna eat, this is just an average, 3,500 to 4,000 calories all throughout Thanksgiving. If you include alcohol, yes, alcohol, I know people are gonna drink. If you include all the pies and desserts, calorie-dense foods, all the snacking, the appetizers, going from one place to another, eating all day. You've got the parade. I've got to eat my breakfast, then we watch the Macy's Day parade, then we have lunch, then maybe later on we have our dinner. You get it. So even those of you who are like lighter eaters might be able to pound down, you know, 3,000 calories or more. For those bigger folks who eat a lot, could eat a lot anyway, 35 to 4,000 the average. And some of you, yeah, might hit five, six, or I do know a few of you that are gonna hit seven or eight. That's extremely that's an outlier though. But even at 5,000 calories, if you are right now in a fat loss phase and you're eating 1,800 calories, you're still only 2,800 above maintenance for one single day out of 365 days. And the scale might, in fact, it probably will jump three to five pounds Friday morning. Maybe it's less if you're smaller, but let's just say it does. Let's prepare for that. But it's not fat. It's glycogen, it's water, it's food volume. Every gram of glycogen holds three grams, three to four grams of water. We need a carb-heavy meal, which Thanksgiving generally is, with all those desserts, all that sodium as well. You're gonna store water and you're gonna store a heck of a lot of it. That's it. That's it. Especially when you combine it with the math, I just reiterated a couple times about the 3,500 calories for a pound of fat. And remember, when you're in a calorie deficit, you're generally eating below your maintenance. If you eat a whole bunch of food one day, it's not like you're eating all those calories above maintenance. You're just eating some amount of calories of maintenance and making up the difference for your deficit as well. You know what I mean? So over the next two or three days after Friday, assuming you return to your normal eating, the water weight disappears. And if you're tracking your weight every day, which I generally recommend for people, at least early in this process, part of the learning phase, you'll see that. You'll see it go way up, then you'll see it go down and back down. And that's kind of cool to see because then it validates that it's not fat. I at least I hope it does. For those of you who are skipping weighing in on weekends just because of the fear of seeing the scale go up, you're missing out on an opportunity to learn about it. We also know there's studies that say tracking seven or weighing yourself seven versus five days tends to have better outcomes for weight management. So just think about that. All right. So that's the simple math on the 3,500 calories and the overeating piece, just to put that in perspective. Now, what let's talk about what happens when you overeat on a single day, besides the calories, right? Because your body's not just a calorie calculator, it's a very adaptive system. So when you dramatically increase calories and you just binge the heck out of food in one day, especially from carbohydrates, I'm gonna shock you now, but several things are gonna work in your favor. Okay. So this is this is called non-delusional positive reframing. This is reality, guys. Okay, first, your metabolic rate is gonna go up, probably a little bit, through adaptive thermogenesis because you're burning more calories, digesting and absorbing food. You probably have more energy. I'm not gonna say that your meat goes up because you may be sitting around all day, but we do know that following a large refeed, sometimes your expenditure can go up a few hundred calories, according to some studies. Because you have more energy, you start to move around a lot, you kind of make up for make up for the slothiness on Thanksgiving. So that's just kind of an interesting little side tangent. Second, if you're in a fat loss phase, and this is the more important benefit, really, a strategic refeed can probably benefit you psychologically, if nothing else, but sometimes there's a little physiological boost as well. I don't want to overstate it. Like we used to think that, oh my God, you're gonna jack up your leptin and you know, all this stuff gets recovered well beyond where it was before. Not like that. But when you've been in a deficit for several weeks and your leptin's low and your metabolic rate is lower, and you're hungrier, your performance is suffering, and then you have a re feed, like a high calorie, high carb day, aka Thanksgiving, it's gonna temporarily boost some of that stuff up, right? It's gonna temporarily bring your leptin up, tell your body, hey, we're not starving today. And that can also improve some things like your metabolic rate, reduce your hunger, improve your training performance. It's not on the net gonna vastly improve those things. We know that, according to the evidence, but it will give you a temporary boost. And mentally, it's super helpful. And I've talked about in the past having a weekend diet where kind of the opposite of what that sounds like, where on the weekend you stop dieting and you go to a full refeed. That some evidence shows potential increase in muscle mass retention when you do that. So there's little benefits to this. So, in other words, think about the positive of having a refeed and using the holidays for that. It's the same reason I tell people on that go on vacation during fat loss. Use the vacation as a maintenance refeed, as kind of a D load from your diet. Okay. So in that case, Thanksgiving could be this thing planned in that you supports your fat loss, especially if you've been in a long deficit. Look forward to it. The third thing here is the I'm gonna call it metabolic flexibility. I'm still not super comfortable with that term. The idea that you have divided energy systems. So when you eat a huge amount of carbs, your body's gonna shift to burning more carbs, right? And less fat short term. Just like when you eat more fat, like on keto or something, it burns more fat, but you have more fat. So at the end of the day, energy balance is really what matters, right? Fat storage and fat release on your body comes down to energy balance. But, you know, when you have all these carbs coming in, of course, you're going to have an immediate source of energy, you're gonna refill your glycogen. Some people find like a really great training session the next day after Thanksgiving. And again, that just ties into this whole thing of Thanksgiving being like a carb up opportunity, potentially, and you can do a reframe. So, from that perspective, just enjoy it. Let your body have the refeed and then return to normal Friday, right? The worst thing you can do is try to make up for it by slashing calories Friday or even pre-slashing calories. Some people like starve themselves earlier on Thanksgiving. Don't do that. Cause then you're just gonna, you're gonna make up for it anyway, and you're not gonna feel as great because you're probably gonna shovel in more calories because you feel like you can handle them, and then you just feel terrible, right? Digestively, right? Or you're trying to do some extra punishing workout or fasting or like go for extra walks or runs that you don't feel like doing just to force it. Don't do any of those behaviors. These cause problems. These cause problems. The Thanksgiving meal doesn't cause the problem. So just enjoy it. Try not try not to take stress off your plate if you're listening to this the day before or even the day of Thanksgiving. Now, if you're the type of person that likes to bounce these types of questions off of others and figure out like, how do I structure Thanksgiving in reality? Because I can't just, I can't tell you specifically this is what you need to do. This is, I was thinking about this. This is one of many of these cool scenarios come that I've seen come up lately where Fitness Lab, that's my new app that came out, where people are saying, Hey, I I went into that to the coach tab and asked it about my Thanksgiving plans. And it was so cool because it asked me about my specific situation and helped me, you know, move my training sessions around the right way, or think about how to plan for the food, or even come up with like really good recipes for Thanksgiving that align with my goals. Right. And that's the adaptable piece of it. So I did want to give a little plug because Fitness Lab is out now, and and this is the last time you're gonna hear an episode before the Black Friday discount ends on Black Friday, November 28th. That's 20% off. So if you're looking for that, we're not gonna have another, I don't know when we'll have another discount. You shouldn't like count on those. That's the whole point. So go to fit, go to wits and weights.com slash app. Um, if you haven't heard about Fitness Lab, it's my new AI coaching app. It's designed to adapt with everything you're doing. It accounts for your biofeedback. Hey, how's your hunger? How's your stress? How's your sleep? What's your schedule look like? When do you train? What equipment do you have? You know, how's your hormone situation? Like it learns all of that. And the more that you talk to it every day and feed it information, the more it learns and says, hey, let's try this, let's try this. And then when Thursday hits, you know, you could maybe upload a picture of the meal and say, hey, take a look at this and analyze it, or don't even use the app on that day because it is a holiday, right? But the whole point is Fitness Lab adjusts to you. It takes all of these different data points, not just metrics data like most apps, but a lot of qualitative data, which I think is where it fills in a gap of apps that doesn't apps that don't exist today. It fills in that gap. So again, right now through Black Friday, Fitness Lab's 20% off. Go to wins of weights.com slash app. If you've been listening to the podcast, you're like, I really need help implementing my fat loss plan or my holiday plan or like my flex framework or anything else, but I can't hire a coach. This might be what you want, what you need. And it goes beyond workouts and nutrition. Like there's plenty of apps for that. It does the intelligent coaching, the interpretation. It meets you where you are. It can handle all your corner cases, all your different situations in life and builds momentum even during chaotic weeks. So go to witzaways.com/slash app, 20% off through Black Friday. All right, let's talk about the more realistic scenario about holidays and elephant in the room, Thanksgiving and Christmas and everything else, although they are just one meal. Oftentimes I say they're just one meal. For many of you, it's not just one meal because we have something called leftovers. Now, I don't like to waste food. I also like to make a lot of food at once because it's more efficient. So we have a lot of freaking leftovers. Okay. So Thanksgiving may become a four-day weekend where you have leftovers Friday, right? You have the turkey sandwiches. You might also have social events and meals out because you have Black Friday and you have it it kind of feels like a time off. You know, a lot of you get a four-day weekend or whatever, and you just kind of let go that weekend, which is cool, right? And so what happens if Thursday leads to Friday to Saturday to Sunday and you're over calories every single day? Have you ruined your progress? Still no. Still no. Let's walk through why. All right. Fat loss happens over time, week to week, month to month. It's not day to day. Obviously, you're burning and storing fat every day in small amounts, but anything meaningful is not gonna happen until it accumulates over time. If you're in a 500 calorie a day deficit, that's 3,500 calories a week. That's a pound of fat loss, right? And that takes some effort for people to do it that way, just like it would take effort to do it the other way. And it takes time. Okay. Now, sometimes it's not intentional, like over consuming, but it's still gonna take time. So if you have four days at or above maintenance and you're in a fat loss phase, what are you doing? Well, you're just reducing your deficit, but you're not erasing the deficit for the week unless you're dramatically over every single day, which is possible, right? Depends on how, if your deficit is very conservative, you could definitely blow through it. But it's almost like you've, I hate to put it this way, it's like you're you've banked some deficit anyway because you've been in a deficit. Okay, so let's say you're eating 1800 and your maintenance is 2300. That's a 500 calorie day deficit. That's 3,500 calories a week. That's a pound a week. And then Thanksgiving, you eat 4,000. Friday, you eat 2,800. Saturday, you're back to 2,000. Sunday, you're still at 2,200. So you're still overconsuming, but you know, not as much as Thanksgiving. And now you've added 2,000 calories over four days. Well, guess what? Over seven-day period, now you are still in a deficit of 1,500 calories instead of 3,500 calories. So you've lost just a little bit less fat that week. Big deal. You haven't even gained fat. You've actually just slowed progress a little bit temporarily, and then the next week you're right back to your normal deficit, losing fat again. Right. That's why I tell clients and I talk on the show, think in weekly and monthly trends and averages over time, not daily, you know, daily numbers and even not sometimes weekly, depending on what we're talking about, what metric we're talking about. Okay. Well, one week is not gonna define your progress. And even so, one week you might be surprised that you were still in a deficit. And then the average over the next four to six weeks is ultimately what's gonna smooth out reality, what's doing. Now, obviously, if you four or five days a week you're overconsuming massively, that's gonna catch up, but that's not what we're talking about. So, for many of you who've been dieting for a while, a week at or near maintenance actually might be beneficial. We kind of alluded to this already: a psychological break. Your body recovers from a chronic deficit, you come back the next week refreshed, your performance improves, you're back on track, you're ready to go, right? Helps with the adherence as well. The alternative is trying to stay very strict in your deficit during Thanksgiving week, being miserable, feeling deprived, potentially binging because you restricted, and then feeling like you failed when you could have just enjoyed the food in the first place without any of that stuff. That's you know, all that stuff is far worse than just accepting this week as a little different and being okay with it, right? Your body cares about that long-term average energy balance. We're going back to logic and math and numbers. So one week of eating more surrounded by months of a consistent deficit, it's a blip. And that's we're talking about fat loss and a deficit. If you're, if you're listening, you're like, look, I already decided not to even try fat loss during the holidays, then you're probably even better than fine because it's going to be closer to what you've been eating anyway, just a tiny bit over. All right. So now the last piece here is the psychological side, always worth talking about. Because the biggest threat to progress isn't Thanksgiving. It's the all or nothing thinking that we tried to address on the last episode by coming up with a flex framework. So go check that out if you missed it already. And that's the framing where you say, well, I already blew it Thursday, so I might as well keep eating poorly all week and I'll start fresh on Monday, or maybe I'll start fresh January 1st. And this causes problems, long-term problems. It's the relationship with food. And your relationship with food is ultimately what matters with your food. It's not the macros that matter. The macros are a lagging indicator, are a metric. If you view Thanksgiving as a dangerous event to survive or control, you're setting up stress, anxiety, and behaviors that work against you. But if you view Thanksgiving as a single meal to enjoy fully without guilt, and then you move on, that is psychological flexibility. And that is a skill that will predict long-term success. Okay. I've worked with hundreds of clients. I've talked to thousands of you through the podcast. And those who maintain results, not even for years, but even for months, believe it or not, are not the ones who adhere perfectly, who have perfect compliance. That might be surprising to you. It's not. It's the ones who learn to handle the imperfect weeks where the adherence dropped and sometimes dropped significantly what was still there, and they didn't spiral out because of that buffer. They ate Thanksgiving dinner, they enjoyed it, they woke up Friday, went right back to normal. And even normal might still be a little bit over for a few days, but then, you know, gradually back to your routine. No compensatory behaviors, we call them. You're not compensating, you're not making up, no weeklong binge, just back to normal. Right. And that's the skill we're building. So tomorrow, if you're listening to this Thursday on Wednesday or whenever Thanksgiving is to you, is an opportunity to practice that skill. So if you're worried about spiraling, here's what I want you to do. Okay, I'm gonna give you three tips. First, plan Friday. Don't plan for Thanksgiving. Plan for the day after Thanksgiving. What are you gonna eat and train? What does your structure look like? Write it down, have a plan for Friday. Because Friday should be more or less a normal day. Maybe you're gonna go out to dinner or whatever. Most people aren't because you're kind of like a little hungover, a little stuff from Thanksgiving, even if it's a food hangover, if you know what I mean. That's the first tip. Plan for Friday. The second tip is I want you to practice self-compassion. Now, this is this is a little more complicated. This requires a little work. If you eat more than you intended, if you feel uncomfortable or you feel guilty, you know what? That's fine. Because you know what I'm gonna say next. You're human, you're a human being. That the response is what's important. And so we don't want to respond by punishing ourselves. I want you to acknowledge what happened and then choose your next action with intention. That's it. And this goes for any day for the rest of your life. Where you did something that you didn't intend to do, you acknowledge it and then say, okay, that happened. Now this is what I'm going to do next. That is what's in your control. So Friday morning, I eat my normal breakfast. Maybe I go to the gym and I move on. The third tip I have is to disconnect your self-worth from your adherence. You are not a good person because you stayed on your diet. I don't want to hear that language. And if I hear that language, it's okay. I understand there's an education, a teachable moment there. But I'm saying analyze yourself right now. Do you use that language? Oh, I was good this week or I was bad this week. I hear it all the time. Ladies and gentlemen, I hear it all the time. I was good because nope, nope, doesn't have a place here at all. You're not bad because you had three slices of pie when you intended to have one or none. Your value has nothing to do with your macros. Nothing at all. Right? What are we doing? We're building a healthy, strong identity, person, physique, health, all of that wrapped in one of our human mind and body that we can maintain for decades, for decades, until the day we die. And that requires a relationship with food where holidays are part of life because they exist and they are. They're not threats to your identity. So I hope that hits. I hope that hits with you and that's helpful. So I'm not going to give you the here are your 10 tips to do for Thanksgiving, blah, blah, blah. Everyone's different. You do it how you want to do. I would say enjoy, you know, Thanksgiving, whatever that means to you. And then try to get back to your normal, normal on Friday. But even if it's not the normal, normal and it's a suboptimal or a minimal or even a bailout, go check out our flex flame work from last episode if you don't know what I'm talking about. Then you're still gonna have momentum, right? And then remember the scale is probably gonna go up Friday and Saturday. It's okay. If you weigh yourself, it's kind of cool and experiment to see how it does that and then how it comes back from the water weight dropping. If you have leftovers, awesome. Work them into your normal meals. You've got food now you can plan around. Leftover turkey is the best. It's protein. You can fit that in your macros, right? Right? Leftover pie, it could be a little trickier, but just portion it into small slices. All right, get a little plate so it looks nice and big. Have some Friday night if you want, have some Saturday night if you want. You're gonna get tired of it probably. Log it, move on. It's fine. Plan for it, right? One meal, a few days of different meals is not gonna, is not drama. It doesn't require drama. Guys, don't be dramatic. Just return to normal. So holidays are never the problem. The problem is this rigid, unsustainable approach that everybody is selling and in the industry talking about how dangerous the holidays are, that you have to survive the holidays. But to me, survival sounds like not very fun. I don't want you to survive. I want you to just be. I want you to be, be happy with yourself, trust the process, trust your body, trust that one meal can't undo months of consistency that you've put in place. And that's what I wanted to cover today. Okay, three reasons why Thanksgiving will not, no matter what you do, ruin your fat loss. Number one, the math doesn't support it, right? Because it just, you would have to just eat gobs and thousands of gobs of calories to even tick, move the needle a tick. Second, your body is very metabolically flexible. It might appreciate an overfeeding. That is the epitome of a holiday meal. And then third, the psychology and the skill of enjoying a meal and moving on is a really important thing to learn. And it's definitely way more important than trying to ever be perfect or perfect adherence because that is what predicts long-term success. So eat the meal, be with your family, enjoy yourself. Then Friday, go back to whatever it is you were doing before. And of course, be grateful for whatever you're grateful for, the people around you, the food on the table, the fact that you have a body capable of incredible things. You've worked hard this year. I don't care how much progress you've actually made, you're listening to this podcast, you are trying to learn, you are trying to practice skills and grow. You're building strength. Maybe you've lost fat, maybe not. That's not the end goal here. It's the process of showing up consistently. Happy Thanksgiving, everyone. I'll talk to you next time.

Philip Pape 11/24/25 Philip Pape 11/24/25

Avoid Holiday Weight Gain with a BAILOUT Strategy (Flex Framework) | Ep 404

The holidays don't have to wreck your gains! Most fitness plans collapse the moment your routine gets disrupted (travel, family meals, late nights, packed gyms, etc.). You skip workouts because you can't do the "full session." You avoid holiday meals because there are no "clean options." One bad day becomes three weeks off track, and by January you're starting over again. We break down a simple, resilient system called The Flex Framework that helps you keep muscle, strength, and momentum when your routine gets slammed by travel, late nights, and meals you didn’t cook.

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The holidays don't have to wreck your gains!

Most fitness plans collapse the moment your routine gets disrupted (travel, family meals, late nights, packed gyms, etc.). You skip workouts because you can't do the "full session." You avoid holiday meals because there are no "clean options." One bad day becomes three weeks off track, and by January you're starting over again.

We break down a simple, resilient system called The Flex Framework that helps you keep muscle, strength, and momentum when your routine gets slammed by travel, late nights, and meals you didn’t cook.

Instead of betting on perfect conditions, we map 3 tiers for every pillar (training, nutrition, etc.):

Optimal for routine days
Minimum for busy days
Bailout for disasters

This multi-gear approach limits decision fatigue, preserves your habits, and keeps you out of the all-or-nothing trap.

Learn practical strategies for Thanksgiving, travel days, and holiday dinners.

By January, you'll pick up right where you left off instead of starting over.

Timestamps

0:00 - Why your plan fails during the holidays
2:45 - The Flex Framework
6:55 - The all-or-nothing trap
10:15 - How to build your anti-fragile fitness system
12:05 - The 3 levels: optimal, minimum, and bailout protocols
15:15 - Strength training and muscle building
20:30 - Recovery and sleep
22:35 - Nutrition and protein
28:45 - Reframe from "I can't" to "what level can I operate at?"
31:45 - Setting up your framework and finishing the year strong

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Get notified of new episodes. Listen on Apple, Spotify, or all other platforms.

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Philip Pape: 0:00
It's that time of year. Thanksgiving is this year in the US, and that means travel, family meals you didn't cook, late nights, early mornings with relative stain at your house. If you have a rigid plan, it's probably gonna break. You might skip a workout, you might avoid certain meals or foods, a bad day might become a bad weekend, a bad weekend becomes three weeks off, and then by January you're starting over yet again. The problem isn't you, it's that your system might only have one gear, and it's built for perfect conditions. Today I'm showing you how to upgrade your system so you can maintain strength and muscle through any holiday, even if everyone else is backsliding. I'm your host, certified nutrition coach, Philip Pape, and today we're gonna talk about something that's probably on your mind as Thanksgiving approaches in just a few days here in the US. And honestly, this applies to anyone going through any holiday or time like this. How do you keep your progress going when your routine gets completely disrupted? This is a general principle of any time of year, but it really comes up during the holidays because most of us approach this time of year with one of two strategies. Either you try to maintain your exact routine and then inevitably fail when life doesn't cooperate, or you completely give up and you plan to start fresh in January. Both approaches have the same result, right? You lose your training progress, maybe you gain some fat that you didn't want, maybe you feel like you're back at square one or falling back, regressing when the new year rolls around. Now you're kind of reset more than you'd like to be. So what I'm sharing today is different. Something I came up with over the last few weeks. We talked about it in physique university recently, and it's called the flex framework. Very simple, based on a simple principle that a system with multiple gears, right, just to put the engineering hat on, can survive tolerance or variability better than a system that has only one setting, right? So we're talking about having flexibility in your system, but we're gonna be very uh concrete about it today and give you very specific ways to do this. So you're gonna learn how to create three versions of what you're doing, of your plan: an optimal version, a minimum version, and what I'm calling a bailout version, so that you can adapt to whatever the holidays throw at you without losing your progress. And of course, this applies beyond the holidays, as I mentioned. Anytime life gets chaotic, that could be work travel, that could be family emergencies, you know, just those weeks where everything seems to be going wrong. We know what those are, right? But real quick, I just want to share a couple quotes from our clients in Physique University who always like to share their wins. And it's super inspiring to those listening to the podcast. You said you want to hear directly from people who are doing this. So the first one says, My DEXA scan. Looks like heavy barbell training is paying off. Check out the spine increase. That's awesome, right? Because we've been talking about osteoporosis recently. So love to hear that. Another one, and this is I would file this under small but monumentous wins. I completed week one of the strength template I selected. That's a massive win to get through your first week of trained strength training sessions, excuse me, is phenomenal. And then one more says, I was traveling for work this past week, but I was able to get a couple workouts in, lots of meetings and late nights. Lifting seemed to have given me given me a bit of energy, embracing the new lifestyle. And the last one I'm going to share today is actually from one of many of the users who downloaded Fitness Lab, which is now out for Black Friday. It's 20% off for Black Friday. Just came out, our new AI coaching app. And this user says, I have it and I'm loving it so far, especially the AI feature. It feels like you are coaching me. Apple Health will be excellent once integrated, which this is Philip talking here, will be out within days, if not already, when you hear this podcast. But honestly, I like what it's making me do by not having it. I want to let you know this is exactly what I've been looking for. Good stuff. So the reason I share all these is because I'm super proud of what all of you are achieving every day, whether it's through the podcast, through Physique University, or now through the Fitness Lab app. You could check out all those resources in the podcast show notes. But now let's get into the topic. And the first thing I want to talk about is why having a plan that's a little bit too rigid or even very rigid, of course, why it collapses under pressure. And this is a lot more of a head thing, a psychology thing than anything else. And if we put it in context of this week, at least here in the US, where you've got Thanksgiving in just three days, if you're listening to this when it comes out on Monday, and then it's only a few weeks until Christmas and New Year's, and you're already stressed out about how you're gonna handle all of that stuff, family dinners, travel, the gyms are probably gonna be packed, you might have hosting duties, you're wondering about things like, you know, how do I deal with alcohol and stuff like that? And saying, hey, should I just accept that things are gonna be perfect and therefore I'm gonna backslide and then plan to get serious again in January? Well, I'm here to tell you that that those aren't the only options. Okay. No, things are not gonna be perfect. They never will. So that we just throw off the table. That's a fact. But the fact that you'll black backslide isn't a given. But I get it because the traditional approach to fitness in this industry can come across as very rigid. It's like, here are the seven pillars you have to follow. You've got to do your training for three, four, five days a week. You've got to have, you know, the these calories and macros. You've got to hit your energy balance and your sleep is being locked in. Got to keep your stress low, by the way. Make sure you get your steps in. All of that, all of that is fine, but it it really only works when the conditions are perfect. In other words, hitting a 10 out of 10 on all of those things. You know, when you're at home, when you're prepping your own food, when you've got your normal gym every day, when you control your environment, etc. But the holidays are maximum variability with minimum control, right? The travel schedules change. Family members have their own plans for meal times and what to serve at the meals. And, you know, you don't want to offend your relatives because they're gonna make all this great food that that's part of a tradition. The gym, maybe you're visiting and you try to go to a gym and now it's different and it doesn't have the equipment you need. And you normally try to get to bed at 9 or 10 p.m. Now it becomes midnight because everyone's still talking in the kitchen, right? So this is life, guys. And so your rigid plan is of course not gonna have an answer for this. So it breaks, and then when it breaks, you feel like you failed, and then you quit, and that's the all or nothing trap, right? We it's it's worth it's worth revisiting that because we all fall into that, even if it's it's small in a small scope. You know, I do as well. I fall into sometimes this thought of like, okay, here's my routine. I'm gonna lock it in, and then something happens, I'm like, ah, I get frustrated because I'm not, I can't quite hit that routine like I wanted. And by the way, I'm gonna have rotator cuff surgery coming up. So I could easily fall into that trap of, oh no, this guy's falling. I'm not gonna be able to train, I'm not gonna be able to this, not gonna be able to that. And I have to just and say, okay, that's the reality. What do I do? Like a good stoic, what do I do? And it's why January, when we talk about the holidays, why January is the busiest month at every gym. Because everyone's starting over, New Year's resolutions, after completely abandoning abandoning their routine for six weeks, if they even had one. And so the real problem here of why things break is because they're one-dimensional. They have one gear, they work under certain conditions, not necessarily perfect conditions, but let's say close to them, right? Nor quote unquote normal conditions. And so, what you need is a system with multiple gears that can adapt to imperfect and far imperfect conditions while keeping you move forward. Now, this does this might be like common sense, like, oh, okay, Philip's talking about flexibility, great. But I want to be very, I want to give you gears here. I want to give you three gears that are very specific steps that you can step down to if needed and think ahead for yourself what that looks like. Okay, and this is something that I'm introducing called the Flex Framework. Now, we talked about this in a workshop, or I should say, our monthly coaching call in Physique University. We just talked about it. And on that call, we went through, I'll say a lot more detail than I'm gonna cover today, although you're gonna get a good amount of it today. And we did a lot of QA and there's a guide and all this other stuff. And the community is working with it to get accountability along the way as we head into Thanksgiving. So if you want to get in for all of that, as well as the community support and the ability to say, hey, what do you guys think of my flex framework? Is it gonna work? How do I execute it? Join physiqueuniversity, physique.wits and weights.com. You could also go to wits and weights.com slash physique. Sorry to confuse you. The link is in the show notes. So go to witsandwaits.com slash physique. There's a special code in the show notes to get a free nutrition plan when you join using that code. And then you can get a head start on this flex framework. But it is built on a principle from I'll say reliability engineering. And that's the principle of redundancy. Right? When we design a system like the ones that keep airplanes in the sky or nuclear power plants running safely, they're super complex, just like life is complex, just like your body is complex, and they don't rely on a single component or gear. They're multiple levels of redundancy. So if things fail and multiple things fail, and sometimes multiple things fail at the same time, which seems unlikely, but it can happen in certain cases. Can things keep functioning or gracefully step down or gracefully shut down or whatever? And so your fitness system, your life system for your nutrition and training need the same approach. And I like to think of this in threes, three versions of all the important elements: an optimal version, a minimum version, and a bailout. So let me define each of these. Optimal is what you do when conditions are perfect for you. Nothing's ever perfect, but basically your normal week to week to week, the kind of boring life, hopefully, you have. Well, boring in the way that I'm defining it here, where it's predictable, somewhat predictable. That's where you have full access to your routine, plenty of time, energy, and resources available that you need, you know, within your given constraints. That's like your best case scenario, and which you're probably doing before you get to the holidays for the most part, if you haven't been traveling or something. That's optimal. Okay, not not optimal is not perfect for anybody. Optimal is good enough, close to perfect for you. Then minimum is your non-negotiable floor. Now, I talk about minimums in the past of like, okay, this is the bottom, but stay tuned because it's not going to be the bottom bottom. This is what you cannot skip without starting to lose progress in one of those areas, right? So this is the consistency piece. This is that, you know, the idea that maintaining what you've built actually does take far less effort than building it in the first place. We know this for volume when it comes to training. About an eighth to a quarter volume is necessary to maintain what you have. So your minimum maintains you've built and typically takes a lot less of your optimal effort, let's say 20 to 30%. So this is when we say no zero days, or being consistent, or making sure you have micro wins that you can do every day that are the minimum, but they'll still compound and give you progress as opposed to skipping it altogether. And then bailout, this is the new thing I'm in, I'm talking about today. This is your emergency protocol, is your lifeboat. What you do when everything goes wrong, right? You're sick when your schedule implodes, when you have zero control over your environment. You know, in my case, like I have surgery coming up. There's bailout protocols I'm going to be putting in place for things. Although when you can plan far enough ahead, you still could have a minimum, if that makes sense. But your bailout's what prevents total collapse more in your head than anything else. Let's be honest, more in your head than anything else. Meaning it's better than nothing, but it's not even your minimum, and it takes even less effort. So I'm adding an extra gear here to give yourself permission from a psychological standpoint to still do something that gets you a win that keeps you going so that the next time you can strive for the minimum or the optimal. Does that make sense? It's kind of like a bridge win. And the power of this framework is the mindset shift, the psychology. Instead of thinking, I can't do my full workout, so I won't do anything. It's, well, I can't do my full workout. What's my minimum? Okay, I can do three out of my five exercises. Well, can I not even do that? What is my bailout? My bailout might be one exercise. It might be not even going to the gym, but doing something at home, like running up the stair and down the stairs for 10 minutes. Something that psychologically gives you that, dare I say it, checkbox on the streak that you you've now bridged to the next day or the next point where you do your normal habit. So in this case, you're not lowering your standards. You're actually building one more gear of standard that gives you an anti-fragile system that survives the most obliterated imperfect conditions that come across. That makes sense. All right. So having that in place, now what do we do? All right, let's apply the flex flamework framework to the big areas that we care about here, like nutrition and training. So with training, let's say use the holidays as the example, but this can work for any routine work that gets disrupted. Optimal, even during the holidays, it's just your normal workout. You have maybe still have access to your gym, maybe you're still at home, you know, and you're you're just you've got some different schedules and stuff going on, and you can still work in your normal full training sessions. You might have to shift the days around, but you're still getting all the volume and the frequency and the intensity in, right? Maybe it's at home, maybe you're visiting somewhere with a good gym and you can do it as well and still hit some optimal days. Remember, optimal doesn't mean every day has to be optimal. It's just on a given day, are you doing the optimal thing? And you don't have to be doing everything optimal. Remember, you're doing, you have different pillars that you're hitting, training, nutrition, steps, whatever. Each one of those can be at their a different level. All right. So just give yourself, it's like flexibility within flexibility. So just because it's the holidays doesn't mean you can't keep on with your optimal routine, right? And then minimum training is gonna focus on something like let me just do the main lifts, the big lifts, the compound movements. I've been doing this more lately because of all this medical stuff I've been dealing with, having appointments and extra meetings and having to drive places. It's cut into my time, but I've said, you know, I'm still gonna train, but instead of doing all five movements, I'm gonna do three or even two. And I'm gonna go really, really hard on them. I did that this morning. I did weighted pull-ups, neutral grip, I did T-bar rows, and I did a superset of lengthened partial lat raises and bicep curls on a cable machine. Now, though that last one, obviously it's not main lifts, but it does support my goals to support my shoulder health and also keep my biceps a little pumped. Okay. I just it's something I enjoy. So I decided what that was for me, my main lift. But the, but the but the main lifts today, which didn't include massive lifts like the squat or deadlift today, particularly for me, I still focused on the main ones. And there were a couple other small things that I didn't do, right? I think I don't know if it was like high rep shrugs or something that I cut out. All right, so you're cutting out the accessories, maybe you abbreviate the warm-up necessary as needed, but to still do it safely, and then hit your main lifts and get out, right? So main lifts could be all the variants of the main movement pattern, squat bench, deadlift, rowing, whatever your core movements are depending on your program. And you could even cut a set. You could even get just the main lifts, and instead of doing, say, three sets, you do two, and maybe do a top set back off set, right? Because at the very minimum, you're maintaining what you have, and surprisingly, you might find that you needed the extra little rest, and it might give you a little boost in performance. You never know. So I don't see this as a bad strategy at all. This is pretty good. That's a minimum. Now, bailout. Let's talk about bailout. So to me, bailout is movement based, not performance-based. Might sound sacrilegious, but that's why it's a bailout. This is not about hitting new numbers on your list. This is not even about progressive overload. If your bailout strategy is, damn, I can't even get to the gym. I can't even get to any of this stuff right now. I don't have a home gym. I just need to move my body and get some sort of stimulus on my muscles. This is beyond beyond walking. And this could be body weight stuff. I mentioned running up and down the stairs, you know, for your legs. This could be a brisk walk with weight on your back, like a rucksack or weight vests or something like this. It could be just push-ups, you know what I mean? All you're doing is just bridging the gap with some bare minimum. And psychologically, more than anything, it gives you that boost that, like, I did it. And that means next time I'm gonna keep making progress when I go back to my minimum or my optimal. All right. That's all we're talking about. Now, notice what's happening psychologically. You have options. On a perfect day, you hit optimal, on a chaotic day, you fall back to minimum. Usually it ends there. But now on a disaster day, you can at least do your bailout. You're not stuck in the all or nothing trap at any of those levels. And that's how you maintain your routine through the holidays at some level. You may not try to make gains or PRs, but at least maintain what you've built, feel good about yourself, keep going, keep yourself in the mode of I'm doing this thing on a regular basis. And throughout all of this, recovery is gonna be super important, right? It a lot of it does come down to stimulus versus recovery. And if you're stressed because of the holidays, recovery is gonna be impeded as well. Now, for me, you guys know I love to talk about sleep a lot because it's something I am personally working on. And it's probably the biggest pillar of recovery. And when you're traveling, when you're staying in different beds, when you're dealing with family stress, irregular schedules, I would say quality sleep becomes even more important and often harder to get. And so, shout out to the sponsor of this episode, Cozy Earth. They have incredible bedding that I own personally, that I use. It is my favorite bedding of all. I'm glad I found them because it regulates temperature. You sleep cooler, you sleep more comfortably even when you're not in your own bed. If you could take your sheets with you. That's my tip for you right now. Okay. If you could take your sheets with you, you know how everybody has like their favorite pillow, it's kind of like that. If you could have your own sheets with you, which then you know they're clean as well, and you're not dealing with any of that stuff, and you could take them with you. I've been using the Cozy Earth sheets now for quite a few months, and the difference in sleep quality is definitely noticeable, both qualitatively and in my numbers, in my HRV scores, uh, my sleep quality scores, it just feels like something I want to, you know, drift away in. It just feels so good. I mean, sometimes I just want to get in the sheets just to like read a book. And so when you're dealing with holiday stress schedule changes, having something like that to anchor you when it comes to an important pillar like sleep, and that could be bedding. It could also be their pajamas and other things, other products that they have made with the bamboo-derived material that regulates the temperature. It's just one less thing that works against you and to worry about. So go to witsandweights.com slash cozy earth. Use my code Wits and Waits for 20% off. They have an incredible warranty and money-back guarantee. So you could try it. If you don't like it, return it. If you want to get better sleep during the holidays and beyond, this would be, in fact, this is a great birth Christmas gift, guys. Cozy earth. Sheets. If you're struggling to figure out a really nice, luxurious Christmas gift for your significant other, for a friend, for somebody who's in this space who cares about sleep, go to wits of weights.com slash cozy earth, 20% off. And trust me, the sleep is going to vastly improve. And that means better recovery, better training, more energy to enjoy the holidays and help your metabolism and all this other stuff. Wits of weights.com slash cozy earth. Check them out. All right, so that's training. Now let's talk about nutrition, because this is where most people really derail during the holidays. And I don't even like the word derail because I've said before I don't believe there is a rail if you have a flexible framework. Okay. But we're gonna assume that the rail is your general direction that you're trying to go. Maybe it's fat loss, maybe it's muscle building, maybe it's just maintenance. And for many of you who know me, I definitely recommend against fat loss during the holidays, unless you're using it as a test. You're using it to kind of push your comfort zone further during the hardest time of year so that you can handle any time of year. That's all that's up to you. But whatever it is, the situation changes quite a bit this time of year because you often go to family dinners or you visit family and you didn't cook the food, or there's a potluck, right? Or you bring one thing and they cook everything else. Or you're just cooking other things because it's the holidays, right? The pecan pie. I know people who have like 10 pies, okay? This is like an American tradition to have all these pies: apple pie, pumpkin pie, blueberry pie, cherry pie, you name it. And you're probably at restaurants a little more, you're getting out, you're going on parties, you're visiting friends, you might be traveling. Like the usual meal prep routine sometimes goes completely out the window. So optimal, minimum bailout. Let's look at them. Optimal nutrition during the holidays is just your normal plan. You're hitting your macros and calories, you're hitting your hunger signals, you're, you know, using the same meal timing, good food quality for what you like to eat, you're cooking most of your meals or at least controlling what goes on your plate in the same way that you always have been. It's just your routine. This is very realistic on the days when you're at home, when you're cooking for yourself or your immediate family, when you have control over things, right? That's optimum. And by the way, if you're not even at optimum yet, don't beat yourself up. So the one of the missions of this podcast is to help you find that. And that doesn't mean perfect. It just means at a good place to make progress and to be sustainable. All right. Minimum, I will say minimum nutrition is about simplifying the tracking and the choice, the decision framework so you don't have as much cognitive stress. So I would the way I would simplify this is protein. Like your only non-negotiable is protein. Hit your protein target. And it doesn't even have to be in calculating the grams per se. If you have any experience at all tracking protein, you know that having like five servings throughout the day, you know, or having protein, a decent amount of protein at every meal or snack is going to get you where you need to be. And again, this assumes you've done this before. If you've never done it before, I still recommend trying to track the grams just to see where you stand. Have a rough awareness of calories so you're not massively overshooting, right? But but what that means is you should kind of feel good about yourself, like you're roughly in maintenance world, right? You're not getting stuffed all the time. Obviously, you're probably not on the other side of always feeling hungry during the holidays. Although, although I could be wrong, some of you were you're really stressed and you're shopping and you're doing all the things and you forget to eat. That's its own challenge. I get it. You know, the food timing here maybe doesn't matter as much because things are a little bit less predictable. Your carbs and fats can always flex depending on the situation. So the rule's simple: just prioritize protein all the time at every time you eat, and don't worry about the rest. And that's a good minimum. You may decide something else is your minimum. Like, I'm always gonna have fruits and vegetables, you know, fiber. It could be something else, but I would go with protein for most people. So at Thanksgiving dinner, that's easy. Turkey baby. All right. Like I actually find Thanksgiving kind of interesting because I feel like a lot of Thanksgiving dinners are actually pretty decent food options compared to maybe other parties and holidays, if you know what I mean. Like it tends to be a lot of home-cooked food for a lot of families. Now, that's if you celebrate it, that's if you cook it yourself. You know, some people go out to Chinese food for Thanksgiving, whatever, or don't celebrate it, let's say, or different country. But, you know, you want to enjoy the meal. You want to enjoy the experience and the family time. You don't want to stress whether mashed potatoes have the butter, the green beans are cooked in oil, all those little details, really. Just get enough protein, which usually comes from Turkey. And I love dark meat personally, but you might like the breast meat. And then all the other things, the sides, you know, have a little bit of everything that you enjoy. There's nothing wrong with that. If you're at a restaurant, always order protein forward meals, right? Steak, vegetables, chicken and rice, fish and potatoes, simple stuff like that. So that would be the minimum. The bailout is even simpler. It's like one anchor meal a day to keep your brain connected to the fact that there's this idea of nutritious, performance-enhancing, supportive foods that you'd like to eat. And you're gonna have that one experience every day that's yours and everything else is chaos, and you accept it. Maybe you're traveling all day, maybe you're dealing with a family crisis, maybe you're completely overwhelmed. Don't skip eating. Just make sure you make sure you get at least one great hit of protein in a fairly well-balanced meal. And if you can't even do that, your minute your bailout might be a protein shake. Okay. Some jerky in a protein bar. The other day I was in a hurry and I had forgotten to bring my prepped food. I stopped at a gas station and they had the barbells brand protein bar. I'm like, you know what? This is a good bailout compared to the alternatives. I'm gonna try it out. And by the way, it's pretty delicious, like cookies and cream. Now, I don't eat that stuff all the time, but it's pretty cool. And I couldn't pass up the fact that it said barbells, right? And I'm aware of that brand. I just was surprised they had it in the gas station. And then you get back to your minimum tomorrow or your optimal, whatever makes sense. So the psychological shift here is the same as with training. You have multiple gears. On days you have control, or I should say on days you have some control, but not all, you hit the minimum. And days where you have lots of control, you push toward optimal. And then on those disaster catastrophe days, you got your bailout and you don't feel guilty about it because at least you're not a zero. Don't be a zero, be a hero. All right. And here's the thing about protein specifically: we know how important it is. It's also very satiating and it helps you not overeat. So even on the bailout days, that strategy is really important. And again, if it's not protein, maybe it's fiber. Both things can help with the hunger signals. I went out to dinner with a friend of mine the other night, and we went to this place where they used to have this big barbecue plate, and I was so disappointed they didn't have anymore. They had a new owner. The barbecue plate was like six different types of meat and all these great sides, but they still have the same chefs, the same cooks, and the cooks do everything from scratch, even like blue cheese dressing, things like that. Which, when when something is made with love like that, with pretty fresh ingredients, you notice a difference, you enjoy it, and all that. Anyway, we we each ordered a salad along with some wings and some other things, and these were the biggest salads I've ever freaking seen. They were massive. They were probably the equivalent of like six garden salads. Now it was mostly just raw vegetables. It was like iceberg and romaine lettuce, some carrots, some cucumbers, maybe peppers, maybe tomatoes, right? Just just like that. And then, of course, dressing on the side. I'll tell you what though, halfway through that salad, I really didn't want to eat much more of anything else. And I know I hardly had any calories. And the ironic thing was at the end of the day, I said, you know what, I had planned to eat like almost 2,000 calories because of the barbecue dish. And I probably ate like 900 or 1,000 because of the salad. So it's just, it's just an interesting idea of how you can almost like trick your body, let's say. You're tricking it with eating good food. I get it, but fiber can be helpful, protein can be helpful. Okay, enough rambling. Let's talk about the it's just setting this up very simply. It's more about reframing than anything. So the old way that you would think is I can't do my full workout, so I'm not gonna do it. And maybe you'd say in your head, maybe I'll do it tomorrow. Maybe I'll shift out, maybe I could skip this one. You get all these maybes in your head, and then of course you end up going for the worst choice because you don't have a plan. The new way, the new way to think about it is I can't do the optimal. That was my plan. What is my minimum? And then let your brain figure it out. Nope, can't do that either. Can I at least do my bailout? And that way you have a second gear and a third gear. Or I should say, uh, if you go like in a car, you're going down to second gear and first gear. Okay. In this case, first gear is the bailout, you get it. Okay. Now you might be thinking, oh, but if I just do a bailout, like what's the point? Am I still aren't I still losing progress? Two things. First, the the minimum is designed to maintain progress, and the bailout is designed to be better than zero. And the idea is not to backslide. So psychologically, it keeps pushing you forward and keeping the routine in place. The goal is not to come off your habit. That's that's the goal. So, how do you set this up? It's very simple. You're gonna write down your optimal for the different buckets. And I just talked about training and nutrition. We talked about a few other buckets on the workshop in physique university, and you could add your own buckets as you need, right? Sleep, stress, recovery, whatever. And then identify your minimum. What's the least you can do without losing progress? So for training, we already talked, we already talked about that stuff. And then define your bailout, which I would say, what can you do in less than 10 minutes when everything else is just chaos? What can you do in less than 10 minutes? Have that in your backup plan. Write it down, put it in a notes app, send yourself an email, put it on post-note, whatever makes sense. Write them down. Please, write them down. Don't just let this fly by you in your ears as you're multitasking right now, listening to this podcast. Or, Jonathan, you know who I'm talking to. You just got your home gym, buddy. You reported how the home gym now gives you extra time and you control the environment. Now you can listen to a podcast while you live. Love it. Anyway, shout out to you, Jonathan. When chaos hits, you have to know your options. So this is still having a plan. This is still a plan. That's the cool thing about it. It's kind of like you're tricking yourself into doing something that's a plan anyway, that doesn't even feel like a plan because it's a bailout. Right. So, like for nutrition, what does that look like in Thanksgiving? Load up on your turkey, take reasonable portions of sides. You're not tracking macros, you're just prioritizing protein. You get full. That's the minimum. There you go. It works. All right. So if you're thinking, okay, this makes sense. I really want help implementing it and coming up for. Myself, what all this looks like for all the different pieces. That's what we did inside physique university, and we continue to do with our students. We taught the Flex framework in our last coaching call, and we're actually going to connect that to a challenge at the end of the year. It's going to start December 10th and go right to the end of the year. It's a three-week strong finish challenge. Now you're probably listening to this episode a little before around Thanksgiving, which is a couple weeks before the challenge starts. Totally up to you if you want to come on in and get caught up on the flex framework ahead of time, because we did give everyone a six-week roadmap. And the second half of that roadmap is the challenge. So the challenge is going to run through the hardest three weeks of the year. And that's designed to help you practice pivoting and maintaining that floor, that bailout floor through this maximum chaos. And we did create some training programs for travel that you can use, some training templates, I should say, body weight, as well as if you have access to some basic hotel equipment. We will be posting daily check-ins to keep you accountable. And we have a ton of resources. A lot of them Coach Carol put together. We have decision trees for your training. Carol put together what to do at a gas station, at an airport, a hotel, a visual meal guide. What else? There's a lot of stuff in there. So when it's that time of year, you could literally go to the reference during the challenge and say, what do I do for this? So you can join now. I would encourage it and get caught up on the flex framework and start doing our onboarding and then meeting the community, meeting me and Coach Carroll, and really starting to build momentum now before it gets too crazy. Or, you know, I get it, not everybody wants to do that. You want to just do the challenge? The challenge, we're going to talk about it some more as we get closer. But it starts December 10th. We're going to kick off on December 8th. So that's a Monday. Monday, December 8th, we're going to kick off. Anybody who joins Physique University or joins through the challenge link, which is live.wits and weights.com. Live.wits and weights.com. You can join anytime now until then. You will immediately get access to physique university, become a member, and be part of the challenge and get all those resources. And for those of you who join at live.witsandwaits.com, I always throw in a free custom nutrition plan when you join as well, which accelerates the process even further for you. So again, the challenge kickoff is December 8th. It starts a couple days after that. If you want to finish the year strong, instead of starting over in January and use and learn this flex framework, go to live.wits and weights.com right now. Link is also in the show notes. So whether you join us or not, take today's episode and start setting up your framework right now. Define your optimal, your minimum, and your bailout at a minimum for nutrition and training. But also think of the other buckets that you care about. Write them down, test them if you have to before you need them. And then when Thanksgiving hits in a couple days, you're ready for that. When Christmas chaos comes in a few weeks, you're ready for that. If you join physique university, you'll be in a challenge. You'll get super accountability and support there. And then by January, while everyone else is starting over, you're going to be at least where you left off, if not better. And if you didn't make gains, that is fine. It's still far beyond where most people are because you didn't lose ground either. Maintained your strength, your muscle, your momentum. That's how you build lasting progress. That's how you make this sustainable over the long term, over the 12-month period. Because if the holidays are generally the worst time for you and you're maintaining now, that's a huge win, isn't it? Because now the rest of the year, you're going to make a ton of gains and then keep them year after year after year. All right, that's it for today. Go set up your flex framework, define those three levels. Have your strongest holiday season yet. Enjoy your holidays if you're celebrating Thanksgiving. I know we will. We're going to be enjoying all of the delicious food and the family and being grateful. I am grateful to you. I'm grateful for this platform to be able to share and have these conversations. Until next time, keep using your wits, lifting those weights. And remember, the best systems do have multiple years. I'm Philip Pape, and this is Wits and Weights. Talk to you next time.

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