Wits & Weights Podcast

All Episodes

Interviews Philip Pape Interviews Philip Pape

5 Signs You're Insulin Resistant Even If You Lift Weights (Amber Wilhoit) | Ep 468

How can you lift weights, build muscle, and still be insulin resistant? What if your metabolism is sending warning signs before your A1C ever changes? Insulin resistance is often treated like a weight loss or carb problem, but Amber Wilhoit, a registered dietitian and diabetes specialist with 22 years of clinical experience, shows why muscle quality, visceral fat, fiber, sleep, stress, and daily movement all matter.

How can you lift weights, build muscle, and still be insulin resistant? What if your metabolism is sending warning signs before your A1C ever changes?

Insulin resistance is often treated like a weight loss or carb problem, but Amber Wilhoit, a registered dietitian and diabetes specialist with 22 years of clinical experience, shows why muscle quality, visceral fat, fiber, sleep, stress, and daily movement all matter.

We talk about fasting insulin, waist-to-hip ratio, post-meal walks, strength training, and why midlife hormone health can shift body composition even when your effort stays the same. We talk about fasting insulin, waist-to-hip ratio, post-meal walks, strength training, and why midlife hormone health can shift body composition even when your effort stays the same. 

Join Eat More Lift Heavy, the 26-week fat loss program for adults over 40 where you learn the skills to improve your insulin sensitivity, build muscle, eat a flexible diet full of protein and carbs, and improve your sleep, stress, and movement... one week at a time so it's sustainable and you FINALLY keep the fat off for good.

Timestamps:

0:00 - Why muscle may not fix insulin
2:39 - Visceral fat and waist-to-hip
6:26 - Fasting insulin, the underused test
10:06 - Exercise pathways, stress, and sleep
18:52 - Protecting muscle during fat loss
21:08 - Perimenopause shifts and visceral gain
26:53 - Stop over-restricting nutrition
34:28 - Sexual health as metabolic signal
39:04 - Fiber, gut health, and glucose control

Episode resources:

  • Why muscle may not fix insulin

    Philip Pape 0:00

    I've mentioned on this show that insulin resistance is often a muscle problem, that building muscle is one of the best things you can do for your metabolic health, and I truly believe that. But my guest today, a diabetes specialist with 22 years of clinical experience, says you can lift heavy, you can have solid muscle mass, and still be insulin resistant. Today she's gonna walk us through at least five warning signs that your metabolism is in trouble even if you train hard. We get into muscle mass versus muscle quality, how to test for insulin resistance proactively long before A1C becomes a problem, and midlife changes to your body composition and sexual health that have nothing to do with your effort in the gym. Plus, the one thing almost every lifter is undereating that directly affects how your muscles handle glucose. That's all coming up. Welcome to Wits and Weights, where in every episode we put a popular piece of fitness advice under the microscope, find the hidden reason it doesn't work, and give you the deceptively simple fix that does. I'm your host, Philip Pape, and today's premise that we're going to challenge is build muscle and you'll fix your insulin resistance. It's advice I've given on this show. It's backed by evidence, but it's not quite the whole story. So my guest today is Amber Wilhoit, a registered dietitian and certified diabetes care and education specialist who's spent over two decades working with patients in clinical diabetes care. She's the host of the Diabetes Podcast, which you should go follow right now and check out the episode we did together, the Diabetes Podcast, and the founder of Empowered Diabetes, where she helps adults with type 2 diabetes and prediabetes achieve remission through lifestyle changes. So today, Amber is going to walk us through at least five signs that you might be insulin resistant even if you lift weights, including muscle mass versus muscle quality. We'll talk about proactive blood work. We'll talk about early signs to look for and some tips you can implement this week. Amber, welcome to the show.

    Amber Wilhoit 2:12

    Thank you. Thank you for having me. I'm so excited.

    Visceral fat and waist-to-hip

    Philip Pape 2:15

    I've said on this show, I talk a lot about insulin resistance and sensitivity related to a lack of muscle, related to a lack of movement, aka fitness, you know, not just as a carb or blood sugar problem, but given that you've worked with diabetes patients for a long time now, right? That's your expertise. How big of a factor in like the pie is fitness when it comes to insulin resistance?

    Amber Wilhoit 2:39

    Oh my gosh, it's a huge factor because skeletal muscle plays such a predominant role in taking in glucose in the absence of the I think of the way the body takes in insulin, is uh insulin is the key that unlocks the door to this body's cell and lets the glucose get inside where energy can be made. So when you have excess adiposity, especially around the midsection, especially around your visceral organs, which are your lungs, your heart, your liver, your intestines, then you are more resistant to the insulin that your body produces. So then the pancreas gets the signal, we need more, we need more, and it puts out more insulin. But the muscles can act like a sponge and use other pathways beyond, you know, needing that insulin key to the lock, one being the GLUT4 pathway, where it can act like a sponge and take in that excess glucose from the bloodstream. So skeletal muscle is really key in fixing part of that problem.

    Philip Pape 3:49

    Okay. And that's good to know, right? Because we are on one hand saying like that is important. And on the other hand, I do want to cover what other things are important because that's not the whole story. But two things I want to unpack there. The first is the excess adiposity you mentioned, visceral fat around the organs, which a lot of people want to get rid of for multiple reasons, including aesthetics, but also it's super uh uh important to your health. I like what you said though. You are more resistant to insulin when you have it. So it's almost this vicious cycle. The more you have it, the more you can get until is that kind of how it works?

    Amber Wilhoit 4:24

    Absolutely. I often refer to it as a snowball effect that one leads into the next, which leads into the next. And and so it's it's also about when we talk about genetics and the role that it plays, it's not as much as most people think. It has more to do with where you store your fat genetically than it does a genetic predisposition because genes take thousands of years to really change, but then you do have something called epigenetics. So you have like a dimmer switch that can be moved up or moved down, but your environment really shapes whether that dimmer gets moved up or down. Yeah. So you could be a person who stores more fat around your hips and butt and thighs. We call that a pear body shape, and your insulin resistance, your diabetes risk would be lower than someone who tends to store more fat around their abdomen that what we call an apple body shape. And we have something called a waist to hip ratio, which is one way to measure that. And typically in women, you want a waist-to-hip ratio that's below 0.85. So you you measure the smallest part of your waist and the largest part of your hips, and you divide one into the other, whichever one makes sense. I'm just kidding, but you you divide the larger to the smaller, and then you get your ratio. And for men, and you want it less than 0.9. So if it's greater than that, you're at a greater risk for cardiovascular disease, insulin resistance, diabetes, and so on.

    Philip Pape 6:01

    So that's important. I love that you went right to data and measurements. I literally just recorded a walkthrough video of a physique tracker that I have, and in one of those things is waist to hip, and then like weight to height and different things. So I have a quick question. Is waist to hit hip ratio like pretty much the simplest, best way to go? Or do you also look at like the body roundness index is one that I've seen that's replacing BMI? Like, do you have any others that you use?

    Amber Wilhoit 6:26

    I really like waist-to-hip ratio. It's so simple and it it's one of the most researched when it comes to visceral adiposity to look at that. And then if you're if you're really looking at biomarkers like early intervention for things like prediabetes and type 2 diabetes, which I believe people should be looking at because the statistics around this are amazing. So one in two adults in the United States has either prediabetes or type 2 diabetes, which is just phenomenal when you think of the greater your age, the more your risk for diabetes. But we're so if you really took another slice of that older population, it's definitely going to be greater than one in two. So one way to know your risk really early on, there are things like your A1C, which if you if you go on the American Diabetes Association website, you can see different like clinical markers to diagnose prediabetes and diabetes. One is your A1C test, which measures the glucose levels that are attached to your red blood cells. And your red blood cells live about three months, so they can measure that and then get an idea of how the sugar's been circulating in your bloodstream for three months. But that's not really going to be elevated until you've already had a great degree of insulin resistance and you've already had a great degree of fasting insulin levels. So that it starts with those fasting insulin levels being higher. So that's another test that's completely underutilized. So back to your question, I like waist-to-hip ratio because it's cheap. You can do it today, you know, you could do it in the next five minutes. But fasting insulin levels are another pretty inexpensive test that you could get done. And if the number is five, if it's under five, you're good. If your number is five to 10, then you've got some level of some early insulin resistance that could be possible. If it's 10 to 20, it would be moderate insulin resistance. And then greater than 20, you've probably got some very significant insulin resistance going on. And that's going to affect your inflammation levels and that avalanche effect.

    Philip Pape 8:50

    So fasting insulin is that typically tested as part of normal labs that people get, or do you have to ask for it?

    Amber Wilhoit 8:56

    You have to ask for it. It's not typical, very underutilized.

    Philip Pape 9:00

    And is it affected by the environment of the study, or you know what I'm trying to say? The situation, like what you've eaten and all that? Because it's fasting, right?

    Amber Wilhoit 9:08

    Right. So you want to who knew fasting would be like no part of it.

    Philip Pape 9:13

    That part seemed obvious, but yeah.

    Amber Wilhoit 9:14

    No, it's okay. No, I think it is important to spell it out because if if people are going to be doing this, it's important that they know what they're asking for and they know how they would show up for the lab test. And so it's a blood draw. And you would want to be fasted for eight to 12 hours prior to that test. And with this one, you actually would not want to do your wits and weights workout before that lab. You don't want to exercise day of. And you wouldn't want to have caffeine, coffee, even though it's no sugar, no cream. You wouldn't want that before that test as well, because that could increase the insulin levels.

    Philip Pape 9:49

    That actually makes sense, right? Because when you work out, you're changing the dynamics of the insulin in your bloodstream and where they go. And I think that is related to the GLUT4 transporter as well that you mentioned. Yeah, the pathway. Maybe we could dive into that a little bit so people know what that is.

    Amber Wilhoit 10:06

    Well, it's just essentially an alternate route. You know, if if you think of, I like to use Waze and some people hate it, some people love it. I really enjoy it to get me where I'm going and avoid traffic jams and and the like. So think of insulin resistance as the traffic jam. And Waze is going to divert your path around this. So it's another way to get glucose into the cells, which is what your body needs to have happen, in the absence of, you know, it overcomes that resistance. It is a way to get it directly into the muscle where the energy is needed. Create ATP, you get your all that Krebs cycle goodness that we learned. Whew, huh? I don't want to say how many years ago, almost 30 years ago. But yeah, it's just allows your muscles to get the energy that it needs. And the more the better trained you are, the better that glute four pathway is going to be. The more skeletal muscle you have, the more sponges you have, the more water you're going to be able to soak up.

    Philip Pape 11:10

    So that's a good point, right? Because sometimes we think about transitory effects and then long-term effects. And I know we talk about training a lot as having both benefits of like while you're training, amazing things happen in the process of when you're in the gym and right after as you're recovering and as you adapt the next few days, and then long term. So when it comes to insulin resistance, you mentioned the GLUT4 is, I guess, amplified when you have more muscle tissue, is because you have just have more of those or or more that are switching on.

    Amber Wilhoit 11:41

    Yeah, but I think it really comes down to what you see in terms of like for my experience, it's been people who have altered glucose metabolism, who have type 2 diabetes mostly, sometimes pre-diabetes, but in these individuals that you really can more than most see the effect of a response to exercise on blood sugar levels. You see for 48 hours the blood sugars being more level than days where they don't have their normal activity or workout. And it was my very first introduction to this was maybe 19, 20 years ago when I was counseling someone and their glucose levels were just gorgeous. Like morning fastings were in a non in the range of somebody who didn't have diabetes. All the two-hour post-meal glucoses that this person recorded, so two hours would be when you would expect it that the insulin would peak and kind of get out of the system after the meal. So the two-hour post-meal levels you would want to see less than 140 in people who have diabetes. And so all of those were under 140. Beautiful. And then there was this one day where, or like a couple of days in there where the fastings were in were in the 180s, 190s, and then they got up to 220, 280 after meals. And I'm like, what happened here? And he was like, oh, that was a really stressful time, and I wasn't able to get my workout in, and I didn't get much sleep. And it just goes to prove what the research also supports that stress and high cortisol levels and low sleep can really have an impact on your glucose levels and and the way that you utilize, you know, the inflamed nature that you are in that situation. So a lot of outputs and and it's neat to see the proof in the pudding.

    Philip Pape 13:40

    So the Glute4 thing, just just to nerd out on it one more time, is you know, when you're strength training and using your muscles, uh, it activates those, but also walking does, right? Like just movement in general. How do they compare? Do you know?

    Amber Wilhoit 13:52

    I don't know offhand. I would say that it has more to do with how you're like your VO2 max and how trained you are across time. Talk about transient effects. Like if you look at, for example, the fats that is in a muscle cell, the fat stored in there, your myofascial fat stores. You can take somebody who is very well trained and they would have more than an untrained person in some circumstances, have more fat in their muscle, but they're not gonna have the typical results you would see with people with a lot of fat in their muscle because they're well trained. So the pathways are just different in how it utilizes it, and they haven't fully extrapolated like what's causing that exactly. But you have in, especially in endurance athletes, they have a lot of fat stored in their muscle. And if you think about it, the liver can store around 250 grams of glucose. And so if you're doing a marathon and you're using massive amounts of glucose both during the race and then even afterwards, as you're repairing and rebuilding from the race, you're using more glucose than you can really kind of eat. And most people eat about 200 to 250 grams of glucose a day or carbs a day, that it makes sense to be able to store it in the muscle and have it directly where it is needed for more endurance base. Now, it's not going to help you in a sprint necessarily because you use a different pathway, but to be able to utilize that, it it just shows that people who are well trained don't have that same negative response to fat storage in and around the muscle cells that you do with people who are not.

    Philip Pape 15:38

    Okay, this is really fascinating. So you're talking about like fat infiltration in the muscles, which we don't talk about a lot here. And what comes to mind for me is clients I've worked with who are very well muscled and they are, you know, super strong, very well muscled, and their blood work looks pretty good, actually, even if they're carrying a lot of extra body weight, but like they might not have a great resting heart rate because they're not walking or something like that. It's interesting, these different health variables and what they're affected by. So are you saying that? Well, I'm gonna make two assumptions. You could tell me if I'm wrong.

    Amber Wilhoit 16:11

    The first assumption I will try. I didn't read that study yesterday, but I'll try.

    Philip Pape 16:17

    Somebody with more muscle, despite having more fat in general, which also means in their muscles, is still gonna have a slight advantage uh for some of the health outcomes we're talking about. That's assumption one. And then assumption two is is there a difference then in someone who's well muscled who has more versus less fat in their muscles?

    Amber Wilhoit 16:40

    Okay. Yes. So what I was referring to before was sort of the this study I read a while a while ago about like a meta-analysis of looking at people who were endurant well-trained endurance athletes versus lean individuals versus obese individuals, overweight obese individuals. And they found that just in the lean individuals who are well-trained, that excess fat in the muscle was not detrimental to their overall health. In fact, the opposite was true versus the lean and the lean untrained and the overweight obese didn't have those same positive benefits from the fat and the muscle is actually a negative effect.

    Philip Pape 17:27

    So I was thinking, I've seen data suggesting that total muscle mass isn't significantly different between metabolically healthy and metabolically unhealthy people. And that could be a matter of when you're overweight, you have more muscle, even though you're not going to be able to do that. Right.

    Amber Wilhoit 17:43

    You're carrying more weight. Yeah. Yeah, that makes sense.

    Philip Pape 17:46

    Yeah. And then and then there's this muscle quality issue. Is that something that you could tell us more about?

    Amber Wilhoit 17:52

    The only things I've seen regarding muscle quality, because I am a one-trick diabetes pony. So it for me, it's is the muscle well trained? Can it act like a better sponge to soak in excess glucose? And that's gonna come from in general, it's gonna come better from people who exercise at least 30 minutes, at least five days a week, from people who have less central adiposity, meaning they have less visceral fat and fat stored around their internal organs, and they manage their sleep and stress well. I am a little too removed from all the exercise physiology studies to do a better job than that.

    Philip Pape 18:36

    That's helpful to know, right? Because you're connecting everything we just talked about with now. I always tell people look, wherever you're starting from, you have some advantage. If you're overweight, your advantage is you have extra body fat to draw from and you'll probably respond better, you know, to certain things, right?

    Amber Wilhoit 18:52

    Yes. And so speaking to the part that you said about more muscle in in people who are overweight or obese, that is true. And I I agree with what you said to use it to your advantage. And in fact, one little trick up our sleeve that we've used with people that we work with is if you have lost five pounds in the past two weeks, guess what? You're gonna now walk with a rucksack with an extra five pounds in it. If you've lost 15 pounds, you're gonna walk with a rucksack with that, because that it tends to go, it tends to be true that as you lose weight, it's not all fat loss. You lose muscle with it, you lose your bone mass, lean body mass type stuff. So the idea behind that is we wanna keep your brain, keep your body thinking that you're still that same weight muscle-wise. You gotta hold on to that muscle because it still benefits you. But let's let go of the fat, the extra fat, you know. Um, and of course, that comes from the composition of the foods. We look at um processed foods in the diet and trying to increase fiber intake and just the overall quality of nutrition with the exercise. And I know your part of your program also encompasses that, which I think is amazing. So I think you can out-eat any medicine, you can out-eat any exercise, and that's why you have to also pay attention to nutrition on top of the exercise and and movement portion. It's crucial though.

    Philip Pape 20:31

    Yeah, and I love that hack too. That that's actually a really good hack that people should pay attention to. Of like, even if you're not extremely overweight, anybody in a fat loss phase, what if you just start adding that weighted vest or that rucksack or you know, making things a little bit harder from a load perspective, not going overboard with understanding you have recovery capacity issues and things. But if you are overweight, one of the advantages, you shouldn't have as much recovery sapped from you because you have those fat stores to draw from. At the same time, you know, you you may not have the work capacity or the cardio capacity yet too. So you got to balance it all for the person, right?

    Amber Wilhoit 21:08

    Yes. And and we we use it more than just for that purpose. We use it, we call it a gratitude pack because if you've lost 10 or 15 pounds and at the end of that walk, you take that 15 pounds off, you feel so light. And it's like, whoa, I used to carry that around all the time. You know, so it's just a shift in perspective. And I think anytime you can get outside of your head and outside of just what you always do and do something different, think of something differently, then you can really experience change for the positive in that space. So that's also helping you so that's awesome.

    Philip Pape 21:50

    Shifting a little bit here, you know, we talked a little bit about the visceral fat component of it. And I know a lot of listeners, a lot of my listeners are women in their 40s and 50s. And they're dealing with perimetopausin changing hormones that have their own independent effects, especially the decline in estrogen, on that extra, even more fat storage. Um, and they haven't changed anything, right? So they're super frustrated. They're like, and maybe they are training, maybe they're all doing all the things. So what's happening at the metabolic level that's maybe relevant to what you brought up already about adiposity for the hormone stuff? Yeah.

    Amber Wilhoit 22:26

    Well, I mean, it's definitely estrogen and the way that it shifts where you tend to store fat, you know, it it does have an effect on whether you store fat in your legs and your butt and your hips versus your abdomen. And it is, it is more likely uh around and after menopause to be stored around your internal organs. And that is the most dangerous place to store it. And so unfortunately, it's not enough to do what you've always done and have the same outcomes or look the same way. Unfortunately, you have to think like, what more can I do? What other fine-tuning knob can I adjust here? And sometimes it feels like I'm already doing it all. What more could I add in? So it's you really have to look at what is the impact of stress and sleep. Because if you're fighting against cortisol all the time and stress hormones, you're just gonna be pushing that rock up a hill like Sisyphus, and you've got to find ways to to manage and look at that. And I think a lot of that can come into play. I'm 40, almost 49. So that's I'm at that peri stage. And and it is important about I have to spend more time and attention thinking about what I'm doing to set myself up for success, to get a good bedtime and get good sleep and wake up around the same time every morning to help with the circadian rhythms and in that as well. And just it takes more focus, but not always more effort, if that makes sense. It takes better systems, which I think you're all about and intention. Yeah.

    Philip Pape 24:08

    Okay. So two things came up in my brain. The first is related to insulin resistance at that age and specifically in that population. So is there an independent increase that we see in insulin resistance because of those hormonal changes, independent of the other factors?

    Amber Wilhoit 24:28

    So um what I will just speak in general statements is that as people age in general and especially worsened by estrogen and where it causes women to store fat more around the internal organs, that's gonna increase insulin resistance. That's going to increase the shuttling of the triacyl glycerols to the liver. That's gonna put someone at greater risk for fatty liver. And all of those things are are going to be going against blood sugar levels and against metabolic homeostasis where it is now. So it would get worse with age, but mostly because also with age, we tend to lose lean body mass. So it's a couple of factors.

    Philip Pape 25:18

    Yeah, that that makes sense. So then the trap I think a lot of women have told me they find themselves in is like the weight loss resistance combined with the stress, combined with now I feel more desperate to do something about it. And they all seem like counteracting forces. You know, my program's called Eat More Lift Heavy for a reason because I'm trying to encourage people to think differently, not just to eat more at limitum, whatever, but more of let's support the fuel side of things rather than restricting that side, but then fix the other stuff like training and like you said, sleep. So, like, where would you stack the priority of those pillars? Obviously they're all important, but when you've got sleep, managing stress, food as in eating enough food, or also versus trying to diet and lose fat? Because losing fat and what could also be good for your health, depending. Like, how would you stack those in general?

    Amber Wilhoit 26:12

    Um, I'm gonna go from bottom up instead of top to bottom, if I may.

    Philip Pape 26:15

    Like a pyramid, you mean, or or like the least priority?

    Amber Wilhoit 26:18

    Least priority first.

    Philip Pape 26:19

    Okay, got it, got it.

    Stop over-restricting nutrition

    Amber Wilhoit 26:21

    I would say because there's only one of those when you were saying, I was like, ooh, I don't really like that one. The rest were fine. Um, but I don't like restrictive eating styles in general. Like most women are over-restricting, at least to some degree. And if they're under-restricting most of the time, then that also can bring about some binge eating at other times. And then you get things like cheat days. And there's a fantastic app. Your app, of course, there's a any app that can track your calories. If you wanted to do that, I would recommend anybody do it for two weeks. It's not really fun, but it's good to just kind of have a marker of where you are. And it's so eye-opening to see, like you could be in a calorie deficit Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, and in let's say you were under by 200 calories all those days. So you got a thousand calorie deficit going into the weekend, but then you have a brunch, you've got a baby shower, you've got something sketched, some event scheduled, and you easily eat those thousand calories between Saturday and Sunday and different events. And so you think, oh, it's not I've been so good during the week, and food does not have a moral value. I think it's important to say that. And then you then you've suffered, if you will, this entire week and just to have a little bit of fun on the weekend, if you will, and it just completely came out dead even, which is okay. Depends on what your goals are. You know, your goal might just be keeping it dead even. You know, it might be that I'm restricting here so that I can have this fun on the weekend and eat things that I want. I think where people get into trouble is if they overfocus on everything and they think they have shame within themselves for what they eat, or label different foods as something that they never eat, they don't eat. Um like I said, food doesn't have a moral value. I think that's where people get into trouble. I think also when you have a lot of processed foods in your diet, and by diet I just mean the food that you eat in a day in your lifetime. And processed foods would be anything that you can't go into your pantry and normally find. Like you don't have xanthan gum in your pantry, you don't have kerogenin in your pantry. So that sort of thing. You you just want to keep it with things you you could have in your pantry. And and I don't want to say the less ingredients the better, but as a general rule, that works well too. But really looking of how I can add things, and we talked about this before, and and I'm a strong proponent of looking at where you are, and instead of thinking of restriction and cutting back, and that none of those words are fun, you know, like how do you add in more fiber? How do you add in more fruits and vegetables? How do you add in more color? So nutrition is way up there for me. So in that, I want you to add nutritious foods. I want to take away things that are really stealing joy from your life in terms of restrictive types and behaviors of ways of eating. And I mean, for me, exercise is super important. I'm I schedule in my activity in my week and in my day before anything else. Like that's what I do first thing in the morning because I just want to get it. Not that I want to get it done because I really enjoy it. It's not one of those things like swallow that frog. I want to get it over and done with. I want to move my body. I feel the best when I move my body. I eat better when I think of it in terms that I've moved my body and now I want to fuel my body well. So nutrition, exercise, those are the top two for me. Sleep is important, of course, because I can't move my body well if I'm dragging along, you know, performance-wise. That's and that's also why, you know, the things that I have cut out of my nutrition are, you know, I used to have the occasional drink here and there. And and people, you know, if you enjoy that, fine. But for me, when I would drink the night before and then run, even if it was just a glass of wine, when I would run the night the next morning, my performance would suffer. And it just didn't pass the worth it line for me. So for others, it does. It wasn't when I can notice my performance suffer because of something I've done through sleep or or nutrition, I'm gonna, I'm gonna cut it out. That's my personal preference.

    Philip Pape 31:13

    I'm gonna requote you right now. Does it pass the worth it line? Does it pass the worth it line? That's so good. Some of this stuff is binary. Like you mentioned training. I would tell no one that zero trainings is acceptable. Like, you know, like you have to train. I would agree. But then it's a matter of degrees and like frequency and all that. Sleep, everybody has to sleep, but then it's a function of okay, now where do you make the trade-off between your schedule for training, for sleep, and then like just fitting fun stuff in for stress? Like, how does somebody make all that work, Amber, when your population you deal with is just like stressed out of their mind?

    Amber Wilhoit 31:50

    Yeah, no kidding. Uh, because in in general, I work with a group of people who have a lot of stress because there's so many more decisions they have to make in a given day that somebody without type one, type two, pre-diabetes, type C, you know, monogenic diet, any of these types of diabetes has to worry about because they're thinking about, okay, I'm gonna eat how much insulin should I take for that amount of carbs? What's my ratio of insulin to carbs? So if I'm having 45 grams of carbs and I'm on a one to eight, then I need to give this many units, and then my sugar, I need to add those many units in. So I'm giving nine units for that, but then oh, I'm gonna exercise afterwards, and I don't want my sugar to go low, so I have to take it away, which is why um technology has really helped in this space ease a lot of the burden with continuous glucose monitors and automated insulin delivery devices, your GLP1 class of medications, your SGLT2 receptor agonists. So all of these are, I'm sorry, SGLT2 inhibitors, forgive me, GLP1 receptor agonists, all of these help. But you know, I I'm a firm believer in doing as much as you can through nutrition, exercise, sleep, stress management. And then if you need the scaffolding to support the other, um, unfortunately, people who have type 1 diabetes, that scaffolding is needed forever. You know, they have to have insulin to survive. But if you could not have it and get away with it, wouldn't you want to do that? You know?

    Philip Pape 33:26

    What about? I know one thing that you've covered, I think you've covered on your podcast is like sexual health and diabetes, which, you know, erectile dysfunction and uh arousal and all those things that are important. We don't talk about it enough sometimes. I talk about libido in the context of hormones and stress and energy, but where does this connect with the diabetes world?

    Sexual health as metabolic signal

    Amber Wilhoit 33:47

    Yeah, well, I think it's important to understand that in the diabetes world, if you are over age 80, there's something like a 98% chance that you have erectile dysfunction. And if you're over age 70, it's still somewhere like a 75% chance. I haven't looked at the numbers recently, but it is an astounding number of people. So you have this chronic disease that showed up in your life when you're 65. And on top of that, you've noticed your libido is in the toilet and your your quality of life has thus decreased. And so I see so many men, especially, but you know, it's not necessarily just men. Women have some of the same sexual dysfunction issues, but they're like, well, gotta die somehow. And and they're they're just don't always have a lot to live for once the spice of life, if you will, has been taken away. So, but now let's talk about more people in their 40s and 50s. If you think of the the risk of type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease, so they are ugly best friends, they go hand in hand. And a lot of people who come in with a heart attack are then diagnosed with type 2 diabetes because it's all that metabolic disease process. And erectile dysfunction can be an early sign that something cardiovascular is not firing on all cylinders, that there's some issues there. And so when we talk about insulin resistance and that excess fat shuttling to the liver, it also shuttles to the arteries and can get in the intermedia there in the blood vessel walls, and it makes these foam cells in there that are highly inflammatory very sticky, and people can throw a clot. And so it's very important that cardiovascular health is looked at in this whole picture because heart disease is the number one killer in the United States. And I think it would be real, we would be really remiss to not look at disease risk there and the way that insulin resistance plays a role in that, and the fact that half of all adults have either diabetes or prediabetes, half. So as you age, it's gonna be more. And then if diabetes and heart disease are interlinked and cardiovascular dysfunction and sexual dysfunction are interlinked, you see it's all it all matters.

    Philip Pape 36:31

    All those are linked with obesity, right? Which is also linked with the upstream root causes of obesity, which is, you know, for whatever reason full of controversy, because there's always talk of the end of the stream, like diet and exercise and nutrition and all that, or or you know, calories and calories out. But at the end of the day, these these diseases of aging, they probably didn't exist at all at a certain point in human history, and now they do, and it's not just a function of longevity because people could have lived to the 90s a long time ago. People, there's a myth about that for some reason. But yeah, it's it's because of the lifestyle, right?

    Amber Wilhoit 37:08

    I don't know. I think you also need to look at the environment. The environment plays a huge role. And the reason I think the environment is so important is because if you look in the 19, just 100 years ago, just a hundred years ago, but if you look at that time period, you didn't have the prevalence of heart disease and type 2 diabetes that you have now. You know, 11 and a half, 11.7% of the population has diabetes, but in 1920, it was less than 1%. So what has changed the most? I would say it's the environment. Then and then that comes into the food supply and policies and just so many things, industrialization, lots of stuff.

    Philip Pape 37:54

    At which point in the stream, like when I say lifestyle, I'm thinking the environment affects your lifestyle, but then you could go one step further and say, well, where does this environment come from? And can we do something about it? But okay, to make it maybe a little more positive here, let's switch to nutrition a little bit because there was a note that I had we didn't get to, and that is we talk about protein a lot, but I want to hear your take on fiber because that is super, super important. Yes. And maybe more important for some people, is it? I don't know, you tell me.

    Fiber, gut health, and glucose control

    Amber Wilhoit 38:23

    Yeah. Well, the our national guidelines recommend 25 to 35 grams of fiber a day. World Health Organization guidelines recommend 25 grams of fiber a day. If you have type 2 diabetes, they recommend 30 grams of fiber a day. The average person in the world gets about 20 grams of fiber a day, but then when you cut the United States pie into that, we're looking at 10 to 15 grams of fiber a day. And the studies are robust on the effect of fiber on cholesterol. The greater the fiber in your diet, the better the cholesterol numbers, the less the risk of heart disease, and even all cause mortality. So it's very important to have add fiber into your diet.

    Philip Pape 39:12

    Wasn't there a very recent big retraction of an LDL study that had to do with some of this stuff in terms of like the carnivore and keto crowd? Because one of the things that really irks me about that crowd is the dismissal of fiber. Like you don't need it, or it's associated with these toxic killer plants that exist in the world. You know, plants kill you and like weird stuff like that.

    Amber Wilhoit 39:32

    I I say weird, but yeah, when they're talking about plants kill you, most of the time when I see that they're talking about lectins. And and lectins are the plants defense chemicals that that prevent other plants from invading their space. You know, like this is what this is what I need for my roots to grow. Stay away, stay away, you know. But that and then there have been some in vitro studies, test tube studies that that cells can be damaged by these. And then there's also like the anti-nutrient data, but that's really old data. Like I learned that when I took my courses at UF in nutrition. And but thankfully, science evolves and changes. And if you're looking at that, you're looking at like 30-year-old nutrition data, and really it is beneficial, and they're finding more and more benefits of that through roughage. So your intestinal lining has these finger-like projections, these villi, and each one is very important for nutrient absorption. And you need the fiber to be like that, the straw broom to sloth off all the old cells and keep it fresh and vibrant and and able to absorb all the nutrition from the food that you eat, which you do absorb all the nutrition from the food that you eat, but it just keeps it all healthy because if you don't absorb all of your fat, for example, like you can do a fecal fat test, where even if you lose six grams of fat, you have some degree of fat malabsorption, maybe from cystic fibrosis or from um some kind of bowel condition. So fiber is important because it helps with your prosprandial glucose, it helps with the intestinal health, and it feeds the microflora of the gut. And lots of research has come out now regarding the immunity that is in your gastrointestinal system, especially your your small intestine, and that you you get this nutrition that the the bacteria really like you've got your bacteroides and your fermicutes, and and you want more of the good bacteria to proliferate the good colon bacteria that's gonna keep you healthier than the bad.

    Philip Pape 41:56

    Sometimes I just want to make it a matter of it's gonna keep you more full, it's actually gonna reduce your calories, it's going to be associated with healthier, you know, more nutritious foods anyway, like fruits and vegetables and grains and such. But you point out also the gut health aspects of it that are that cannot be underrated at all. And having a diverse microbiome, uh, you mentioned gut issues, right? There's people with um ulcers of chloritis and all and IBS and all that, where there's a whole gut connection. And then I think my brain went to LDL just because there's also correlation with reduced LDL cholesterol and things like that with fiber. Um so meaning it's important to do that.

    Amber Wilhoit 42:34

    Yeah, there's so many things. And I and I do believe we haven't even elucidated all of the things, you know.

    Philip Pape 42:40

    So don't cut carnivore. Okay, so all right, to kind of wrap it up, because we talked about a lot of things, but I think it's the audience also wants to know like, is there something they're not doing, something specific, something actionable related to insulin sensitivity? I know we got some tips today, like test your fasting insulin. I think that's a super easy tip.

    Amber Wilhoit 43:04

    Yeah.

    Philip Pape 43:04

    And a few other things. Is there something we didn't cover? Something you're like, yeah, you guys do this thing. It's easy, it's simple, it's gonna help you out.

    Amber Wilhoit 43:11

    The obvious one would be move after meals. That's gonna increase your sensitivity to insulin for sure. Lifting, because the more lifting you do, the more trained your muscles, the the more sponge effect, if you will, they're gonna have. And the post-meal walking is very research-based, especially in the world of diabetes.

    Philip Pape 43:34

    Actually, I want to ask you about the movement after meals, because yeah, um, I usually tell people like, you know, step one, move. Doesn't matter when. Step two, move after meals if you can. Like specifically.

    Amber Wilhoit 43:45

    The timing, yeah.

    Philip Pape 43:46

    Um, but what about not moving? Uh, in other words, what's the impact? Because I I I've I've seen a few studies on this, but the impact of not moving on insulin resistance.

    Amber Wilhoit 43:57

    Yeah, it's bad. Don't not move. Like, even if you're training and getting like let's say you got enough steps and you're training, but then you're sitting for hours and hours and hours because your job Yes, you could be you could get your daily workout in, but if you're sedentary the entire rest of the day, it's gonna have deleterious effects for sure. And and that is also backed by research that is just it's your sedentary lifestyle as a whole, even if you've got that time picked out that you run around like a maniac and get stuff done. You know, you still it's cumulative.

    Philip Pape 44:35

    And does it come down to like the mechanisms like the GLUT4 transporters specifically, or is there a specific mechanism of like sitting for a long time? Do you know what I mean? Like with the blood flow or something.

    Amber Wilhoit 44:45

    I mean, there's so many different things. You you've got P par gamma, you've got GLUT4 pathway, you've got like I I wouldn't say that's the thing. It it's it's cumulative movement and keeping your body you know, people have used the term keeping your sword sharp, and I love that term personally. I just think it's important to to look at where you are and think, where can I add more? Very much like with our nutrition discussion, where can we refine this and fine-tune it and just be the best you that you can be and do the best that you can with your movement. I think um it's gonna help you with your knees and your back and like we weren't made to sit hours upon hours of the day staring at a screen. I think you and I are both standing and we're doing that for on purpose, you know?

    Philip Pape 45:36

    Yep, yep. Exactly. So funny. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I stand all the time. It's great. All right. So as we wrap up, I want folks to know, you know, you've got you guys have a podcast, the diabetes podcast. I was on it, but you've also got fantastic episodes. I think you're up to over 50 episodes now. Is there one that's like a really good one we want to point folks to?

    Amber Wilhoit 45:57

    Oh, um, I would say I did one that really specifically looks at the environment and its role in diabetes and policy change. I would love for people to take a look at that one because it is out of control. And there are lots of reasons why. And I don't think that it can be fixed by any one thing or any one person, and that's kind of why we moved our role from just consulting to the podcast. Because, like, how do we get the message out to reach the most people that they really understand that it's it's not just personal responsibility? Like, personal responsibility is number 30 on the list of things that got us where we are. So there's that one, and then there's also one that's called pre-diabetes is diabetes, and I think that's a really, really important one, especially for your listeners.

    Philip Pape 46:52

    What I really like about your podcast uh with Richie is the episodes are like very thoughtfully constructed and really deep into that topic, and you cover like all the things people want to know. And so that's episode 47, pre-diabetes is diabetes, which is a good look at like if you don't do the things, where are you gonna end up? And then episode 51, the diabetes epidemic, um, is probably a really good understanding of we've alluded to the whole pie chart of you talk about fiber and like no PE in schools and screen time and you know, butyrate and inflammation, all the things. So, guys, check that out. There you go. I hear you, I hear you. All right, so check those out. We're gonna throw the links. Any anywhere else we want to send folks to Amber?

    Amber Wilhoit 47:35

    The diabetespodcast.net is where you can find all the notes, all the other episodes. Um, there's things on fiber, carbohydrates, all sorts of stuff.

    Philip Pape 47:45

    Great. So if whether you have diabetes or not, it's you guys need to check Amber's podcast out. And Amber, thank you so much. This was a lot of fun. Uh time flew by, and thank you for coming on the show. Thank you, Philip.

Featured

Ready for the Next Step?

Read More
Interviews Philip Pape Interviews Philip Pape

3 Fat Loss Metrics to Track Before Summer (Beyond the Scale) | Ep 467

The scale can jump 2 to 5 pounds overnight yet you're still losing fat. How is that possible? Scale weight is one of the noisiest signals, and if you’re over 40, strength training, or dealing with hormonal fluctuations, it can push you into the exact wrong decisions: eating less when you shouldn’t, adding cardio when recovery is already limited, or assuming you're failing when you’re actually improving body composition. We walk through 3 metrics that tell a more accurate story about fat loss progress and long-term sustainability, especially for lifters over 40 running a fat loss phase before summer.

The scale can jump 2 to 5 pounds overnight yet you're still losing fat. How is that possible?

Scale weight is one of the noisiest signals, and if you’re over 40, strength training, or dealing with hormonal fluctuations, it can push you into the exact wrong decisions: eating less when you shouldn’t, adding cardio when recovery is already limited, or assuming you're failing when you’re actually improving body composition.

We walk through 3 metrics that tell a more accurate story about fat loss progress and long-term sustainability, especially for lifters over 40 running a fat loss phase before summer.

This episode covers daily weight fluctuations from water, glycogen, sodium, and hormonal cycles, study findings on body composition during the menopause transition, the rate-of-loss range that separates fat loss from muscle loss, the link between waist circumference and cardiovascular risk, and a 4-marker biofeedback approach for spotting an unsustainable deficit regardless of what the scale weight says.

This episode is for adults over 40, women in perimenopause and postmenopause, and anyone running a strength training and nutrition plan before summer.

Cozy Earth - Bamboo pajamas, the Classic Cuddle Blanket, and other temperature-regulating products for better sleep and recovery. Use code WITSANDWEIGHTS for 20% off.

Try Fitness Lab, the AI coaching app that tracks your nutrition, training, and biofeedback and tells you what to do next so you can build muscle and lose fat without spreadsheets or guesswork.

Timestamps:

0:00 - Scale weight and the fat loss problem
3:30 - Daily fluctuations from water, glycogen, sodium
5:00 - Perimenopause and menstrual cycle changes
5:45 - Body composition during menopause
7:30 - Weight trend velocity
10:30 - Rate of loss and muscle preservation
12:00 - The #1 foundation of recovery
14:17 - Waist circumference
14:39 - Cohort data on cardiovascular risk
16:30 - Waist thresholds for men and women
17:30 - Visceral fat shifts in perimenopause (menopause belly)
19:30 - The 4-signal biofeedback composite score
26:17 - Bonus: red flag threshold for an aggressive cut

  • Philip Pape: 00:00

    If you're stepping on the scale every morning and using that number to decide whether fat loss is working, you are masking decisions based on one of the noisiest, most misleading metrics you could possibly choose. Your scale weight can swing two to five pounds overnight from water, glycogen, sodium, hormones. None of that is fat. Today I'm going to show you three specific metrics that actually predict whether you're losing fat, preserving muscle, and doing it at a rate you can sustain. You'll learn why a woman in perimenopause can lose half a pound of fat per week and see a three-pound gain on the scale the same morning. Why one measurement predicts your cardiovascular risk better than BMI, and the biofeedback signal that flags an unsustainable deficit before the scale ever catches up. Welcome to Wits and Weights, the show that puts a popular piece of fitness advice under the microscope, finds the hidden reason it doesn't work, and gives you the deceptively simple fix that does. I'm your host, certified nutrition coach Philip Pape. Summer is right around the corner. And if you're in a fat loss phase right now or you're about to start one, you need to know whether your approach is working. For most people, working often means one thing, and that is hey, the scale is going down, and that's it. And that is the entire feedback loop. And if you are over 40, if you're strength training, if you're a woman dealing with hormonal fluctuations, that feedback loop is going to mislead you. It is going to cause you to make bad decisions. It's going to make you think that you are failing when you're succeeding. Or worse, think that you are succeeding when you're actually maybe not. So today I'm going to give you three metrics I want you tracking alongside your scale weight. Not instead of the scale weight, but alongside it. We're going to use the scale weight for one of those metrics actually. Because together they will give you a complete picture that the scale alone will not give you. Then I want you to stick around to the end of this episode because I'm going to share one specific threshold that tells you your cut is too aggressive and that you need to pull back potentially immediately. It's a red flag that you could miss for a long time until the damage is sort of already done. And I'm going to give you that at the end. Here's what we're covering in today's episode. First, why the scale is such a terrible standalone metric and how much it actually fluctuates from things that have nothing to do with body fat. Second, we'll talk about the three metrics, and I'm not going to reveal those just yet. I want you to listen to the episode because I'm going to explain the context behind them. But they are very simple things you can do already with nothing special, no special math. There's a little bit of math, but it's going to work really well for telling you what progress you are actually making. So let's talk about the scale again. Okay, and I say again because if you've listened to the show, we've talked about fat loss versus weight loss. If you're new to the show, listen up. This is super important. You step on the scale in the morning and it's up two pounds from yesterday. I'm sure that's happened to you many times. What do you do? If you're like most people, you panic a little bit. Maybe you panic a lot. Maybe you think I need to eat less. Maybe you think I need to do some more exercise or cardio. Or maybe you're just defeated, deflated because you're doing everything right. And I did everything right yesterday. I didn't even overeat, and the number still went up. Well, the problem here is that your body weight can fluctuate one to two and a half kilograms or two to five and a half pounds in a single day. And usually, almost guaranteed, none of it is body fat. And it makes a lot of sense when you think about it because every gram of glycogen in your muscles stores three to four grams of water. So if you eat a higher carb meal, 500 grams of carbs can add four to six pounds of scale weight from glycogen and water alone. And sodium does the same thing essentially. If you have a salty meal, it can cause one to three pounds of water retention that resolves within about one to three days, and none of that is fat. Of course, sodium is in a lot of things, it's in processed foods, it's in takeout, pizza, Chinese, you name it. Now, where it gets really important for you is specifically depending on your age and depending on your hormones, there could be some other confounding factors. So, for example, if you're a woman in your 40s, if you're in perimenopause or postmenopause, the scale becomes even more useless, is the way I'm gonna put it. When we look at menstrual cycle weight fluctuations, on average they're one pound per cycle, but the clinical range is like one to five pounds. And then during perimenopause, those fluctuations become erratic and unpredictable because estrogen and progestrogen are not following a consistent pattern anymore. So you could be losing, say, half a pound of fat per week, and then you see a three-pound spike on the scale one morning. And then if you react to that by doing something silly like cutting calories or doing more cardio or changing your whole routine up, you probably made a bad decision based on bad data. The Swan study, it's the gold standard study we've talked about for menopausal body composition research, tracked over 1,200 women and they used DEXA scans over 18 years. They found that during the menopause transition, fat mass gain roughly doubled, going from about 1% a year to 1.7% a year. Meanwhile, lean mass, right, muscle, lean mass shifted from a slight gain to a decline. But total weight gain over the transition averaged only three and a half pounds. So because fat was going up and muscle was going down, the scale didn't really change that much. So think about that. Think about that a lot. A dramatic shift in body composition, more fat, less muscle. The scare scale barely moves. And this results in a lot of stories I hear from you from ladies who they're just not happy with their body. They have belly fat. I hear it all the time. They're it's not that they've gained a ton of weight necessarily. They could have, but even if they didn't, something is off, something isn't computing, and this is behind it. And when we talk about this body composition issue, which is relevant for all of you listening, anyone who lifts weights, listening to this show, you're trying to build muscle and lose fat. We see in study after study, trial after trial, that when people are put into a calorie deficit and training and eating enough protein, we see that there are differences in how much lean mass is retained and fat mass is lost. And you can't tell the difference between these different groups based on their training and protein, just based on the scale, because the scale weight might stay the same, but one group is actually building muscle, one group is losing muscle. And of course, we don't want to do that. We want to lose fat. For anyone starting or returning to lifting, especially when you're older, maybe you're detrained, maybe you trained when you were younger. This is also especially relevant because your body is going to respond like a novice lifter and have that high anabolic sensitivity where you are primed for recomposition. And then what happens is you sometimes gain some weight and yet you're gaining more muscle than you're gaining muscle and losing fat at the same time, yet the net effect is you're gaining weight, and that can really mess with your head. So I'm not telling you throw out your scale. In fact, the scale is something we're gonna use, and it's actually very important. You'll see why in a moment, but what you need is context, and that's what these metrics provide. So let's get into metric number one, which I call weight trend velocity. All right. So if a single daily weigh-in is unreliable, what do we do? Well, we have to zoom out, right? Instead of the trees, we want to have the forest. And so, interestingly or ironically, to do this, we want to weigh ourselves every day. Okay, you're like, what? Just stick with me. You're gonna weigh yourself every day under standardized conditions.

    Philip Pape: 07:46

    The best time to do that is first thing in the morning after using the bathroom before you eat or drink, wearing minimal clothing. And you're gonna do this every day. Then if you want to do this by hand, what you would do is calculate a rolling average. So seven days is reasonable. I really prefer more like 14 days. But let's just say you want to start collecting this now, seven-day average, and then you're gonna compare those rolling averages across time to see the trend. This is not the end of it. This is not what this is not the metric we're talking about yet. We're gonna use the trend velocity, but we need to have the trend first. Now, if you use an app like MacroFactor, okay, I love MacroFactor. All of our clients and members use it and eat more lift heavy. If you want to go download the app and use my code Wits and Weights, all one word, you'll get a two-week free trial to try it out for yourself. It's the only app that calculates your metabolism to give you accurate targets for calories and macros. So go download it, use my code Wits and Weights all one word. But in macro factor, there's something called the trend weight. And the trend weight is an exponentially weighted moving average. So it essentially smooths out the daily noise and it gives more weight, pun intended, to more recent data points over 20 days. That is something you can do in a spreadsheet as well. But my point is it's over about a three-week period, over 20 days. And what's cool about trend weight is it shows you the true direction that your weight is heading based on body fat change, because that's the energy storage in your body. And so it smooths out all the other noise from that daily number that's that's influenced by fluid. That makes sense. So the trend line is the signal, the daily number is just the noise, and we're trying to reveal the signal. But it only tells you, okay, my weight is going up or down. You also need to know how quickly that's happening. And this is where the rate of loss comes in. And it really matters a ton. So the consensus at this point is if you're gonna lose weight on a deficit, you should be losing anywhere from like a half to one percent at most of your body weight per week. There are exceptions to that rule. We're not gonna get into those cases today, but in general, you peg the top end at 1% of your body weight per week if you want to avoid losing muscle mass. So for a 160-pound person, that's 0.8 to 1.6 pounds a week. If you're 200 pounds, that's one to two pounds a week. And again, we've seen studies on athletes, on trained individuals showing that a body weight loss at these percentages of 0.7 versus 1.4 in one study resulted in similar weight, but the slower groups tend to gain more lean body mass or hold on to more lean body mass while they're losing the fat. And so that's where we get the confounding issue. If you're going too fast and you're losing weight too quickly, and a great example of this is GLP1s, GOP1s, okay? You may be losing muscle mass and it confounds what's actually happening with your body. And we don't want to do that. We don't want to do it. We want to get more muscular or at least hold on to that muscle. So when you lose faster than about 1% body weight a week, these bad things tend to cascade. Your muscle protein synthesis tends to drop. Your body doesn't have the resources to care about preserving muscle anymore when all it's trying to do is find as much energy as it can. Along with this, your testosterone can drop significantly in an aggressive deficit, as well as your other reproductive hormones, your thyroid, and your body starts pulling from lean tissue for energy. So, what I want you to do is actually look at the velocity or the rate of loss of your trend weight. And all I mean by that is what percentage are you actually losing per week? Now you may have intended on a certain amount, but what are you actually losing? So if you're doing this by hand, all you have to do is compare this week's rolling average to last week's rolling average and see what percentage of your body weight that is. If you use macro factor, all you have to do is go to your weight trend page, scroll down under the insights and data section, and you'll see something called weekly weight change. And if that number is faster than the 1%, just watch out. It might be too aggressive. If the number is flat or slightly positive and you're trying to lose weight and it's been more than three weeks, don't panic. That is where metrics two and three come in to tell you whether the approach is working, even if the scale isn't showing it. Now, speaking of things that you should be tracking, we are gonna talk about sleep and biofeedback in a little bit. And the foundation of recovery, the foundation of everything we're talking about today is sleep. So I want to put it in your head now, and then we're going to revisit it later. But this is a nice smooth segue into our sponsor for today, Cozy Earth. And I want to talk about their pajamas

    Philip Pape: 12:40

    and their cuddle blanket because when we talk about sleep and recovery, you might have heard me talk about their sheets, but pajamas is are something I never used to wear, and now I wear them every day. They're made, they're made from a bamboo-derived material. So not only are they lightweight and comfortable, but I run really hot. And temper temperature regulation is really important for me. They don't make me overheat, and that's really, really simple. When I overheat, just everything goes wrong. My heart rate goes up, my HRV gets worse, my sleep is not as good. So really think about the clothes you're wearing at night and making yourself relaxed and really pulling energy back into your body is kind of a way to put it because you get into that parasympathetic state when you're relaxed. The other thing they have is called a classic cuddle blanket, and we have it just available on our couch all the time. It is super, super soft. And if you get chilly, it's a great product. And they have so many more. A lot of them are derived from bamboo to give you, again, this temperature regulation. So go to witsandweights.com slash cozy earth to check these out. Check out all their products. I love the company, and I love if you could support the show if you're looking for something like that. Whether it's for a birthday, a gift, or just for your own use, go to witsandweights.com slash cozy earth. Code wits and weights will give you 20% off. They back everything up with a hundred night sleep trial, which means you could try it for more than three months and still return it if you don't like it. They also have a 10-year warranty. Go to wits and weights.com slash cozy earth. Automatically the code Wits and Weights will show up when you go there to get 20% off. That's witsandweights.com slash cozy earth. All right, now metric

    Philip Pape: 14:17

    two. And I'll say that this is quite underused today, which surprises me because I thought everybody just does this. And that is measuring your waist circumference. Okay, just your waist circumference, not everything else, just your waist. And the reason this matters so much, I'm gonna point to a massive European

    Philip Pape: 14:39

    cohort study in the New England Journal of Medicine, over 359,000 people. So you can't argue about sample size on this one. This found that every five centimeter increase in waist circumference raised mortality risk by 17% in men and 13% in women. And the waist circumference's predictive power got stronger after you controlled for BMI. In other words, BMI often becomes non-significant once you account for waist circumference. And that makes sense because where you carry your fat and the fact that you have more body fat matters more than how much you weigh. The more muscular you are, the more higher your BMI is gonna be, and it just throws off the number, but your waist really tells a vast majority of the story. There was something called the interheart study with 52 countries, 27,000 participants, and it found that the highest waist to hip ratio group

    Philip Pape: 15:40

    had two and a half times the heart attack risk. So if we define obesity by waist to hip ratio instead of BMI, the number of people classified as at risk would roughly triple, roughly triple. This is why I prefer things like body roundness index. This is why our clients measure their waist, along with some other measurements that give you extra nuance, but definitely want to measure your waist. It's also why waste is part of body fat calculations typically. So what are the actual thresholds? Well, the World Health Organization has two tiers. You have an increased risk above 90 centimeters for men, which is like 37 inch waste, and above 80 for women, which is about a 31 and a half inch waste. That's an increased risk. So 37 for men, 31 and a half for women. Substantially increased risk is 40 inches for men, 35 inches for women. And for the waist to hip ratio, the threat the thresholds are if you're higher than 0.9 for men and 0.85 for women. By the way, we in in Eat More Lift Heavy, we have this amazing physique tracker that will calculate all this stuff for you based on your measurements and tell you whether things are at risk or not. Now, for tracking fat loss specifically, a meaningful change based on interventions from exercise, from training is typically around five centimeters. And we know that waist circumference reductions also correlate with visceral fat reductions. That's belly fat. Okay, now we know also it's not just from exercise, that's for sure. It's also going to be from your diet and how much body fat you have. But this is especially relevant for women in perimenopause. The Swan study showed visceral fat shifts from 5 to 8% of total body fat up to 15 to 20% during the menopause transition. That's a threefold increase in visceral fat, which is the most metabolically dangerous type of fat. It concentrates in the midsection. So even if the scale isn't moving, your waist circumference going down is telling you a very important thing that you are losing visceral fat. And that is a big positive for your health. That's why I love this metric so much, because even if the scale is not moving, or even if it's going up a bit, maybe you're gaining muscle. We don't know. If your waist is going down, that's a fantastic sign. Now, here's the nuance waist circumference has measurement error, right? It's a little bit difficult to get it perfect. You know, breathing can shift your reading by four to five centimeters, meal timing can make a big difference. And if even if you're trained at this of how to do it, there can be an error. And so the protocol, the way you do this is important. I would say pick one consistent objective spot. Now, the WHO has the technical definition of the midpoint between your lowest rib and the top of your hip bone. But my shortcut is just use your belly button. Okay, we all know where our belly button is, right? So just stand in a relaxed state. Don't tense up your abs and don't slouch or like pop out your stomach. You know what I mean? Just a neutral state. And that'll be a pretty objective measurement you can do. You can use a digital measurement, you can use a normal closed tape measure, you can use the what's it called, accutape, which lets you do a little ratchet. It's okay. What matters is the trend over time. That's what matters. You'll know. I mean, the measurement error isn't so big that you're not gonna detect inches over time. You will. And so I would track it weekly, but then look at the trend, look at the average, you know, just just like you would with scale weight, but you're not tracking it every day because your waist isn't gonna change that much. But this will tell you whether you're losing fat, even if the scale is staying the same, going up, going down, it almost doesn't matter.

    Philip Pape: 19:29

    All right, so the

    Philip Pape: 19:30

    third metric is a bit different from the first two. It is a little more subjective, but the way we track it makes it more objective. Let me explain. This is the biofeedback composite. Now, you might have heard me talk about rating your biofeedback, things like energy, digestion, hunger, sleep, stress, et cetera. We have seven metrics that we look at in eat more lift heavy. By the way, if you you keep hearing me say eat more lift heavy, it's just our our program. It's a 26-week coach program where we walk you through building all of these skills, tracking your physique, improving your nutrition and training all together, your whole lifestyle. You can go to eatmoreliftheavy.com to check out what that's about and learn more. But where I'm going with that is we recommend clients track at least once a week across all seven categories. What I'm talking about today is a more precise measurement you can choose to do, where you track four specific things on a scale of one to ten, and then you just average them up, and we're gonna see if how if it deteriorates or not over time. Okay, those four things are hunger, energy, sleep quality, and training performance. Hunger, energy, sleep quality, and training performance. And you can use a scale of one to 10 to give you a little bit more uh resolution. So where one is the worst, 10 is the best. So, like if you're if you're super hungry all the time, that would be closer to a one. If sleep is pretty poor, that's closer to a one. If you're low energy all the time, that's close to one. And if your training performance is low, it's close to one, right? And then the opposite, if they're good, closer to 10. And you average them out. And the reason this works is it gives you a signal of your adaptations and your metabolism during a deficit. And that and that's because it shows up in how you feel, and that's the subjective part, but you know your body best and how you feel is becomes kind of objective because it's relative to how you felt last week. Well, you know how you feel day after day after day, and what's a good direction, what's a bad direction. And we know that your total daily energy expenditure, your metabolism, drops beyond what body mass loss would predict through reduced BMR, through decreased spontaneous movement, through hormonal shifts, especially lower leptin, lower thyroid hormones, higher cortisol, higher ghrelin, right? Appetite, uh metabolic hormones, stress hormones, all of that changes. And so your body is giving you signals. Very early in the process. And the question is whether you're paying attention to them and they if they are, let's say, appropriate or within the window that's acceptable to you, or if you're working with a coach, that's what we tend to look at is hey, let's let's use this as a proactive measure here. So if we look at the individual markers, those four things, start with hunger. Hunger is the strongest standalone predictor. And if if I'm working with a client, I can look at their hunger all by itself and learn a lot about them, not everything, but learn a lot. We know that an increase in hunger ratings predicts a decrease in adherence to your diet. And that's the biggest thing. It's simply that hunger makes it harder to stick to your diet. And temptation, the level of temptation you have, predicts an even larger decrease in your adherence. So temptation is kind of a subset when we think of hunger and cravings and temptation, right? There's a whole bunch of factors combined. Training performance is kind of like the physiological canary in the coal mine. Now I know I mentioned this as the fourth metric, but I I in my notes I had them out of order. It doesn't matter. Training performance is interesting because we know that in a deficit, strength gains tend to hold on for a while, but muscle mass starts to drop. And so if your performance in the gym is starting to drop, and performance can be measured in different ways. It can be measured with the actual numbers, but also in the effort and in how lethargic you are and how much energy you have and all that. Kind of up to you how you do that. Again, in E More LiveTavue, we give you some prescriptions around that. But just pick a way, pick a way to track that, either objectively based on your weights or slightly subjectively based on how you feel in the gym, things like that, to know whether you're losing muscle or not. That's how we look at it. Then we have sleep quality. Obviously, we know sleep is super, super important. It is difficult to self-report on sleep. But essentially, if you are more restless, if you are waking up tired, like those alone are a big way to track that your sleep is getting better or worse, not just the hours of sleep, excuse me, but basically are you waking up tired or not? Versus, hey, I'm sleeping really well, I'm sleeping like a baby, I wake up on my own. It's great. And as I mentioned before, you know, there are a lot of factors that affect sleep, including what you wear, what you sleep in, your environment, your blue light, your routine, how consistent you are with sleep times and wake times, all of that. And then, of course, the fourth one that I mentioned at the end out of order here is energy. And energy, again, it could be several different things. For many of you, this is a sense that you don't have enough energy to get through the day properly. And I say it that way because we should all have an energy drop toward the end of the day, just naturally due to cortisol, but it should feel fairly natural and smooth, I guess is a way to put it. And it shouldn't feel like you have these massive dips in energy or like you're super tired in the morning and need this huge jolt of caffeine to get going. That's what I mean by energy. And again, it's relative. So when I say relative, what you're gonna do at this state is you're gonna track it all on a daily basis and average it. Now, you're not gonna do this forever. I'm not asking you to track biofeedback forever this way, but doing it temporarily as we head into summer, if you're in a deficit, if you're trying to lean out, if you're trying to get shredded, whatever, this is gonna give you a good trend of how your signals are telling you your body's adapting. So if your hunger goes from a seven to a three, your energy goes from a seven to a four, your sleep quality goes from a six to a five, you know, your bench press starts to stall, right? All within the same couple weeks, the average is gonna start dipping down, right? Some things go up, some things go down. But if the overall average is dipping down, maybe your deficit is too aggressive. And we don't care what the scale says, because if the scale says your weight is dropping, great. But if it's at the expense of potential muscle mass or adherence or something else, we want to get ahead of it. Now, I mentioned in a recent episode, the Matador study about intermittent energy restriction, the alternating two-week deficit, two-week maintenance, producing greater fat loss. And part of that has to do with your biofeedback and adherence and your metabolism not overadapting, right? So this biofeedback composite can potentially tell you that your deficit is or isn't sustainable. Pretty cool, right?

    Philip Pape: 26:17

    Now, I did promise you a specific number at the beginning of this episode. It's a red flag threshold that tells you that your cut has maybe crossed the line from being productive to somewhat destructive. I'm gonna share that in a second. But if this episode made you realize that you want to track this stuff, but you don't want to use a bunch of spreadsheets or you don't want to manually track them, that's what we designed Fitness Lab for. It's an app that we designed and upgraded this spring and gives you personalized guidance on nutrition, training, biofeedback. It adapts to your data. It connects to Apple Health. Eventually it will connect to the Google Health and it can suck in all that data to really help you understand what's going on, whether or not you like tracking. But for a lot of people, you don't like it. And ironically, even though this sounds like a tracking app, it is not a tracking app. It actually tracks a lot of the stuff for you and tells you what to do with it. And then it's super empowering. So go to wits and weights.com slash app to check it out. That is witsandweights.com slash app. The link is in the show notes. Okay, here's the red flag number, and it's going to be based on that third metric, the biofeedback composite, the average of your hunger, energy, sleep, and training performance. If it drops below five for three or more days in a row, almost guaranteed that your cut is too aggressive. So that's the threshold I would look for. If it drops by five two to below a five for three days in a row, it means at least two of those four markers are significantly impaired at the same time, just based on math, based on averages. And that is a pattern that is predicting unsustainable dieting, potential muscle re muscle loss, and a potential rebound where you overconsume and you binge. One single bad number is not gonna get the average below a five for three or more nights. That's why we like this. Okay, but when it does, you have two options. Option one, take a diet break. Eat at maintenance for about a week. Research shows this lowers hunger, it improves your alertness, it preserves muscle endurance, it reduces your metabolic rate being suppressed. It's a great tool. Option two, it's just to reduce your calorie deficit a little bit. So stay in the deficit, but increase those calories. So it's maybe two to three hundred calories of a deficit and reassess for a week. This is gonna give you a good idea of whether it was simply a dip a past the line for your deficit and the deficit's okay, or whether just the deficit itself is the problem. You can kind of compare the two, and then if you have to, you can still take a diet break, right? We know that pushing through an unsustainable deficit does not get you to your goal faster. All of the research on metabolic adaptation tells us this. It actually gets you to a plateau faster, and it costs you a ton on the way there and it frustrates you, and then the whole thing kind of falls apart until you do it right again. So tomorrow morning, rate your hunger, energy, sleep training on a scale one to 10, average them out. If you're above, you know, six, if you're six or above, you're in a good place. If you're like five or six, keep an eye on it. But if you're below five for three days in a row, maybe you should pull back. All right, until next time, keep using your wits, lifting those weights. And remember the scale measures gravity, not progress. That's it. Your body composition, your waist, how you feel, those tell a much more accurate story. I'm Philip Pape, and I'll talk to you next time here on the Wits and Weights podcast.

Featured

Ready for the Next Step?

Read More
Interviews Philip Pape Interviews Philip Pape

Is "High Protein" Just Another Fad Diet? | Ep 466

Is high protein just another fad diet? Learn about the 3 criteria that define a fad, how protein performs against each one, the research on lean mass and strength training, the mechanisms behind protein's thermic effect and satiety, and why the case gets stronger for adults over 40.

Is high protein just another fad diet?

Learn about the 3 criteria that define a fad, how protein performs against each one, the research on lean mass and strength training, the mechanisms behind protein's thermic effect and satiety, and why the case gets stronger for adults over 40.

This episode covers the fad diet framework, research updates on protein and muscle building, the thermic effect on your metabolism and the satiety research that gives protein an advantage over carbs and fat, findings on muscle protein synthesis, and thedata on lean mass and body composition when postmenopausal women lose fat.

Plus the protein leverage mechanism behind menopausal weight gain and a 3-question test for evaluating any nutrition trend you see on social media or TikTok.

Get the Protein Day Builder, the tool that maps out a full day of meals hitting your protein target based on your schedule, dietary preferences, and the foods you eat every week.

Timestamps

0:00 - High protein fad narrative
3:25 - What defines a fad diet
4:30 - Fad diet examples
5:45 - The (false) link with fat and carb demonization
6:40 - High protein vs. the fad criteria
8:15 - Meta-analyses on protein and lean mass
9:45 - Sustainability and physical activity
11:45 - Hitting your protein target in practice
13:15 - Thermic effect of protein
15:40 - Protein and satiety
17:10 - Muscle protein synthesis and meal distribution
19:45 - Muscle loss and strength after 40
20:45 - Menopause and protein leverage
22:30 - Adequate protein for your goals
24:10 - 3-question fad diet test

  • Philip Pape: 00:00

    Chances are you've been prioritizing protein. And yet, because of all the attention on protein, you might hear pushback in the media or on podcasts that, hey, maybe this is another fad, the high protein fad. So I thought it'd be a good idea to show you three specific criteria that define a fad diet and test high protein against all three, and then explain why this backlash confuses commercialization with science. We're going to revisit topics like protein's thermic effect, its satiety impact, the muscle building threshold, and why the case might be even stronger than you think to get plenty of protein if your goal is fat loss, building muscle, and a long, healthy life. Welcome to Wits and Weights, the show that puts a popular piece of fitness advice under the microscope, finds a hidden reason it doesn't work, and gives you the deceptively simple fix that does. I'm your host, certified nutrition coach Philip Pape. And what I see happening now is there is high protein in everything. There's high protein, of course, in protein bars, but there's also protein cereal, protein water. Everything that they that has even a little bit of protein is marketed as high protein. And when something gets super popular like that, there's often a backlash. I've heard it on mainstream media. I've heard it on like news podcasts that aren't even in our space, where you'll see things like, are we obsessed with protein? And is high protein bad for you? Or are we going far beyond what the evidence says you need to have? Or isn't the level you need for protein only this? And why are people, you know, bodybuilders and fitness gurus recommending so much? And so there's this uh skepticism, I'll call it, which I'm always for curiosity and skepticism. But then there this leap of logic where they're connecting, say, the low-fat craze of the 90s to the keto craze of the 2010s, to proteins today, and they're saying, okay, this is just the next trend. And if you are listening to the show, you're probably trying to eat more protein. And what we would call high protein, now that's a whole separate issue because to me, the protein we need is as a percentage of your diet still totally reasonable. It's just people are eating far too little protein. But that's part of what we're getting into today. Because if you're trying to build muscle, if you're trying to lose fat, and then you hear somebody say, Oh, are we getting too much protein? Is that a fad? And you second guess yourself, I want to settle that today. And then stick around to the end of the episode because I'm gonna give you a three-question test that you can apply to any nutrition trend. So for my skeptics out there who are listening and want to know, hey, is this thing real? Let me examine it a little bit more carefully. And when someone starts talking about anything, even if it's seed oils, let's say, you can apply this test. So today in this episode, you are gonna learn the specific characteristics that make something a fad diet, and why the high protein approach really fails every one of those. You're gonna hear research on how protein builds muscle, burns more calories during digestion, reduces hunger, all the fun stuff about protein to reacquaint ourselves if you've already heard this before, or to learn something new and the value of protein, and why, especially adults as we age, over 40, over 50, especially women, a protein or in menopause, need higher protein, not to check a box, but because it is important to your physiology. All right, so first let's

    Philip Pape: 03:25

    define what we are talking about. What makes a fad diet a fad? The British Dietetic Association, the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics, and multiple research reviews give us a pretty consistent set of characteristics. A fad diet eliminates entire food groups. And it often relies on a single magic food or a super food or sometimes a supplement. It promises rapid results from some sort of hack or trick of your metabolism, and it is based often on anecdotes and testimonials as opposed to peer-reviewed research. It often involves selling you something proprietary, a special method, a special program, a special approach. And it's unsustainable long-term and often ignores physical activity. In other words, it's in a vacuum as hey, this diet solves everything. So I know I just threw a lot at you, but I want you to think of some real world examples that'll make this concrete. So we have the HCG diet. This is you're effectively injecting a pregnancy hormone and you're eating only 500 calories a day. There was a meta-analysis of 24 studies, found zero evidence that this does anything for weight loss. And it sold for something like over $1,000 a month. Then we have the blood type diet. This is Peter D'Amano's book, sold over 7 million copies, I believe. And there was a study in 2014, University of Toronto, over 1,400 participants. Again, no evidence that supports the diet. Same thing with the cabbage soup diet, the grapefruit diet, the cotton ball diet. That is a real thing, the cotton ball diet. And they're all based on this single magic item approach. And they're all nutritionally inadequate, often lead to malnutrition, they're all unsustainable, and many times they just simply don't work. And even if they work, it's in the short term at a severe cost with all these other things. So if you look at the historical pattern, I think history is worth understanding here, like they say, so you don't repeat it. In the 80s, in the 90s, the villain was fat. If we go back to the late 70s, Senator McGovern had dietary guidelines in 1977 that told us to cut fat and eat more carbs. And so that's when the food industry started creating low fat everything. They replaced fat with sugar. And what happened? Well, obesity rates went from 15% in 1980 to over 40% by 2018. So then we swung the other way and we demonized carbs. And this was starting to kind of overlap in like the 90s. That's when I was a teenager. Atkins, Paleo, keto, and even today, like carnivore, right? All these things are very low carb. And we know Atkins went filed for bankruptcy back in 2005, although I still see the brand, so somebody must have bought the brand to slap on these low-carb items. And now you look, you know, people look at protein and they say, all right, it's the same thing. You know, fat had its moment, carbs had its moment, and now protein is having its moment, but it's not a fair comparison. So let's get into it. Let's run the test. Does high protein meet the criteria of a fad diet? So, first of all, does it eliminate food groups? It actually doesn't. You can eat high

    Philip Pape: 06:40

    protein as an omnivore, a vegetarian, a vegan, chicken, Greek yogurt, lentils, tofu, eggs, fish, and you're essentially adding something, you're not removing something. This is a key distinction if you think about it. Cutting out or going low carb or cutting out or going low fat is different than saying, no, just eat more protein. That's a different, it's asymmetrical. So that's one distinction. You're not actually eliminating food groups, right? You don't have to cut out carbs or fat to get more protein. You just have to eat in a more balanced way. The second criteria does it rely on a one magic or super food or small groups of food? No, absolutely not. Protein is just a macro. There's no single sort protein source that's really superior. Any high-quality protein works. Plant-based, animal-based, it all works. The mechanism is the nutrient, not something proprietary or special food. The next question is: does it promise rapid results from some sort of hack or trick of the metabolism? Again, no. The recommendation to eat adequate protein for what your body needs alongside resistance training is actually the opposite of a trick or a quick fix because it requires effort, behavior change, consistency. You have to do hard things like resistance training alongside it. So if anything, it's the it's very hard to sell something like high protein from that context. The next question is: is it based on anecdotes and testimonials, or is it based on peer-reviewed research? And here's a very, very clear distinction we have that does not support low carb and low fat. We have tons and tons of studies. But if I were to pick one, there's the 2018 meta-analysis by Morton and colleagues, and this was 49 randomized controlled trials over 1,800 participants, people who consumed higher protein while resistance training gained significantly more fat-free mass. I mean, it sounds kind of dumb to say it out loud, especially if you listen to this show for any length of time. Like, duh, eating more protein, you're gonna gain more fat-free mass. That's lean mass, that's muscle tissue, right? More recently, a 2022 meta-analysis by Noones and colleagues expanded that to 74 randomized controlled trials, confirm the same finding. And we see this over and over again. There's the Tagawa study that's been referenced a lot, the dose response back in 2021. And that was over a that was 105 studies, over 5,400 participants. And when we look at the dose response curve, guess what? You gain lean mass with higher protein intake. And it's across a very, very wide range. So a very wide range, there's a lot of flexibility here. So thousands of participants, decades of research definitely passes that test, whereas low carb and low fat actually do not. Is it sustainable? All right. Well, you tell me if you could eat pretty much any food that has protein, is that sustainable? Like you could eat chicken or eggs or yogurt or beans or lentils or any plant that has protein, oats? I mean, it's again kind of a dumb question. Of course, it's sustainable. You're just adding stuff in and you're giving yourself the bounty of foods available in the world that have protein compared to like Optavia, where they're selling you packaged foods or HCG diets, 500 calorie protocol, or the cabbage soup diet. I mean, it's it's insane that we even do any of these things. And I'm raising my hand because I did them too. I did a crazy diet before my wedding to lose a bunch of weight, where I limited my diet to like 12 foods. I don't even remember what they were. My wife thought was crazy, but she loves me and she was super supportive. So she just kind of looked at me askance and left me alone. But it's insane that we do these two things to ourselves. And then the final question here is here is does it ignore physical activity? This is an important one you might not have considered. I mentioned it already, but the idea that, you know, it's not just about food, right? Food is part of a whole kaleidoscope, I'll say, of behaviors, especially your physical activity and how you move your body, because the whole idea is to fuel yourself. So when we recommend protein and higher protein, we're not saying just sit on the couch and eat more protein, because then you just might have more calories and you gain even more fat, right? Just like carbs or fat. Doesn't matter. They're all energy. It's, hey, you got to be resistance training. And we're seeing more and more of the big industry guidelines even match this. And that's why the levels we give you are far above the RDA. And when I hear the like mainstream media talking about this and they don't even mention resistance training, it's crazy to me because then it implies that there is this corner of the protein world that is like a fad diet, but it's because you're just focusing on the food itself and you're getting obsessed with that, but then you're not resistance training. So I'd say high protein, again, quote unquote high, because most people aren't even eating more than you know 20 or 30% of their diet from protein when it gets up to sufficient levels. It fails all these criteria of a fad diet. Every single one, every single one. The argument that it's a fad relies on the only observation that you could possibly stand on that is, oh, it's popular. It's popular and everybody's talking about it. So we're gonna play the contrarian and we're gonna bash it on, you know, podcasts, and then

    Philip Pape: 11:45

    people are gonna question it. Okay. So I I thought it was important to talk about this. And if if we're confirming what you already suspected, and your question is less about the why, okay, Philip, I get it. I get it, but more about how do I actually hit my target. I actually built a tool for that. Um, and I haven't talked about it in and of itself, but it's called the protein day builder. You enter your daily protein target, and then things like how many meals you want, and what your lifestyle and eating preferences are and your dietary preferences. And then it maps out a full day of meals that hit your numbers. So, of course, you can use ChatGPT or AI for something like this, but this is all pre-designed specifically for this purpose based on the evidence, based on the right numbers and all that. So it's kind of like creating a meal plan on the fly, but very flexible. You can keep hitting the button and update it over and over again. Uh, and then you can lock in your meals and have other ones rebuild around them. So it's pretty cool. It's actually part of Eat More Lift Heavy, which I've talked about before, but I want to make it available on its own. So if you go to witsandwaist.com slash protein dash tool, witsandwaist.com slash protein dash tool, protein tool, I'll drop the link in the show notes and you can go if you want to get a copy of it by itself. Okay, so we've established high protein doesn't fit the high high fad profile. You're probably not too surprised about that. But if you are, I'm glad you found this podcast. I want to go further. I want to go further. I don't think it's enough to just say that. I want to show you why the science behind protein is qualitatively different from like the the fad diet bubble, let's call it. And there's three specific mechanisms that are measurable, that are reproducible physiological effects. And they're really powerful. They're so powerful that a lot of people I work with, a lot of women, especially over 40, who simply increase the amount of protein they eat, start having a tremendous amount of results and progress in other areas like their metabolism and their body fat distribution and everything else, their energy and so on, especially when it part of balanced meals that also include fiber and sufficient fats and carbs, right? This is the thing. They all go together. So the first one is the thermic effect. I still, I'm still on the fence about whether this is overrated or underrated. So hear me out. Your body burns energy digesting food. Makes sense, right? But not all foods cost the same to process food, that food in your body. And so we call this the thermic effect. Thermic meaning heat heat energy. So fat has a thermic effect of close to zero. Carbohydrates are about five to 10%, and protein is 20 to 30%. Now that's percentage of calories. That's the percentage of the calories that you eat of that macro get burned in the process of processing that macro. So again, fat zero, carbohydrates five to 10, protein is 20 to 30%. And that's a big difference. If you start to scale that up and you you figure you eat 800 calories from protein, your body is gonna burn 160 to 240 of those calories just processing the protein. Right. Now that's 200 grams of protein. You may be eating less than that, but I'm just giving you round numbers. But the same 800 calories from fat, where you know, protein bur can burn 160 to 240. The fat's gonna burn like 24 calories at most. And we've seen this on in studies as well. There is a West WesterTerp 2004 paper you can look up and a 2024 review by Servanini or Seravini, I'm sorry, that's a TZ seravini and colleagues in Metabolism Open that also confirmed these ranges of the thermic effect. And it declined, it seems to decline a little bit with age. So older adults produce about 6.4% total diet-induced thermogenesis compared to 7.3%. It's a small difference, but it also is another reason to just keep cranking up that protein as we get older for the most part. So that's an important one right there. Number two is satiety, fullness. Protein reduces hunger more effectively than any other macro.

    Philip Pape: 15:40

    So we've got two big wins here, right? We've got the thermic effect, and now we have satiety. There's a 2005 study about 20 years ago by Wagel and colleagues. And they took participants from 15% to 30% protein in their diet, but they kept carbs constant. And no one was told to eat less. Calorie intake dropped by about 441 calories per day spontaneously in the participants who increased their protein. And then they lost about five kilograms, which is over 10 pounds. That's like what, 12 pounds or something, over 12 weeks without trying. I say without trying, but I mean they increased their protein, and that's all they did. That goes back to my earlier comment about how powerful this can be, right? So that's that's from nothing other than being less hungry. There's a scientist, her name is Heather Lady, L-E-I-D-Y, who has a lab where they looked at high protein breakfasts, like a 35 gram protein breakfast, and showed that it reduces evening snacking and it also changes the brain reward signaling when looked at looked at it on fMRI. And that's compared to a normal 13 gram protein breakfast. And I say normal, I mean a lot of people don't even get that much for breakfast. And we've seen other studies that found that higher protein diets reduce daily hunger as well, reduce your desire to eat, increase fullness, all of it. So it kind of all goes together when it comes to managing your hunger signals. And then number three is of course muscle protein synthesis. That's the big one. I mean, your

    Philip Pape: 17:10

    body is gonna use the amino acids from protein to build and repair your muscle. And there is a dose threshold. Like you need enough leucine. This is a specific amino acid to trigger the pathways that kick off the process. But if you're eating enough protein for the day, you're gonna hit somewhat, you're gonna hit those thresholds. And I always tell people like your first priority is just get your total protein dialed in however you can. And then your next priority is to spread it out. And the spreading out part is a little bit for higher muscle protein synthesis, but that's a that's kind of overblown. The more practical reason is, or yeah, practical it for practical reasons. It's so that you can have the more balanced meals, help with your satiety, and get your protein in in a practical way. That's why primarily I suggest having protein every meal. So, how much are you looking for every meal? Probably at least 20 or 25, ideally 30 to 40 grams. And since you probably need over 100 grams a day, you do the math, three or four meals, 30 to 40 grams. That's how we do the math. Pretty straightforward. And again, you can go grab my tool, wits and weights.com slash protein dash tool, and go purchase that tool if you would like a standalone way to calculate and hit this for yourself. Uh, one last thing, you probably heard that 2023 study by Trommelin and colleagues that looked at the hundred grams of protein, and they saw that eating even a full, that huge amount of protein in one meal could produce a post-exercise response that lasts for many, many hours. So there's not a, oh, you, you know, the rest gets wasted. Like if you eat over 40 grams, you're gonna waste the rest. Well, however many pro however much protein you eat in one dose is going to get used in some way. Like a large bolus, as they call it, especially post-training, can do that. But I would still recommend recognize distributing across meals just for practical purposes. Okay, I want to spend a few minutes on the older population. A lot of you are probably over 40, 50, 60, you know, I myself am 45, because it's even more important the older you get because of the muscle mass decline, because of the need to resistance train and support that. Starting around the age 30, muscle mass declines 3 to 8% per decade. Strength declines even faster, believe it or not, about 1.5% per year between the age of 50 and 60, accelerating to 3% per year after that. This is huge for functionality and for aging. For women, the menopausal transmission, transition, I apologize, tends to amplify these. So postmenopausal women have nearly three times the odds of sarcopenia compared to pre-menopausal women. And we know that there's issues with bone density as well. We see a higher incidence of osteoporosis. Estrogen decline drives reduced growth hormone, reduced IGF-1, increased inflammatory cytokines, accelerates visceral fat accumulation, that's belly fat, menopause belly, we've heard of that, right? And there is even this protein leverage mechanism that we think exists for menopausal weight gain. The idea that increased protein breakdown during menopause gives you a higher appetite through a hormone called FGF21. And so if you don't have enough protein coming in, you're gonna overcompensate by eating other stuff just to get total calories. You're gonna get more fats and carbs and total calories. So a lot of the weight gain women experience during menopause could be partly a protein-seeking behavior that gets misdirected into overconsumption of everything else. Just another reason, whether this is supported long-term or not by the evidence to eat more protein. And then there was the now, take this with a grain of salt, the women's health initiative data, which has its own problems for things like hormone replacement, but we're talking about body fat distribution. And they looked at nearly 4,700 postmenopausal women over a three-year period. And those consuming one and a half grams per kilogram or more lost more visceral fat and more subcutaneous fat and gained lean tissue compared to those at lower intakes. Again, not surprising. Just eat more protein. So I can go on and on about the studies, but protein is not a trend. It's here to stay. I'm glad that more and more people are eating it. And I'm kind of glad that they're putting it in all these foods, to be honest, just to get the attention up, you know, whatever your thought is on processing and ultra-processing, which is its own problem in our Western environment. Now, if you're worried about eating too much protein, I usually tell people there's not really an upper limit unless you already have something like kidney concerns. But the main thing is you just don't need so much more protein. If you like more protein, I have a lot of clients who just love to eat their protein, perfectly fine. As long as you can make it work with work and get enough fiber, nutrients, fats, carbs, depending on the goal, it's gonna actually serve you quite well, especially in a fat loss phase. So, in conclusion, the recommendation to eat at, I'm gonna call it adequate protein, not even high protein. Protein, just adequate protein, 0.7 to 1 grams per pound. I didn't even mention the number until now. 0.7 to 1 grams per pound of your body weight. So that's based on your body. It's for your activity level, it's for your age. So probably more if you are more active or you're training, you're trying to build more muscle, you're in fat loss, you're older, et cetera, right? All of this is backed by plenty of studies. It's endorsed by many, many large organizations now: sports nutrition, geriatric nutrition. And it's clear the mechanistic explanations are totally clear for these benefits. So I think we could put to bed that there's any fad kind of cloud over higher protein or what I'll call adequate protein. All right, before we wrap up, remember that three question fad diet test I mentioned earlier. I think is pretty cool to examine things skeptically. I'm going to give it to you in a second. But if this episode gave you something that's helpful, whether the research, the framework, or say the confidence to keep prioritizing protein and hit your protein, I would love it if you just share this with a friend. That's it. That's all I'm asking you to do. Follow the show and share it with a friend, somebody who's wondering about protein. And again, if you want to make sure

    Philip Pape: 23:05

    you're hitting your protein or find a way to do it, uh grab my protein day builder at witsandweights.com slash protein dash tool. The link is in the show notes. Of course, if you're an Eat More Lift Heavy, you already get that tool unlocked as part of the program. And that program, by the way, is at eatmoreliftheavy.com if you want to learn more. All right, here's the quick test you can run on anything that is like a trend or you see on social media. It's three questions. Question one, does it eliminate something? That's it. Does it eliminate something? If if you're told to cut out an entire macro or food group, it's already a red flag. I don't care if it's seed oils. I don't care if it's artificial sweeteners. It's still a red flag. Evidence-based nutrition tends to add and adjust and have some flexibility built in. And oftentimes this fear-mongering of single ingredient things is a red flag because things are not that black and white. And often that restriction leads to binging and overconsuming at the end of the day and then not maintaining your results. So just ask that question because if it doesn't eliminate, that at least means it's probably on better footing. Question two does it require buying something proprietary or secret or special or this is my secret one thing? If the only way to follow the diet is to purchase something, a product, a supplement, a membership, that's just really, really good marketing. That's really good marketing. Whether there's a little bit of science behind it or not, that is good marketing. Now, there could be some very science-grounded practitioners who have programs that you pay for. My my question here is is the thing that they're trying to teach you that works only unlocked for you if you pay something? That's what I'm talking about. Like I don't hide information behind a paywall, right? And if I do, let me know. I haven't I don't hide information behind a paywall. What I like to charge for is helping people and where you see the value of being helped implement that information for you. Like to me, that is that is where that is the value of working with a coach or with a group of people that are expert in this to accelerate your results. That's different from locking the actual information behind a paywall. All right. The principles work, they should be free. Question three is could you do this for at least five years, if not the rest of your life? So this is the sustainability question. If the approach is so extreme or rigid or socially isolating that you think of it as a short-term thing, like a quick fix, or I'm gonna do this just to lose weight, that's a big problem. That is not a sustainable strategy. And if you're like, yeah, but Philip, isn't that the only way to lose fat? No, it's not. The way we lose fat is by scaling things up or down, but still having the balanced meals that hit your protein, they keep you full of the right nutrients that fuel your body, that avoid all of this stress and all of this

    Philip Pape: 25:55

    metabolic dysfunction. And that's the way we want to do it. And if you're like, I don't know how to do that, okay, come join us, eatmoreliftheavy.com. Check it out. That's what we do. And again, that is where I'm not gonna hide information. The information's on this podcast. In fact, if you reach out to me and say, hey, Philip, how do I do XYZ? I'll probably give you an answer and just we'll move on. All right, so if two or more of those are, I guess it's probably a fad. If you could confidently answer in the negative with all of those, it's probably evidence-based. And of course, high protein falls under that category. Until next time, keep using your wits, lifting those weights. And remember, you do not need permission to simply eat enough protein as part of a balanced meal for your goals. Go after it. I'm Philip Pape. I'll talk to you next time here on the Wits and Weights Podcast.

Featured

Ready for the Next Step?

Read More
Interviews Philip Pape Interviews Philip Pape

Should You Fix Your Diet or Training First? | Ep 465

Should you fix your diet or your training first? The real answer depends on which part of your system is the weakest link right now.  Learn about the research on resistance training for body recomp, the constraint theory "bottleneck" concept, how to tell whether nutrition or training is YOUR bottleneck, and a practical 5-question framework you can apply this week. If you're over 40 and stuck in the cycle of cutting calories and changing workout plans, you'll know where to start by the end of this episode.

Should you fix your diet or your training first?

You've probably heard that diet is 80% of the results, so nutrition is the obvious place to start. After all, "abs are made in the kitchen" right? The problem is this claim has no basis in science, and for a lot of you, training is the actual bottleneck.

The real answer depends on which part of your system is the weakest link right now. 

Learn about the research on resistance training for body recomp, the constraint theory "bottleneck" concept, how to tell whether nutrition or training is YOUR bottleneck, and a practical 5-question framework you can apply this week. If you're over 40 and stuck in the cycle of cutting calories and changing workout plans, you'll know where to start by the end of this episode.

Try my favorite sheets! Cozy Earth's bamboo-derived sheets regulate temperature for better quality sleep, backed up with a 100-night sleep trial and 10-year warranty. Get 20% off at https://witsandweights.com/cozyearth

Enroll in Eat More Lift Heavy, the 26-week coached program where Phase 1 diagnoses your specific constraint, Phase 2 fixes it with guided adjustments to training and nutrition, and Phase 3 teaches you to run this process on your own: https://eatmoreliftheavy.com

Don't forget: the Fitness Lab app is 20% off through Friday, May 8. AI-powered nutrition and training coaching for adults over 40: witsandweights.com/app

Timestamps

0:00 - Fix your diet or exercise first?
3:30 - The NEW trial and body composition
6:00 - Resistance training and body recomp
8:30 - Weight loss vs. fat loss
10:30 - Constraint theory and the bottleneck concept
13:00 - Is nutrition the bottleneck?
 19:30 - Is training the bottleneck?
 22:30 - Sleep and recovery
25:00 - The 5-question framework
33:00 - Strength training over 40 and perimenopause
35:30 - An efficient way to fix nutrition AND training
37:30 - Bonus: the 5-second bottleneck test

  • Philip Pape: 00:00

    Should you fix your nutrition or your training first? You might have heard that diet is 80% of your results and exercise is only 20%. But that has no basis in science. There was one study of overweight postmenopausal women doing aerobic exercise, not resistance training, and they measured scale weight, not body composition. For many of you, fixing your nutrition first is exactly correct. But for others, fixing your training first will produce faster, more visible changes. So today I'm going to show you how to diagnose which one is your bottleneck, a simple framework for deciding where to start, and a five-second test you can do right now to figure out your answer. Welcome to Wits and Weights, the show that puts a popular piece of fitness advice under the microscope, finds the hidden reason it doesn't work, and gives you the deceptively simple fix that does. I'm your host, Philip Pape, and this is a question that I get all the time. Someone sends me a message or asks on a coaching call, hey, Philip, I know I need to fix my nutrition and my training, but I can't do everything at once. So where do I start? Or they say, hey, I just want to lose fat. I'm gonna hold off on the strength training thing you keep talking about. I want to work on my food. Or vice versa. Hey, I just want to build muscle. I'm not gonna worry about the food part right now. And the standard answer is either, hey, diet is the majority of results. This is what I hear a lot. You know, abs are not made in the gym, they're made in the kitchen, those kinds of things, which are great sound bites, and they sound very decisive, like you should start with diet. And it sends a lot of people down the wrong path. In fact, more often than not. So today we're gonna retire that myth. We're gonna replace it with something better, and that is a diagnostic that you can apply to yourself. How do we personalize the answer? Because the real answer isn't a ratio or you have to do both, or you have to go in one order or the other. It depends on what is your weakest link right now. I want to give a quick shout out to Christina R, who wrote in asking how this kind of framework applies when you're in your 60s or 70s, even though this audience or this episode is for everyone. Christina, I just wanted to give you a shout-out because the answer is the same framework, regardless of your age. I'm gonna touch on some age-specific evidence as we go. And I think you'll see that it still holds because I'm all about principles. And then stick around till the end because I'm gonna share a five-second bottleneck test. It's one question that tells you whether diet or training should be your first move. And you're like, Philip, just give it to me now. Well, look, we have to set up the why behind this and the true diagnostic so you understand that even when you get an quote unquote answer, that it truly is right for you. Here's what we're gonna cover today. First, why the 8020 claim is a problem and what the research actually measures. Second, how to identify your personal bottleneck using the signs that you can observe right now. You don't need any lab work, you can do this all with just your body. And then, third, a practical decision framework that you can use this week. All right, let's get into it and talk about this 80-20 myth. And some of you may not have heard of it, I get that, but I've been hearing it for many years: the idea that diet is the most important driver. Diet is 80% of the results. You can't have fat loss without diet, et cetera. It's all kind of related. And it's probably understandable for a couple different reasons. One being that most of us have gained weight or fat or become less healthy with age, often due to our eating patterns and our eating habits, or at least we blame those. And when we look at research, there have been some trials that tried to examine the effectiveness of one or the other's independent variables. There was one in 2012 called the new trial, and that was in the journal Obesity. 439 overweight to obese, post-menopausal women. They're randomized into four groups. There was a diet-only group, exercise only, diet plus exercise, and then the control group. And then 12 months later, the diet-only group lost 8.5% of their body weight. The exercise-only group lost 2.4%, and the combined lost 10.8%. So doing the math, diet accounted for roughly 79% of the combined weight loss. And that's kind of where this idea of 80-20 comes from. Now, if all you care about is losing weight on the scale, that's fine. Then go ahead and get a shot. But we care about fat loss, not just weight loss. We care that diet can create an energy deficit much faster than exercise. That is true, especially when compared to aerobic exercise, which sometimes can backfire and actually cause you to burn fewer calories overall due to adaptation. And there have been studies that go back to the 90s where dieting alone tends to produce quite a bit more pure weight loss versus exercise. But the nuance left out from a lot of these discussions is that, for example, in the new trial from 2012, the exercise only group was the only group that gained lean mass. They actually gained 0.3 kilograms of muscle while losing fat. The diet-only group lost 0.8 kilograms of lean mass. And you see this story over and over again with body composition changes in a worse direction, even though people lost weight on the scale. And that's why we care about fat loss and not just weight loss. So this these big swings of, you know, over a kilogram of muscle tissue between the two groups. I don't want that. And I don't think you do either. And here's the worst thing, I guess, is that the exercise in the study was cardio. It wasn't resistance training. If they had used resistance training, guess what? The gap would have been even wider. So it just goes to show that exercise of any kind does have value. And of course, we know resistance training has even that much more value. Now there was a 2022 meta-analysis by Lopez and colleagues that looked at 116 articles covering over 4,000 participants. Resistance training alone, with no change to diet, reduced body fat by 1.6% and increased lean mass by 0.8 kilograms. That's body recomp, body recomposition. Less fat, more muscle at the same time without even touching your diet. The diet plus resistance training group lost the most fat, about 5.3 kilograms, and they preserve muscle. So they didn't actually gain muscle, which kind of makes sense again when you're in a diet, you stunt your ability to gain as much muscle. And all of this stuff is really, really important, guys, because weight loss and fat loss or body composition are not the same goal. When you lose weight through dieting alone, you're going to lose lean tissue, 20 to 30%. I recently did an episode about GLP1s where they talked about 40%, but in reality, when you count for some different factors, it's probably about 25, right? The quarter rule, 25%. And then what we see in studies is that some form of exercise tends to cut the rate of muscle loss. And I suspect a lot of people, it's because they they were sedentary to begin with, and doing any exercise at all kind of primes your body and gives it a signal that it's important to keep that muscle mass, even if you're not doing what we would call lifting heavy or resistance training. So this 80-20 rule has some merit, but in a very narrow context, especially when we say it's it's really about the scale weight loss in sedentary or a cardio-focused population. As soon as you shift that goal to body composition, which is what most of you listening to the show care about, then the ratio changes a lot. And for a lot of people, especially if you're older, if you're over 40 and you're already eating reasonably well, the training may be the higher leverage fix. I was joking on our eat more lift-heavy coaching call this month. Somebody, I asked her if she eats in a very boring way or a very exciting way, as in tends to go overboard on the weekends, things like that. She's like, oh no, I eat really boring. I'm like, okay, that's actually gonna serve you really well. Somebody like her, the eating isn't the issue, and a higher higher higher leverage fix is actually the training. So I wanted to establish that popular frame of what is this, what does the data say? What are we actually talking about here? And now we're gonna say, what is right for you? So this goes back to constraint theory and the bottleneck concept, really everything that I built my philosophy around based on the evidence here, that you need to find the next biggest constraint and go attack that. Again, you know, I sometimes mention our coaching program, Eat More and Lift Heavy. It's built on that idea of every week we go after the one next constraint, and it works really well for getting compounding results. So if we go back to the history of this, the theory of constraints, it was developed by a physicist named Eliahu Goldrat, that's what two Ts, in the 80s. So I was a little kid back then, I probably wasn't reading uh research studies. And the core idea is very simple that every system has at least one constraint that limits its output. And the throughput of the system is determined entirely by that constraint. So if you think of it as a chain, a chain is only as strong as its weakest link. So if you can if you improve any other link than the weakest one, it's not gonna help the chain, is it? You have to fix the weakest one, and then the whole chain gets stronger. So Goldrat's big insight was that in the corporate world, most managers spend their time optimizing the wrong part of the system. They might speed up a machine that's already fast as opposed to a machine that's creating some sort of bottleneck. And I think that happens to us in our lives, especially when it comes to health and fitness. And so the analogy that I like is a highway. Imagine a four-lane highway that narrows to two lanes for about a mile. And what happens? Traffic backs up. Well, we all love traffic, don't we? I grew up in Miami, I hated it. One of the main reasons I love living where I do now in Connecticut, in the woodsy area, is the lack of traffic. Anyway, traffic tends to back up, and now you're stuck on the highway. And the question is, would widening the four-lane sections to six lanes fix the traffic? No, of course not. You'd still be bottlenecked at the two-lane section, right? You can change that other part of the highway to 12 lanes. It doesn't matter. You're still gonna be constrained at the two lanes. So, what do you need to do? You need to widen that part of the highway. Now, that's separate from all the arguments about, well, once you do that, you're gonna have a lot more traffic anyway, and it's all gonna catch up. That's a separate issue. That's a throughput issue. So in your body, the highway is really your entire system of training, nutrition, sleep, recovery. The bottleneck is whatever of those is most constrained. And for a lot of us listening, a lot of you, especially those over 40, a lot of women who've been in the diet and restrict cycle for many, many years, the bottleneck, believe it or not, is not your nutrition. Believe it or not, it's not your nutrition. I talked to a lot of you, and the nutrition isn't that bad. And you got to consider the fact that the weight gain has happened slowly over many years. You might be eating vegetables, you might be trying to hit protein, maybe you, maybe you are, maybe you aren't. You might even be tracking all of this stuff. But then the bottleneck is you're doing, you know, three sets of 12 on the leg press and it's the same weight every day in the gym, every time you go to the gym, or you're using the little dumbbells and you you're just not willing to go to a gym or get a barbell or get something heavier. And I don't mean to put the blame on you. I'm just saying either not willing or not able, or you're not sure that's what you need to do. And when you're doing that same routine, as consistent as you might be, you're not gonna have any progression or improvement. You're not gonna have progressive overload, you're not gonna get close to failure, and you're not gonna get the thing that drives strength and muscle, which is gonna help with the fat loss and the belly fat and the energy and all the other things we talk about and make better use of your food and fuel. Now, for a different group of people, I hope I wasn't too harsh. Always tough love. For a different group of people, the bottleneck is their nutrition. Oh, yeah, it definitely is their nutrition. They might be training reasonably well, four or five days a week. Maybe they have a good program, maybe they are doing progressive overlap. I know a lot of the guys I speak to who have just gained a bunch of weight, or ladies are eating 900 to 1200 calories and you don't have the energy to adapt to the training and even build the muscle, even if you're doing the right thing. So it's all over the place when we say nutrition is the problem. It's not just that you're overconsuming per se. And as we've talked about before, anything more than a very moderate calorie deficit of like 500 calories a day can it can very well lead to a loss of lean mass while even while you're resistance training. But if you're kind of within that window, you can probably still get stronger while under-eating, but you're still gonna have a very hard time building much meaningful muscle beyond, say, the first few weeks or months of newbie gains. And so I think the idea of strength and body composition and whether you're making progress or not can very well lie in the nutrition side, even if you're training well. Now, if you're not doing either, obviously the question is, you know, what should you fix first? Not necessarily what you should you do first. There's a subtle distinction. The distinction is I think you need to focus on both, right? To some level. Like you need to train and you need to track as a minimum for your nutrition, but you don't necessarily have to quote unquote fix both at the same time to the same level, if that makes sense. You're gonna prioritize one at a time, get that dialed in, and then work on the other, even though you're doing both at some minimal level. Does that make sense? Like you're still doing the things, it's not not zero. You're doing it, you just might be at a one or a two over here and you're trying to get this to a three or four over here. I hope that makes sense. So the I would say that the opposite pattern can also reveal bottleneck, meaning if you are eating adequately, if you're sleeping okay, but your lifts have been flat for a long time and you don't look any different, then the bottleneck is probably your training, right? Your volume, your intensity, your exercise selection, probably progressive overload is the main thing that's lacking, if assuming your nutrition is okay. So, what is your two-lane highway? That's the bottleneck. What's the two-lane highway? So, what do you look for to figure that out? All right, let's talk about the signs. One sign is persistent fatigue, even if you have enough sleep. So your lifts kind of stall or even regress backward, especially on the main movements, the compound movements. Or if you have constant hunger or on the other hand, almost no appetite, that can tell you that you have an energy imbalance. Mood disturbances, irritability, brain fog, irregularities with your cycle if you're menstruating, frequent illness or prolonged soreness, hair loss, cold hands and feet, right? Guess what? All of these can be symptoms of low energy availability. Now, there is research on how low is too low in terms of energy needs. Let's just say for a 180-pound man like I am, with let's say 15 to 20% body fat, something south of 2,000 calories, maybe 1800, maybe 1500, you know, the exact number is going to depend on the person, is where hormonal metabolic function starts to break down. And this is a normal thing, this is an adaptation when you're in a deficit, but it is very important to understand that low energy availability will cause lots and lots of symptoms that can tell you that your nutrition is the bottleneck. We also know that a lot of female recreational exercises, as many as half, are at risk for low energy availability based on some different studies. So it's not just about athletes, right? When you hear of things like Reds or physique competitors, it's everyday people. And what they what makes this tricky is for those of you who've been dieting for many years, you might not think that you're under-eating. You might think you're maintaining because your body weight is no longer dropping, you're not losing weight anymore. Or you're even eating less than you used to and you're not losing weight. But your body has adapted. Your resting metabolic rate has probably come down, you've probably lost muscle mass. Your non-exercise activity activity has probably decreased subconsciously. And so all of these are a negative for your training adaptations because now you have lower muscle protein synthesis because of the lower reduced or the lower energy availability. So it all compounds. The encouraging thing here is that even one training session with resistance training can jack up your muscle protein synthesis. It's a great stimulant. This is why I'm saying just getting into the gym and getting your workout done can be a great jump start and in and of itself has massive benefits to your body and your physiology, even in an energy deficit. And then if you're adding protein in after you're training, you're eating your carbs, all of that can push these things higher. So the constraint is the energy. So that would be a those would be good signs that energy availability is the problem. Of course, if you're tracking and you kind of know this and you know that you're in a deficit, great, but you may not know it because your numbers may tell you that you're maintaining. You're just so adapted and underrecovered that you're actually well below what your maintenance could be. Therefore, you don't have enough energy coming in. All right. Now, what about training as the bottleneck? What signs tell you that? Well, if you're eating at a reasonable level of calories, you're hitting your protein, your energy is pretty good, your mood is pretty good, and your body's just not changing the way you want, usually indicated that by your lifts have not progressed in several weeks or maybe several months. And this assumes you even were expecting them to go up. And what I mean is a lot of you don't even, aren't even using progressive overload. And if you don't know what I'm talking about, definitely check out more episodes of this podcast or reach out to me. This is very important. But for those of you who are trying to progress but just haven't been able to, you know, maybe you don't have a structured program, maybe you're changing program a lot, programs a lot, maybe you're not actually trying to push yourself. Maybe there's a fundamental misunderstanding of like sets and reps and load and all that. And the reason I put it this way is because in our coaching program and Eat More Lift Heavy, when we have our coaching calls, these questions come up all the time. As much as we provide educational material, the podcast has it, YouTube has all this stuff, you know, we try to spell it out. Not everybody under understands the details about training properly or eating properly that we sometimes talk to on this podcast. If you have a background in, say, nutrition science or you're a personal trainer or something like that, right? We have to acknowledge that there's a learning curve here. So if you're not progressing, if you're not training close to failure, if you're doing too little volume per week, like far less than say five to 10 sets per muscle group per week, the bottleneck, the bottleneck then might be your training. Like if you're only training once a week, even if it's hard, it still might not be nearly enough for what you need to make progress. And we know this because there's plenty of evidence on the dose response of intensity and volume, especially volume, for making progress and building muscle in conjunction with the principle that builds muscle, which is mechanical tension. And the only rate, the way you get mechanical tension is lifting close to failure. Excuse me. And the only way you lift close to failure is as you get stronger each time you go to the gym and you do that same exercise, you need to go a little bit heavier or a little bit more reps, a few more reps or a little bit more load, right? That that's because by definition, you're gonna get stronger and you're gonna be able to do more. So you need to do more to get close to failure. Does that make sense? So it really does come down to progressive overload, but it's it's that because mechanical tension, training close to failure, is the mechanism that drives the muscle growth. So that's training. And speaking of things that you can optimize that you may not be thinking about, but is probably the most important third pillar alongside nutrition and training is your sleep. And even though today's episode is the dichotomy between nutrition and training, I would put sleep into the category of non-negotiable, no matter what. However, it depends on where you are and what your constraint is and what you need to do. One thing that I did to upgrade my sleep is my sheets. I use Cozy Earth's bamboo derived sheets. Smooth segue to our sponsor today. This is a temperature regulating sheet that feels amazing. It's so comfortable. It keeps me cool. Whether it's hot or cold, I stay regulated and I feel very comfortable. And therefore, I'm not waking up as much. I'm sleeping more consistently consistently, getting good recovery, and my aura ring is telling me I have higher scores, better HRV, and things like that. And it's a great company. I love great companies, and I would appreciate your support if you're looking for something like this. It makes a great gift, but it's great for yourself if you want to try improving your sleep via a tool like this. The cool thing about Cozy Earth is they give you a hundred-night sleep trial so you can test them for over three months. And then if you don't love them, you can return them. And they have a 10-year warranty as well. So they really do back up their sheets. And remember how much time we spend in bed, it's a third of our life. It's 2,500 hours a year. So, yes, training and nutrition are super important, but bringing it all together is those ideally eight hours of sleep. And that is a logical place to focus. Go to witsandweights.com slash cozy earth. You'll get an automatic 20% discount using code Wits and Weights. Go to wits and weights.com slash cozy earth. Support the podcast, but more importantly, support your sleep and your recovery. That's witsandweights.com slash cozy earth. Link is in the show notes. All right, let's get back to this decision framework. So we have the concept you got to find a bottleneck, you've got to fix a bottleneck, and you It's either training or nutrition. So you need to ask yourself five different questions. All right. Question one: Are you doing structured resistance training at least three times per week with progressive overload? So that summed up everything I just muddled through a few minutes ago. If the answer is no, then training is the first fix. You notice how I did that. I'm giving you a simple framework. Start there. So guess what? A lot of you, training is the first thing you have to fix, not nutrition. Full stop. This is the single highest leverage change for your body composition. Resistance training alone can help reduce your body fat percent, reduce visceral fat, even when you don't change your diet. It's a tremendous buffer. I've worked with clients who've trained for years and they built a lot of muscle, and their diet is terrible, their walking is terrible, and yet their blood work is pretty darn good because they have that protective muscle. And of course, it gets better now that they start walking, they start improving their nutrition and losing some excess body fat. But the lean mass, the muscle mass, the strength, the bone density, the function is almost more important than anything else for most of you, especially if you're not doing it. So that's question one. Question two, all right, I'm training consistently. Great. Is your training well structured? So you might be doing some progressive overload, which means you're potentially okay, but are you hitting sufficient volume with that progressive overload? At least, let's say eight to ten sets per muscle group per week. And so I'm gonna file this into the training quality. Now, some might argue that if you're able to apply progressive overload to all your lifts, then by definition, your training is well structured. And I could somewhat buy that argument, but some people are muddling the two. And if you've got both of these dialed in, then training is no longer your bottleneck. Question three All right, training solid. Do you know your calorie and protein intake? If you don't, you can't diagnose whether nutrition is the problem. Okay, so start tracking for at least two weeks. Don't change anything, just observe. And I think you're gonna be shocked at how far off a lot of your assumptions might be. Or you might confirm some of your assumptions. Calories alone are always way off for most people. Average self-reported energy intake usually underestimates real intake by at least 20%. I've seen some estimates up to 40%. Question four. So now you're tracking, you know what you're eating. Are you eating enough to support your training? So if your energy availability is low, and you know this from the symptoms we talked about earlier, even if you are quote unquote maintaining your weight, you might have to jack up your food. You might simply have to eat more, help your metabolism recover, get through the fear of the fact that you might gain weight. Yeah, you might gain a couple pounds of fluid and glycogen, but for the vast majority of people that I've taken this through, they're super shocked because they don't get beyond that fluid weight, they don't gain weight. What happens is their metabolism starts to ramp up while they're maintaining weight. So the metabolism goes up, they burn more while they eat more. And that's the principle behind eating more, which then unlocks your training and your movement and your energy and your fuel and your hormones and all the other things. And then question five, so once we've established you're eating enough in general, question five is is your protein adequate? Now, some of you might think, oh, shouldn't you put protein first? Not really. If you're just not eating enough, I almost don't care where it comes from. I just want you to eat more, seriously. And then we can start shifting those macros where they need to be. But then you can focus on protein, where we're aiming for 0.7 to 1 gram per pound of protein. Now you might ask, is that ideal weight? Is that lean mass? Just simplify it. Whatever your weight is right now, 0.7 to 1 gram per pound, start there. You can always optimize further later on. So if all of those are answered, like, no, I'm doing all that and it's super solid, well, now you're looking at secondary factors like sleep quality. We talked about the cozy earth sheets, for example, your stress, your consistency over time with these things. So, like you might think you're doing them, but then in reality you're not actually consistent with them or improving with them. Most people have a clear primary bottleneck in one of the first five questions we talked about. But then a lot of you, as you get into this and more experience, you start to hit those secondary bottlenecks. Now, here's the really awesome thing that I that I get that I get excited about. It's called upward spiraling. Once you fix your bottleneck, it creates an upward spiral, a cascade. When you've been under-eating and then you start eating enough, what happens? Your energy improves and then your training quality goes up. You can push harder, you can get more reps, you can recover faster, you're more excited to go to the gym, and then you build more muscle. And then more muscle increases your resting energy expenditure. And guess what? That gives you more room for calories, which then makes your nutrition easier to sustain. So it's an upward spiral or a virtuous cycle. And the opposite direction is true as well. Okay. The opposite direction is true as well. In a good way, I mean. So, like Lyle McDonald always talks about how when women start properly lifting heavy, they almost always change their diet on their own. And that's something I've observed as well. More protein, more structured meals, the training itself is a catalyst for better nutrition. And we have research that completely backs this up. There was a 2011 review that talked about exercise as a gateway behavior. Isn't that funny? Right, because we talk about gateway drugs like on the negative side. But imagine having a gateway behavior like exercise, like training, that strengthens your brain. It rewires the prefrontal circuits involved in self-control, which translates to your diet and nutrition. Isn't that interesting? So, this is the mental side of doing hard things that I think creates resilience, consistency, self-control, all of those things. So starting with training or exercise may actually make it easier to fix your nutrition later. So if both sides need to work and you're not sure where to begin, a good default is okay, start with nutrition if you're clearly under-eating and you have all those symptoms we talked about because you need the energy to train well, or start with training if you're eating adequately, but not providing the stimulus for that change because the training creates that downstream motivation to eat better. Does that make sense? And this is all consistent with the questions we gave you before. Even though I tend to start the questions on the training side, eventually you're gonna hit where that constraint is. Now, quick note for Christina and anyone else wondering about age-specific considerations. Remember that muscle mass decreases about 3 to 8% per decade after age 30, and then it accelerates after age 60. But a 2021 landmark study in science found that metabolism itself remains very stable from age 20 to 60 when adjusted for body composition. So this, like, my metabolism is slower now that I'm older narrative. It's all about muscle loss and the fact that you're moving less. It's not that your metabolism is truly dropping off a cliff, which is a good thing. It means the fix can actually work when you're 45, when you're 55, when you're 70, you resist and strain with sufficient stimulus, eat enough food, eat enough protein, make you sure your energy, energy intake supports your recovery. Now, for women in perimenopause, the shift in fat distribution toward visceral fat, toward belly fat, menopause belly, the decline in the estrogen that causes that, and then the increased baseline stress and cortisol all point to the same conclusion. Resistance training with adequate nutrition is the most protective intervention you can have for this. Not doing more cardio, not eating less, not low carb, not intermittent fasting. Resistance training, adequate nutrition, which is great because that means you have lots of flexibility to do this. All right, before we wrap up, I did promise you a five-second bottleneck test. It's one question that tells you whether you have to fix your diet or training first. I'll share in just a moment. But if you're listening to this, you're thinking, okay, Philip, I know what my bottleneck is now. Thank you, but I don't know how to fix it on my own. That is what Eat More Lift Heavy was built for. This is my 26-week, week-by-week coach program. We focus on one constraint at a time. You've got two coaches in the program. In the first phase, we diagnose where you are. We set up your tracking, we assess your training, we identify your specific constraint. And then in phase two, we fix it. We fix it together. You learn to read your data, you learn to adjust your nutrition, progress your training, stop guessing. And then in phase three, you learn to do this independently. We give you specially designed tools and exercises to train you to do this for yourself so you never need a program like this again. If you're over 40, especially women who've been going back and forth between cutting calories and trying new workout plans, nothing sticks. This program actually sequences it for you, slowly but surely in the right order, with coaching to keep you on track. If you're looking for a quick fix or a challenge or rapid fat loss, this is not the program for you because those things are not sustainable. You'll end up right back where you started. But if you want the results to stick, check us out. Go to eatmore liftheavy.com to learn about the program. That's eatmoreliftheavy.com. Link is in the show notes. All right, here's the fastest way to figure out whether you should fix diet or training first. Ask yourself this question Have my lifts gone up in the last four weeks? That's it. I thought about this a lot and it really comes down to that one question. Because if they have, then your training is doing its job. You've got the stimulus. But if your body isn't changing, the constraint is on the nutrition side. So you're either not eating enough to support muscle growth, your protein's too low for the muscle growth. Okay, that's an easy way to tell. Now, if that's that's if the answer is yes. If your lifts are going up, but you're not getting what you want, it's probably nutrition. If your lifts are not going up, then there's your answer. That's your answer. The training stimulus is the bottleneck for sure. I mean, the food will help, but it's not gonna help nearly as much as fixing your training. Either your program lacks progressive overload or the way you're implementing it does, or your volume's too low, or you're not recovering because of a different issue. So fixing that is the first thing to do. That's it. One question. Have my lifts gone up in the last four weeks? Start there. All right, until next time, keep using your wits, lifting those weights. And remember the answer to which I should fix first is not a slogan or sound bite. It is diagnosing your immediate constraint. I'm Philip Pape, and I'll talk to you next time here on the Wits and Weights podcast.

Featured

Ready for the Next Step?

Read More
Interviews Philip Pape Interviews Philip Pape

Why You Can't Lose Fat "Eating Clean" (Performance Chef Mario Limaduran) | Ep 464

You eat clean, cook at home, and choose whole foods, so why can’t you lose fat? Are your macros and portions quietly keeping you stuck? I ’m talking with Chef Mario Limaduran, culinary director at Trifecta Nutrition, about why food quality matters, but quantity still drives weight loss, muscle building, and performance. We cover how a performance chef builds meals around protein, carbs, fats, satiety, sauces, and real-life meal prep.

You eat clean, cook at home, and choose whole foods, so why can’t you lose fat? Are your macros and portions quietly keeping you stuck? 

I’m talking with Chef Mario Limaduran, culinary director at Trifecta Nutrition, who has cooked for UFC fighters, NFL athletes, Olympic-level competitors, and NCAA Division I wrestlers.

You’ll learn why food quality matters, but quantity still drives weight loss, muscle building, and performance. We cover how a performance chef builds meals around protein, carbs, fats, satiety, sauces, and real-life meal prep. 

Mario also explains why goal-based nutrition beats rigid named diets, how to cook better at home without becoming a chef, and when meal delivery can support evidence-based nutrition.

Go to witsandweights.com/question and drop the secret code for a chance to win an entire week of free meals from Trifecta!

Timestamps:

0:00 – Why clean eating stalls fat loss
3:03 – Sourcing food for performance
5:35 – Using the exchange system
8:42 – Consistency beats food labels
12:58 – Refeeds and the 80/20 rule
20:05 – Named diets versus goal-based plans
22:06 – Satiety, macros, and smarter sauces
35:58 – Simple weekly meal prep structure

  • Why clean eating stalls fat loss

    Philip Pape 0:00

    You know that person who switched to organic everything, cooks at home, eats mostly whole foods, and still can't figure out why they can't lose fat. That might be you. And the problem isn't your food quality. It's how quality and quantity work together or more often don't. Today I'm talking with a chef who's cooked personalized meals for UFC fighters, NFL athletes, and Olympic level competitors. And he's going to explain what he sees go wrong when everyday people try to eat clean without the structure that actually makes it work. Plus, stick around because we're giving away an entire week of free meals. But the catch is you have to listen for the secret word later in this episode. Welcome to Wits and Weights, where in every episode we put a popular piece of fitness advice under the microscope, find the hidden reason it doesn't work, and give you the deceptively simple fix that does. I'm your host, Philip Pape, and today we're examining the claim about eating clean and losing fat. It sounds obvious, eating whole foods, eating lean proteins, lots of vegetables. Nobody argues with that, but a large number of my clients come to me already eating well and they're stuck. They're frustrated because they did the thing everyone said to do. It didn't deliver the body composition or fat loss changes that they expected. So what's missing? My guest today is Chef Mario Lima Duran, culinary director at Trifecta Nutrition. Mario has a degree in culinary nutrition from Johnson and Wales University. He spent his career at the intersection of real cooking, but also sports performance. He was a chef at a two Michelin star restaurant in LA. He cooked for NCAA Division I wrestlers at Cornell. He ran a kitchen for NFL, NHL Olympic athletes. Such a resume. He also built and ran the culinary nutrition program for the UFC Performance Institute, cooking personalized meals for fighters during fight weeks around the world. So he's one of the few people around working in commercial meal delivery who has this depth of both culinary training and applied sports nutrition experience. So by the end of this episode, you are going to understand why eating clean without structure might be keeping you from making progress. How a performance chef thinks about building meals that are nutrient dense, protein optimized, and of course delicious. And what practical strategies you at home can use, whether you cook yourself or use a meal service to make the nutrition match your health and physique goals. Chef Mario, welcome to the show, my man.

    Mario Limaduran 2:34

    Philip, pleasure being here. Thank you so much.

    Sourcing food for performance

    Philip Pape 2:36

    All right. So, you know, we've never had a chef on the show. I was talking about that before we recorded. And I'm just curious about your process, really, to start off. Like when you prep food for someone who is performance-minded specifically, so whether they're an athlete or lifter or somebody listening here, what do you think of first? Like, do you start with macros and micros and then make it fit? Do you look at food quality? Is it taste and preference? Like I'm really curious about your process and the order of operations.

    Mario Limaduran 3:03

    Yeah, yeah. That's a great question. So when you're cooking for anybody, you got to start with the sourcing of the ingredients, right? You go to the supermarket, you go to Costco. Um, when I was with the UFC, I would use a lot of uh Amazon delivery from Whole Foods and getting the highest possible quality produce, proteins, starch is essential to create a healthy, nutrient-dense meal, right? So uh the sourcing of the food is definitely important. Conventional food, um, mainly protein speaking, tends to yield a less nutrient-dense protein. Conventional and organic produce, there's no difference in the nutrition density. Um, there's some concerns around the um the pesticide use, um, but generally speaking, you can get the same nutrient density from a conventional food or a fruit and vegetable as a as an organic one for half cost too. Same goes for starches. Sometimes it doesn't really make sense to buy organic, you know, but you still want to source fresh produce, you still want to source uh not overly ripe or underly ripe produce, um, otherwise you're not getting the the the bulk of those nutrients there. So we start with that, and then as as a chef, as a cook, um, that's that's definitely a big focus. And also, you know, the care with which the food was grown translates into the plate one way or another. That's very true. So there's some advantages to to you know the the higher end proteins and whatnot. And then we work with the athlete to figure out what their macronutrient needs are. Macronutrients are proteins, carbohydrates, fats, and that translates to calories. And so I typically work with uh registered dietitians who do the intake conversations and the intake interviews, and then they are the ones who help me with that portion, figuring out what their macronutrients are, and then they give me, okay, this is the total daily caloric macronutrient needs. Then we break it down into main meals and then snacks. And so from there, it's very easy to have the profile of a person and understand, okay, this person needs 28 grams of protein, 30 grams of carbs, and five grams of fat, just for easy numbers there uh per meal. And so go ahead and do your magic and play to that way. I follow the exchange system. Have you ever heard of the exchange system, butchins?

    Philip Pape 5:35

    I don't think I'm familiar with that one.

    Mario Limaduran 5:36

    Okay, so the exchange system was originally created by dietitians to help diabetic people learn how to use a weight scale, measuring spoons, and measuring cups, and serve their food in a very consistent basis. So essentially, a serving size is equivalent to a certain amount of grams of a micronutrient. So, for example, a third cup of rice is equivalent to 15 grams of carbohydrates. And so there's the fat, the carb, the protein, and this system is very easy to understand. Don't want to give you guys too much information all at once, but I've become very good at understanding that system and have used that system to essentially divide the grams needed per meal into a serving size. And so, for example, in this example that we were just talking about, 30 grams of carbohydrates would be equivalent to two-thirds cups of rice. Five grams of fat would be equivalent to one tablespoon of a fat-based sauce or uh a quarter of an avocado. And you can mix and match with the servings. You know, that's that's where the creativity on my part begins to grow, and I can just mix and match based on the serving sizes of the exchange system.

    Philip Pape 6:50

    Yeah, yeah, I want to sit on that. You typically draw on food databases. One of the things we talk about is the more you weigh, especially when you normalize it to like grams, the more you can recognize, like in a restaurant, okay, that's 100, you know, 20 grams of whatever. What you're telling me is you essentially have memorized kind of a library of what standard foods and their portions versus the grams. Is that what you're saying?

    Consistency beats food labels

    Mario Limaduran 7:10

    Correct. Yeah. So yeah, first I'll give you a quick example. For sweet potatoes, it's half a cup, but for potatoes or and sweet potatoes is half a cup. For quinoa is a quarter cup. For rice and most of starches and uh grains and legumes is a third cup. That it and that serving is equivalent to 15 grams of carbohydrates. Um, for fat, one exchange is five grams. So a tablespoon of oil would be five grams of fat. But you can interchange and use that serving of fat to make sauces and then and we'll get into that in a little bit, and then serve very easily, just grab you know, a chimichuri sauce and serve one tablespoon, and you know that you're giving them five grams. Of course, I've done a lot of work on this, and in order to prep for cooking for these athletes, I've analyzed a lot of recipes and I've made sure that the recipe that I'm following is yielding the exact nutrition that I need in order to follow this exchange system. So that's pretty much the system that that I follow. And then as far as protein, one exchange of protein is equivalent to three ounces or 21 grams of protein. The the original system calls for one ounce or seven grams of protein being one exchange of protein. But the performance industry has evolved in use that made 21 grams the one one exchange. That way we can give people the basic needs of a high protein meal by just uh by just using the the one equals 21 instead of one equals seven. So it's three times that original serving size. I got it.

    Philip Pape 8:42

    So then you can have a couple exchanges per meal or whatever to hit that 40 grams. Yeah. Okay. Wow, fascinating stuff, man. So what I like is the level of precision. It also hits on the fact that it isn't just about what matters, obviously, for quality and like you said, sourcing and all of that. But if you're gonna meet some goal, you know, for energy intake and also for macros, and it sounds like even from a health perspective, if you're diabetic and whatever, that you need to be precise in some way, right? And I think the average person listening kind of generally understands that in terms of tracking calories and macros, but you kind of take it to a another level, right? Like with the RD involved and you involved. So let's segue that into the idea of everyone out there who doesn't want to track or isn't tracking or thinks it's obsessive or whatever, but they have a goal and they think they could just eat certain foods. And that might come in the form of a named diet in a book, like we all know them, you know, keto and carnivore and all of the others, or it might come in the thought of like there's good and bad foods, or there's clean and not clean foods. And by the way, we you know, we take a very agnostic approach here of most foods are perfectly fine as long as they meet your other needs, you know, your nutrient, your calorie, and your macro needs. So, like, what are your thoughts on that whole space?

    Mario Limaduran 9:54

    Yeah, no, 100%. I mean, I'm I'm of I'm very much of that same philosophy. There's no moral weight to to food, it's not good or bad. Um, you know, you can have a fried chicken sandwich. I love fried chicken sandwiches and I have them once or twice a month, and I'm still very healthy because I'm keeping track of my diet 80% of the time, right? So that allows me for that 20% to be a human being and enjoy the sensual experience of having a food that I really like. I also deeply believe that food has a spiritual connection in many ways. Like when you eat a good meal, you're just like so joyful, and it just changed it. There's some energy there that really heightens the experience of just living, you know. So, and then going back to your original question, yeah, I mean, eating clean, um, clean for the lack of a better term, I don't do not like that word, but um, eating healthy and eating, you know, uh high-quality food and healthy meals with vegetables and whole grains and high-quality protein, that's part of the equation. But if your body is not getting consistent energy day in and day out for a long period of time, then it doesn't know what to really do with the body composition. Because if you're not if you're thinking that you're giving the enough protein to your body to sustain and then help you put on more body uh more muscle mass, you're thinking that, but you really don't know. If you think that you're giving your body enough energy through carbohydrates, but really you're over or underdoing it, then that has an effect. Same with fat. You know, fat has a direct effect to hormone levels in satiety for that matter. Um, so if a person is looking to attain a very specific body composition goal, being very consistent with one's diet is an absolute must. And that comes with making sure that you're serving yourself the exact amount of food day in and day out. Our bodies reward us by being consistent and by getting the exact amount of energy that that the body needs. Otherwise, it's gonna stall that progress that that one is is seeking. So it depends how bad you want it. If you want it really bad, then I say, you know, track and and measure and weigh your food because it's it's that that important.

    Refeeds and the 80/20 rule

    Philip Pape 12:13

    Yeah, there's all there's always effort involved. And I like that you said, look, you're either thinking or guessing, but you don't know, or you know. It's pretty clear. And of course, you can develop a skill or an intuition over time doing it over and over and over again, just like you can kind of probably eyeball portions and know, but you're still knowing because you're measuring it in some way. I want to hit on that consistency factor because I've touched on it lightly over the years on this show when it comes to sleep, when it comes to calorie intake. And I've even seen with certain clients where, you know, they try to do this like up and down, either with protein or calories, and average it out for the week, but because of the volatility, something's off, like their metabolism is a bit downregulated. And it's almost like the body's in a dieting state, even when it's not. What do you know about that? Either the science or just from experience?

    Mario Limaduran 12:58

    Yeah, I mean, I'll talk about my experience first. I have a culinary nutrition degree. I've been in this industry for the last 16 years. I'm about to be 34 years old, and just now have I finally figured out what my body wants. Like it's, you know, even the experts have an issue applying the the knowledge into one's experience. So, and lo and behold, and I hate to admit this, it was consistency. You know, it was actually weighing or measuring a cup of rice and six ounces of chicken and a cup and a half of vegetables, and adding the whatever sauce I wanted that led me to have the best composition of my life to date. I'm the strongest, I'm I it look great. So I'm very proud of that. But what I wasn't doing was being consistent with my measuring, even though I knew I had to be, right? And I wasn't um I wasn't week in and week out. I was being very healthy, then going out and not being too healthy, and then so on and so forth. And that I spun my wheels for years and years and years. Nutrition doesn't have to be hard. It's I think made hard by the amount of over information and disinformation that we have in social media nowadays. But consistency and being very thoughtful and knowing your numbers on what your body needs week in and week out for three, six, nine months will get those results.

    Philip Pape 14:27

    How does that reconcile with nonlinear approaches like carbon calorie cycling and also weekend refeeds? Because there is some research supporting, for example, a weekend refeed during a fat loss phase or a calorie deficit could actually have a slight advantage for lean mass retention versus not. I'm curious about your thoughts.

    Mario Limaduran 14:46

    Yeah, yeah, 100%. Yeah, no, I that that's the the science is very sound there. Um, I I wouldn't say, you know, go cold turkey and just be on a calorie deficit for 52 weeks because that's not healthy. I go through refeeding phases, I go through being very strict with my diet, and then one, two weeks I travel and I don't even think about measuring my food, I'm just enjoying food, and then I come back. I read somewhere, I forget the name of the paper, but our bodies don't lose muscle mass or gain fat mass as quickly as we think they do. So two weeks is not gonna blunt your five-year consistency, you know? So going through those motions is also being a human, and again, I mentioned the 80-20 rule. If you control 80% of your input of your intake of food and your diets, your sleep, uh, your stress levels, alcohol intake, you can allow yourself to have those strings, those cheap meals, those days where you're off and you just want to eat something, it's fine. We're all human, we don't have to be perfect.

    Philip Pape 15:52

    Yeah, and and that's very consistent with like the brain research on how the brain gets used to certain patterns and finds safety in them. And then, like you said, if if you're doing something 80% of the time, the other 20%, your brain sees it as an anomaly as opposed to something to react to. So that's kind of cool. You mentioned the spiritual connection of food, and that's another topic that's fun to get into, whether it's spiritual or enjoyment of food. I mean, I've had commenters on YouTube be like, you know, food's not for enjoyment, it's just to, you know, for nutrition or food's not right. And you get these weird conflating it with right, because it conflates it with like, um, well, if you enjoy food, that's the problem with you know, we obesity and Western diet, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. So tell us more about the value of just that part of food, like having nothing to do with performance or macros or calories.

    Mario Limaduran 16:39

    Yeah, I mean, humans are social, right? We're social beings. I think we all can agree that COVID hit everyone super hard because we weren't socializing with people. We're all just alone in our homes, maybe with somebody, maybe not. But I always think about that time because the enjoyment of going out, having beers with the boys, having drinks with the girls, or just going out with the group and enjoying breaking bread is a historically everlasting you see in every part of history of humanity. You know, it's it's just part of who we are. And so to me, I mean, to hear somebody say that they don't enjoy food and it's just for nutrition, and I mean, you're missing a big part of enjoying being in this earth, you know. There's like Middle Eastern food that's delicious, Asian food that's delicious. Like, we are such a rich, I think, race. Earth is such a rich race, and we have so much to explore and so many flavor profiles to see. It's a little overwhelming when I think about it from the culinary perspective, but also I think it's so beautiful because it's again such a social thing to do. And my experience with traveling and going to other countries and eating their cuisine and being part of their culture, it has been very eye-opening in the sense that you know we're really a speck of dust, and it makes me feel more connected with each other, with every other person in the world. So there's that social aspect, but I I also feel like the spiritual side is I don't know. When I eat something, I get this F VF factor. I won't cuss in this podcast, but the FVF factor, that's what I call it. It's there's this inner sense of like, damn, this is so like how is this so good? How can how can you know? And it's just a and maybe it's a chef in me, but it's just a such a joyful thing that just comes up here, and uh, you know, so I think it's just such an important part of being a human.

    Named diets versus goal-based plans

    Philip Pape 18:39

    You make me think of so many memories as you talked about traveling the world, like the first time I had really good gnocchi, I think is how it's pronounced, right? In Italy, right? I know my honeymoon, or when I went to Japan years ago and I was very picky back then, I didn't eat vegetables or anything. And the guy I was with like got me to try everything octopus and like vegetables of all kinds and tempura. And it was just I'm again, I love food. Montreal, I was so surprised. Montreal is only five hours from here. Like the quality of the food there, breakfast, lunch, dinner, you eat a lot of calories because it's just so good. Um, so yeah, yeah, I think I think we need to lean into that and not like judge ourselves for that as conflated with you know the challenges people face with emotional eating and all that other stuff. Let me ask you this. So, you know, just full disclosure, right? You work for Trifecta, we're an affiliate of Trifecta. If you keep listening to the show later on, we're gonna drop a secret word uh that if you if you go to witsandweights.com slash question and give me that word, you're entered for a giveaway for a full week of free meals from Trifecta. But the reason I bring it up is because I know through Trifecta, there's different ways to filter on food. And one of those is types of diets like keto. Um, and I remember when we were setting up our partnership, I said, I don't I don't really want to showcase it that way for me. I want to showcase more about the macros and the foods that are in there and stuff. So is there value or what is the value in these named diets? Like, what are your thoughts on marketing them specifically? Because people want them, I'm sure, um, like versus the value in them.

    Mario Limaduran 20:05

    Yeah, that's a great question. So uh I'll start by saying that we have moved away from being a diet-specific company and having diet plant or meal plants around a diet like paleo and keto and um Mediterranean, so on and so forth. And now we've moved into what I think is a modernization of the meal delivery industry, a goal outcome meal plan. So now we have uh the performance plan or the the uh I forget the names of it, and we just changed them, so apologies on that. But essentially it's it's a a higher calorie meal plan for people looking to put on weight, the flex choice program, which is for people looking just to eat healthy um and maintain their weight, and then we have uh a low calorie one, which is for people looking to lose weight. We also continue to keep keto uh as part of the rotation and the plan-based, um, since they're so popular, and we've seen we just have a lot of business around this, so it doesn't make sense for us to let go of them. And it seems like people have found um success within that. The keto diet is very good for specific chronic diseases and illnesses, so we continue to support that diet for that reason. And plan-based, you know, it's uh it's here to stay. So we we we support people who are vegan and choose that lifestyle as well. But I'm happy to say that um this move was something that I pushed that we really needed to move away from diet-specific to goal specific because it's it encompasses more people and it helps more people really more clearly understand what we're offering for them. And within that is, of course, every single meal is macro balance, which is the essence of trifecta.

    Philip Pape 21:45

    Love it, man. Yeah, no, I'm glad you made that move, and I didn't know that it wasn't a setup just so the listener knows it wasn't a setup. I'm looking at it right now and I see what you're talking about, right? The protein build meal, get lean, flex choice, goal based is is really the way to do it, right? Because that's right. To left, like here's my goal. Now let me back up into all the variables for my eat food, my training, my everything else.

    Satiety, macros, and smarter sauces

    Mario Limaduran 22:05

    Yep.

    Philip Pape 22:06

    All right, cool. So actually, you know, one thing came to mind when we were talking keto was you mentioned earlier about satiety and the fat exchange and all that. I think protein technically has the highest satiety, and yet we hear a lot about fat having high satiety and why it's important for that reason. What are your thoughts on the satiety aspect of those two macros?

    Mario Limaduran 22:24

    Oh, yeah, great question. Well, yeah, protein 100%. I mean, I just had lunch with six ounces of chicken and I feel phenomenal right now. And I'm in a calorie deficit. So that's been a huge uh part of having that satiety. Also combining it with high volume foods like uh leafy greens and but a lot of vegetables, a lot of like high fiber foods, you know, that helps with uh blunting the hunger cues while when it's in a calorie deficit. Now, to answer your question, fat is very calorically dense. So we talk about high volume foods, meaning that they occupy a lot of space in your stomach, but don't have a lot of calories. They have a lot of nutrients, but not a lot of calories. But fat is very caloric dense and calorically dense. And per gram of fat you get nine calories. Per gram of protein and carbs, you get four. So you're almost getting 2.2, 2.1 times the amount of calories per gram, which means that a very small amount of fat will get you a lot of calories. And it's very easy to overeat if you're not really measuring those correctly, or if you know that you're eating fat. That's why the the fried foods tend to be so unhealthy, right? They're delicious, but it's because they just have so much fat in them that you've been cooked in a fat medium that you're not only eating the carbohydrate that was just fried, you're eating copious amounts of fat as well.

    Philip Pape 23:48

    Yeah, fat is a classic addition to those who are low calorie, right? To get those calories up, uh, especially when we're bulking. But for that same reason, you know, you've got to watch out. This goes back to the clean or healthy discussion, the fact that you know, nuts and avocado and salmon are all delicious sources of fat, and they're a little more nutrient dense than some alternatives. So it depends on your calorie needs. Let's get into cooking a little bit here. And for those at home, because again, that's your expertise, who are not the greatest cooks on their own, right? Like I think the the majority of people, I'm gonna just put it that way in general, is the majority of people kind of half-ass their cooking or like, you know, they'll look up recipes online, they'll follow them, and maybe over time with lots of cooking, you get better and better at it, right? Do you have like some top tips? Like, let's say your top three tips for people who just want to cook better food at home that they look forward to. They like to prep, they want it to taste good, but it's not complicated.

    Mario Limaduran 24:42

    Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, my mother, bless her heart, most the smartest woman I know, and she just cannot cook a life for her, uh a meal for her to save her life. So um, this is very dear and close to my heart. Um, and unshaveful plug-in here. I I teach this online in my own social media. I teach people how to cook, and this is one of the biggest questions that come to me, you know, like, what do I do? I hate cooking or I don't know how to cook. So, a few tips. Number one, focus on the basics and what you like. You don't need to be a Michelin star chef. Like, there's no need for that. Your cuts don't need to be perfect. If you're just starting, focus on learning a few basics and mastering those. And those basics need to be things that you like to eat. If you are somebody who likes broccoli, rice, and chicken, no shame. Double down on that. Learn how to cook your chicken well, how to season it well, learn how to use stalks in order to add flavor to your rice, and a couple of onions, you know, a couple of chopped onions in there, saute it, mix it in there. You have a delicious rice that doesn't have a lot of calories added to it, or minimal calories added to it. And then your broccoli, you learn how to blanch it, learn how to roast it, learn how to uh saute it and experiment with whatever it is that you can stick for for a long period of time without getting bored. At the point where you get bored, then you learn something new. But by focusing on the basics of cooking, very simple things that you can stick with, that you like, that you enjoy eating, that becomes very simple. Number two, if you don't like cooking vegetables, go to Costco, go to Sam's Club, go to your local supermarket and buy frozen vegetables. I'm a chef and I'm not ashamed to say that I live off of those frozen vegetables. I'm visiting my mom right now in South Florida, and we went to Costco and I bought a whole bag of those vegetables. Being here can get really hectic, and I don't have a lot of time to cook. So that has been a great addition. They have roasted vegetables that have a lot of flavor. Um, they're organic as well, so they're you know, there's that added uh unique salon preposition to them. And that that saves a lot of time because you can just cook, I don't know, potatoes, rice, quinoa, orzo, whatever your preferred starches, and then grab a protein and then drop it in there. Third, I would say proteins is what takes the longest time to learn how to cook well. If you're somebody who doesn't have the means or just don't want to cook proteins, there's a lot of really good uh companies out there that are that are selling ready-to-eat proteins that are sous vide and come sauced. Uh trifecta, we sell proteins a la carte, so you can buy a pound of proteins from chicken to bison to beef, uh, to salmon, and you can just have that and plate it on your own. So we live in a time period where food science is very advanced. You know, we are essentially the result of the frozen meal movement that started in the 1960s. We are the evolution of that, but we've taken a massive step in making sure that the food that we're providing is not high in sodium, is not high in it, doesn't have any sort of um additive um or preservative MSG, anything of that sort. You know, we are a very clean, healthy uh meal delivery. So there's always those options. So yeah, those are the three things that I would advise.

    Philip Pape 27:58

    Those are great. And uh those first two, especially the making slight additions to what you like to eat. I was thinking of a dinner my wife just made this week, and she's come a long way. Again, she'll she'll admit that she was not a great cook when she started. But you know, she took pork tenderloin, she put some teriyaki soy sauce type sauce she made from scratch. Delicious. She took rice, added coconut milk, you know, and then she took broccoli and she always roasted in a pan with a little oil and and salt, and that's really all you need. Broccoli's so good, you know.

    Mario Limaduran 28:26

    Sounds delicious, yeah.

    Philip Pape 28:27

    And there you go, right? Like it doesn't have to be complicated. Exactly. And I yeah, and I always tell people when they're meal prepping, like, go big, you know, like just just just put huge quantities of stuff. Like if you had to prep a protein, what would be your favorite protein or two to prep in bulk?

    Mario Limaduran 28:40

    Um, I buy the chicken from Costco in bulk. Um like chicken breast or chicken breast. Yep, chicken breast. Chicken thighs, you can go. Uh that's actually, I'm glad you bring that up. Um, if if you're somebody just starting to cook, yeah, I mean chicken thighs is very easy to dry out. So if you're if you want to eat chicken and you want to eat something that's good all the time, chicken thighs is the way to go. I like to change every two weeks and either buy a salmon and just cook the salmon ahead of time, or I buy the steak from Costco and then I just eat steak and that's like my treat to myself. So I also do turkey. So I I like to change again, it's it's the variety that I try to bring to my life, you know. I already know how to cook all these things, so I just experiment from week to week.

    Philip Pape 29:26

    It's funny with turkey, right? Because at Thanksgiving, they're so inexpensive that I always think, why don't families just buy like 10 turkeys? You know, that'll last, but of course you'll get bored of turkey.

    Mario Limaduran 29:35

    Yeah, totally and need a space for it.

    Philip Pape 29:37

    Steak. Oh, I want to ask you about steak because I've had a lot of conversations with people about that. So a lot of confusion over the cuts of steak, the marbling, the tenderness, how to prepare it. You know, people that want to get more protein too and don't want it to be too fatty of a cut, like ribeye, which I love ribeye, but you know, much higher fat content. So, what would be the most, I guess, good balance of economics and leanness that's easy to prepare? Because I know some steaks like are super cheap, but then they're really tough and you need to marinate or slow cook or something like that. Like, what are your thoughts on steak?

    Mario Limaduran 30:08

    Yeah, um I personally buy skirt steak, and that is the in between your tenderloin and your short rib. You know, um, one's super tough, one is very expensive. The skirt steak tends to be the the middle of the ground. If you can find Terrace Major, which you don't really see that catu uh too often in supermarkets, it's uh mainly used in commercial food manufacturing, and that's what we use at Trafecta for keto meals in our a la carte. It's very tender, surprisingly tender, and it's a very uh economic piece of of meat, also very lean. So those two are my my go-tos.

    Philip Pape 30:49

    Man, skirt steak with chimichuri, I'm thinking, or uh let's see, uh like uh churrasco, or uh what am I trying to think of? You said you're in South Florida. I grew up in Miami, I grew up in Highland.

    Mario Limaduran 30:59

    Oh, I'm in Miami.

    Philip Pape 31:00

    That's a lot of food. Okay, go to Miami, Cuban food, Argentinian food, every every Caribbean uh yeah, so good. Okay. So speaking of sauces, um, I know you know you mentioned sauces once or twice, and that is another tricky area for folks because they can easily add a lot of flavor and even nutrition in some cases, but also a lot of calories. So best maybe maybe the top few sauces people should always like be making for their food or like really easy ones. Like, what are your thoughts there?

    Mario Limaduran 31:30

    Yeah, yeah. Let me uh let me start by saying this. So when I think of sauces, I I uh classify them in in three categories calorie neutral, carb forward, and fat forward or fat-based. Calorie neutral can be anything like a salsa or a hot sauce. There's sauces that come from peppers and vinegar and tomatoes that don't add a lot of calories. You know, the the serving size is 10 calories per serving in the nutrition label, but it adds a lot of flavor. So if you're looking for a way to if you're in in a cut or if you want to maintain your weight and make sure you're not adding enough a bunch of calories, then uh calorie neutral sauce will be it. Now, if you're on the opposite and you're trying to gain muscle weight, the last thing like you to gain muscle, the energy intake needs to be really high, right? About 500 calories above your your uh maintenance, uh give or take. And so sometimes that can be a lot of food for certain people. If we're talking about linebackers that play in the NFL, like these boys eat a lot. So, how do you give them enough calories so that they can actually meet their caloric needs, but not be overly full and be sluggish in the field? You double down on we kind of touched on this earlier, on liquid calories, but also on carb forward sauces. So your teriyakis, your barbecues, your sweet and sours, those are very carb heavy, sugar heavy for the uh for the sake of this argument or of this conversation, that with one tablespoon you're adding 15 carbohydrates of 15 grams of carbohydrates, or with one cup, you're adding you know a bunch of them.

    Philip Pape 33:16

    That's 60 calories, yeah.

    Mario Limaduran 33:19

    And then with fat, fat-based um is a great way, fat-based sauces is a great way to add a lot of flavor, but a lot of add a lot of richness to your meal. And when you talk about fat-based sauces, think about vinaigrette, think about aiolis or mayo, think about any sort of variation from that. For example, if you do chimichuri, like we were just talking, that's really a vinaigrette. It's got a three to one ratio of oil to vinegar, uh, maybe a four to one ratio, and that provides a lot of flavor in itself with a lot of nutrients from the herbs and the peppers that you add to it, but it's also adding a lot of calories from fat, right? So fat is good because it adds richness. So, with those three categories in mind, you know, the most popular, I have a list. I wish I was at home, but I have a list in my wall of the most popular because I'm gonna be making videos about these. But anything that is fat-based, that can be uh an oil, um like uh olive oil and vinegar, like a zoo sauce, which is essentially just a chimichuri but Asian style. You know, it has uh jalapenos, it has cilantro, it has a little bit of oregano and uh coriander, um, whereas chimichuri, it has cilantro, it has parsley, it has a red pepper oil and vinegar. Uh Romesco sauce is another delicious sauce that you can do that's fat-based. Instead of making it with bread, you can make it with nuts, with almonds, toasted almonds, um, and and olive oil, and you have something delicious. Then having your barbecues and your teriyakis, like I mentioned, is something that most households in the United States have. Fat-based, you can also have your ranch. Ranch in, you know, in the United States is super popular. And then your sauces, again, we're gonna go back to that. I personally uh add a lot of hot sauce to my food. I'm Hispanic, so I love I love heat. Um, so that tends to be my seasoning uh when I'm in a rush. Um, so having a variety of those, and it doesn't need to be, you don't need to make these at home. You can if you want to control the the health and and the caloric and added sugar portion of it, but you can buy them in the supermarket. You again, you don't have to do a Michelin star uh chef.

    Simple weekly meal prep structure

    Philip Pape 35:26

    So we've made the rounds through a lot of the aspects of cooking of food, of what's in your food, of why we do it, right? To hit our goals. So, you know, food quality matters, like social connection matters, macros matter, taste matters. You bring all these things together for a typical week. My audience, I will say, is like an average person who has a very busy job, very stressed, maybe they have a family and they're trying to make it all work for the week. Is there kind of a not a template or meal plan, but a structure that's time efficient to kind of think of your whole week and putting it together?

    Mario Limaduran 35:58

    Yeah, yeah. I'll give you what I do as someone who also lives a very uh occupied life um with a tight schedule. I like to understand what I'm craving for a week. If it's potatoes, I roast a bunch of potatoes, cut them, roast them. I have my my uh vegetables that are bought from Costco, uh frozen vegetables, and then I look at the protein and I typically cook either five to seven days worth of that protein. And within two hours, I can have all my my food portion in my containers ready to cool down. So I just put it in the fridge, cool it down completely, and then cover it. And that's my way of making sure that I have consistency throughout the week. If you want to add a little more variety on a meal, your sauces are going to be the differentiating factor because the sauce is the essence of a dish, right? The sauce is what makes the dish uh a cuisine. So I tend to have a couple of different sauces in my fridge, and I add barbecue to one, I add chimichuri to another one, I add a tabili to another one, and then I just interchange with those three throughout the week until I run out of the sauces. Um, and and and that's that. So it doesn't need to be complicated and that's it, it doesn't need to be fancy, it just needs to work for what you like. And this that's that's essentially you know what I like.

    Philip Pape 37:16

    That's pretty straightforward. And then for for vegetables, vegetables, it sounds like the frozen veggies are an option, or do you bulk prep starches or vegetables as well, or do you do those more as you go?

    Mario Limaduran 37:27

    Yeah, no, I I tend to uh to bulk prep uh starches as well, um, with rice and potatoes being the number one that I consume. So I do.

    Philip Pape 37:35

    Oh, you mentioned potatoes, yeah.

    Mario Limaduran 37:36

    Yeah, I tend to do five five days at a time because I don't want the food to go bad. And of course, you can adjust this based on what your food beliefs are. If you don't like to put have something in the fridge for more than two days and just prep the food for exactly for two days. Um, if you're okay with five days and prep it for five days. Um adjust is needed. It does, it's it's just a guideline, it's a blueprint, it's not a law.

    Philip Pape 37:59

    Yeah, yeah. And there's always the freezer, and also some of us have cold spots in our fridge. Like I have a very cold spot in the back top, so like things will last a little longer. Yeah, for sure.

    Mario Limaduran 38:09

    Absolutely.

    Philip Pape 38:10

    Um so interesting, two different people asked a similar question recently about resistance starch. So we know resistant starch is naturally in some things like white potatoes, which is considered the top satiety food as far as I understand. But then also when you cook rice and then cool it, it converts some of the starch to resistant starch. And there's this uh theory that some people respond really well to uh an increase in resistance starch for a variety of factors. Is this something you're aware of that you think about or not?

    Mario Limaduran 38:39

    I I don't have enough knowledge on that, so I can't really speak to it. Yeah.

    Philip Pape 38:43

    Yeah, it's an interesting thing. Look into it because um there's a few people I know with certain conditions that have responded well to it nutritionally. I'm like, that's and so there's this whole hot carb versus cold carb thing out there that's I thought it was hogwash initially, and I saw some legitimacy behind it. So interesting.

    Mario Limaduran 39:02

    Yeah, I can't say I've experienced anything with my body, so but yeah, I'll definitely all right.

    Philip Pape 39:06

    So as far as like the skill of cooking, then what skill or habit like from your experience makes a big difference to learn, whether it's knife skills or using certain equipment or the stove, oven, etc.?

    Mario Limaduran 39:18

    Yeah, yeah, definitely. Um I'll start with two. First, always make sure that your cutting board is large enough and that it's secured with uh damp paper cloth underneath. Always please start with that. That should be your bot baseline safety. You know, you don't want a moving cutting board while you're cutting something because you can chop off your fingers very easily. And if you haven't done so and you haven't been securing your uh your cutting board up to d up to today, then you're lucky. And then number two, organizing your cooking station uh by having a bowl where your waste goes, and then having a bowl or a continuous where your finished product goes, or having the tray where where you're you're gonna be cooking your food in always helps with the flow of your cooking to be better. Uh that way you're not jumping from one place to another, you're not going to the trash, you're not, you know, those micro sidesteps actually take a lot of time in the grand scheme of things in cooking. And I'll add a third one, um, keeping your knives sharp. Like I cannot stress how important this is. Buying a sharpener, either a whetstone or one of those automatic sharpening tools, or taking your knives to be sharpened at your local knife company knife company, is something that I cannot stress enough on how important it is. A dull knife is ten times more dangerous than a sharp knife, because the sharp knife just goes through the vegetable. A dull knife can actually not go through the vegetable, make you stab yourself or make it, you know, cut yourself at the same time. So I would say make those three things part of your cooking ritual, and you'll become a much better cook immediately.

    Philip Pape 40:58

    Those are good tips. A cutting board, I hadn't heard that, so thank you. And then my dad was a butcher, so I've heard about the knives. What do you think of the the knife blocks that have built-in sharpeners?

    Mario Limaduran 41:09

    Uh yeah, those are great. Those are great. Yeah, if you can store them, yeah, if you can store them at home and you have a place, yeah, absolutely. I have I have this, I have the whetstones, of course, um as a professional cook, but at the same time, I also have uh cuisine art, the the one-two sort of like pass you kind of pass the the blade from there's there's these little brown stones and that just sharpens uh the blade. So you can get it very affordably in in Amazon, I think, for less than 30 bucks.

    Philip Pape 41:36

    Cool, man. Yeah, so we've covered a lot today about cooking food and everything else. I mean, at the end of the day, we're all trying to fuel ourselves with our food, and that is the secret word, guys. It's fuel. Okay. Um and but I do want to kind of segue into what you do and the company you represent in the form of a question first, and then we can tell people where to find you. But um, where do when does meal delivery make sense? Because for for years I've had a small section of clients who they're just so busy and so stressed. Money isn't as much of an issue for them as, say, time and convenience and stuff. So there's definitely a place for it. What are your thoughts on like the ideal situation people would consider it?

    Mario Limaduran 42:14

    Yeah, 100%. Exactly what you just said. Uh it's it's it's a tool that we now have, and we should be, I think it's it's very exciting to have and to be in the United States and have it as an option to have a surveys deliver the food that you want to eat every week to your door. And so if life gets busy, if something is going on where you can't actually cook, then having this uh meal delivery sent to you ensures that you're staying consistent. And it's not something that you need to stay on forever because meal boredom happens, and we see that in our business. You can turn it on and off as you see fit. But for myself, I've been with with trifecta for the last almost eight years, and um I've eaten trifecta for the great majority of those eight years. Um, I get seven meals a week, um, aside from making sure that our kitchens are are producing our food well, um that they're following the recipe. Well, I also eat it for my own um health and uh consistency purposes, you know. Um I have seven meals that I cook at home, but I have seven meals where if one day for whatever reason I woke up late, I'm sick or whatever, and I have no desire to be in the kitchen, I just reheat this meal and I'm ready to go. So it's a beautiful tool to have that helps with convenience, helps bridge the gaps in time and allows you to be consistent over a long period of time.

    Philip Pape 43:36

    Yeah, and I'll say you could be intentional and plan ahead too without all the time of planning. In other words, you're not going to DoorDash in the last minute and getting some local fast food or pizza. You know, you're thinking about it, and then you guys have the macro balanced meals that people can then log and track and everything. So that's awesome. All right. So people, everybody listening, if you go to wits of weights.com slash question, you can submit a question for the show or For Mario, and you could also drop the word fuel and say, hey, this is the secret word and enter me in the giveaway for a week.

    Mario Limaduran 44:06

    No, it's so secret anymore.

    Philip Pape 44:08

    Yeah, yeah. It's secret if you listen to the show, and it's not secret if you listen to it. So um, so anyway, we want to send folks your way as well. I know you have some content online you just mentioned about cooking. Where can people find you? Where do we want to send folks after they listen to this?

    Mario Limaduran 44:22

    Yeah, yeah, thank you for that. Um, I am uh very present on Instagram at Chef Mario is my page. I teach the basics of cooking. So if you want to improve your cooking and you want to listen to more hacks of this sort, um I I post uh I post weekly. Um I'm starting a YouTube channel, um, Mario Lima Duran, my name, and then I'm also on Facebook uh posting the same reels um as Mario Lima Duran.

    Philip Pape 44:46

    All right, awesome. We're gonna throw all that in the show notes. You guys go check out Mario, Chef Mario, follow him, look at his stuff. I mean, this he has the kind of content that's not your like typical, you know, influencer stuff. It's like super helpful. And if you're looking to cook better and you just want to look at good food too, um, check him out. So thank you again, Mario, for coming on Wits and Weights. It's been a pleasure, man.

    Mario Limaduran 45:07

    Thanks, folks. Appreciate the time. Enjoy the conversation, and hopefully your audience also enjoyed it. So thank you for having me.

    Philip Pape 45:12

    Thanks, man.

Featured

Ready for the Next Step?

Read More
Interviews Philip Pape Interviews Philip Pape

Mini-Cuts and Mini-Bulks for Faster Body Recomp After 40 | Ep 463

Bulking, cutting, bulking, cutting. If you've been through that cycle and ended up further from your goal than when you started, there's a reason the yo-yo keeps repeating, especially over 40. Learn about the metabolic adaptation and hormonal changes that make long diet phases more difficult (and sometimes unsustainable), a creative approach called intermittent dieting (not to be confused with intermittent fasting), a very powerful weekend refeed strategy, and the exact structure of a mini-cut and mini-bulk protocol including rate of loss, protein targets, surplus size, and the ratio of building to cutting.

Bulking, cutting, bulking, cutting. If you've been through that cycle and ended up further from your goal than when you started, there's a reason the yo-yo keeps repeating, especially over 40.

Learn about the metabolic adaptation and hormonal changes that make long diet phases more difficult (and sometimes unsustainable), a creative approach called intermittent dieting (not to be confused with intermittent fasting), a very powerful weekend refeed strategy, and the exact structure of a mini-cut and mini-bulk protocol including rate of loss, protein targets, surplus size, and the ratio of building to cutting.

Plus learn the ONE warning sign that tells you to end a mini-cut early, even if you planned to go longer.

Check out Fitness Lab (20% off through May 8), the AI coaching app built for adults over 40 who want daily structure, training feedback, biofeedback tracking, and meal planning that fits real life. Take the free onboarding quiz before you buy. 20% off all plans through Friday, May 8:
https://witsandweights.com/app

Timestamps:

0:00 - Bulking, cutting, and the yo-yo recomp cycle
5:24 - Metabolic adaptation during continuous dieting
7:10 - Hormonal disruption, testosterone, and estrogen after 40
9:20 - Muscle loss acceleration during longer cuts
10:06 - Large vs. small surplus and fat gain during bulks
12:12 - 2-week intermittent dieting blocks vs. continuous restriction
18:01 - Saturday meal planning for tight-window phases
21:31 - Mini-cut structure, rate of loss, and protein
26:06 - Mini-bulk surplus size and the 4-to-1 ratio
31:32 - Strategic cycling vs. phase-hopping
35:18 - Bonus: one reason to end a mini-cut early

  • Philip Pape: 00:00

    Bulking, cutting, bulking, cutting. If you've been going through that cycle and every time you bulk, you don't like all the fat that you put on, and then you cut for months and your strength and muscle disappear and you suffer through it, there's a reason that cycling might not be working for you. Today I'm covering the research on how shorter diet phases can produce 50% more fat loss with less muscle loss, the exact calorie and protein targets for a mini cut and mini bulk protocol, especially after 40, and the one mistake that turns this strategy into that failed yo-yo trap that hasn't worked for you in the past. We're gonna get into everything about mini cuts and mini bulks today for faster body recomposition. Stay tuned. Welcome to Wits and Weights, the show that puts a popular piece of fitness advice under the microscope, finds the hidden reason it doesn't work, and gives you the deceptively simple fix that does. I'm your host, certified nutrition coach, Philip Pape, and this is a topic that is near and dear to me: body composition and the use of different cycling periods for your cutting and your bulking. Because if you are over 40 like I am, and if you've been trying to improve your body, build some muscle, lose some fat, maybe do both at the same time, you've often heard, hey, focus on one and optimize. I've said that myself. For many people, that is the right strategy. Focus on one for a while and optimize. We call it periodization. You might bulk for a few months. I usually recommend around six months or more. And then cut for a few months. I usually recommend maybe a couple months or even a shorter what we're gonna get into today, a mini cut. Just commit to one at a time. And in theory, it's quite reasonable. In practice, a lot of people end up spending, let's say, those first four or five months in a surplus, and they either they're not doing it effectively enough and they never quite get into a surplus, or they go too fast and they gain more fat than they wanted. And part of it is maybe they're not consistent with their training. Maybe they're not eating enough protein. Maybe they're not eating high quality enough nutrition despite being in a surplus. There's lots of reasons, you know, lack of sleep and so on. And then they're like, okay, I need to cut, and they switch to a fairly long deficit, four or five months in a deficit instead of much shorter that I would recommend. And then they might end up losing muscle and end up kind of where back where they started because of all the inconsistencies. And uh, a lot of this is the sustainability factor. And so this is a yo-yo recomp cycle that I've seen. And it's really, really tough the older you get, because you're more sensitive to these things not working the way you wanted to as they would when you were younger because of hormonal changes, limitations in your recovery, that accumulated frustration of feeling like I'm working so hard, but I don't have anything to show for it. So today I'm going to show you a different approach, strategic mini cuts and mini bulks. These are short focused phases with specific targets to keep your body responsive, to protect your muscle, to get some of that, those wins that compound over time, and ultimately the psychological aspect that allows you to be consistent and sustainable with the process. And I'm a huge fan of non-linear, what I call nonlinear approaches. And that is finding these different creative lengths and aggressiveness of these things that work best for you. So I want to give you all those options. Stick around to the end because I'm gonna share a specific warning sign that tells you that your mini cut needs to stop, even if you plan for it to go longer. A lot of you are impatient, or a lot of you want to keep going because you think you need to do it to get that extra pound off, but there's a warning sign you've got to look for. And it's a really important factor that I get asked about all the time when people are not sure when to end their cut. So here's what we're gonna cover today. First, why the standard long bulk and cut approach often works against you. Not always, but it often does. Second is the research on intermittent dieting, intermittent dieting. So I said nonlinear, but I think intermittent's a better approach that tends to change how you think about this. And then third, the exact protocol, numbers, durations, and of course, that mistake that can make this more of a trap than a benefit. All right, so conventional wisdom is you need to commit to a building phase for at least, I'll say, four or five, six months. In a calorie surplus, you're gonna gain muscle, you're gonna accept a little bit of fat gain, and then you're gonna transition to a cut for, well, fill in the blank. It depends on how much fat you need to lose. If you're already fairly lean, it could be two to three months. A lot of people end up doing it for three to six months, and you're trying to strip that fat off while keeping the muscle you had and then rinse and repeat. And if you are super consistent, if you've got a decent hormonal profile, which for a lot of people that means in your 20s and 30s, high testosterone, everything's good, everything's normal, fast recovery, your metabolism is fairly forgiving, meaning you have some room to work with. And ultimately, psychologically it works, then great, it can work for you. And by the way, when you're past 40, when you're past 50, that approach still works perfectly fine. But for some of the psychology behind it and the reality that life tends to get in the way, especially as we're older, there's there just seems to be more things that interrupt what happens, whether it's injuries and sickness, things with your family, your kids, your job. I just see it all the time. And that's why I wanted to kind of make this more practical for

    Philip Pape: 05:24

    you. So the first thing I want to talk about is metabolic adaptation, a very common topic we address on this show, but it's very important to understand. Your body will start compensating for a calorie deficit right away at the first week of a diet. And within the second or third week, you can really see it in the numbers. So if you're tracking with, for example, Macrofactor, which is the app we use to track our food because it also helps track your metabolism. You should likely see your metabolism start to tick downward when you're in a diet. And that's normal. That's normal. But after about six to eight weeks of continuous dieting, you might have seen a drop of anywhere from, say, as low as 50 or 80 calories. But for most people, it could be several hundreds of calories. Depends on how large you are. It could be 500 calories, it could even be seven or eight hundred calories per day beyond what the weight loss alone would predict. And of course, you can't tease apart the two things. So, overall, let's just assume it's in the 500 calorie range, for example. That is not your metabolism being broken, right? That's your body doing what it evolved to do, protect you as you uh starve it of resources. And when we look at just the first six weeks of restriction of a diet, the numbers that I've seen generally is 90 to 100 calories per day on average reduction, but with a lot of variation. Some people don't adapt very much at all. And a lot of times that's newer lifters, for example, who are compensating the other direction because now they're having a better lifestyle. Others see drop of 300 calories a day or more. And that's in the first six weeks. When you prolong it beyond that, it can go even more. And that's what I'm talking about here. So that's metabolic adaptation. So keep that in mind because that's going to affect the logic here. Second is the hormonal disruption. So calorie restriction directly suppresses many of your hormones, thyroid, as well as your reproductive hormones, like testosterone, men and women. And of course, in men, we know that testosterone is declining and women, but you know, men, because they have so much, it's a big, meaningful decline. One to two percent per year after 40. For women in perimenopause or menopause, we've got estrogen that drops. The estrogen receptors in skeletal muscle are involved in some of the things that help with regenerating those fibers and building muscle, and it affects fat distribution and fat storage. So you are adding this deficit-induced hormonal suppression on top of the other age-related hormonal things going on, not to mention thyroid, which is your metabolic regulator, and then all of these downstream cascades to affect things like cortisol, and cortisol itself tends to go up because you're more stressed during dieting, and then longer diets mean more exposure to elevated cortisol. You get my drift. So taking those first two together, you've got all sorts of adaptations and compensations going on. All of which is normal, but you've got to understand it and to what degree it could occur based on where you are in life and how aggressive and long your diet is. All right, the third factor here is the muscle loss that accelerates as we get older. And we know that an energy deficit, be just being in a deficit, is going to prevent you from gaining muscle or gaining lean mass mass, even though you're resistance training, it's going to limit it. And the bigger the diet, the more it gets limited to the point where eventually you risk losing some muscle as well. And again, this is if you are resistance training. If you're not resistance training, you're gonna just lose a ton of muscle when you go on a diet anyway. That is not who I'm speaking to. You should be resistance training. And if you're not, honestly, mini cuts and mini bulks are too advanced of a topic to even worry about. Go listen to some of my other episodes, such as your very first cut. Go look that up. It's a great episode. So we know that there's roughly a threshold of 500 calories per day on average of a deficit beyond which lean mass loss may start to accelerate, but it also depends on the duration of the deficit, not just the aggressiveness of it. And sometimes we see that relatively lean people have it even worse. And you have to be a little bit careful on how you do that deficit. Now, what about recovery? Because the older we are, the longer it takes us to recover. We know that older adults take longer to recover to baseline strength because of the stressors on your body, especially after uh intense training. So when you're in extended deficit and you're training hard, and now the recovery is even slower, you're compounding the stress stack on your system. So you've got to remember all of these variables stack up as forms of stress, which

    Philip Pape: 10:06

    again affects the logic of why we're talking about mini cuts and mini bulks. Now, that's all on the dieting side. What about on the bulking side? Well, the extended bulking side has some own some issues you've got to be aware of. There was a 2013 study. It compared large versus small calorie surpluses in elite athletes that trained the same way. And the large surplus group gained significantly more fat mass, but not significantly more lean mass. And this is consistent with many, many studies to come after that that showed us that a surplus doesn't need to be that big. And if you go too big, you're not gonna gain any more muscle, you're just gonna gain more fat. There was the 2023 study, I think Helms, that was Helms' study and his and his colleagues, compared the 5% surplus, or it compared maintenance to 5% to 15% surplus over eight weeks. And the two surplus groups had similar muscle gain, but guess what happened? The 15% surplus group gained even more fat. So the extra calories went to fat, not muscle. So if your anabolic hormone levels are lower, aka when we're over 40, and the quote-unquote nutrient partitioning shifts more toward fat storage, you may have even more sensitivity to that. Not necessarily, it depends on a lot of factors, but we've got to keep in the right window when it comes to the surplus. So the pattern looks like this. If you bulk too long or too aggressively, you're gonna accumulate excess fat. If you cut too long, you might risk losing muscle and suppressing your metabolism more than you really like, where it's gonna have to recover. And then you tend to be further from your goal than when you started in many cases with a lower metabolism and maybe less muscle mass. That's the trap that I'm talking about here when you're not doing those things right. Now, if you do long duration cuts and bulks with a lot of precision and control, you could avoid these things. But a lot of people have difficulty doing it that way, at least without a coach, without being in a program like ours, like eat more lift heavy, or having some way to double check that your numbers make sense beyond just calories, macros, and scale

    Philip Pape: 12:12

    weight. Okay, so we covered why the long phase approach could be a risk for you. It depends. Now we're gonna look at when you shorten those phases and then when you alternate them more strategically. This is the fun, creative stuff that I like. All right, so the landmark study, the Matador trial, published in 2018, you've probably heard it many times. If not, look it up. It's pretty cool. They took 51 obese men and they assigned them to either 16 continuous weeks of dieting at a 33% deficit, or the same 16 weeks of dieting, but broken into two-week blocks, alternating with two-week maintenance. So two weeks of dieting, two weeks of maintenance, two weeks of dieting, two weeks of maintenance. And so it ended up taking twice as long, but the same weeks of dieting at the same deficit within that block. Does that make sense? So the only difference was the structure of it. Again, the one group took twice as long, but it's the same deficit over the same amount of dieting days. So the intermittent group that went two on, two off, they lost a hundred or fourteen point one kilograms versus nine point one kilograms in the continuous group. So that's 55% more total weight loss. And the fat mass loss was 12.3 versus eight. And the fat-free mass loss was pretty small, like the amount of muscle mass they lost, and it was similar between the two groups. So the extra weight loss was almost entirely fat. And the intermittent two-week-on, two-week off group, their resting metabolic rate dropped by only half as much, about 86 calories per day instead of 179 calories a day, which that is the crux of this, isn't it? It's not that one group was in a one group, it's not that both groups were actually in the same deficit, even though I kind of said that incorrectly the way I framed it. They were in the same intended deficit. But if your metabolism is dropping faster than the other guy, then your intended deficit just shrunk, didn't it? It just shrunk. You're not actually in the bigger deficit. I think that's where people get confused. And so at the six-month follow-up, here's another interesting fact: the continuous group regained almost everything, while the intermittent group maintained their significantly lower rate. And the two-week blocks was chosen because the rapid early phase of metabolic adaptation tends to happen around the two-week mark. And so they designed that protocol around that. Now, the the big caveat for the Matador study is it was untrained obese men.

    Philip Pape: 14:44

    So then how does this translate if you are a trained lifter? Well, there was something called the ICE CAP trial that looked at intermittent versus continuous dieting in 61 resistance-trained adults at a similar deficit as the Matador trial, so 34%. By the way, when we say 34%, we mean 34% below your maintenance calories. So fat loss and fat-free mass retention were the similar were similar or the same between the two groups, but the intermittent group said they had significantly reduced appetite. And then there was a secondary analysis that found during the during one-week diet breaks, fat-free mass increased a little bit, 0.7 kilograms, resting energy expenditure increased, and there was no increase in fat mass. So a lot of these studies are interesting. As much, you know, as much as you can question methodology or sample size or what have you, it's it's just very interesting to see that, hey, your metabolic rate can be affected by how aggressively and how intermittently you're dieting. And I've talked about the weekend diet before many times. A lot of my clients do this now. We talk about and eat more lift heavy as well. The idea of going five weeks on your deficit, five days on your deficit and two days at maintenance to create a similar type of interruption and keep that metabolic rate a little bit higher, maybe hold on to a little more lean mass. So intermittent dieting may get you the same or better results, is my point, because primarily of the expenditure not dropping as much, even though the total dieting added up at the end of the day is the same. But of course, you're taking longer as well. So the average rate of loss actually is lower, which kind of comports with logic to me. Like it's not really, you're not really comparing the exact same thing, are you? You're really saying that we're gonna stretch this out and go slower. We're just happening happening to do it in this intermittent way, like full on, full off, full on, full off, instead of half all the way through. Does that make sense? There's also a study from 2020, and it showed that the weekend diet that we talked about, they looked at that, the 25% deficit, and they got two-day carb refeeds every week. And that study showed they preserve fat-free mass, dry fat-free mass, resting energy expenditure compared to continuous restriction. And both groups lost the same amount of fat. So again, refeeds are really powerful. So these are really relevant findings, I think. You have most people don't have as much of a buffer as they would like with hormones, with stress, with recovery. And so your risk of lean mass loss during dieting is probably higher than you think based on just pure numbers, which would then mean, okay, how do we compensate for that? Well, other ways to compensate are higher, you know, higher protein intake, potentially more training volume. But then that affects recovery, maybe more sleep. But are you gonna get more sleep? So shorter cutting phases can keep you more productive, is the way I'd like to put it. Keep your body more in that window before these deep adaptations set in. And then all the side effects like poor mood and psychological effects that just worsen the whole situation, not to mention the cascade against your recovery as well.

    Philip Pape: 18:01

    So before I get into the exact protocol, I want to mention something that is very relevant to this topic. So a mini cut, it is a tight window. And it could be as short as like a three or four week cut. Anything shorter than that, I would call it rapid fat loss. That's a different topic. I think I'm gonna be doing another episode on rapid fat loss soon. I haven't done one in a while. But for mini cuts, if if you get off track for a week, it's more sensitive to the results, right? Because you're by definition in a bigger deficit, most likely. And so it could actually affect, you know, 25% of the window if you're off for a week of those four weeks, correct? Or if it's a three-week mini cut, it's it's a third of it. Meaning if you fall off track, so to speak, for a week, and maybe you just end up being in maintenance instead of deficit, there is a big is a bigger hit to the result, even though on the other hand, you also have more margin. So there's no way to recover if if you start to get off track, like just you just have to accept that it's now going to take an extra week, if that makes sense. So the difference between people who get the results from the mini cuts and those who don't, usually come down comes down to one habit. And that is you plan ahead. You have your weeks set up, you use a level of precision necessary to do this properly, and you've got your meal planning, your prepping, your groceries, your, you know what you're gonna eat, your tracking, all of that, right? Again, this is not for beginners. So this is where Fitness Lab, this is my AI coaching app, is really, really helpful. This is really helpful. I I have plenty of users that use this app that are doing mini cuts and mini bulks, and they love how the app is just the tool they need for the fact that this has to be more precise. For example, there's a Saturday planning feature. It's a meal planning activity on Saturdays where you spend about five minutes mapping out the week before the week starts, which is awesome, right? And you could tell the app if you want it to happen earlier, like on Thursday, so it's in time for your grocery shopping. The app is very flexible and can actually move things around for you. It's like your own little concierge assistant. So you can plan ahead, look at what's on your calendar, look at the social stuff, any parties, any travel days you know you're not gonna have as much time. And then the app will help you plan your meals, your protein around those realities. You know, not this fantasy version, like my week's gonna be fine and everything's perfectly prepped, and I'm gonna be able to hit everything just like I planned. Okay. No, you walk in with a realistic plan for that week, which is super important. And so during a mini cut, that one habit of preparing for your week properly is the difference between one that works and one that it ends up becoming like any other cut, and you get very frustrated. So if you want to execute these tight window phases and think that the weekly ability to plan your meals is helpful, we are running 20% off right now through Friday, May 8th, for the Fitness Lab app. Go to witsandweights.com slash app. You can learn more. You can take a free onboarding quiz and get your custom plan before you even buy the app. So you can see if it's right for you. So go to witsandweights.com slash app. Link is in the show notes. All right, so we've covered why long phases sometimes break down, why the research supports shorter and alternating phases based on physiology, metabolism, and psychology. Now let's get practical. What does this actually look like? Okay, let's start with the mini cut.

    Philip Pape: 21:31

    So the mini cut is a short, focused fat loss phase lasting roughly three to six weeks. It could go up to seven or eight, but anything less than three is more rapid fat loss that's just so aggressive. I wouldn't even categorize that as a mini cut. Now, the goal is not to get shredded. The goal is to peel off the accumulated fat from your building phase so you can get back to building in a slightly leaner, more insulin sensitive, more. Metabolic responsive state. And a lot of my clients who get in who've developed a decent amount of muscle mass love the mini cuts because of its short duration. They can peel off some fat, they can get right back to it. Getting shredded is a whole different topic because you want to go deep into even a mini cut, even if it's aggressive, you'll probably have to go deeper than you think or even want. And that's a whole separate topic. So we're talking about getting super healthy and super lean for sure, but it's not the same as getting shredded. That's a different topic. Okay. So what about the calorie deficit? Well, it's it's not going to be as aggressive as you would think. It would still max out at the 1% of your body weight per week, supported by the evidence before you lose muscle mass, unless you have a bunch of extra fat or a bunch of muscle already, right? There's there's categories where you can go more aggressive, like up to 1.2, 1.3% of your body weight a week. Typically, this is people north of 200 pounds body weight who have a high metabolism. Okay. So if that's not you, I would cap it at 1% of your body weight a week. So I don't go by percent deficits. I go by how much weight you're trying to lose per week, because then it's relative to your body weight, right? Not relative to your uh calories. Now, once you've done that, it'll you'll know how many calories you actually need to eat. And if it's too aggressive, you'll know, and you could always titrate it back. So there was an interesting study, this is about 15 years ago in 2011, and it compared slow weight loss at 0.7% per week versus fat weight loss at 1.4% per week. And this was in elite athletes. The slow group actually gained lean body mass while losing fat. So they they experienced body recomp in a diet. The fast group did not. The bench press went up 13.6% in the slow group and only 5.2% in the fast group. So slower is not just, you know, safer for the physiology and the psychology, it's also more productive in many cases, which is interesting because you would think, okay, I'm impatient, I want to get the result, but it's actually backfires, whereas slower tends to be more helpful. Now, protein during the mining cut should be as high as you can get it. So, what I mean by that is usually the upper range I recommend is one gram per pound, but I'm gonna say that's a minimum. So try to get like 1.2. If you can get 1.5, even better, because we're getting into that regime closer to protein-sparing type diets, where the calories are somewhat low, especially if you're going toward that pegged upper limit of 1% body weight a week. Okay, and this is higher than the standard recommendation for protein, and it accounts for the lower anabolic environment and the need to protect muscle mass. And also it's gonna keep you fuller, it's gonna be good for satiety. And it's so it's not necessarily the most exciting diet, but you could make it that way. You could get creative. So that's protein. I would keep it at least one, if not up to 1.2 or higher grams per pound. Training during a mini-cut, well, this is the same advice I would give for almost any fat loss phase. The goal, the key is to maintain your intensity. Intensity is the load, like keeping up to that, those heavier loads that you were already training with. You might have to reduce overall sets or volume based on your recovery. Maybe it depends on how much you were doing in the first place. But like if you were doing 10 to 15 hard sets per muscle group per week, maybe now you go to eight to 12 hard sets per muscle group per week. So you can kind of do the math based on your program. It might mean switching to a different program, or it might be just cutting some sets out. And then of course, you've really got to focus on your recovery. And so that's sleep, right? And that's getting in your nutrition, even though the calories are limited, making sure to get that protein and where you get carbs, get them around your training. So that's really it for mini cut. I can go into a lot more details. This is something we help people with. Or again, we're we're running a promotion on our app Fitness Lab and it can help you with all of this stuff. You can chat with the coach in there and get as personalized a protocol as you could possibly imagine and all the help you need to make this successful, go to witzelweights.com slash app.

    Philip Pape: 26:06

    Okay, the mini bulk. Now, mini bulks are interesting because normally I would recommend that somebody bulks for at least five or six months to really get into that anabolic environment and really, really build muscle. But a mini bulk is a great entry point. And for many people, it's really just a more aggressive maintenance. In other words, a lot of people I work with will be in maintenance most of the year and they'll crank it up a bit for a while and get into this mini bulk situation and then kind of come back to maintenance. And then they may do a mini cut, they may not, right? So a mini cut or mini bulk is about eight to 16 weeks. So think about that. It's like two to four months. You're still getting up to that four months. It still can be decently long. And this is a very small calorie surplus. And by small, I mean about a quarter to half of your half a percent of your body weight a week. Now, half a percent, you're like, wait a minute, that's that actually could be super aggressive. That is only for the newest of new green lifters who have never done this before. And part of that, in my mind, is psychology. It's a stretch goal to make sure that you yes are getting in that surplus because I know what's gonna happen to you is your body's gonna start adapting upward, you're gonna burn more calories, and you're gonna fall behind very quickly. And you're like, oh, this is too much food. I can't eat all this food. I hear it all the time. And if you're laughing and you know that's you, raise your hat. You know what I'm talking about. So a lot of this is mind games. I get it. But the actual average gain of weight is probably gonna be around 0.2.3% of your body weight per week. So for a hundred seventy pound person, maybe that's a half pound per week. So that's a couple pounds per month. And so that's a reasonable amount to shoot for. If you're gaining much faster than that, then that's much higher risk of gaining too much fat. And then the cool thing about any bulk, especially a mini bulk like this, is well, now you've got this concentrated period of time where you're just gonna push it in the gym. You're gonna push it in the gym, you're gonna be able to handle more volume, you're gonna progress probably better than you have ever before, right? Even it even in an aggressive maintenance where you're eating close to maintenance and stay well fueled, you make progress. But in a surplus like this, even though it seems small, it's all you need, all your body needs to know that it can let loose and grow, grow, grow. And that's the important thing. Now, we've talked about a ratio of bulking to cutting before as something like four to one. The same thing happens here. If you notice the lengths I just gave you, you know, two to two to four months on the building side, no more than a month on the cutting side. So it's the same thing. You're just squeezing the time frame. And you're essentially, instead of doing what we talked about in Matador and Ice Cap of like two weeks on, two weeks off, or two weeks on, one week off, or whatever, you're going straight through, but you're keeping it short, if that makes sense. Now, you could take these and you could double them in length, and you could do two on, two off. You can try that. I wouldn't recommend doing that because that enter that introduces a new variable of frustration because it takes too long. Okay, and that kind of defeats the purpose of the mini piece of this. The hack that you can use is the weekend diet, where on the weekend you have a refeed within this, and then it might extend, like the cut might be a week longer. The bulk, of course, you don't have to do that during a bulk. I'm only talking about the cut, but the four to one ratio of bulking to cutting is kind of how you do the math. And you can just make that work within your, you know, time frame. And then between the phases, I always like between cutting and bulking phases to spend at least a week or two just around your maintenance, right? Coming back up immediately to maintenance that that's calculated maintenance, not estimated, but your actual maintenance based on your tracking, right? Like you should be using something like macrofactor affiliate code wits and weights, all one word. If you want to support the podcast and get two weeks free, macrofactor will calculate that for you. So then you just go right back to maintenance. So if you're coming from the dieting side, this is gonna let your glycogen replenish, your hormones will normalize, your performance is gonna come back. Like this is the recovery piece. Now, when you're going from bulking to cutting, I would also park a little bit in maintenance just to let your body kind of level out where it needs to be before you go into a cut. So let's say you did this for an entire year. What could that look like? Well, it might look like a 12-week surplus, a three to four-week cut, a transition week, 12-week, three to four-week cut, transition week, and then one more short build. So then you're actually building the majority of the year over 52 weeks. You spent up to 40 of those weeks in a productive surplus, and then only like six to eight weeks in short cuts for the whole year. So the net result, assuming reasonable genetics, consistent training, that's important, is six to 10 pounds of lean mass gained at the same or lower body fat percentage than where you started. So, guess what that is, guys? That's body recomp, but done in this nice, sweet spot, efficient way, right? Not so hard that you have those frustrations we led the podcast with, and not trying to do it purely at maintenance where you're just so frustrated because you don't feel like anything's growing. So it might not sound dramatic, but man, six to ten pounds of lean mass at the same or lower body fat percentage, you're gonna look like a completely different person. I mean, a completely different person. And you're gonna love it. So I think it's a great strategy for a lot of you. Now, I have to be honest about something here because mini cuts can be a trap.

    Philip Pape: 31:32

    It can be a real trap, a real honeypot if you use them wrong. Is that word like have innuendo these days? I think it does, but I'm gonna play clueless right now. Anyway, the distinction here between strategic phase cycling and indecisive phase hopping. Does that make sense? So I like the former. I like being strategic, cycling your phases. You have to have the right data, you have to understand what you're doing. It helps when you have coaching. I'm not saying you have to have a coach. If you like spreadsheets and you like figuring this out on your own, you could do it, right? Strategic cycling means you plan your phases in advance. You know before you start your build when you're gonna do your mini-cut, how long it's gonna last, what your exit criteria are. And you set certain targets. Well, you set a duration and targets. And what's gonna happen is you're gonna start with the duration, in my opinion. Like you pick the dates, and then you see what's gonna work within there and give yourself kind of a range of flexibility. Like, don't beat yourself up if you can't quite get to the optimal. And it really depends on your psychology of how which direction you want to go there. But that is different. So that's very intentional. The opposite is what a lot of you do, which is hopping around, program hopping, phase hopping. You step on the scale, you freak out, and then you start cutting. You know what I'm talking about. Or, you know, you start to feel flat, small, skinny, whatever. You're like, okay, now I gotta build, now it's time to build muscle. I'm good again, and then you feel fluffy again, and then you start to cut. That is anxiety. That is anxiety that you're disguising in some sort of strategy. It's not a strategy, it's just random, right? It's just reactionary. And we know the math shows it doesn't work. The psychology doesn't work, the stress that comes out of it doesn't work. Actual studies on these types of things, comparing going back and forth quickly to not doing that, we see it doesn't work. And a lot of times the changes that you're looking at are just on the scale, and all of it's from water and glycogen. And so you're not even getting the right data. You guys probably know Elaine Norton, better or worse, you know, he's a controversial guy, but he makes a related point here. He argues that his original mini-cut concept was specifically designed for relatively lean males. So it wasn't the general population. So for women with extensive histories of dieting, who already have suppressed metabolisms, repeated short deficit exposures can sometimes make things worse. And then if you don't feel comfortable at your current body fat level, if you're just not comfortable with your body, you're gonna keep defaulting to cutting, and then you never spend enough time building, which probably why I named my program Eat More Lift Heavy, to lean into how valuable that piece can be. So here's the rule: if you cannot commit to at least eight to 12 weeks in a surplus without bailing on it, you're not ready for this. You're not ready for this mini-phase cycling because you're not gonna get the full package. You have to build the psychological foundation first. You have to get comfortable with slow, intentional weight gain because you're not gaining fat. You're gaining muscle. That's a beautiful thing. You're gaining strength. Where in the past, when you gained weight, it was probably body fat because it was unchecked. It was without training, right? You get the difference. So you have to learn to evaluate progress by things like your training performance, your body measurements, your waste, not just the scale. Also your psychology, your biofeedback. And then plan out your mini cut and mini bulk on a calendar before you start and stick to it. All right, as we wrap up, remember that warning sign that I promised to give you that tells you to end your mini cut early. I'm gonna share that in just a second. If you want this data layer that we've been talking about or alluding to, that helps you catch these signals and know what's going on with your body and know how to measure things and track the right things beyond the scale.

    Philip Pape: 35:18

    Fitness Lab will help you do that. It is my AI coaching app that if you've been listening to this podcast any length of time, the stuff that I love and I'm passionate about helping you with is baked into that app in every respect. And it's gotten so much better even since launch. People loved it when it came out, but now it's faster, it's more responsive. It's got training feedback, biofeedback, pattern recognition. It gives you custom metrics on the fly based on what it realizes that you need. We have this new Saturday meal planning feature. We now have a pre-meal check-in, not just a post-meal check-in. We have daily activities that you need and want, and you can change those activities, like if you need stress reduction or you need to be reminder to go for a walk or drink your water. All of it's in there. And they're 20% off right now. All plans through Friday, May 8th. Go to without com slash app. The link is in the show notes. That's witsandweights.com slash app. I think you're gonna love it. I love the app. I'm proud of it. It's helping so many people. Check it out. Link is in the show notes, wits and weights.com slash app. All right, so here is the number one warning sign that tells you you have to end your mini cut right now. All right, very, very important here. If your gym performance has dropped for two consecutive sessions on the same lift, you could be risking muscle loss. Now, we got to be careful here because one bad day, everyone has those, everyone has an off day, everyone has bad recovery days. But two consecutive sessions where you can't match your previous performance on something that you've gotten progress on before. So, like you're getting fewer reps at the same weight, or the same reps are feeling significantly harder, then your deficit has started to cross the line from being productive to potentially risking things. Now, this is in a mini cut. And I'm telling you this to be proactive, not to scare you. In fact, a lot of coaches might be listening to this thinking, what is Philip doing? Of course, you're gonna lose lose strength during a fat loss phase. What matters is you keep your relative strength. I'm talking about the case where you have been slowly but surely progressing, or at least maintaining, and all of a sudden, two weeks in a row, you drop and then you drop. I've seen that before, and I know when that happens, there's something going on with recovery, sleep, or food. And because you're in a diet, obviously food is probably a big factor. And the question is, is it going to snowball now? Or do we need to adjust something, like slow down the fat loss phase or get out of it altogether? So I just want to put that in your head, not to scare you. You should be training hard and trying to get those reps. In fact, I'm almost hoping it has the opposite effect of make sure you're pushing in the gym, even in fat loss, to get those reps. You might feel a little bit winded or wiped, but get them, get them. And if you just can't at all, then we can look at do you just need a quick diet break? Move to maintenance calories for a few days or a week, get your performance to stabilize, and then decide whether to resume the cut. And I tell you this out of love because what I don't want you to do is start to have this cascade of poor biofeedback and performance and muscle loss. And it really, the muscle loss piece isn't because your performance is going down. It's because that'll lead you to make poor decisions and not go to the gym as much and not push as hard. And then it's just gonna cascade. Does that make sense? So I want you to use these very subtle signals to help you be proactive. All right, until next time, keep using your wits, lifting those weights. And remember, the physique that you want gets built with precision in intentional phases that compound over time, not by grinding it out forever or constantly switching around. I'm Philip Pape, and I'll talk to you next time here on the Wits and Weights podcast.

Featured

Ready for the Next Step?

Read More
Interviews Philip Pape Interviews Philip Pape

5 Supplements for Stress, Mood, and Recovery After 40 (Evidence-Based) | Ep 462

What supplements help with stress, sleep, and recovery after 40? The honest answer is a very short list of compounds with clinical evidence behind them, specific doses, mechanisms that matter for body composition, and specific safety profiles. This episode covers 5 compounds with clinical evidence for stress, mood, sleep, and recovery in adults over 40 who do strength training to lose fat and build muscle.

What supplements help with stress, sleep, and recovery after 40?

The honest answer is a very short list of compounds with clinical evidence behind them, specific doses, mechanisms that matter for body composition, and specific safety profiles.

This episode covers 5 compounds with clinical evidence for stress, mood, sleep, and recovery in adults over 40 who do strength training to lose fat and build muscle. Learn about the forms and doses studied, mechanisms relevant to body composition, findings from recent trials, head-to-head comparisons against prescription antidepressants for mild to moderate symptoms, and safety signals that have led one European country to ban one of these compounds.

Plus a 30-second stress audit at the end to check whether recovery is the variable holding your results back.

Join in Eat More Lift Heavy, the 26-week coached program where adults over 40 build the nutrition and training skills to preserve muscle, lose fat, and manage their physique for life.

Timestamps:

0:00 - 5 supplements for stress, mood, and recovery
1:13 - Where supplements fit after 40
3:53 - Sleep, cortisol, and body composition after 40
6:09 - Supplement 1
9:57 - Supplement 2
12:03 - Supplement 3
15:29 - How to evaluate your supplement stack
16:30 - Supplement 4
18:53 - Supplement 5
22:00 - Bonus: 30-second stress audit

  • Philip Pape: 00:00

    Are you feeling like you are not recovering or you are stressed in your body or your mind, or you're waking up tired, or you feel like you're working harder than results show? Maybe your mood is not where it needs to be. Now, whether you're doing all the things we talk about on the show, like training and dialing in your nutrition, I do want to talk about supplements occasionally, being a nutrition coach. So today I'm gonna give you five specific supplements that target stress, sleep, and recovery in a way that could give you a boost to the training and the diet that you're already trying to put in place to build muscle and to burn fat. And one of these on the list has actually been shown to perform as well as prescription antidepressants for moderate symptoms at a fraction of the cost with fewer side effects. So we're gonna get into all of those today.

    Philip Pape: 01:13

    Okay, you get a lot of influencers telling you what to take, you get a lot of programs, a lot of high-priced products based on supplements. And I hear from a lot of you that you go straight to these oftentimes, wonder why they don't work. And I ask, are you lifting? No. Are you watching your protein? No. So I kind of want to put those in two different buckets. In other words, you should be doing the basics and see how that goes, see what's left. But supplementation can also be helpful as well. There are some things on the list today I'm gonna talk about that I would recommend to anyone, no matter what. And then there's other things that are really up to you to investigate, potentially talk with your healthcare provider, functional doctor, whatever, if you need to. I'm not here to plug these or give you affiliate links or anything. Okay. I just want to talk about five compounds that have some clinical evidence behind it, which again is mixed at times, and at times it's stronger. What doses have been studied, and how do the outcomes matter to you? As someone who is lifting weights, you want to lose fat, you want to build muscle, but you're stressed or you've got issues with mood or things like that, which is very common in the audience that I'm speaking to. If you are in your 40s, 50s, or beyond, because of hormones, because of lifestyle, there's a lot of reasons that we have these. And some of you are doing all the things and you still have problems with stress, mood, sleep, et cetera. And then stick around to the end because I'm gonna share a 30-second stress audit, three signs that your recovery is the thing holding you back. And that can be very helpful for you. I'm a big fan of those sorts of exercises. So here's what we're covering today. First, why stress and sleep are not luxuries. They're really important to your body composition. And you probably already know that, but it's good to understand why again and get refreshed on them before we then connect them to okay, here are five supplements that I might recommend, depending on the person with the form, the dose, the study behind them, and the safety concerns for each, because nuance is important. One of them has been banned in a country. And I want to make sure you listen all the way through the episode to get all the details. And remember, this is not medical advice. I'm not specifically recommending any of these to you. I'm just sharing the information on them. So before I share those supplements, I need you to understand why we're talking about this on this podcast. When we this is a strength training and nutrition podcast, this is not a wellness or functional or supplement-styled podcast. And there are those out there. There are those. I'm kind of sick of them. I'm trying to have, you know, no more guests, for example, who are in that world. Although I just to be fair to my guests, all the guests I've had have been amazing.

    Philip Pape: 03:53

    There is a study from 2010 in the Annals of Internal Medicine, where it was a small study, 10 participants, age 41, so probably like a lot of you, and they were on the same calorie deficit with the same food and calories, but the only difference was the sleep. This is the one, the study I've mentioned quite a few times, where one group got eight and a half hours, the other group got five and a half hours. Both groups lost the same weight, but the well-rested group lost a lot more fat and less lean mass. And the sleep-restricted group lost a lot less fat and more lean mass. And I always like to mention this study. It's just a microcosm of something that's been seen time and again. And I definitely see this with clients where the sleep is the one thing left holding them back. They're doing all the other things, and for some reason, they still get five hours of sleep. And they're asking me, why isn't it working? Why is my metabolism so low? Why can't I lose weight? I'm like, you're getting five hours of sleep. Okay, but I can't really change that. What else can I do? And honestly, it's worse than that because when you're chronically stressed and your cortisol is high, your body, that is the catabolic hormone where in a short burst, like post-workout, when your cortisol is up, it's great. It helps clear the metabolic debris and all that. But when it's chronically elevated, then it's gonna accelerate that muscle protein breakdown. And it's also gonna increase the visceral fat storage in your abdomen. So more belly fat. And for women in perimenopause, we see we tend to see this compound because of the hormones, the declining progesterone, which is like a buffer for cortisol. So now it's you have less of that. But even for men with testosterone decline, that's a less anabolic environment in your body to counteract these things. So if you are training hard, if you're trying to eat well, but you're chronically stressed and you're sleep deprived, it's like you got holes in the bucket. It's like you got holes in the bucket. You could pour more water in, more volume, more protein, whatever, but they're just gonna keep draining out on the other end. So you're like, okay, Philip, but doesn't that mean I should just fix my sleep? Perhaps. But what if something is lacking, like a nutrient in your body that is causing it, making it harder for you to sleep? Can we address these in parallel? And that's kind of where I think there's a usefulness to this. So

    Philip Pape: 06:09

    let's get into the five supplements. Supplement number one is magnesium. And so I like to start with one that's super common and effective, and like I have no problem at all recommending to just about everyone. And you want a bioavailable version of this? This could be magnesium glycinate or L-theanate or one of the blends. People always ask, what should I get? Just get something that is highly bioavailable. You can Google it, ask ChatGPT, is this bioavailable? Whatever. And the reason magnesium is important is because about half of adults don't consume enough from food. And honestly, I think it's more than that that just don't get enough, especially as we get older. Um, women between the ages of 51 to 70, two-thirds of them fall below the requirement. And then exercise increases your need for magnesium above sedentary people. So you're you're definitely short on this. Like I know you're short on magnesium. Most people are. It's very, very hard to get enough in the modern food supply and the way most people eat, even if you're trying to eat quote unquote healthy. And the cool thing is we have studies that compare magnesium intake to sleep. And the largest sleep trial to date was Schuster 2025, 155 participants, and they tested magnesium bisglycinate at 250 milligrams daily for four weeks. Their insomnia severity index dropped 3.9 points in the group that took the magnesium versus dropping 2.3 points for placebo, and most of it happened in the first two weeks. And people who had low dietary magnesium to begin with saw the biggest intake, which makes total sense because if you're depleted of a nutrient, repletion of the nutrient works. And for a lot of you who are undereating, underfueling, you probably have some form of malnutrition. In fact, I know you do across many areas. Now, I have notes in here with a bunch of other studies. I think I'm gonna bore you to death. There have been studies of the different types of magnesium that looked at these insomnia scores. And just in general, they see them go down when you take magnesium. We also see an improvement in depression scores and anxiety scores. And again, it's within two weeks, so it's pretty quickly. And I've had plenty of clients who they just started taking magnesium and they're like, wow, my migraines went away. I'm feeling better, I have more energy, I can sleep better. So that's why I put this first on the list. I think it's a really powerful supplement. And the mechanism is that magnesium increases an enzyme that converts active cortisol to inactive cortisol, which is why, even if they directly measure cortisol in the urine, they also see an improvement, right? Now, again, the form matters. So the cheapest one is not the one you want. That's magnesium oxide, like you'll see it in Walmart or whatever. I would say glycinate is the highest among the oral forms and gentlest on your stomach. Feonate is the one that gets into the brain. So some people buy magnesium blends because they're supposed to have all these other benefits. And you may want to experiment with different ones, like take one for, say, a full month and then switch to a different one and try it out. It's worth experimenting if this is a concern for you. And for most people, you're gonna want to take at least two to four hundred milligrams. Most pills are like three to five hundred milligrams of elemental magnesium in the evening. Take it in the evening. I usually take mine a couple hours before bed, so it's after dinner, but not too far after dinner. If you want the cognitive and the brain benefits, you might want to target in on L3N8. And all of these have elemental magnesium, but then they also have these other compounds. And really, the only issue with a too high of a dose could be a GI issue, and probably that's it. Again, this is not medical advice today. I'm not telling you to take this, I'm not telling you what dose to take, I'm telling you what the evidence has looked at. So that is number one, magnesium. Please, everybody consider it. And with all these supplements, it is totally up to you, you with your doctor, you with your medical professional, and your own mind and choices whether you want to experiment with these or not, because they're not FDA approved, yada, yada. Okay.

    Philip Pape: 09:57

    Supplement number two is omega-3 fatty acids. I didn't think, or you probably didn't think that would be on the list. Maybe, maybe, maybe not. Okay. So you've got one of the most studied things on the list is omega-3 fatty acids, EPA, and DHA. And for mood, EPA seems to be the thing that will help with your mood. Um, and that's been measured through depression scores. Whereas DHA seems to not have an impact on those things. Now, one interesting thing is if you're healthy or if you get enough already, it doesn't make a difference and it doesn't prevent, it doesn't prevent depression necessarily. It treats existing symptoms. So just be aware of all these things. These are important distinctions. Now, inflammation, systemic inflammation in your body, this is one of the big things talked about in terms of recovery, where omega-3s can be helpful. And there have been a ton of studies on how omega-3, like two to four grams per day, which is a little more than you would think. Like you got to be careful when you buy this stuff because you'll see a dose might have far less than that or might not have as much EPA and DHA in there. So you have to just kind of do the math and check for yourself based on your budget. But they found that omega-3s reduce CRP, TNF alpha, and IL6. And these are those three inflammatory markers we talk about a lot on the show that accumulate with age and that do affect a lot of things and your recovery and things like that. And when I say recovery, I mean literally like delayed onset muscle soreness can be reduced because your inflammation is reduced. Now you might say, well, inflammation is a natural response to the body adapting to the stressor, and that's true, but you don't want too much inflammation. So you might hear something like one to two grams of combined EPA and DHA for general health, and that's probably the dose you'll see in a lot of things. I would aim for probably more than that, like double that. However, here's my disclaimer high dose omega-3 is associated with a modest increase in arterial fibrillation risk, about 25% in a particular meta-analysis. And if you have a history of heart issues, definitely talk to your doctor. All of this stuff is not medical advice. Okay. Disclaimer, disclaimer, disclaimer.

    Philip Pape: 12:03

    Supplement number three here. And a lot of you are already taking this, it's become more and more popular, and that is Ashwagandha, specifically KSM 66. This is the one that seems to have this pretty massive link to cortisol, but it also has a lot of safety caveats you have to be aware of. So the landmark trial on this was Chandrosikar, I think you say, 2012, 64 participants, and this was 600 milligrams a day of KSM 66. That's the amount that is in something like Legion's version of Ashwagandha. There's 600 milligrams, considered the like optimal clinical dose. And they saw that serum cortisol in these participants dropped almost 28% versus placebo. Their perceived stress scale scores dropped 44%. There have been more recent meta-analysis that confirmed a reduction of cortisol. And then for lifters for strength for muscle, there's a study from 2015 that saw people taking Ashwagandha had better gains in their bench press, their leg extension, their muscle size, their testosterone with lower creatine kinase levels, which suggests they had better recovery. Now, these were untrained individuals, which I always have to say is a huge caveat because you know newbies often amplify the effect of any of these interventions, from what I've noticed. But studies in trained individuals do still show some smaller but meaningful benefits. And then we have sleep. There was a study in 2019, Legade, or Langade, I should say, and they used what's called actigraphy to measure things like sleep onset latency, sleep efficiency, total sleep time in insomnia patients. And the KSM66 Ashwagonda, 600 milligrams a day for 10 weeks, significantly improved all of those. So that is the generally recommended dose that you can buy. And some products have it in there, like the multivitamin I take from Legion has ashwagandha in there. I don't think it's to that dose within the multivitamin, but that's what you would get if you bought it on itself. Now,

    Philip Pape: 14:08

    let's talk about safety here because there is some data out there that connects liver injury to ashwagandha. And most of these resolved after people stopped taking it, but there were three patients with pre-existing liver disease who did die. And it's typically two to 12 weeks after starting use. So Denmark banned it in April 2023. France, Sweden, and a few other European countries have issued warnings. Now, there's no randomized trial so far that has reported serious liver events, but oftentimes they are excluding people with liver disease, of course, and they don't go for very long, you know, eight to 12 weeks. So my recommendation is if you have any history of any medical issue whatsoever, including liver issues, you're not using this podcast as advice anyway, right? This is just information. Talk to your doctor. Don't just take stuff on your own. If you've got an issue, pre-existing conditions, talk to your medical professional. If you are not concerned and you are trying to, you want to see how it works, consider cycling it like eight to 12 weeks on, four weeks off. I think I've seen anecdotally, sometimes people get tolerant of it and it helps to do that anyway. But there, who knows what the side effects are with something like this, an adaptogen, right? We've heard it can potentially stimulate thyroid function. So I give you this not to scare you, but because you have to make an informed decision.

    Philip Pape: 15:29

    So speaking of making informed decisions, this is the kind of thing we love to do inside Eat More Lift Heavy. Eat More Lift Heavy is my 26-week coached program. Two coaches in there, Coach Carol and myself, designed to build every skill you need for lasting body composition change. You want to lose fat, you want to build muscle and do it in a structured way. Each week we'll do that. Week six, especially in the program, is just dedicated to sleep stress and recovery, where you learn to use your own biofeedback data to identify, hey, what is limiting my progress? And then week 16 is the supplements and micronutrient review, and we're gonna help you audit your stack of supplements against the evidence so you can make personalized changes for yourself. So if you're tired of all the guesswork, if you want structured coaching to address the whole picture, not just macros, not just training, those are like 5% in the equation. Go to eatmoreliftheavy.com. I'll drop the link in the show notes. That is eatmoreliftheavy.com. All right, let's get back to the list.

    Philip Pape: 16:30

    We've got supplement number four is saffron extract. Now, a lot of people haven't heard of this, and it's not for everyone. But there was a study in 2019 of it was a meta analysis of 23 trials, randomized controlled trials, and they compared it to placebo, and it significantly improved depression and anxiety. And then there have been some trials that tested saffron directly against SSRIs, and it actually found that it was similar to several SSRIs. Fluxetine is one in particular, and they found that they were statistically equivalent to SSRIs for depression and anxiety with fewer adverse events. Now, I want to be clear here this applies to mild to moderate symptoms. Saffron is definitely not a treatment for severe major depression. Most of these are small trials. Who knows how good the methodology is? But the most recent one from 2025, Lepresti, had 202 participants. It used 28 milligrams a day of standardized saffron extract and an improved depression scores. And we think this works because saffron contains crocin and saffronol. Crocin inhibits the re-uptake of serotonin, dopamine, and neuro or norepinephrine. You probably recognize those. And so SSRIs target only serotonin. Whereas the saffronol, right, the saffron extract compound, it binds to your GABA A receptors, and that is the same target as benzodiazepines, but at a much milder intensity. So you get this multi-target mechanism from one compound. So I hope I don't, I'm not losing you there. I went a little technical. I had to write that down to say it the right way. But it's kind of crazy. And for the women in our audience, I know a lot of women who take this. I know there have been some studies, specifically with women, that showed it it helped with PMS severity, for example. And there are supplements that combine saffron extract with magnesium, with I think L-theanine, which is amino acid, that also is shown to help with stress and also helps with performance, like in the gym. So you gotta look it up and find the right thing. There is, you know, the safety margin you have to think about, the supplement dose, the toxicity thresholds, all that stuff. And please, please, please look into it yourself. But I wanted to put it on your radar. That's saffron extract.

    Philip Pape: 18:53

    Supplement number five is Ltheanine, which is what I just mentioned. And I'll say it's probably the gentlest supplement on the list, probably the safest based on the evidence. Again, I'm saying probably as a disclaimer, it's an amino acid. It's found in tea. Its effects are documented on something like EEG because it increases your alpha brain wave activity. And that's associated with alertness or relaxed alertness. So that's like your the state between full wakefulness and drowsiness. So it's like you get relaxed but without getting sedate, getting sedated, which is weird because I also see it recommended for performance in the gym. So it's like it helps you focus and get relaxed, but it doesn't make you tired, right? Like magnesium or you know, magnesium could actually make you a little bit tired or drowsy. So these alpha wave increases that happen pretty quickly after you ingest it, something like 45 minutes, can then do like reduce your cortisol and make you feel more relaxed. And then when we look at sleep, there's some moderate improvements in sleep quality as well, and daytime dysfunction, as they call it. So it's more of a sleep quality thing, not a sleep quantity thing. And apparently there's a really good synergy with caffeine, where when you take it with caffeine, you can improve your speed and accuracy on attention tasks, get less distracted compared to caffeine alone. Caffeine only improves accuracy, but with L-theanine, it seems to also improve speed and attention or speed and lower distraction. It also seems to blunt the jitteriness of caffeine, but preserve or enhance the cognitive benefits. So it's kind of interesting. Again, look into it yourself. There on the on the downside, it doesn't seem to affect people with more severe symptoms of anxiety, you know, like generalized anxiety disorder. So again, this is more for everyday stress, not clinical use. And I think the dosage on here is the sweet spots like 200 milligrams. By the way, the saffron extract, I think it was 28 or 30. So this is 200. And it's also generally recognized as safe, GRAS status with the FDA. It's been approved for unlimited food use in Japan since 1964. And they've looked at doses up to 900 milligrams with no adverse events in trials. So it sounds like a pretty safe supplement and one more to look

    Philip Pape: 21:08

    at. All right, now remember, I promised you a 30-second stress audit at the end. Three signs that your recovery might be the bottleneck coming up in just a second. But if this episode made you realize, hey, my approach to body composition needs to be more complete. Maybe I'm not thinking about the recovery in stress or the supplementation. Maybe I'm not lifting weights. Maybe my nutrition isn't dialed in. That is why we have eat more lift heavy. That is why I made this 26-week coach program. We walk you through not just nutrition and training, but sleep, stress, biofeedback, supplements, everything else that determines whether the work that you're putting in actually shows up on your body. We do not sell supplements. We don't. We teach you how to make smart decisions about them based on your data. Go to eatmoreliftheavy.com to learn more and join us. The link is in the show notes. That's eatmoreliftheavy.com. Okay, here's the stress audit that I wanted to share with you. Three signs that your recovery is the bottleneck. Sign number one is that your training performance is declining or stalling, even though it's the same program and your nutrition is on point. All right. And this assumes you're not in a diet, guys. Okay. Because if you're on a diet, that alone is causing the issue. I promise you. All right. So if you were hitting the weights, but now you're stalling, there is some problem with recovery. Now, food is recovery. So if it's just that, it's that. But it could be another issue. Sign number two is you're waking up more tired, regardless of how many hours you slept in bed. Like even if you sleep seven to eight hours and then you feel like you haven't slept, there is a recovery issue there. Okay. And then sign number three is that you're holding on to water and your weight is bouncing around more than usual, especially around your midsection. So this is a relative thing. You need to compare before and after. You're holding on more water than usual and your weight is bouncing around more than usual, especially around your midsection. This could be that you are more stressed and because of the higher cortisol, you're increasing your water retention and visceral fat storage. You may not see this over days. This may take weeks or months to see it, but if you're measuring things, if your scale is erratic, your waistline feels puffy, even in a deficit, could have to do with stress. It's a good sign. So if you said yes to two out of those three, then recovery could be and is probably your constraint. It's not necessarily training volume, it's not necessarily calories, but it is if you're underfed, let's just put it that way. It's really some form of recovery. And hopefully this episode was helpful at least for one tiny piece of that in the supplement world.

    Philip Pape: 23:39

    Okay, until next time, keep using your wits, lifting those weights, and remember that the supplements themselves do not do the work. They clear some of the constraints or obstacles to the work you're already doing to help you out as tools. I'm Philip Hape, and I'll talk to you next time here on the Wits and Weights podcast.

Featured

Ready for the Next Step?

Read More
Interviews Philip Pape Interviews Philip Pape

The Latest GLP-1 Science on Muscle Loss, Fat Loss, and Weight Regain | Ep 461

What REALLY happens when you take a GLP-1 drug? Your fat loss, your muscle, your heart, your inflammation, what happens to your weight when you stop, and long-term safety. This episode covers body composition data from the 2026 semaglutide and tirzepatide trials, cardiovascular outcomes from SELECT and SURPASS-CVOT, inflammation findings beyond weight loss, weight regain patterns after stopping, and a 5-part framework to keep muscle on or off the drug after 40. 

What REALLY happens when you take a GLP-1 drug?

Your fat loss, your muscle, your heart, your inflammation, what happens to your weight when you stop, and long-term safety.

This episode covers body composition data from the 2026 semaglutide and tirzepatide trials, cardiovascular outcomes from SELECT and SURPASS-CVOT, inflammation findings that go beyond weight loss, weight regain patterns after stopping, and a 5-part framework to keep muscle on or off the drug after 40. Plus the 2026 safety update and recent Alzheimer's and Parkinson's research for adults considering, taking, or tapering off a GLP-1.

Join Eat More Lift Heavy, the 26-week coached program where adults over 40 build the nutrition and training skills to preserve muscle, lose fat, and manage their physique for life.

Timestamps:

0:00 - The GLP-1 drug narratives
5:55 - Lean mass loss in STEP 1 and SURMOUNT-1
8:30 - Organ mass, muscle quality, and DXA
10:15 - STEP UP trial and higher-dose semaglutide
11:23 - Cardiovascular outcomes from SELECT and SURPASS-CVOT
13:00 - Inflammation markers and CRP reduction
14:00 - GLP-1s and neurodegeneration research
15:32 - Habits that outlast the drug
17:00 - What happens to your weight when you stop
19:30 - Exercise while taking GLP-1s and natural production
20:48 - 5-part framework for muscle preservation
26:55 - Safety signals and long-term effects
28:12 - 3 high-protein meals when you don't have an appetite

  • Philip Pape: 00:00

    If you're on a GLP1 drug like Ozempic or Monjuro, or you're thinking or curious about it, there are a few different narratives out there. And I wanted to get into all the aspects of the science today, especially the body composition data from very, very recent research. What happens when you stop taking these? The cardiovascular and inflammation findings beyond fat loss, and then a framework to keep your muscle while the drug does its thing. And then for those of you struggling with appetite and eating enough protein, stick around to the end. I'm going to share some tips for that. Welcome to Wits and Weights, the show that puts a popular piece of fitness advice under the microscope, finds the hidden reason it doesn't work, and gives you the deceptively simple fix that does. I'm your host, Philip Pape, and this episode was directly requested by two listeners. And I want to give them a shout out up front. Daryl T wrote in and said, I'm mainly wanting to know if it's safe to take GOP1s and a deep dive into the long-term effects as well as its role in other indications beyond weight loss, like inflammation and heart health. I'm also a nurse practitioner who's worked in urology for 11 years. So, Daryl, we went back and forth a lot, and we're going to get into all of those things today. I know you can evaluate this stuff with clinical eyes. Obviously, I don't give medical advice, but I'm going to go deep on the evidence, and I think you're going to appreciate that. And then our listener, Brianna N, asked for, quote, a podcast about GLP1 weight loss drugs and how to eat enough food and protein while taking them. And so, Brianna, this is definitely a gap, definitely a challenge that I've seen. The practical side of, well, they don't have as much of an appetite, which has seemed to be helpful for losing weight, but now it actually becomes a challenge when you're trying to get things like more protein or higher satiety foods. So we're going to cover that as well. And then stay tuned to the end for three specific high protein meals that I think you could use that are under 300 calories, over 35 grams of protein. One of the challenges is protein density. And this will help, I think, when you don't have quite as much of an appetite. So in this episode, what are we covering? You're going to learn the actual lean mass loss percentages from the major GLP1 trials. You're going to learn about how lifestyle modifies those, because really that's what it comes down to. So we're not fear-mongering. We're not going to say, oh, you just lose your muscle on these things. You're going to learn what happens to body composition, your heart, your inflammation when you take these drugs, and a practical five-part framework to keep your muscle, whether you're currently on a GLP1 or considering one, or honestly, or not, because the principles are universal. All right. So

    Philip Pape: 02:42

    there are a couple narratives out on social media around GLP1 drugs right now. And one narrative is hey, these are really great. People have food noise. People are using them to lose a lot of weight that were affecting, that was affecting their health and had trouble getting started. We had uh guys like Jamie Sellzer on the podcast where it's been, you know, I mean, let's be honest, it's like a miracle drug. This is not something that's ever existed before. And yet he's doing it the right way by changing lifestyle at the same time. And that's where we get into some of the thorny things here. But that's that's the first kind of narrative, and and often there's a pushback because people want to judge people for taking these and so on. I even did an episode a while back called Ozempic Envy about that phenomenon. And then the second narrative here is hey, you lose all your muscle when you take these things, or it's cheating, or hey, you're gonna gain everything back the minute you stop. And you've probably seen some truths to all of this stuff in a way. Uh, not truths to judge judging people. I'm not talking about that, but really like what happens when you take these drugs. So just to say it up front, I'm definitely not anti-medication. I think if any tool is the right tool for your situation, use it. Use the tool if it helps. Obesity is pretty well established now as a medical condition that has actual physiological drivers, things like brain-related genes and many other things. It's very complicated. These drugs do work. Yes, there is a behavior and lifestyle component, but it's one of many, many components. And the weight loss we've seen from these drugs is not only clinically meaningful, but just real life meaningful, you know, lots and lots of pounds lost. And you know, we talk about it's not always about the scale, but it often is about the scale when you're carrying a lot of excess and dangerous body weight and body fat. The body composition side of that, meaning how much of your weight that you're losing comes from fat versus muscle, this it's not a fixed thing. It's not like you have this side effect and it happens this way. It depends almost entirely on two things that you actually control. Number one is do you lift weights? And number two is do you eat enough? I'll say enough protein, but there's other things you can have malnutrition with when you are in such a huge deficit that's often caused by these. But protein is kind of the leader of all of these. And so the difference between what I'll call unmitigated GLP1 use and optimized GLP1 use is the difference in what we're seeing with some of those numbers, like when you hear the 40% of your weight loss from lean mass, versus I've talked about it recently, losing close to zero from lean mass, just like if you weren't taking the drugs because you're doing the things. And that's a big gap between those two populations. And I guess the problem is today there's so many people taking these drugs that are then not doing the lifestyle thing that we hear about this more and more, and it gets fear-mongered and all that. So I want you to be strong. I want you to be metabolic, metabolically strong and resilient. I want you to be leaner if that's what you want. I want you to be healthier, all of those things together. So that's what this episode is about. It's not whether you should take the drug, that's between you and your doctor and your goals. This is about what the evidence says you should do alongside the drug to get the best possible outcome.

    Philip Pape: 05:55

    So let's start with numbers because numbers always tell the nuance. They tell us the stuff, the reading between the lines of all these headlines. The step one trial, I've mentioned it several times. This is referenced a lot. It's foundational data on semaglatide, which is the drug behind Wagovi, and Ozempic. And in this study, it was on body composition. Participants lost about 15% of their weight over 68 weeks, and about 39 to 45% of that was lean mass. So just every 10 pounds you lost, about four were coming from muscle. Not something we want to do, right? We don't want to do that. And it sounds scary, but the context always matters. So we've talked about the quarter rule in body composition research, where we've seen for over decades of research when anyone loses weight through any method, about a quarter of the weight loss on average is typically lean mass. And that's your physiology. Your body doesn't just say, I'm only gonna burn fat. It's going to burn whatever it can, and I hate to use the word burn, but it's gonna draw energy from wherever it can. And when we talk about muscle, it's not like eating away at your muscles, it's simply not rebuilding them, it's not preserving them. And that's kind of the way to think about it. So it, you know, this percentage right off the bat is not great, and that affects anyone who's just not lifting weights. For semaglotide in step one, the question in the step one trial, the question has always been recently is it higher than the average? The answer is yes, but you also have to think about the rate of weight loss, also is higher than average. So we're still teasing out the data. We're not 100% sure that there's an independent factor with these drugs, and it really doesn't matter because if you're doing the right thing, you don't have to worry about it. Now, if we look at terzepatide, that's the drug behind Manjaro and Zeppound. There was another study, the Surmount 1 body composition substudy, and that's February 2025. So you can look that one up. Participants lost 21% of their body weight, and lean mass accounted for about 25% of what was lost, which is more in line with other weight loss methods and that held across different doses, different sexes, or both sexes, and all age groups. Now we don't quite know what the difference is between the two. It may have to do with the terzepicide being a dual receptor agonist hitting both the GLP1 and the GIP receptors. And maybe that gives some additional lean mass protection, but nothing is compare the two side by side. They're different studies, different potentially methodologies and populations and all that. Okay. Now, the lean mass includes more than skeletal muscle. I think we forget that in the discussion as well. It includes your organ mass, your connective tissue, your bone, and your water. And the fat tissue you have, what we call adipose tissue, believe it or not, is also 15 to 20% lean mass itself. I don't know if you realize that. It's something we don't talk very often, but there is some lean mass, quote unquote, in fat tissue, and that's water and protein in your fat cells. So when you lose a lot of body fat, you're automatically going to lose some measured lean mass, even if you haven't lost actual muscle. And now, of course, you're like, well, wait, one time I gained lean mass. Well, yes, if you gain enough muscle to offset that during a fat loss phase, like if you're a brand new lifter, that can offset it for sure. A very recent study, 2026, combined pre-clinical data with a human proof of concept trial and looked at lean tissue loss on submagotide, where and they found that liver mass decreased more than muscle mass. So that's an organ, right? So now we're saying, oh, maybe some of that lean mass loss is coming from organ mass loss. Interesting. And then there's a third piece here, and that's what we call muscle quality. So there was a surpass three MRI substudy published last year, 2025, and it found that while muscle volume decreased on tur's epitide, intramuscular fat infiltration. Now that's the fat marbled within the muscle itself, decreased significantly more than you would expect from weight loss alone. So now less fat inside the muscle means better muscle quality, insulin sensitivity, better function. And the researchers called these adaptive changes, not pathological, just adaptive changes. And finally we had the step up trial, and that tested the new higher dose of maglatide of 7.2 milligrams, found the same pattern. And they used MRI instead of DEXA. They measured about 16% of weight loss coming from lean tissue, and then the muscle function as they measured it with sit-to-stand testing was preserved. I don't know what to make of that piece of it, honestly, because it it's a low bar, but I guess it's important. But the the summary is this, right? The initial numbers from the step one, that's like the full-on, unmitigated scenario. First study they did on this, or the first big study that I guess we can rely on. And really, in practicality, the lean mass fraction of the muscle lost ranges from anywhere from you know zero to like eight percent in people who do train and eat protein. Remember that some of that lean mass is good. It's from, you know, fat what what I should say, fat cells. And then some of it is non-muscle tissue anyway, and then some is all the way up to say 45%, and people just don't do anything they're supposed to do, and they're losing tons of weight really fast. All right, so that is body composition. I think we're all caught up. Now

    Philip Pape: 11:23

    we're gonna shift to what Daryl was talking about, which is the non-weight loss indications. There was a trial back in 2023 called SELECT, over 17,000 adults that had heart disease, a high BMI over 27, but no diabetes. And smagletide reduced their major cardiovascular events by about 20%, with a hazard ratio of 0.8, and it reduced all cause mortality by 19%. And I think from what I can read, the cardiology community was a bit surprised because there was an analysis in the Lancet in 2025 that found a third of the heart benefit, only a third of the heart benefit, was explained by the reduction in waste. In other words, they lost weight, they got a benefit to the heart, but there was more of a benefit than you would expect. And the cardiovascular protection seemed to be consistent regardless of how much weight people lost. And so it's not just, hey, lose weight, help your heart kind of thing. Something else must be going on. So fast forward, or not fast forward, but same year, 2025, last year, for terzepatide, the surpass CVOT trial, compared it to dulaglutide, which apparently already has proven heart benefits. And terzepatide met what's called non-inferiority, meaning it's at least as good. And against a theoretical placebo, they estimated a reduction in major heart events by 28% and 39% reduction in all-cause mortality. These are huge numbers. And then the inflammation data probably explains some of this cardiovascular data. It's all connected, right? So across the STEP trials, going back to those semaglatide trials, they found a reduction in C reactive protein, CRP. That's a key inflammatory marker we can measure in our blood pretty easily. And it dropped by 38% over two years. It dropped 12% at just four weeks, and that's before there was any meaningful weight loss. They only lost like 2-3% of their body weight by that point. So that's really strong evidence for a direct anti-inflammatory effect that's independent of weight change. At least that's my understanding and reading of the evidence. Another review last year in the Journal of Clinical Investigation looked at a neural pathway where GLP1 receptor activation in the brain reduces circulating TNF alpha, and it does so just within a few hours. Just a few hours. This is before really anything else has changed. So that's pretty clear potential cause and effect going on. Now let's talk about the brain. And this is maybe a little bit less exciting than what we know so far. There's some large observational studies where GOP1 users had 40 to 70% lower risk of developing Alzheimer's, and it generated a lot of headlines at the time. But then when Nova Nordisk tested oral semaglitide directly in people who already had mild cognitive impairment or early Alzheimer's in the evoke and evoke plus trials, it failed to make a difference versus placebo on things like cognitive scores. And there was another trial of laraglide in Alzheimer's that also didn't seem to have an impact, but it did show 18% slower cognitive decline and it preserved brain volume on MRI. There was another study that showed no benefit for Parkinson. So, you know, things are being tested out. Who knows where we're going to end up with all this? I'm not claiming anything here. I'm just sharing what seems to be known so far from whatever studies have been done. And I guess the emerging interpretation here, and for Daryl, our listener who asked about those things, I think it's that GLP1 drugs may help prevent some neurodegeneration through anti-inflammatory metabolic effects. They may not treat the disease, you know, maybe a prevention thing. And honestly, I again, I'm not giving you medical advice here. This is just my reading of evidence as a lay person when it comes to this stuff. So I hope that's helpful and at least gives you a thought to look into some of these things.

    Philip Pape: 15:32

    So we've just covered why body composition on GOP1 drugs is it's not a fixed static thing. It highly depends on your training, your protein intake. And if you're thinking, okay, how do I actually set up my protein? How do I structure my training? How do I know if I'm losing weight too fast or if my plant is working? That is what Eat More Lift Heavy is built for. This is my 26-week coach program. I created it in conjunction with Coach Carol. So you get two coaches. And it's a three phases over 26 weeks where phase one is where we get your tracking and your baseline dialed in. Phase two is where most of the, I'll say coaching happens because now you have data that you can read and make decisions from for your protein, your progression, your hunger signals. If you're on GLP1s, are you losing weight too fast or just right? Are you holding on to your muscle? How are you training the right way? You know, and if you're on a GLP one, I think it's fantastic. These are the same skills we want to build. And if anything, you really want to come in and learn those skills. So eventually you could potentially titrate off the drugs. And whether or not you do that, you can live with them in a more sustainable way. So there's a lot in there. I'm not going to go over all the things. You know, you've got calls, you've got one focus per week, we've got a community. We've got all that fun stuff. But the key is that you're going to build skills one week at a time so that you come out more confident on the other side. EatmoreLiftheavy.com. That's eatmoreliftheavy.com. Link is in the show notes as well. All right. So the

    Philip Pape: 17:00

    next question people often ask is what happens when you get off these drugs? Speaking of stopping, what happens when you stop? And again, we go back to the step one, they had an extension study where at the end of it, after 68 weeks on some magletide, participants lost about 17% of their body weight. And then when they stopped the drug, a year later they'd regained two-thirds of the weight they lost. And also the cardiometabolic improvements in their blood pressure, their lipids, their blood sugar, those all reverted toward baseline too, which kind of makes sense. Obviously, if you're gaining weight and you're not getting the protective effects if these drugs have independent effects, that would you'd be expected to happen. For terzepatide, the Surmount 4 trial had a similar outcome. 70% regained their weight within a year of stopping. And 82% of patients who stopped regained at least a quarter of the weight within 12 months. And then we have a 2025 meta-analysis across 11 different trials that found an average regain of about 5.6 kilograms, which if I do the math in my head is something like 12 pounds or something, multiplied by 2.2. And then even longer follow-up periods showed even larger regain of weight. Now that sounds discouraging, but I'm all about reframing and understanding the context. So think of it this way: no one would take blood pressure medication for a year and then stop and be surprised when their blood pressure went up if they didn't do anything else, especially. That's the nature of a chronic condition. The drug was managing a physiological drive inside your body. You move remove the drug and the drive returns. So GOP1 drugs do the same thing at a minimum with your appetite, let alone with these other metabolic things we're talking about. Your body has this biologically defended set point. Now, I I'm hot and cold on like set point theory, but when you've been doing something for a long time, many years, there does seem to be a reversion to the mean that your body wants to do in terms of your weight and your habits and everything else. And the drugs are suppressing the appetite signals that would have caused you to eat up to that point and then some. And so when you remove the drug, those signals come back, right? And we talked to Jamie Sellsler on this podcast. He was talking about being on this for life in his case. And that doesn't necessarily have to be the case for everyone, it depends on the person. But the the promising thing here is other research. There was a Copenhagen trial published in the New England Journal of Medicine in 2021, and it showed that exercise actually changes this equation. So patients who exercise on laraglide regained five kilograms less than those who just used the drug after a full year after the treatment stopped. And they were seven times more likely to maintain at least 10% weight loss. And it increased the body's own natural GLP1 production. So exercise during taking the drugs, it's not just a, I'll say transient support. It's actually giving you long-term benefits, which really isn't that surprising, is it? And now they say exercise. I like to be specific: strength training, walking, all the types of activity we talk about on this show, especially lifting weights as being a huge game changer for the longer term. But when you stop AGOP1, you are probably going to gain some initial weight anyway, like anyone would when you start to eat more. Your body restores glycogen. That's the stored carbs in your muscle and liver. Glycogen binds with water. So the first like three to five pounds on the scale on average are not body fat. And that's always something when I tell people they're going to gain weight, you know, if they come out of a deficit and go to maintenance, is what's going to happen. So you got to account for that as well. And don't blame it on the drugs. Okay, so where are we now? We've covered body composition data, cardiovascular and inflammatory story regarding the drugs, and the weight regain piece.

    Philip Pape: 20:48

    Now, how can you use this data? So if you're on or considering a GOP1 drug, there's five things the evidence says you should prioritize. And the cool thing is, these are the same things this show Wits and Weights has always taught. So this is a great refresher if you've already heard it, and it's a great new sense of empowerment and information that you can use if it's new to you. Because the drug is not going to change the principles. What I would say is it amplifies the consequences of ignoring these principles. That makes sense. Okay. So number one is the protein. We've got to have a certain amount of protein. I'm just going to say the number again, at least 0.7 grams per pound, or like 1.2 grams per, or 1.6 grams per kilogram. Some numbers you see out there advise less, but we are we're talking about lifting weights here and having enough, and we're talking about older population, maybe over 40. I would just say going for, you know, 30 or more grams of protein for every meal so that it adds up to around 0.7 grams per pound of your body weight or more is solid. And if you don't have an appetite, which is going to be the case, that's where you have to prioritize protein dense, low volume foods, where we normally talk about the opposite. For most people, trying to have higher volume foods, but this is where you need it to be more uh dense. And I'm gonna give you three specific meals at the end of this episode that do exactly that. So I want you to stick around, but I want to get through these principles first because these are important to have before you go to tactics. So number two is resistance training, non-negotiable. This is the most evidence-supported intervention to preserve lean mass, period, let alone on GLP1 drugs. And we talked about the exercise group in the Copenhagen trial. There's also a case series in 2025 of patients who did resistance training while on some aglitide or terzepatide. And I talked about this in a previous episode. The amount of lean tissue they lost was low. It was something like five to 10%. It's very similar to anybody who would lose weight and hold on to muscle, remembering that some of that lean mass is not muscle. And so your actual muscle loss is quite small. And if you're doing it right, it kind of comes right back when you get back to maintenance or start building again. So all you need at a minimum is two to three sessions per week hitting all major muscle groups with progressive overload. So if you want further numbers than that, I would say try to hit major muscle groups for around 10 sets per muscle group per week. And that could be direct or indirect. That leads to a whole other discussion and many other podcast episodes about training and programming. But heck, going from zero to one a week is itself a massive game changer compared to saying, no, no, I just can't do this and I'm not going to train. You've got to lift weights. All right, number three is monitoring your rate of loss. So the GLP1 drugs, because they suppress your appetite by a lot, like 30 to 40%, it can push you into a very aggressive deficit without even trying. I see it all the time. Clients come in or members come in to eat more lift heavy. And it's ironic because they the eat more in their mind is because they're actually not able to eat more due to the appetite while losing weight. It's a very interesting place to be. And so if your scale is dropping faster than 1% of your body weight per week, you are definitely in that zone where the lean mass loss can accelerate. All right. There's a lot of other variables behind it, like how much weight do you have to lose and how lean are you to begin with, et cetera. But the fix here is just to intentionally eat more, starting with protein. Don't be all excited about this rapid weight loss. Like manage it and get control of it. And this may also let you reduce your dosage of the drug, which I don't know if it's gonna save you money as well, maybe reduce side effects, those kinds of things. Number four is to start early. Now, what do I mean by this? There is a study in 2026, semoline, it was called. It found that lean mass loss was largest in the first three to six months and then it stabilized. And they used hand grip strength and found that it improved. And sarcopenic obesity, so so sarcopenia, which is the loss of muscle and function, actually reduced as well. Like there was less of it from 49 to 33 percent. But the loss of lean mass is really front-loaded. So ideally, you're starting your training in protein optimization when you start the medication. But if you haven't, the next best time to start is now, right? That's obviously always the case. Don't use that as an excuse. Then number five is plan ahead for an off ramp. Now, a lot of people aren't doing this. A lot of you taking these drugs, I know it because I talked to you, you're just taking them, you're kind of in the middle, and you're like, all right, I'm just gonna keep taking them. Well, if you plan to eventually stop or want to stop or want to reduce the dose, right? Yeah, many people do, some people don't. And it's okay to experiment and try coming off, seeing what happens, and maybe you do have to go back on. That's fine. The behavioral habits that you build while on the drug, that is the thing, that's the buffer. That's like the insurance policy that will save you later on when you reduce or come off of these. And at a minimum, they'll get rid of some variables that you need to fix anyway, right? Your training and your nutrition, so that you can isolate whatever remains in terms of things like food noise or appetite. So, this would be how do you structure your meal? Do you plan ahead? What are your training habits? Do you get enough protein? All of those things, the things that we teach and eat more live to have exactly those skills. And then for those who are staying on these drugs long term, which is a totally valid option, and some people are probably gonna have to do this. There is now an oral pill for cymagotide that they're starting to study. And I guess it's pretty affordable as well. There's a higher dose injectable somagide, and there are more options now than ever, is what I'm saying. So, meaning you should kind of shop around and always be aware of what's available. Talk to your doctor, of course. This is not me giving you medical advice. This is just be aware of the options as they continue to evolve and change. You might find something that has less side effects or a lower dose or something like that, or it's more convenient to take, et cetera. All right,

    Philip Pape: 26:55

    last little thing here is I think Daryl asked about safety as well. And this is where I could easily get into the medical side of things too much more than I'm comfortable with. But if you look up, look up the studies, large cohort studies done as recently as 2026, made analysis done as recently as 2025 on thyroid cancer, on pancreatitis, on gastroparesis, on even things like suicidal ideation. There's a lot of mixed data. Generally, it seems like some things are getting overblown. You know, there have been these like what they call like black box warnings that were on and then they were removed from the labels. There's weird conditions like dysesthesia. I don't even know how to pronounce it. It's like an altered skin sensation. So there's all these really weird little side effects and things. And in studies that show some sort of risk increase for like a cancer, oftentimes they're confounded by other things like gallstone formation or the fact that you're losing weight rapidly, all that kind of stuff. So I really don't want to make any claims or even get into that data here today. I'll leave that for more of the medical podcasts. But it's very interesting if you are taking them or thinking about taking them just to be educated on things like side effects and long-term effects, if you're able to tease that out, which is very difficult, I realize.

    Philip Pape: 28:12

    All right, before we wrap up, remember those three high protein meals that I promised you, each under each under 300 calories, over 35 grams of protein. If you don't have an appetite, I'm gonna share those in just a second. But if you know someone who's currently on a GLP1 med or thinking about starting one or curious about them or talking about them, send them this episode, please. Share this episode. We love to spread the word and get people educated and excited and curious. Text them a link from your app, whatever's the easiest way to do it, because I doubt they're getting a lot of this information from their healthcare professional. I'm just saying, I doubt they are. The odds are low from what I've discovered. And things like protein and training and whatnot, doctors generally are just not talking about those from a prescriptive standpoint because that's not really their job anyway. So text this friend who needs to know, wants to know who you love and want them to know about it. All right, here are some ideas for hitting a lot of protein in a very dense way without having as much volume. So, meal one is take a cup of nonfat Greek yogurt, a scoop of whey protein, handful of berries. I've mentioned this before. This is like the perfect combination of low calorie, it's like 280 calories, 42 grams of protein. And of course, you've got the fiber and the berries, and it tastes great. You could add some cinnamon, add some sweetener in there, you know, either a calorie sweetener, which adds calories, or if you're okay with an artificial sweetener or like a stevia. All right, meal two, let's go with the chicken breast, about four ounces of chicken breast, mixed with a tablespoon of mayo and squeeze a lemon on a bed of spinach. So that's kind of like your chicken salad, if you will. And of course, you could put that on like high fiber wrap or something like that if you want to add more fiber and maybe even a little protein that way. So we're talking 250 to 300 calories and almost 40 grams of protein, super quick and easy, convenient. And you could even use canned chicken. And then meal number three is a protein shake where you've got one and a half to two scoops of whey. You use something like skim milk or almond milk, and some peanut butter powder if you like peanut butter, so you don't get all the extra calories and fat from actual peanut butter. So, again, that is about 290 calories, 43 grams of protein. Just super simple, convenient ideas. Three meals, protein forward, they're low volume. That's the key. They're low volume. They shouldn't make you as full. And you can rotate them through and get your protein. All right, until next time, keep using your wits, lifting those weights. And remember that the these GLP1 drugs, they definitely can affect your appetite. But regardless of whether you're on them or not, it's the protein and the training and the lifestyle that are really going to make a difference for you in the long term. I'm Philip Hape, and I'll talk to you next time here on the Wits and Weights podcast.

Featured

Ready for the Next Step?

Read More
Interviews Philip Pape Interviews Philip Pape

Why Lifting Weights 6 Days a Week Won't Help You Lose Fat (Ben Brown) | Ep 460

Exercise physiologist and clinical nutrition expert Ben Brown breaks down why exercise is often a weak tool for weight loss, even when you are lifting weights and doing everything “right.” We unpack metabolic compensation, how stress after 40 changes your results, and why nutrition and fitness habits like protein, recovery, and smarter programming matter more than chasing calorie burn. We also cover GLP-1s, muscle building, hormone health, and how to use cardio strategically for longevity instead of relying on it to build muscle or lose fat.

How much lifting is too much vs. too little? What about cardio? And how hard does your body fight back when you try to out-exercise your diet?

Exercise physiologist and clinical nutrition expert Ben Brown breaks down why exercise is often a weak tool for weight loss, even when you are lifting weights and doing everything “right.” 

We unpack metabolic compensation, how stress after 40 changes your results, and why nutrition and fitness habits like protein, recovery, and smarter programming matter more than chasing calorie burn. 

We also cover GLP-1s, muscle building, hormone health, and how to use cardio strategically for longevity instead of relying on it to build muscle or lose fat.

Get Fitness Lab (20% off for listeners), the #1 coaching app that adapts to YOUR recovery, YOUR schedule, and YOUR body. Build muscle, lose fat, and get stronger with daily personalized guidance.

Timestamps:
0:00 - Why more exercise backfires
2:14 - What exercise is really for
5:24 - Why calories out misleads
8:38 - How metabolic compensation happens
11:56 - Cardio as a strategic lever
17:34 - Stress after 40 changes everything
24:26 - GLP-1s, weight loss, muscle
32:00 - Tapering GLP-1s and recovery
36:24 - Cardio for longevity and health

Episode resources:

  • Why more exercise backfires

    Philip Pape 0:00

    You're training five, maybe six days a week, showing up to the gym, putting in the work, and yet the scale hasn't budged. So you add more cardio or you push the sessions longer, and somehow you're hungrier, more tired, and still stuck at the same weight. What nobody tells you is your body has a metabolic thermostat, and the harder you push your training, the more aggressively it compensates. Not because something is wrong with you, but because your biology is doing what it evolved to do. Today I'm talking to an exercise physiologist about why exercise is one of the worst tools for fat loss, how your body actively neutralizes extra training before you even leave the gym, and what you should be doing with your workouts instead if you actually want to change your body composition after 40. Welcome to Wits and Weights, where in every episode we put a popular piece of fitness advice under the microscope, find the hidden reason it doesn't work, and give you the deceptively simple fix that does. I'm your host, Philip Pape, and today we're gonna put one of the most persistent beliefs in fitness under the microscope. That exercising more will make you lose more fat, lose weight, lose fat, whatever you think it's going to do for you. My guest today is Ben Brown. Ben holds master's degrees in both exercise physiology and clinical nutrition. He's consulted for professional sports teams, including the Arizona Diamondbacks and the Golden State Warriors. He's a professor of kinesiology at Arizona State, and he now runs Body Systems, an online coaching company that has worked with over a thousand clients. He has spent two decades in the exercise science trenches. And now he often tells people they need to train less, not more. Today you are going to learn why your body compensates for increased exercise. It can reduce your calorie burn, it can do other things, and how that compensation sometimes gets worse as you age and why higher quality, focused strength training, among other things, will do more for your body composition than simply training or exercising more. We're also going to get into some of our favorite controversies, including perhaps GLP1 drugs and muscle loss and the nuance behind calories in, calories out. Ben, it's good to see you again and welcome to the show.

    Ben Brown 2:14

    Thanks for having me, Bud. Great seeing you. Glad to be here.

    Philip Pape 2:16

    I'm going to ask a very simple but very difficult question here. What is the point of exercise?

    Ben Brown 2:23

    You know, that is a seemingly simple yet complex question, but I think exercise is necessary for life. I mean, it's part of what contributes to cellular function and metabolic function. And so I would say the point of exercise is to live.

    Philip Pape 2:47

    Okay, mic drop. Okay, so now let's take it one level deeper. Already the idea that exercise, and we need to define what that is, what type of exercise, or how do we want to define exercise for this discussion?

    Ben Brown 3:01

    Yeah, again, a really good question. And so, I mean, listen, let's look at physical activity in general. And and I it perhaps it's the classification between overall just physical activity and and just generalized movement, and then exercise as potentially being something that has what could be contributed or uh considered like a higher intensity level. Candidly, like I don't know what how we would necessarily differentiate. And I'm sure we could kind of dig into the literature to get clarity around that, Philip. But at the end of the day, I would say that if we're classifying the two, if we look at just generalized physical activity, that's probably more like activities of daily living and things that we would just do, right? Like walking to and from the house and the car and to work and getting up and getting down and you know, picking up the kids and all of those obligatory things that we need to live versus exercise as being actually something that's intentional, that's strategic, that's in some way, shape, or form structured, right? Around like I am intentionally going out for a walk, or I'm intentionally going to the gym and I'm going to lift weights. And of course, that comes with a different amount of volume and intensity and time. And so exercise in that respect, as we're hashing it out here, I would say comes with some sort of quantification and qualification in terms of the volume load and intensity.

    Philip Pape 4:32

    That's great. And it also sounds like there are different modes. You you alluded to daily activities and you alluded to intentional structured exercise, which then leads me to think of all the types of fitness or the terms that people use, especially when you, I'm sure working with coaching clients, hear things like mobility, strength, flexibility, athleticism. And there's, you know, it can get overwhelming, it can get confusing. So people think about losing weight and being fit and healthy. They think of things like calories, calories in, calories out. They think of maybe now they're wearable or what the machine is telling them in the gym tells them that they're burning. And there's a lot of misconceptions around that. But where does the math begin here when we start with energy balance, calories in, calories out, and how it links to exercise? And we can set that as a foundation for maybe talking about constrained energy expenditure and all that other fun stuff.

    Ben Brown 5:24

    Yeah. So we we need to look at it. Um, if I'm understanding the question, is is is basically you're saying what's the difference between or how are we looking at exercise in terms of energy expenditure, right? In terms of expenditure, right? And and so while it is valuable, right, we know when we exercise, we expend calories and there's different forms of exercise, and therefore, and there's different intensity levels, and therefore there's different amounts of expenditure over different periods of time. That's all good and well and valuable. But when we take that model, right, and we take that the physics of caloric expenditure and we apply it to the physics of caloric intake and weight loss, and we all understand, and this is the crux of it, Philip, right, is that we understand the value of calories in, calories out, right? However, when we take that model and we apply to say, well, if I just offset my intake with my output, then theoretically things should come out in the wash. And unfortunately, that's not the way that the human metabolism works for a myriad of reasons.

    Philip Pape 6:32

    If I burn 400 calories on the treadmill, how much of that shows up as additional expenditure or my metabolism at the end of the day? How does that affect the equation?

    Ben Brown 6:42

    Yeah, so I think when it comes down to it, it's significantly less than even 50% of what we perceive that caloric expenditure to be. And that's where, you know, the human metabolism functions and the beautiful thing about the human metabolism, right? And so that's the most important component for people to understand when they're undergoing a weight loss program, as an example, of not trying to just leverage physical activity as the prime modality of caloric control. And that's why we always talk about around the value of your intake, not only the amount of food or the amount of calories that you're consuming, but of course the quality of the food and the implications therein, right?

    Philip Pape 7:27

    Yeah. So you you said something very powerful of not using physical movement as the main lever of calorie control. Very, very important. But just on the calorie out side, right? On the output side, where does that compensation primarily come from?

    Ben Brown 7:40

    Yeah. So essentially what's happening is we we have these pushback mechanisms at play. It's like, yes, we are earning these calories, but what essentially happens is what's happening the rest of the day, right? And how are our behaviors influenced by virtue of that caloric expenditure? In other words, right, is how does our intake change? How does their physical activity change through the rest of the day? How does our hormonal patterns change? And how do those influence, again, like I said, the amount of caloric expenditure and caloric intake through our daily patterns. So do we end up eating more? Do we end up exercising less? Do we crave more food? Do we experience more hunger? And this seemed to be the primary metabolic mechanisms in terms of how it influences that physical expenditure.

    How metabolic compensation happens

    Philip Pape 8:38

    That's very interesting, you know, listing those things because I know when I first got into this and learned about it, you know, we all subscribe to this additive model, right? The more you move, the more you burn. And then when I started to learn about it, I learned about hormones like you mentioned and cellular compensation. But you mentioned you might move less, you might walk less, you might, you know, exercise less because you exercised, et cetera. Uh, you talked about eating, maybe you eat more, you're hungrier perhaps, or you're eating things that aren't you know serving you as well. And then even what comes to mind to me is things like sleep. You know, I've talked about the impact of cardio on sleep when it's too intense or too much volume. It could reduce your sleep and then lead to a vicious cycle as well. So, should people even consider not exercising a certain way to avoid that? And that's that's ultimately what we're trying to get to is some sort of prescription for living and moving. What are your thoughts there?

    Cardio as a strategic lever

    Ben Brown 9:29

    So here's the deal is you know, mechanistically we can break this down a bunch of different ways, and we could obsess over the X's and O's of well, it says I burned 500, but I only burned 250. And, you know, how does that correlate to this, that, and the other? At the end of the day, it's like I think what most people need to understand, and that's most the biggest takeaway, is like exercise is necessary. Like I said, it's life, man. It's beautiful, it's healthy, it's warranted, we need it. We should be infusing it in some way, shape, or form every single day in multiple different modalities between walking and you know, and strength training and things that we enjoy. So we just need to first and foremost stop thinking about it as offsetting calories. It's valid, but it's not that valid in the grand scheme of things unless we're really in the far reaches of a caloric deficit. And so, you know, when we're having these conversations for people who are maybe hitting plateaus or their significant level of leanness, and we need to use that as a as a switch, right? As a trigger or a lever to kind of really move the needle because we can't get calories a lot lower, sure. But for the vast majority of people that are looking like, I just want to look better, I want to feel better, I want to be healthier, want to have more energy, I want to optimize more hormonal function, great. Like, let's figure out ways for you to exercise every single day. And then beyond that, is like, and now if we're if we're really making a concerted effort to lose body fat, first and foremost, let's figure out what your caloric intake looks like and let's set the precedent that you're going to be training in some capacity, right? Whether we set, you know, say, listen, you're you're going to be getting 8,000 steps a day, you're going to be training three or four days a week. And maybe we won't touch cardio just yet. We'll use that and maybe we'll save that, Philip, as a lever that we apply, right, at some point if and when we need it. Because I think one of the best strategies that we can use over the grand scheme of health and fitness and wellness, especially for fat loss, is to, okay, well, where's the caloric intake need to be to get the needle moving? And then how do we leverage calorie intake and calorie output from exercise? I hope that frames it appropriately.

    Philip Pape 11:56

    It does. It also creates a priority. So I like to think in terms of pyramids or priorities, you know, what's at the bottom. So then people in their mind, they're like, well, cardio is a tool later. What do you mean by that? Why do we do it that way? Why can't we just be having a high cardio lifestyle? What if I love to do cardio? What if I love, you know, my sports and I love my group classes and all of that? Is this just a stacking approach? Like, what's the purpose of taking that approach, Ben?

    Ben Brown 12:20

    It's the approach of like just physiologically how the body tends to respond the best. And we talked about the compensatory properties at play. And it's just the way the body works. And there's been research, you know, around the energy constrained model uh by Dr. Herman Ponzer and Hadza tribe in uh Tanzania. And essentially it's suggesting listen, the more we move, it's not the more we burn. The Hadza tribe, they're they're taking 20,000 steps a day or walking up to like 10 miles a day. And when they do, you know, their studies and they have them, you know, doubly labeled water and they look at exactly what they're expending, they're not expending more than that essentially the average American couch potato. And so it begs the question of metabolically, well, what's happening? Because of course they're eating a better diet, they're not consuming nearly as many calories. So, what exactly is happening here? And that's this sort of the way that the metabolism works in terms of keeping us alive, which is fantastic and beautiful, but it's also quite frustrating when you're someone who's like, I love running and I want to go out and run every single day. And it would be awesome if my running and the caloric expenditure that came from running would contribute to me looking fight club shredded. And unfortunately, if you've seen runners in general, like that's just not what happens, right? And so we have to look at the stress on the body. And so we know sort of it's like this this allostatic load, the amount of stress and how it adds up in terms of contributing to the metabolic compensation. So if we if we know, okay, well, more stress, more exercise clearly isn't better, then we have to look at, well, what is the right dose for the person in the situation that they're in? And if you think about human evolution, right, and caloric scarcity and perhaps the way that humans again evolved is like we're not going out of our way to do more physical activity. Like we hunt and we fish and we forage and we did these things that we needed to do. Otherwise, we laid around and we created and we fornicated and we played, right? And we weren't intentionally going out for a run to like to get abs. Like it just, you know, from a human standpoint, it doesn't make sense. And that's the way we have to apply those principles to the body composition and health changes that we're looking for. That's where cardio lines up, especially intense cardio or intense and prolonged cardio, and how it lines up with its prioritization, right, in the hierarchy of fat loss. And that's where it's like calories and strength training and just overall movement and then okay, strategic cardio.

    Philip Pape 15:18

    Um people have higher appetite, it's probably a normal brain that has a higher appetite because that's what how we evolved in the past, and those people would have survived the most.

    Ben Brown 15:26

    That's right.

    Philip Pape 15:27

    And yet it fights back against us. So if anything, they're not, you know, a worse-off uh genetics. They might even have superior genetics, just not for today. So two things come to mind. You mentioned the Hadza Tribe and Ponser and his doubly label water study, and that confuses a lot of folks, not just the compensation piece of it, but when they're thinking of, hey, I'm 45 and perimenopause. I, you know, how could I possibly have the same metabolism if I can't possibly lose weight? And I want to get into that piece. But let's just clarify in that research, I believe when accounted for lean mass, the metabolisms were different. Isn't that the case? Like the more lean mass you had for the same body weight.

    Ben Brown 16:05

    The more lean mass, the more calories and at rest. Yeah.

    Philip Pape 16:09

    Yeah.

    Ben Brown 16:09

    Yeah. I think I think that makes perfect sense. So I so I I think that makes perfect sense. And and I I think there are issues with someone's metabolism when in reality this is the metabolism doing exactly what it's supposed to do. Right. And so your your metabolism quota isn't damaged or broken, and there's nothing wrong with you. And I think actually GLPs are a really good example of how there's actually nothing wrong with your metabolism. You just knowingly or unknowingly were overeating, and we certainly can get into that. But at the end of the day, that's also speaks to you know, the value of lean muscle tissue and the role that it plays in terms of metabolism and function and caloric expenditure and and what have you.

    Stress after 40 changes everything

    Philip Pape 17:00

    Yeah. And so then, you know, to especially like the ladies who are listening, and and you mentioned allostasis or allostatic load. We've used that term here a few times in the past, but just it's kind of the opposite of homeostasis, right? Homeostasis is your body kind of in its safe, regulated pattern, and allostasis is something pulling you away from that, is like I like to think of it. But in say, people in their 40s going through hormonal changes with the lifestyle they have, what is triggering or causing that higher level of allostasis and allostatic load that is then affecting the metabolism?

    Ben Brown 17:34

    It's such a good question. And it's probably the most relevant thing that people can acknowledge at this stage of life. Um, and it's very much a contributor to why things are different now. They're different in terms of your stressors, your responsibilities, your body weight, your amount of lean muscle tissue, your amount of body fat, which is very pro-inflammatory, your relationships, your social support system, your financial stressors. So your gut health, the environmental toxicity, is that enough allostatic load for you? Right. So, but but that's really important. It's a really important acknowledgement, is we're not 25 with no responsibilities and no kids. We're at a very different stage of life. And with that comes a very different hormonal response, less sleep, more cortisol, which is not a bad thing, right? But it's it's part of how our body functions in terms of stress hormones and the way that all of those contribute to hormonal regulation and blood sugar regulation. And we talked about leptin and ghrelin and brain function and hunger and cravings. Then you take all of that and you compound that, right? You pile all of that on, you say, I'm still an evolutionary brain who thrives off of sugar and salt and fat. And oh, hey, I have all of this food around me that is part of, you know, survival, even though that's not, you know, my main concern from your brain standpoint, it is, especially when you're in a stress response, which we're in 24-7. And this is, you know, it from a 30,000-foot view, this is the major factor at play, you know, for so many of us, that is directly contributing to why we're not responding well in the gym, why more aggressive exercise isn't better, why under eating for an extended period of time isn't serving you. And because of the implications of those things in terms of how it affects your behaviors around alcohol intake, weekend eating, lack of sleep, right? I'm just perpetuating this vicious cycle.

    Philip Pape 19:39

    Yeah, it's all interrelated. And that maybe is part of the confusion for folks trying to get out of it. So where does someone start thinking about that or prioritizing for themselves, knowing that it's unique, it's a unique thing. It's not everybody, but you as a coach who've coached thousands of people may have seen patterns that emerge time and time and time again. And you could like, you know, hit on the big three that would be most helpful to our listeners.

    Ben Brown 20:01

    Yeah, well, I think first and foremost, you kind of have to get really clear about what you want and what's holding you back. I had a conversation with a client yesterday. And now she's she's probably about our age. I think she's um early 40s. For her, it very much was like, you know, this is not the trajectory that I see for myself. I'm not happy with what I see in the mirror. I'm not happy with how I feel on a daily basis. And I know that I am in control and I'm the only one who can make these changes. So the first is just the extreme ownership over your situation. It's like, dude, you were in control. It's like if you're unhappy in elements of your life, your social support system, right? Uh the support of your spouse, uh, the way you're showing up, like you have to tackle that.

    Philip Pape 20:50

    You know, let's sit on that one for uh just a spell. And I think there's that language is is needed, even if it has to be delivered in a compassionate way, right? You're not just gonna say to a new client, yeah, it's all your fault, you're you're you you suck, you need to fix things. It's it's a different type of narrative, but still it's what you're saying. So, what did this client say in her own words to demonstrate that ownership?

    Ben Brown 21:11

    I think for her, it very much was like, I'm not happy in my skin, I don't feel confident, I don't believe in myself. And for a lot of women, they've been perpetuating this dieting cycle, you know, for their entire life. And it's, you know, their mother was hard on them, and they never had this self-confidence. And so they kept turning to sort of like the weight being the end-all be all of your self-worth. And that's a real deal, man. This is real stuff. So I think once she started to experience the benefits of losing weight, feeling better, looking better, believing in herself more, then it's just the next domino and the next domino. And then it becomes well, we continue to move the goalposts. Like, what's getting in the way of your success? And I think for a lot of people, they Just don't acknowledge. They take the obligatory steps around the X's and O's and say, oh, it's not working for me. But it's not working because you're miserable in other areas of your life and it's contributing directly to the level of stress that's compounding your gut health, your food behaviors and decisions, why you can't quote unquote stick with the diet, all of those things, right?

    Philip Pape 22:21

    Yeah. And then it sounds like you connected this ownership to awareness, to action, to self-motivation or intrinsic drive, which is the beautiful thing about all of this, because that is the empowerment at the end of the day. Do you find that people who do that are then unlocking a new level of thinking as they go? In other words, there's a level that is a skill base in and of itself, that ability to become more and more aware of certain things that they would never have had a clue about before.

    Ben Brown 22:50

    I think that that's the most important element of this journey is developing the skill to be able to do that. Right. I think it's developing the skill to constantly be assessing your circumstances and putting yourself in the best possible position to make a better decision. Right. It's it's this just level of forethought that becomes present as you start to go down this road of like what comes next and what comes next, and how am I navigating these circumstances and situations? Right. And that's the the attribute of someone who is changing their identity and genuinely is going to be quote unquote successful, whatever that looks like, because we know that this is one long perpetual journey. You know, we're all dealing it, we're all in different, different layers and and uh places along the road.

    Philip Pape 23:46

    Yeah, it strikes me as a far more useful skill than just the losing weight or whatever short-term outcome you might have been going after in the first place, because it unlocks any outcome.

    Ben Brown 23:56

    Yeah, any outcome. And that's what's cool is like that's where we talk about how it permeates over into every area. Because then it's like you start to think differently in business. You start to think differently in terms of the conversations with your kids and how you're teaching your kids to be owners and make better decisions. And it translates into who am I surrounding myself with and what are the types of conversations that we have and what do they do and what are their behaviors relative to what I want to be in my values? And is it something that's worth investing time and energy into?

    Philip Pape 24:26

    So we well over half of our audiences are right now talking about one of the most powerful tools in the industry, and that is the GLP1 drugs. This is a totally natural segue here, Ben. 100% because it is a something that clearly works physiologically for weight loss, if that's what people are trying to achieve with it. It also seems to impact lots of other things, definitely the brain-related genes, for some people, addiction mechanisms and other things uh related to the liver and metabolism that we're not even quite understanding yet. Given all of that, given that it is a tool or is it a tool versus, you know, some might argue it's something else, where do GLP wands fit into this? Because I would say that that's like an extreme version of any other type of tool that shortcuts the process for better or worse, like say, taking anabolic steroids or like many, many other tools that I'm not saying are right or wrong. If it's right for you and you choose to do it and it's part of the process, but you did a whole episode about this called, you know, why GLPs work until they don't. So I know you have a lot of thoughts on it.

    Ben Brown 25:27

    I do have a lot of thoughts. And I have a lot of thoughts in terms of, you know, the good, the bad, and the ugly, right? In terms of I've interviewed experts, I have clients who are using them, I have clients who have used them and come off of them. And I think that there's certainly a time and a place. What's most important is that people are informed about and again, just along the line of ownership and take responsibility over the outcomes of utilizing these drugs. And experts who are leveraging GLPs, just not at like clinical doses. So there's a lot of conversation around like microdosing GLPs as being best practices, right? And the reason being that these GLP drugs at clinical doses are completely sabotaging our hunger signals, our you know, the the leptin, the ghrelin, the hormonal signals. And to what end is that potentially uh detrimental around, yeah, around just one, the delayed gastric emptying, never being hungry, and in terms of the role that hunger plays in a healthy diet, right? In a healthy eating environment, in terms of planning and preparation and portion control. It's like you can't do it without acknowledging levels of hunger and cravings and all of those things. And so my one of my big concerns is around what happens when people come off the drugs. We're seeing from the research that there's significant weight gain within the first several months, but the vast majority of weight coming back within 18 months of people coming off of these drugs. And if you consider that a lot of people using these drugs are not strength training and they're not eating enough protein. And so they're likely losing a significant portion of lean muscle tissue along the way. And we know that muscle tissue is a metabolically active and beneficial organ, right? And it's very anti-inflammatory in nature. Uh, and so by losing lean muscle tissue, we're putting ourselves in a very uh metabolically disadvantageous position, to say nothing of what happens when we gain all of that weight back, but as body fat, you know, then it's we've got significantly more pro-inflammatory tissue. So if we can acknowledge that, then you know, what is the question around, well, what is actually effective dosing? If we do just more like uh micro dosing, and it's just skimming the surface of like the metabolic benefits, the hunger benefits, the food noise benefits, the motivational benefits to help you make better decisions, then perhaps is that better? I can't say yes or no, but I do think it's a very important part of the conversation to say it doesn't have to be all or nothing, but perhaps there is a effective dose for the person depending on what they're trying to do.

    Philip Pape 28:33

    Yeah, you hit on the big points, right? And there's no right or wrong answer, and there's a lot of there's ethics, morality, there's choice involved. The long-term implications might be the biggest unknown or red flag in that as a short-term tool, sure, it works. And then at what dose does it make sense? But when you talked about sabotaging your hormones, maybe we can get into what you mean by that, because I've looked into it too. Like they downregulate your hormones because they're replacing them, right? They're synthetically replacing those hormones. When you come off of it, they come back. Is it no different than then fighting through a deficit and constantly being hungry? And then when you come back and you crave food and you body fat overshoot, or is it more exacerbated because there's like almost a huge rebound effect?

    Ben Brown 29:18

    That's what I wonder. Right. Honestly, I mean, that that's that's what I'm wondering, and that's what I'm concerned about. Is since we talk about the compensatory effects of exercise, I think it's very much the same thing of like when you quelling this food noise and this hunger by virtue of delayed gastric empty and right for an extended period of time, what is the body trying to do, right? From a brain standpoint, it's like, hey, we want to survive and we've been losing a considerable amount of weight, right? And we have this kind of proverbial set point. And so when you come off, the body wants to do everything it possibly can. And we listen, why is it different than what we see with the biggest loser studies, right? In terms of how quickly these people gain the weight back once they stop white knuckling it. And to their credit, they did all of this stuff without the GLPs, right? But again, why is it any difference once we we stop the you know hormonal disabling, if you will? That's my biggest concern, man. And so if you're using it now and you're seeing benefits, this is your best opportunity. You still have to reinforce all of the foundational principles around physical activity and strength training and resistance training and supporting lean muscle tissue and eating enough protein and right, but even with that, are you eating enough to maintain all of that? Like these are real questions that I think we have to be very objective about. And you should be working with your clinician to be observing lean muscle tissue and doing DEXA scans and actually right taking ownership and responsibility over how are things moving, how much am I consuming? And if I were to come off of this tomorrow, how reasonable would it be for me to continue consuming a thousand, twelve hundred, fifteen hundred calories, eight hundred, whatever it is, probably, you know, would it, wouldn't it? I don't know. But it's what we're seeing that there's a reason people are gaining the weight back.

    Tapering GLP-1s and recovery

    Philip Pape 31:17

    Yeah, is worth thinking about if you listen to our podcasts and are wondering about it. And like you, I've had clients tell me they're gonna start or they want to come off or they want to keep doing it. The question I have for you is with your clients seeing this now, do you have a standard um titration protocol you've seen work? You don't, this is not medical advice here, but like uh you mentioned appetite, you know, I found that people at GeoPo ones or church epidite, all of a sudden they're eating too little. They're like, I can't eat as much as you're telling me, Philip. Like, well, maybe it's time to come down on the dose, talk to your doctor. That's great, right? What is your like titration ramp? Do you get people to come like into maintenance uh as they're doing this or even into a bulk uh to naturally kind of offset it? Like what are your thoughts there?

    Ben Brown 32:00

    So what we're working on with clients that are on it andor coming off of it is essentially again, least effective dose is uh we'll work with their clinicians to one, start titrating down. So if they're coming in at high doses of you know, trzepatide is a good example, then it simply becomes all right, can you go down in dose andor can you extend the existing dose, right? So if they're on like 10 milligrams per week of uh trzepatide, and maybe you know the doctor's not ready to take them down, or you know, they're committed to that 10 milligram dose or whatever, then it's like can you extend it out for a period of time? So we can start to observe what's happening with hunger and satiety in the later stages of the week, right? And we can start to understand and observe those feelings and appreciate and start to acknowledge and get comfortable with those and what those are like, and then start to titrate on uh on dosing, titrate down. But essentially the the objective, my objective for what it's worth is to get people on the lowest possible dosage while being able to effectively control for calories. And then at the same time, yes, like you said, is okay, but are they where they want to be from a weight and body composition standpoint? And the crux of that, as you as you're well aware, is like, hey, if they're undereating, we're gonna have a really hard time maintaining, if not improving, lean muscle tissue. So how do we get them starting to build up their calorie intake? This is essentially just working up to maintenance, right? How can we get them as close to maintenance as we possibly can while still seeing, you know, some body recompositioning going on? And it's really just playing that game. But with that, is we are seeing some nice changes in terms of continued body composition changes and lean muscle tissue, especially as they train the right way and as they start eating enough.

    Philip Pape 33:52

    That makes sense. And it also makes sense that the population of people would want to bulk and that that population would by definition be small, given that they were on the GLP1s in the first place to drop weight. And I only ask, is that, you know, oddly enough, the men in my group tend to be experienced lifters with a lot of muscle, like two different populations for the men versus women. And some of them, you know, they used it to kind of get rid of that excess belly fat, that stressed fat that they couldn't, they just had trouble with. And that, and then they're at a point where, you know, they're they're ready to build back. There is one of the little pop corner case that I've noticed, and that is, at least for men, kind of the the super stressful guys, uh, the executives or the guys with the jobs who with the business who like because of the stress, their metabolism is so suppressed, and yet they want to lose weight. So then they go on these drugs, even if they are lifting weights, and it's kind of put you in that window of, man, they're eating like 1200 calories or something. You know what I'm talking about.

    Ben Brown 34:49

    I do. It's such a great observation. Um, and it's really challenging. You know, this is where I think it really speaks to like, okay, well, what are the stressors at play? How do we control for those as much as possible? And, you know, how do we wean you out of this metabolic dumpster fire, for lack of a better term? That you're that's the scientific term, by the way, uh, that you are currently in by virtue of making sure you're eating enough of the right things. So making sure you're getting a nutrient-dense diet, you're getting enough vitamins and minerals, making sure you're getting enough protein, making sure you're managing your blood sugar levels. This also tends to lend itself to hormonal disruption. And so we definitely do want to look at blood sugar. We want to look at lipid profile, we want to look at sex hormones like testosterone and free testosterone and sex hormone binding globulin and make sure that those are actually being optimized for. Of course, you know, sleep comes into play here. And my experience is that by really starting to shift the focus around those things, then we can start to kind of build back better, if you will. But it's a challenging milieu of stress and pressure and type A personalities and all of the things that go with that.

    Cardio for longevity and health

    Philip Pape 36:06

    Yeah. And you know what came to mind is the your comment earlier about acknowledging the problem and the aware, having awareness of it and maybe having to make some hard decisions in your life, like quitting the job or changing your job or like some massive uh decision in your life. Maybe it's not, maybe it's not. But um a metabolic dumpster fire. Yeah.

    Ben Brown 36:24

    Like you said, there's absolutely zero judgment. I don't think if you're having a hard time going down this road and you're doing your diligence, and this is something that you feel like is going to be, you know, a positive contributor to the change that you say you want to make, like, why wouldn't you go down that? And to be devil's advocate for GLPs, right, is that the environment that we are in now is very different than humans have ever been in, right? And with the what we're exposed to, the light, the stress, the lack of sleep, the environmental toxicity, physiologically and metabolically, it is very different from what we're meant to thrive in. And if you take that into consideration, then I don't think it's unwarranted to have the candid conversations around how medical intervention can help with this process because there's a lot of people that can't control that food noise, that have unsubstantiated um levels of leptin and insulin dysregulation despite their best efforts, right? And it's not to say you can ever forego the foundational principles that will always reign supreme, but listen, it doesn't have to be one or the other. And the two can absolutely coincide.

    Philip Pape 37:43

    To end on a positive note, you know, people ultimately want to have a lifestyle that is enjoyable. They want to do this for the rest of their life. You know, when we talk about the S-word sustainability, let's say they've now gone through this process to an extent. They're lifting weights, they are uh finding that minimum effective dose for all the things, not just, you know, uh pharmaceuticals or their schedule or their stress, but also their training, doing what you said, and that is kind of dialing back first and then seeing where you are using things strategically like cardio. Where does the long-term thinking here on not fat loss, not short-term, not weight loss or body composition, but maybe specifically, where does cardio fit into that? If it does, what is a longevity-based lifestyle look like, in your opinion?

    Ben Brown 38:29

    Oh no, I think absolutely cardio fits into the equation fundamentally in terms of how it influences blood vessel health and aerobic fitness and the role, right, the how important that is in terms of longevity and health. So let's not suggest for a moment that cardio is not important for health and longevity. I'm simply right, cardio oftentimes is sort of questionable with respect to the fat loss process. But in terms of health and longevity, right, this is, you know, we absolutely want to be getting, you know, moderate to intense physical activity every single day, you know, three to five days a week, if not every single day in some way, shape, or form, and figuring out the ways that work best for us. And so that's where we can get a massive benefit in terms of health, terms of blood work, in terms of blood pressure, uh, by ramping up just our cardiovascular fitness. In fact, for you know, some of the guys that I start working with, that's the first place that we start is just adding in some structured, whether it's zone two cardio, whether it's zone three, depending on the time that they have and what we would be paying attention to, obviously, is objectively, like what's happening on scale, but more importantly, like what's happening with blood pressure, with blood sugar numbers, with lipid numbers. And then subjectively, we see massive changes in terms of energy, uh, recovery, sleep quality, uh, brain cognitive function, emotional well-being. And I think that's what people need to be to looking for and leveraging in their health and fitness and exercise journey is like what is the combination that works for them? But are we basing that on not just what feels good, right? And not just what fits within their schedule, but also challenging them to objectively look at the parameters around uh biometric markers, right? Blood work, blood pressure, uh weight, even if it's like VO2 Max, can we make a concerted effort to improve VO2 Max? Like all those things are very valuable for longevity.

    Philip Pape 40:38

    And that's what this nuance is all about. The right combination that works for you. I think that's well said the right combination that works for you. Uh, let's figure it out together, guys. I want you to follow Ben on his podcast, The Smart Nutrition Made Simple Show, because he's got fantastic episodes. I'd say one of the most aligned guests we've had on the show in terms of the nutrition science. So love your stuff. Is there anything we didn't cover you wished we did cover before we start talking about where people can find you?

    Ben Brown 41:04

    No, man. It's just uh always, you know, great conversation. We're gonna have to do it again. I appreciate the way that you approach health and fitness. I appreciate the level of education and science and rigor that you apply to your guests and the questions that you ask and the information that you provide. So it really is a pleasure and I'm honored to be here.

    Philip Pape 41:23

    Likewise, man. And it's always good to have someone with a great mic and a good voice to come on and go back and forth with and chat, you know, maybe next time we'll we'll get more controversial and even challenge each other in some way if we can't. Uh, but I think we agree on most things. So um with that, I know you've got a lot of things going on. Um, what's the next best step we can send listeners to? You know, we'll throw your Instagram and contact information, but like uh, do we have a webinar or resource we want to include?

    Ben Brown 41:50

    Yeah, so uh we we certainly will have uh some upcoming webinars. Um that's something I'm focusing more on this year. So make sure you follow my social media at Body Systems Coaching on Instagram. And then I've got a couple good resources that perhaps your your audience would be interested in. And you can find those on our Instagram as well, specifically like a 30-day fat loss reset that I put together that applies some of these foundational principles, but it also assesses kind of like the mindset aspect of like what do we strategically want to get done? And how do we start to move the needle without having to or feeling like we need to adhere to just like only eat this, exclude all of this stuff, start killing yourself in the gym. It's a very modest and realistic but effective way of crushing your first 30 days to fat loss.

    Philip Pape 42:42

    All right. So go to Instagram, Body Systems Coaching. We're gonna throw that in the show notes, and from there you can go to the um you can throw it in there.

    Ben Brown 42:51

    It's body systems.com slash 30-day dash reset. Yeah, appreciate it.

    Philip Pape 42:56

    All right, man. We'll throw the 30 day reset in there. And thanks again, Ben, for coming on and sharing your wisdom with us. It's a blast. We'll definitely have to do it again and stay in touch.

    Ben Brown 43:04

    Pleasure, my friend.

Featured

Ready for the Next Step?

Read More
Interviews Philip Pape Interviews Philip Pape

Lifting Weights Builds Flexibility Better Than Stretching (New Research) | Ep 459

Do you need yoga, stretching, or "mobility work" to stay flexible. Does lifting weights make you "stiff" or does it improve flexibility?We examine 3 recent studies that compared resistance training to stretching for flexibility, and their findings challenge everything most people assume about lifting weights and mobility.

Do you need yoga, stretching, or "mobility work" to stay flexible. Does lifting weights make you "stiff" or does it improve flexibility?

We examine 3 recent studies that compared resistance training to stretching for flexibility, and their findings challenge everything most people assume about lifting weights and mobility.

Philip covers the "lifting makes you stiff" myth and a training approach that builds flexibility and strength at the same time.

If you're over 40 and worried about losing range of motion, this one's for you. Stay for the bonus 60-second squat test at the end.

Upgrade your sleep to match your training with Cozy Earth. Cozy Earth's bamboo-derived sheets regulate temperature so you stay comfortable all night. 100-night sleep trial, 10-year warranty. Use code WITSANDWEIGHTS at witsandweights.com/cozyearth for up to 20% off.

Timestamps

0:00 - Lifting weights and flexibility
1:10 - Strength training and mobility after 40
3:00 - Partial range of motion and stiffness
6:12 - 3 recent studies on strength training vs. stretching
8:30 - Bodyweight exercises and flexibility
10:22 - Eccentric training and range of motion
12:38 - 2025 Delphi consensus on stretching
13:31 - The best way to improve recovery
14:49 - Full ROM on compound lifts
16:30 - Exercises that load muscles at long lengths
18:00 - Load intensity and flexibility gains
19:30 - Exercise substitutions for flexibility
21:00 - Olympic weightlifters and mobility
22:34 - Bonus: 60-second squat flexibility test\

  • Philip Pape: 00:00

    If you've ever spent 15 minutes foam rolling and stretching before a workout because you think lifting weights makes you tight, I have some news. Three separate meta-analyses, the most recent from 2025, all found the same thing. Full range of motion strength training produces the same flexibility gains as dedicated stretching. And one type of training, the eccentric or the lowering phase, actually produced bigger improvements than stretching alone. Today I'm covering exactly why the lifting makes you stiff myth exists, what the research says about how your muscles get more flexible under load, and the specific exercises and training approach that build strength and flexibility at the same time. Plus, stick around to the end because I'm going to walk you through a 60-second squat test that tells you exactly where your flexibility stands and how to start building full-depth squats from wherever you are right now. Welcome to Wits and Weights, the show that puts a popular piece of fitness advice under the microscope, finds the hidden reason it doesn't work, and gives you the deceptively simple fix that does. I'm your host, Philip Pape, and this episode is for anyone who's ever avoided lifting weights because they're worried about getting stiff or having more flexibility first, or who spends a chunk of their training time on dedicated mobility work because they assume their strength training maybe is working against their flexibility, or they can't even do it until they're flexible enough. All of those things apply. Maybe you're a little bit on the older side. By older, I mean over 40, and that's me. And you've noticed that your range of motion isn't what it used to be. And someone said, hey, you got to do yoga or you've got to do Pilates or some elaborate stretching machine. And, you know, no judgment. Those things are fine. I have nothing against them. Maybe some things against them, depending on the claim. But the research on this topic has actually gotten more clear in the last few years. And it tells a really good story that I've been talking about for a while, but it's nice to have the evidence to back it up. So you're gonna learn three things today. First, why the belief that lifting weights makes you stiff is based on a specific training mistake, not on what lifting does to your muscles. Second, what three separate meta-analysis have found when they compared strength training to stretching for flexibility, and why the numbers they found are actually quite convincing. And third, the specific way to program your lifts so your training sessions build flexibility and strength simultaneously, and you don't have to do any extra stretching. Now, isn't that nice? And remember, at the very end, I'm sharing that 60-second squat test I mentioned in the teaser. A simple weight that you can figure out where your flexibility is right now and how to progress to build it, even if you can barely get to parallel right now. All right, let's get into it and talk about this myth, which you may or may not hold, but it's gonna lead to the other topics we're covering today.

    Philip Pape: 03:00

    And it goes like this lifting weights makes you tight and bulky. If you want to stay flexible, you need insert method here yoga, stretching, dedicated mobility work. Or in some cases, you know, you can't even lift weights until you get flexible enough. And this is one of those beliefs that it feels like it has a lot of truth because, you know, you see these, if you see ever seen a very muscled bodybuilder who can like who has trouble scratching their own back, you know, somebody who's jacked in the gym, can bench multiple plates, but can't touch your toes or get into a deep squat or whatever, which I don't even, I don't even think that archetype exists as much as we say it does. But if it did, you know, the conclusion is, oh, lifting did this to him, right? Lifting made him stiff. The solution has to be something other than lifting. Because if you lift weights, if you're just a bodybuilder, if you just do single plane of motion lifting, if you just focus on strength or powerlifting, whatever, you're not gonna have the flexibility. But that concluding that is a leap of logic. It is skipping the question, hey, how was that person lifting? Because here's what I have noticed in that the people that look or act like that, they might have they might have some muscles like show muscles, but they might also they're probably training partial ranges of motion, like quarter squats, like half half-rep benches, you know, curls where they're just cheating and the elbow never extends, or leg presses that never break, you know, past 90 degrees, and and loading muscles to the shortened positions and never working under tension or under long lengths, you know, under full range of motion. And this actually matters because the stimulus that improves flexibility, the thing that actually makes a muscle a little bit longer, more extensible over time is tension at long muscle lengths. Now, I'm not saying just go out and do long length partials. There's plenty of research that backs up that you, you know, having full range of motion, so you cover the short and long length is probably the best move here. But the stretched position, the bottom of a squat, the bottom of a Romanian deadlift where your hamstrings are loaded at their longest, or the overhead position of like a tricep extension, when you train through a full range of motion, you are stretching the muscle under load on every single rep. And that's really important. So people who, for example, get stiff from lifting are probably getting stiff from not going through the full range of motion and avoiding the positions that would maintain or improve their flexibility. And the whole stiff thing, that's just one stand-in for any number of lack of flexibility issues that you might see in someone who otherwise maybe looks a little bit healthier fit. So if you like analogies, I want you to think of it this way: if you get like a door hinge and it never opens past 45 degrees, it just kind of opens part way, partway, partway, partway. It often will get stuck or it'll rust in place and it'll never get past that point. Not because the hinge itself is broken, but because it hasn't been using used through its full range. I don't know if that analogy is helpful. It's what came to mind, but your joints kind of work like that. If you use the range, you keep it. If you don't use the range, you lose it. It's an adaptation. It's an adaptation. So I don't want to just make this me going off on a diatribe.

    Philip Pape: 06:12

    I want to look at the research. Okay. So I mentioned three separate meta-analyses that have compared resistance training to stretching specifically for flexibility outcomes. And I want to walk through each one just real quickly because I think they build on each other and together paint a really clear picture of what we're talking about. The first is Afonso and colleagues. This is 2021. This is 11 randomized controlled trials with 452 participants comparing strength training to stretching for range of motion improvements. And the result was there was no difference, no statistically significant difference. The effect size was negative, 0.22, which slightly favored stretching, but it wasn't significant. The p-value was 0.206. And there was a subgroup analysis that showed no differences whether they measured active or passive range of motion, whether they looked at hip flexion or knee extension, whether the studies were high or low risk of bias. They all came back the same. Basically, the two were equivalent for flexibility. Now that was a small study, again, 11 studies, 452 people. So we have a bigger study published in sports medicine in 2023 by Aliziday and colleagues. And this is a larger one. 55 studies, over 2,700 participants, and they asked three questions for the study. First, does resistance training improve range of motion compared to doing nothing? Yes, no surprise. There was actually a pretty highly significant moderate effect size, 0.73. Second, does resistance training match stretching? Essentially, yes. The effect size of 0.08 compared the two, p-value of 0.79, no meaningful difference. So in other words, they were about the same stretching and resistance training. Third, does adding stretching on top of resistance training improve flexibility further? No. Effect size was negative 0.001. So if you're already training through full range of motion, adding a stretching program on top of that gives you exactly or approximately zero additional flexibility benefit. There was a very big effect size, it was 1.042. Trained individuals or active individuals still improved a little bit, but it was smaller, around 0.43. So if you've been sedentary, if you start lifting through full ranges of motion, you're gonna have huge gains in flexibility. And if you already train, you're gonna have some moderate gains in flexibility. They also found that bodyweight exercises did not significantly improve range of motion. Only exercises with external load, free weights, machines, resistance bands produced significant improvements, which tells us that yes, load does matter. You need actual resistance pushing you into those end range positions. So that's the second study. The third one, the most recent meta-analysis, was by Favreau and colleagues. It was in the Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research just last year, 2025. 36 studies, nearly 1,500 participants, and they confirmed the overall finding we've been talking about that resistance training significantly improves flexibility, and they had a medium to large effect size of 0.63 compared to the control group. But they also found something new, and that is related to intensity. That intensity is important. High intensity resistance training produced a significant effect size of 0.75. Low intensity training was only 0.28 and not statistically significant. So that tells us it's not just about going through the range of motion. You also need meaningful load through that range of motion. And by the way, when we talk about intensity, we're talking about load. We're not talking about like sweating or endurance or something like that. All right, now let's

    Philip Pape: 10:22

    get a little bit more specific because there is a separate body of research on eccentric training. That is the lowering phase of a lift. And when you look at that compared to flexibility, okay, so there's a study by Kay and colleagues, or not a study, but a meta-analysis. I love meta-analysis because they take, they take many, many studies and look at them to give even higher quality findings. And this was in medicine and science and sports and exercise from 2023, and it was 17 studies, 376 participants. They looked at eccentric resistance training and lower limb range of motion, lower limb meaning your legs. The overall effect size was large at 0.86, 86. For ankle dorsiflexion specifically, the effect size was really large, 1.12. Okay, and again, that's compared to that's showing that they improve flexibility. Then there was a systematic review by Vetter and colleagues in 2022 that also found a centric eccentric training improved range of motion by 9% on average. But concentric only training, which is just the lifting phase without controlling the lowering phase, produced no measurable change in range of motion. So the eccentric phase, which is the controlled lowering, where the muscle is lengthened under tension, is the primary driver of the flexibility improvements from resistance training. Right. And this actually makes mechanical sense if you just put a put on your engineering hat. When you lower a weight through a full range of motion, what are you doing? You are stretching that muscle while applying that force, that load. Right. And that is the same stimulus that a static stretch would provide, except you're also getting the strength and hypertrophy benefits under load at the same time. Pretty cool, right? Now the research community issued a consensus statement. This is 2025 Delphi consensus statement. It's from 20 leading stretching researchers across 12 countries. And they said, hey, full range of motion resistance training produces flexibility gains, quote, at least a similar degree, end quote, to stretching, especially when the eccentric phase is emphasized. And they concluded

    Philip Pape: 12:38

    that, okay, if you're a healthy adult, the choice of method for improving range of motion, quote, can be left to individual preference. So that's pretty cool to see a verbalized scientific consensus that resistance training improves flexibility. So I walked you through the research on how eccentric loading, that controlled lowering phase, drives flexibility adaptations. And then those adaptations, like the fascicle lengthening, the tissue remodeling, to get nerdy about it. It all happens when? That those adaptations happen when? Come on, during recovery, right? During recovery, specifically during sleep. Your muscles are not going to rebuild while you're in the gym. They're going to rebuild when you're resting, which means the quality of your sleep directly affects how well your body responds to training. So here we have another natural, totally unscripted, just kidding, segue

    Philip Pape: 13:31

    into our sponsor for today, Cozy Earth. I tried, and now I'm owner of at least two sets, not at least two sets, exactly two sets of Cozy Earth's bamboo-derived sheets. And they're awesome. They're made from viscos derived from bamboo. And what they do best is regulate temperature, other than feeling silky, smooth, and really comfortable. They help you if you run hot at night or if your partner's freezing and the other's overheating. The sheets actually solve it in both directions because they wick heat and moisture away from your body. And then you stay comfortable throughout the night. So if we're talking about sleep quality, something that's on you your entire night is a massive variable in the equation. So that's why I'm a big fan of them. And if you spend 2,500 hours a year in bed, you're already investing in your training and nutrition, those eight hours deserve a lot of attention. So I love these. Go to witsandweights.com slash cozy earth to get 20% off with the code Wits and Weights. They have a hundred night sleep trial and a 10-year warranty. So you can basically test them for three months. And if you don't love them, you send them back and they'll give you a refund. Go to wits and weights.com slash cozy earth. And you know, if you take their survey, let them know you heard about it on Wits and Weights. But at the very least, go check it out. Witsandweights.com slash cozy earth. All right, so let's get into the fix for how to improve flexibility.

    Philip Pape: 14:49

    All right, if you understand the mechanism, you don't have to have a separate flexibility or stretching program. All you have to do is train through full range of motion with meaningful load, emphasize the eccentric phase of your lifts. And some of you are thinking, wait a minute, the eccentric phase, now we're getting into that funky stuff. Does that mean we have to use negatives? Is that no, you're gonna find out that what we're doing here is not different than what I've recommended in the past to begin with, which is great. Great. You don't have to learn anything new, okay? Let me give you the specific principles and then the exercises. So principle one is full range of motion on compound lifts. If you haven't been doing this, do this. If you're an advanced lifter, there's definitely places where you wouldn't use full range of motion. But this is the principle for getting into the full range, both the eccentric and concentric, and also the lengthened and shortened positions. So this means getting your squat below parallel, not a quarter squat, not too parallel, below parallel means the hip crease below the patella, means your butt below your knee. It means if you're doing a Romanian deadlift, you need to have a genuine stretch of your hamstrings at the bottom, which if you're, again, flexible already, could be taking the bar all the way to the ground, or if you're uber flexible, could be standing up on a block or pads so that you can go even further. It means with your overhead press, they're gonna start from your shoulders, not your chin, right? You're gonna come down. It means rows and pull-ups that reach full arm extension at the bottom, right? Not just coming part way. If you are cutting range short on these movements, then you're just leaving the flexibility on the table. So if you complain about flexibility to me and say, like, I need flexibility because I need a lift, I'm gonna say, are your lifts already in full range of motion? Or you know, yeah, the full range. Principle number two is to include exercises that load your muscles at their longest position. So this is where selection gets a little bit strategic. So for biceps, an incline curl, for example, is fantastic because you're at an incline. So when you open up your arm down to the bottom lower position, you're gonna go even wider in terms of a length, a longer length. So for triceps, an equivalent would be an overhead extension, is one of my favorite moves. If you had to do one thing, I would do an overhead extension. That could be with cable, with an easy curl bar, uh, with dumbbell, it doesn't matter, just do it overhead. Um, hamstrings, we've got the Romanian deadlift or a stiff leg death deadlift, you know, from a deficit that'll put your legs under a much greater stretch than, say, a leg curl. Calves, I mean, even the body, even the show muscles and the bodybuilding stuff, standing calf raises from a step where your heel drops way below platform level, where you could stretch at the bottom and load the what they call the gastrosinemius at the long position, any of these exercises will double as both strength and a loaded stretch. And for much of what you're doing, there's an opportunity to do this anyway. But sometimes you have to pick exercises that really maximize it. Principle number three is to control the eccentric. Now, this is the one where I'm going to, I'm not gonna get weird. Okay. So remember we talked about eccentric training that that helps with the improve, it improves your range of motion, having the eccentric in there. Now, by definition, you're gonna have the eccentric in there, but what you don't want to do is just drop the weight or bounce out of the bottom position. And this is important because you know, when I learned the low bar back squat, I learned to use a stretch reflex at the bottom, which is super helpful. And there are benefits to that for sure. And you don't have to pause. I will say, however, adding in a pause could be beneficial, especially if you're trying to get this extra flexibility stimulus, but even just doing it in a controlled fashion. So if you're gonna squat down, you squat down and you bounce out of the bottom, but it's not like a big shock bounce. It's not like a CrossFit thing. You know, it's not like you're banging out the reps. It's still very controlled. And I would say on the way down, you know, a two-second, up to three second lowering phase is fine. You don't have to actually extend it further. We're not talking about time under tension. We're simply talking about the flexibility piece of loading into the full range of motion. So just doing it under control is really important. And then, of course, as always, explode into the concentric. That's a different topic, but it's an important thing to do. Principle number four is you gotta train with real load. You've gotta train with real load, right? Doing stuff at body weight or high reps and never going up in weight, never having load, especially if you're doing partial ranges to begin with, right? But even if you're doing it full range of motion, you're gonna quickly tap out on the benefits until you increase with load. Well, guess what? If you're applying progressive overload, you're gonna do that anyway. You're gonna have to increase the load anyway, right? We're not talking about maxing out and grinding. I'm talking about getting close to failure like you normally would for mechanical tension. Well, the same principle applies here. So you see how it all naturally works together if you're lifting the right weight anyway. So I want to give you a couple substitutions that might help with flexibility while you're building strength. So let's say you're doing leg presses and for whatever reason you're getting limited depth, you could swap in goblet squats or front squats, where they often make it easier to go super deep and then progressively work deeper and then translate that over to something like a leg press. All right. And I I only say this because I know some people have different hip limitations when they start doing some of these exercises. So it's it's a matter of not having an excuse, but rather building that range of motion in an as natural way as possible. It might be bench, it might be belt squats, might be hack squats, but you get my idea. If you're doing something like leg curls, like these isolation movements, I would go to a compound lift like a Romanian deadlift. RDLs are great for hamstrings, let me tell you. They're so good. Also, good mornings. Good mornings can be a little tricky though on the upper body if you're not used to them. So Romanian deadlifts can be loaded super heavy without, you know, with a pretty good form for most people. If you're doing, say, press downs for your triceps, right? Very popular, fun thing to do is take cable press downs and add in or replace them with overhead dumbbell extensions or overhead cable or easy bar extensions. And then if you're doing regular barbell curls, which I do love barbell curls, and I would say when you get to the bottom, stretch them out and wait a second and come back up. Don't just bounce out of the bottom. But inclined dumbbell curls, let me tell you, are awesome. Kind of related to that would be preacher curls or spider curls, either two-handed or even one-handed on the back of an inclined bench where you can really get that angle of the stretch, that long, like that length of position. And then I mentioned the calf phrases before where you really should be up on a step so you can get a stretch at the bottom. It's not the concentric where you're pushing up that's as important as the bottom stretch. So you don't have to overhaul your entire program, just do a couple swaps. I'm I'm a big fan of swaps no matter what. Even when I follow a program that's somebody else's or my coach's, unless it's fully custom, I'm always going to be making swaps anyway, just for different things. I'll add a slingshot over here, a block over here. Thanks, Tony. Shout out to you. I'll do a, you know, I'll do a what am I trying to say here? A different angle, a different variation, a machine versus a dumbbell, whatever. You know, and and just one quick side tangent. If you think about Olympic weightlifting, the snatch. The clean in jerk, these guys are really strong, but they're also really flexible. And they didn't do it through stretching, they did it through the lifts themselves, right? And they're they're putting themselves under load, full range of motion, all the time. There was actually a study in 2022 of master's weightlifters. So this is age 35 to 76, that found that their shoulder range of motion exceeded the general population and functional capacity was greater than age match people who don't lift, but only 5 to 20% of them supplemented with something like yogurt Pilates. So meaning you lift weights, you get

    Philip Pape: 22:34

    more flexible. All right, as promised, here is a quick test to find out if your squat depth is limited by flexibility, by your motor control, or by something else. I want you to find a box or a bench or a sturdy chair that is about knee height. So not like a tall, what do you call it, stool or something like that, but a short, firm surface about knee height. I want you to stand in front of it with your feet roughly shoulder width apart, knees pointed slightly out. Now sit down to the box slowly, take about three seconds to lower yourself all the way to the box, and then stand back up. If you can do that with your heels flat and your chest up, then your flexibility is not the problem. You have the range of motion. You have it. You just have to start loading it. Okay. And this is problem one that with most people, if I say, can you sit down to a box and get back up? And you can, you're good. You have the range. Now, if your heels pop up or your chest collapses forward or something like that, maybe you have a little bit of an issue with your ankles or hips. You can, you can what you can do is put a rolled towel or a plate, you know, a small like five-pound or 10-pound plate under your heels and try it again. And if you're able to do it, then okay, maybe there's something with your ankles we have to look at, which again is typically resolved just through the squatting itself. But a lot of people have just, you know, poor ankles for a variety of reasons. And and one way to strengthen them is work on calf raises from a deficit or do goblet squats with your heels elevated until you build a range to go flat. You know, I when I started squatting, I was able to squat in, I'll call them normal flat shoes and you know, weightlifter shoes with a heel, but it was a little bit tough for me to do it barefoot, which was an indicator that, you know, I had a little bit of a lack of flexibility, but it very quickly resolved itself just by squatting. Now, once you can sit to the box comfortably, guess what you do? Lower the box height. So this is where if you have a stack of plates or something like that, or if you're lucky enough to you have a plyometric box that's just really low, like 12 inches, but some way to drop it, heck, even if it's big, thick books that you've got to stack up. And you're gonna drop it. And the idea is you want to eventually be able to sit to a low box at about 12 inches, 12 to 14 inches, where you're doing it under control, your feet are flat. That demonstrates you do have the range of motion for a proper deep squat. Again, a lot of you can just already do this. And from there, you have to load it. So you can load it in front with like a dumbbell or kettlebell at your at your chest, like goblet style, and then start building strength of that range. Or you can load it on the back with a dowel or a light barbell or a full-on barbell again, depending on how strong you are, just loading it. I mean, I would prefer the barbell if you're gonna eventually do the barbell squats, but you can do it in really any way you want. So you're gonna control the eccentric, you know, two, three seconds at most, lightly sit on the box, but don't let go of all of your tension. Hold on to that tension and then squat back up with explosiveness. And that's how you get started. Okay, and you're gonna build your strength and flexibility.

    Philip Pape: 25:36

    You're gonna be just fine. You don't have to do anything extra. All right, anyway, if you know someone who is having trouble with their flexibility, send them this episode, let them listen to it. Maybe it will open their eyes and ears to all the new possibilities. Until next time, keep using using your wits, lifting those weights. And remember, lifting is the best stretching tool you already have. You just gotta do it. I'm Philip Pate, and I'll talk to you next time here on the Wits and Weights podcast.

Featured

Ready for the Next Step?

Read More
Interviews Philip Pape Interviews Philip Pape

5 Ways Intermittent Fasting Backfires for Women Over 40 | Ep 458

Intermittent fasting is still the most popular nutrition advice on the internet. Skip breakfast, shrink your eating window, lose weight. But if you're over 40, this may not give you the results you want. It could even backfire. Learn about the 5 specific ways intermittent fasting can backfire when your goal is losing fat and building muscle after 40.

Intermittent fasting is still the most popular nutrition advice on the internet. 

Skip breakfast, shrink your eating window, lose weight. But if you're over 40, this may not give you the results you want. It could even backfire.

Learn about the 5 specific ways intermittent fasting can backfire when your goal is losing fat and building muscle after 40. Philip examines a 2025 meta-analyses comparing IF to standard dieting, the challenge of getting enough protein in a compressed eating window, recent findings on cortisol and hormonal effects that especially affect women in perimenopause, and a surprising 2025 review that challenges one of fasting's biggest marketing claims (hint: it's about inflammation).

Plus, learn a structured meal timing alternative and 3 diagnostic questions to test whether your current eating window is causing issues for you.

Try my favorite Cozy Earth temperature-regulating sheets for better sleep and recovery. Use code WITSANDWEIGHTS for 20% off: witsandweights.com/cozyearth

Enroll in Eat More Lift Heavy, the 26-week coached program that builds your nutrition and strength training skills so you don't have to use a restrictive diet or intermittent fasting while still building muscle and losing fat. Go to: eatmoreliftheavy.com

Timestamps

0:00 - Intermittent fasting and fat loss
0:53 - 5 ways fasting backfires after 40
3:44 - #1: Metabolism and fat loss
11:04 - #2: Muscle building and protein
14:28 - #3: Cortisol and stress
17:33 - #4: DHEA and thyroid hormones
20:28 - #5: Fasting and inflammation
25:00 - Eating more to lose fat
27:00 - Structured meal timing
31:22 - 3 questions to test your eating window

  • Philip Pape: 00:00

    If you've been skipping breakfast using intermittent fasting to lose fat, or for some other reason, a 2025 review of 22 trials found that intermittent fasting produces essentially zero additional fat loss when calories are the same. But there are four other things that it doesn't do. It limits how many times per day your muscles can respond to protein. It raises your cortisol during a time when cortisol's probably already jacked up. It may suppress a hormone called DHEA that your body depends on, especially after menopause. And recent research shows that fasting actually increases inflammatory markers rather than decrease them. Today I'm going to walk you through all five and what to do instead without giving up the simplicity you might like about fasting in the first place.

    Philip Pape: 00:53

    Welcome to Wits and Weights, the show that puts a popular piece of fitness advice under the microscope, finds the hidden reason it doesn't work, and gives you the deceptively simple fix that does. I'm your host, certified nutrition coach Philip Pape, and former intermittent faster. And intermittent fasting IF might be still the single most recommended nutrition strategy in the interwebs right now. And I get it, I get why. It is elegant, it is simple to understand. You don't worry about what you eat, you just worry about when you eat. It simplifies your life. It shrinks the window when you could be overconsuming. And then, of course, you control your calories and you can go ahead and lose weight or lose fat. And if you've tried it, just like I have, you probably felt good about it for a while. Your body adapted to the routine. Maybe you lost a few pounds early on or not. Maybe the routine itself felt freeing in some way. Maybe you even have some other benefits that you ascribe to fasting, whether it's mental clarity or something related to inflammation or something else. But if you're over 40, especially if you're a woman over 40 who strength trains and you're trying to build or keep muscle while losing fat, that's what we do here on Wits and Weights. We're about improving body composition. Then intermittent fasting is probably working against you in ways that show up later in longer-term effects, not just short term. We'll talk about both short and long-term. We're going to cover that today. And just so you know, there's no judgment on if you like intermittent fasting and it's working for you in all the ways we're talking about today, then that's your story and you should stick to it and it works for you. In my experience, a vast majority of people don't want to intermittent fast if they don't have to. And that's what we're going to talk about, that you don't have to. And not only do you not have to, there's probably negatives that outweigh any potential positive if there even is one. Stick around to the very end of this episode because after the main content, I'm going to share three quick questions you can ask yourself to figure out whether your eating window is too narrow for your goals. And it takes about 30 seconds. It might save you months of frustration and help you make the right choices for yourself. So here's what we're covering today: five specific ways that intermittent fasting backfires, especially for women over 40 who lived. And I'm sorry to target women, but population-wise, that is who I hear using fasting the most. And it's who we tend to work with the most. But this advice really applies to everyone. So five specific ways we're going to cover. I'm not going to list them here. I don't want to give them all away. I want you to dive in and really hear the context around them. And then I'm going to give you the fix for those, which keeps everything that you might like about IF, but without the downsides. So I know it's a tall order, but let's get into it and see if we can make that

    Philip Pape: 03:44

    happen. All right. So the first way intermittent fasting backfires is it doesn't actually give you an advantage for fat loss. It doesn't produce better fat loss than a standard calorie restriction by any means. And this is the foundation so many other things rest on because if it had a genuine metabolic advantage, then you might argue the other downsides are worth tolerating in the trade-off, but it doesn't. And the popular version of IF goes like this. And look, I was on IF for a decade. I've tried all versions of it. I've even done full day fasts. Okay, so the popular version is this. You skip breakfast. This is the typical approach people take, because it's, I guess, the easiest to fit into a normal schedule. You skip breakfast, you eat your first meal around, say, noon. You stop eating by 8 p.m. if you're doing the 8 to 16, but it might even be earlier. It might be like 5 p.m. if you're trying to squeeze the window even tighter. And then the fasting window is all that time after you stop eating dinner, all the way to that next midday meal where the magic happens. That's where your insulin drops, your body burns fat. Maybe you get some autophagy, you lose weight without having to count calories. It's not what you eat, it's when you eat. Oh, it's just beautiful. It's just the perfect solution, guys, right? And I know you know that, right? Because you're you're listening to this show and you're like, yeah, intermittent fasting works for me perfectly. Now, I want to be fair because I can be a little facetious, a little sarcastic at times. There is a grain of truth to all this stuff. There's also plenty of anecdotal evidence for anything that can work for people. It doesn't mean that the science isn't there, doesn't mean that there isn't an optimal range of things for the vast majority of humans. It just means that your experience might be an outlier. Intermittent fasting does help some people lose weight, for sure. But the reason has nothing to do with the fasting window. The reason is that when you eat in a compressed window, you spontaneously eat less food. We see this in studies. Okay, so this we're gonna give them that point. Studies show that when you're just like in an ad libitum free living condition, if you're doing time-restricted eating, which is the more science-y term, people consume 350 to 650 fewer calories per day, and they're not being told to restrict, they're not doing anything special or anything different. And that is a very meaningful deficit. So, so yes, people on IF lose weight, but it's because of the calorie deficit. It's not the timing itself. How do we know this? Because when researchers match the calories, a non-IF approach has the same result. So going to all the way to 2025, just last year, Cochrane or Cochrane, it's a systematic review. I love systematic reviews because that is the highest level of evidence synthesis we have, where they looked at 22 randomized trials with nearly 2,000 participants. And they compared intermittent fasting to conventional calorie restriction. The difference of weight loss was 0.33% body weight. Not 3%, 0.33%, which is definitely not clinically meaningful in any way. That is what we would call noise. Okay, so almost nothing, no difference. Also in 2025, there was a different meta-analysis, and this was in nutrition, metabolism, and cardiovascular diseases, if you want to look it up. And they looked at 20 randomized controlled trials that were specifically designed to match calories between IF and standard dieting. And so this was a very direct conclusion that what's called isocaloric intermittent fasting is not superior to calorie restriction for any health outcome. There were no differences in body weight, in BMI, or in lean body mass at any time point. And then if we go a couple years back, there was the big New England Journal of Medicine trial from 2022. 139 obese patients randomized to time-restricted eating plus calorie restriction versus calorie restriction alone for 12 months. And guess what? The results were identical across fat mass, across lean mass, visceral fat, and liver fat. So the first thing to understand is that the mechanism of action for intermittent fasting is simply calorie reduction. It is a behavioral tool to create a deficit, and that is it. There's no metabolic alchemy. You know, we're not converting lead to gold. It's nothing magic that is happening during the fasting window that gives you any sort of edge whatsoever. And when you accept that fact, that premise, then you have a different question, don't you? You have a different question. Instead of saying, look, does intermittent fasting work? The question for you is is intermittent fasting the best way to create a deficit for you, given your specific goals and situation. And here's where I'm bringing it full circle to who I'm talking to on this show. A lot of you are over 40, a lot of you are women who strength train. The answer is almost always no, is what we've found. Almost always no. And that brings me to ways number two through five that backfire for intermittent fasting.

    Philip Pape: 08:51

    Now, since we're talking about what drives results, which is all I care about, and all you care about, I think, versus the shiny object or the shiny distraction, I'm gonna tell you quickly about one thing that does make a real difference, and that is sleep. Sleep makes a big difference. Recovery is where adaptation happens. You don't build muscle in the gym, right? You build it while you sleep. Of course, you got to go to the gym. If you're waking up hot, tangled in sheets, tossing and turning, you've got night flashes, you've got disrupted sleep, that is all recovery time that you're not getting back. And so this is my smooth segue to introduce our sponsor for today, Cozy Earth. And Cozy Earth makes the most amazing sheets. I'm not just saying that, I am saying it, but I'm saying it because I use it and I bought another pair because I love them. I've had them for a while now, many months since I became a sponsor. And the temperature regulation piece is the thing that initially sold me, but I wasn't sold for real until I actually slept in them. So they're made from a bamboo-derived fabric, and that's what lets them keep you cool, even if you run warm like I do, and it keeps you comfortable even when it's cold. So it's not like it makes you colder. It's it's a nice balance depending on the temperature. And we know that better sleep means lower stress and cortisol, better recovery, better training, and a better use of your food, whether you are intermittent fasting or not. And that was my point with this extremely smooth segue to our sponsor in that getting enough sleep is going to prevent you from having massive cravings that often lead to people saying, Hey, I need a different solution because I can't help but eat. I'm gonna use fasting. You see how that works. All right. Right now, Cozy Earth will give you 20% off with code Wits and Weights. Go to witsandweights.com slash cozy earth. The link is in the show notes. Go to witsandweights.com slash cozy earth. Check out all of their products. I love this company. If you want to support the show, go check them out. Buy a gift for someone, buy it for yourself. They have some uh amazing warranties that are backing up the product like few other companies have. Go to witsandweights.com slash cozy earth and enjoy. All

    Philip Pape: 11:04

    right, so the second way that intermittent fasting backfires is how it limits your ability to build muscle. And this is probably the most concrete issue that matters a lot to those of you listening. When you're trying to lift weights, you're trying to build muscle, you're trying to partition your nutrients just the right way. It's just a fancy way of saying, you know, what I eat into my mouth goes toward building muscle as best as I can and also whole, you know, losing fat when possible, right? Because that's what we're trying to do. So your muscles, they respond to a few things. They respond to number one, how much protein you eat total. So you've got to have that minimum, but also they respond a little bit more to the distribution of that protein. Not as much as the total. We've got to hit our total, but they also respond to the distribution. And there is a concept called the muscle full effect. So that is after you eat a protein-rich meal, muscle protein synthesis, that's the process of building and repairing muscle tissue. It spikes. It spikes for about 60 to 90 minutes and returns to baseline within two to three hours. Now, caveat, if you eat a lot of protein, like 100 grams, there is a study that did show it will that tail drags even further out simply because you ate more protein. So you will still get benefit even if you have more protein. There's not really a too high of a level, but there is a problem when you are going long stretches of time without protein and you don't have amino acids in your blood, that can give you a little bit of a disadvantage. And I wanted to mention it here because, again, if you don't have to fast, it's good to know what you're losing when you do fast that you might want to consider in your trade-off. Um, and in this case, I'm not going to go into all the different studies. There is one I found among many that I've referred to before by Aretta in 2013, where they did different patterns of doses for protein and they found that the pattern that had more frequent meals produced more protein synthesis than the others. And again, it depends on how much optimized you want to be here. As long as you're getting your total protein, even when you're fasting, you're going to be in a good place to start, but not the most optimal place, is my point. Um, and I've alluded to the anabolic resistance piece as well. Like if you're over 40, if you're a woman over 40, especially, your muscles become less responsive to protein. So when you're not really flooding your system with a decent amount of protein on a regular basis, you definitely could have a disadvantage, let alone the other issues having to do with satiety and your expenditure and all that fun stuff. So, what does intermittent fasting do to this? Well, you're compressing the eating window to at most six to eight hours, sometimes less, where you can realistically fit two meals, maybe three meals in that time. A lot of people are trying to fit it down to only two, but oftentimes you get three if it's like, you know, noon and then four and then eight or something like that. So let's say you're a 155-pound woman and you need, you know, 125, 130 grams of protein a day, which is a reasonable target. And within an eight-hour window, if you only have three meals, now each meal has to contain about 50 or 60 grams of protein. So you might be missing out on your total protein as a result. Now, I'm not saying you can't solve that simply by getting more protein, but it does create an extra practical issue. And then that entire fasting window, of course, you're not getting protein either, which again could be more or less of a problem depending on your response and also depending on when you train, right? Where when you train, if you're training kind of in the middle of that or late part of that fasting window where you haven't eaten in a long time, um, that could be a challenge as well. So that's way number two. Way number

    Philip Pape: 14:28

    three about intermittent fasting backfiring backfiring is it can stress you out further than you already are. Now, this is the really important one that we don't talk about a lot. We know that fasting raises cortisol. Cortisol is your stress hormone. And this is this is not debatable, it's a survival mechanism. Your body is without food, and so your cortisol is going to try to mobilize your stored energy. This is great if there's a famine. You want to be stressed, you want your stress level to come up so that you can act on this and seek out food. But it's less useful in our situation where we're just trying to hold on to muscle tissue, we're trying to lose fat, we're trying to make this as easy as we can and not get more stressed out than we already are just from our life. There was a meta-analysis by Nakamura and colleagues back in 2016, looked at 13 studies, and they found that fasting produces what they call a very strong effect, and in quotes, on cortisol levels. Now, what's interesting is that shorter, more acute fasts produce larger cortisol spikes than chronic moderate restriction. So, in that sense, the daily start-stop pattern of intermittent fasting can be provoking your cortisol more than simply eating a bit less across the whole day. Now, there's some longer fasting studies that show even more dramatic effects. There's Bergendal's 1996 study found a 1.8 times increase in 24-hour cortisol production during a five-day fast. Now, again, we're not, I know a lot of you aren't doing full fasts like that, but it's worth understanding the mechanisms here. A more recent study in 2023 by Marciniac, I think that's how you pronounce it, found that even one day of fasting produced an 11% increase in cortisol and shifted the peak of cortisol about 50 minutes earlier. Now, why does this matter? Well, two reasons. First, we think of uh women in particular, the female HPA axis, that's your stress hormone system, which is more reactive than the male axis. Women initiate cortisol responses more rapidly and produce a greater output of cortisol. It's just a biological difference. No, nothing to worry about. But it means that the cortisol hit from fasting can be amplified for women. Second, during perimenopause, the decline in estrogen, it's already increasing your baseline cortisol and this activity of the HPA axis. So now you're layering fasting stress on top of a system that's already running more stressful than it was, say, five or 10 years earlier. And then we know cortisol is catabolic, catabolic. That means it will, it'll break down muscle tissue. It increases the breakdown by upregulating the pathways, the molecular pathways that do this. We're not going to get into a biology lesson here, but it preferentially targets fast twitch type 2 fibers, the ones responsive to strength training. So it's doing all these things that work against the adaptation that you are training for. It's

    Philip Pape: 17:33

    kind of like when you don't get enough sleep. You just don't build muscle as effectively. All right, so way number four that IF backfires is it suppresses DHEA and thyroid. Now, this one is a bit newer, and this one is also specific to post-menopausal women. This is why the lens today is more toward women with some of these issues. And by the way, it could explain some issues you are having if you're listening to the show and you like to fast, thinking it's benefiting you. A 2022 study from Krista Varedi's lab. This is the first to examine time-restricted eating and sex hormones in pre- and post-menopausal women. It found that eight weeks of four to six hour time-restricted eating, say that's four to six hours of your eating window, caused a 14% decline in DHEA. DHEA, if you spell it out, it's dehydroepyandrosterone. Hard to say, but I wanted to say it because it's in my notes. After menopause, DHEA is the primary precursor that your body uses to produce estrogen and androgens in your tissue. So if you have a drop in DHEA, it's pretty concerning for postmenopausal women who already have reduced estrogen. That makes sense. In parallel to this, there's evidence that fasting can reduce T3. We've talked about thyroid a little bit on the show. T3 is the active thyroid hormone. And there is evidence fasting can reduce it by up to 55% within 24 hours and a corresponding rise in reverse T3 along with it. So for women over 40 who are already at higher risk for what we call subclinical hypothyroidism, this is a down regulation, right? It's a metabolic downregulation because we know thyroid affects a metabolism. And therefore it undermines your fat loss because you're going to burn fewer calories. And we don't want that. We don't want that. So it's interesting that fasting could actually reduce your expenditure, causing you to burn fewer calories, even though fasting and non-fasting can cause similar weight loss if the deficit is the same. That's the big if, though. You're now affecting the output side of the equation, the metabolism side of the equation. Now, the other thing we always have to mention is with this research, perimenopausal women are often not even included in these studies. There are so many studies we rely on in this space, and we talk about perimenopausal women, but then they're not even in the population. And so the lab that I just talked about excluded it, excluded them. There's another study I found that didn't have them. And so the population most likely to experience these effects, we have the least data on. So even though they see these effects in DHAA and thyroid, they're not even looking specifically at the population. That's not to uh say that it won't happen. That's to say we don't know to what if to what extent it's gonna happen. And it could be worse, is my point. It could be even amplified for women in perimenopause. We don't know. The

    Philip Pape: 20:28

    final number five way that intermittent fasting could back virus, this is a very interesting one because it goes against what is often claimed, is that it can increase inflammation and not decrease it. And it might it might surprise you to hear this because so many of the marketing claims are that it's anti-inflammatory. Fasting reduces inflammation, cleans up your cells, it calms the immune system, blah, blah, blah. It sounds great. It sounds so good to sell a marketing system based on intermittent fasting. But going again to very recent research, very recent, 2025, it was a scoping review and it was published in Aging Research Reviews. The scientist's name is D-Qt. I don't know how to pronounce that, but it's D-E-C-I-U-T-I-I-S, and colleagues looked at this claim directly. They reviewed 14 human clinical trials that examine prolonged fasting of 48 hours or more, and they measured what happens to three inflammatory markers in the blood CRP, IL6, and TNF alpha. We've talked about these before. These are objective ways to measure inflammation in your body. I've had these measured myself due to an autoimmune condition. And you can clearly see these go up when you have an inflammatory response at the cellular level in your body. These are true inflammation, not woo foo foo inflammation that a lot of social media people talk about. These are the markers that a doctor can look at, okay, or a rheumatologist or what have you, you know, a functional doctor doesn't matter. They can look at these and say, okay, you've got some systemic inflammation going on. The majority of studies from this review showed either no change or an increase in these markers during fasting. So we look at CRP, C reactive protein. The levels frequently went up, oftentimes a lot, especially when people are overweight or obese, which just goes to show like inflammation is often amplified when you don't have a healthy lifestyle on top of that. Some studies found increases in the TNF alpha and the IL-6, the interleukin 6. And this is the opposite of what so many fasting proponents claim. Now, some studies did show CRP normalized or dropped below baseline after the refeeding. So in other words, the inflammatory spike might be transient. It might be an adaptive stress response, which in which case we shouldn't overblow the finding and say fasting causes some sort of long-term inflammation, but we shouldn't say fasting reduces inflammation either, should we? You know, the honest summary here is fasting appears to trigger a pro-inflammatory response during the fast itself. And then whether that resolves cleanly depends on you as an individual and also how you refeed. Now, is this a bad thing? I wouldn't say it's a bad thing. It could be like any other transit response, like when your blood pressure goes up when you lift weights. That's not a bad thing. In fact, it has some long-term benefits. And maybe we'll find a long time from now that the short-term inflammation causes a long-term adaptation. But when you're doing it regularly and you're constantly going to this pro-inflammatory state, I think most people would generally agree that's not a great thing to be in, especially when the claim is the opposite. That's really my point here. And it's not that you get a use that you get used to it and that future fasting doesn't increase your inflammation either, right? There was another meta-analysis in obesity reviews, also in 2025, and it confirmed this same thing, but from a different angle. So when they compared intermittent fasting to standard calorie restriction, the intermittent fasting actually intermittent fasting reduced TNF alpha and it didn't have an effect on CRP or IR IL6, while the standard calorie restriction significantly reduced CRP and IL6. So interesting. If reducing inflammation is one of your goals, then guess what? Continuous moderate calorie restriction seems to outperform fasting for that as well. So man, you might even go and say, make the claim now that, hey, a normal calorie deficit can reduce inflammation compared to fasting. Maybe. That's that's basically the point is you can't claim that fasting helps when it comes to inflammation. So for all of this, just to put this in a bow, I don't think this is a major health concern, honestly. I don't think this inflammation thing is a major health concern. I just think it's a a poke in the balloon of the fasting is anti-inflammatory claim. That's it. That's it. And we're looking for nuance here and we're looking for evidence.

    Philip Pape: 25:00

    All right, so you're hearing all of this. You're thinking, great, Philip, what do I actually do about my meal timing and my protein and all of that? Well, that's what Eat More Lift Heavy is built for. So Eat More Lift Heavy, we just launched this recently. It's my 26-week coaching program. You got me and Coach Carol in there actively involved to help you out. It is designed specifically for adults over 40 who lift. And we've got a lot of resources specific to women over 40, especially in week four of the program, which is our nutrition foundations uh module. We walk you through how to set up your meals, how to hit some level of protein based on how often you want to eat, how to space them to maximize muscle growth, how to structure your pre- and post-workout nutrition, all of that stuff personalized to your life and your schedule, not a meal plan. Like I do not like meal plans. Meal plans are just so static. You can go to ChatGPT and create a meal plan in five seconds. It's not helpful. What's helpful is a framework that fits how you eat and then can adapt as your life changes. And then in that same or in the next phase of the program, phase two, which is kind of the middle of the program, when you're executing everything and you're adjusting based on the data, we have something called dialed in, where Coach Carroll can review your nutrition strategy weekly and monthly and help you troubleshoot in real time. So if you're looking for that extra level of support, you have that option as well. And you can avoid the problems you have today with okay, I'm trying to cram everything into two meals a day, or I'm intermittent fasting, or I just can't get enough protein, I'm wondering why my body composition isn't changing. This is how we fix it. Go to eatmore liftheavy.com. You can learn more on that page. No pressure to join if it's not for you. But if you're trying to support us and you want the best results you've ever had that actually stick, this is definitely the way to do it. EatmoreLiftheavy.com, link in the show notes. All right, so those are the five ways intermittent fat intermittent fasting backfires. There's, you know, no advantage of fat loss, fewer opportunity to build muscle, amplified stress, potentially suppresses some hormones, you know, the inflammation profiles know better. It's possibly worse than standard dieting. So if you accept all of that and you're welcome to dig into the research, what do you do instead? Well, the fix is structured meal timing. And the reason I call it deceptively simple is because, well, it is. It gives you all the benefits that people attribute to intermittent fasting, such as appetite regulation, simplicity, reduced decision fatigue, but you're not going to sacrifice these other things like the hormones or the potential for inflammation or just the ability to enjoy food more during the day, if that's something you value. So here's the core of structured meal timing. You're going to eat three to four, what I'll say are protein-forward meals every day, space about three to four hours apart across a 12 to 14 hour window. That means your first meal is within an hour or two at most of waking up, especially if you're going to train in the morning. I mean, that's bar none. If you're going to train, I definitely encourage eating before you train. And then your last meal is about two to three hours before bed. You don't want it too close to bed because it can affect sleep, digestion, et cetera. Each meal should contain at least 30 grams of protein because doing the math, that's probably where it's going to need to be for whatever size you are. You know, unless you're much bigger and you need a lot more protein. For most people, that's going to get you there. And that's a reasonable amount of protein, but it's probably more than you're getting right now, especially for something like breakfast. It's like a palm-sized portion of meat or fish or poultry, or it's a combination of Greek yogurt and eggs. That's a good breakfast thought. Or a protein shake plus a whole food source, right? Any combination of those things, if you're vegan or vegetarian, you've got fewer options, but you still have lots of other things to consider. And the 30 grams is just a nice round number. It gets you the enough protein all day if you have them in each meal when they add up. It also gives you a good amount of protein at once to kind of maximize that muscle protein synthesis, again, without overblowing that piece of it. And it also gets you to make your very first day of the meal have to have that amount of protein, as opposed to waiting and cramming it in the end, and then you forget, and then you fall short. So the biggest single change of all this for people who are used to intermittent fasting is no longer skipping breakfast. And I know that's tough if you haven't done that in a if you've been skipping it for a long time. Getting that 30 to 40 grams of protein in breakfast is a game changer. It is a game changer. It is going to set you up for so much success. You're going to feel better, you're going to feel less hungry. It's going to regulate your hunger signals throughout the day. It's going to get you, you know, a good chunk of the way toward getting your protein. There's so many good reasons for that. And all you have to do is put together a simple breakfast for yourself right now, plan ahead and make it happen. Three eggs and a Greek yogurt, a protein shake with milk, leftover chicken from dinner. Come on, leftovers from dinner. People forget about this idea. It's a great idea. Make extra meat for dinner and then have it for breakfast. Takes five minutes to do these kinds of breakfasts and it gets you going. All right. So if you're worried about losing this simplicity in the routine that appealed to you about intermittent fasting, I think this is just a replacement with a new routine. You're still going to eat at the same time each day. I recommend eating the same time each day, the same basic rhythm to your meals, even the same meals if it doesn't bore you, which for most people, you know, breakfast can be the same. And even lunches for like the whole week can be the same. And then you could do another one the next week based on your meal prep. And that way you get structure without restriction. Structure without restriction. The consistency is the part that helps, whether you're fasting or not, that's the part that's helping you. Right? The fasting, the fasting is causing other things that are potentially problems, but either way work for consistency. So don't force yourself to fast if you don't have to. Now, look, intermittent fasting is not poison. Okay. If you're, if you're hitting your protein targets, it fits your life, it feels good, you have all the performance you want, you're doing getting everything you want, then it does work for you. And I'm not going to tell you it doesn't. But I'll say the vast majority of people over 40 who are lifting weights, who want to improve their body composition, this uh structured meal timing spread throughout the day, kind of in a normal schedule, a more normal schedule. I hate to use the word normal, but you know what I mean, tends to get better results over time and has less friction as well. So the question isn't does IF work? It's is it the best tool for you with your goals at this stage of life?

    Philip Pape: 31:22

    All right, before we wrap up, remember I promised three quick questions to diagnose whether your eating window is too narrow for your goals, which I'm gonna share in just a second. But if this episode is changing or has changed how you think about meal timing, but you're not sure how to restructure your eating around your training, your schedule, your protein targets, how to get enough protein. That's exactly what Eat More Lift Heavy walks you through. The program is 26 weeks, one focus per week that builds your skills slowly over time. By the end, you're not following a plan anymore. You are owning your own plan. You know how to build one, you know how to adapt, you know how to adjust on your own. That's what we want for you. We call it a graduation model because the goal is to make the original program unnecessary and let you go to bigger and better things for the next level. Go to eatmoreliftheavy.com. That is eatmoreliftheavy.com. Link is in the show notes. All right, here are three questions you can ask yourself right now to figure out if your eating window is costing you the muscle that you're trying to hold on to or making fat loss harder. Okay, question one How many meals with 30 plus grams of protein can you fit into your eating window right now? If the answer is two or less, it's probably too narrow. You're missing the opportunities to get enough protein, and that's gonna slow you down across the board. It's gonna make everything harder. It's gonna make it harder to hold on to lean mass. And then when you do lose weight, you're gonna lose muscle. We don't like that. Okay. Listen to our last episode where we talked all about how to hold on to muscle during fat loss. That's question one. Question two are you routinely hungry, low energy, or craving carbs in the last two hours of your fasting window? Okay. If so, that is your cortisol talking to you. It is, it is mobilizing that hormone to keep you going. And then when the fat feeding window opens, you are more likely to overconsume or to make poor food choices. That's another thing we didn't even talk about today. I see a lot of people who fast and they don't eat so well during the feeding window because they're just like starving. They're ready to eat and they go hog wild. And this is a physiological thing. This is not your discipline, it's just the situation has incentivized you to do this because of the cortisol. Question three Are you hitting your daily protein but not seeing body composition changes? Now, this is an interesting one because some of you are fasting, you're still hitting it, but it could be that you are underperforming in the fasting window. It could also be a carb situation. It could be when you're training. There's a lot of could be's, but if you are hitting your protein but not seeing body composition changes and you fast, there could be an issue there with the fasting window. All right. So if you answered yes to two or three of these, you may want to experiment with not fasting anymore, widening your window at least by two hours to add another meal with protein in there, for example, or just go all out to a normal eating schedule. Do it for at least two weeks. Track what you're doing and see what changes. Tell yourself, based on the evidence, whether this is a superior choice for you or not. Don't let me try to convince you of it. Do it for yourself. That is the best evidence. All right, until next time, keep using your wits, lifting those weights. And remember, when you eat matters less than whether your muscles get the signal they need when they need it, and you're eating well for your goals. I'm Philip Hayde, and I'll talk to you next time here on the Wits and Weights podcast.

Featured

Ready for the Next Step?

Read More
Interviews Philip Pape Interviews Philip Pape

How to Lose Fat Without Losing Your Muscle Gains | Ep 457

You spent months building muscle, and now you're ready to cut. Or you're on a GLP-1 medication and losing weight but not sure how much muscle your'e also losing. Without getting 3 things right, roughly 25% to 40% of the weight you lose can come from lean tissue. Tune in to learn what they are!

You spent months building muscle, and now you're ready to cut. Or you're on a GLP-1 medication and losing weight but not sure how much muscle your'e also losing.

Without getting 3 things right, roughly 25% to 40% of the weight you lose can come from lean tissue.

Tune in to learn what they are!

Join Eat More Lift Heavy, a 26-week coached program where Phase 2 guides you through exactly this transition, from building to cutting without losing what you built: eatmoreliftheavy.com

Track your nutrition with MacroFactor using code WITSANDWEIGHTS for a free two-week trial

Timestamps

0:00 - Muscle loss during a cut
6:31 - Rate of loss and lean mass
9:56 - Protein during a fat loss phase
13:12 - Per-meal protein over 40
15:01 - Sleep and body composition
17:08 - Eating more and lifting heavy
18:36 - Rate of loss and protein targets
21:25 - Training volume and intensity
23:57 - Diet breaks and refeeds
27:04 - GLP-1 body composition research
33:16 - Bonus: 50g protein meal for low appetite

  • Philip Pape: 00:00

    If you spend months building muscle and you're about to start a fat loss phase, or if you're on a GLP1 medication and watching the scale drop, but wondering how much of that is muscle, this episode is going to change how you approach your cut. Today I'm going to show you the three specific mistakes that cause people to lose muscle instead of fat during a deficit, and a research-backed approach to fix all three. You'll learn about how fast it's too fast to lose weight so that you don't lose up to 60% more lean mass, how much more protein adults over 40 need versus their younger peers, and what a recent case series found when GLP1 users combined resistance training with adequate protein. All that and more in today's episode. Welcome to Wits and Weights, the show that puts a popular piece of fitness advice under the microscope, finds the hidden reason it doesn't work, and gives you the deceptively simple fix that does. I'm your host, certified nutrition coach Philip Pape, and this episode is coming out during the spring. I know a lot of you are thinking about transitioning into a fat loss phase ahead of summer. Maybe you just finished a building or bulking phase over the winter. Maybe you've been on a GLP1 medication like Wagovi or Manjaro, and you're losing weight, but you're not sure what weight you're losing. Are you losing some muscle along the way or not? Maybe you've been through this cycle before where you dieted down, you lost some fat, but you also lost a bunch of muscle that you work very hard to build. And then when you try to build again, you're basically starting from scratch. And that is the cycle I want to help you break today. Stick around to the end of this episode because I'm gonna share a specific meal structure that helps you hit 50 grams of protein with less than 400 calories with almost no demand on your appetite. If you're on a GLP1 medication or your appetite is pretty crushed during a cut, which is sounds strange, but for some people this does happen. This is definitely going to be useful. All right, today you're gonna learn the three biggest threats to your muscle during a fat loss phase. You're gonna learn the specific protein and rate of loss targets that the latest research supports and why GLP1 users who lift and eat enough protein can have just as good outcome as anyone else and lose very little, if any, muscle

    Philip Pape: 02:22

    mass. All right, let's get into it and look at the standard advice when it comes to cutting. When you listen to podcasts, when you think about how to plan out fat loss or weight loss, and that is you're gonna cut your calories a certain amount, you're gonna keep training. Maybe you modify your training, but you keep training, and then you ride it out until you're lean. Maybe you have a target, maybe you don't. There's all different ways to approach this. And you're not sure, do I add in more cardio or do I increase my step count? Do I drop my carbs? Well, they're gonna drop naturally, but should I deliberately drop them even further? And then for GLP1 users, you know, you're taking the medication and your appetite is lower, but then you want to do a fat loss phase. It's like, do you still need to force yourself to eat a little bit more than you were, even though you're in a deficit? So the deficit is not too big, right? There's all these questions swirling about cuts that I want to address kind of all together today with concepts coming together. And there's some truth in all these things, right? You have to have a calorie deficit to lose fat. Yes, that's that's the truth. You do have to keep training to hold on to the muscle. But the the problem is what is often not said with the advice that helps you hold on to muscle optimally. So if we just step back a bit and think of two people who lose weight, both people lose 20 pounds, and one of them loses, say, 18 pounds of fat and maybe two pounds of lean tissue, which isn't terrible, right? It's just a little bit of muscle, but mostly fat. The other loses, say, 12 pounds of fat and eight pounds of lean tissue. Well, you're gonna have very different outcomes at the end, which is why we have to stop obsessing over scale weight, because it's a very small piece of the equation. And somebody who loses that much muscle is gonna feel much different. They're gonna have a much different metabolism. The same result on the scale, but very different body composition outcome. And I see the people walking around taking the GLP1s, not doing the training, not eating protein, and they're not happy. They're not happy. Maybe they're a little bit happy on the scale, but it doesn't last because they're not keeping, they're not getting the body that they actually wanted out of this. Maybe they improved their health outcomes, so there's definitely value in that. But there's a lot of research on this now because of those drugs, and it affects everyone. If you're listening and you're not on these drugs or not even considering them, this still impacts you in understanding this. If you don't do things a certain way, then some percentage of the weight you lose is going to come from lean mass. And it's probably about 25% on average, and sometimes even more than that. It's what we call the quarter rule from body composition research: one out of every four pounds as lean tissue. Now, for most people who are just dieting without the resistance training at all, without paying attention to protein, without controlling the rate of loss, which is a lot of people on GLP one meds, but it could be people who are just crash dieting or doing like a keto or carnivore type deal and they're just losing weight really quickly, but they're not doing the other things. That 25% can climb up to 35 or even 40%. If you're on a GLP1 med, again, without a structured plan to change your lifestyle, we've seen DEXA data. DEXA can measure body composition. There were the semaglatide trials showed that lean mass made up about 40% of the total weight loss. That's a lot of muscle to lose. And it's not to me, not to scare you. You've heard this many times on podcasts, because you can actually do something about it. It's not inevitable. This is where the episode is headed. Okay, with the right strategy, you can get that number down to under 10%, some cases zero. And we want to be able to measure it as well. Okay, folks who are, for example, in our program eat more lift heavy. We have a very good tracker to do that. So we can track fat-free mass and lean mass and body fat change and all of that stuff. Anyone can do it. It's just math, simple numbers. But in some cases, people actually gain some lean mass while losing significant body fat, even on GLP1 medications. So there's this huge gap between the worst case and the best case, and the variables that control it are entirely within your hands. So let me walk you through each one. All right, here

    Philip Pape: 06:31

    we go. These are the three things that are threatening your muscle while you're in a cut, so you know you can do something about it. Threat number one is you're just losing weight too fast. And there is a study I think every everybody should know about who's listening to this. It's it's pretty old now. It's 2011. Researchers took 24 elite athletes and they split them into two groups. One group lost weight at about 0.7% of their body weight a week, and the other lost at about 1.4% body weight per week. So twice as fast. Both groups trained four days a week. Both groups lost a similar amount of total scale weight. What do you think happened? Well, the group that went slower gained lean mass. The fast group didn't gain lean mass. Now you're like, well, aren't you talking about the loss of lean mass? Still, this is incredible because they were in a fat loss phase. And what you're noticing here is that training is a really important variable, even if you're losing quickly, not just to hold on to muscle, but if you can go at the right rate and it's not too fast, you could potentially gain muscle, which is insane, right? It's insane because we're always told, no, you can't do that. When you lose weight too fast, remember what's happening. Your body needs to pull energy from somewhere. It's trying to get back to homeostasis. And so, on one hand, it has some fat stored up that it's trying to pull energy from, but because you're going so fast, it can't even, it's like it can't keep up and it's just trying to take energy from wherever it can, including muscle tissue. And so, if we go to a more recent study from 2022, a meta-analysis that I've referred to quite a bit, it showed that once your deficit exceeds about 500 calories a day, your ability to gain or maintain lean mass during resistance training drops to essentially zero. And then below five, you know, below 500, like losing losing fewer uh pounds, going slower, you can still build muscle in a deficit, you know, if you're training hard and eating enough protein. And then above 500, that ability kind of goes away, right? So that's the first place to start here. And that leads us to a rate of loss target of about a half to 1% of your body weight a week. Or you can go slower than that, of course, but up to 1% of your body weight a week, which is something I've talked about for several years now. So for if you're a 180-pound person, that's around 0.9 to 1.8 pounds a week. If you're 150 pounds, that's up to one and a half pounds, right? It's just one per 1%. Pretty easy math. Now, if you're leaner, I usually suggest aiming for the lower end. If you have more fat to lose, you probably have a little more room at the upper end if you're concerned about muscle preservation or even trying to gain muscle during a cut. Once you go faster than 1% a week, the research shows that you have a higher chance of losing muscle. And again, it's very individualistic. Like I definitely have worked with folks who have a lot of fat to lose, are training really hard, they have a lot of muscle, and they can go a little bit more than 1%. Maybe they can go 1.25%. It also depends on the duration. But again, the relationship is still there. And if you want to avoid that risk, you're going to keep the rate of loss more reasonable. And a lot of people are not doing that, especially on GLP ones, is that they're going faster than they need to. And when they come into our program, we're like, hey, we need we need you to eat more, even though you don't have as much of an appetite and you're still losing weight. It's kind of a weird situation to be in. It also implies that maybe you don't need to be on those drugs if you're doing this the right way, but it depends on the person. Okay.

    Philip Pape: 09:56

    The second threat to this muscle loss is, of course, protein. And I might be stating the obvious here, but I did want to bang them out one, two, three, just so we are making sure we're doing these things. Because if you're not doing these things, why are you so focused on all the other stuff that just doesn't matter? Focus on the one thing to optimize in front of you. Okay. So protein. Now, training is absolutely essential throughout this discussion. So I'm not even going to mention it as a threat to muscle loss. In other words, if you are not training, you will lose muscle. Let's just get that out of the way in case you're listening and you thought I was going to mention uh not training as one of the three threats. No, not training is an inevitable threat always, by definition. So you have to be resistance training. And if you have been pushing against that for whatever reason, you don't like it, you hate it, you, whatever excuse you're making for yourself, now's the time to stop and find a way to eliminate all those excuses. We help people do this all the time. I just had a chat this morning with one of our uh dialed-in clients in Eat More Lift Heavy, where she's like, all right, I know the first thing I need to do is learn to like lifting weights. Now, it may not be exactly that. It may be finding a way to lift that then gives her the results so that she starts to find joy in it. But the point is you have to train. Okay, I got off on a tangent, but the second risk we're talking about here is protein. The original landmark review by Eric Helms in 2014 recommended 2.3 to 3.1 grams per kilogram of fat-free mass for lean athletes during a deficit. You're like, oh, okay, now I have to do all this weird math. No, I don't want you to do all the weird math. What it translates to is the thing I talk about all the time: roughly 0.7 to one gram per pound of total body weight. A little bit more than that is never gonna hurt. Like more protein is not gonna hurt you. All it does is take away from the other macros, which could be a problem if the calories are really low, but more protein is not gonna hurt you. The minimum, though, you want to get to around, you know, 0.7. Now, there was just last year, 2025, an updated systematic review from the same group that looked at 29 studies instead of the original six, and they found a greater than 97% probability of a dose response relationship between protein intake and lean mass retention during a deficit. And the threshold they identified was around 1.9 grams per kilogram or 0.87 grams per pound as the minimum to prevent accelerated lean mass loss. Now, again, these are just means, these are averages. 0.87 during a deficit, okay? During a deficit. So below that, yeah, you have a higher risk of losing muscle. And of course, you know, it's dose response. So, you know, if you're near it, that's fine. The farther you get from it, the more it increases that risk. And then above it, the benefits continue in a linear fashion up to about 3.2 grams per kilogram. So for practical purposes, here we go. Conclusion During a fat loss phase, if you can get around that upper end of like one gram per pound of body weight, and if you're over 40, I'd really seriously consider doing that and push it at least there, if not 1.1, 1.2 grams, because of the anabolic resistance and all that. You know, as we age, our muscles become a little bit less responsive to protein. So your ability to maximize muscle protein synthesis is a little bit less efficient. So, anyway, you need a little bit more. I don't want to overthink it. I don't want to overthink it. But I, again, going back to the GLP1 discussion, we've got a client in our group that joined this week for eat more lift heavy, and he's on, he doesn't have as much of an appetite and is worried about how to get enough protein. I said, look, don't worry about trying to get the full amount we want to get you to. Let's get you from where you are today, step change up to the minimum, and then you can start to tweak up from there. It's just a function of the math initially, but then it might be a function of how do you do it with your appetite? Like if you don't have an appetite, if you can't eat that much, we need to look at more energy dense foods or protein shakes, things like that. Not all of your protein, but there are little tricks we can do to kind of eke our way there as you learn about energy density and volume and all of that. And also frequency. Like if you're trying to get all your protein in one or two meals, it's gonna be a lot harder than if you distribute it across three, four, or five meals or snacks of you know, 30 to 40 grams each. So, long story short, in a fat loss phase specifically, going for a higher end is more helpful. And if you guys use macro factor, which I use, code wits and weights, all one word, get your two-week free trial if you want to support the podcast. That's macro factor. When you go into a fat loss phase, it actually does jack up your protein based on this science. All right. So, what I what I often see happen is the opposite. People cut their calories. So, of course, their meals get smaller, or they may even have one or two fewer meals a day. And yet they're trying to get they need to get the same or more protein, but it's harder to get more protein when you've already now dropped the calories. And so it takes a shift in your planning. Like you really have to plan well during a fat loss phase to do that because your percentage of calories from protein goes way up. It goes from say 10 to 20% up to like 40 or 50%, maybe.

    Philip Pape: 15:01

    Okay, the third threat to your muscle growth is you're not sleeping enough. You're not sleeping enough. Okay, and and this one can never get talked about enough. I'm not gonna rehash the study that I've mentioned over and over again, but essentially we've seen time and again in a calorie deficit, if you are sleep deprived, you're actually gonna lose more lean tissue during a deficit. And we're we're talking a massive amount, potentially, depending on how sleep-deprived you are, like up to that 30, 40, 50% range of your muscle as lean mass. And again, this is mitigated somewhat by your training and your protein that we've already talked about. But your, you know, what we call nutrient partitioning, the fancy word to say how much of the nutrients are going to muscle and fat versus how much energy is pulled from muscle and fat, is not the way you want it to be if you're sleep deprived. All right. And we've seen multiple studies where sleep-restricted subjects didn't lose very much body fat because they were losing some muscle as part of their weight loss. So if you are not in a good place with your sleep, it is not a good time for fat loss. And I can't tell you how many people have come to us. They're frustrated because they're trying to lose weight. The calories keep going down and down, but they're not losing it. And they're like, Yeah, I don't get much sleep. Like, okay, let's fix that. Oh, I know I need good sleep, but I want to lose weight. Well, I'm sorry. The mechanism is there. It's your body. Poor sleep increases cortisol, it decreases testosterone, it impairs muscle protein synthesis, it shifts your nutrient nutrient partitioning toward fat storage and away from muscle recovery. Why does it do this? Because your body is looking for any energy it can get. And because you're not giving it sleep, it's like, well, I'm gonna hold on to that damn fat right now. Apologize my uh for my language. That's the worst you're gonna hear in terms of swearing on the show. So sleep, sleep, sleep. So important. If you're doing everything else right, if you're eating enough protein, if you're controlling the rate of loss, you're training hard, but you're only sleeping five hours a night, you are massively holding yourself back from all of that, and it's really not gonna go anywhere. You've got to fix that sleep. Just gotta do it. All right, so we've covered the three biggest threats to your muscle during a cut losing weight too fast, not getting enough protein, and not sleeping

    Philip Pape: 17:08

    enough. And I want to tell you quickly about Eat More Lift Heavy because what we just talked about is exactly what phase two of this program is designed to guide you through. Eat More Lift Heavy is a 26-week coached program that I created and we recently launched. I run it with Coach Carol, and it's three phases. And the second phase, which is called Eat More, Lift Heavy, is where you learn to execute and adjust your plan with us as the coaches looking over your shoulder. And so that includes navigating your phase transitions, like going from a building phase into a fat loss phase without losing the muscle you just built. And you're gonna learn to read your own data, you're gonna interpret your expenditure, you're gonna adjust your training, you're gonna learn to troubleshoot plateaus in real time with again, coaches who are watching this and giving you the feedback on, hey, is what you're interpreting correct? Let's help you out. So it's not a meal plan, it's not a course, it is a coached experience that builds skills so you can do this independently for the rest of your life. Isn't that what you want? Isn't that what you want? Now, if this topic today is really hitting home for you, if you've been through the cut and lose muscle cycle multiple times, that's exactly what Eatmore Lift Heavy was built to solve because I've seen this problem time and again, and I want to help you guys, but it you've got to do more than just binge podcasts, you've got to put it into action. So if you want to do that, go to eatmoreliftheavy.com. That's eatmoreliftheavy.com and check us out. All right.

    Philip Pape: 18:36

    So now you know the threats to muscle loss during a deficit. What do you do about it? What does the research say we should do, other than just the opposite of those threats? So step one is okay, if going too fast is a problem, how fast should I go? And we we mentioned briefly the half to 1% of your body weight a week is a really solid range to be in. And you can calculate this manually. Just take your body weight. We said it before, if you're 150 pounds, that upper range is 1.5 pounds. I'm talking to someone on a consult who's about 185 pounds, he's losing over two pounds a week. And his energy is dropping, and there's a reason for that. He might be losing muscle. It might be too fast, especially if you've been on a prolonged deficit. If you're losing fat, if you're losing weight faster than that, you just run the risk of losing more muscle than you need to. And I see it more often than I don't. And all you got to do is increase your calories a little bit. You could also make sure the other things like sleep are really rock solid, and these will also mitigate often the muscle loss as well. But anyway, this is the easiest lever to pull because it's just a number, it's just a rate of loss. And the pushback I see is often like, well, I want to lose weight faster than that. Like I just want to get to a result fast. If that is your mindset, it's not going to serve you long term because that puts you in the 95% of people who are inevitably going to gain it back. If your mindset is, I want to do it the right way and hold on to those results, then please process what I'm saying. All right, step two is setting that protein floor. Um, I mentioned during a deficit, if you can get at least that one gram per pound of body weight or even more, the older you are, the more you probably need. And then you distribute it evenly across your meals, where every meal is like a protein event. Every meal has protein, not just dinner, not just your post-workout, every single meal, just make it a habit. Because it can be really hard to get your protein otherwise. If you go into the office and you don't plan ahead and bring your lunch with enough protein, you end up going to the cafeteria. Good luck. Like good luck getting enough protein that isn't, you know, deep fried or a tiny bit of the meal without doing like a grilled chicken salad, which is fine if you want the same, you know, grilled chicken salad every day. And there is an interesting little thing called the protein leverage effect that I've alluded to before, where if protein drops below a certain percentage of calories, you tend to unconsciously overeat to meet that protein target, and you end up eating even more fats and carbs and still not getting enough protein, and then it affects your hunger. So having the protein is increases your satiety, but not just directly. There's this indirect way that it does so as well. So that's protein. And by the way, in eat more lift heavy, uh, very early on, I think it's week four, we give you a very massively helpful tool called the Protein Day Builder that helps you build out your entire day based on whatever your targets are. And you can keep running the tool as many times as you want, forever, while you're in the program.

    Philip Pape: 21:25

    All right, step three is maintaining your training intensity. So here I do want to talk about training. A lot of people get this backward, right? A lot of people want to reduce their training during a cut or they want to do more high-rep endurance cardio type like fat burning stuff. Now, we know that when you're in a deficit, recovery is lower, it's compromised. But the hierarchy of how you do things is important. So if you have to reduce something for that recovery drop, I would reduce the volume first, right? Number of sets, then I would reduce the frequency, how often you do the same lifts or hit the same muscle groups. And then last thing I would reduce is the intensity. And I probably really wouldn't reduce the intensity, other than the fact that you might go from, you know, a strength type program where you're doing PRs above 80% of your max to a more mid-range strength/slash hypertrophy, where you're often hitting higher rep ranges, say above 60% of your max, but you're still lifting heavy, quote unquote. Because maintaining heavy loads is the most important signal to hold on to your muscle. We know from research that even when your deficit prevents you from gaining muscle, which once you've are a little bit experienced, that's usually what happens. You're not going to gain new lean mass in a deficit, usually. You're also not going to lose a lot of strength either. Your nervous system can still adapt even when your muscles can't grow. This is that whole interesting dichotomy between strength and muscle. So keep lifting heavy. Keep lifting heavy. You can drop the volume from, say, if you're doing 15 sets a week down to 10. We know it takes a lot less to maintain than to build. So by definition, if you're all you're trying to do is send a signal to maintain muscle, you have some permission to drop that volume to give you more recovery. A lot of this is going to be by feel and by what the data is telling you in the moment. You may not notice much of a difference in the first, say, four weeks of the cut, and then it really starts to ramp up later on. It's also going to be affected by your sleep and how much how fast you're going of a deficit. Again, these all tie together. One last thing about the maintenance thing, I know I've I've looked in the research lately again, and it does seem that the older you get, the higher dose you need to maintain your muscle. And I don't know if that's really just an age thing or it's confounded by other variables. But as long as you're training like a reasonable level of volume, you know, at least those five to ten sets per muscle group per week are good. All right. Step

    Philip Pape: 23:57

    four is kind of my bonus step today. And that is about diet breaks, using diet breaks as a strategic tool. There's the famous Matador study that found that men who alternated two weeks of dieting with two weeks of maintenance lost a lot more total weight than men who dieted continuously for the same time in the deficit. And that intermittent group that went on and off two weeks at a time showed less metabolic adaptation and maintained more of their weight loss at a six-month follow-up. And I know there have been some pushbacks against this study over the years, but the general principle still applies. And most of it, more of it is psychological. I've I believe this is maybe more anecdotal. The ability to take breaks keeps you more consistent with your diet. So for resistance-trained individuals, which you are trying to be, the the body composition advantage of diet breaks is not like this clear-cut thing, but psychologically it's very helpful. It's very helpful. Really, the only study I can think of that showed some advantage was one of the one that I did called the weekend diet, where you went to a full refeed on the weekends. Like you brought your calories all the way up to maintenance on the weekends, and there showed a slight advantage for retaining muscle, more muscle for that. So I do recommend that approach for a lot of folks, but I mainly recommend it because weekends are where people go off the rails. So if you plan in a break every weekend, it's ah, it's a nice relief. You can go out and enjoy yourself. You know, it's it's just a really good cycle that goes with your natural week for most human beings, social your social calendar. But the big advantage of diet breaks is the subjective well-being advantage. You tend to have less hunger. I mean, you definitely have less hunger the days you take the that you're taking the break, but then it translates psychologically to overall less hunger because you're you're satisfying yourself more often, right? So you have more satisfaction, and then what do you get is better adherence. And you know what? Adherence is the variable that governs everything else. If a diet break every four to six weeks keeps you going, keeps you from falling off the wagon or chasing the next shiny object, then it is worth it, regardless of the math on, oh, it's gonna slow me down a little bit. Well, yeah, but you would have slowed to zero or reverted or regressed if you didn't have the diet break. So, from a practical standpoint, I recommend something like a one to two week diet break at maintenance every, say, four to eight weeks if you're in a longer cut. Almost think of it like a deload for your diet. If you want that more frequent cycle of relief and refeeds than the weekend refeed or the two days per week, one day is often not enough in practical experience. Like the one day it kind of comes and goes real quickly, and it's just not enough. Two days is a really nice compromise because it's two, it's still two out of seven. So five days you're still in a deficit. You can go in a harder deficit on those five days than you would have otherwise, or just keep it, keep it to the same level of calories and accept a slower rate of loss and a slower weekly deficit overall. You can do it whatever way you want.

    Philip Pape: 27:04

    All right, so everything I just said applies to anybody, including GLP1 users. So I kind of want to touch on this a little bit, these edge cases. So rate of loss, protein, training. The difference, though, is that these medications make it easier to lose weight, but harder to eat enough, especially protein. It's kind of funny. That's what that's what I noticed, which is kind of a clue that protein is a really good thing to have in your diet for a lot of reasons, isn't it? I think it's like this intuitive clue that hey, maybe you should be getting more protein. And the fact that it's harder to eat if you came off or lowered the dose on the GLP1s while you're increasing your protein, does that kind of solve some of the issues you were having with your appetite? Maybe, maybe not. It depends how strong those signals are in your brain. A lot of brain-related genes. So I want to give you some numbers from trials so you can see the range of outcomes. You've probably heard of the step one some magnitude trial. It's a big one that's referenced all the time. And there was no exercise or protein guidance in the trial. And in that one, lean mass was up to 40% of total weight loss, what I mentioned before. And that sounds really bad. Okay. But a 2025 case series looked at GLP1 users who did resistance train three to five days a week and had adequate protein. And in a case series, so these look at case studies. Okay, it's not like a big trial with a huge sample size, it's just case studies, but they're still helpful to understand. One person lost a third of their body weight, but less than 9% of that loss came from lean tissue, which is totally acceptable, I think, when you've lost that much body weight. I mean, seriously. That's the other thing is like if you if you have a lot of weight to lose, getting a little bit of muscle loss is not fine. It's probably fine and probably worth it. And it's probably not all truly muscle loss. It's lean tissue, so it includes fluid and things like that. In which case you're probably gonna be in a better position afterward to build that as long as you've been holding on to a lot of it to begin with. And then two of the three participants gained lean mass while losing significant body weight. Isn't that pretty cool, right? And that happens. And I'm guessing it's because they hadn't been training before. They were new to it. Now there was a bigger study, it's a prospective study of 200 adults who they were educated on resistance training and protein when they started the GLP1s, and they had 13% weight loss with only 3% muscle loss after six months. So this is a massive gap that we need to understand and we need to spread the word. The same class of drug, vastly different body composition outcomes, based entirely almost on whether they lifted and ate enough protein. And then there's a nuance I do want to mention. I want to mention it, okay. A lot of the scary headlines about GOP1 muscle loss come from those DEXA measurements that I mentioned. And remember that there are, there's not really one body fat measurement that is foolproof. There's error in every single one of them. And if you think of DEXA, anything that's not fat or bone is counted as lean mass. So that includes water, glycogen, and even your organs, which can change in size. So it's not just muscle mass. So when you lose a large amount of body fat, you're also gonna lose the water and protein embedded in that fifth in that fat tissue. And about 15 to 20% of fat or adipose tissue mass is water and protein. Not sure if you realize that. So the DEXA is overstating the amount of skeletal muscle you're losing. I kind of said this already, but I'm saying it in a different way. When researchers use MRI, which can directly measure muscle tissue, we see that the lean tissue drops or lean tissue loss drops about 16% of total weight loss. So, in other words, I'm acknowledging maybe it's not as tremendously massive as we think, but there's still a gap between 16% and 3% or 0% or gaining muscle, right? There's still a big difference. So none of this means you should ignore the risk to that and that you shouldn't train any protein. We want to do those anyway. You want to do those anyway. But I gave you some other tips today, like the controlled rate of loss, and I also mentioned those diet breaks. Um, and I think there are there are medical organizations that are now recommending similar rates of protein intake for people on GLP ones, you know, like up to, not up to, but around 1.2, 1.6 grams per kilogram, which gets you around, gets you to that 0.7 grams per protein, which is great. And they're recommending at least, I think, 360 minutes per week, which is what, six hours per week of exercise with an emphasis on resistance training. So if you're training three or four days a week, you're already getting at least three to five hours just from your training and moving around, and then you're probably walking as well, and then you might be getting a little bit more cardio. So you should probably be in that range anyway. Now, I want

    Philip Pape: 31:47

    to mention retatrotide briefly, because there's a lot of news and buzz around it. It is the next generation, the triple receptor agonist. And it's currently in phase three trials. And I've heard from some of you listeners and some former clients who have taken this, and it is becoming popular in the body composition space, interestingly, with a different, a different judgmental lens on it than things like OZEP. And now, why that is well, okay, so what do we see from it? We see a massive amount of weight loss. I think the most of any of the drug, up to 28% weight loss over the same time periods. And the there's a body composition stuff sub-study that confirmed the proportion of lean mass loss is similar to other GOP1 drugs, which again, I'm not surprised. Same problem, same solution. The mechanism is the same. It's a calorie deficit, it's not the drug itself. And there might be other benefits to all these drugs like retatrotide, might have benefits for liver fat and things like that. And I've seen it used almost as a tool for rapid fat loss or protein-sparing modified fast in a way that the other drugs are not talked about, which is very interesting. I might talk more about that in the future. All right, before we wrap up, remember I promised you a specific meal structure to hit plenty of protein. So in this case, 50 grams of protein with doing it very efficiently, so under 400 calories with minimal demand on your appetite, whether you're on GLP1 drugs or you're just looking to get a lot more protein and you're having trouble from a from a hunger perspective, fitting it in. Like you can't feel like you can't eat that much. I'm gonna share that in just a moment.

    Philip Pape: 33:16

    But if this episode was useful to you, I do have a favor. All I want you to do is think of someone in your life who wants to start a cut, wants to lose fat, who might be currently on a GLP 1 med. You know, those are two different categories. They might want to lose fat and or they might be on GLP1 med, wanting to lose weight, and they're worried about the muscle loss thing. Send them this episode. Just text it to them from your app or tell them about it, or tag me on Instagram and send it to them. All right, this can change someone's life, just knowing this information on what to do, and hopefully you're giving it to them out of love, out of kindness. People are not hearing this from their doctor. They might not be hearing it from their trainer, or if they even have one, so share it with a friend. All right, here is the 50 gram suppressed appetite meal idea I have for you. It's designed for days when eating feels like it's tough to do. And I know that's not the case for everyone. You might be listening, like, whoa, I would love to be in that situation. But many of you are, okay? Especially if you're trying, I'm asking you to increase calories. Like when you join eat more, lift heavy. The first two words, eat more. We're trying to bring up that metabolism, help you eat more calories. So, this this is for people on a cut, deep into a cut, especially on GLP1 meds, or just one of those low appetite days. I want you to take one cup of non-fat Greek yogurt. That's 130 calories, that's 20 grams of protein as a base. You're gonna mix in one scoop of your favorite protein powder, flavored, unflavored, I don't care, whatever you like, casein or whey or a vegan protein powder with pea and rice. That adds another 25 to 30 grams of protein. So now you have another 120 calories. Now you're gonna fold in a handful of berries, maybe about a quarter cup of berries. That gives you some flavor and some fiber and also a little bit of hydration. I personally love raspberries and blackberries because they're extremely high in fiber. But hey, blueberries, strawberries, they all work. So when you add it all up, you've got about 50 grams of protein, around 280 to 350 calories, depending on the protein powder amount. Takes 90 seconds to make, doesn't require you to chew, it doesn't demand a lot of stomach space, it is cold, it is creamy, it is mildly sweet, it goes down easily, even when you have no appetite. And if you're looking for a pre-bed or late evening snack with enough hours before you go to sleep, this is also a great idea. So, again, that's just non-fat Greek yogurt, protein powder, and berries. Super, super simple. And the reason this works is yogurt and protein powder are the two most protein-dense foods per unit of volume. You're getting 50 grams of protein in the physical space of this small bowl. And you compare that, say, to say eight ounces of chicken breasts when you don't have an appetite and it feels like kind of a chore to get down. It's the same protein but a different experience because of the food density. And I just wanted to share that. It might sound obvious to some of you who are really into making recipes that this is like, you know, child's play 101 stuff, but a lot of people are not thinking of this with intention, how they make this work. And if you put this in your rotation, plant it in, add it to macrofactor or wherever you track, and you could skip it if you need to, but have it in there, pre-plant it, and it can be a really helpful tool. All right, until next time, keep using your wits, lifting those weights, and remember the muscle you built is worth protecting. And the way to do that is just simpler than you think if you listen to this episode. I'm Philip Bate, and I'll talk to you next time here on the Wits and Weights podcast.

Featured

Ready for the Next Step?

Read More
Interviews Philip Pape Interviews Philip Pape

The Mad Scientist's Guide to Strength Training After 40 (Chris Duffin) | Ep 456

Why does lifting start hurting once you hit 40? Is it really age, or is your body compensating for weak links you cannot see? Chris Duffin joins me to unpack the biomechanics behind strength training longevity, muscle building, and injury prevention. Chris is a world record strength athlete who has squatted and deadlifted over 1,000 pounds while applying engineering principles to human movement.

Why does lifting start hurting once you hit 40? Is it really age, or is your body compensating for weak links you cannot see?

Chris Duffin joins me to unpack the biomechanics behind strength training longevity, muscle building, and injury prevention. Chris is a world record strength athlete who has squatted and deadlifted over 1,000 pounds while applying engineering principles to human movement.

We talk about why many lifters trying to build muscle and lose fat end up breaking down, especially with strength training over 40. Chris explains how breathing mechanics, foot stability, and movement quality determine whether your body adapts or gets injured.

You’ll learn why poor mechanics “detune” your nervous system, how foot strength influences power and metabolism, and why proper bracing unlocks safer muscle building and hypertrophy.

If you care about body recomp, lifting weights long term, and evidence-based training that supports longevity, this conversation is packed with insights.

Timestamps:

0:00 - Why lifters over 40 get hurt
2:40 - Adaptation and movement quality explained
9:36 - Detuning, breathing, bracing, and core stability
21:57 - Breathing strategy across rep ranges
34:16 - Why foot strength matters for lifting
39:36 - Barefoot training and footwear choices
43:28 - Shoulder and hip power mechanics
46:17 - Regenerative framework for recovery

Episode resources:

  • Why lifters over 40 get hurt

    Philip Pape 0:00

    Most training advice treats your body like a simple machine. More input, more output, add some weight, follow the program, repeat. And that works fine until you're 45 and your shoulder is clicking, your low back is always sore, and you're spending more time warming up than actually lifting. Is this just your age? Are you lifting too heavy? Or what if the problem is your feet or how you breathe? Or that pain in one area might be connected to other points on your body? Today's guest has over 20 years of applied expertise across engineering, biomechanics, and elite strength performance. And he applies this knowledge to the human body. Oh, and he's also a world record-holding strength athlete who squatted over a thousand pounds at age 42. You are going to learn how to engineer your body so it doesn't break down, why the fix starts in the places you'd never expect, and why the interconnectedness of your biomechanics is far more important than the program you're running. Welcome to Wits and Weights, the show that puts a popular piece of fitness advice under the microscope, finds the hidden reason it doesn't work, and gives you the deceptively simple fix that does. I'm your host, Philip Pape, and today we are talking about your shoulders, your low back, your hips. They're not supposed to hurt every year you train, but for many lifters over 40, we get pain, we get injuries, and we are trying to train for longevity. My guest today is the Chris Duffin, the mad scientist of strength. He was everything from a manufacturing engineer who spent years diagnosing complex systems and why they fail to later becoming a world record-holding strength athlete. He's the only person to have squatted and deadlifted over a thousand pounds for reps in his late 30s and early 40s. He just turned 49. He's still training heavy, still applies principles from engineering and biomechanics and cellular health and all of that we're going to get into today to the human body to help you find that bottleneck and fix the constraint that's limiting your performance. So today we're going to get into training longevity and resilience, the interconnectedness of your body, neurocentric biomechanics, even some surprising things that you need to know about your feet, your breathing, and more to improve how you feel and perform. Plus, maybe a little bit about what Chris does in his own training to keep lifting heavy. Chris, it's an honor to have you on Wits and Weights. Welcome.

    Adaptation and movement quality explained

    Chris Duffin 2:26

    Yeah, thanks. Uh thanks for having me. I've been looking forward to this conversation. And the way you did that opening is exactly why I've been looking forward to it because it's a really great way to frame what we need to discuss. So yeah, I'm looking forward to this.

    Philip Pape 2:40

    Good. I'm glad we hit the mark, at least as a starting point. And it's funny because just the timing of this, a client of mine recently said, you know, I asked him, what do you want to see more in the fitness industry? And he said, I want to see more people talking about how not to get hurt. I mean, that's the way he put it. He's like, he's 45, I'm 45. And he came up in the world of like starting strength and five by fives and the big compounds and this almost epidemic of older guys now who are into lifting but getting hurt. They're breaking down. Maybe there's aspects of their life that compound that, like executives and busy professionals who have a lot of stress and they feel like their training is maybe too limited or dogmatic, or they're not sure what to do. Yeah. So, like, what's the trend or the culture you're seeing?

    Detuning, breathing, bracing, and core stability

    Chris Duffin 3:25

    There's a lot of pieces to dissect within that. And hopefully we can simplify that because this industry always goes in cycles or waves. And there was a big push for a long time around movement quality and cleaning that up. And I was part of that. And now there's a lot of shift more around like the pain science of this and going, you know, we develop, we acclimate, that's the wrong word, adapt to stress. And so whatever movement that you move in is totally fine. And I think that might be causing some issues, even though that messaging is really on point. We don't want people to be fearful of movement. So being afraid, like I'm gonna do squat, I'm gonna hurt my back, or if if I don't do it exactly perfectly, means that I'm gonna hurt myself. Well, that creates fear, and then people are not pushing themselves, which then means they're not adapting, not growing stronger. And a better word for adaptation. It's just getting stronger, more resilient, right? But this is where context comes in, that little magic word, right? Because if we're not trying to improve the quality of our movement, there's an interesting thing that happens here because we adapt nearly any movement or stress that's imposed upon us, but not all of that adaptation is at the same rate. And we can take the back, for example. Like there's a lot of folks getting into lifting, maybe later in life, and they get strong maybe fairly quick, and then all of a sudden their back starts hurting. And it's like, hey, I read X program, and it says I should be able to train, you know, four days a week doing this. And it's like the research, all these science-based influencers are going through this over and over and over again, like scale back, and like, yes, but that's adaptation to muscular tissue and not the adaptation that needs to happen at a skeletal level for your disc to be able to support that load. Which, if you haven't had years of history of training, that adaptation hasn't happened. In this getting complex into the science of things, this piezoelectric, basically bone welding process that happens. That literally is it. That's how bone forms. That takes about a week. So if you haven't trained heavy in the past for you know decades, you may not have those adaptations and you might need to take it a little bit slower. We see this a lot in like female populations where if somebody gets into a strength sport, they don't have a history, and all of a sudden they're close to world-class levels in a few years and then they're gone because they actually didn't have the time that takes longer to develop that. And it might take longer to do that. Now, that's differences between you know processes in our body and how they adapt. We're talking, you know, skeletal adaptation versus skeletal muscle. But we also have our training reserves. If we think about this, if I move in a poor form, let's say I'm really rounded over while I'm squatting, again, you can adapt to that, but it's going to take you longer to recover from that. So you would not be able to, let's say, move as much load. So if we think about the total cumulative experience of your training over a week, for example, the total amount of repetition and load and all of this that adds up. If I work on improving my quality of movement in that, I'm going to be able to handle more volume, more frequency, and more weight, and still recover because I'm more efficient with the use of the tissues moving that load. Which means the more load that I handle within a given period of time stacked up means I get stronger. So you would get more resilient and develop more strength if you improve the quality of your movement. So don't be afraid of movement. If your technique isn't perfect, you go train. But also at the same time, try to make it a little bit better over time as well. And that's going to help you. And then there's some other things that kind of happen in this process too. Why is it? Why don't we recover as well when we're not using, you know, the materials, our biological materials as efficiently? Like our body responds to these, I call it peripheral inputs, where that load is at in space and where your joint is in relation to it actually sends a signal to the brain. So this soreness that you're feeling from squatting, it's like, oh, I have to do more to fix this because I'm I'm getting tight from all this squatting. My hips are getting tight, my back's getting tight. So I gotta add yoga, I gotta add stretching, I gotta add my foam rolling, I gotta add, add, add, add all this stuff. The body is trying to protect you because it's going, hey, we've got a loss of stability. Maybe our foot is unstable and it's shifting around on the ground because we're on an unstable shoe or an unstable surface, or we've just kind of lacked some motor stability issues and the knees wavering around. The body's response to that is to detune you. And so detuning you, one, it actually makes you weaker immediately. So you're not moving as much load as you really are capable of doing. It's literally how you move like thousands of pounds, for example, is to like really refine those patterns. So you're reducing the detuning that's happening in your system. So like all of a sudden, somebody's like way stronger. And it's like, how did that happen? We didn't add strength in 15 minutes, but we clean this stuff up and the signals are clear, and the body goes, You're safe to move now because we've got that in the right position. But on another level, that's why your hips are tightening up. It's not tightening up because you're squatting, it's tightening up because you're squatting like shit. The body's gonna start protecting that joint, and it's gonna start protecting that joint by tightening the muscles around it and starting to restrict the movement. And so I see this as a classic issue in strength training world is like everything is additive. That's not working. So we got to add because I lift, I have to balance that with doing this other thing, and I have to balance it with doing the other. And it's like, well, let's let's look at what we're doing and seeing what's actually driving that. And it might be that you're training too much, like you have too much load and that too much volume, frequency, all the other stuff. But these are all those variables that create that. And if it's a specific area that's starting to lose mobility, it means something with your training or your movement is amiss there. And if you correct that, that shouldn't happen. But being a thousand-pound squatter on deadlifter without stretching my hips, I can come close to doing the splits as, and that was as a 280-pound, you know, five foot ten male, because my movement through my hips was really clean.

    Philip Pape 10:30

    If you want to be strong and be able to do this a long time, and you mentioned it, quality of movement equals strength, you know, avoiding this detuning because you've become weaker due to the peripheral inputs. But ultimately, what I'm hearing is the quality of movement and your ability to do this and listen to the signals which are telling you something's off, and fix those things. That's how we simplify this to don't add more, fix that. It'll then lead to you being able to lift more. I guess my next question is when you say quality of movement, uh, we need to define that. And then what do you mean? And go on on all the different branches uh very specifically of what that means.

    Chris Duffin 11:06

    So listen to the signals that they're sending to you, going, hey, there is a gap here, and there's some areas where I can get more efficient. And the more efficient I get, the stronger and more resilient I can get, because then I can handle more load. But with that, spend some time training in some of those other ranges. Now, there is to some level a definition of good quality movement, and that is having the right balance of length tension relationship of the muscles around a joint. So that is joints that are you know balancing that hip, where if I'm popping my chest way up, like all the muscles that are connected to the front of the spine are in a stretch position, and the ones in the back are in a shortened position. If they're constantly like that, the ones in the back are going to be overworked. They're gonna hold a lot of tension and they're going to be less able to get nutrients in, so substrate material in and waste products out. So you're restricting their ability to recover and they're overfatiguing because they are working all the time. So they have a, you know, a chronic level of fatigue that now when I get capacity, so someone that has overactive, you know, erectors because they're trying to uh compensate for something typically has those fail during a movement because they don't have the resilience because they're already working. Uh again, I've got a lack, uh, a little bit of laxity in the muscles in the front that are in this stretched position all the time. They're not turned on in that balance. And this becomes important when we talk about what we call prime movers, which are the main like drivers of force as versus stabilizing muscles, ones that are kind of creating that balance. So I think of this in a global perspective. So the biggest impact to me is the impact of I hate calling it the core because people misapply that to like tight, you know, rigid abs. And it's not what I'm talking about. It's this ability to manage, well, that region of the body, the diaphragm, it's the area between the diaphragm, so your upper rib cage and your pelvis, and having good alignment with that and being able to balance the processes within that, which is happens from it's cued from the diaphragm. There's a lot of other muscles that happen, but we'll talk about that, which has three essential functions respiration, stabilization, and the sphincter. It's why you can't brace 100% if you're running a marathon. You're still braced, otherwise, you'd flop over. So it's this balance, and it's always somewhere on a continuum. So you can think about this, you know, knob that goes to 10 one direction and 10 the other, and you you can choose. Like you go dial it one way, it's less, you know, as you start dialing more towards respiration, you're having less stabilization as you're dialing the other way. And it's it's always a balance in there of what do you need from a respiratory versus stabilization. But that process right there, that alignment and using those resources and getting everything to stabilize the spine has this huge effect throughout the entire system. So number one is the ability to control and manage the breathing and breathing complex. All right. Number two is the foot and ankle complex. Then number three is the big power generation joints, the shoulder complex and the hip complex. All right, then you can get out into the peripheral. And if you think about things in that sequence of like trying to diagnose what's going wrong, it may be counterintuitive. I'm gonna start with that breathing embracing and that alignment uh component. That may sound weird, but if you are lacking that stable base to fire from, that lat that holds that internal rotation of that shoulder while you're benching doesn't have a stable base and it might be flaring out. Fixing this can fix that. Same thing. That lack of mobility, that protection could be happening because, again, a lack there in that area. And so just focusing on that first, like that's the global perspective. I'm not saying the problem's there, but that's the thought process. We go there first. So it's it's about having a good relationship there. And it doesn't mean you can't like be in another area and space, but when I'm trying to maximize my force output, when I'm trying to get more efficient with some base motor patterns, I'm going to try to make sure that I've got that and I know how to be able to inflate my core 360 degrees. So I should have some expansion in my lower abdominals, in my lower obliques just below the belt line, in my low back just below the rib cage. Like I should be able to just sit there and expand all of that while keeping that diaphragm, so that space at the base of the rib cage in parallel to my pelvis, right? Keeping those two in that same frame, being able to expand there, the equality and ability to control that does a lot of things. And then you can move in different ways in different spaces, as long as you can kind of control that. The ability that diaphragm descending down creates pressure on those organs. And that pressure pushes out all the way around, including down in the pelvis, which causes a co-contraction of all those muscles, which is the thoraciolumbar musculature, the pelvic floor, like all these other things that you could think about doing. The I need to do the valsalva move over, I need to do all these things. It's the real simple way to just focus on one thing and get like those processes, the body to say, it is safe for me to be in this position and elicit force without restriction. That's the signal that you are sending to the body when you do that. So being able to learn to do that without breath, because guess what? There's no actual air in your down there. That's organs. It's just the diaphragm is descending down, making space in the lungs. So doing it through the lungs is a compensatory pattern. You could add a little bit more over the top, um, and you can kind of pulse the diaphragm. So you may hear like people doing kettlebells or other things with this like little burst, like that is they already have good stability and they've got right at the peak of contraction, they're hitting that, which causes this micropulse of intense pressure, more intense pressure. Good posture, and then being able to expand all of that all the way around, checking those points. Boom, that's first step in the process.

    Philip Pape 18:00

    So I really like this breathing bracing nuance that you're gonna get into because we do simplify it often to the Valsal remover, um, just taking one big breath, holding it. There's no spectrum of how big of a breath, the pulsing or anything like that, from a max one RM to just like doing something for reps, people don't distinguish. And I think there's got to be different ways to approach this across that spectrum. So, some of my questions are now gonna be about like the pressure versus the load, about how does this apply to the actual lift mechanics, you know, and then and then things like lifting belts, which we can add tech on afterward.

    Breathing strategy across rep ranges

    Chris Duffin 18:38

    So you'll notice in there that discussion, I didn't talk about like the contracting of the muscles. Like if you're gonna put a weight on your back or in your hands or throw a punch or do these sorts of things, that outer contraction is gonna happen over the top of it. So you don't have to like consciously do that, or again, consciously think about like the Valsava maneuver. If we just initiate, I try to simplify things down into all right, I'm gonna have that outward expansion in those areas, a few touch points and be in good posture. That's it. Bunch of stuff happens. Now, what is the intensity? What is that very one rep max, three rep max, five rep? Uh, I'm doing kettlebell snatches, you know, for time. How do I manage this? And that's why I mentioned that continuum dial. There is no necessarily perfect answer because it's gonna vary on your particular respiratory needs, but it's going to be that balance. And again, like what is your level of strength in those muscles that are creating that stabilization too? So there's gonna be a balance there, and it is a give and take. So with a max true one max rep, there is no breathing during that process. Everything is stabilization, all right. And let's say I'm doing a five rep max, I'm probably pausing in there somewhere to take a reset and take a breath. Maybe it's after the second rep or the third rep. I'm gonna stop at the top where I'm in a good posture, release, another breath in so I don't pass out from last lack of air. All right. But let's say I'm doing a kettlebell snatch. That's for time. That's gonna be pretty continuous, but it's got some peak forces in there where I'm gonna need to be stable, but I'm probably not doing the breath between reps because there's no time. So I'm doing I'm timing that with it, right? So in a non-contractile phase, you know, I'm letting that air out, then I'm bringing it in, and then I've got a period where I'm not uh taking a breath, and it's in that movement. So it's within that continuum and just understanding all right, where's that balance at with this? Right. And so there's no fixed answer. If I'm doing a 20-rep squat, you know, it's gonna be very different and might start becoming part within the movement, but the stabilization demands are a little less as well. But this is also if we go all the way back to the beginning and you talked about how do I not injure myself. This is problematic in this arena when we're dealing with these core compound movements that people don't think about when they're talking about all right, movement quality doesn't matter. That whole initial discussion, let's tie back to this. We are now using the same process for respiration and stabilization. And if we start fatiguing out because of respiration, and now we don't have the strength to handle the stabilization, and I'm doing a CrossFit circuit with wall balls and squats and all of this, and I've got a core movement in there, and I have fatigued my capacity from an endurance respiratory standpoint. And now I've got 200 pounds on my back, but I'm a 400 pound squatter, but you just can't stabilize enough to protect yourself, and you end up hurting yourself. This is good reason to take. Make movements like that and separate those from they shouldn't be part of a metabolic conditioning program because of the failure mode.

    Philip Pape 22:10

    Yeah, yeah. I'm laughing because I did I did CrossFit for like eight years and I have the injuries to show for it, the long-term issues that are slowly getting resolved from separating the two. You're right. Because you just you get wiped and you're going for you know grace or what are these wads for reps on deadlifts and you're just killing yourself.

    Chris Duffin 22:28

    You just you got nothing and you got to the end. And that's not a knock-on CrossFit. You can do CrossFit and program it highly intelligently. Um, and you can do like and you can get strong too, like hit boom. But you're gonna come in and you're gonna like, all right, let's hit a squat session, boom, let's roll up. All right, let's now do a metabolic conditioning piece and just not have a movement like that with load that has that potential within that wild. Like it's that simple.

    Philip Pape 22:53

    So if you were coaching somebody and they're you're coaching them on the deadlift, people are trying to do a set of five, let's say, or even a set of three. Is there a standard default that you'd recommend in terms of like, do you breathe at the top or bottom? And also how do you do it and when do you take a breath? Like if you said, yeah, it's a pretty good protocol, let's say, for a set of three deadlifts.

    Chris Duffin 23:12

    So it's not one or the other. That's where the continuum, because they can mix and you can be doing the breathing. It's just a so just quick clarification there. But typically on a squat or deadlift or a base movement like that, I'm gonna do it in a position where I'm not holding the weight. And that it does that sounds funny. I'm like, I'm holding the weight with a squat or deadlift all the time. But you can stand with a weight for a really long time because the postures and everything, you're not actually loading and holding that spinal position uh unless you're leaning slightly forward or back or in the corner.

    Philip Pape 23:43

    Right, you're totally balanced over midfoot in a vertical line. Yeah, exactly.

    Chris Duffin 23:47

    That's the time to do that if you're doing one of those movements. Reset.

    Philip Pape 23:52

    Okay, okay, interesting. So on the deadlift, see that that's a good one, right? Because a lot of people breathe at the bottom of the rep or they take a breath at the bottom.

    Chris Duffin 23:59

    Yes, do not do not do that.

    Philip Pape 24:01

    Okay, yeah. See, that's yeah, exactly. That's why I'm bringing it up, right? Because I taught I have my lifting buddies and I would are we sometimes argue about this stuff, and a lot of people come to their own conclusion when they realize doing it at the top seems to be more helpful.

    Chris Duffin 24:15

    A caveat with that, like if you're doing low load and you're doing repetition based stuff, that may make sense because it doesn't require as much to get that off the floor. But you if you are setting the tension and you're already in that down position, you're literally trying to force like how to explain that. Like, you need to create, if you're moving a heavier load, you need to force that level of tension into the bar. And if you start with no tension whatsoever, because if you've let a breath go, your body is completely relaxed and you don't have tension on the bar. That is it, right? So now I'm gonna rebuild that and I'm rebuilding it all just through that and that slacks in that bar. There's some sort of acceleratory thing to get that bar moving and to get that bar moving without some give in the body, it needs to be really light, or you're compromising position. You've got a little bit of loss in position as you're getting into position. So, like for me, I would set that brace before I went down into the deadlift, and I'm driving my hips into position, and the bar is literally bending up to be able to match to give my hips the highest position possible. Because the higher hip position possible gives me the best diaphragm uh to pelvis relationship and the best strength I can elicit from my hips. If I'm loose, if I've let loose that brace, let loose that tension on that bar, the hips are thus lower. And thus I don't have the same efficient power, like just from a mechanical standpoint, as an engineer, you get this like literally change the lever points, and I have less strength. And I'm going to end up compromising position as I let those hips rise and get into position to where I optimize those strengths, but I've done that by compromising the other positions. So you have to have that rigidness, and that rigidness can be created as you're driving into, but it's got to be done before. So, like for me to set up for a deadlift, there used to have to be 500 pounds on the bar. Because if it was less than 500 pounds, the weight would come off the ground during my setup because I knew where my hip position had to be for that to break off and the bar would be bending so much, I owned that position and I wouldn't start from a lower position because it's a different movement.

    Philip Pape 26:40

    Another thought that goes through my head is if you just bend over right now, if you're listening to this into a deadlift position and then try to take a big breath, it just feels unnatural.

    Chris Duffin 26:50

    You're not in a good position for the for all that activity to happen. You're in a poor position. You want to be in good position to set that. You can't do that when you're in that position. I mean, that is it is that is a known fact.

    Philip Pape 27:03

    Like so, when it comes to the respiration versus stabilization, like when we think of lifting belts and people talking about intra-abdominal pressure and all this stuff, like what's your thought on a belt?

    Chris Duffin 27:14

    Yeah. So a belt can be a really valuable tool for a couple of reasons, but usually it's completely misapplied. All right. So people are using the belt for support. And so they're cranking this belt on. And in fact, what we want the belt to be, and we need to be able to expand to actually get that contraction to happen the way that we want. So you have to be able to expand out into the belt, but then you reach a point of like, all right, once we've written that, I don't want to, I need a rigid force to expand against. And that's actually that co-contraction of that the thoraciolum bar musculature, the abdominals, like all this stuff is your internal belt, but it's not a hundred percent wholly rigid. So it does have some give to it. And so a belt can be valuable by creating that more rigid for handling that maximum load. And it can also be really valuable for you to just from a cueing mechanism to have the tactile feedback. Like, am I pushing out in all these spaces? And just tactily having that. So I found a lot of effect of just having like an expandable kind of belt that allows you to breathe out into it, uh, but has some restriction because it's creating that reactive neuromuscular training, is the technical term for it. But it's like it teaches you to push into it, like a like a nylon instead of a leather. Yes, exactly. So that's another if I'm using from a tactile, if I'm like trying to, um, so if I'm working with an audience that is, you know, not a maximum performance audience, I would use a rigid belt for them, right? But uh, but if I'm teaching, I really like uh that it is that it's got a few pockets where you can put like uh you know balls in massage balls so you can target like specific areas for people to like, hmm, okay, I'm pushing out into that. So I find that really, really valuable. And that's actually what I use today because I don't train for maximal strength. And I just like that little bit of extra resistance, but not too much. So the way to use a belt properly is to have be able to slide at least two fingers between your belly and the belt before you you're expanded. But it's to have it relatively, but like loose enough that you can still slide those in there. So if you've got it too tight, you're actually sucking that in and you can't expand out into it anymore. So that's where the misapplication that I see over and over again is people are looking, they're cranking, and they're they're using it as a passive structure. It needs to be used in an active manner.

    Philip Pape 29:47

    Okay, and two more questions about breath. One is can you take too many breaths? And and I say that because again, you alluded to holding your breath for multiple reps, and there's different schools of thought on that as well. So if you're doing like a set of five squats, you know, is there a disadvantage to taking a breath for each rep because of now the respiration overcomes the stabilization in some way or tires you out? Or is it like that's too short of a period for it to matter?

    Chris Duffin 30:12

    That's too short of a period. Uh, so I wouldn't worry about that too much. So, what does this allow? It allows us to move greater load, right? But it also then allows us to push. If we can maintain our technique and we're not stopping because of respiration, I'm not stopping because my low back's fatiguing. Like it is just pure, like my movement's just freaking maximal solid. And I and I'm failing because my quads just can't give anymore, right? That triggers something at a cellular level. So when you're able to push into a deeper state of fatigue, the deeper you go, it pushes further oxygen desaturation of the muscles, it pushes uh changes lactic threshold, it does a number of things at that level. And that's like if anybody ever gets around uh looking at like blood flow restriction or things like that, that kind of forces that mechanism via a whole different pathway by just depriving the body and putting it in that deeper state uh without the load. But the further you actually improve that, so like changing the load in space got people with a squat bar, it was called the transformer bar, put the diaphragm and the pelvis like perfectly aligned and got people in these amazing squat patterns. And all of a sudden, you could go to that level. So it's another way of tapping into this cellular level biology because when that happens, those triggers things like uh PGC one alpha, it's basically this cellular level response triggering uh adaptation at that muscular at that level. And it's truly, truly fascinating. And that's a lot of my thought process through the years was underlying what is the cellular signaling pathways, which is why you saw me dealing with products that like a flywheel, so the Kratos flywheel, like the load starts dropping as you first push into it, like a dumbbell that changed weights as like you could change the leverage as you went because you could just keep pushing. BFR, I was a big proponent of it. I still am uh education around that same thing. It's another pathway into that same modality. And these are actually triggering those responses at the cell level so we can actually grow stronger, more resilient, drive metabolic changes at that tissue. So it's it's really fascinating stuff.

    Philip Pape 32:44

    Is it just a function of putting you into more variations that then can reach the deeper and more muscle fibers, just like the conjugate method tries to do with rotation through different lifts? Or when you when you say set cellular signaling, is it really just that, or is there some other mechanism you're you're alluding to?

    Why foot strength matters for lifting

    Chris Duffin 33:01

    Uh well, what I was talking about was just truly in that context was cellular, uh cellular signaling. But it has an effect. I mean, your grip position plays a role in that, for example. Like a lot of people grab super, super tight because it creates all this tightness of the upper back, but there's a disconnect where that upper back isn't tied into this really strong, rigid, stable core. So it feels tight and it's great and it's a great shelf. But once we get closer to fatigue, we'll see that at the thoracic lumbar junction, they'll end up rounding out and failing, right? Does that mean a wider grip's better? No, because they lose that strength. But somewhere in there, there's a grip that allows you to stabilize and now use the lats to connect the shoulder into the core. So actually, the best grip is your pull down grip, but you have to pull down. So when you've got that squat bar on your back, you need to have the shoulder mobility to be able to get into that position and then pretend to be bending that bar over your back and into your core. And now you won't feel as tight in the, you know, the upper area, but that's tied to the core, and now you've got this rigid, solid member, and that won't give out when you're going to squat. But sequence is important here too, because if I tighten those lats beforehand, the lats are gonna throw you into extension, and then you won't be able to get. So you have to set this first, then draw the bar over you.

    Philip Pape 34:29

    Okay. Well, I also want to get into the other aspects, right? Foot, ankle, as well as shoulder, hips. Is that a logical next? So feet and ankle. And I know you're a big barefoot guy, like guys that you can check out other podcasts that Chris has been on, and he goes all into the foot for like hours. It's it's fantastic content. But like footstands, feet, footwear, ankles, all that stuff definitely is another. I mean, you're contacting the ground there, so that's super important.

    Chris Duffin 34:53

    Yeah, the biggest point here, and and I don't have to argue this anymore because people used to go, where's the science? Where's the science behind what you're saying? And I went, have you ever heard of exercise science? Because the exercise science is about the specific adaptation to imposed demand. And you're telling me that the foot doesn't respond the way the rest of the body responds and doesn't respond to the specific adaptation to imposed demand. So all I'm saying is you need to use and train your foot. And if you don't, the foot is going to get weak. And if the foot gets weak, it's going to have a loss of blood flow, it's going to have mobility uh restriction issues, and then you're on a weak base, and the body is going to compensate and try to protect around that. So that is just fundamentally my position and has been for a long time. And it was most of our footwear today, and it's not a sizing problem. If you've been wearing traditional footwear your whole life, your foot has been deformed to fit the shoe. So it's not going out today and finding the shoe that fits. But that immediately grab your hand in front of you, grab the four fingers and pull them in. Okay. And immediately you can start seeing them turn a little white. All right. The front of your foot is in the front of that shoe, and you're creating a loss of blood flow with that. It's near immediate. Okay. Some certain things happen if we pull that big toe in immediately, which happens in that shoe, versus pulling it out, as far as their ability to engage the upstream musculature. So simple stuff, and I'll base this off of known research right now. And this is with MRIs, it is with uh X-ray, and I haven't seen the research, but I've talked to the doctors that have done the biopsies. And it is around plantar fasciitis. All right. So, but we'll extrapolate this out. Most everyone thinks that plantar fasciitis is an overuse condition. I've overused the plantar fascia. It's sore, it needs uh a passive support and needs rest. All right. All imaging shows it's at least 96% of all cases are an actual atrophy of muscle tissue due to lack of blood flow and the tendon and ligament tissue basically uh degrading in that process as well. It is weakness, it is atrophy of tissue, it's lack of blood flow like from underuse because you haven't been using your foot because you've learned to passively sit on top of this foot, just like stand on this stump of your foot.

    Philip Pape 37:38

    Just like a block, just a block in a shape. Just like a block.

    Barefoot training and footwear choices

    Chris Duffin 37:41

    Okay. And so that's like the essence of my argument right there is the problem is we have our feet stuffed in these shoes that is allowing our foot not to be used, and it is becoming weak and creating a lot of dysfunction. It happens to be the base of nearly all sports, other than like, you know, any ground-based sport. Um, not swimming, you know, for example, although we could probably argue that too. But power is generated from that force and then applied to a distal end. And we've got weakness there to start with. And I'm just like, you gotta spend some time using that, right? So having the minimalist level of protection from the environment, right? From heat, like the hot pavement, uh, from germs, you know, that's what you want. The minimalist level that still allows your foot to move and then learn to actively stand, actively build your arch and control that. And then it's just with time. And people are like, Well, I do that, and my foot hurts. Yeah. Do you remember the first time you went to the gym and did a squat? It hurt. What do you do? And this is a well the argument. Well, people put um, yeah, there was the big barefoot running craze, and the company that put those shoes out there got sued because so many people got hurt. Like, do you remember the first time you squatted? Did you go into the gym and taught 220 squat 225 for 50 reps? What would have happened if you tried? Because that's what happened, is they said those shoes are better, and all these runners that run 10, 20 miles a day, you started putting them on and just going out and running that. Guess what? If they had weak feet, detrained feet, well, how do I well what what's the progression? I don't know. I can't tell you what the progression for your squat is. What do you do? Oh, you go to the gym, you do some squats, and if it was a little too much, you don't recover as well, do a little less, then you'll find you can build a little bit more and then build a little bit more. It's the same as the rest of your body. And all I'm suggesting is use it and train it and use the same thought process as the rest of how you would train your bench press. Now, the research has come out because the foot is just like fundamentally used all the time. If you switch to a minimalist style footwear, it does as much as a dedicated foot and ankle strengthening program.

    Philip Pape 39:58

    Just because of how much you use it, right? Yeah, and everything exactly. You don't even have to like try to like get a foot dumbbell or something, right? Like people are thinking of that.

    Chris Duffin 40:06

    I used to tell people do both, like because I didn't want to be like pitching, like, oh, just go buy the shoes, but yeah, it is the like just do that. Like, and if you do that, then go try lift, squat some and dead lift some weights, do some stuff. Like uh, if you want to build it further, hey, do some lunges or some split legs with uh half of your foot off of a off of a block. Like do some calf raises without shoes on.

    Philip Pape 40:30

    It makes sense. I mean, the foot has like um the feet and hands have half your bones and muscles of your body, or at least half your bones. I forgot. I don't know about muscles, but yeah, right. They're so complex.

    Chris Duffin 40:40

    37, I think. It yeah, it's insane. Your foot is an engineering marvel, so it's got the whole windless uh system built in there where with your stride, we've got this uh, you know, basically really flexible like movement of the foot. But as soon as we go to stride, as that big toe raises up, it winds up this windless mechanism that winds up and creates the stiffness of the arch. So all of a sudden, this structure that is like really pliable and can walk over stuff. As soon as you go to sprint or run or take off, becomes this powerful medium that propels you forward and multiplies your force. Like it just the foot is a beautiful engineering marvel, and it's the base of everything that we do from movement. That's why it is. We're not gonna design something better than what it is.

    Philip Pape 41:31

    That's interesting, right? Because I talk to people about sprinting all the time. I'm like, get the most minimalist footwear you can, and it's gonna feel amazing. Like, you got to adapt into it. So the controversy, of course, is always squat shoes versus flat shoes versus no shoes, and like, oh, you don't want to drop something on your foot, so there's a safety issue. Is it a function of us, you know, some percentage of certain lifts? Go ahead and do barefoot, and then maybe the rest wear what you want, you know, squat shoes, or you're like just go all out barefoot.

    Chris Duffin 41:57

    Yeah, you got to think about shoes as a tool. Like it's protect from our environment. Like, if you're a logger, am I gonna tell you to wear a minimalist shoe? No, but I'm gonna tell you to find the most flexible one that allows the best that's gonna support you, like in whatever environment that you're in. So it is a balance of trade-offs. That's what it is. I think it's a crux, and maybe it's a mental crux, but it's in the right tool for the job. If you're gonna do an overhead, you know, movement, like that's a weird lift, a an Olympic lift, uh, you know, the Olympic snatch. That is a sport, and you're going to need to be able to get in position to do the sport. And that is an unnatural to be sitting on your heels with weight overhead for us to be in that type of position. So those ones, yes, that shoe makes sense. For basic squatting and deadlifting, it doesn't make sense. There's no need to do it. But if you're competing and you lift more that way, go ahead and do that. But trust me, you will perform better if you do the majority of your training outside of that shoe and get a stronger foot and then put it into that. But the stronger foot and ankle complex you have within that is going to perform better.

    Philip Pape 43:08

    Train your foot, enhance it with tools as needed, go back and forth and kind of one works with the other. And I know you yourself, I believe, improved your deadlift barefoot, right? Is that right? Yes.

    Shoulder and hip power mechanics

    Chris Duffin 43:19

    So if you go watch my videos of my squat and deadlift, and at the time it was such a this was such an unusual controversy thing. Like if you read through the comments, you'll see people like comments in there. Oh my god, Andy did it with no shoes. Can you believe what he would do with them? And it's like, no, that was actually a performance enhancement, but you know, it's the other way around, is what you're saying. You're implying. But so people did not get that at that time. It was 2016. I did that. Yeah.

    Philip Pape 43:45

    Okay, so shoulders and hips, I think, is worth some discussion there because I'm really curious to hear about that. I personally have two rotator cuff surgeries.

    Chris Duffin 43:53

    So those are the power generating units, and it's just like we don't need to look at those until we've checked the box. On those other things. And if you've got, you know, issues at your elbow or your knee, rarely is it that. It's somewhere, you know, in that train. So at that point, you know, if I've checked those boxes, I'm be looking at the hip and the foot to further down figure out what's going on with the knee or the elbow. I'm going to be looking, you know, at the shoulder. And if you've got those signals correct and you can, you know, put that power forth, it is going to change a lot of that. And then it becomes down to, you know, managing those complexes correctly.

    Philip Pape 44:34

    All the talk of impingement and overhead work and people's anatomies and all that, there's a lot of misunderstanding there. Like what's your general thought? Yeah.

    Chris Duffin 44:43

    So yeah, I mean, if we're in poor position and uh we're destabilized, there's three muscles that get tight around that hip and they'll pull that hip board in its capsule and create an you know an impingement and it's there. Uh, I've seen it over and over in the shoulder, and I'm not saying all cases, but if we've got lack of tension where it doesn't need to be around that joint, that joint is going to be in a different position. It's not this fixed thing. And because you've got a lack of space now doesn't mean that there is a lack of space.

    Philip Pape 45:15

    And is there a bias of pulling versus pushing that you have, or is that an irrelevant variable in terms of your overall volume?

    Regenerative framework for recovery

    Chris Duffin 45:23

    I guess that's a good question. And I would say, yes, it does matter. I don't know I've ever put it in that terms just when building training plans and looking at the overall volume and stuff. Uh yeah, that definitely is applied. So context. Generally, yes, there's more muscles on the back. So there's likely if we're developing that all correctly, but you could end up with somebody with a really underdeveloped front. And you so where what's the developmental need as well? So so there's not a ratio that's absolutely perfect. And I think that you're gonna discover that in the training process and just understanding where the gaps are with your movement. But generally, yes, the lats and the rear delts and the traps and all that add up to a significantly more chunk of space than your pecs and your front delts, right? So, but there's some level of variability. But you could say, yes, roughly that thought process is is correct.

    Philip Pape 46:21

    Cool, cool. You know, I feel like we barely scratched the surface, but there's a lot of practical stuff in there that I think a lot of lifters listening are not thinking about and now are, and that's hugely beneficial for their health. And I want everybody to just really like take notes again if you if you just like were binging this, like people tend to do when they listen to podcasts and take notes. You know, we didn't get into a whole bunch of other awesome stuff you're doing with like, you know, regenerative protocols and peptides and all that. But is there anything we didn't that I didn't ask you, like one thing you're like, this is worth mentioning that that we didn't cover?

    Chris Duffin 46:52

    Um, yeah. From a general thought process, understanding the larger perspective of so I think about things in this kind of regenerative, I call it the regenerative amplification uh method or framework. We need to think about this, like we need to be able to have a clean space to send those neurological signals, uh component of that. We talked about cleaning that up from a movement perspective. If we get into a broader health perspective, that might be cleaning up inflammatory signaling like in your diet and other stuff, because that's going to inhibit that mechanisms, right? Once you've cleaned up and have a clean terrain to send those signals on, which comes from, again, diet, light exposure, sleep, like all these kinds of uh supplementation. There's a lot of things that you can do to manage that. But we're talking about cardiovascular disease, diabetes, uh, how you're physically like recovering uh tendons, arthritis development, like all of that, right? Like that's all cellular signaling. Then you can move into you know modalities that actually send those signals. And so we'll get to the training, but that would be uh the use of like uh peptides or other therapies. If you do that, we can actually enhance some of that with like alternative modalities. Where does that fit in? You know, red light therapy, shockwave therapy, things like that. Then there's having making sure you have the right like substrate material to work with. Like, hey, I'm sending a signal to repair collagen, joint tissues, things like that. Like, hey, I'm probably gonna want to have some glycine in there for, you know, like what are the raw materials, like protein, the substrate material. And then we've got to reinforce that with the loading and mechanical signals to build and lock in the resilience and adaptations uh piece of that. And so that was a piece of like improving that, and that's a lot of what I'm known for in that work. So, yeah, people want to know more, check out uh Enhanced Executive. That's where I'm at. And I've got a free forum uh for people if they want to join, tons of articles, all my movement videos, stuff like that is uh on there as well. So you can find that on my website. But it's uh absolutely free, amazing resource uh for folks. And check out my YouTube. I'm producing a lot of content there, and I have tons of lectures and videos on all the things that we talked about.

    Philip Pape 49:20

    Based on the evidence, uh, there's a lot of you know, quacks out there, especially in some of these newer therapeutic areas. Um, and I love your stuff. We're gonna send people to the forum and your YouTube and your other resources. Um, but definitely check Chris out, follow him, listen to him. Like even myocines and inflammatory signals and like what you can see in lab work and machine learning and AI now, looking at all that stuff is it's just amazing. It's incredible.

    Chris Duffin 49:43

    Great, yeah, story. So I've been just for the audience, like, yeah, be wary of that space because there is a lot of quacks, a lot of information, a lot of people trying to make a fast buck. It is where I my profession is right now, but you will not find anybody that has 23 years of experience with those regenerative modalities. And I'm the guy behind the scenes that does the consulting for some of the top stem cell therapy clinics and regenerative medicine people in the world. And that's so.

    Philip Pape 50:11

    And if that's not enough, he's one of the strongest, if not the strongest, doing it. So all right, all right, Chris. It's been a pleasure having you on Wits and Waits. Uh, a lot of fun talking to you. I learned a lot. So thanks again, Chris, for coming on.

    Chris Duffin 50:22

    Check out barefoot, B E A R. That's uh the shoe and boot brand.

    Philip Pape 50:27

    Sounds good. Thanks, Chris. Talk soon,

Featured

Ready for the Next Step?

Read More
Interviews Philip Pape Interviews Philip Pape

Your Pilates, Yoga, or Barre Class Is NOT Strength Training | Ep 455

You've been showing up to Pilates, yoga, or barre for months, maybe years, and your body composition hasn't changed. You're not getting stronger. And if you're over 40, the muscle and bone you need most may be slipping away while you work hard at the wrong thing. Building muscle and maintaining bone density after 40 requires two specific things from your training: mechanical tension and proximity to failure. Pilates, yoga, and barre are not designed to deliver either one. So, what do you do instead?

You've been showing up to Pilates, yoga, or barre for months, maybe years, and your body composition hasn't changed. You're not getting stronger.

And if you're over 40, the muscle and bone you need most may be slipping away while you work hard at the wrong thing.

Building muscle and maintaining bone density after 40 requires two specific things from your training: mechanical tension and proximity to failure. Pilates, yoga, and barre are not designed to deliver either one. 

Philip covers why these modalities plateau fast, what the research found when scientists actually measured muscle growth from Pilates with MRI, and a 10-second audit you can run on any workout to know if it qualifies as strength training.

Join Eat More Lift Heavy, a 26-week coached program that pairs nutrition strategy with a coach-assigned strength training program from Day 1, so you stop guessing and start building the muscle and bone density that matter most after 40: eatmoreliftheavy.com

Timestamps

0:00 - Why your Pilates class is not strength training
3:00 - What every modality gets right at first
4:45 - Two requirements for muscle growth
6:30 - Proximity to failure in group fitness classes
7:30 - The limits of a Pilates reformer spring
9:00 - Progressive overload and the repeated bout effect
11:00 - How Pilates, yoga, and barre plateau quickly
13:15 - Volume-hypertrophy data and diminishing returns
14:55 - Getting started with progressive resistance training
16:30 - Sarcopenia risk from perimenopause to menopause
18:30 - Bone density, the LIFTMOR trial, and lifting heavy
21:06 - Do THIS to build strength and muscle over 40
24:30 - Bonus: 3-question strength training audit

  • Philip Pape: 00:00

    If you've been doing Pilates or yoga or bar classes and counting that as your strength training, you're missing one of the most important adaptations your body needs. And it's not flexibility, it's not core strength, it's not balance. Today I'm gonna show you the specific reason these modalities just stop building muscle within weeks, why that matters more as you age, and the one type of training that no other modality can replace. You're also gonna learn what a nine-month study of Pilates found when researchers measured muscle growth. Welcome to Wits and Weights, the show that puts a popular piece of fitness advice under the microscope, finds a hidden reason it doesn't work, and gives you the deceptively simple fix that does. I'm your host, Philip Pape, and here is the situation. I talk to women every week who tell me that they are doing strength training. And then when I ask what that looks like, they say, Oh, I'm doing Pilates three times a week, or I'm doing hot yoga, or I'm doing this bar class and some resistance ban work at home. And they're frustrated because despite consistently showing up to these classes, sometimes for years, their body composition hasn't really changed. They're not building the strength or muscle they expected. They don't feel noticeably stronger. Or if they did, it was for a few weeks, maybe a few months, and then it stopped. And if they're over 40 or in perimenopause, they might be watching their muscle and bone density go the opposite direction despite all of that effort. And, you know, I'll be honest, these activities are decent. They have real evidence-backed benefits. And I'm gonna tell you what they are later in this episode because I don't want to just trash on every mode of movement. I think movement is great. But I also owe you the honest answer on what the research says about building and preserving muscle and bone, both are important, and these modalities just do not meet that threshold. They don't. And it's not because they're bad. I have no judgment against them in general. I'm specifically talking about strength and muscle. These modalities are designed for something that is not that. So if that's what your goal is to get stronger to build muscle to improve your body composition, we're gonna have to do something more effective. Then I want you to stick around to the end because I'm going to share a three-question audit that you can run for yourself on any workout. It takes 10 seconds to know whether it qualifies as what I'll call real strength training. And you might be surprised by the answer, so stick around for that. So today you're gonna learn the two biological requirements that any exercise has to meet to build muscle, why your body stops adapting to Pilates and yoga within just a few weeks, and the specific data from studies on what happens to muscle and bone when you rely on these modalities versus actual progressive resistance training, especially as we age, especially over 40. So let's just jump right into it and talk about the conventional wisdom and why it sounds right.

    Philip Pape: 03:00

    I always like to start there because there's a lot of truth in these things, and then we can break it apart from there. So if you hear, you know, do Pilates for strength, I know Pilates are very popular right now, or yoga can build muscle, or bar can sculpt and tone you. There is a grain of truth in all of it because these activities use your muscles. You feel them working. They are a little bit more low than not doing those activities. You might even be sore the next day, especially when you first start. And then there's always the marketing aspect with the wording, like Pilates sculpts long, lean muscles or yoga builds functional strength, right? You've heard it all. For someone who was previously sedentary, any of these, and let's just let the cat out of the bag, any form of exercise whatsoever practically, is going to produce noticeable improvements in the first few weeks. You are gonna get stronger functionally. Guess what? Riding a bike when you were previously sedentary is also gonna build some muscle initially. You're gonna feel more capable from doing these things as well. You might really enjoy the classes, you might feel like you are accomplishing something really powerful, and you are in some sense. Does that translate to ultimately what you want to get out of it? Well, the problem is what happens after that honeymoon period, after those first few weeks. And more importantly, the problem is not it's what's not happening in your body, especially if you're older, especially if you're perimenopause or post-menopause. If your goal is to build or maintain muscle mass and your bone density, that is why I'm calling out these particular populations who we work a lot with with our coaching, and I know how important that is. Avoiding osteoporosis, avoiding sarcopenia. Very, very important. So let me define what's actually required for your muscles to grow. There's two non-negotiable requirements, two requirements, just to simplify it. Number one is sufficient mechanical tension on the muscle. This means the muscle has to be loaded heavily enough that the fibers experience real force, right? Strength is simply the application of force, the production of force. This is what activates the signaling pathways that your body is so capable of activating, especially what's called the mTOR pathway. We're not going to go into details, but that tells your body to build new muscle protein when combined with eating protein, we build muscle. So mechanical tension is, I'll say, the number one, if the only principle we care about on the muscle. Number two, what else is required for muscle to grow is proximity to failure. Now, this is kind of a proxy of number one in a way, because getting proximity to failure leads to mechanical tension. So it's almost like secondary, but it's very important because the set that you're doing, the set of whatever it is, let's say you're doing a bench press, it has to be hard enough that you're within a few reps of the point where you physically cannot do another rep with good form. We've seen multiple studies that back this up. There was a 2022 study that showed that low load training not taking a failure produced far less hypertrophy, hypertrophy is muscle growth, than the same training taken to failure. There was a 2024 meta-aggression that confirmed the dose response relationship as well. Now it was just a couple of years ago. Again, the closer your sets are to failure, the more muscle you build. And of course, that's because it is giving you, number one, sufficient mechanical

    Philip Pape: 06:30

    tension. And that's actually all it comes down to. All the other talk about volume and intensity and everything else are to affect that outcome. Now, think about a Pilates class. Think about a flow in yoga, right? The stretching flow, the position flow. Think about a bar session if you're familiar with these. Are you approaching muscular failure on any set? Honestly. Honestly, are you? And if it's one set, great, but are you doing it on a consistent basis? There's usually an instructor, and the instructor's pacing the group. The choreography dictates when you stop and the movements dictate what you're doing. It's not the training to proximity to failure with your muscles like you would if you were doing reps on your own with free weights or machine or something like that. The cultural emphasis in these things is more on the control, on the flow, on the connection, on the pace, on sometimes the aerobic aspect of it as well. Um, there's often music involved, sometimes, sometimes not. It's not about, hey, let's get really close to failure to do something really hard where you want to quit and putting enough tension on your muscles. There might be a different type of discomfort, right? A different type of discomfort like sweating, soreness, your heart rate, but not the mechanical tension. The mechanical tension is not there. A Pilates reformer works with springs that follow something called Hooke's law. I'm gonna throw in some engineering for you or physics here. The typical working resistance is five to 30 kilograms per exercise. And the maximum resistance tops out around 50 to 130 kilograms, and it depends on the brand and the position of the reformer. So for your lower body, that ceiling gets reached really fast, right? Because those are much bigger muscles. For comparison, a moderately trained woman might squat 135 pounds, which converted to kilograms is 61 kilograms, and then she's adding weight every few weeks. So she quickly blows past what the reformer could possibly give her, probably within a few weeks, maybe a few months, again, depending on your starting point. And that's it. And the reformer can't keep up anymore. And that's why we talk about the first few weeks as being not as important, because of course anything can cause growth when you're starting from a very weak baseline. And then beyond that, you're not going to get it anymore. You might maintain something, maybe, but that's not what we're trying to do. We're not trying to maintain, we're trying to build muscle and increase bone density and maintain bone density as well. So that brings us to progressive overload, which is the principle that ties all this together. Your body is really good at adapting. It's like a machine when it comes to adaptation. When your body encounters a stimulus, it adapts to handle that stimulus, and then it needs a bigger stimulus to keep adapting. That is built into our biology. It is why you're not sore after your third week of the same Pilates routine or of the same squat on Monday. Your body adapts. The signal is weakened, and now you're only maintaining. Now, the difference with the squat and the Pilates is the squat keeps going up. The Pilates maxes out. You see the difference. And the research on this is clear as well. It's called the repeated bout effect. A single bout of exercise provides substantial protection against muscle damage from subsequent identical bouts. And so at the molecular level, the number of genes that are activated by the same workout, right? Because that's adaptation, drops significantly within just three weeks. And then your body literally stops responding at the cellular level, especially when the load doesn't go up. So on one hand, there's a benefit to this in that you won't get super sore. On the other hand, it's a disadvantage if you're not actually increasing the load. You're not going to adapt any further. And this is exactly where Pilates, yoga, and bar and things like it hit a wall. And even something like CrossFit, if you're not actually progressively overloading the strength component, let alone the other aspects of CrossFit that kind of get in the way. We don't have to go into that. Whereas with a barbell or dumbbells or a machine, a cable machine, really a lot of options. It doesn't have to be just barbells, you actually solve this problem very elegantly. This is why I love strength training, because it's just a very efficient, elegant, straightforward solution to the problem. What do you do? You add two and a half pounds or five pounds or

    Philip Pape: 11:00

    10 pounds, whatever makes sense, whether it's dumbbells or barbells, you add some weight. Small incremental increases that keep the stimulus ahead of the adaptation. I actually found I was actually looking up if there are official recommendations, and actually the ACSM recommends two to 10% load increases when you can exceed your target reps by one or two. It's an interesting metric. I always just say, look, you're gonna figure it out. It's gonna be probably five to 10%, and it's gonna depend on recovery and depend on how strong you've already gotten. But that's kind of an interesting metric, right? Because it means if you, if your target reps are let's say, let's say eight to 10 reps, and you can get to 11 or 12 reps, then you would go up between two to 10%. Now again, I have different ways of coaching folks. I don't, I actually would rather you increase the weight by default and have the reps come down. And then when the reps fall too far low, you can reset. But that's it's two halves of the same idea. It's progressive overload. Either way, you're increasing the load or the volume in some way over time, and that's how muscle keeps growing for years. And of course, the reason it's growing is what? Go way back to earlier in the episode because of mechanical tension. Now, what does progression look like in Pilates? Well, you go from a medium spring to a heavy spring, and that might be the only jump available for that exercise. Or you can change the lever arm, and that changes the movement pattern entirely. So now you're not even doing the same movement pattern. You can't just incrementally increase in an objective way, like a two and a half or five pound increment. There's no systematic path from week six to week 26 with the load increases by small predictable amounts. I'm sorry, it just doesn't work. Yoga, how about yoga? Well, your body is the load there. This is more like uh body weight or calisthenics in a way, and your body weight doesn't change, right? Unless you want to eat a bunch of food and become fatter to make it harder on yourself. That's not the way we do things. You can progress from, you know, to harder poses, but the jump from like a standard plank to one arm variation is a actually a massive jump. There's no middle ground. It's like going from squatting 95 to squatting 225. The point is it's not objectively incrementally loadable. And then when you think of bar, you've got lightweight, you've got high reps, you've got these pulsing movements, the load is fixed, it's some very, very lightweights, like two to five pounds. Once your muscles are used to that, and that happens in a few weeks, the stimulus is gone. You're just having fun at that point, getting a sweat on, having some fun exercise with the ladies, and that's it. And again, I'm not trying to be dismissive about it, but it you're you're training muscular endurance, you're not training strength, you're not getting muscle growth out of these things. And I'm saying all this with love because I want you guys to get what you want. And these these these activities fit under to me, they fit more in cardio, the cardio slash fun category. They don't fit into the strength training and muscle building category. Um, and here's a little nerdy fact. There was a 2024 meta-aggression of 67 studies over 2,000 subjects, and they found that the volume hypertrophy relationship follows a square root function. Stick with me, even if you know what I'm talking about, stick with me. It means the more reps that you pile on at the same load, the less additional growth you get per rep. This is why we don't advocate for super high reps. We advocate for a moderate rep range, but going up in weight. Now, that rep range is still pretty wide, anything from one rep to say 20, 25, even 30 reps. But with something like, again, yoga or bar or Pilates, you know, if if you were even to quantify it as reps, you would have to just get more and more and more reps to try to get close to that mechanical tension. And eventually it just becomes impossible. Very quickly, it becomes impossible to do that, let alone being not objectively incrementable, incrementally loadable. All right. So you're hearing this and thinking, okay, Philip, I get it. I need to lift heavy. And that's where the word heavy comes into play here. It's not too

    Philip Pape: 14:55

    heavy for you, it's simply heavy enough to be proximal to failure to cause mechanical tension so you can build muscle and strength. How do you do it though? What program do you do it? How do you set up your nutrition, your recovery, your energy, your sleep to support it? That is what Eat More Lift Heavy is designed to solve. We just launched this week, yesterday, March 30th, as this episode comes out. It is now open to the public. It is my 26 week, so that's six months, coached program. We have another coach in the group, Coach Carol, where we take you through three phases. Stop guessing, where you build awareness, you set your baseline, eat more lift heavy, where you execute with real-time coaching adjustments, just what we're talking about today. And then trust yourself where you build the skills to manage your own physique independently. And you learn the skills week by week and they build on each other. You get a coach-assigned training program from day one. It is matched to your equipment, your schedule, your experience level. So, yes, if you're coming from yoga or bar or Pilates, we are gonna help you get to where you need to be. And of course, super important, a nutrition strategy, live coaching calls, community support, all of that for accountability. And accountability itself is super, super important. And very few, if anybody else at this price point offers both the training and nutrition coaching together in this uh skill building approach. So if this episode is making you think about your training approach and how to get the help that you need, go to eatmore liftheavy.com. That is eatmore liftheavy.com. Link is in the show notes. It is out now and people are loving it. Go to eatmoreliftheavy.com.

    Philip Pape: 16:30

    Okay, so everything I've said so far applies to everyone. I'll be honest, it applies to everyone. The principles are the same. But I want to spend a few minutes on why this matters even more with age, especially if you're over 40, especially if you're a woman entering or in the middle of perimenopause or menopause. And there's really important data that I want to share. A 2021 study found that sarcopenia, the prevalence of sarcopenia, which is what we we call clinically significant muscle loss and function, the loss of function and muscle with age, it jumps from about 3% in early perimenopause to roughly 30% in late perimenopause. And that's a tenfold increase in a window of just a few years. And then after menopause, the muscle mass declines more linearly, about 0.6% a year. And then bone loss accelerates 1.5% to 2.5% a year during the first decade after menopause. And the key reason for this is declining estradiol, which removes a key anabolic signal because estradiol stimulates muscle satellite cell proliferation, it limits the degradation of your protein, and it inhibits inflammatory signals that break down muscle. So, all this to say that when that hormonal protection drops, your muscles need more mechanical stimulus to get the same growth response, not less. And ladies, your ability to grow muscle is still the same. I want you to know that. Your ability and percentage growth of muscle potential as you get older is still the same till you're pretty much till your 90s, is what we've discovered. So your ability to build muscle is still there. You just need to have the right stimulus. And then for bone density, which is the other important piece, especially for women after 40, there's something called the mechanostat theory. This is related to new bone formation. New bone formation requires mechanical strain that exceeds 1500 micro strain. And you don't have to measure that. I don't even know how to measure that. But heavy squats, deadlifts, and even impact exercises, so jumping type exercises, generate those strains. And I've learned from talking to some really good experts in this area that heavy lifting above about 80% of your max, of your one rep max, or 85%, is what you need to maintain your bone density. But if you want to reverse osteoporosis, reverse and build new bone because you've lost a lot, you also need some impact exercises on top of that. So the matte Pilates, the gentle logo, the light bar, they don't produce that strain. That's what I'm getting at. And then aging bone becomes less mechanically sensitive, and the threshold rises when people are most vulnerable to osteoporosis. And there was a study called the Liftmore trial. I love that name, lift more without a knee, lift more. Postmenopausal women with low bone density did two 30-minute sessions a week of supervised lifting at greater than 85% of their one rep max. Deadlifts, squats, overhead press. Three of my favorites. They did it for eight months, and the result was pretty staggering that lumbar spine bone mineral density improved 2.9% versus a 1.2% decline in the low intensity control group. So that's a 4% difference. That's massive. And not only massive, you heard what I just said. Bone density went up in the training group in the high intense group, you know, high load group, and it actually went down in the other group, despite them actually training, but it was a low intensity. That's huge. There were no fractures, there were no injuries, the compliance was over 87%. Now, compare that to a 2021 meta-analysis of 11 studies that looked at Pilates and yoga for bone density in adult women, and those studies found no significant effect on bone density compared to controls. The what they call pooled effect size was 0.07 and the confidence interval crossed zero. Again, no significant effect on bone density. I'm not surprised by that, but it's just good to know that there are studies that further back this up. So I'm gonna say this differently. I'm gonna summarize this differently. Eight months of heavy lifting improved bone density by nearly 3%. Pilates and yoga combined showed no effect. That's it. That's the qualitative difference if you care about building bone versus watching it wear away. Okay, so now what is the fix? I told you it would be deceptively

    Philip Pape: 21:06

    simple. That's the mission of this podcast. Even though I have a tendency to ramble sometimes, the fix is simple. If you want to build and maintain muscle mass and bone density, you need progressive resistance training with external loading. That could be barbells, dumbbells, cable machines, plate-loaded machines, anything where you can add weight in some way, resistance in some way, in small increments over time, training at least twice per week, ideally three or more, targeting all major muscle groups, and working at loads where your sets end within about three reps shy of failure. That's it. That's in one paragraph what the fix is. So it's not complicated, it's not sexy, it's not 30 days to a new you, it's not a challenge. It's just showing up, lifting heavy things, adding a little weight when you can, and doing that consistently for months and years. Now, going back to the ACSM, they came out with brand new resistance training guidelines. Their first update in 17 years, based on 137 systematic. Reviews of over 30,000 participants, and here's what they recommend they recommend at least 60 to 85% of your one rep max for strength and hypertrophy development. And that's consistent with what I've talked about before. When we talked about strength versus hypertrophy, you need at least 30% for hypertrophy and 60% for strength. So if you want both, you've got to be above 60%. And if you want the bone density benefit, you've got to be above about 80 or 85% sometimes. Not all the time, but a lot of the time. Now, what about Pilates, yoga, and bar? You don't have to quit them. I wouldn't ask you to do that. They actually excel at some things that resistance training can't. So for example, Pilates can be effective for low back pain. Now, I'm not saying that deadlifts are not also effective for low back pain because they can be as well, believe it or not. But Pilates, interestingly, has been helpful for that and knee osteoparthritis pain and range of motion and core stability, appropriate reception, motor control, all of these things. And once you take this with a grain of salt, too, because all of the do you, all of you who are strength training and not doing Pilates or yoga, whatever else, probably are also getting all these benefits as well. But I'm just wanted to point out some of the benefits these have in isolation. Yoga, of course, has been around forever, many, many years. It's ancient and has a lot of evidence for reducing stress, anxiety, and depression. It can reduce stress and mood, you know, help with mood. It's one of the most effective well-being interventions for so many people. And I know so many people love it. There's many people in our group that teach it, that do it, that love it. And I'm all for that if that's for you. I think yoga is great. I've done yoga before. I love many aspects of it, both for relaxation and for stretching and things like that. So there's definitely independent benefits of these things. And then the group fitness in general provides something. And that is, for a lot of people, it keeps them adherent to their program. And there's research to back this up. And the relatedness aspect, higher attendance, long-term consistency versus training alone, the social support, the accountability, the enjoyment is very, very helpful. So you have to use these things for what they're good at, like yoga for the recovery and stress, Pilates for maybe some rehab or pain management, bar and group for the social motivation. But they're complements to strength training. They're not replacements for strength training. All right, before we wrap up, remember I promised you a three-question audit you can use on any workout to know instantly whether it counts as real strength training. But if this episode is shifting how you think about your training, I ask you to do one thing. Text this to a friend who's been doing Pilates or yoga and calling it strength training and tell them that I told you to send it if they're gonna get mad at you. You might help them find out a new way to protect their muscle and bone for decades, the way we do it. And if you realize that you need a structured plan to start lifting, go to eatmoreliftheavy.com and learn about what we offer. 26 weeks of weeks of coach training and nutrition with a specific skill building approach. That's eatmoreliftheavy.com. All right, here's how you can evaluate any work workout in 10 seconds to see if it's actually strength training. Question one, did the load go up since the last time you did the workout? Even a little, even two pounds, even one pound. If the answer is no and it's been no for weeks, you've plateaued, it is not strength training. Question two, did any set end within three reps of the point where you physically couldn't complete another set within three reps shy of failure? If you finished every set feeling like you had five, seven, ten or more reps in you, no, stimulus wasn't strong enough. Question three, can you add

    Philip Pape: 25:30

    more weight next time? In other words, does the exercise allow you to do so? Not a harder variation, not more reps. Can you actually add weight to the thing you're doing? If the equipment or the movement pattern you're doing has a ceiling on load that doesn't let you do that, you've outgrown it. It's not a good tool for the job. So if you answered no to two or three of these, what you're doing might be really good for exercise, if you want to call it that, but it's not gonna build muscle or strength. And I know that is what you want to change. All right, until next time, keep using your wits, lifting those weights. And remember, the exercise that protects your muscles and bones for the next 30 years isn't the one that is the most fun or that you enjoy doing necessarily. It's the one that gets progressively heavier over time, and it is called training. Strength training to be exact. I'm Philip Hape, and I'll talk to you next time here on the Wits and Weights podcast.

Featured

Ready for the Next Step?

Read More
Interviews Philip Pape Interviews Philip Pape

Stop Eating LESS to Lose Fat After 40 (Do This Instead) | Ep 454

You've been eating 1200 calories, working out, and the scale won't budge. The advice you keep getting is to eat even less, but that's the problem. If you're over 40 and stuck despite doing "everything right," your body is probably caught in the undereating trap. Philip breaks down the 3 metabolic adaptations that stack against you when you chronically undereat, and the three-part fix that reverses the cycle. Plus, one simple number that tells you whether your body is ready to diet or needs to recover first.

You've been eating 1200 calories, working out, and the scale won't budge. 

The advice you keep getting is to eat even less, but that's the problem.

If you're over 40 and stuck despite doing "everything right," your body is probably caught in the undereating trap. 

Chronic low-calorie dieting suppresses your metabolism, burns muscle instead of fat, and disrupts the hormones that control where you store fat and how you recover. The calorie deficit that worked at 30 stops working at 45 because your body's compensatory mechanisms get more aggressive with age, hormonal shifts, stress, and poor sleep.

Philip breaks down the 3 metabolic adaptations that stack against you when you chronically undereat, and the three-part fix that reverses the cycle. Plus, one simple number that tells you whether your body is ready to diet or needs to recover first.

Join Eat More Lift Heavy before the March 30 launch to lock in founder pricing on a 26-week coached program that builds your nutrition and strength training skills in phases so you can maintain your fat loss and body recomp results for lift: eatmoreliftheavy.com

Timestamps

0:00 - The undereating trap that stalls fat loss after 40
2:36 - Why "eat less, move more" doesn't work
5:30 - How your body adapts differently in your 40s vs. your 20s
7:03 - Metabolic adaptation and suppressed energy expenditure
9:15 - Muscle loss from chronic dieting and why it compounds
11:45 - Hormonal disruption from undereating (thyroid, cortisol, estrogen)
14:44 - The undereating trap defined
16:36 - Fix #1 (related to calories)
22:00 - Fix #2 (related to protein)
24:51 - Fix 3# (related to training)
28:23 - Deficits, hormones, and fear of gaining weight
31:50 - The one number that predicts whether your next diet will work

Episode Resources

  • Download MacroFactor (use code WITSANDWEIGHTS for a free two-week trial) to track your true, dynamic energy expenditure (and get accurate calorie and macro targets)

  • Join Eat More Lift Heavy before pricing goes up on March 30

  • Philip Pape: 00:00

    If you've been eating 1200, 1500, maybe even 1800 calories for months or even years, and you're working out and the scale won't budge, this episode is going to explain exactly what's happening inside your body and why eating less is probably the thing keeping you stuck. Today I'm going to show you the metabolic trap that catches almost everyone over 40 who's been dieting for years, why the calorie deficit that worked when you were 30 stops working at 45, and a three-part approach to fix this without gaining a bunch of weight in the process. Welcome to Wits and Weights, the show that puts a popular piece of fitness device under the microscope, finds the hidden reason it doesn't work, and gives you the deceptively simple fix that does. I'm your host, certified nutrition coach Philip Pape. And if you listened to Tuesday's episode, you heard me walk through the full 26-week structure of Eat More Lift Heavy and what a coached body composition process looks like. But today I want to talk about the problem that that program was built to solve because it's the single most common pattern that I see in men and women over 40 who come to me frustrated, stuck, convinced that something is wrong with their body, they just don't know what. And it's usually this they're eating too little. They're not eating too much, they're eating too little. But what does that mean? The advice you keep getting is to eat less, move more. So stick around because we're gonna go over exactly what this means and what to do about it. And then at the very end of this episode, I'm going to share one number that predicts whether your next diet will actually work, or you're just gonna repeat the same yo-yo cycle. And it's a number that most people never look at. You'll learn in 30 seconds whether your body's ready to lose fat or whether you need to do something else first. So stay around for that. Here is what we're covering today. First, why eat less, move more, just is bad advice, especially the older we get. And what is different about this stage of life in our 40s, 50s, and beyond that affects that advice. Second, the three metabolic adaptations that your body makes when you chronically under-at, and why they create this vicious cycle that gets harder to escape the longer you stay in it. And third, a three-part fix that can reverse the cycle without requiring you to just eat whatever you want, like they say on social media, or to abandon your goals either. So let's start with the typical advice, the conventional wisdom. I always like to break apart

    Philip Pape: 02:36

    the advice. That's the mission of this show. You know it, I know it. It's called eat less, move more. It's very, very common. It is a pithy response and a comment to just about any YouTube video or Instagram post where someone's talking about a struggle and they're like, you just need to eat less, move more, bro. It's all you need to do. Create a calorie deficit. The bigger the deficit, the faster results. And if you're not losing weight, you're not in a deficit, so eat even less. Boom. Easy, right? And here's the thing like the advice related to energy balance and calories in, calories out, I will say over and over, is technically and scientifically correct. You do need a calorie deficit to lose weight and thus lose fat. That is thermodynamics. And so I would never argue with physics. I'm a man of science. The problem is the assumption underneath this, the premise, and that is that your body is a static system. That's the premise that is false. That if you eat 500 fewer calories today, that you're gonna burn 500 more calories and that that math is gonna hold indefinitely for the next few weeks, months, and beyond. But it doesn't because your body is an adaptive system. It responds to the inputs you give it and it changes that equation. In other words, calories in, calories out is technically correct, and the way we apply it to our body is very well misunderstood. And if you're gonna understand it, you can then take advantage of that correct equation for you. Now, for a lot of people who are younger in their 20s and their 30s, a simple deficit approach often works. You cut calories, you lose weight, you go back to eating normally done. And that's because there's a lot less fighting against that at this age. We're gonna talk about that. You tend to recover much more quickly. But once you get older, once you get into your 40s, raise your hand if you've realized this or recognize this, especially if you are a woman going through peri and postmenopause, a man on lower testosterone, people with high stress lives, et cetera, you notice something doesn't quite work the same. And it's not because, again, thermodynamics, physics stops working, but because the compensatory mechanisms get more aggressive. They were always there to some extent, even in your 20s, but they're way more aggressive. Your hormones shift a lot more. For women, estrogen plays a role in storage of fat, where you store fat, how you partition nutrients, how sensitive you are to insulin. Cortisol is higher because life is just more and more stressful. It's like a compounding stress over time. Kids, parents, finances, job, house, all of it, right? All of it. Your sleep quality is often dropping at this time of life as well for a lot of the same reasons. And guess what sleep affects? It affects appetite, it affects recovery, how your body handles glucose, even and carbs, all of those things, cravings, the list goes on. So when, for example, a 47-year-old woman who's been dieting on and off for 15 years cuts to 1200 calories yet again, and now her body doesn't respond the same way it did at 32, it responds more aggressively, it holds on harder. And she still gets the same advice. Eat even less, do more cardio, try harder. Like, let's go to 1100 calories, let's go to a thousand. I've seen people come from other coaches when they're like, yeah, she had me on 800 calories because the needle wasn't moving. I'm like, are you kidding me? Are you kidding? Is that is that the only solution we have out there, coaches? Come on. So I hear this all the time, and I get really pissed and frustrated on behalf of everyone who gets this advice. Because having worked with hundreds of clients myself in our coaching programs, you know, 49% of them report that protein is their number one struggle. And you're like, what does this have to do with everything you just said? It's because you are eating so little food and probably even so little protein, even if the calories are like okay, right, that hitting adequate protein with low calories is nearly impossible without a very, very specific intentional plan. So you're shortchanging your protein massively, and that alone can be a big lever behind why things aren't working, let alone all the other problems we're gonna talk about in this episode from under-eating in general. So if you are living on a calorie target and a prayer, living on a prayer, right? It's not gonna work for you. So the conventional wisdom is not wrong about the physics, about the mechanism of calories in, calories out. It is wrong about the application of that, that theory or that fact, I should say. You know, it treats your body like a static system when it's actually a very dynamic system. All right, so what is actually happening when you chronically

    Philip Pape: 07:03

    undereat? Because this will now take us to that next level of understanding the dynamic system. And by chronically, I mean months to more likely many years of eating below what your body needs to maintain its current weight while also supporting muscle hormones and daily function. Listen to what I just said that most important sentence of the whole podcast. You are eating below what your body needs to maintain weight and support muscle hormones and function. So what's probably happening is you're maintaining weight, but you're not supporting your muscle hormones and function. That's the key. It's not just about scale weight. You might be eating 1200 calories and maintaining your weight, but you are under supporting lots of things inside your body that are independent of scale weight, right? I'm not talking about a mini-cut or a well a well-planned fat loss phase that someone goes through. Those are fine. I'm talking about the perpetual 1200 calorie existence that millions of people live in, millions of women especially live in. So your body is making three adaptations, three adaptations through the compensatory mechanisms I mentioned before. And they stack on top of each other. So these can be additive, all right? Adaptation number one is metabolic adaptation or the suppression of your metabolic rate, also called adaptive thermogenesis. Okay, the phrase doesn't matter. The point is that your metabolism, your daily energy expenditure drops, not because you weigh less, that's actually totally expected. Like if you lost 20 pounds of weight, yeah, you're gonna burn a few calories, it's fine. But beyond that, there's an additional adaptation that occurs, this adaptive thermogenesis. We mentioned the biggest loser study many times because it's such an extreme but really illustrative example of this, where six years after the show, where these contestants lost a ton of weight very quickly, their metabolisms were still burning fewer, 500 fewer calories per day than predicted for their body size. Now that's an extreme case, right? That's extreme dieting, extreme exercise, extreme weight loss. But it's the same mechanism for anyone in a chronic deficit. Your metabolic rate declines. Your basal metabolic rate declines, right? That's your BMR, but also your neat, your non-exercise activity thermogenesis drops because you tend to move less unconsciously, you fidget less, you take fewer steps, you sit more, you tend to feel more tired. And then because you're eating less, the thermic effect of food drops, you're burning fewer calories just from eating less and eating less protein. And all of these are components of your metabolism dropping, right? Compressing, dropping. And it doesn't just happen while you're dieting. If you have been in a deficit for a long time, and then you go back to eating normally, let's put quotes around that, because you're still probably not eating normally, your metabolism, it's not going to instantly bounce back. It's going to take time. It takes the right conditions. You have to have adequate food, adequate protein, resistance training. And for many of you, even if you came kind of out of a diet, let's say, you never quite came out of it to recover all those functions. Like I said before, you might be maintaining your weight, but you're under-supporting everything else in your body. So that's the first adaptation. The second one is muscle loss. When you're in a calorie deficit, especially a large one, and you're not doing resistance training, or you're not eating enough protein to support that training, your body is going to pull its energy not just from fat, but also from muscle. I hate to say it burns muscle because that's the word burn is very unscientific in this case, but if that helps you visualize it, feel free. So you're not just burning fat, you're burning muscle. Um, I mentioned the 2010 sleep and adiposity study before that looked at sleep-deprived dieters, and they lost 60% of their weight as lean mass instead of fat. And now we have studies, people on GLP1s, and we see it's something like 30 or 40% of lean mass is lost instead of fat. And again, that's without resistance training and eating enough protein. When you do resistance training and eating enough protein, you can hold on to the vast majority, if not all, of your lean mass. And for newer lifters, you might even gain some lean mass. So that's a very, very important aspect that's independent of calories in, calories out. And this matters extremely because muscle is the most metabolically active tissue in your body. It's that metabolic engine where when you lose muscle, that's gonna further lower your metabolic rate, which means the deficit you started with gets smaller and smaller without you trying, which means you have to eat less if you want to get the deficit back. And then that causes more muscle loss. Okay, so you see what the vicious cycle is, it feeds itself. And so for women over 40 specifically, thinking of peri and post-menopause, this is happening. This is this is a big part of what's happening, ladies, when you look at why you have weight loss resistance and have to feel like you have to eat less and less. There's muscle loss compounded with the natural age-related tendency to lose muscle called sarcopenia, right? So not just the muscle loss from dieting, but just the muscle loss from not lifting weights due to age and the loss of function as well. So if you're not actively building and protecting muscle through resistance, training, and adequate protein, you are definitely losing it. And every pound of muscle you lose then makes the next diet harder. So that's the second type of adaptation from chronic under-eating. The third one is hormones. Let's talk hormones, because they are a thing, even though they sometimes get overblown in social media. But just to be straight about it, chronic energy restriction suppresses hormones. One of those hormones is thyroid hormone, especially T3. That's the active form that relates your metabolism. It's the metabolic regulator. So if you have lower T3, lower metabolism, that means you have to eat less. It also suppresses your reproductive hormones. Your body decides, hey, reproduction is not a priority when food is scarce. I mentioned earlier, if you're under-eating, even if you're maintaining your weight, you might not be supporting your hormones. You might even be amenorrhea and not have a period, like if it's very extreme or, you know, low energy, very low energy. So dieting not only does it affect thyroid, it affects your reproductive hormones, estrogen, progesterone, and testosterone. And of course, that affects men as well. And that makes your body composition worse as well. Okay, all of these things affect fat storage, like visceral fat storage. Your stressors, your stress goes up, which is represented by cortisol, because under eating, guess what, is a physiological stressor. And then that promotes more fat storage, especially in the midsection. And that impairs recovery from training. So ironically, you're trying to lose weight or fat by undereating, but it's causing you to hold fat and causing you to hold fat in the places you don't want. So you have a woman eating 1200 calories, exercising five days a week, probably not doing lifting properly or with progressive overload, if at all, maybe instead doing, I don't know, Peloton, spin classes, group classes, those things, which are fine. They're social, they're all that, but they, you know, Pilates, I know I get flack for saying Pilates isn't strength training, but from a progressive overload perspective over time, especially for heavier loads for things like bone density, it's not going to do the job. It's just, it just can't. By definition, physically, it can't. Okay, it's no judgment on you for liking Pilates. It's the physical manifestation of the movement patterns and the load that you can't get relative to resistance training. Anyway, that's a side tangent. But going back to this woman who's 1200 calories, probably not sleeping very well, probably running on like a lot of cortisol, right? A high stress situation, probably losing muscle, probably have suppressed thyroid function, probably trying to take a bunch of supplements to make up for it, and it's not doing it. The number on the scale doesn't move. And everyone around you, including your freaking doctor, is telling you to eat less or try harder. You need, you need to do more diet, and you have to focus on your diet and exercise. And that's the extent of their advice. Am I right? Am I right? Come on.

    Philip Pape: 14:43

    Okay.

    Philip Pape: 14:44

    So that's the under-eating trap. That is the under-eating trap, meaning the thing you think is the solution is the thing causing the problem. And the longer you stay in it, the deeper the hole gets. So if you're hearing this, if you're like, hey, I recognize myself in what Philip is saying, that is me. That is me. I've been stuck in this cycle of eating less and getting nowhere. All right, listen

    Philip Pape: 15:03

    up. I want to tell you about eat more lift heavy. This is my brand new 26-week experience coaching program. I built it with Coach Carol. So you've got two coaches. By the way, she's a women's and hormone expert, especially in thyroid. The entire first phase of the 26 weeks is about breaking this cycle. We do not start you with a diet. We do not. And by the way, in this program, you can eat whatever you want, but it's going to be with intention. We actually start building a measurement system. We establish your baseline. We get you eating enough and breaking through the psychological fears of eating enough to support your training and your hormones and to feel great and to look great eventually. And I say eventually because obviously physical change will take time, and to live that identity you want to live as someone who fuels yourself. You get a training program on day one, or I should say week one, if you submit our intake. There are monthly live coaching calls. If you prefer a live interaction, there is one focus per week in the program. So you never get overwhelmed. You're never going to fall behind because it's at your own pace. It unlocks whenever you join. It's not that you're joining a group of people. It's whenever you join. But it does open up this Monday, March 30th. And we have founders pricing only through this week, March 29th. It's a big discount from what it will be when it goes public on Monday. So if you want to grab a spot there, you won't get charged until the 29th. Go to eatmoreliftheavy.com. That's eatmoreliftheavy.com. All the details are there. The pricing is there, fully transparent. EatmoreLiftheavy.com. Link is in the show notes. All right.

    Philip Pape: 16:36

    So now we know why this is a trap, why it's a contradiction almost. Now, what do you do about it? Okay. What do you do about it? I want to be clear. The fix is for everything I everything I share on the show, the fix is usually straightforward, but it's not fast and sometimes it's not easy. And if you're not ready to do a little bit of effort and work, you're not going to get your goals and you're not going to improve. And I'm sorry if that hurts you, you know, in your heart or your mind, but it's the truth. And you know it's the truth. You know, anything in life in this world that that involves improving yourself and breaking it through your comfort zone requires a little bit of effort. So, and it's not always fast. In fact, it's usually slower to do it right. If you've been chronically under-eating for years, you're not going to fix everything in two weeks. Nor would you expect to or want to. It's been years. What's another few months to do it the right way? The direction of change, however, starts immediately, as in right now, based on what you decide to do from this episode. And that matters a ton. That matters. Men and women listening, dear listener, change can start right now. The direction of change is an action and of itself that will change your life. All right. What's the first thing you're gonna do? The first thing is to restore your calorie intake to maintenance. We're not getting you to a surplus. We're not doing cheat meals or eating whatever you want. We're getting you to your true maintenance. But this means you have to figure out what your total expenditure is right now in your current adapted state and eat at least that amount consistently, and then start to eat more than that to help you recover. So I'll mention it again: a tool like MacroFactor is incredibly useful here because it uses your weight trend and food intake over time to calculate your actual maintenance calories, and then it'll follow it as your calories increase. So this is not reverse dieting, this is recovery dieting. We're jumping right to where we think your maintenance is now, and then we're pushing that up to get you to your final recovered maintenance. So go download MacroFactor from the App Store if you don't already use it. Use my code WITS and Waits, all one word, all spelled out, wits and weights, to get a two-week free trial. You're gonna, it's gonna change your life. Some I've had I've had hundreds of people email me and say, look, I just started using Macro Factor months ago, and that's all I need. I don't even want your coaching programs. Like that has solved it for me. And I'm happy to say that on a show like this because it supports the podcast and it helps people. And if you want to do it, do it, please. Macrofactor, use my code WITS and Ways. Okay. So by doing that, you can find what your maintenance is. Now, for most women that I work with who have been chronically dieting, maintenance is higher than they think. It's higher than they think. It's not dramatically higher, like 500 calories or a thousand calories higher. Well, it could be 500 calories. So I take that back. It depends on how you define dramatic, but it could be enough that the jump from like 1200 to 1600 is what they need. And that feels significant. I mean, 400 calories is like a whole extra small meal, or maybe not even a small meal, maybe a decent meal that's full of, you know, fiber and vegetables and lean food, lean meats and such. You can get a lot from 400 calories, right? And so when you do that though, here's the fear. When you do that, the scale not only might, it probably will go up a few pounds initially because of the water and glycogen from eating the extra food, the extra gut content, the extra fluid, and the extra carbs, probably extra carbs, right? And that has nothing to do with body fat. Your muscles are refilling their carbohydrate stores, your liver is refilling the glycogen, you're retaining more water, and your digestive system has more stuff moving through it. So this is normal and it's temporary. And by temporary, I mean the weight bump occurs and then it stops. And here's the thing: just to take a quick side tangent, when you get used to cutting and bulking, you see that both sides of the equation have like a few pounds of buffer because of water. Meaning when you go on a diet, you're gonna lose quickly a few pounds. That's just water. When you come out of the diet, you're gonna gain quickly a few pounds. That's just water. So you kind of notice that there's this little buffer of weight, and you have to push through that mentally to realize that has nothing to do with body fat. And so I don't want you to get stuck on like a fixed number that this is your ideal weight or this is what I weighed when I was 25, so that's what I should weigh now. Don't think that way. So I'm not gonna pretend that this is easy up here psychologically, okay? After years of restricting, eating more is gonna feel wrong. It's gonna go against every instinct you've ever built. And that is a real, real fear, and I respect it. I do. But let's look at the data. Let's look at the data. Clients who spend eight to 12 weeks of maintenance before attempting a fat loss phase tend to lose more fat, retain more muscle, and have dramatically better adherence when they eventually cut, meaning they can keep their results. Okay? That's clients who spend eight to 12 weeks of maintenance because they're dieting from a position of metabolic strength as well as physiological and psychological confidence instead of a depleted, stressed out, underfed state that is just gonna backfire. So that's part one is simply restoring your calorie intake to maintenance. And it could take four, six, eight, even twelve weeks to get there. The longer you've been dieting in the past, the longer it's gonna take. And that just is what it is. Accept it and go after it. Part two.

    Philip Pape: 22:00

    Is prioritizing protein at every meal. And I know every single fitness person, every single health and fitness podcast talks about protein all the time now. I don't want to just like talk your ear off about it. But a few of the reasons this is so important is it's going to burn more calories just by eating more protein as a percentage of your diet. So I've seen women keep the calories the same, double their protein. So they reduce their fats and carbs a little bit, they double their protein, and they increase how many calories they burn by a hundred calories, let's say, just by doing that. And it is often the difference between being able to do a calorie deficit and not, like mentally. So more protein literally increases your metabolic rate. And of course, it protects and builds muscle. That's that's really the most important reason we eat protein because of the importance of building and holding on to that muscle. Okay. The target for protein is 0.71 grams a pound per per pound of body weight. Now, in Eat More Lift Heavy, in week four, I believe it is, we unlock a tool called the Protein Day Builder. I'm very proud of this tool. It is a very well-designed tool where you put in your target protein, how many times you want to eat per day, all of your preferences. Like, I mean, even if you're vegan or omnivore or you're, you know, gluten-free, you don't want to use protein powders, you don't want to use protein bars, all those preferences. And it will build you a protein-based plan for the day that has a lot of variety and a lot of ideas, and you can rebuild with a click of a button and like instantly, you can click a button and it'll keep rebuilding for you. So I know that's the biggest struggle for a lot of you guys is like, okay, I know I have to get a gram of protein per pound or up to that, but I don't know how. And you can go to AI and you could try tools like that for sure. You can try to do it that way. But we have a tool like that in our program. Anyway, you know, stepping back a bit, I'm kind of jumping into the weeds. You can't just fix the protein gap just by adding protein shakes. I mean, you can numerically, but you really want protein sources, a variety of lean protein sources that also tend to have other forms of nutrition in them, that they taste good, that they're gonna make great meals, et cetera. Everything from eggs to Greek yogurt to chicken, fish, lean beef, cottage, cheese, and yes, even whey protein and kind of a good variety where protein always anchors the meal, and then you fill in the fats and carbs around it. I like to think protein, then fiber, then other carbs. And fats kind of come in naturally with like oils and sauces and naturally in meats and stuff like that. When you do this, something interesting happens that people don't talk enough about, and that is your hunger stabilizes. Your hunger stabilizes. Protein is the most satiating macro. So you feel fuller on more, you feel fuller because you have more protein, but even when the calories are the same. And it can help with things like your 3 p.m. energy crash and radiating the pantry after dinner. A lot of the cravings that you might have might go away simply because you upped your protein and your total calories with these first two parts. All right. So that's the first two

    Philip Pape: 24:51

    parts. And then part three is of course resistance training with progressive overload. If I hear anyone, anyone tell me or think in their mind even that they don't need to do resistance training, that it's just another form of exercise, that, well, you should train based on what you like. And you are 100% incorrect. Resistance training is absolutely a non-negotiable requirement as a human being if you want to stay healthy and have a long, healthy life. You have to do it. You have to do it. I'm sorry. Okay. I've seen too many women doing bodyweight circuits that they never increase in weight, light dumbbell classes, the pink dumbbells that never go up. They do the machines that they never increase in weight. They're doing cardio heavy programs, they're doing even Pilates. Yes, I'm calling out Pilates again or spin or whatever else. And they don't actually progressively overload. And then they wonder why my body composition isn't changing. Why I don't want to see muscle definition? Or, hey, I went on a diet, I lost fat, I still don't see the muscle. It's because you're not training properly. Building muscle requires a specific stimulus. You have to challenge the muscle with enough resistance that it adapts by growing. That's what's happening. You're giving your body a hormonal signal that it needs bigger muscles. And bigger means tone or cut or whatever, whatever word you'd like to use. It doesn't mean bulky, especially for women. Women aren't gonna get bulky. And this means lifting weights that are genuinely hard for anywhere from, let's say, three up to 20 reps per set. The details about training we're not gonna get into today, but it's got to be enough frequency, enough volume over time, tracking your lifts and progressively adding weight or reps over time. Even if you do this in a sloppy, imperfect way, as long as you can look at your log and say, wow, six weeks ago, I did this one exercise for 85 pounds and now I'm up to 115, that is proof that you're getting stronger and thus building muscle. Okay. Now it doesn't require a gym. You can have a gym at home. It doesn't require barbells, you can use dumbbells and machines, but it does require progressive challenge, not just the movement or quote unquote exercise itself. So those are the three big things. When you combine adequate calories, adequate protein, progressive resistance training, your body starts to rebuild. And it might, I might sound like a broken record, like, okay, these are the basics, but I hope I got into a little bit level of detail today that helps you understand the why behind how this affects your metabolism and your ability to eat food and why we're probably under-eating, and that's really part of the problem here. Okay. It's not just eat whatever you want, eat a whole bunch more food, eat a whole bunch of pizza and donuts, sit around all day, and that's what Philip told me to do, and that's gonna help me. No, that's absolutely not what I'm talking about. But once you do that, well, now you're gonna support those things I just said earlier. You weren't supporting, even if you were maintaining your weight. And that is your hormonal function because you're no longer restricting. You're building a body that requires more fuel because you have more muscle, because you're moving more, moving more in the right way. And now eventually you could do a strategic fat loss phase and you have room to work with. It's not because you've magically increased your metabolism, it's because you're probably finally supporting your metabolism. And now you could eat, say, you know, 1800 calories and lose some fat instead of 1200. That's the fix. Eat enough, prioritize protein, lift progressively. And it sounds deceptively simple because on paper it is. The hard part is not the information. I've said this before. The hard part is trusting and taking action on the process when everything else you've been taught says to do the opposite. Now, just to really quickly get ahead of the YouTube commenters, although they're probably not going to comment on this because it's audio only. Three things I'm not saying, or four things

    Philip Pape: 28:23

    I'm not saying. The first one, I'm not saying calorie deficits don't work. If you were listening carefully, you know that yes, you need a calorie deficit to lose fat, but the way most people do it is counterproductive because of the chronic restriction. And there's a difference between a well-designed, time-limited fat loss phase from a metabolically healthy starting point and a perpetual 1200 calorie, I'll say grinding deficit misery that erodes your muscle, your metabolism, your hormones month after month. I'm also not saying just eat more and magically lose weight. Just eat more in general, right? Eating at maintenance is a recovery strategy to restore your body's capacity. So when you do diet, it actually works. That's what we're talking about by eating more. And part of the eating more is eating more protein, not just calories. Right? I'm also not saying hormones don't matter. They absolutely do. In fact, I mentioned that several times. But the hormonal issues you're experiencing are probably amplified by chronic undereating, meaning it's bi-directional. If your hormone panels, if you get lab work, don't look great, or you have symptoms from low hormones, it could simply be that these other things like chronic undereating are keeping those hormones low. Not that the low hormones are causing the other issues, but it's all a cascade. So if you can fix the energy availability and fix the protein and fix the training, a lot of those symptoms improve or go away. And maybe not all of them. Some women definitely benefit from HRT and other medical interventions, but the foundation has to be there. And then the last thing I'm not saying is that it's easy or that the fear of eating more isn't real. It's definitely real. I hear it every day from clients and listeners. Like, hey, I know I'm probably not eating enough, but I'm afraid of gaining weight. I hear that language where they even know they need to eat more, but they're afraid of gaining weight. And it comes from years of conditioning. Let's just say it out loud. Like, I've been conditioned that way from years and years, but the path forward is going to be through adequate fuel and muscle, not more restriction. And the women who trust that and commit to it for six months are the ones who break that cycle. All right, before we wrap up, I promised you the number one thing that predicts whether your next fat loss phase will work or just stall.

    Philip Pape: 30:29

    Again, it's quick, it's practical, it's coming up in just a second. But if this is if this episode described you to a T, if you've been eating less and less with nothing to show for it, if you know you need to change your approach, but you're not sure how to do it without gaining weight, that is what Eat More Lift Heavy was built for specifically. It is not an education program or a learning program. It's actually an experience that walks you through each of these steps of the phases to teach you the skills so that you have the confidence to do this while also, of course, getting the result, changing your body composition, looking and feeling better than you ever have before. The first phase is building your foundation, getting your tracking set up, establishing your baseline, making sure you're eating enough, doing this recovery phase we talked about today to support muscle and recovery before we make other changes. You'll have human coaches, you'll have live calls, you'll have a training program assigned to you so you'll know what to train with exactly. You won't be guessing or choosing on your own. We're gonna help you. And then you follow the 26-week program. It gives you one thing to focus on each week instead of trying to overhaul everything at once. So if you want to stop guessing, if you want to eat more and lift heavy to get the result, go to eatmore liftheavy.com. Grab your spot before Monday, grab the founder's price right now. You won't get charged until launch. That's eatmore liftheavy.com.

    Philip Pape: 31:50

    All right, there's one number that predicts whether your next diet is going to work or you're gonna keep yo-yoing. It is your expenditure trend over the last four to six weeks. Your actual observed expenditure, how many calories you burn every day based on what you've been eating and what your weight has been doing. Now, this is a classic thing that coaches for years, nutrition coaches for years, have helped their clients collect. And as I mentioned before, if you use macrofactor, it does it for you. Use my code wits and weights, all one word. Okay. And track your food and weight daily for four to six weeks. And I say four to six because for some people, their metabolisms are more stable than for others. For others, you're really you have a lot of volatility or a lot of recovery going on, so it'll take a little longer to stabilize. Now, if you've looked at that trend and the excuse me, and that trend has been declining steadily week after week, and you've been dieting or maintaining, then your metabolism is adapting downward. And you don't want to try to cut further or start another calorie deficit from that position, right? It's like trying to squeeze water from a dry sponge, think of it that way. If your expenditure has been stable or rising, then your body has a good enough capacity, it's pretty well recovered, and you're probably in a good place to handle a deficit. And that's it. That that's what I wanted to share today is you have to have real expenditure data. And if it's going down, you probably still need to recover. If it's stable or going up, you're probably good. So before you start your next diet, do this. Track your food and weight consistently for four to six weeks weeks it to current intake. And we definitely help you do that and eat more lift heavy. I've always taken that approach with clients. A tool like Macrofactor will calculate your real expenditure from that data. Don't change anything, just start tracking. That's all I'm asking you to do. Don't actually change the targets, just set it to maintain and start tracking until that number is stable and not decreasing. If it's going up a little, that's fine, but as long as it's not decreasing. If it's falling, you have to restore your metabolism first. Get up to your true maintenance. Build muscle. Make sure you're training. Let that number climb back up before you try to cut. All right, that is it. Until next time, keep using your wits, lifting those weights. And remember, the path to losing fat after 40 starts with eating enough to build the body that burns that fat. I'm Philip Pape, and I'll talk to you next time here on the Wits and Weights podcast.

Featured

Ready for the Next Step?

Read More
Interviews Philip Pape Interviews Philip Pape

The 26-Week Plan to Build Muscle and Lose Fat After 40 | Ep 453

Yet again, you're motivated to make a change. You've given yourself 6 months, you pick a program, cut calories, and go after it! Then (inevitably) the whole thing falls apart about 1-2 months in (maybe even sooner). Most people over 40 who want to lose fat and build muscle start with the wrong first step. They jump straight into a calorie deficit before they even know what their body is doing. This episode lays out a complete 26-week body recomp roadmap

Yet again, you're motivated to make a change. You've given yourself 6 months, you pick a program, cut calories, and go after it!

Then (inevitably) the whole thing falls apart about 1-2 months in (maybe even sooner).

Most people over 40 who want to lose fat and build muscle start with the wrong first step. They jump straight into a calorie deficit before they even know what their body is doing.

This episode lays out a complete 26-week body recomp roadmap with three phases that build on each other:

  1. Stop Guessing

  2. Eat More. Lift Heavy.

  3. Trust Yourself

You'll hear why the first 7 weeks should involve almost zero changes to your diet, how to read your own metabolic data so you stop relying on guesses, and the one skill most people never develop that determines whether results actually stick for the long term.

If you've been lifting and tracking but your body still doesn't reflect the work, THIS is the plan to follow.

Start the Eat More Lift Heavy program and follow this exact 26-week roadmap with the help of two coaches, a training program matched to your unique situation, monthly live coaching calls, and a community built for accountability. Founder pricing locks in through March 29: eatmoreliftheavy.com

Timestamps

0:00 - Why most 6-month transformation plans fail
3:30 - The house-building analogy for body composition
5:42 - Undereating, protein, and hormonal challenges
8:31 - Three phases: Stop Guessing, Eat More, Trust Yourself
10:10 - Phase 1: tracking, training, and building awareness
13:12 - Baseline measurements and biofeedback tracking
14:15 - The fear of eating more after chronic restriction
16:40 - The Phase 1 milestone and reading your data
19:30 - Phase 2: making decisions with real numbers
20:48 - Weekend eating, social situations, and alcohol
24:58 - Phase 3: building independence after 40
27:29 - Teaching yourself and hormonal awareness
30:10 - Troubleshooting without a coach
32:43 - 60-second protein audit for your gap meal

Episode Resources

  • Philip Pape: 00:00

    If you've been saying, I will give myself six months to really change my body, and you're planning to just pick a workout plan, cut some calories, and hope that it sticks, I want to be honest with you. That approach has about a six-week shelf life. Today I'm walking you through a 26-week plan. That's six months to build muscle and lose fat after 40, broken into three phases that build on each other. You'll learn why the first seven weeks should involve almost no changes to your diet, what actually happens when you start eating more instead of less, and the specific skill that determines whether your results last or just evaporate the moment you stop following a plan. Welcome to Wits and Weights, the show that puts a popular piece of fitness advice under the microscope, finds a hidden reason it doesn't work, and gives you the deceptively simple fix that does. I'm your host, Philip Pape, and this episode is coming out just a few days before the start of spring. A lot of you are thinking about the next six months. Maybe you want to look different by fall, maybe you want to feel strong and lean and confident at the beach this summer. Maybe you have a wedding to go to, or maybe you just want to feel better in your own clothes. And if you're over 40 and you've been lifting for a while, but your body doesn't quite reflect all that work that you've been putting in, I think this episode is a good roadmap to plan out the next six months. So I'm gonna walk you through a complete 26-week plan. 26 is weeks is exactly half a year from start to finish. I'm not gonna give you a list of exercises. I'm not gonna help you calculate macros. I'm talking about the process, the phases that build the right skills in the right order, so that by the end of the six months, you know how to manage your own body composition without needing someone to tell you what to do. Because you guys, you probably like this podcast, or maybe you just found it and you can binge all the information you want. But the real goal here is to actually make the change, to take the action to make the change. And then stick around to the very end because after the main episode wraps up, I'm gonna share a 60-second protein audit that you can do tonight at dinner. It's the simple, single, fastest way to find out if protein distribution is the bottleneck holding back your results. So today you're gonna learn why the very first phase, where you change almost nothing, I know it sounds counterintuitive, is the most important phase of any transformation. Then you're gonna get a specific week-by-week structure for all 26 weeks across the phases. And I'll show you one diagnostic skill that separates people who maintain their results, right? The 5% of people who maintain their results from the 95% of people who just bounce back and do it all over again. All right. So, first of all, why we have to understand why things don't work for a lot of people. What does a typical six-month transformation look like for most people, especially over 40, and just doesn't work? And I'm gonna tell you because I've coached hundreds of clients through this situation and I see what has happened and burned them in the past, and I don't want that to happen to you. It usually starts with what? Motivation, the new year, right? New Year's resolution, or maybe it's a birthday, or maybe a photo that you see of yourself and you're like, ugh, I gotta, I gotta change. Like this is the time, right? Or maybe you finally rated that candy drawer one last time, raising my hand here, and like I've got to change things. And then your plan looks something like this. I'm gonna find a workout program, I'm gonna get some sort of calorie tracker or app, I'm gonna go ahead and, you know, cut some calories, set a deficit, or maybe I'm gonna eat a certain diet, right? Maybe I'm gonna go cut carbs or go keto or something like that. And I'm going to get more steps. I'm gonna work out, you know, three, four, five days a week, and then I'm going to just just push through. I'm gonna push through as long as I can. And that's how I used to do things. I mean, leading up to my wedding way back in 2006, I did this weird diet with a restricted list of foods, and I was starving all the time and it felt miserable. But I had this date, I had this wedding, and so it was very, very uh extrinsically motivating. And I pushed through it, but it was miserable. And of course, what happened? I gained everything back afterward, starting with the honeymoon. So when this happens, right, the first week is great. You're fired up. Maybe you're meal prepping, you go to the grocery store and get some new healthy foods. Maybe you're hitting the gym, you know, all three or four days that week, you know, you go in regularly, you're good. Maybe week two, you're still solid and you know, you're getting this going. Like, yeah, I've got this. Week three, you miss a day, you know, schedule gets in the way, you feel guilty about it. Maybe you have a, you know, somebody invites you out to dinner, or you just, you know, you have some alcohol, whatever, and things start to fall off. Week four, you're looking at the scale and it hasn't moved like you expected, or then it or it moved, but it bounced back up, and now you're confused. You're like, no, maybe this isn't working by week six. You've you're done with your willpower, the willpower is gone. And now you start making all of those little exceptions where okay, I'm not gonna track today because of this, or I'm gonna go, my my workout's gonna be shorter today, or I need to skip my workout today, but I'll make it up for for tomorrow. You know what I'm talking about. It's these little excuses we make to ourselves that just start to build up like a thousand little cuts. And then by month three, what happens? You're back where you started. Except now you're also frustrated and a little more convinced that your body doesn't respond the way it used to and that you can't do this. Does that sound familiar? I hope I'm hitting you really hard where you recognize this pattern in yourself because I see it a lot and I used to be this. Okay, I used to be this. It's not, it's not you. It's not by you, I mean it's just not, it's not discipline, working harder, doing more, all of that, right? You didn't fail because you're lazy. It's not because you lack motivation, it's because of the approach, and it actually is skipping the most important part of any transformation. I want you

    Philip Pape: 05:42

    to think of it like building a house. Okay, analogies are really helpful here. All right. Most plans for transformation, and I know this because people come to me having worked with a coach, gotten a result, and then they go right back to where they were before. So even working with a coach or with a structured program isn't always enough, right? It's got to be uh long-lasting after that. Most transformation plans, it's like if you were building a house, it's like they gave you cans of paint and they gave you the furniture, right? And that's like the calorie deficit and the workout plan. But there's actually no foundation. Like you literally are putting a plot of land on some dirt, and you have a pan of a can of paint and a couch. Okay. And here we go, right? And you never understand, you know, how much you're actually eating or why you're eating it or how your body is responding to your food and your training and what your stress and sleep look like or what your actual metabolic expenditure is. I can't tell you how many programs people never really learned their metabolism. I don't understand that. If you go through six months with a coach, how did you never really know your metabolism? I don't understand it. And you could say, well, because I'm not calorie counting. Well, yeah, but if you don't have any understanding at all, how can you make any adjustments that make sense with any level of precision? Right. And then every decision you make is based on guesses. Half the people I've worked with come into me thinking that they are overeating. And it's understandable why, right? Because we gain weight over many years of a certain lifestyle and we think it's simply because of overconsumption. Or people like to simplify it. Hey, it's just calorie balance, just calories in, calories out. That's the obesity problem. But a lot of people are actually undereating and not necessarily calories per se, but it is calories for a lot of people. But it's also protein, right? Nearly 50% of people cite protein as their number one struggle, not because they don't know it matters. They hear it all the time, like too much on podcasts, but because they haven't figured out how to hit it across full-day meals. And that's a very simple problem solution set. But yet if you haven't solved that problem, it's going to cascade into all the other problems that you also haven't solved. About half of people say they have problems with their hormones, especially peri postmenopausal women, a huge demographic that we speak to on this podcast, especially now that I see how impactful it is and how frustrating it is that affects your nutrition and training. So if you don't account for those variables, then you're just fighting everything from day one. So I think the hidden flaw in the advice to like you just need to be in a calorie deficit and you just need to train the right way, isn't the deficit or the training. It is the sequence of how you put those skills in place so that they work for you and not executing before you understand the system you're trying to change, not taking action on a lack of a plan, if that makes sense.

    Philip Pape: 08:31

    So I think the fix is a phased approach. We've talked about periodization in the past. We've talked about phases and structure. We're gonna go over that today. And I'm gonna split it into three phases over 26 weeks with a very specific progression. And I've given them names. They're called Stop Guessing, Eat More Lift Heavy, and Trust Yourself. Okay, stop guessing, eat more lift heavy, which yes is also the name of our program that walks you through all of this and trust yourself. So I'm gonna walk through each one. And by the way, if you do want to go check out that program, which opens on March 30th, just go to eatmore liftheavy.com. That's eatmoriftheavy.com and you can learn all about it there. We've got lots of cool information available for you to check out. But let's walk you through this today. All right, phase one is stop guessing. This is the first seven weeks. This is the phase that feels the most counterintuitive because the goal is not to change your body, the goal is to understand your body. All right. And I know you want to start losing fat immediately, or many of you use the term lose weight, which if you're new to the podcast, we differentiate between weight loss and fat loss. Fat loss is really what you want. You want to lose fat and hold on to muscle. You don't want to just lose muscle and fat. Everybody wants to lose fat. Most people come into the program, even if they want to build muscle, they also want to lose fat. But if you start a calorie deficit in week one before you actually know what your calorie needs are, then you're guessing. And guessing is probably why the last plan didn't work. Even if you were working with a coach who is who you were dependent on to tell you what to do, but you were still guessing as to your own data of what to do. So here's what the first seven weeks look

    Philip Pape: 10:10

    like. Week one is where you start setting things up just for tracking. You start tracking your food and weight every day. Now, I would recommend using Macro Factor. MacroFactor is the only app on the market still, I'm surprised about this, but it's the only app that calculates your metabolism, your daily expenditure based on your food and weight. All the other apps, MacroFactor, I mean MyFitnessPal, Chronometer, Lose It, they're trackers, but they don't calculate with an algorithm your metabolic needs to give you the right targets. So then you're not actually trying to hit the right targets. You're using a calculator, and that's not good enough. That can be off by hundreds of calories. So start tracking your food and weight every day and ideally use a tool like MacroFactor. Use my code WITS and Waights, all one word, to get a two-week free trial. You don't have to. That would support the podcast. You don't have to, but it's wits and weights all one word. Download MacroFactor from your app store. And what that'll let you do when you just start logging, don't worry about the target yet. Just start logging. You're gonna see what's happening. What are you eating? How much are you eating? How much protein? How does your weight fluctuate day to day? Oh wow, it goes up and down, you know, three pounds some days. You're building a measurement system, and that system needs about six weeks of consistent data before you can get an accurate picture of your true calorie expenditure. And some people will say, well, it's only two to three weeks, but really, you know, at least a month to six weeks before it's really dialed in. And then you also need training programs. So to me, it's it's the food and weight side, and then the training side are the two big buckets. All right. So the food, the tracking food that we just talked about, that's just tracking, that should take you three to five minutes a day. You're not changing anything. You're just tracking three to five minutes a day. That's it. Super, super easy. For training, you gotta be careful here, right? There are a ton of things online. There's a lot of free programs online, there's apps that have free programs, and that's cool, but you can't just pick a random program. You have to have one that's matched, first of all, to you know what will work for you to actually show up and do it regularly. So that's how many days a week you can realistically train. If you want to train four, but really you're only gonna get in three on most weeks, go for three. Your equipment. So do you have a well-equipped home gym or not? Most people don't, although that's a great aspirational goal. But if you don't, you're probably gonna go to a commercial gym in the area that's within a short driving distance so that you make sure you get to it. But it has to have enough equipment to get the job done. There's also your experience level, and there's of course your goal. A lot of people over 40, especially, are running programs that are not designed for them for one reason or another, having to do with their joint health or the movement patterns or the strength levels or whatever, or even the equipment. So if you are, you know, a woman who is training three days a week and you have a barbell in a rack, your program is gonna look different from someone training five days a week with a full commercial gym setup, for example, right? All right, so that's that sounds like a lot for week one, but really all it is is you're starting tracking food and weight and you're identifying how you're gonna train, getting a training program. Okay. Week

    Philip Pape: 13:12

    two is now you're gonna take baseline measurements. So you don't even do that in week one, just get things set up. Week two, you're gonna take measurements like you could take photos, you could take some circumference measurements, you can start tracking biofeedback, things like sleep, energy, stress recovery. We have a very simple tracker in Eat More Lift Heavy that does this all in one place once a week. Yeah, again, it takes you five minutes. So it takes you five minutes on a Sunday, you're done. And this data is going to become incredibly valuable in phase two when we start making decisions, but only if you have a baseline to compare against. I mean, wouldn't it be great to see your trend for your sleep and your stress and your mood and your energy and your recovery and your hunger, and then know where the dials are, where the bottlenecks are, that is really, really powerful. We're able to coach people tremendously well when we have that kind of data. All right, then week three is where things get interesting, and it's one of the most important weeks because this is where we tackle some of those initial fears that I know are in a lot of your heads, especially the fear of eating more.

    Philip Pape: 14:15

    Okay. If you're, for example, a woman over 40 who's been dieting on and off for years, maybe decades, this is genuinely a scary thought. Eating more food, right? Because you've you've been told your whole life that less food equals less body fat, or you know, you need to eat less, move more to lose weight. And I think that false belief is the single biggest barrier to changing your body composition right now. It's the single biggest fear I've seen. So in this week, you're gonna understand why people are not helped by this undereating. And it's a metabolic argument about chronic restriction having to do with a lower expenditure and metabolism over time. And there's a psychological case as well related to diet trauma, to food fear, the belief that eating more is gonna make you fat. And really what eating more looks like in practice. It's not cheap meals, it's not free-for-all, it's not just eating uninhibited, it's actually strategic. It's protein first, it's food volume and fiber first, it's nutrition, you know, quality and quality, quality and quantity coming together combined with the enjoyment of food as well. And we want to address this before making changes to your nutrition because if you skip that mindset piece, everything is gonna feel like a resistant, you know, like friction as you try to change your nutrition habits. And then the next few weeks of the first seven weeks, this is where you start to introduce some of the specifics. Nutritional foundations and meal timing, for example, protein. Protein is super, super important. How much protein you need per day, how much protein you should get per meal. You know, per day, we're gonna talk about the evidence-based target of 0.7 to one gram per pound of body weight. And per meal, it's really more of a practical thing. And relative to when you're training and pre- and post-workout nutrition and just general distribution per your schedule. And then in the next few weeks, as you're setting all this up and establishing your baseline, you want to look at things like how many steps you're getting, what kind of movement you're doing outside the gym, your sleep, your stress, and then as you go along, how to read this biofeedback data that you've been collecting, right? So this is by weeks five and six, I would say you're starting to collect and learn about this data. And it's really not a lot that you're changing each week. You're just slowly putting the pieces together. And then now look, if I work with a one-on-one client, we're we're fast tracking this process a

    Philip Pape: 16:40

    little bit. But if you're doing this on your own, or if you're doing this as part of our eat more lift heavy program, where we want you to to, we want the habits to stick and to teach you the skill, then you you want to be methodical about it and do it the right way. And then week seven, now you get to the culminating milestone of your first big week. And this is you're gonna assess how your training's been going. You're going to look at the data of your biofeedback, your recovery, your food, and your expenditure and put it all together and say, what's been going on without me trying to change things. Without me trying to change things, what is my body doing? What is its, what are its tendencies? Okay. What is it telling me? What are the signals it's telling me? And then you're ready to go into phase two and set some targets based on actual data. That's what's at that, that's what's happening. And that's why we call this first phase stop guessing. Because now you're ready to stop guessing. So I know seven weeks sounds like a long time to just set things up, but you can tell there's actually a lot of little pieces in here. And every client I've coached who goes through this tells me the same thing. Like, I wish I had done that in the past. As frustrating as it first seemed, because it seemed like I wasn't doing anything. I actually, it was actually the most powerful thing I've ever done. Because for the first time, I understand my body and I know what to do now. I've got confidence. Boom, huge.

    Philip Pape: 18:01

    Now, everything I just described, this phased approach, the week by week structure, building this foundation before making changes, that is exactly what Eat More Lift Heavy is designed to do. I am really proud of this. This is a new 26-week coaching program that launches March 30th in just a few days. You get a phased program, an experience, I like to call it, with one focus per week. You get a training program matched your situation from week one. There are monthly live coaching calls with me and Coach Carol, and there's a community where you get questions answered. And so it's a really powerful way to combine your training and nutrition needs and how to build those skills. It combines both. Eat more lift heavy gives you both coached together because they are not separate things. It's very hard to take a training thing over here and a nutrition over here and smoosh them together. These work together with a defined endpoint of 26 weeks where you have the skills now to manage your own physique. That is the goal. And if you're a woman over 40 who lifts and is tracking, but you're not seeing results, this is gonna help you get those results finally and have the skills to keep them. So you don't go afterward and say, oh, I worked at Philip and now I've gained all the weight back. That's not gonna happen. Go to eatmore liftheavy.com. That's eatmore liftheavy.com. We have what's called founders pricing. If you're listening to this podcast, available through March 29th, and it locks in permanently as long as you stay enrolled. Go to eatmorliftheavy.com. All right, let's get to phase two. Phase two is where the real work happens, I'll call it eat more lift heavy. This is weeks roughly eight through eighteen, so that's 11 weeks. And by real work, I don't mean suffering or being miserable. I mean this is where you make decisions with your data and you learn to read the signals your body is sending you. So by the beginning of this week, your data is somewhat dialed in and somewhat consistent. And I say somewhat because it'll never be perfect, and that's fine. So for example, if you're using macrofactor, your expenditure should be very well known at this point because it's been learning your metabolism for seven weeks. And now you could know is it going up, down, is it stable? And how many calories can I work from for a fat loss phase? Right. So if you're in a fat loss phase and your expenditure is relatively stable or it's starting to decline slowly, you know, we would expect that, right? We expect a little bit of metabolic adaptation, but you need to start from the right baseline to begin with. And then you can decide later on, do I need a diet break, this and that, all the decisions you have to make. So you're no longer flying blind because you have the starting data. And then as you move into the next few weeks of this phase, there's some different things that unlock. All right. So if we were to tie it to the way we designed our program, if you're doing this on your own, let's say, week nine is going to try is going to tackle

    Philip Pape: 20:48

    things like weekend and social eating because that is what trips up roughly 40% of people. So what we do in this program is we start from the biggest hitter problems and we work our way down the list and unlock them for you so you can deal with all the issues life throws at you. So things like alcohol, eating on the weekends, going out. And the fix here is simpler than most people expect, and it has to do with structure and planning. You don't want to make decisions when your willpower is low. You want to make them when it's high. Well, where when's the willpower low? Well, when you go to eat at that restaurant, you're all excited, the passions are high, the emotions are high, the hunger is high. You're gonna make the worst decisions at that point. So the act of planning actually changes the outcome because it shifts you from reactive to intentional to when you have the most willpower, which is earlier in the week. Earlier in the week. All right. Now, in our program, we also talk about alcohol and the research about its effects on fat loss and recovery and things like that. It's a separate little piece that's important. But, you know, the step one here is to plan ahead for whatever you're doing. This is a very important thing. All right, then you get to week 10, and now you have eight weeks of training data, eight plus weeks of training

    Philip Pape: 21:56

    data. This is usually a good time to diagnose your training. Are your lifts stall? You have recovery issues. How does the volume look? How does the intensity look? Is the program right for you? This is a great time to decide. Do you need to switch your training whole in what am I trying to say? Switch the whole training program or just make adjustments, right? And then we're gonna tick through the next few weeks pretty quickly. So week 11, we're gonna go deeper into protein because most people at this point, they've now truly understood what they're able to hit and what they're not able to hit. And now you can build a fix for all the meals that fall short and get you to where you need to be consistently. Weeks 12 through 16 are really about biofeedback pattern analysis, adjusting your program, you know, continuing to adjust your program, planning for phase transitions. So, like what are you gonna do when your fat loss phase is done in a moment, you know, in a few weeks? How are you gonna come out of that? How are you gonna deal with plateaus? What about supplements, right? So notice that we didn't try to solve all this in week one. What I'm saying here is that as you go, each of these things unlock in the right priority. Like supplements, I don't even like to deal with them until you're maybe 10 or 12 weeks in, because by then you'll understand where some of the deficiencies might be. You might even have some lab work. You might find that you know energy is a problem, but you've solved everything else. So now it could come down to like a sub a nutrient deficiency, maybe you're low in magnesium or something like that, and so on, right? So you've got all of this data pretty mature by now. You've got things like photo before and afters to see and motivate you as you go. You see the change in your trend weight probably having moved significantly at this point, or you know, at least meaningfully. You've also collected physique data to tell you whether you're building muscle and losing fat and body recomping, right? So weeks 12 through 16 are the sweet spot for that. And within that is, I mentioned, a point where you need to know: should I change phases? What do I do when I change phases? Should I keep cutting? Should I switch to maintenance? Should I start a recovery diet? Should I take a diet break? Should I switch how I distribute my calories? Again, notice these are advanced things that come later on. Once you see how things are moving for you, don't you do these from step one. And so this decision-making framework is methodical and it's based on your signals and your signs and your biofeedback. And if all this sounds very complicated and confusing, it's because we've thought about it over years with hundreds of clients and have broken it down to something that's actually doable and actionable. Okay. Go to eatmoreliftheavy.com if you want to jump on the program to help you do that. This podcast episode is really just to lay it all out for you and let you decide, okay, is this something I want to try on my own? And then I could deep dive into Phillips' podcast and do it, or do I want to get some help doing it? All right. And then we get to the final couple weeks of this phase where we go a little bit deeper on training. Okay, we look at D loads, we look at block periodization, we look at

    Philip Pape: 24:58

    evaluating whether your program still fits your goals. We want to make you really autonomous when it comes to strength training. So you're not like tied or dependent on, say, a personal trainer or a coach. And then finally you get to your milestone for phase two, where you do a full review, you update your targets again, clear set of goals for the next and final phase. So let's do that. Phase three, the final phase is called trust yourself. This is weeks 19 through 26. And this also, I think, is very different from almost any other program because the goal here in these final eight weeks is independence. Independence and sustaining your results. By the end of this phase, you should be making most decisions about your nutrition and training on your own with decreasing reliance or dependence on a coach or program. And all the coaches listening to this are like, Philip, what are you doing to us? You know, we want to keep, we want to keep clients locked on forever. That's not the way I work. I actually want you to feel so independent and powerful that you can go coach this stuff yourself. But you know what usually happens is you then, if you have a more advanced goal, I'm here to help you do that as well if you'd like, right? That's that's that's an authentic, I'll say trust-based way to coach, in my opinion. So think about what you've built at this point. You've got five months of body weight data, biofeedback trends, training cycles with progression on your lifts. You know what your PRs are. You've probably gone through one phase transition at least. Well, definitely you went from the first phase to the second phase, you know, probably for maintenance of fat loss, for example. You know your expenditure, you know how your expenditure changes, you know your protein gaps, you've practiced eating around social situations and weekends, so many skills. You're super proud of yourself at this point. So now what do we want to do? Well, now we want to step it up one more level to the final bottlenecks and points of friction that people face. So, for example, week 19, we look at travel and disruption strategies, right? What happens when life gets in the way and you have vacation, business travel? How do you keep a minimum effective dose? How do you maintain protein without getting too obsessive at like restaurants and eating out? How do you get back on trap track when a trip throws you off? Right. And by the way, the answer to that one is you just start again. Like I'll just give you that answer. It's you start again. But a lot of this has to do with planning ahead for those types of situations. Week 20 is one of my favorite weeks. Uh, we call it in our program teaching yourself. It's an exercise. And what you do is you write out your current

    Philip Pape: 27:29

    approach, your system, your fitness, your training, all that, as if you were explaining it to a friend. Have you ever done that before? If you've never done that before, it's powerful. You're writing down your system, how you eat, how you train, how you make decisions. Kind of like into a little manual for yourself. And this exercise is going to reveal gaps because anything you can't articulate, especially you can't, especially if you can't explain why you do it, you don't quite understand or own it yet. There's still some mystery that we need to unlock so you truly, truly understand it. So I really love this one. Um, and you can do that exercise for yourself as well. The next week, we're getting up to week 21, we start to talk more about hormones. You're like, why don't we start talking about hormones at the beginning? Well, in our program, we will deal with hormones early if they are relevant to you individually. But in general, this is one of those more advanced things where I say, look, get the basics in place, do it for these, you know, two to four months, right? Get through this second phase and then see what's left and see what you have to deal with from a hormone perspective. If you're in peri or postmenopause, now you've got five months of data showing how your cycle and hormonal shifts are affecting things independent of the lifestyle changes because you've already made those. So now, how exactly are hormones affecting your weight and your energy, your recovery, et cetera? And now you can see the patterns and make those tactical adjustments. And that might be, you know, seeking out hormone therapy or some other form of treatment or, you know, therapy that you might need or supplementation. All right, then we get to weeks 22 and 23. And this is where we talk about maintaining your maintenance and using long-term periodization. So these are skills that really coaches learn, people into nutrition science like myself learned. And a lot of, I'll say, people doing this for themselves don't think too much about this stuff, I'll be honest. But they're very important skills. Most people are jumping from one program to the next. But what's important is how do you transition between phases, not programs, but between phases without regaining all the weight or without losing what you've lost? How do you map out the next six to 12 months of your training and nutrition when it might look different than the last six to 12 months? You're not just going to keep doing the same thing, even though the underlying skills are the same. When do you cut versus build versus maintain? What triggers those changes? So I think at this point in your journey, you are thinking about these things and maybe stepping it up to that level of awareness and knowledge. And we we teach people to do that for themselves. We're getting to the end here. Okay, week 24 is learning to troubleshoot things without a coach as well. So we actually give you scenarios and you work through them. You know, you practice

    Philip Pape: 30:10

    scenarios like, okay, what if your weight jumped three pounds overnight after restaurant meal? What do you do? Like, tell us why that happened and what do you do? Your energy tank this week, what do you check? You've been in a deficit for 12 weeks and progress all of a sudden stalled. Well, what are your options? Right. And these are the diagnostic questions I would ask to get to an answer to help someone on a coaching call. But we actually have exercises to help you do that for yourself. And then week 25, you're gonna take your measurements, you're gonna compare everything to your starting point, you're gonna write a story about your own transformation. So, this is how did your identity reveal itself to what it is today? What changed? What did you learn? What surprised you? Actually, writing it down. So again, these are all things you could do on your own, guys. I'm explaining our program, but also telling you the roadmap so that any of these things that resonate, like, oh my gosh, I've never actually written down my story of success to learn something from it and then and then also motivate myself. And then finally, the final week is you're gonna choose what's next. You can choose, am I going to you know implement more of this phase? Am I gonna go to a new phase? Do I need to step it up to a new goal? Do I want to compete? You know, all those kinds of things. Like there is really no endpoint, there's just a next level, a next level and a next level after that. All right, before I share detail, share details on how to get started with this plan, I do want to remind you stick around because I've got a 60-second protein

    Philip Pape: 31:36

    audit that I promised you. But if you want to follow this exact 26 roadmap, 26-week roadmap today with the exact instructions and exercise and guidance, as well as automated tools and of course human coaching. That is what Eat More Lift Heavy is for. So you'll have two coaches, you'll have a 26-week phased experience. Each week unlocks, I'll say teachable moments, but also specific actions to take that are achievable week by week. You're gonna get a training program assigned from day one, monthly live coaching calls, and the community that can help you with that accountability. It's not a Facebook, it's not a social media thing. It is a let's get the work done thing. The program starts March 30th. Founder pricing is still available right now through March 29th. Go to eatmore liftheavy.com. And if you lock it in, you're gonna have that price forever. It's quite a big discount from the public price. Go to eatmoreliftheavy.com. That's eatmorliftheavy.com. We also have spots available in the dialed in tier, which is a little bit higher tier that includes personal coaching from me and Coach Carroll, a private telegram chat, uh, form checks,

    Philip Pape: 32:43

    weekly and monthly reviews of your data. So it's asynchronous, very personalized coaching in that tier, but we have limited spots. Go to eatmoreliftheavy.com. If you see the option to select dialed in, that means we have some spots left. So go ahead and select that if you want it. Eatmoriftheavy.com, link in the show notes. All right. Here is the fastest way to find out if protein is the thing holding back your body composition. Tonight at dinner, I want you to look at your plate visually and estimate how many grams of protein are on it. Okay. Then I want you to think about your breakfast and lunch. Are any of these meals below 30 grams per meal? Are any of them below 30 grams per meal? Not because that's a magic threshold, although there is some evidence related to muscle protein synthesis, but because that's a practical limit where you need about that much each meal to get the protein for the day for most people's goals. Now, most people who are tracking protein are not even hitting their daily daily total, let alone people who aren't tracking protein. And usually it's because you're loading it into one or two big meals, usually dinner and maybe lunch, and then falling short at the others. You'll see like, you know, 10 grams of breakfast, if that, maybe 20 at lunch, and then you try to make up for it at dinner with the 60 grams. And it just doesn't work well from a consistency standpoint, from a hitting your protein standpoint, but then there's other factors like it affects your hunger, and you often miss your protein by doing it this way, especially if you miss a meal or you don't get quite enough in the earlier

    Philip Pape: 34:13

    meals. So, simple audit. I want you to check your last three meals and just find the one that is consistently the lowest. It's usually breakfast. That's your gap meal that you start with. I want you to fix that one meal, find the swaps to get it over 30 grams. I think you'll see a huge difference in recovery, in satiety, in body composition when you do that. And again, for most of you, that's gonna be breakfast. That's it. Simple protein audit, just to remind you, let's start with the weakest meal and jack that protein up, then go to the next one, jack it up, and pretty soon you'll be, you'll be rolling. All right, until next time, keep using your wits, lifting those weights. And remember, the best transformation isn't the fastest one. It's the one that teaches you how to never need a transformation again. I'm Philip Pape, and I'll talk to you next time here on the Wits and Weights podcast.

Featured

Ready for the Next Step?

Read More
Interviews Philip Pape Interviews Philip Pape

Why "Listening to Your Body" Kept Her Stuck for Years (Cori Lefkowith) | Ep 452

Can macro tracking actually create food freedom? What if the structure you’ve been avoiding is the exact thing that helps you lose fat, build muscle, and stop starting over? I’m joined by Cori Lefkowith, founder of Redefining Strength, certified trainer, former Division I athlete, and powerlifting champion, to unpack why macros, nutrition, and strength training are powerful tools for body recomp when used the right way. 

Can macro tracking actually create food freedom? What if the structure you’ve been avoiding is the exact thing that helps you lose fat, build muscle, and stop starting over?

I’m joined by Cori Lefkowith, founder of Redefining Strength, certified trainer, former Division I athlete, and powerlifting champion, to unpack why macros, nutrition, and strength training are powerful tools for body recomp when used the right way. 

We talk about why tracking is just data, how the “change loop” keeps people stuck in weight loss frustration, and why muscle building has to come before more restriction. Cori also shares how to use flexible tracking, non-scale victories, and a habit budget to make nutrition and fitness sustainable for real life. 

This is a practical, evidence-based fitness conversation for anyone who wants lasting progress without obsession. 

Get Fitness Lab (20% off for listeners), the #1 coaching app that adapts to YOUR recovery, YOUR schedule, and YOUR body. Build muscle, lose fat, and get stronger with daily personalized guidance.

Timestamps:

0:00 - Why tracking feels restrictive
2:08 - Cori’s mindset shift on macros
5:01 - Tracking as neutral data
8:15 - Why intuitive eating backfires
12:16 - The change loop trap
15:37 - The habit budget framework
18:44 - Muscle first for body recomp
23:33 - Handling tracking fatigue
29:27 - Aging, perimenopause, and stress
35:37 - Why there’s no perfect time

Episode resources:

  • Intro And The Tracking Myth

    Philip Pape 0:01

    You've been told that tracking your food is obsessive, that if you just listen to your body and eat intuitively, you'll find balance. And that feels right because who wants to weigh chicken on a food scale for the rest of their life? Today's guest believed all of that. She's a certified trainer, a former Division I athlete, a state powerlifting champion, and the founder of one of the fastest growing online coaching companies in the country. And for years, she avoided macro tracking because she thought it would make her relationship with food worse. She tried every other approach first. None of them stuck. When she finally gave tracking a chance, she realized that the thing she'd been avoiding was the thing that set her free. In this episode, she is going to explain why the advice to just be intuitive fails most people. What's actually happening when he feels stuck in a cycle of starting over and a simple system you can use to break out of it for good. Welcome to Wits and Waits, where in every episode we put a popular piece of fitness advice under the microscope, find the hidden reason it doesn't work, and give you the deceptively simple fix that does. I'm your host, Philip Pape, and today I'm excited to be challenging the idea that structure and tracking are the enemy of food freedom. My guest is Corey Lefkowith, founder of Redefining Strength, where she coaches women through sustainable nutrition and strength training. Her company has made the Inc. 5000 list in back-to-back years, and she has a brand new book called The Strong System, a science-backed toolkit to keep you on track. Corey spent years actively resisting macro tracking before becoming one of its biggest advocates. And that 180 is the foundation of what we're talking about. So by the end, you're going to understand why just listen to your body often backfires. For most people who are trying to lose fat or build muscle, what the change loop is, she has an interesting framework that is going to help you out, how to recognize when you're trapped in the change loop and how a six-step system can turn tracking from a chore into a tool that you actually want to use. Corey, thanks for coming on Wits and Weights.

    Cori Lefkowith 2:08

    Thanks for having me. Super excited to dive in.

    Philip Pape 2:11

    What I love about your story is that you have the open mind to have learned through your own journey of, hey, you know, in the past you would coach people on nutrition and fitness and telling them maybe you don't need to track macros. And there's definitely a dichotomous kind of thinking out in the fitness industry, which sometimes is its own trap, right? Like the black and white thinking. So, you know, did you truly believe that at one point? How has your thinking evolved? And what did you settle on to where you are today?

    Cori Lefkowith 2:38

    Well, the internet is amazing and also slightly embarrassing when you go back and look through its archives. But I did find even proof on my blog of when I wrote about how I would never track and how tracking was too restrictive and obsessive. And when I did that, it was after an experience of actually tracking where I'd cut out all the foods I love. I felt miserable, I felt hangry, low energy. And so I really had determined from this experience that it wasn't right for me, but I completely wrote it off. And I determined that if I was eating healthy foods, that had to be enough. But then as I started to do that and recognize my progress wasn't happening the way I wanted, I sat with myself for a second and was like, okay, well, what's going on? And as I began to research, I realized what gets measured gets managed. And I didn't really have any clue of the portions I was eating. And I don't know about you, you, but like peanut butter and that portion, that is not the actual serving size on the jar. So just gonna throw that out there. But I was not measuring it out and my portions were very distorted. And so I decided that I was just gonna log what I was currently doing. And through just logging without making any changes, I began to realize that tracking was just data. I assigned all meaning to it and determined to make a choice to cut stuff out to restrict to a point where I felt hangry. And I say hangry because it was hungry and angry. Hungry isn't just enough. It's the low energy too that comes with that restriction often. So I began to realize that tracking was just a tool and it was a tool to fuel better. So there was that evolution and it's amazing to find, but I think it's also not only recognizing the habits, but the mindsets behind them that allows us to find freedom in the variations or tools or tactics that really help us move forward.

    Philip Pape 4:29

    Great frame on this, right? Because it sounds like when you originally tracked, you connected it to restriction. And really there are two separate concepts happening in parallel, which can give somebody a misaligned association, right? Which happens to us all the time as human beings. And you just said it's a tool that can be used, it's a tool that can be misused. And how you track is important. What I did like one specific thing you said is your idea of portions was distorted until you tracked. And I did an episode not long ago. You guys can find it in the feed about developing intuitive eating skills. And one fact I mentioned is that even the most expert, you know, nutritionists, dietitians, coaches are typically off about 20%, but even with the skill, they're off by 20%. Without the skill, it's 40, 60, 80, 200% off. You know, who knows? So when we have that belief that tracking is disordered, where does that come from? Is it exactly like your situation, or is there something like in the evidence we know that this association has developed, even though it's not reality?

    Tracking As Neutral Data

    Cori Lefkowith 5:30

    I think it all comes back to mindsets. There is not a one size fits all approach to anything. I mean, and the more we see the nuance in things, the more we can allow ourselves to be able to use different tools and tactics at different stages of life. But it's recognizing that you can be obsessive without tracking. I know lots of people, and I've worked with lots of clients who come into tracking because they need to eat more and giving themselves that clear evidence that they can eat more, that they should eat more, that they can include foods they love, really helps them release some of the obsessive tendencies they already have because we can get very restrictive without even like having that thing that we're weighing and measuring. We can decide that foods have to be off limits, that they're evil, that they're bad for us, and we assign moral value. So obsession is a mindset, it is not inherent in a tool or tactic. But we do often use things in a way that then creates that association. And it's really key we recognize that because when I even say that tracking, and I actually believe that tracking in some form is right for everybody, that means vastly different things for people. It can mean just writing down what you're eating, it can be writing down emotions on how you felt with the food, but you need some form of data to give yourself that ability to step back because we are very bad at remembering things and feelings play a huge role. And to slightly go back to the intuitive eating thing, one of the most eye-opening things early on in my coaching career was not only my personal experience with tracking, but I had a client and she was on a weight loss journey and I was having her track macros. And we encountered somebody when we were out who said to her, I can't believe you track. Just eat intuitively, listen to your body. And she was like, Well, my body tells me intuitively that I want to go eat that whole pint of ice cream in the fridge when I get home from work and it's been a stressful day. And with that moment, you could see the other person sort of be like, Oh, because there isn't this recognition that we're each coming at food from a different upbringing or a different perspective on it. And some of us have trained ourselves to emotionally eat because that has solved the feelings in the moment. And that pattern is so ingrained that we don't even sometimes realize we're replicating it until after we've done it. So that tracking can help bring that awareness and recognize when we're eating out of intuition in a way that we've just trained our body to respond.

    Philip Pape 7:39

    Yeah, and that makes a lot of sense because those signals that people just assume you have become more and more dysregulated and dysfunctional and with certain behaviors like chronic restriction, right? Because you're talking about fueling and but chronic restriction, let alone eating disorders and such, which makes it even worse, where it's just completely dysregulated that connection. And some of it is neurological too, with the between that and your hormones, when we talk about all the types of hunger. So one thing you mentioned that's very powerful is that your system of tracking itself can be so flexible. Like when we talk about flexible eating or flexible dieting, it's not just macros, it's, you know, the way you're tracking. So what I'm interested before we go on is in your past, when you weren't quite on the side of full-on tracking, were there things you, in hindsight, did find successful that may not fit in the tracking window? Does that make sense? Like, are there things you still carry to you to this day that are disconnected from tracking that helped you and still help you with food, let's say?

    Cori Lefkowith 8:39

    You know, this is a question I've never asked myself, but I would honestly say no.

    Philip Pape 8:43

    Okay.

    Why Intuitive Eating Backfires

    Cori Lefkowith 8:44

    Because I think in some way you always are tracking. You're keeping a log of what you've done. Like even if you think about the mindsets and the confidence you have, it's a log of proof that if you've stacked one way or the other. When you don't trust yourself to go into a program again to make changes, that's because of proof you feel you've stacked. So in some way, we're always tracking everything mentally, whether or not we're aware of it. And so I think what happened before is that I would track my food by having specific foods I deemed healthy to eat, but I was still sort of tracking what I was doing. It was just from the framework of having good and bad foods, which for me honestly led to more obsession and restriction and more starting over again because I would ultimately want some food that I had labeled as bad. For me, the the stricter macro cycling and tracking actually allowed more food freedom because I worked in those foods, saw that they could be a balance. And when I want to balance in a little more fun foods, I switch how I'm tracking. So maybe it's a more minimalist approach, only watching protein and calories, or maybe I'm taking pictures just to make sure my portions are somewhat in line and to allow myself to really understand am I feeling full or am I not feeling full? If I'm not feeling full, am I not feeling full because I had more processed foods that might not have, you know, really made me feel full so that the hunger cue is still there. You know, I would say we're always tracking whether or not we realize it.

    Philip Pape 10:06

    That's a great way to put it. So then can you systemize your tracking to make it work for you? Is really the goal. You know, we all have bank accounts and there's some level of tracking going on, but some people don't think about it and they spend, spend, spend, and then before long they're like, oh no, I don't have any more money. I need to use a credit card. Others, you know, may track every single expense and use budgeting software. Um, and I and I spent like a weekend not long ago doing that for my business and saying, oh no, I need to cut out a bunch of expenses. But sometimes you need that next level. You need to level up the amount that you're scrutinizing and using that data. So what is it about logging that I guess threatens people that I would suspect is emotional about all of this? I mean, you kind of alluded to it here and there, but do you see today one or two big buckets where people still resist when you say, no, this is gonna do it for you?

    Cori Lefkowith 10:52

    I think a lot is tied to our past experiences with it, where when you have a bad experience with something, you're not gonna want to do it again. I also think that we have to recognize that when we say tracking, the mental pushback we get is against the form that we envision first. And so we don't like to make changes because we're only comfortable being uncomfortable in certain ways. And generally the changes we're resisting are discomfort in a different way. And we do see that data as judgment because we instantly place judgment on ourselves. We know we are not doing the things we feel we should, and so therefore we see it as a negative. So I always like to start people with just tracking what they're currently doing. Hey, you're not trying to make changes, you're not trying to judge, you're just seeing what you're doing. Because maybe they're the changes you think you need to make, you don't actually need to make. Maybe you need to eat more, not less. And that is honestly the biggest relief because you start to separate out the emotions from like the tool a little bit. But we so often just go into something wanting to make changes and trying to make these sweeping overhauls that it's not the tracking, it's the overhauls that are really getting us, but it gets the association anyway. So I would say the mental hang up really does come back to the discomfort of something new and outside what we've always done. Because we push ourselves into pain. It's just pain we're okay with. And then it's recognizing, like, hey, how can I do this in a way that doesn't get that mental pushback to start?

    The Change Loop Explained

    Philip Pape 12:16

    Yeah, that makes sense. So the form we envision using most is usually what comes to our head, is what you said, which sometimes makes us repel against this idea until you realize, no, there are multiple ways to do it, and let's do it and take a baby step of letting it show us what's happening, what's reality, what's your baseline, rather than going to the next step. And that's super, super revealing. I totally agree. So you talk about something called the change loop, which is a cycle of you try something new, they get some results, but then they hit a wall or a plateau, uh, then they quit, right? Or switch to another program or the next shiny object. And I'm assuming you went through this yourself many times in your past. Tell us about that change loop, how you recognize it, like why it's important to understand that pattern, so then we can do something about it.

    Cori Lefkowith 13:01

    I did the starting over Monday for far too long. And I think a lot of people can sympathize with that. But then I recognize I am never starting over. You are stuck with everything you have done prior. And that sounds really negative, and I don't mean it to be, because you're also stuck in a positive way with the lessons you've learned if you really reflect on everything that's happened. But that's why when someone will ask me, like, how long is it between X photo and X photo in this transformation? I'm like, my entire life. And so when I started to really recognize this pattern of constantly starting over, I recognize the emotions that went with it. We get really excited for a new program because we've hit this point of like the pain of change, like just is worth anything, right? To us, right? Because the pain of staying stuck just stinks so bad. We are not liking where we are. So we get really excited with a program promise, something that says it's like new, exciting, whatever else. And so we go all in. But in going all in, we never reflected on who and what we are, what habits have sabotaged us in the past, any of our realistic lifestyle, right? We just go for this ideal we see. Hey, this woman looks lean. I'm gonna do that program. That's right for me. We get super excited by it, do all the habits, and we hit like that habit overload where you start to be like, okay, I'm doing all these things, you know, I can do two-a-da workouts, I can cut out the dessert I love, I don't have to have the wine. And then, you know, like at the end of the week, you weigh in, you're like, okay, I lost some weight. I think I can do this. And then another week goes by and maybe the scale doesn't go down or even goes up, and you're like, what the heck am I doing? Why am I doing this? Right. And so that's where we hit the habit overload leading to emotional sabotage, where I also call this the flat tire rule, uh, where it doesn't feel worth it. It's Friday night. You're like, forget everything. You go pour the glass of wine, and then you pull out the box of cookies, and one cookie becomes like 10, especially if you're me or the pint of ice cream. I prefer ice cream. But it just is this whole downward spiral. And it's basically what I call the flat tire rule because you get a flat tire, right? You don't get the results you want. Maybe you even do have the wine, but instead of stopping there, you pull over to the side of the road. Instead of fixing the flat, you slash the other three tires, maybe even light the car on fire and walk away. But you spiral a lot more than you need to. And then there's the guilt. This is part of that emotional sabotage because so often, if we just stop at the event instead of making ourselves feel guilty, we wouldn't fall off and quit for multiple more weeks. But that's what we do. And then we end up getting to a point where we are so not happy with the situation, but we're also so not trusting ourself that all we can do is hope that the next thing will be the thing. And so that's where we repeat the pattern. And the only way to break it is to ultimately like sit with ourselves and say, why does this keep happening? Is it the same point? Is it how I'm doing the habits? But it's that self-awareness we need to build because there is no perfect plan. And the more we keep trying to go on a plan or fall off a plan and see it that way versus seeing ourselves as a plan, the more we just keep ourselves stuck.

    Philip Pape 16:00

    So I have two follow-ups to some things you just said. So on habit overload, and you kind of alluded to the fact that if you're trying to do a lot of things and then you make a little progress, but then you stop making progress, it kind of correlates with those speed bumps. So do you have like a framework of, hey, literally one habit at a time for a certain amount of time before you go to the next, like a stacking framework that you suggest to people? Or is it a little more individualized?

    The Habit Budget For Consistency

    Cori Lefkowith 16:27

    Well, the more individualized, always the better. But I think what the thing comes back to is that self-assessment of effort and outcome. I like to think of it as the habit budget. And it was funny that you brought up money before because I do think of it as like, what are you putting into yourself to invest that gives you more energy, less stress, more ability to do more things? And then what is taking out from your self-control? And this is a lot of different things. And I don't think it's one set time of like 21 days, 45 days, whatever it is. I think it's more when that budget gets out of balance that we start to see that real pushback or habit overload. So if you're making changes in January, where maybe the holiday wake-in has you, you're feeling a little blah, you know, it's not a time where you're traveling, you're like, okay, I have an ideal time, like work's not busy, whatever else. So you can make changes based on that time. Maybe it is working out six days a week, maybe it is truly tracking macros intensively. And you start those habits and you have enough in your savings to really budget for them. But then you see the summer come, or for some people, it might be all the way to the holidays, or some it might be, you know, their birthday, like just in February, whatever it is, we have that time where all of a sudden stress or lifestyle shifts. And maybe we're not putting as much into savings, we're not doing as much for ourselves in terms of like the self-care, or maybe work stressors increase or family life changes. And all of a sudden, the habits that felt within budget no longer do, even though they didn't change. The effort didn't really change, but the feeling of effort did. And we have to recognize when that shifts, because when that shifts, if we don't evolve those habits or see what else we can adjust in our outside life, that's where we end up saying, forget everything, I'm done.

    Muscle First And Smarter Metrics

    Philip Pape 18:09

    Yeah, that's resilience, at least, at least in my opinion, that's what came to me was that ability to stretch the rubber band and let it come back rather than break when time gets hard. You know, planning for the worst case, let's say you could either run in such a way where you're always behind paycheck to paycheck, which maybe we think about that as the budget you just mentioned, or also even our calories, let's be honest, where you're kind of always on fumes and or you can like focus on muscle and focus on fuel and like pay yourself first. Again, thinking in money terms, like take out the profit and the owner's pay first, which is like taking care of yourself and then seeing what's left. So when we talk about fuel and adding things in and building muscle and all that, I know that's like in your bailiwick, right? Where does that sit in all of this, even from day one? Like as you're starting to do an audit with someone or habit assessment, how are these conversations going, Corey, with regards to building muscle? Because there's so many fears and like myths around that, especially for women, for example.

    Cori Lefkowith 19:05

    Most of us do come into wanting to make healthy lifestyle changes because we want to lose weight. I know for me, like out of college, I did want to perform a certain way. I was into like lifting and building muscle, but a big journey into macros was because I had decided, you know, I want to see body recomp. I want to lose fat, I want to get lean. And in that process, I recognized that if I actually wanted to stay lean, not only did I have to recognize there were more phases to fat loss than just the constant cutting, but I recognized that muscle was everything. And if we start with a focus on muscle, everything else is gonna happen because you're gonna see improvements in your health, which is gonna make your body more efficient, which is gonna lead to fat loss. And while it's not sexy to think about it in that way, the reason you feel like things work, but nothing has actually worked long term is because you're approaching it as fat loss first over building muscle first. And those practices have often made us lose muscle in the process and trying to weigh less, but they've also adapted our metabolism. And if you think about your metabolism as like all the lights on your house being on to start, and then with your dieting practices, maybe with age, some have dimmed, some have been turned off. You can go turn them back on. But it means giving your house the energy so that it can do that. And so you have to fuel to build that lean muscle. And in the process of building that lean muscle and all the processes regulating back because they've potentially downregulated in order to survive off the calories you're consuming and the training that you're doing, you'll see yourself actually building that muscle and losing fat and seeing the recomp happen. Of course, it's not a fun process and often takes far longer than we want. And it's really challenging, especially mentally, because you often at first see the reverse of what you want to have happen actually happen.

    Philip Pape 20:47

    Yeah, you see maybe a little bit of extra weight gain, you carry a little more fluid, you maybe even gain a little bit of fat. And you're right, this kind of messaging is everywhere because it's important because it leads to the other question I was going to ask you, which is about these what you're measuring from the beginning. Because we mentioned nutrition, okay, that makes sense, but you also mentioned weight, which involves the scale. And, you know, we know that the scale can be helpful, but definitely it out of context can be very dangerous in the wrong hands in terms of how it's interpreted. So given muscle and fuel and no longer restricting and having a flexible diet, and all these are important, what are the basic things that people should be measuring and not paying attention to as well, at least early on?

    Cori Lefkowith 21:30

    It really does depend on your goal, because if your goal is gaining muscle, I'm probably gonna tell someone to just chuck the scale out or put it in the in their closet for a little bit just because you can't really watch it. Because often you will even be building muscle before you lose fat. And yes, your glycogen stores are gonna be full because your body thinks it's in a calorie surplus as it adapts. But we measure a lot what we like to call NSVs or non scale victories. And so we have reflection sheets not only on are you doing the habit consistently? Because I think a lot of times we don't notice our own inconsistencies. And then we get really frustrated, we're putting in a lot of effort for things not to snowball. But we want to measure progress in other ways because that's really the signals often before we reach our goal that things are working. So is your sleep improving? As you're increasing calories, are your nails growing? Is your hair growing? Are you fidgeting more? We want to make note of all the different ways that we can see those habits paying off to know that we're on the right track because we see a lot of those signals well before our ultimate goal. And then I do think body measurements, progress pictures can be very helpful to track progress. But the more ways you measure success, the more ways you give yourself to be successful. So you got to measure progress outside of your ultimate goal. And I even think setting complementary targets is really important. So if you're going after weight loss, you want to think about a performance goal in the gym. You want to think a habit consistency goal. You want to think about outside challenges that you know will keep you in the habits that ultimately pay off with if you're going after the scale change, the scale change.

    Philip Pape 22:56

    That's great. And you just said complementary metrics. So again, digging in one more layer, does that mean that the suite of metrics can change quite a bit from person to person? Not even one person from goal to goal, but literally like this person may need to have these three things on their list at most of the time, even for the rest of their lives. And this person over here is these three other things. I'm curious, like how that comes up.

    Cori Lefkowith 23:21

    Oh, it definitely does. Like each season of our life is going to be different. And if you're trying to work towards a muscle-building goal, you're going to have to work, like let go of some of the habits that you did to lose fat. And so you have to track then progress in different ways. But it really depends. Like I always start with clients with getting an accurate assessment of where they are. What aren't you happy with in your life right now? What have you struggled to do in the past? What do you feel like has sabotaged you in programs? Like, where would you like to see improvements in your life outside of the weight that you want to lose? And when we do that, we can often find little things that I like to call sort of pulling on the thread that unravels everything, where we know things that will be signals that things aren't paying off the way we want or habits have started to slide. So if a client comes in saying, My sleep is just horrible, as we're making changes, if we start to notice their sleep is bad again, we'll yes, look at outside stressors, but say, Hey, have things changed in how you're doing your meal timing? Are you starting to try to do too much in your workouts? Are you adding more somewhere? But we'll find the little ways of measuring progress that are key to them and how they want to feel in everyday life and use those as those checkpoints throughout. Because we don't do well with forever. We we need some sort of end date in our head. And so by even saying, hey, I'm gonna check in with myself every few weeks on these other things and do a more deep dive reflection, we give ourselves that point at which we're assessing our lifestyle to make tweaks because it's fun to adjust. We should always be growing. And creating a lifestyle doesn't mean you're doing one thing. So I do like to set those things forever because I think we all need those little boundaries or buffers. Otherwise, we get those 1% deviations that just completely pull us off course.

    Philip Pape 24:58

    So the tension here that I feel, and I've seen this in my own clients, is the ones that then start adopting this mindset and doing the tracking and learning from it. And then they get all the wins and they start to progress. And then six months or year down, they've they've really made a big improvement. And now they hit this other wall that I've noticed, right? Which is a little bit of a new tracking fatigue wall where you're almost like bored because things are going well and you're tracking the same things over and over again and you're looking for a little bit of something different. So it's almost like this longer-term tracking fatigue. Have you seen that phenomenon?

    Cori Lefkowith 25:29

    Yeah, and that's where you want to almost proactively assess and address that. So like I know it during the holidays, I get tracking fatigue in the way that I do it in January. I will not do it. And so I started to recognize, like, hey, I can't force the same habits. So proactively now going into the holidays, I come up with a different game plan. So when a client starts to say, like, oh, this doesn't feel worth it, or well, I deserve just one, you know, like this is just like a bite, lick a nibble, it doesn't matter, right? And you start to see that excuse creep like creep in, you got to recognize that is self-sabotage starting to happen. And so at this point, while we struggle to do less, it is a time to do less to ultimately move forward more consistently. So as you feel that sort of pain pushback, that fatigue with the habits you're doing, uh a desire to do something new, do something new. Just do it with strategy and intention. Because if you're controlling it in that way, you're not going to end up doing something that's going to derail you, right? If tracking full macrocycles like protein, carbs, and fats is feeling like too much, why not just track protein? Or why not say, hey, I'm feeling fatigued with my meals and this full tracking because there's other things I want. How can I work this in? Like I love to say, like, how can I get away with more stuff, right? Can I work out a little bit less because right now I just don't feel energized to go six days a week and get away with that, so to speak? Can I include more foods that I love? Can I go out to eat more? Or can I adjust the way I'm doing some of the habits that really match what I need now? But proactively like evolving and adapting the habits is so key because we do get bored and that's why we search for something new. We just want to make sure that that doesn't make us jump ship on something that's working.

    Philip Pape 27:10

    When I hear someone say, hey, I'm going on a trip in a month, what do I do? I'm like, yes, like you're that's step one is saying, like, I need to have a structure or plan. Even if the plan is I'm not gonna track, but I'm gonna have certain guidelines or thoughts or whatever around the trip so that I enjoy it. I also thought of the idea that, you know, you can always exchange within that budget you talked about if working out six days a week and you're like, well, I'm gonna go down to three, I can get some more sleep now on those other days, right? So there's always these wonderful trade-offs that you can get. So that kind of addresses the, I guess, a little bit of a fatigue, which is probably more of a novelty and a seasonal thing that humans deal with all the time, right? And just kind of keeping it different. What about when you're actually trying to then nail in on a root cause or a bottleneck for someone? But you also said you don't want to try to do everything at once. So, how do you narrow that down? What is a good system to do that when you have all this data coming in?

    Cori Lefkowith 28:03

    Data can overwhelm us. And I say that as I have like a tracker on my wrist, but you have to understand what the data is telling you and you have to come back to who and what you are. So, with all the different habits, with all the different metrics, you have to then say, what does my lifestyle actually look like right now? And the reason I come back to that is because what feels doable for you right now. And that's where we sort of started. And when you get those wins stacking, all of a sudden you want to do more. And it's going back to even the the working out six days a week, because I think this is a great example of it. If you have six workouts on your schedule for the week and you do three, generally you kind of feel bad. Like you could say, well, I still did three, but generally we're like, oh, I only did three. Versus if you only had three workouts on your schedule for the week and you did three or four, all of a sudden you're like, I'm a rock star. It's the same three. Yes, maybe you design the workout slightly differently. So you optimize the three days a little bit better, but it's still the same time technically, and both would still count, but it's the momentum and mindset you create. So I think when we're trying to address bottlenecks, so much of it isn't just a tool or tactic that we're looking for. It's the mindsets and lifestyle that we need to address underlying it. Because a perfect plan, if something it's not something we can do consistently, it really doesn't matter versus imperfect changes done consistently are going to add up far faster.

    Tracking Fatigue And Seasonal Plans

    Philip Pape 29:27

    For sure. The compounding effect. I mean, even a fat loss phase that that you plan out from day one, you don't know if by day two or the next week something interrupts your life or something changes. So always be ready to pivot and kind of squish it, expand it, go up and down. Like it doesn't matter. As long as you're in control of that, you'll be fine. Even if it's even day-to-day, like that, that's what I've seen. So thank you for for kind of validating that for people. This is not a fixed thing. You don't just have a plan on day one and just, you know, run with it. So then if you expand that out longer term to a decade, let's say, and or two decades, and now you're in your 30s, 40s, 50s, right? I'm sure you get the question like, my body doesn't work like it used to, my hormones are different, my recovery's not there, my joints hurt, and you know, whatever system you've put in place doesn't work either. And and I I say that with a caveat, because if they work with you, you already helped them put in a resilient system, right? But how does like say the women and the men in their 40s and 50s listening to this handle that?

    Cori Lefkowith 30:28

    Well, I'm of the suck it up buttercup mindset. And I say this not from the no pain, no gain, push-through pain type attitude, but more the give yourself agency to control what you can control. And I bring this up because guess what? As we get older, our body does change. We don't have the optimal hormone levels we once did. We aren't as efficient at a lot of processes, that's aging. But we also have to own that a lot of the things we did before that, when we thought we were a superhero and could just push through the pain and, you know, diet and eat whatever we wanted, created a lot of the situation we're in right now. And so if we created a lot of it, we can also reverse a lot of it. So life is constant evolution. And the more we own that and give ourselves back the power of choice and give ourselves the ability to really assess what we need now to move forward, the better off we're gonna be. So as we enter, you know, 40s, 50s, 60s, 70s, I have a client who just at 79, going into her 80th year, has seen amazing recon, built muscle. And it was because she decided, hey, I'm gonna train in a way that fits what I need right now. And when we truly own what we need right now and don't think about a number of years that we've been on this planet, but more, hey, do my joints feel achy? How am I fueling? What's going on with my lifestyle? Then we can start to assess and adjust because there's so much from how we fuel and even our hydration, because we don't recognize how much our hydration has an impact on our joint health, but even to our training that can really help us move forward better, but it means optimizing for our body now.

    Philip Pape 31:57

    When you think of some of the most persistent myths that people come to you with in that category of age-related body change, because I I do like the idea of like, let's not use excuses, let's have this stoic attitude toward things, like control what you can control. What are like the top two strategies in general for dealing with those kinds of challenges? So let's pick one. Let's pick perimenopause and weight loss resistance.

    Aging Perimenopause And Stress Levers

    Cori Lefkowith 32:23

    So perimenopause and the hormone shifts, it does change how you need to fuel and train. And you're gonna see a lot more variability that you have to address. But again, and I don't say like the agency, the choice as like a push through pain or just willpower your way into it because you can't. But it's more taking ownership of what you're actually seeing going on and recognizing you always have a choice. And like part of that choice is the perspective you have on what you're dealing with, right? You can see those hormone changes as you're doomed. This is just too hard, you can't handle it. Or you can choose to see the hormone changes as okay, my body is telling me these signals. How can I address them to feel most fabulous? Because if I control what I can control, it is the cycle of if you start to adjust your nutrition, you see changes in some of that hormone balance, which then impacts your sleep positively, which then allows you to make more changes, right? So it's you can get caught in that cycle. But I would tell them, like, hey, you need to really look at what changes you're seeing. Has your sleep shifted? Are you seeing more inflammation? Are you not recovering as fast? Do your joints hurt? Are you having night sweats? Like, what's going on for you? And then from there, we start to look at, well, what's the smallest change we can make that addresses the most of these things? And really, that all starts with tracking what you're currently doing because we don't recognize how much our food is not only contributing to making some of the symptoms worse, but we're not optimizing our nutrition to make some of the symptoms better. And then from there, we go into the diet and workouts. With perimenopause, we see a rise in stress, so to speak, on your body. And so because your body is more stressed and your mind might even feel more stressed, especially with other lifestyle things, you can't add more stressors on top of that, no matter how positive the stressors technically are, because working out is a stressor. Trying to adjust your diet is gonna take some mental strain. So you need to really assess those things and recognize that if you're in extreme calorie deficit, that is a stress on your body. So, how can you reduce the stress through how you're fueling and training to match what you need?

    Philip Pape 34:16

    I love it. So there's a reframe, there's the tracking to see what your biggest ROI levers are gonna be. And then, of course, you want to fuel and train to be successful. And look, anybody who says, Well, I'm not lifting weights, and you suggest it to them and they still say they're not lifting weights, I'm sorry. You got to start lifting too as part of this process at some point, right?

    Cori Lefkowith 34:34

    Yeah, but even that, like it's not even okay, well, why don't you want to lift?

    Philip Pape 34:38

    Yeah, of course.

    Cori Lefkowith 34:39

    And then how can we do strength work that maybe meets you where you are right now? Can that be bodyweight training? Can it be bands? Like, where is your resistance to this? So I want you to go research all the reasons why someone might promote this. And then I want you to give all the arguments you have against doing it and then really research why they're valid or why they're not valid. And then I want you to assess how they might be a mismatch for what you need right now. And through that, we then get to the point of okay, so what are you willing to do? And what are you willing to say is worth it for that goal, even?

    Philip Pape 35:08

    If you could only track calories or macros, what would you track?

    Cori Lefkowith 35:12

    Macros.

    Philip Pape 35:13

    What's a food rule that you used to follow that you now think is nonsense?

    Cori Lefkowith 35:17

    Carbs are bad.

    Philip Pape 35:18

    What's the hardest habit for your clients to build?

    Cori Lefkowith 35:20

    That's a good one. You know what? And maybe this is personal bias too, but drinking enough water.

    Philip Pape 35:26

    Okay.

    Cori Lefkowith 35:26

    I would say that's the hardest habit because it's so simple seeming, but it's so important. And when we think we're getting enough, we're not getting enough. The second one I was gonna go with is protein, and increasing protein is often hard.

    Philip Pape 35:37

    Yeah, it's interesting because walking comes on the list for me too. But hydration is a good one.

    Cori Lefkowith 35:42

    They're almost the things we take for granted.

    Philip Pape 35:44

    If you if you're listening to this, it's a thing that you're not doing. All right. So when we think of tracking apps, how long before someone should maybe try not using an app? And I'm talking about apps specifically, not necessarily tracking in general, but most of the time people are using apps.

    Cori Lefkowith 35:59

    I say, why go in with the mentality that you're ever gonna stop using it?

    Philip Pape 36:03

    Okay, good one, good one. And then um, let's say you are coaching yourself when you were 25.

    Cori Lefkowith 36:08

    Do less.

    Philip Pape 36:09

    Can you elaborate?

    Cori Lefkowith 36:10

    Yeah, so I would say do less because I decided that I was gonna try and out extra my diet and I ended up injured. I would also say train intentionally off of that because I would push through and not be paying attention to what I felt working, which led to a lot of injuries and my now love of prehab. So often we waste a lot of effort trying to outwork time and it's just not gonna happen. And that's also what leaves us really frustrated, feeling like the effort hasn't been worth the outcome we get. But if we do less, we're gonna create more sustainability and consistency long term, and we're probably actually gonna see results faster.

    Philip Pape 36:42

    All right. So to wrap it up, I often ask this question is there anything you wished I had asked? And what is your answer?

    Cori Lefkowith 36:48

    I would just add, with all of that we've talked about today, there is no right time to start. And when it feels really wrong to start, that's actually the right time because so often we do only try and make changes when we've deemed it the right time or the perfect time. And that's why we keep making changes and habit changes that don't stick. So I would say if now feels like the wrong time, if everything in your life is just fighting against you wanting to make changes, make one small change because if you can do minimums at the worst of times, you're gonna be able to do so much more when times are really good. And that's how we sort of level up so that we see progress over the weeks, the months, the years. It's not the best times and optimizing them. It's the 1% improvements at the worst of worst times.

    Philip Pape 37:30

    There's no right time to start. That's so good. What's the biggest excuse when is it people say they don't have enough time or this thing has come up, or like what's the biggest one they use to say it's not the right time?

    Cori Lefkowith 37:41

    Oh, there's so many specific ones, but let's let's face it, it's always life. Life is always our excuse, but life is always going to be there, right?

    Philip Pape 37:49

    All right. So this is good stuff. A lot of psychology in here, a lot of counterintuitive things that people may not have heard about why tracking could be so powerful in anything in your life. Anything, guys, not just food, not just training, but everything, finances, everything else in your life, tracking be helpful. Where can people look you up, Corey? Where can they connect with you? And we'll throw those in the show notes.

    Cori Lefkowith 38:06

    I am Redefining Strength on every platform and redefiningstrength.com. So you can find me on YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, all that jazz.

    Philip Pape 38:13

    And you guys can check Corey out. She's awesome. And you know, it's been a pleasure talking to you today on Wits and Weights. Well, thanks for having me.

Featured

Ready for the Next Step?

Read More
Interviews Philip Pape Interviews Philip Pape

Breastfeeding and Body Composition (Nursing, Lifting, and Fat Loss) | Ep 451

"Just breastfeed and the weight will fall right off." That's what every nursing mother hears. And then it's a struggle because of what's going on hormonally while you're producing milk. Philip walks through the actual research on calorie restriction during established lactation. You'll learn what's really happening with your hormones, why protein needs are 50 to 100 percent higher than the RDA suggests, why sleep may matter more for body composition than your nutrition plan, and 3 signs that tell you your approach might be too aggressive.

"Just breastfeed and the weight will fall right off." That's what every nursing mother hears. 

And then it's a struggle because of what's going on hormonally while you're producing milk.

Lactation does a few things. It suppresses estrogen to near-menopausal levels, shifts fat storage toward your midsection, and creates anabolic resistance in your muscles, all while burning 350 to 450 extra calories a day. 

One side says don't touch your nutrition until you're done breastfeeding. The other says eat in a deficit and train hard like everyone else. Both are inadequate.

Philip walks through the actual research on calorie restriction during established lactation, including the landmark New England Journal of Medicine study that showed zero effect on infant growth with a moderate deficit. You'll learn what's really happening with your hormones, why protein needs are 50 to 100 percent higher than the RDA suggests, why sleep may matter more for body composition than your nutrition plan, and 3 signs that tell you your approach might be too aggressive.

Improve your sleep quality with Cozy Earth's temperature-regulating bamboo-derived bedding and sleepwear. Deeper, more relaxing sleep makes a real difference. Get 20% off at:
https://witsandweights.com/cozyearth

Episode Resources

Timestamps

0:00 - Breastfeeding and body composition
3:55 - Two types of bad advice for nursing mothers
6:15 - Calorie restriction while nursing
9:09 - How lactation suppresses estrogen and shifts fat storage
10:45 - Anabolic resistance and insulin sensitivity during nursing
11:30 - Perimenopause and lactation
12:15 - Oxytocin as a cortisol buffer
14:17 - Sleep quality while nursing
16:38 - Nutrition, protein, and calorie floors for nursing mothers
21:00 - Why sleep deprivation prevents fat loss
23:26 - NEAT and practical movement tips
25:53 - Eat more and lift heavy
27:47 - 3 signs your deficit is too aggressive while nursing

  • Philip Pape: 00:00

    What do you do if you are breastfeeding, but you also care about body composition post-pregnancy? You've probably gotten mixed messages like don't touch your diet while nursing, or just eat less and move more like everyone else. These are all incomplete prescriptions, then they often ignore what's happening inside your body while you're producing milk. Today I'm going to walk through the hormonal and metabolic picture of a nursing mother, what the research says about when and how it's safe to adjust your nutrition, and three signs that tell you if you've pushed too far, because of course the priority is always your baby and your health first, and then your physique goals second. Welcome to Wits and Weights, the show that puts a popular piece of fitness advice under the microscope, finds the hidden reason it doesn't work, and gives you the deceptively simple fix that does. I'm your host, Philip Pape, and today's episode was inspired by a listener question. It's one of the best that I've gotten in a while. Katie S wrote in she's 42 years old, 5'2, nursing her nine-month-old, which is her eighth baby. She's been lifting for about three years. She hits her protein most days, and she's watching her body slowly change. She's at about 145 pounds, which is 20 pounds above what used to be her normal weight. But her goal is not to get back to 124. It's more like 130 because she's accounting for some of that muscle that she's built. And Katie, if you're listening, that right there is what tells me that you are thinking about this correctly because you are not chasing a number from 10 years ago. You're building a different body for a different time of life. And what you described, losing five pounds during a winter illness and then seeing muscle definition emerge because the muscle was already there underneath shows me that you were going through body recomp, right? It is happening. And sometimes that's very hard to see. I just had a client call where she had lost 1.2 pounds, but within that was about six or seven pounds of fat loss and about four or five pounds of muscle gain. So sometimes it's hard to see that because it's it's slow enough that it doesn't always feel like progress when you're living it day to day. Now, quick note before we go further: I am not a doctor, I'm not a lactation consultant. Nothing in this episode replaces working with those experts. What I am is someone who reads research. I coach women through these situations. Yes, I'm a husband. Yes, I have children as well. And I care about these things. I care about all the women in my life, no matter who they are. And I think breastfeeding is an important topic. I think we need to talk about these things and understand what's happening with the body. I've worked with women pre and post-pregnancy, those who lift up to very late in term, and then even right after. One of my friends and former clients, she probably knows who she is listening to the show, you know, won a powerlifting meet just a few months after being uh having her child. So everything I'm gonna share today is grounded in peer-reviewed evidence. I'll be specific about where it's strong and where it's not so strong. But if you have, you know, specific medical concerns about your milk supply, your hormones, your baby's growth, please, please work with your healthcare team on that. Um, and then stick around to the end because after the main content, I am gonna share three quick signs that tell you whether your nutrition approach is too aggressive for nursing. These are simple things you can check this week. They'll give you some real-time feedback on whether your body is handling the adjustment well so that you know this before you make any changes. So here's what we're gonna cover today. First, why the two main camps of advice for nursing mothers tend to miss the mark in different ways. Second, what's actually happening hormonally, metabolically while you're breastfeeding, and why that tends to change the equation for things like muscle, fat storage, and even, of course, your recovery. And third, I'll give you some practical tips for supporting your body composition while protecting your milk supply and your health, because the order of those priorities does matter. And we're gonna try to get that right for you. All right, let's get into it.

    Philip Pape: 03:55

    So you are a woman who's nursing, or maybe you plan to nurse, or you wanna, you know somebody who's nursing, you want to share this with them. You care about how you look and how you feel. You do want to get back to some level of, you know, feeling like yourself again, let's say. Although having a baby is is an incredible experience in its own right. And please don't be so hard on yourself, ladies. But that's easy for me to say as a guy, right? I get it. So you've probably run into different messages on social media, and they tend to be in opposition, but kind of two sides of the same coin. The first one is that you shouldn't mess with your diet while you're breastfeeding, that your baby needs every calorie, just wait till you're done nursing, then worry about your body. And it sounds protective and responsible, right? You're trying to nurse and bring up a human being and help them grow really quickly, you know, quickly compared to when they get older, right? Because babies consume a lot and grow very fast. Um, so it comes from a real place of love. And in that first six to eight weeks postpartum, your supply is being established. There's all the new habits and the bond with your baby. Any significant calorie restriction can genuinely interfere with milk production. That part is totally true. And then during that early window, the the absolute right call for most women is you got to eat enough and you have to focus on your recovery and let your body do what it needs to do and just focus on the baby, focus on that bonding, focus on that, you know, your milk supply and all that, because you've gone through what amounts to kind of a trauma, right? Having gone through pregnancy. But then those same people, they take that legitimate early postpartum caution and then they stretch it across the entire duration of breastfeeding, which could be a year, two years, or longer. I mean, we have two daughters. Our first um had trouble getting enough from breast milk because she would spit up a lot, so we supplemented with formula. And so she didn't breastfeed for too long, maybe up to a year max. And our second went almost two years because she was, you know, she was drinking it up and growing from it, and that's all she needed. And then we started to add in food when the time was right in addition to the breast milk. So it can be quite a long time. So, you know, the first few months, as we just said, are super important to focus on the recovery in the milk supply. But then after that, we could start looking at these other approaches. The evidence just doesn't support a blanket prohibition that far out. There was a landmark study published in the New England Journal of Medicine by Love Lady and colleagues. What a nice name, Love Lady. 40 overweight exclusively breastfeeding women were randomized to either a 500 calorie-a-day deficit with exercise four times a week, or the control group. And they started this at four weeks postpartum. So the diet plus exercise group lost about 4.8 kilograms over 10 weeks, and there was no effect on infant growth. None at all. Another group went even more aggressive here, imposing a 35% deficit for 11 days in exclusively breastfeeding women. Again, no adverse effects on milk volume, milk composition, prolactin levels, or infant weight. So the idea that a calorie restriction during established lactation, right? You've gotten to the point where you've had a baseline of successful established lactation that it's going to hurt your baby, that is not supported by the research in well-nourished women. Now that distinction matters. You have to have established lactation, adequate total intake, and be well-nourished. Not close to postpartum, not extreme restriction of your diet, not malnourished. Now, the other camp, camp two here, has the opposite problem, I'll say, where they give generic postpartum body composition advice. You've heard of this, like just eat in a deficit, train hard, track your macros, same as everyone else. And that might work fine for some women, but it ignores the pretty significant hormone and metabolic shifts, right? Shifts in your metabolism that happen during lactation. Because what's happening? Your estrogen is suppressed, your prolactin is elevated, your body's allocating hundreds of calories a day to producing milk. Your sleep is probably terrible. And these definitely change the whole equation for how aggressive you can be, like it would anybody, but in your case, you've got these specific pressures and it changes these, changes what your protein needs are. It changes what your body does with the calorie deficit. You know, the calories in an equation can change drastically. And so treating a nursing mother's body the same as a non-nursing body is just sloppy. It's it's the generalization and oversimplification that so many people get into, even when they mean well. But honestly, I don't think you mean too well if you don't get to that next level. Now, if you're nursing in your say late 30s or 40s, so we're getting to, I hate the term geriatric pregnancy, right? It seems crazy at that age. But you know, as we as you get closer to that, you know, menopause age and you're but you're you're nursing, there's like another layer of stuff to deal with where perimenopause is entering the picture and you have these two different hormonal states clashing together. And I don't think that's been studied at all, to be honest, but we are gonna talk a little bit about that. So those are the camps that we have. That's where the advice is coming from as a baseline. If we look at you know what's generally discussed out there. But I

    Philip Pape: 09:09

    want to actually go into the next topic here, which is what's happening in your body, what's going on with hormones? Okay, when you're breastfeeding, especially when it's frequent breastfeeding, all you know, you you it's a it's a common thing for you, your body is suppressing the estrogen. You've got prolactin is high. That's that's what drives the milk production. The elevated prolactin shuts down normal hormonocycline. So your estradiol drops to somewhere around four to 47 picograms per milliliter, if you were to look at it on the lab. Whereas a normal premenopausal woman is like up at 30 to 400, right? Quite a bit higher. A breastfeeding woman who doesn't have her period, so we call that amenorrheic, can be sitting at like as low as four picograms per milliliter. And that's comparable to a postmenopausal woman. So your progesterone is basically zero because you're not ovulating. And hormonally, a nursing mother's body looks like a menopausal body in terms of estrogen status. And that that's whatever age you are, whether you're 28 or 42 or whatever, that the lactation hormones do all that. Now, why does all this matter? Why is a dude on Wits and Weights talking about this? Okay, a few reasons. First of all, we've never talked about this, and so this is like a definitive episode on this. Low estrogen shifts fat storage toward your midsection. Okay, we know this is a challenge for post for perimenopause, right? It causes menobelly, that it's a popular term. Research shows that when estrogen drops, whether from menopause or from lactation, you're going to preferentially deposit visceral fat. So if your body shape feels like it's changing during breastfeeding, if you're carrying more around the middle than you used to, that's probably a real thing. There's an actual hormonal mechanism behind that. And I know that's tough when you've just had a baby and you're trying to lose that belly weight, but now it seems to be counteracting it. Low estrogen also creates anabolic resistance. Your muscles become less responsive to the signals that drive that muscle growth, like your training and your protein. This means you probably need more protein, maybe more per meal, more per day, for the same muscle protein synthesis response. And then your insulin sensitivity can be affected because lactation adds insulin resistance to support milk production. And then that tilts the metabolism toward fat storage as well. So combined with low estrogen, your body's in a state where it is prioritizing the baby's energy supply. And that makes total sense, right? From an evolutionary standpoint, your body's doing its job, but it means you just can't follow standard advice and think it's going to work. Now, if you're nursing in your late 30s or 40s, there's that second layer I mentioned. We talked about estrogen, estrogen fluctuating wildly irregular cycles, you know, your progesterone's declining. And then that combines with the lactation stuff going on. And now you have this like deeper, more sustained, low estrogen state than either of those would create on their own. And I don't I don't know that this has been studied directly. I'm gonna be honest about that. I think any recommendation for a woman who is simultaneously nursing and perimenopausal is probably extrapolated from like adjacent research, right? Not not direct studies for that population, which is a problem in women's health in general, as we know. There is a bright spot here. I always like to find the silver linings here. Every time you nurse, your body releases oxytocin. Oxytocin suppresses cortisol and lowers blood pressure. This is the this is the one released because of the bond with your baby, right? It's the motherhood coming out. It even have even fathers can have an impact when you're with your baby. That's why they like all the touching and being close, you know, right after the baby's born. So after about six weeks of breastfeeding, this buffer on your stress persists. Even six weeks after of breastfeeding, even between feedings. So the breastfeeding is giving you some protection against the cortisol-driven visceral fat storage that sleep, you know, sleep deprivation and the stress you have would otherwise cause. So it kind of gives you a little bit of an advantage there. One more thing worth knowing is that extended breastfeeding seems to delay menopause onset. Uh, data from the nurses' health study found that women who breastfed 25 or more months total had AMH levels. That's like your ovarian reserve, like a marker of your ovarian reserve, how many eggs you have? It's about 39% higher than those who breastfed less. So, our listener who wrote in, Katie, with your history, your perimenopausal symptoms could be partly lactation-driven and partly reversible once you wean off. It doesn't change what you're doing now, but it's it's worth knowing that context. So, when we summarize it all together, what do you have? You have suppressed estrogen, elevated prolactin, some insulin resistance, tendency to store more fat in your belly, anabolic resistance in your muscles, but also a built-in buffer against the stress, the cortisol from because of the nursing. So that's kind of what you have to play with. What do you do with this information now? Okay,

    Philip Pape: 14:17

    so I just got done telling you that sleep might be the single most important variable for body composition while nursing, and that a three-hour difference in sleep changed fat loss by more than half in a controlled study. And I know if you're nursing a baby, the idea of getting better sleep seems uh hilarious, maybe, maybe like a cruel joke. Whether or not your husband's helping out. Now, I was working, my wife wasn't. Fortunately, I was able to get a little more sleep because she was breastfeeding, but that's not always the situation. You can't control when the baby wakes up either. So there's that. But here's what you do control: what happens when you finally lie down? How fast you fall asleep, how deeply you stay asleep during those windows that you actually get, and that's where the physical environment matters a ton more than people think. Temperature regulation is a huge one. Nursing mothers tend to run warmer, especially at night, and overheating is one of the most common sleep disruptors. So, naturally, I'm gonna segue into our sponsor for today's episode, Cozy Earth, because Cozy Earth, who I love as a company, very ethical, really good people at that company. They make bamboo-derived bedding and sleepwear that regulates temperature and it does so better than anything I've tried. So if you're nursing, this could be a nice luxurious gift for you, for yourself, or maybe hint hint to somebody who's looking to get you a gift. Maybe for the baby shower, I don't know. Their sheets are very breathable, they stay cool without feeling cold, they get softer over time instead of piling. I also use their bamboo-derived pajamas along with the sheets and the cuddle blanket. And anyway, the difference for me with all of this is falling asleep faster, waking up less. And so for someone who's nursing who only gets sleep in two or three hour blocks, getting deeper sleep during those blocks is a huge advantage. So that's cozy earth. Go to witsandweights.com slash cozy earth if you want to support the podcast and also improve your sleep quality. They have a hundred night sleep trial, a 10-year warranty. So absolutely no risk on that. Go to wits and weights.com slash cozy earth. You'll get a code Wits and Weights for 20% off when you go to that link, witsandweights.com slash cozy earth. If you're in that season where every hour of rest has to count, then just make it count. And Cozy Earth is a great move for that, and you would support the show. Witsandweights.com slash cozy earth. All right, so

    Philip Pape: 16:38

    after that very natural segue to our sponsor, we're now gonna get back to the framework here. What is happening in the body is what we just covered. Now we're gonna talk about what the approach should look like. Now, the goal here is not to lose weight while breastfeeding. Okay, let me say that again. The goal is not to lose weight while breastfeeding, the goal is to support your health, to protect your milk supply, to preserve and build your muscle, and let your body composition improve as a byproduct of doing those things well. Does that make sense? I hope that makes sense. It's a very healthy approach to take that I prefer for anybody, let alone nursing mothers who have these extra challenges going on. If you approach it that way with the baby and your health as the top priorities, then the physique changes actually follow, from what I've seen. So don't look at this as a guy trying to, you know, tell you what to do and that you can't lose weight or can't lose fat. I'm saying that actually a more efficient way to do it is to prioritize the health and your muscle and things like that. If you flip those around, if you chase the number on the scale while you nurse, you're definitely gonna run into problems because there's a lot of other variables at play that are that make it more complicated. Right? So we've got we've got our four pieces here. We've got nutrition, protein, sleep, and movement. For nutrition, I'm gonna say that after you've established your lactation and you've been well fed and well nourished and not worried too much about calories during those first two to three months, then a moderate calorie adjustment, which usually comes by tracking in awareness, is totally doable. It's totally supported by the research. It doesn't, shouldn't be a huge deficit if you're still breastfeeding. But as much as 500 calories a day, which is one pound a week of weight loss, is totally doable. It's totally doable, it's perfectly healthy, it's perfectly fine. Of course, it's gonna, the actual number is gonna depend on your size and how you can handle it with things like hunger and biofeedback. But you're still burning a lot of calories, like around 350 to 450 calories a day producing milk at nine months postpartum. So your energy expenditure is higher than a non-nursing woman of the same size, and then that works in your favor because then you can eat more total food and still be in that modest deficit, right? But the calorie floor itself depends on your size. You know, the when you hear never go below X while nursing, or I don't know, 1800 calories while nursing. That comes from the love lady study I mentioned because they didn't prescribe anything below that, but that's all that was. And that population was larger women on average. There's another research-based floor from data that's 1500 calories, where below that it got a little bit dicey. But in reality, below 1500 or 1200 for most people, it starts to get a little dicey anyway. So for a smaller woman like our listener Katie at 5'2, the hard floor is probably closer to her around 1500, not 1800. But again, I don't know the exact number, it depends. So the practical approach to do it is calculate your deficit from your actual TDEE, your actual expenditure. Use something like macrofactor so you're not just doing a calculator. You want to be have been tracking. So actually, it's it's helpful if you're tracking your food while pre while postpartum, even if you're not using that to go into deficit yet, just so you know what your maintenance calories are. And it might be pretty cool to see what happens to your maintenance over the course of breastfeeding over that time. So that's something we can definitely help with if you if you wanted to reach out. But you know, if you're early postpartum or if you have any concerns with your supply, don't use a deficit. Eat to support your recovery and your baby. There's no rush on this. Now, protein, this is probably where most nursing mothers are falling short, even if you think you're doing well, because most people fall short. And the the need for breastfeeding women is probably 50 to 100% higher than the RDA. And there are there are recommendations out there that are higher. I don't know if like from an official agency, and that's before you add strength training and the other things that we want you to do on top of that. So, guess what? We're gonna go with a typical advice for protein for a pregnant woman just as well, 0.7 to 1 grams per pound or more. So for someone Katie's size, our listener at 145 pounds, that's you know, anywhere from like 120 to one, even up to 160 if you want to go above the one gram per pound, and then spread your protein across meals at least 30 to 40 per meal, so that you can just maximize all of this and make it more practical. And that that's what I would say for that. If you think about breast tissue, the mammary gland, it consumes a significant amount of those branch chain amino acids to produce milk. So you're actually draining your amino acids, and that's why probably even going higher on the protein can be helpful. All right, now sleep. Come on, this is the most important variable for of all in this population, and I'll be honest, in most people's lives, period, because we don't get enough of it, but it is also the hardest one to control. There was a study from Nedelcheva that put subjects on the exact same calorie deficit with the exact same exercise, but one group slept eight and a half hours and the other slept five and a half. Uh, this is a famous study about sleep deprivation. And the sleep restricted group lost 55% less fat and lost 60% more muscle. All right. So they had less fat loss and more muscle loss with the same food and the same exercise, but they had less sleep. So their bodies preferentially broke down muscle and preserve fat. And that's not what we want generally. We know that sleep deprivation also increases ghrelin and by 28%, decreases leptin by about 18%. And that means you're going to consume up to 500 more calories a day, and you're going to seek out higher sugar, higher fat type comfort foods. So you're hungrier, you crave foods that don't serve you as much, the deficit you're in maybe is actually coming somewhat from your muscle. And that's why aggressive dieting on bad sleep is one of the worst things you can do. So for a nursing mother where you're nursing through the night, I'm not going to pretend you can just sleep more, but there are some findings from the research that are helpful to know. The first one is that resistance training during periods of sleep restriction help maintain muscle protein synthesis at normal levels. So training kind of rescues you a bit from muscle loss, which makes sense because we talk about strength training as a way to preserve muscle. Okay. So, you know, training postpartum is still something highly encouraged. Secondly, even an extra 1.2 hours of sleep per night led to eating 270 fewer calories the next day without any other intervention. So really every extra hour of sleep you just can figure out to negotiate in there somehow. A nap when the baby naps, going to bed 30 minutes earlier, having your partner take a feeding if that's possible, all of that's gonna help you.

    Philip Pape: 23:26

    And then we have movement. Katie mentioned that steps and swimming for her are hard to fit in. And, you know, she's right that the activity matters, but the type matters more than anything here. You guys know how I talk about strategic cardio versus your neat, your non-exercise activity, which is primarily your steps and your walking. And when I look at Katie's day, I can see where it's tough to get that neat because she's sitting in the passenger seat for her the hours her teens are driving. She's sitting while homeschooling, she's sitting while nursing, she's standing in the kitchen cooking, and that's still stationary. No offense, Katie. Standing burns a few more calories than sitting, but obviously if you're in place, it's still a lot of stationary lack of movement, not because you're not trying, it's how your life is structured and how crazy things are. And a lot of nursing mothers are going to recognize something very similar, probably in their own routines. So the fix is not, let me add in a 45-minute swim. It's rethinking or reframing the hours that you're stationary. What can you do instead? Can you stand at the counter for homeschool instead of the table? Can you walk your younger kids around the block while the teens drive? I don't know. Can you pace during the room, you know, phone calls during pace your room during phone calls? And these sound like small things, but they add up. That, you know, going from like five to seven thousand steps can be helpful. And an extra 20 minutes a day spread throughout the day could be an extra two or three hundred calories burned, right? On the swimming specifically, Katie, I think it's an awesome option for like joint-friendly conditioning. But the the cork here is that there was a study that found swimmers lost no weight over six months while walkers lost 10% of the body weight because cold water stimulates appetite. Now, I'm not saying swimming's bad for you. I'm just saying if body composition is a goal, walking in general daily movement might give you a better return per hour without appetite compensation. But that was just a little uh side tangent that I found in my research. So I guess what I'm saying is this nursing doesn't mean you have to put your body on hold for a year or two. The evidence does support a moderate patient uh protein forward approach once you've established lactation. And then the biggest threats to that process are not the calorie deficit, but things like inadequate protein, inadequate sleep, and of course inadequate patience. Before we wrap up, I did promise you three signs that tell you whether your nutritional approach is too aggressive for nursing. That's coming up in a second. But

    Philip Pape: 25:53

    if this episode resonated with you, if you're a woman who lifts and pays attention to her nutrition, but isn't seeing the results you expected, whether you're nursing or not, especially if the hormonal shifts feel like a factor in your life, I want to tell you about Eat More Lift Heavy. It's a 26-week coaching program that I built with Coach Carol. It launches March 30th. Today, as this episode comes out, is the last day to get on the wait list for founders pricing because it's going to go up pretty darn soon. So as soon as you hear this episode, I want you to go to witsandweights.com slash eatmore. Witsandweights.com slash eat more. What's gonna happen is you'll lock in a lower rate permanently for as long as you stay enrolled with that pricing that's gonna go away within a few days and it's gonna go up and never come down again. What do you get? You get a training program assigned to you in week one based on your specific situation. There's a monthly live coaching call with me and Carol. There is a 26-week program. It's a process week by week with one focus per week. It sequences you through along the way, it makes it very accessible, low stress, and achievable. So you can build those skills. 54% of our members report hormonal concerns. And so the curriculum has a dedicated module on hormonal pattern awareness. So this is a coaching program. It's not a content library. We have a section that has all these other courses and things that were part of Physique University. But this program is one sequence over 26 weeks that gives you a custom launch plan in week one, custom, you know, selected training plan, and then all the support and accountability along the way to get to the goal that you want. If that sounds like what you need, go to witsandwaist.com slash eatmore, get on the wait list, witsandwaist.com slash eatmore. All

    Philip Pape: 27:47

    right, if you're nursing and you're adjusting your nutrition at the same time, here are three signs that tell you you've gone too far. Number one, when your supply dips at a specific feed, usually the late afternoon or the evening one, milk production is lowest when cortisol is highest. So if your energy intake's too low, then that vulnerable feed is the first one to drop. If you notice the baby is fussier or less satisfied at one particular feeding and then it's consistent for a few days, that's the signal. So again, your supply dips at a specific feeding. And again, it's usually late afternoon or evening, but it does not necessarily. Number two is a wet diaper count. This is this is a very objective measure. So talk about data tracking. Wet diapers. Less than six wet diapers per day in an infant probably means inadequate hydration, which can reflect reduced milk volume. No need to freak out. It's just something to track. If you've been tracking this, I think you should be. Uh most, most of us. I mean, I remember us, we knew exactly how many diaper wet diapers there were a day. If there's a drop from your baby's normal baseline, that's something to look at. That's that's what I'm suggesting. Number three is that your own hunger is constant and very intense, right? Not just like, yeah, I could eat, but I can't stop thinking about food. And if you have that level of hunger while you're nursing, it means your deficit is too big for what your body is trying to produce. That is your brain through biofeedback telling you that the energy math isn't working right now. So if you see any of these, the fix is actually quite simple. Eat more. Eat more. Add two to three hundred calories for a few days, reassess all of these things. You can always tighten it up later. You know, your milk supply is harder to rebuild than the deficit is to reintroduce. All right. I hope this was helpful. I know it's a very unique topic for wits and weights, but I think it's an important one. And thank you, Katie, for the question. Uh, if anybody wants to submit a question for the podcast, go to wits and weights.com slash question. Until next time, keep using your wits, lifting those weights. And remember, your body is doing incredible work right now. Support it first, and the results will come. I'm Philip Pape, and I'll talk to you next time here on the Wits and Weights podcast.

Featured

Ready for the Next Step?

Read More
Interviews Philip Pape Interviews Philip Pape

Lose Weight Through PMS, Your Cycle, and Even Perimenopause | Ep 450

You're tracking your food, hitting the gym, doing everything right. Then your period shows up and the scale jumps 3 pounds overnight. Should you "cycle sync" your diet? Should you just ignore it as "water weight" fluctuations? Or are both approaches missing what works? This episode covers why weight loss stalls around your cycle and what to do about it, whether your periods are predictable or all over the place.

You're tracking your food, hitting the gym, doing everything right. Then your period shows up and the scale jumps 3 pounds overnight.

Should you "cycle sync" your diet? Should you just ignore it as "water weight" fluctuations? Or are both approaches missing what works?

This episode covers why weight loss stalls around your cycle and what to do about it, whether your periods are predictable or all over the place.

You'll hear the actual research on how much water weight your cycle adds (it's less than you've been told), why cycle syncing your nutrition and training has almost support in the research, and what happens psychologically when you see the scale spike during PMS. 

The real problem isn't the water weight. It's that misleading scale data during your most emotionally reactive window triggers the exact behaviors that stall fat loss. 

The fix is a measurement system that filters hormonal noise and a simple nutrition shift that works with your biology instead of against it. If you're over 40, in perimenopause, or dealing with unpredictable cycles, you'll learn why the standard advice won't work and what to do instead.

Join the Eat More Lift Heavy waitlist to get first access and founder pricing on a 26-week coached program that integrates strength training and nutrition coaching together, with hormonal pattern awareness built into the curriculum: witsandweights.com/eatmore

Timestamps

0:00 - The cycle, PMS, and weight loss question
2:56 - Two bad advice camps
5:56 - How scale fluctuations change your behavior
8:24 - Evidence regarding weight fluctuations
12:20 - Hormones, metabolism, and cycle syncing
16:56 - Does cycle syncing work (for training or nutrition)?
19:22 - Perimenopause and the measurement fix
25:11 - Phase tracking and the nutrition fix
33:42 - How to structure your diet and training
36:38 - Bonus: one-meal craving strategy

  • Philip Pape: 00:00

    Ladies, I've been getting a lot of questions about whether you should cycle sync your diet or training and how to deal with your period and PMS when it comes to things like cravings and hunger when you're trying to lose fat. I've also heard, hey, I get a lot of fluctuations in the scale due to water weight and maybe some other things. Today, I'm covering the real numbers behind cycle-related weight swings. Why cycle sinking has almost no real-world evidence in the literature, and a measurement and nutrition framework that does work, whether your cycle is predictable or completely all over the place. And if you're in perimenopause, that last part is for you. Your menstrual cycle, your weight, and how to actually lose fat when your body seems to be working against you every few weeks. Now, I'm recording this because over half the women I work with report hormonal concerns as a major barrier to seeing results. And the advice that they've gotten falls into two camps, both of which are woefully incomplete. And we're gonna fix that today on Wits and Weights. Stick around to the very end because after the episode wraps up, I'm going to share a one meal change that can blunt your cravings before they start, whether it's from PMS, a bad sleep night, or just a high stress day. It takes five minutes, and the physiology behind it is surprisingly clean. In this episode, you will learn the actual magnitude of cycle-related weight fluctuations. Spoiler alert, it's probably less than you think. Why cycle sinking has almost no clinical trial support and it falls apart entirely in perimenopause, and a measurement plus nutrition framework that you can start using this week that filters out some of that hormonal noise from the real fat loss progress. So let's get into it. And if you are a woman who tracks her weight, and by the way, if men, you guys are listening to this, it really helps us as guys to understand women and the plight of hormones and perimenopause, because there's a lot going on there. And the medical industry and the women's health domain is very incomplete at this point. So the more we can learn, the better. To support our ladies, our wives, our clients, our friends, anybody who needs support, who's asking for support. And one thing as a man I know is to not try to fix things unless asked. And the first thing you

    Philip Pape: 02:56

    always want to do is listen. I hope I have that right. So if you're a woman who tracks her weight and you've noticed that it jumps around a lot during your period or around your period, you've probably gotten some different pieces of advice. And I'm gonna guess that it's one of two things, especially. The first one is around cycle syncing. There's so much marketing around cycle syncing, everything. All right, eat more carbs in your follicular phase, cut back in your luteal phase, train harder in the first half of your cycle, go lighter in the second half. There's actually apps for this, there's courses for this, entire Instagram accounts built around color-coded phase charts. And I get the appeal as a numbers guy, even though I don't have a period myself, but it feels like you're finally, you know, working with your body. That's what we talk about here, right? It's like, okay, listen to the signals and individualize it, personalize it, and work with your body. The problem is the evidence doesn't necessarily support it, and we're gonna come back to that in a minute. Option two, the other thing they say is, you know what, you just gotta be patient, ladies. It's it's your water weight, it'll pass. I mean, I I've said that to some extent to folks that, like, hey, if you have a 10-pound weight that goes up and down 10 pounds and you've been stuck in that range, how much of that is water weight could be a lot of it. I don't know for sure until I know you and your patterns and what's happening. But to just be told or gaslit and said, like, well, it is just water and don't worry about the rest, it although technically true, someone telling you, hey, just ignore it without having a framework for what to do instead, so that you can track the right things, such as, hey, let's track your actual trends over time month over month, and maybe compare your different cycle phases to each other to actually get rid of that noise. Then that's like someone telling someone, you know, just live with it. That is what it is. I can't actually help you, right? And so both of these approaches, you know, like hey, cycle sync everything or don't worry about it, are obviously a failed approach because they treat the cycle as the problem to solve. Either you micromanage it or you dismiss it. And by doing that, you're not addressing the real issue. You're not addressing it, which is that most women don't have a system in place for distinguishing the hormonal noise, I'll call it, from say actual fat loss or fat gain signals. And honestly, most men don't have one either. This is definitely not a gender thing. This is a most people don't have a system, and every spike in the scale, every jump in the scale becomes an emotional event. Do you feel me? How does that hit you? Okay. And then every time you have a plateau like weight loss resistance, it feels like this permanent thing, and you can never get out of that cycle, and you know, I'm broken or I don't know what to do going forward, and I it's just not gonna work for me. Okay. And there's different flavors of that. The research shows us what happens next. What happens next in this

    Philip Pape: 05:56

    situation? A 2024 study tracked 50 women in a weight loss program, and they used daily assessments. On the days when participants saw the scale go up, they reported guess what? More guilt, more shame, lower confidence. They were less likely to track their food or to exercise that day. And essentially the behavioral response was immediate. And then there was a separate analysis of the data that found that after a full week of weight regain, participants successfully lost weight the following week only 5% of the time. Five percent of the time. So this is what we talked about in the last episode, the what the hell effect in action. Psychologists call it the abstinence violation effect. The abstinence violation effect. When you perceive that you've broken your rules or you've lost your progress, you don't only feel bad about it, you also disengage. You stop doing the things that were working. Now, here's what matters the most for today's episode. The late luteal phase, the week or so before your period, is when the scale weight is most likely to spike up, to jump from that fluid retention. However, it's also when emotional eating vulnerability hit its peak hits its peak. In other words, you are most likely to eat emotionally while you're also most likely to gain weight from fluid. Kind of stinks, right? There was a twin study of 460 women, so twins, they looked at twins, and they found that genetic influences on emotional eating were twice as high after ovulation compared to before. So you're looking at a window where the scale is least reliable, and at the same time, your psychological response to it is most reactive. And that combination is what often derails the fat loss. So I didn't even realize this powerful connection until I looked into the research for this episode. And the reason I looked into this research is because I hear this challenge all the time, literally every day with our clients and in our community, and I want to help. And this is how we're gonna do it. And so today's kind of the framework for that. Obviously, in our programs, we dive deep and actually figure it out for you as an individual. But that combination

    Philip Pape: 08:24

    is a big challenge. And it's so so it's not the water weight itself, it's not your hormones, it's the interaction between misleading data and this heightened emotional reaction. So that's the real problem we're gonna solve today, right? Not how to hack your cycle, not how to hack your cycle because the evidence doesn't say that that's something that you should even try to do. But how to stop your cycle from hacking your behavior. Ooh, mic drop. Okay, so we're not gonna hack your cycle. Your cycle's not the problem. You're not the problem. It's how do we stop your cycle from interfering with your behavior? Okay, so let's talk about what the research actually shows is happening to your weight across your cycle. Because the numbers matter, they matter. You know how much I love numbers and data and math, and it helps to understand this context. The most commonly cited figure is three to five pounds of water weight. And you'll see that everywhere for some women who have, I'll say, clinically significant PMS, that is very accurate. But the best prospective data actually tells something different. So stick with me. A 2023 study looked at 42 women twice a week. They use bioelectrical impedance across full menstrual cycles. That's kind of the uh body fat scale, like the in-body. Okay. And the average weight increase during menstruation was 0.45 kilograms. So I'm switching between metric and imperial because it was reported in kilograms. So 0.45 kilograms is about one pound, and it was almost entirely accounted for by a 0.47 kilogram increase in extracellular water. So there was no change in fat mass or lean mass and no change in body circumferences. So it was about one pound. That's like the median, not three to five pounds, even though we talk about that a lot. Even I've used numbers like, yeah, two to five. I usually say two to five because I'm a little bit more conservative. So fortunately, the two is closer to one, and one's the median. Now, does the range go higher? Of course it does. Women, like I said, women with significant PMS symptoms can retain two to three kilograms, which is five to six pounds. So that's a real thing, it's a real phenomenon. We have to acknowledge that. This is the this is the problem between population averages and individuals with certain use cases. And there could be a lot of people that fall into that latter category for sure, but you have to, you have to, when you're looking at studies, you have to compare what's being studied and what population is being looked at and don't make assumptions. So the population average is much smaller than the internet is saying, basically. And if we conflate the PMS subgroup with all women, I think that creates a lot of panic for people that just unnecessary. So this is where the nuance comes into play. So that's the pounds. Okay, so it's usually like one pound, but it could go as high as five to six if you have significant PMS symptoms. The timing is also different from what a lot of people assume. So there was a study that tracks 62 women across 765 menstrual cycles, and they found that fluid retention actually peaks on day one of menstrual flow, not during the luteal phase. The mid-follicular phase, which is about days seven through 10, shows the lowest retention of fluid. So the lowest noise, I'll call it the lowest noise window for weighing yourself is about a week after your period starts, not right after it ends. You may want to go back and listen to what I just said just to get all that. Okay, but it it it's different than what some people assume. Now, the hormonal mechanisms underneath all this are worth understanding as well because they explain why this isn't just something you can supplement

    Philip Pape: 12:20

    away. There's so much misinformation about supplements for all this stuff, hormonal support and all that. Estrogen lowers the threshold for your body to release anti-diuretic hormone. So you hold on to water at a lower set point, right? That means you're you're more prone to hold on to more water. Progesterone initially promotes sodium excretion, which you would think would help. But guess what happens? The body loves homeostasis. So when you have more, when you're excreting more sodium, it triggers a compensatory response from the renin angiotensin aldosterone system. I had to write that down because I would not remember it. The renin or renin and angiotensin aldosterone system. And that overshoots and increases your water retention. And by the way, this is what happens a lot when you're dehydrated or when you drink too much alcohol and you get dehydrated, your body compensates by actually retaining more water. And so that's why sometimes people see a big uh jump in the scale, like a day or two after they drink a lot, even though they were dehydrated because the body compensates with water retention. So this is happening hormonally with women. One study actually showed progesterone drives a nearly three times increase in aldosterone production just by itself. So your body is always trying to manage the fluid balance, trying to keep things in balance, and it is doing it in response to these reproductive hormones that are wildly changing every few days because of your cycle. And so there's really no supplement or even food timing strategy that can like override that. It's going to happen. The question is, to what extent does it happen for you? Now, what about metabolism? Let's talk metabolism. Does your metabolic rate actually go up in the luteal phase? Yes, it does. Sort of. A meta-analysis of 30 studies found a small increase that favored higher RMR, that's resting metabolic rate, in the luteal phase. But when they restricted the analysis to studies only published in the last 25 years with better methodology, the effect became not statistically significant. Okay. This is why we have to be careful how we reference the studies. So a more realistic estimate of metabolic rate going up during the luteal phase is probably about 100 extra calories a day on average. And that's about 1,400 calories across a 14-day luteal phase, which is the energy equivalent of 0.4 pounds of fat. So it's not nothing, it exists, but it's not like 300 calories a day, you know, which would be three times that amount. And you're like, oh, that's why I gain a pound of fat every month. No. But but it's not nothing. So again, I don't want to gaslight any of this stuff. I want to approach it with some nuance. And honestly, this is where this whole cycle sinking pitch starts to fall apart. I mean, it starts to fall apart. There's a lot of other ways that it falls apart. Because the premise is that your metabolism and your physiology shift enough between phases to justify different eating and training protocols. But if in reality the metabolic difference is small and the weight, the fluid retention differences are actually rather small, then the case for restructuring your entire nutrition plan around it really gets pretty thin. So I want to put this cycle sinking under the microscope even more directly. That's what we do here, right? We put these things under the microscope and see what makes sense. Let's talk about training first. The claim is that, okay, you should train harder during the follicular phase, your estrogen is higher, and then back off during the luteal phase. And there's two studies that seem to support this. One is from 2014, looked at 20 women, and it assumed every participant had a 28-day cycle with ovulation on day 14, which is one of the problems. Lauren Calenzo Semple talks about that a lot, is like these assumptions that everyone's the same, and then it totally waters down the data, if you will. And they verified the cycle phase, but only with basal body temperature, which is somewhat unreliable in doing that. The other study from 2017 mixed together naturally cycling women with women on oral contraceptives in the same groups. And neither study would probably pass the methodological bar that you would want from evidence-based advice. And that's just scratching the surface. When we balance against those two studies, there's an umbrella review. This is the highest level of evidence synthesis we have. Synthesis meaning combining

    Philip Pape: 16:56

    multiple studies together, especially a meta review, especially an umbrella review, combines a lot together, concluded that prescribing resistance training based on menstrual cycle phase is just not evidence-based. Three independent studies that used what would be the gold standard muscle biopsy and stable isotope in their methodology. They found zero difference in muscle protein synthesis between the two phases of the cycle, between the follicular and luteal phases. In other words, your muscles respond to training the same way regardless of where you are in your cycle. And this is consistent with a lot of what I'm hearing from experts in the field who understand the literature. On the nutrition side, it's even simpler. There has been no RCT randomized control trial that's ever compared cycle-synced calorie or macro intake versus consistent intake for fat loss or body composition outcomes. So there's just no evidence. Any recommendation for syncing to your nutrition is probably extrapolating from hormonal fluctuation data without testing that they actually produce different outcomes. That's all. And I want to be fair about this. I want to be fair, okay, because cycle awareness is not the same as cycle sinking. This is this is the side that I stand on. Knowing that you, you dear listener, tend to feel more fatigued and low, you have a low energy state. You feel wiped in the luteal phase. And then adjusting your training intensity based on how you feel that day and your recovery, that's a smart thing to do. That is responsive, auto-regulated programming, and it is what I recommend. Awareness of your body signals and how you feel and perform, and all of that is great. Also, tracking your symptoms so that you can spot patterns and then know what's coming is smart too. But all that is is listening to your body with a better set of data, just like we try to do with other forms of biofeedback, whether you're a man or woman, whether you're menstruating or not. That is not the same as following a color-coded calendar in an app that tells you to eat sweet potatoes on day 14 and reduce training volume on day 21. That is complete nonsense. I mean, even Stacy Sims, who came on, what was she on with Lauren Calenzo Simple? They kind of went at it and they argued with each other. And, you know,

    Philip Pape: 19:22

    Lauren's more on the side of the nuance and like much of this stuff is pretty much not supported by the evidence. Stacy Sims is probably the most prominent advocate of training around the menstrual cycle, but she has even acknowledged this evolution in the evidence recently, like last year, 2025. She wrote that there is no single right way for all women to train around their cycles. And I heard her say it on a podcast. And so she's kind of evolved her thinking as well. Good for her, right? The real story is individuality, which is essentially the position that I'm presenting here and that I always try to present on the show. Now, for women in perimenopause, perimenopause is the entire period of hormonal fluctuations leading up to menopause, which could be as long as 10, 15 years, you know, starting as early as your mid to late 30s. For women in perimenopause, cycle seeking, cycle sinking is, I'll say structurally impossible because when your cycles shift from 26 days to 45 days to skipping months as you get closer, and I know a lot of you are going through that. We don't talk about it enough, ladies. I know that your cycle is not this fixed 28-day thing. If it is, great, but that's not the case for a lot of women I talk to. It changes, it sometimes gets wildly all over the place. It extends out. Sometimes you don't have one. And this is even outside of like low energy states, amenorrhea, and all that from dieting. This is just, it happens because of hormones, because of perimenopause. In that case, what are you going to sink to? Like it's you're just going to, you know, drive yourself crazy. The entire framework assumes a predictable hormonal pattern, and perimenopause is often defined by the loss of that predictability. All right, if you're hearing all of this, if you're thinking, okay, okay, I get that cycle sinking is oversold. I also know just be patient and gaslighting isn't gonna do it for me. But I need, I want someone to actually help me build that system that works for my body. That is exactly what we've built with Eat More Lift Heavy. And I hope you guys love the name. I'm really loving it because it it says exactly the thing that many of you need to do right in the name. Eat more lift heavy. It's a 26-week coaching program launching March 30, where you get both training and nutrition coaching together, which almost nobody offers at this price point. Over half the women in our intake data report hormonal concerns affecting their progress. And our curriculum has an entire week dedicated to hormonal pattern awareness. You learn About it, you personalize it, you apply it to yourself, and you get coaching. And every member gets a personalized plan that accounts for where they actually are, not where a generic chart says they should be. If you want in at the lowest price that'll ever be our founder's price, get on the wait list now at witsandwaits.com slash eatmore. That's wits and weights.com slash eatmore. The link is in the show notes. The early access window is opening March 16. So get on the list so that you get the emails that say, here it's open. Here's the special deal you're gonna get once and only once, but you're gonna get it because you're on the list. Go to wits and weights.com slash eatmore or click the link in the show notes. Okay, so we've established that cycle syncing over promises, under delivers, and that just be patient does the same. So what do you do instead? All right, two things. You're gonna fix how you measure progress, and you're gonna fix how you eat during the luteal phase. Here we go. How do we fix how we measure progress? The goal is to separate the noise from hormones from the real body composition signals. What's actually happening with your body? And this is gonna help you a lot emotionally too and help you not overreact and know what's going on. The engineering principle here is simple. You don't make decisions on noisy data. You have to filter it first. So I want you to think of it like a filter. Step one, okay, we've got three steps here. Step one, weigh yourself daily, but use a trend. So for that, I recommend an app that can smooth the trend for you. You can do it in a spreadsheet, you can do it on your own, but it takes a lot of math and using the right equations and like making sure you do it. And that tends to create a lot of friction and it's harder for people to get into or stick with. So I would definitely use something like Macro Factor, that's my favorite app that does that. And that's I want you to weigh every day, not because daily weigh-ins are some magical thing, but because we know from the evidence. There was actually a study of 10,000 smart scale users in 2021 that found daily weighing was the only frequency associated with weight loss across all BMI groups and maintaining the weight loss. So the key here is you never react to a single day's number. I know, easier said than done, I get it. But if you're taking a weight every day, it eventually starts to get, it becomes less and less important, and you just kind of get used to seeing that it goes up and down. But what you really care about is the trend. And MacroFactor does this well because they have an exponential moving average, and then they have their expenditure algorithm that takes your trend weight and your calorie intake. And then they actually have their algorithm now has improved handling of cyclical fluctuations. So, and you can track your period as well alongside it. It's it is very fast. So I like that app because it does all of that. So, like if you're working with us or if you're an eat more lift heavy, that's our recommended tool. And if you come to, say, me or Carol and you want some feedback on your data, we're gonna say, hey, one of the one of the data points we need is your macrofactor data because then we have your trend weight and we know what where your expenditure is. If you don't have that data, we're kind of flying blind, right? We're kind of flying in the dark. And so if you're doing this for yourself, same thing. Step two.

    Philip Pape: 25:11

    So that's step one is weigh yourself daily and use a trend smooth, a smoothed trend. And that should that trend, by the way, should be over at least a two-week period, but I really prefer three weeks. Step two is to use the same phase comparison. So phase to phase is how you want to compare as your monthly sanity check. So you're gonna compare your weight from the mid-follicular phase this month, like days seven through ten, to your mid-follicular phase last month. That's that's your most stable hormonal windows, the mid-follicular phase. And and again, you want to take the trend weight from that point, but even if you have just a few spot weights, a few individual scale weights, at least it's been a month and you can do that comparison. But take several of them, don't just take one day. If that number is moving in the direction you want over, say three months, hey, your plan's working. If it's flat, something is off and we need to adjust. And that eliminates a lot of the false alarms that come from weighing yourself, you know, pre-menstrually and comparing it to a random day three weeks ago. Step three, and this is really important if you're in perimenopause, and that is to extend your evaluation window. Listen to me carefully. I want you to extend your evaluation window, the window within which you evaluate what's happening. Because when your cycles are more and more irregular, as they tend to be in perimenopause, especially closer to menopause you are, you cannot rely even on step two, the same phase comparisons, because there's no reliable data, no reliable phase to compare. Instead, you're going to use longer moving averages. You're going to use four to six week moving averages before concluding that any weight change is real. And I know that takes patience. And I know you got to wait. And you want the quick fix and the quick change. It, but you're not going to get it. In fact, you're going to slow your progress down. You're going to go in the wrong direction if you overreact to the short term. Because if you end up under-eating and stressing your body out further, it could actually compensate the wrong direction by burning fewer calories and actually making you have a worse outcome. But in addition to this, see that that's just scale weight. Honestly, you've heard me talk about how scale weight is just a tiny piece of the puzzle and really not that important. I would supplement your scale data with your waist measurement, how your clothes fit, of course, how you're improving in the gym with your strength, and even progress photos. Right? Those things can all be very helpful because the scale alone is going to miss all the changes in your body composition, like building muscle and losing fat at the same time, for example. And during perimenopause, those shifts can be pretty dramatic, right? We know from plenty of research at this point that the rate of fat gain tends to jump up almost double, or I think it did double at the start of the menopausal transition. And lean mass is declining as well. And of course, you know, you lift, listen to wits and weights, you lift weights, you're eating your protein, right? Right? Well, if you're not, that's a whole different thing we got to deal with and get you doing that. But a woman whose scale weight is fairly stable still might be gaining fat and losing muscle. Obviously, the opposite could happen too. You could be gaining muscle and losing fat. Uh, it depends on your lifestyle and what you're doing. And the scale alone is not just is just not going to tell you that. So that's the measurement side. On the the nutrition fix, okay, let's talk about nutrition. We have the behavioral side of this first, and this is big. Luteal phase, the luteal phase is notorious for having uh lots of hunger. So I've seen it over and over again, okay. I can't imagine where like once a month your hunger just is higher than it is the rest of the month. So I feel for you. There's a meta-analysis I found of 15 data sets that show the average increase in energy intake, so how much you eat during the luteal phase is about 168 calories per day. And for women with PMS, it's closer to 300. And then if you fight this with trying to restrict calories, that's like the worst possible strategy because all it does is amplify the what the hell effect, the all or nothing effect. And then it works against the serotonin deficit. That's what's going on here, that is driving the cravings. Now, why is serotonin important? Because serotonin levels drop in the luteal phase and carbohydrate carb cravings appear to function as a form of self-medication because eating carbs increases tryptophan. The tryptophan ratio that feeds how your body synthesizes serotonin. And there's a study on this. There was a double-blind crossover study that gave women with confirmed PMS either a high carb beverage or an identical tasting placebo, and the carb drink significantly reduced depression, anger, and cravings within 90 to 180 minutes, and the placebo did nothing. So the cravings are not a failure of your willpower. They are your brain requesting a specific input that it needs. Interesting, right? So what's the fix here? Well, it's not to fight the hunger, it's to redirect that hunger. This is a powerful tool, ladies. Listen, okay, this is something I've learned working with clients, and it works a lot. First, you've got to leverage protein. If you are not already eating the right amount of protein per day and having protein in every meal, that's your biggest opportunity. 30 to 40 grams of protein every meal, especially your first meal of the day during that luteal phase. The reason is protein is when it's diluted in your diet, like when you don't have enough, right? Total calorie intake goes up because your body keeps eating it until it gets enough protein. So if you can front load protein, you're gonna satisfy that target earlier for your body and reduce the amount of calorie you over calories you overshoot for the day. So if you're not already leveraging plenty of protein, that's number one. The second thing is using complex carbs strategically, don't cut carbs during the luteal phase. That's the opposite of what your brain needs. But what you can do is include complex carbs like whole grains, legumes, starchy vegetables in all your meals, and then you support your serotonin without the crash in blood sugar that comes from you know simpler carbs. Although, I don't want to overstate the blood sugar thing if you're eating balanced meals anyway. Even if you have simple carbs, as long as they're with proteins and fats, you tend to be okay anyway. And then if you're lifting weights and walking, it just makes it even better. But carbs can be your friend for sure. So listen up. If you're low carb, this could be the problem. Third, I want you to allow a modest increase during that phase. So actually shift your calories. If your metabolic rate actually does go up at least 100 calories or so, like if you've proven it for yourself through your tracking, and again, the only way to do that is a tool like Macrofactor where you can tell, then eating an extra, say, 100 to 200 calories during those 10 to 14 days is just gonna offset it. In other words, you're not gonna, you're not gonna stop losing fat. You're not gonna gain weight, it's just gonna offset it. And I know you want to like take advantage of the fact you're burning more calories, but if you're also massively more hungry, you might overshoot that benefit through your food. But if you intentionally increase your food a little bit to match it, then it can on the net work out better. And then over the full cycle, the math washes out in your favor. But if you're trying to maintain a steep deficit during the phase when your body's most resistant to it, then it usually creates, you know, the psychological conditions that lead to you binge eating. Does that make sense? I hope that all makes sense that I didn't get like too technical, because even for myself, I realized the way I worded all that is kind of in the weeds. But the principle across all of this is to work with your biology, not to cycle sink, but understand your body has physiological explanations that are going on and little tweaks in your nutrition and your measurement can go a long way to supporting you through your pattern of your cycle. And not every woman's gonna need every one of these strategies. Now, I want to be clear about what I'm not claiming here because again, nuance, guys, nuance. I'm not saying your cycle doesn't affect how you feel. I'm definitely not. It absolutely does. It does. Fatigue, mood shifts, bloating, cramps, you

    Philip Pape: 33:42

    name it. All of that is real. And if you adjust your training intensity or expectations based on how you feel, that's a smart thing to do. And it's independent of trying to align it with your cycle. It's based on how you're feeling. I'm also not saying that tracking your cycle is useless. It's actually very useful. I even mentioned that in MacroFactor, you can track it and then it aligns it with the other stuff going on there. And it's helpful if you have a coach or if you're in our program and then you can share your data. But for yourself, knowing those patterns gives you better data. And a lot of you do already track your cycle, you know, and I and may not be tracking it against the other things. But what I'm saying, what I'm not saying to do is restructure your entire diet and training plan around this 28-day idea that half the population doesn't even follow predictably. Like half of women don't even fall into the quote unquote normal, you know, ovulation cycle. I'm also not saying the scale doesn't matter. It's a useful data point among many, but I am saying that a single day's weigh-in during the late luteal phase is one of the least helpful things you can collect. And that making decisions based on it is not helpful for the reasons we talked about earlier. So, what I am saying from this whole episode is this you deserve a better framework than quote unquote, sink your macros to the moon, or quote unquote, just relax. The water weight fluctuations are normal and it's all gonna average out. No, you've got to be intentional. And the fix here is a measurement system to filter the noise out, a nutrition approach that respects your individual biology, and then of course, patience to evaluate progress over multiple cycles, not just days or a few weeks. Before we wrap up, remember that I promised you a one meal change that blunts cravings before they start anytime they spike. I will share that in a second. But if this episode is clicking for you, if you are enjoying this, if you want a structured system for navigating all of this with human coaching support, Eat More Lift Heavy is coming. It's a 26-week program. It integrates training and nutrition coaching together. It is built for women over 40 who lift and track but are not seeing the results. And hormonal pattern awareness is built directly into the curriculum. Not to mention Coach Carol. She is amazing. She is an expert in women over 40 hormones and thyroid health, especially, and has personal experience with all of those. The wait list with founder pricing at the lowest it'll ever be is open now. Go to witsandweights.com slash eatmore. That's witsandweights.com slash eatmore. There's no obligation at all. You can join the list for free. Just so you get the information, go to wits and weights.com slash eatmore. Uh by the way, if you're already on my email list, you still want to go there and get on the wait list specifically because you'll get tagged for the early access and the founders pricing. All right, let's

    Philip Pape: 36:38

    talk about the strategy for cravings. Next time you have cravings, whether it is PMS week, maybe you had a bad sleep night, maybe you have a stressful afternoon. Honestly, men, women, whatever the cravings are from, this is what you do. At your very first meal of the day, hit at least 40 grams of protein before anything else. And that could be two eggs plus a cup of Greek yogurt. That could be a protein shake. And the 40 grams is more than enough to suppress ghrelin, that's your hunger hormone. It elevates CCK, that's a satiety hormone. And it does so for several hours. Because cravings are partly a hunger management problem. They are partly a hunger management problem. You're like, yeah, duh. But what I mean by that is when your baseline hunger is already elevated because of your hormones or poor sleep or stress, your threshold for giving in to the hunger is lower. And protein raises it back up. It raises it back up. So you front load the protein and then you build the rest of the meal around things like whole grains and starchy vegetables, a little bit of fat, especially if carb cravings are the issue. You see what I'm saying here? If carb cravings are the issue, why don't you eat some carbs? But eat the carbs that you choose that will benefit you, right? I'm not talking about donuts and pizza. I'm not talking about reading the pantry or the fridge on a whim. I'm talking about you be intentional and have whole grains, fruits, starchy vegetables, things like that. And that way you're not fighting the craving. You are taking the edge off with intention and responding to it gracefully instead of reacting to it. And isn't that what we all want to do? All right, until next time, keep using your wits, lifting those weights. And remember, your cycle is not the enemy of fat loss. It's just data that most people never learned to need. I'm Philip Pate, and I'll talk to you next time here on the Wits and Weights podcast.

Featured

Ready for the Next Step?

Read More
Interviews Philip Pape Interviews Philip Pape

Why Streaks and Badges Don’t Help You Lose Fat (And What Does) | Ep 449

You've been hitting your macros for two or three weeks, then one bad day wipes everything out and you're starting over. Again. The problem isn't your discipline but how you're setting up your targets. This episode breaks down why streak-based tracking doesn't work, the behavioral psychology behind RPG-style skill leveling (proximal goals, the progress principle, and flow state research), and a 6-step method for building your macros one skill point at a time where progress is permanent and you never start over. 

You've been hitting your macros for two or three weeks, then one bad day wipes everything out and you're starting over. Again. 

The problem isn't your discipline but how you're setting up your targets.

Most people use streaks, badges, and all-or-nothing tracking to stay consistent with nutrition. The research shows those extrinsic reward systems actually increase dropout rates and erode the motivation you need to lose fat and build muscle long term. 

A 2015 study found that gamified systems made people less motivated, more anxious, and worse at the task. If you've ever felt like a broken streak meant a broken week, that's the system failing you, not the other way around.

This episode breaks down why streak-based tracking doesn't work, the behavioral psychology behind RPG-style skill leveling (proximal goals, the progress principle, and flow state research), and a 6-step method for building your macros one skill point at a time where progress is permanent and you never start over. 

Join the Eat More Lift Heavy waitlist to get first access and founder pricing on a 26-week coaching program that builds your nutrition and strength training in sequence, one skill at a time: witsandweights.com/eatmore

Timestamps:

0:00 - The cycle of starting over with macros (why habit streaks fail)
2:32 - Why gamification borrows the wrong parts of games
5:00 - Self-determination theory and the what-the-hell effect
8:15 - How RPG skill leveling actually works
11:17 - Flow state and the "just manageable" challenge
14:20 - How to apply this model in practice
18:48 - Define your increments and level up when ready
22:10 - Logistics problems vs. cognitive problems
27:10 - Bonus: 3-question flow zone test
31:30 - Reframing a missed day as a level, not a reset 

  • Philip Pape: 00:00

    How many times have you hit your macros for two or three weeks, missed a day, and felt like all progress was gone? The way most people structure hitting their nutrition targets is designed after gamification, which actually doesn't work as well as you think. Today I'm showing you a different approach, borrowed from video games and RPGs, but not quite the same as gamification, where progress is much more permanent and you never have to start over. Welcome to Wits and Weights, the show that puts a popular piece of fitness advice under the microscope, finds the hidden reason it doesn't work, and gives you the deceptively simple fix that does. I'm your host, certified nutrition coach, Philip Pape. And if you've ever tried to build a consistent nutrition habit and found yourself doing really well for a few weeks and then falling off, and then starting over from scratch and then falling off, today is going to explain why that keeps happening. And we always come back to this, but it's not because you simply lack discipline. The problem is systemic, it is structural. It's the system that you are using to set and progress against those targets. Now I'm gonna warn you today, I'm gonna get a little nerdy and talk about some video games. And if you've ever played RPGs like Diablo or Path of Exile or even old school Final Fantasy or Zelda, you already understand the mechanic that I'm going to describe. If you have it, don't worry. The concept is simple. The psychology behind it applies to everyone. You don't have to know video games. That's just my thing. All right, and then stick around to the very end because I'm gonna give you a three-question test to find out whether your current macro targets are in that sweet spot where progress can actually happen, or whether they're in a zone that's more or less guaranteed to make you frustrated and quit. And it takes about 30 seconds. All right, today you're gonna learn about three things. First, why the type of gamification most people use actively undermines the motivation truly needed for long-term adherence, right? Sustainability. Second, the specific psychological mechanism that makes RPG style leveling so effective. So getting leveling up. Okay, when we talk about RPGs and video games in this context, I'm just talking about making progress and leveling up. And then we're gonna look at why it maps directly to your nutrition behavior. And then third, I'm gonna give you a method that you can apply this week to your own

    Philip Pape: 02:32

    macro targets to turn this more abstract goal of, say, hit my protein into a concrete progressive system where you're always building and never starting over. So let's get into it and talk about the what is the popular advice and what's wrong with it. We've heard of gamification. I love the concept of gamifying your nutrition, of making it fun, you know, close the rings, right? On your uh on your watch, hit the streak, earn the badge, get the check marks. And you see this in apps, you hear this from coaches, from influencers, you see it in challenges. Plenty of tools are built around it. You see in communities, you know, my own community has a leaderboard. I don't even use it only because I know it actually doesn't work, part of what we're talking about today. It sounds like it should work, right? Who doesn't want to make a healthy behavior feel like a game? Especially something people don't often like to do. And there is a grain of truth there because games are motivating, right? We've all experienced just chilling on the couch, getting lost in a game for hours. Well, maybe not all of us, but I have many times. And you're voluntarily doing, I'll call them hard things, right? They're not hard in the IRL, right, real life context, but games tend to challenge you and get harder as you go through them, right? Whether it's a shooter or an RPG or a simulation, whatever. And so there's this feedback loop and it feels really good and it hits the dopamine center. And so the impulse is to borrow that type of energy and say, how do we apply that to other things like nutrition? And it makes sense on the surface. But the problem with these systems is they borrow the wrong parts of the games. What they borrow are extrinsic motivators, things like points, badges, leaderboards, streaks. And these are these surface elements, the shiny objects. And when you look at behavioral research about them, it's not great. These things actually don't work too well. So I'll give you a couple examples. A little over 10 years ago, Hannes and Fox 2015 ran a study at Indiana University, which by the way is one of my alma maters. I got my MBA there, um, and I know they won the national championship this year in football, which disappointed me because I'm actually a Miami Hurricanes fan. But it, you know, kind of cool that this study is from there. They took a college course and they added gamification. So they added leaderboards, badges, and points for participation. The control group got the same course, but none of that stuff. The gamified group

    Philip Pape: 05:00

    had all that, and guess what? They ended up less motivated, more anxious. They scored lower on the exams, they reported lower satisfaction. So there were more gamification elements, but worse outcomes. Now, why is that? This is the cool thing. This is where it gets important. So there's something called self-determination theory, and it's a great framework where humans have three core psychological needs when it comes to sustained motivation. Three, those three things are autonomy, competence, and relatedness. Autonomy, competence, and relatedness. Extrinsic rewards like streaks and badges, they tend to erode your autonomy or your agency. And the behavior then shifts from, hey, I'm doing this because I want to get better to I'm doing this to keep my streak alive. And then when the streak breaks, you've lost the only thing that was motivating you. Kind of makes sense, right? There was a meta-analysis by Kim and Castelli that looked at gamification across health and fitness contexts. And they found a pattern where short-term engagement tends to go up, but long-term adherence doesn't. And the average dropout rate for gamified health apps is around 75% within the first 90 days. So we've got this popular approach, gamify your nutrition, that produces this, you know, dopamine-fueled honeymoon phase followed by a crash. And if it sounds familiar to you, if you've had that experience of, hey, I'm really into tracking for the first three or four weeks, and then I have a bad day or something comes up and it destroys the whole thing, it's because the system isn't designed optimally. And this streak-based thinking specifically creates a psychological trap. Researchers call it the what the hell effect. And that's just putting it nicely because I don't swear on this show. So that's as bad as it gets. Pollavy and Herman documented this across decades of dieting research that when someone is trying to maintain a perfect record, a single slip-up, it doesn't just feel like a slip-up, it feels like total, utter failure. Like, hey, I already broke the streak. What the hell? Might as well eat whatever I want today, right? That's the all or nothing thinking, the all or nothing frame baked into that streak model. And it creates a binary that causes this whole collapse. Because like, oh my God, I just missed my streak. It's all over. And I've actually felt that myself when it comes to step, step counting. I actually lowered my step count target in the app I in the app I was using because I kind of felt that phenomenon as well. It's like, oh my gosh, I just broke a streak. It just, it just kind of disappointed me, right? So here's where we are. Gamification is popular. The the type that people are using, though, with these extrinsic reward systems, undermines intrinsic motivation over time and it sets you up for all or nothing thinking. And then that derails a longer-term process like fat loss, muscle building, all the things that we are trying to do. Okay, so if badges and streaks take from the wrong parts of games, what are the right parts? Think about how a role-playing game works. And I'll explain it if you've never heard it before. Most people do. You start with a character, and the character has a set of skills, and each skill has a level. Okay, forget classes, forget, you know, all the sub-elements of RPGs. We're gonna keep

    Philip Pape: 08:15

    it simple. So you might have strength, for example, and it's at a level three, intelligence at a level five. Maybe you can distribute your skill points at the beginning, but you have a finite amount of skills, and that's where you start. And you usually start as this lowly character with, you know, a wooden sword or something, right? Or a club or something like that with barely any clothes, if at all. And then when you earn experience by, say, killing mobsters or mobsters, monsters, mobs of monsters. I guess killing mobsters in some games, right? Then you get skill points. You get experience points. And then you can invest those points every time you level up into the skills that you want to develop. Simple as that, right? Now, two things are happening in that model that actually apply to behavior change in real life. First is that the bar is always rising, right? The bar is always rising, but it rises incrementally. Going from level three to four is a meaningful improvement and it's also achievable. You don't just jump from level three to level 15. The game doesn't let you do it unless you're hacking it or using a mod, and your brain doesn't expect that to happen either, even in real life, right? You don't expect to go from a complete beginner to completely advanced, for example. Each level, therefore, is the small win that unlocks the next level. And this maps directly to some pretty old research now. Back in 1981, Albert Bandura studied proximal versus distal goals. So that's just short-term versus long-term goals. And he gave students the same math curriculum. One group got a single end of semester target. The other group got weekly targets that built toward that same endpoint. And the weekly target group outp outperformed on all the measures speed, accuracy, confidence. So the destination is the same, but the path structure to get there was different. And the incremental path won. Teresa Amobile did research on what's called the progress principle, and it reinforces this, but but from a little bit of a different angle. Her team analyzed over 12,000 diary entries from professionals and found that the single strongest predictor of sustained motivation was the feeling of making progress on meaningful work. Okay, not the rewards, not the recognition, but actually the progress itself. Small, visible, regular progress. So that's kind of the first concept of the short-term, step-by-step, you know, micro goals and progress. The second thing, and this is the part a lot of people miss, like when you're comparing it to a gamification of an RPG, you don't ever lose your levels, right? You never go backward. You might have a bad session, you might get killed and die and lose some gold, or you know, in a in a souls-like game, for those of you into that, which are super frustrating to me and I don't have the time, in a souls-like game, you might lose a ton of your progress from the last point, but you don't go past before that point. Your skill points remain. The things you've invested in

    Philip Pape: 11:17

    so far are permanent because you've achieved that level. Now, if you compare that to a streak, a streak is more binary. You're either maintaining it or you've lost it, right? When you when the streak breaks, you're back to zero psychologically, even if nothing about your body or your behavior has changed. Whereas a skill level, it's more cumulative. Progress is always banked. All right, so now this brings me to the research about flow and flow states, which I absolutely love because there's an overlap with positive psychology. So when we look at flow, it is that state of complete absorption where your effort feels almost automatic. And it occurs when the challenge of what you're doing is slightly beyond your current ability to do it, just slightly. Okay, I've used other frameworks like put, like expanding your comfort zone. So that's flow. It's like the challenge, it's challenging and it's slightly beyond your current ability. If it's if something's too easy, you're gonna get bored. If something's too hard, you get anxious because you you're you get frustrated, right? Maybe that's why I don't like Souls like Souls like games. But other RPGs that have a leveling system, it naturally keeps you in that flow because each new level is one increment above where you proved you could perform. And there's debates about whether video games can even be something considered a flow state. That's a separate argument. All right, then there's the third piece of psychology here that's worth calling out, and that is goal setting theory, where goals have to be specific and difficult, but within reach to optimize your performance. So a vague goal, like I need to eat better or hit my macros, it doesn't produce the same behavior. When somebody responds to me to an email and they're like, hey, I like what I heard, you know, I've been trying to watch my food and alcohol. And that's the way they frame it. I'm trying to watch my food and alcohol. And my brain immediately goes to, okay, how are you watching? You know, you is this a specific, you know, way of tracking, blah, blah, blah, because I know that person is not going to succeed long term with that as their goal. Whereas increase my protein from, you know, 80 to 90 grams this week is a lot more specific, something you can track objectively, something that's achievable, and you could look back and say that you won that. And the RPG model forces that kind of specificity, right? Because think about in a video game, you can't invest a skill point in everything. I mean, you might get five points and distribute one to each, but you can't invest as many as you want in everything. You have to pick a skill and increase it by one increment, hold on to it, and move to the next, you know, incrementally. So the model looks like this: instead of tracking streaks or closing your rings on your Apple Watch, you define your nutrition targets as like skills on a character sheet, where say protein is a skill, calories are a skill, steps are a skill. It's up to you to decide what those are. And of course, we we help our clients and members come up with those, the things that you want to track. And then each week you evaluate which skills are ready for a level up. You add just the one increment, and then you hold on to it because you've built that skill. Now, there's

    Philip Pape: 14:20

    some timing involved, like how long it takes to do some of these in the real world. There are different models. I like the roughly 45-day model. Like once you've held a skill for 45 days, then it's locked in. So it's not like in a game where you can just blow through it in a few hours, but it's a very important thing. And then you add the next point and the next skill. Now, if you're hearing this and you're thinking, all right, this makes sense. How do I actually build this kind of progressive system for myself? How do I know where to start? How fast to progress, when to hold steady. That is exactly what Eat More Lift Heavy is built around. That's right. Eat more lift heavy. It's a 26-week coaching program. So 26 weeks is six months, but notice 26 weeks, it's it's individual weeks that each help you build these skills. And it involves both training and nutrition progressing together over three phases in the 26 weeks. Phase one is stop guessing, where the first eight weeks we establish your baseline. We figure out where you actually are, not where you think you should be, and we build that skill floor. Phase two, the eat more lift heavy phase, weeks nine through 18, that's where the bar starts to rise and you really start to see massive progress. And then phase three, trust yourself, is the final weeks 19 through 26 where you internalize the system so it's intrinsically motivated, so you can run it without us or without the need for this education or push or accountability if you want. And the whole structure mirrors what we've been talking about today: this graduated progression, never going backward. Each week has one focus and one action item, of course, with a lot of resources behind it, tools, resources, modules. And it is a coached process. It's not a content library. It's it's not a bunch of different courses. It's one focus that takes you through the 26 weeks. And it works for everyone because of how customized it is. So if you are over 40, if you lift, you track, but you're not seeing the results you expect, go to wits and weights.com slash eatmore and get on the wait list. The program launches March 30, and the wait list is going to get early access and founders pricing. This is great pricing that will never be the same again. And you're not gonna find a discount like it in the future. So witsandweights.com slash eat more to get on the eat more heavy lift heavy wait lists. All right, let's keep going as I fumble my words here. And I want to get specific about how you apply this gamification framework in the right way. I want to walk you through the mechanics and then you can start doing it this week. Again, if you want support doing it with over a six-month period and really lock it in, go to witsandweights.com slash eat more. But here's what you got to do. Step one. All right, step one is to define your skills. So for most people tracking macros, your skills are let's say protein, calories, and either fats and carbs, or maybe a combination of those or whatever. In other words, some people don't care about the fats, but they do care about the carbs, some people vice versa, and some people like both. The easiest thing is just do all the macros. And then you can add maybe a fourth skill of daily steps or training sessions per week. So I would keep the whole list to like three or four to start. Otherwise, you're gonna spread your skill points to thin. Okay. Step two is to find your level one, your level one. Remember, we're going from level zero to one here. Okay. You started the game and you're trying to get to level one. Now, some games start at level one, I get it, but this is we're gonna start really low. This is not your goal number. Okay, I don't care. We're not talking about weight loss or anything like that, months down the road. This is where you are right now, consistently without stress, that you can get to for the next level. All right. So if your ultimate protein target is 140 grams because you weigh 140 pounds and you've heard me say one gram per pound in that vicinity, but you're actually averaging like 60 grams of protein right now, then going from 60 to 140 is not your level one. Your level one might be 75 or 90, right? It's a small jump. All right, and I want to pause right here because this is where most people push back, they resist, they feel like Seti, 90 grams of protein, it's not even 100. Aren't I going back, or it's not not ambitious enough, and I'm not hitting the target, right? But that is the streak mentality that we're trying to avoid. You are not lowering your standards here, right? You're establishing a floor that you've proven

    Philip Pape: 18:48

    you can hold, which is your zero, that's where you are now. And then every level above that is progress. Every level above that is something you earn and make progress that can stick. And again, going back to the RPG analogy, if you have a new character and you know, the game said, we're gonna give you a starting strength of starting strength, that's funny, starting skill where your strength is let's say eight instead of one, you know, you wouldn't be upset about it. You'd say, or let's say it's eight instead of 20. You'd say, okay, cool, that's where I'm starting. I'm gonna build from there, right? I kind of butchered that analogy, but you know what I mean. All right, step three is to define your increments. So this is the cool part where you where you do it like a game, and you say, okay, I can increment either by day or by week, whatever makes sense. So, like for protein, a reasonable increment might be 10 grams per day. Like, I'm going to increase my target by 10 grams per day. Now, you might be using an app like Macro Factor and it has a target of 140, and you're currently hitting 80. You can still, like mentally or in a separate place, document, hey, I'm gonna try to hit 90, then 100, then 110, then 120, whatever makes sense. Okay, what I you could stick with the same target all week and then go up the next week, whatever makes sense. So for step count, it might be 500 steps per day increase, right? Just a short walk or a few extra steps around the house, whatever. They should be small enough that the effort required to hold a new level feels barely noticeable and not overwhelming, just beyond your current ability. Remember the flow state research we talked about. So that's step three is to define those increments. Step four is to level up when you're ready. And here's the rule I have: when you've held a level for five out of seven days for at least a week, and you haven't felt like it was a really hard thing to do, like you white knuckled it, you're ready for the next skill point. Now notice I said five out of seven, not seven out of seven. We're not gonna build a streak. We're building a pattern, an average, a slight increase in our ability. Okay, a pattern out of five out of five out of seven is a skill. A streak of seven out of seven, but then you break it on day eight because you can't sustain it. That that's the trap we talked about before. All right, so level up when you're ready. Five out of seven days for a week. You can come with some come up with something similar if it's a longer time horizon. That's what, like 80% consistency. All right, step five, and by the way, we have six steps in here. Step five is to pick which skill gets the point. Ah, okay. You don't level up everything at once. In a given week, only one of your skills is going to get that increment. All right. This is where the where research on what's called endowed progress comes in, where people who feel like they've already started a task are about 34% more likely to complete it. And when you've already banked, say, three levels on your protein and then you're holding steady there, then that momentum is gonna carry over when you decide to invest a point in something else instead. So, in other words, you're you're building up each of the anchors, you're building up protein over here, maybe a couple times, and then you hold, then you Build up calories over here and then you hold, maybe you build up steps over here, then you hold, you get it. So we're doing one at a time and we're building it up incrementally. You can go back and forth, but only do one at a time. And then the final

    Philip Pape: 22:10

    step is step six to keep the old levels. So if life gets crazy, if travel interrupts your routine, if you have a bad week, you're not going to reset to level one. You're going to hold the last level that you proved to yourself that you could sustain. Now, could you drop back to level one back one level temporarily? Sure. But the overall architecture of your progress is there. You've built the skills, you have the resilience, you know what that is. A bad week doesn't delete them. So sometimes you are going to drop, but you're going to come right back to it because that is your new baseline. So do you notice the difference? What separates this from a streak-based system where every day is like green or red? There is no red day in this system. There's I'm holding my level or I'm working back to my level, and you're still playing the game. That's what that is. All right. There's one more thing I want to address because I do see this all the time with, for example, our clients and our members, just talking to listeners as well. Sometimes the reason that you don't hit your target is not about motivation, it's logistical. It's just logistical and about the environment or setup or something like that or the system. And those two problems need different solutions. A logistical problem is something like, hey, I can't figure out how to get 140 grams of protein across the three meals that I have and stay within my calories. I just don't know what to eat to make it work. Like I'm either going over on one or the other, or I'm coming under on protein or going over on calories. That person doesn't have a problem with their mindset. Like it's not the psychology. They just need someone to sit with them and show them the math, the numbers. Like, guys, sometimes it's that simple. Now I'm an engineer talking here, and sometimes very cold and calculated about these things, but sometimes that's what you need. Sometimes I need to give you some tough love and say, look, it's just numbers. Let's just figure it out. And that it kind of takes the stress out in some ways. Because then there's the trade-offs you can make and you don't get emotional about it. And that's where things like example meals and protein-dense food options and how to distribute your food and how many times that you eat and all that, those strategies can solve the math of it. And you can solve it almost instantly. Like if I if I get my hands on that problem, I'm going to solve it in about five minutes for you. Right. And I have tools for this as well. And by the way, another plug for Eat More Lift Heavy. In Eat More Lift Heavy, we're going to have like, I want to say about 10 really powerful automated tools that I've worked to code up that will help solve a lot of these problems, like how to get all your protein. And they're tools that you can access over and over and over again whenever you need them. And you're going to have human coaches too, but I think it's really powerful to have something you can go to right away. That's not AI, by the way. That's a pre-coded tool just for that problem. So that's the math side of it. That's like a logistical problem. Whereas like a cognitive problem sounds sounds different. It sounds like, hey, I know I should be hitting my 140 grams and I was doing it for two weeks, but now I can't seem to make myself do it and I feel like I'm failing. And that I see a lot too, right? It's somebody who had gotten to the point, but now they're not. And they may need to drop the target, not because they're not capable of it, but because, let's say 140 was level 12, and they were actually at level three, and they skipped levels four through 11. And so the gap between where they are and where they're trying to be is too large for that flow state. And so instead, they're in the anxiety zone. And what does anxiety do? It produces avoidance. You avoid things, you give up, you get despondent, all of that. So this RPG model handles both of these in a different way. So for the logistics problem, you stay at your current level and you just fix the plan. So you stay at your current level, right? But you fix the plan. It's just math, it's just strategies. For the cognitive problem, you're gonna drop to where you can hit five out of seven days without stress. And you're gonna call that your current level and you're gonna build from there. All right. And look, by definition, you're probably not gonna go down a bunch of levels from your current capability. It's probably that you tried to jump up too many levels and you're just trying to find your true level right now. And I know it's hard to hear. I know it's hard to hear. Nobody wants to drop their targets and feel like they're admitting it's not working and they're a failure and all this. But if we reframe it, it's reallocating a skill point. It's a strategy in and of itself. It's saying, hey, this build, this character build I have, this character class, this build isn't working for my playstyle, right? I can't be a rogue or an a sorceress right now. I have to be a barbarian. I got to go with the brute force at a lower level. Let me adjust my character. Or you still have the character, but your build is changing. And the game is still

    Philip Pape: 27:10

    going and you're just optimizing your character. All right, before we wrap up, remember I promised you a three-question test to find out if your macro targets are in the flow zone. I'm gonna share it in a second, just after this. But just another reminder: if the system I described today sounds like, yes, that's exactly what I've been missing. Oh my God, Philip, you're talking, speaking my language of what's been going on in my head, and I have been able to explain it. Eat more lift heavy is the coached and tool-based and automated altogether version of this. Okay, it's my engineering brain put into a really excellently designed program for 26 weeks, training and nutrition progressing together. You're not gonna find this in the industry at this price point. It gives you a launch, we it, not it, I, I and Coach Carroll will give you a launch plan in your first week built specifically for where you're starting, not where you wish you were, but where you're starting, how you should train, how you should track your food. Go to wits and weights.com slash eatmore and get on the wait list. And then you'll get early access. You'll also get founders pricing. There's no risk in doing that. It's free to get on the list. So go to wits and weights.com slash eat more. All right, here's that test that I promised you. And it's three questions, and I want you to answer it honestly. I know I'm giving you a lot of these, so hopefully this one hits if you need it. Question one over the past seven days, did you hit your protein target at least five out of seven days? If the answer is no, then your protein target is above your current level. That's it. I don't care what the excuse is, what the reason is, forget it all and just acknowledge and admit right now your protein target is too high. Not, oh no, no, no, it's fine. I just did this, this, this, and that's why I didn't hit it. No, no, no. No. Your protein target is too high. Drop it to wherever you were consistently hitting it before and call that your floor to build the levels from there. That's question one. Question two, when you think about tomorrow's meals, are you confident that you can hit your targets? Or do you feel a tightness in your chest right now? A little bit of anxiety and heat in your head. Okay, confidence means you're in the flow zone. Like, yes, of course I'm confident. I've been doing it. I'm confident, I've got my meals ready to go. I know what I'm gonna eat. I hit up the grocery store. Maybe I did my meal planning, all that good stuff. Maybe I've pre-logged, whatever it is for you, whatever your system is, if you're confident. But if you're very tight, if you've got butterflies in your stomach, if you're nervous or anxious, it means that that challenge of hitting your targets tomorrow is far, it's too far above your skill level, and you have to back it down one increment. That's it. Again, the levels. Question three. If you missed your target yesterday, did you feel like the whole day was blown? Or did you think, okay, I'm gonna get closer tomorrow? I'm just gonna start again tomorrow. I'm gonna get closer. If you felt like the day was blown, you're still thinking in streaks in all or nothing land, as opposed to levels. And that's okay. That's you've acknowledged it, right? That's step one. And now we want to reframe that hey, yesterday was a four out of five day. Your level is still your level. Today is a new attempt at your same level. You're not restarting, you're not starting from zero, you're just attempting again to the same level, and you have fallback plans that we've talked about in this episode. If it continues to be a challenge. Now, if you answered, yeah, confident, and I use levels to all three of those questions, then your targets are in the flow zone, right? You hit you you hit your protein targets most of the time, you're confident about tomorrow's meals, and even if you missed your target yesterday, if it was one of those two out of seven, you reframe it and like, okay, today I'm gonna do it again. We're all good. And then you build from there. If not, you know what you need to adjust. All right. I hope that was helpful. I hope it helped you reframe and think about levels in skill building, kind of the way I do. I hope you take with it something valuable. And until next time, keep using your wits, lifting those weights. And remember, you don't build your best character starting at level 50. You earn it one skill point at a time. I'm Philip Pape, and I'll talk to you next time here on the Wits and Weights podcast.

Featured

Ready for the Next Step?

Read More