Why Muscle Predicts Your Cancer and Heart Disease Risk | Ep 482

Most people start lifting to look better, and they treat the health payoff as a nice bonus. There's nothing wrong with that, but the mortality research suggests that the frame is probably backward.

Your muscle and strength are the keys to longevity, with your physique and how you look a nice side effect.

The evidence here is large, in some studies hundreds of thousands of people. One simple measure of strength predicted death better than blood pressure.

I look at what that means for the two outcomes most of us worry about after 40, cancer and heart disease, including a detail about how cancer treatment gets dosed that very few people know. I also get into why muscle behaves like an organ that helps protect your heart, not just things that pop in your shirt :)

You have probably heard that being weak is worse than smoking. Does that hold up? Then I get to the part that should take some of the pressure off, which is how little training it takes to collect most of the benefit and why it is never too late to start.

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Wits & Weights is the evidence-based podcast for strength training over 40, body recomposition, muscle and longevity, fat loss over 40, and healthy aging. Hosted by Philip Pape, creator of Eat More Lift Heavy and Fitness Lab.

Timestamps

0:00 - Why lifting for looks gets the benefit backward
5:36 - Muscle is medicine... looking good is the bonus
10:06 - The strength measure that beats blood pressure
11:30 - Is being weak really worse than smoking?
14:46 - Muscle, cancer survival, and how treatment is dosed
17:23 - Your largest metabolic organ and your heart
20:14 - A useful longevity tool
22:44 - The surprisingly small dose that protects your life
26:01 - Why it is never too late to build muscle
30:06 - A 30-second strength test you can do today

Episode Resources

• Try Fitness Lab (20% off through July 3)

• Muscle-Building Nutrition Blueprint (free guide)

• Transcript

  Why lifting for looks gets the benefit backward

  Philip Pape 0:00

  If you lift weights mostly to look better, to fit your clothes, to see a little more shape in the mirror, I want to show you something today that will help reframe how powerful muscle is, because there is a pile of research, hundreds of thousands of people, that shows us that muscle and strength do much more for us than just our physique and just our function. They change how long you live and how well you live. It is a longevity lever, probably the biggest one we have. Today I'm going to walk you through the actual mortality data on muscle and strength, including how it lines up against cancer and heart disease, why grip strength predicts your risk better than blood pressure, and a part that should make you feel really good, which is how little training it actually takes to get most of the benefit. 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 comes from a very, very common question I get from everyone I talk to, clients, listeners, people who email me, they start lifting for how they want to look. And let's be honest, 90% of us maybe, I don't know if it's 90%, but most of us get into fitness or exercise or health or whatever, driven by how we look initially, because we're not happy with it. And yeah, we might kind of trick ourselves into saying it's about longevity or playing with our kids or whatever the deep value why is that we talk about all the time. But it often starts with we're just not happy in our skin. And there's nothing wrong with that. I wanted to start with that up front. Wanting to look good, wanting to feel strong in your own skin, that is a completely valid reason to train and improve your nutrition and walk more and all of that. It's usually the reason that gets people into this in the first place. But then what happens for a lot of us is we treat everything else, like the health stuff, the wellness, the living longer, the longevity, as kind of a nice bonus, as a side effect, right? It's like this thing that's an extra thing in the background that happens, and ultimately we're still chasing the aesthetic goal. I see it in the questions, I see it in the decisions like modifying how I train, the hypertrophy, you know, trying to do fat loss, maybe when you shouldn't, et cetera. There's a lot of things going on there. And I know it's often driven by vanity, even when you don't say it is. So let's be honest, just me and you in your AirPods or your headset or whatever or car, maybe you're working out now. Good for you. But I want I do want to flip this around, and I know I've covered this topic in the past, but I think, I think we're getting it backward, and I think it's more serious and important than we often talk about. More folks in the industry are talking about the importance of muscle and strength, but the data, the data on how long you live, on the longevity piece, on health, on cancer, on cardiac disease, is one of the strongest, most replicated bodies of evidence we have in all of health science. I can't repeat that enough. We're talking studies with hundreds of thousands of people, some cases over a million, that point to something I think most people who lived, us, I hope, or if you just came across this podcast, you're going to be motivated to do that, have never really thought too much about. And that is look, muscle is not just the side effect. Muscle itself might be the main event. The, I hate to say it, the UFC fight on the White House lawn. And I say that as a joke. Hopefully it's a joke to all sides of the political spectrum. And then the way you look, that's the side effect, believe it or not. And a lot of you, I think you kind of know this, and you're like, okay, here's another episode about the benefits of muscle. But I really want you to internalize this because if I see someone who doesn't lift weights, who doesn't use resistance training, I feel terrible for them. I wish I could just grab them and say, you've got to understand that that is the thing that's between a healthy, long, aging life and sickness and mortality, death, frailty, injury. I am serious. That is the dividing line right there. Now, if you're listening to this and you're you're getting older, you're over 40, you're over 50, right? I'm 45. I still consider myself pretty young, to be honest. And I feel young because I act young and I live young in terms of the resistance training, but also how I eat and walk and all that. I know you want to do that as well. And I know plenty of 75-year-olds and 85-year-olds who also feel like they're 40 because they're living this way and who wouldn't want that. Okay. And then we have, you know, the women in this audience going through peri and postmenopause, where hormones are changing. And this stretch of life into our 40s, that is where muscle and strength start to slip at a very rapid pace if you don't defend what you already have, let alone build more of it. And that's where the health payoff exists. That is where it is. Okay, so that's what this episode is about. I'm super passionate about this topic. I've seen too many people just die when they didn't have to, or get injured when they didn't have to, or go on medications when they didn't have to. And it makes me sad. Okay, now that's what this episode is about. If you stick around, I always give you a nice little treat at the end. We're gonna talk about, you know, the science in the episode. And then at the end, I'm gonna give you a very classic test you could do at home to tell you where your strength is. And you can test it anytime. If you're over a certain threshold, like you're good. Uh, if you're below it, you know you have some potential. But no matter your age, this is gonna be a super helpful test to just check it out relative to what the longevity research says. Okay,

  Muscle is medicine... looking good is the bonus

  Philip Pape 5:36

  today we are going to talk about why lifting just for looks and getting health as a bonus, it's kind of the backward frame, and it it may be causing poor decision making as well, which is why I wanted to address it. Then we're gonna talk about the numbers, the mortality data, the cancer and heart disease part of it, which is kind of how I framed, I think, in the title of this episode, because it's so important. It's so correlated with mortality and shorter lives and health spans or yeah, health spans. Um, we're gonna talk about grip strength and then the fix that I to all of this, okay, which is gonna seem so simple. It's gonna feel like a letdown, but in a good way. So let's get into it. All right, let's start with what people believe. What do people believe? Well, that if you lift to build muscle, muscle is gonna make you look better and move better, right? It's gonna improve function, which is not just looks, it's function. I get it. And that somewhere down the line, in some vague way, it's probably good for your health too. A lot of people truly believe, like they don't quite understand why muscle is important. It's one thing I go on other podcasts to talk about all the time. And when someone asks me on the podcast and they're not sure exactly what we're gonna talk about, that is what I pitch to them because it's so important. Where we think of health or even wellness, I hate that term, wellness, because it's kind of a dirty term these days, is tied into like influencer culture as well. But health and wellness, longevity, let's say, is thought of as the side effect or the background of all of this, but really it should be in the front. The reason this matters is practical because the way that you frame what's important in your priorities, is health more important than, say, strength and function or something like that, affects your decisions. So if you're always training for looks or for PRs or strength, then you might skip other aspects of the program, let's say, especially when it's not convenient, right? We need something that drives us, that motivates us. You might deprioritize recovery again, especially as we get older, our connective tissue gets a little less pliable. We get a little more prone to injury and we take longer to recover and things like that. You might bounce around from program to program because you're chasing something when something doesn't change fast enough, like let's say how you look or certain measurements. You'll question whether things are working. And of course, let's be honest, health and longevity is the long game. It's very, very hard to measure that in a motivational way, knowing that it's so far out, it's so many years out. So the mirror obviously can't show you a lot of different things. The body measurements and weight trend can't show you what's happening with your risk of mortality, of dying. It can't show you what's happening to your odds of getting cancer, can't show you how your heart is going to do 20 years from now. But all of that is being shaped right now by the muscle that you're building. But it's kind of invisible. So it doesn't get the attention or the vote when you're making your decisions. So that's the cost of all of this misprioritization. You end up training or eating or moving for the outcome in the short term. And then you ignore the outcomes that determine, you know, how long and how well you get to live. Now, before you think I'm gonna go down some weird path of longevity foods and inflammation and cortisol, I'm not because none of that really matters. Okay, especially for today's episode. So the thing that you can measure in the short term, ironically, is downstream of the thing that matters in the long term. So we kind of have it flipped around. And I know that sounds confusing, but it's because to put it another way, you can have suboptimal, say, physique outcomes in the short term, but it's because you're doing things that are beneficial to you in the long term. And there, and there's different elements of that we'll get into. So the frame today is not, okay, I'm gonna lift for looks, health is a bonus. It's hey, muscle is medicine and looking good is the bonus. Muscle is medicine and looking good is a bonus. And I don't know how powerful that statement is for you. I don't think it's a mic drop moment. It's just the way we're gonna frame it. Okay, so let's get into numbers. Let's get into objective facts. I love vibes as much as the next guy, but we can't live off of vibes, right? So there is a study called Pure, P-U-R-E, and it's probably the first one I'd look at. It followed 140,000 people across 17 countries, and they found that grip strength, that's just how hard you can squeeze, predicted your risk of dying. And by the way, when I've had physical therapy, they sometimes will at some point measure my grip strength. I think they stopped doing it. They're like, Yeah, yeah, you're you're strong. We don't have to worry about that. But it predicts your risk of dying. So for every roughly five kilogram drop in grip

  The strength measure that beats blood pressure

  Philip Pape 10:06

  strength, all cause mortality goes up by 16%. Cardiovascular death goes up 17%. That's powerful, guys. Okay, in the data, grip strength was a stronger predictor of death than systolic blood pressure. Stronger than blood pressure. Now, your doctor measures blood pressure every time you go in, and maybe you measure it at home. But do you ever get your grip strength measured? I've heard people talk about like having grip strength as a normal thing that you measure. Now, maybe older folks get it measured. I don't know. Maybe in different countries they do, but I haven't heard about it around here in the US. Then we have the UK biobank. Now, thank goodness UK has all this data for whatever you think about the national health system. They have a ton of data on half a million people and they found the same thing. And the effect between the grip strength and mortality was a little bit stronger, pun intended, in women. A large meta analysis that had two million people found 16% mortality increase per five kilogram drop in grip strength, just like we said before. And then they, when they compared the weakest group to the strongest group, the difference in mortality risk was 40%. So that's like taking the the two extremes. Now, always want to have nuance. I always want to be honest on this show and not overclaim because a lot of people in the longevity space get loose with the claims. And I hope I don't do that. And if you please call me out on it if I do, you'll hear things like low muscle is worse than smoking. Now, maybe I've said that, I don't

  Is being weak really worse than smoking?

  Philip Pape 11:30

  know, just to get attention. I I again I don't recall. Put me on the stand and I'll say I don't recall. But I did dig into it for this episode because I wanted to know if that holds up. And honestly, per unit, it doesn't. Smoking is just so terrible. Okay. Somebody who's a current smoker versus a never smoker has two to three times the risk of dying. Like smoking's just terrible. It's awful. And so that's a huge fact, a huge like single effect factor from like one variable compared to this five kilogram change of grip strength. So if someone tells you weakness is worse than smoking, that is definitely overstated. But, okay, now this this is the thing that is actually wild and true. When you compare the extremes, when you compare the weakest people to the strongest people, the gap actually gets up toward the smoking range. Okay, that is actually supported by the evidence when it comes to fitness. Cardior respiratory fitness, when that is measured in the lowest fitness group versus the highest, it's been measured at five times the risk of death. And the researchers themselves have said that is comparable to or greater than smoking. So the whole family of things, the muscle, strength, fitness, it lives in that neighborhood of risk factors, of huge, huge, huge risk factors like smoking that we know about. That's kind of where I wanted to take that. Oh, yeah. So at the end of the day, could you make that claim? It's probably not far from the truth, to be honest, which says something that, you know, strength specifically is a smaller per unit effect than smoking, but it's a bigger predictor than blood pressure. And when you take account for fitness overall and the gap between the weakest and strongest, it's a huge risk factor. And that's still something. That's something profound, I would say. Okay. That is very, very profound. I feel like this is something nobody's talked about, what was talking about, let's say five, even five or 10 years ago. And a lot of people are still not talking about it. I read newspaper articles, I see things online, people send me, and article, you know, and I see new studies that come out on things like osteoporosis, let's say. And they'll say, Well, we tried this new medication and it didn't seem to work. So we're still trying to find what is going to help with bone loss. And then they don't even mention strength training. Okay. Actually, I did see one article recently that says, so we're going to keep advising people to do the things that we know already work, like resistance training. I was like, okay, kudos for you for actually saying that. But how many times have I seen it not even be mentioned? And I'm like, oh my gosh, this is either a massive missed opportunity or a massive lack of education, at least among you know the media and reporters who have to go and find this information from experts. Okay, so let's get specific here because cancer and heart disease is kind of the frame in the title of the episode. And I think it's really important. I want to start with cancer. There's a landmark meta-analysis. Almost 8,000 people who had solid tumors, cancer tumors, and they found that people with low muscle mass had significantly worse survival. So they had worse overall survival, worse cancer-specific survival as well. And the mechanism is that when you have a serious illness, your body is going to draw down its protein reserves. And now you're like, okay, now I see the connection potentially to muscle, where muscle is literally the reservoir of amino acids

  Muscle, cancer survival, and how treatment is dosed

  Philip Pape 14:46

  that your body pulls from to fight, to heal, to recover from surgery, and to tolerate treatment. So we're talking about cancer survival. Chemotherapy, okay. Chemotherapy is often dosed by body surface area. They give you a dose basically based on your size. But we know that two people the same size can have different amounts of muscle, different body composition. So the person with low muscle effectively gets overdosed relative to their lean mass and toxicity goes up. In there was a study where serious, like what they call serious chemo toxicity showed up in 50% of the low muscle patients, but only 20% of the other patients. So it was, you know, the same, the same drug or the same treatment, but because of the different amounts of muscle, one fared much better, the group that had more muscle. Now, I don't want to scare people, I'm trying to approach this with the right nuance. There's a difference between having less muscle and there, and something called, it's a syndrome called cachexia, C-A-C-H-E-X-I-A. And that's the muscle wasting that's driven by the disease itself. And you can't fix that by lifting weights. So I just want to mention that. We're talking about the reserve of muscle that you've built before you know you get cancer, you have treatment for cancer. It's kind of like when we talk about surgery. I I always recommend people get as strong as they can before they go into surgery because you're gonna have to stop lifting and recover afterward. And it's gonna give you a much better chance to handle the treatment and the recovery. So when it comes to cancer, more muscle in the bank, more muscle on your frame before you get diagnosed or before you start treatment means more to draw down from if you ever need it. And I mean, I guess this this goes for anything in the future. Having more muscle is just gonna help. It's just gonna give you extra buffer, a massively extra buffer in some cases. And that's very, very empowering because we know we can build muscle at any age, we can increase muscle at any age. That's gonna be part of the outcome of this discussion. So that's cancer. It has to do with survival rates, chemo treatments, survival, you know, coming out of it healthier because you were stronger and had more muscle to begin with. Now, heart disease is this is kind of where I guess the engineer in me lights up because the mechanism here is really, really crisp. Your skeletal muscle is the single biggest place your body disposes of glucose. After you eat something like 80% of the glucose that gets pulled out of your blood, right, from the carbs that you eat, goes into muscle. So muscles, this glucose sink. More muscle, bigger sink, better blood sugar control, less of the metabolic chaos that drives heart disease. So we're talking about things like insulin sensitivity. We've talked about this on the show before, but this could be one of the biggest,

  Your largest metabolic organ and your heart

  Philip Pape 17:23

  most important reasons to have more muscle. You can handle more glucose, have better blood sugar control, less blood sugar issues down the line. Now, that's independent of your body weight, which in it which is its own risk factor, right? We don't want to carry too much body fat, but we're talking about muscle. I think it goes further than that as well, because muscle isn't just passive. It's not just a passive tank or storage tank for glucose. When you train, when it contracts, I mean, not even trained, even when you walk and just use it on a daily basis, it acts like an organ. That's why we call it an endocrine organ. It releases signaling molecules called myokines. And during exercise, one of them, interleukin 6, IL-6. Look it up, IL-6. It can spike up to a hundredfold, like a hundred times when you're exercising. Kind of like blood pressure goes up when you exercise, these acute responses. So that's an inflammatory marker, myocine, a good one. And this is it's anti-inflammatory. It's anti-inflammatory. That's why I say a good one. It helps damp down the chronic low-grade inflammation that is underneath things like heart disease and diabetes and a lot of the things that ages us. So every time you train, your muscles sending out chemical signals that are protective. So the and let's talk about this because this is the part that connects everything. The same tissue you build when you're trying to get those big shoulder caps, when you're trying to get those big glutes. It is also a metabolic organ that is actively defending your heart health. And it's doing these jobs all at once, but you really only can see, you know, you only see your muscles getting bigger, but you don't see all this wonderful stuff going on underneath. So you see what I mean? Muscle is not just something to build for function or strength or or muscles in and of themselves. It's the health piece, it's the health intervention. It is the prescription for aging. It's probably why John Sullivan created his book called Barbell Prescription. He actually goes into a lot of the fascinating benefits of health and avoiding what's called a sick aging phenotype, which is anybody who doesn't lift weights is going to get sicker and sicker as they age, period, bar none. Now, I know you guys want to get practical, right? And I know you're sitting thinking, okay, I'm convinced muscle is medicine. How do I know if I'm building it? How do I know if my training and recovery are pointed in the right direction? And I want to quickly tell you about my app, Fitness Lab, because it's designed for exactly that. Fitness Lab, which we talked about in the last episode, which is all about AI. Go check that out if you haven't. This is the provides a coaching intelligence layer. It's always hard for me to explain it, but it's effectively like a coach. It's not a tracking app, even though it can track lots of things, it can pull in all your data, but it can really work well alongside other data you have and other tools that you already use, including just having conversations with it. And the whole point is it looks at that data, tells you what it means, right? Which normally AI can't

  A useful longevity tool

  Philip Pape 20:14

  do that as well unless you really feed it the data and kind of prompt it over and over and spend hours chatting with, you know, ChatGPT or whatever. My app can just spit out, okay, I know what this means because I'm trained in evidence-based body composition, training, nutrition, the whole gamut. And it can say, look, are you recovering enough? Is your training producing the signal that you need to build muscle? Are you actually progressing? Is your feedback trending the way that you want across the metrics that matter for your goal? So it is a lot like having a coach in your pocket. People joke that it's like having Philip in your pocket when they talk to the chat tab. And it's like paying attention to what's happening to you. And the more you use it, the better it gets because it's learning from you. So if you if you use Fitness Lab, if you've already got it, I would give it a good three or four weeks to start really learning who you are, and it's gonna pay off big time. As you're listening to this episode come out, we have a promo going on as well. So just to put more skin in the game, 20% off. I'm throwing it your way. It ends tomorrow, Friday, as this comes out, witsandweights.com slash app. You can take a free quiz and get a plan that shows you what it will help you with over the next, say, three to six months before you even decide to buy the app. So totally zero risk. Go to wits and weights.com slash app. The link is also in the show notes. Now, if you're listening to this after July 3rd and it's gone back to full price, I want you to reach out to me. Uh, one way to do that is go to Instagram at wits and weights. Another way is to go to wits and weights.com slash email. Okay. So with Instagram at wits and weights or wits and weights.com slash email. I know I've thrown a lot of links at you, but essentially go grab the deal right now for fitness lab, wits and weights.com slash app. Link is in the show notes, 20% off wits and weights.com slash app. Okay, so we've covered why that's Health piece is so important. We've covered some of the data. We've covered mortality numbers, cancer, heart disease. There's so much data under there. I barely scratched the surface, but I think I gave you the essence of it. Now, what is the fix? I have to warn you. This is this is my trigger warning for you. It's gonna feel too simple. So if you don't like simple things, just stop listening right now. But that is the point of the show to try to get to what is the simple fix? Okay, here it is. I want you to train for muscle the same way you would if you only cared about how you look. Oh boy, oh boy, that's it. I'm gonna ruffle some feathers, right? Because earlier I kind of implied that doing that could lead to some wrong decisions, didn't I? All right, stick with me. Stick with me. I'll get to that. There is not a separate longevity program you need to go buy. There's no GLP1 program.

  The surprisingly small dose that protects your life

  Philip Pape 22:44

  There's no menopause hormone program. There's no cycle-based training program that you need to buy. You get what I you get what I'm saying? I hope you feel what I'm putting down. There's no special anti-aging protocol that is different from just lifting hard and progressively over time, because the mortality benefit is the byproduct of doing the things that you are already going to do. Now, why I said it's going to cause poor decisions is because a lot of people are training for looks. And because of that, they pay attention to the wrong things anyway, even when they're training for looks, because they're thinking short term, they're measuring the wrong things, they're looking at body weight instead of, let's say, body composition, or they're looking at their pump or the sweat or the soreness or the size of just their biceps instead of how their numbers are progressing, and so on and so forth. Now, I want to give you the actual dose here because specifics matter. Okay. I want you to train for muscle. And the research on resistance training and mortality is very encouraging here. Any resistance training at all compared to none is associated with a 15% lower risk of death. The sweet spot, okay, this is the this is the point of maximum benefit, lands at around 30 to 60 minutes a week, a week. After that, the curve starts to flatten out. So when we talk about dose response, what we mean is the more you do, the more benefit you get. But the but the caveat being the benefit becomes more incremental or marginal, right? To where it's not worth, it may not be worth it to you given the amount of time in the gym and the amount of stuff you have to do, right? That makes that makes sense, I think, to a lot of you. So you don't get dramatically more longevity benefit from training six days a week versus a couple focused sessions. Now, you might train more than that for other reasons, like to build more muscle because you enjoy it, to get stronger. All of that is phenomenal, and that's a lot of what we talk about. But the floor for the health payoff is that shockingly low amount of 30 to 60 minutes a week. So practically, here's what that looks like. I want you to train all your major muscle groups at least twice a week. Use progressive overload, meaning you're trying to do a little more over time, more weight or more reps. Get enough protein to support it. I'd aim for the minimum of 0.7 grams per pound of body weight, and you can only go up for that from there depending on your goals. And by the way, even that minimum, if you're nowhere close to it, you can get to it over time, you know, over a short period of time. You don't have to do it instantly. And then recover enough so you can keep showing up in the gym. That's that's the whole thing, right? Squat, hinge, push, pull, carry, whatever, twice a week, getting a little stronger over time, fed well, and recovered. There's a reason I call my program Eat More or Lift Heavy, because essentially the essence of it is that. Now, the other piece, which could be the most encouraging thing today, it's never too late to start. There's a famous set of studies done with nursing home residents. Their average age was late 80s. Some of them were in their 90s. They were frail. Come on, you've been to nursing homes. It is very depressing. It's very sad. I've known people who basically lived the rest of their life in a nursing home for one reason or another, died there. It was very, very sad. And all I thought is if I could just spend an hour a week with them, like as a personal trainer, and maybe I should volunteer to do that if they would have let me and get on a resistance training program, you would have gotten the benefit that these people did in this study. So they put them on a program, actual progressive

  Why it is never too late to build muscle

  Philip Pape 26:01

  lifting, where they increased the numbers over time. And guess what? Their strength went up an average of 174%. Now that is people in their 90s. Also, the speed that they could walk increased. Their muscle grew. New muscle, bigger muscle in your 90s. Come on, this is incredible. So if you're 45 like me right now, or 55 or 65, you're listening to this and you're like, I've missed my window. Heck no, that is not an excuse. I'm sorry, I'm taking that off the table for you. The windows right now, it doesn't matter if you're male, female, what age you are. By the way, I'll say it again. Women build muscle at the same rate as men. They have less to start with. That is what it is. That's puberty, testosterone, whatever. It doesn't matter. But once you start growing your muscle, it's the same rate as men. And it doesn't matter the age. So your body will respond to that signal. It's not like anything changes. You're still a human being till the day you die. So it will respond. Now, listen, I'm not saying lifting makes you immortal. That would be awesome. Like if everybody lifted weights and we lived to be 200 years old. I'm not saying muscle cancels out terrible behavior like smoking or bad diet or never sleeping. Of course not, right? You've got to do those things. I'm not saying you should panic about grip strength or go get a death risk score and like start to spiral about it or rant and rave at me. Please don't do that. I'm not saying the research proves adding muscle directly causes you to live longer. All this research, most of it is observational. There's a chance that some can go the other way, that like being sick makes you weak rather than weakness making you sick and stuff like that. But good studies try to account for all of that. And the overall signal has held up so well. You know, I'd be lying if I told you anything was a closed case in science. Like that is science. You can never fully prove anything, can you? So nuances everything. What I am saying though is across an enormous body of evidence, muscle and strength track with living longer and surviving all the things that kill most of us. The mechanisms behind them make biological sense at the human body level, not just in a rat, right? Or in a petri dish. And the intervention is simple and something that you have complete control over. And hopefully we're going to do anyway, since you listen to wits and weights. So you might as well train like it matters, because it absolutely does. And you don't have to change a thing about your program to collect the benefit. You just have to keep lifting. In fact, adding more and doing more and trying to optimize really benefits the other things like the muscle and the physique and the strength. So just know that the health stuff is a pretty low threshold. So there's no excuse not to get in the gym. All right, before we wrap up, remember I'm going to give you a 30-second strength test you can do at home to just kind of give yourself a wake-up call in case you need to get in that gym. If this episode has hit you, if you're walking away thinking, okay, I really need to train and I need to approach my life differently because this is more, this is more important than anything right now, especially if you don't train. It's not just for vanity. It's the single most controllable lever you have on how long and how well you live. If you want to make sure that lever is moving in the right direction, that your training and recovery are producing the muscle you think they are, just to know that you're doing the right thing, even if you do it for a few months. That's why I built my app Fitness Lab. I want you to just check it out, see if it's right for you. I think it's helping a lot of people. It is a daily coaching layer. It looks at your data and tells you what to do. It's very empowering and helpful and holds you accountable. Go to wits and weights.com slash app. We have a discount through Friday, July 3rd, 20% off. Witsandweights.com slash app. Okay, here's the test. It is a classic test to test your strength. You don't need any equipment. It is called the sit to stand test. You sit down in a normal chair, you cross your arms over your chest. So, you know, you can't use them, you just pin them to your chest like a mummy. And then you stand all the way up and sit all the way back down as many times as you can in 30 seconds. Now, you might want to do this alone. If you think people are gonna look at you askance, like my kids do when I tried it, or you might make it a fun family experience. Up to you. You're gonna count your reps. You're gonna stand up, sit down as many times as you can in 30 seconds, count them.

  A 30-second strength test you can do today

  Philip Pape 30:06

  For most adults who are in this midlife range, you know, 40s, 50s, 60s, somewhere in the low teens is average strength. The higher you go, the better your lower body strength, and the better that tracks with longevity. And people who are who just lift weights on a regular basis can like slam out dozens of these. Like there, there are no issues, like no question whatsoever. But if you're in the teens, low teens, so like let's say 15, 10 to 15, that's average strength, meaning you have a lot of potential to get stronger. And if you're lower than that, then you're pretty darn weak. And that's okay to acknowledge that. That's what the data is telling you. And that's even better reason to get in the gym. And that's okay. Like just admit it to yourself, okay, I need to do something. Right? It's it's a place to start. Wherever you're at, it's a place to start. And what's cool is if you do it and it's really low and you start going to the gym and do it just like a week later or a month later, see how fast that number goes up. That itself could be really, really empowering. So do it today, write the number down, retest it, I'll say in four weeks and eight weeks. And if the number is going up, then you're basically getting stronger. All right, until next time, keep using your wits, lifting those weights. And remember, the muscle you build for the mirror is the same muscle keeping you alive for a long, healthy life. So train it, train it, train it like your life depends on it because the data says it just might. I'm Philip Pape, and I'll talk to you next time here on the Wits and Weights podcast.

The Biggest AI Mistake People Make With Fat Loss Over 40 | Ep 481

You have access to more fitness information than any previous generation. ChatGPT, Google, YouTube, social media, and of course this podcast can answer almost any question about losing fat or building muscle in seconds. So why are so few people over 40 actually getting better results?

The problem was never a lack of information. Most people are using AI to solve the wrong problem entirely. The generic plans you ask for rarely change your body, and this is explained in the behavior research. 

Knowing what to do is not the same as doing it... adherence has always mattered more than the plan you choose.

AI becomes useful when you treat it like a coach instead of a search engine. Feed it your own training logs, nutrition data, and biofeedback, and it helps you make better decisions instead of collecting more advice.

Later in the episode, I also share a simple prompt that gets honest feedback from any AI tool instead of agreement.

By the end you will know which jobs to hand AI, which to keep for yourself, and how to use it for execution instead of just more information.

Try Fitness Lab, the AI coaching app that reads your data, coaches you on your patterns, and keeps you consistent for adults over 40 who want to lose fat and build strength. Summer special is 20% off through July 3:
https://witsandweights.com/app

Wits & Weights is the evidence-based podcast for strength training over 40, body recomposition, fat loss over 40, metabolism recovery, and healthy aging. Hosted by Philip Pape, creator of Eat More Lift Heavy and Fitness Lab.

Timestamps:

0:00 - Why more AI isn't giving you better results
4:22 - The real bottleneck is behavior, not information
8:13 - The gap between intending and doing
11:06 - Where AI actually helps you change
12:42 - Spotting patterns in your own data
14:30 - Accountability, stakes, and the human factor
19:58 - Coaching that works with your data
23:40 - Bad AI prompts vs. better coaching questions
32:36 - The one prompt that makes AI stop being a yes-man
35:20 - The real reason most people stay stuck

• Transcript

  Why more AI isn't giving you better results

  Philip Pape 0:00

  You now have access to more fitness information than any human in history. Every answer about how to lose fat, how to build muscle, absolutely free just in seconds using AI. But ask yourself how that's working for you. You're probably not more consistent than you were a year ago, two years ago. You're not any leaner. And today I want to show you why AI, as you're probably using it, is not really much of an upgrade over a Google search. It might even make things worse. How to actually use AI so it's helpful and effective for you, and a few specific examples of the right and wrong ways to put it to work for your training and nutrition. 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 Abe, and this is an episode I've wanted to do for a while. I think the timing is perfect because everybody and their mother is now using AI for their health and fitness, from Chat GPT to Claude to just random Google searches and everything in between. There's Buco tools and software being generated that use AI. You're asking it, how do I eat? How do I train? Is my plan any good? And I think it's really, I think it's awesome that we have technology to play with like this. And depending on who you are, if you're over 40, if you're navigating perimenopause or menopause, if you're lifting weights, you're trying to lose fat, trying to hold on to muscle, you've probably used AI by this point and asked it a question like, hey, what is the best workout for me given XYZ? Or hey, build me a meal plan given my macros. Am I am I right? Am I right? And if not, you're probably like, oh, I can do that. Let me go try it out. But I bet most of you have done that. And I want to be totally careful and walk the line on this episode because I am definitely not anti-AI. Not only do I use it all the time in my business as a power assist to save tons of time, especially on tedious type of work, but I built an AI coaching app. So I use these tools every single day. It this is not the, you know, robots are coming. This is Skynet Terminator taking over the world episode. And it's also not, hey, I, AI is the best and most amazing thing that will solve everything. Oh, and the last thing, it's not. I'm not gonna get into like how much water it sucks up and how expensive microchips are going to be and how the billionaires are gonna take over the planet. I'm not getting into any of that stuff. I'm gonna try to keep the focus narrow. I think AI is a useful tool. That's it. Like any other tool, it's tool. It's probably one of the most incredibly game-changing advances that we've seen in such a short period of time. And that can be highly dangerous in many of our minds, of course, when there's not appropriate, you know, boundaries on it. We saw this recently when Claude had to walk back the release of their latest mythos class model. You don't have to know what I'm talking about, but basically they said, yeah, this is too dangerous. Like people can create bioweapons or whatnot and you know, hack into banks and if they use it. So we're gonna turn it off. So I totally get all of that. Like I'm pretty educated in what's going on there. I love tech. I'm into all of that. But what this episode today is is about the gap between what AI can do and what most people use it for and how they use it. And we're gonna kind of explore that gap so you can take advantage of the tool for yourself because ultimately I want you to be able to use the tool in an educated way to help you out. That's it. I want you to also stick around to the end of the episode because I'm going to give you a prompt. It's a one-line prompt that you can paste into any AI chatbot that actually helps it help you better by pressure testing your plant rather than just totally agreeing with you. A concept called sycophancy, AI sycophancy, which, you know, South Park made a really funny episode about that a while back. You should look that up. But a lot of people, a lot of people aren't aware that they can they can train or they can update settings in their AI to help it, help it do better for you. And it just takes a few seconds to set that up. So stick around for that. But here's where we're going today. I'm gonna show you the bottleneck that has nothing to do with information. I'm gonna show you four things that AI is genuinely good at that can move the needle for you. And I'm gonna show you the difference between using it well and using it more like a search

  The real bottleneck is behavior, not information

  Philip Pape 4:22

  engine, like a lot of people use it. Okay. So hopefully this is a great episode for you. And as always, I love to start with hey, what is the conventional wisdom? What do people talk about? What do people claim that is true and maybe it's not? And the information's been out there when it comes to health and fitness and all of this stuff. It's been out there for over a decade. I mean, I got into podcasting in my own personal journey because I was able to get access to great podcasts and books and videos. And this was all before AI. And if you think about it, everything you need to know, to know, okay, information to lose fat, to get strong, to do all the things we talk about, to improve your metabolic health, has been sitting on the internet for free, even since before some of you started your fitness journey, even going back to like the bodybuilding forums and going back to the early days of the internet. How to set up protein and get enough, how to structure your lifting, progressive overload, energy balance, like all that stuff. And if anything, we have more so much information now that it's confusing, right? Like it's who who's telling the truth. We have influencers, we have social media. None of it is secret, I'll say. And if it is purported to be a secret, they're probably trying to sell you something. So, so none of it is gated behind a paywall. You can find all the studies, you can find all the information. You could have learned every relevant principle even 10 years ago without spending a dime, even though the science continues to get refined, is pretty darn close to what you would need to do. And of course, we know this because people have been successful improving their health and fitness for much longer than we've had the internet. And of course, we've now gotten just better and better at it. So the question that should really bother you here is okay, if information is the thing standing between me and what I want, the body I want to be lean, to be strong, to be healthy, to stop binge eating and to get rid of food noise, whatever it is, you'd already have it, right? You'd already have it. You you'd be done. Like you would have solved the problem, you'd have your plan, you'd execute, you'd be good. Everybody who has a smartphone, which is like the entire world, would have what they want. We'd be lean and strong. They'd they'd be millionaires, billionaires, whatever. Right. And you, I know you've heard this argument plenty of times, right? Everybody has access to the same information today. Information is as cheap as it's ever been. It's more democratized than it's ever been. You know, started with the printing press and it just went from there. And now we have the internet and now we have AI. But that doesn't matter, apparently, because many of us are still struggling. That's why you're listening to this podcast, because you're trying to figure out, okay, what is the secret or what is the thing I need to do? So information was never the bottleneck. And that's important because AI, the way most people use it, ChatGPT and Cloud and all of these, is a machine, a highly intelligent, you know, neural network machine learning trained, you know, whatever tech behind it machine for producing more information. Now you might not like that, that's the case, because that's really what it's doing. It's taking all of the knowledge that we have in human existence that it has access to and it's processing through that using very intelligent algorithms that are self-learning in many cases. And I know that scares a lot of us, but it's faster, it's, I'll say, cleaner, it uses better grammar, it's personalized to your exact question. I mean, now when you go to Google and you search, Google's smart about it. They use Gemini to just to give you the answer at the top. In fact, a lot of a lot of businesses don't like it because now there's sponsored results or their links at the top, people don't go to them anymore. They just get the answer right from Google. But it's still more information. And it's still, it's like Wikipedia, it's kind of like what Wikipedia has done in a way, where you guys, you know this. You go to Wikipedia and you search up something and then you can follow through with all the the references. So if information was never the problem, then more information, even if it's better delivered, is not the solution, is it? I mean, you tell me. It has it solved things for you? Or is it a marginal or maybe even large upgrade on something that was never really the problem?

  The gap between intending and doing

  Philip Pape 8:13

  So I want to talk about the actual problem. Okay. There's a researcher named Pascal Sheeran who did a big review of health behavior studies. And across studies on exercise, on screening, on all kinds of health behaviors, he found that of the people who had a genuine positive intention to do the thing, to do the thing they wanted to do, they wanted to do it passionately. They planned to do it, whatever that thing is, the median proportion who then did not follow through was 47%. 47%. So almost half of the people who intend to act don't. And so I want you to sit with that because there's a lot of judgment today about, well, you just gotta do it, right? You're just, I don't even want to say people get accused of being lazy, but we think of obesity and things like that. Even if behavior is a part of the equation, okay, okay, let's say it is. Are you able to follow through on that behavior? Right. And and as soon as you judge somebody else, like put point the finger at yourself and think of anything that you failed to follow through on in your entire life. There's probably millions of things. Okay. The constraint was never knowing what to do. It's that vast canyon between intending to do it and actually doing it. Not only that, but consistently, especially on the days you don't feel like it, because that's how you get consistent. The days you feel like it, you're gonna do it. But there are probably more days you don't feel like it than there are that you do. So knowing and doing are two completely different problems. And AI, especially when it's used as a fact retrieval machine, only really solves that first problem, the knowing part. And that's not really the problem that you have. Does that make sense? So, and okay, by the way, we have good data on the doing side as well, like actually following through. There's a famous diet study by Danzinger, where they put people on four completely different popular diets: Atkins, Ornish, Zone, and Weight Watchers. Now we're going back in the time machine, aren't we? Okay, let's see. I've tried two of those, Atkins and Zone. And so they're completely different diets, different mechanisms, different macros, whatever. And what they found is no meaningful difference between the diets. What predicted whether someone lost weight was not the diet they were on, it was whether they stuck to the diet. Adherence. Okay. Broken record, guys, if you ever, if you've already been following my podcast, you know this is a tenet of what we talk about is adherence. That is the key. It's not the mechanism, it's not the plan, it's the doing, the doing, the doing. Okay, do it, just do it. Okay. So if you've been treating AI, I don't know why I'm in a good mood today, but if you've been treating AI as the thing that finally gives you the answer, I want to gently suggest to you that you're solving a problem you don't even have and you're ignoring the problem that you do have. So we're gonna get into that now. All right, so if information is not the bottleneck, behavior change is the bottleneck. Let's

  Where AI actually helps you change

  Philip Pape 11:06

  talk about why this matters for how you use AI, because this is where I think it gets interesting. AI is really, really good at some of the behavior change stuff, but it's not what a lot of people use it for. All right, and I'm gonna piss off a lot of coaches, a lot of behavior change specialists who think you have to have a human in the mix all the time to help people change their behavior. That's absolutely not true. Okay, well, follow, follow me on the logic. There's a study out of out of a team at Google. Now take that with a grain of salt, a team at Google where they took a large language model, so that would be like a chat GPT type software, and they they directed it at activity coaching. So activity coaching, coaching for activities. And they tested on things like is the advice actionable? Is it realistic? Is it empathetic? Does it motivate? And what's so telling is that the model itself got significantly better at being actionable and realistic when they set it up well. Okay. In fact, big jumps in those two areas, but on empathy and motivation, the gains were not even statistically significant. So the machine got better at the practical translation stuff, and it stayed pretty weak as a model or as a tool at the human stuff. And so from that point, we can say, okay, so there are things that need to be kept with a human. Like I just said, empathy and motivation. There are now, having said that, there's a way to marry the two and kind of amplify the two. We're gonna get into that, but first we need to understand the AI side of the equation.

  Spotting patterns in your own data

  Philip Pape 12:42

  So what's it what's AI good at? I think there are four things. Four things. And a lot of you aren't even using it for any of these things. Number one, and I think this is the big one, is it can recognize patterns in data. Makes sense, right? It can take a lot of the more data you give it, the more it can act on it. It's really powerful for that. So instead of when we think of food, not what should I eat, it's here's what I actually ate. So here's my food log, macrofactor, whatever. And I've given it to you for the last three weeks of data. What patterns do you see in my eating to help me decide what to eat? Now that's a very different question, isn't it? Because now it is working with your reality instead of giving you a generic answer. So it's using data, which makes a lot of sense. And this can be used for a lot of things, like your lifting, right? You can put in your workout logs, you can put in your biofeedback data, you could you could do everything that I have clients do as a coach, everything that they track, body measurements, weight, like you name it, you can give it that data. In many cases, these tools are now integrated with Apple Health and whatnot, and it makes it even easier to do that. And a lot of tools are being developed to take advantage of that as well, right? Same thing with something very specific like your protein intake and looking at the patterns and saying, oh my goodness, it looks like my protein falls off here and here, and here's why. Because if you're just tracking it in a food log, like let's say Macrofactory, you can kind of see that visually and figure it out on your own. But what if there are things you can't really see as easily? And I think the AI is great for that. It can catch it in you know milliseconds or seconds. So finding a signal out of the noise, as we say, in a pile of data. And the more, and the bigger the bigger the pile of data, the better. So that's what's great is you can feed it so much data, lab work. I mean, just dump it in there. All right, number two is accountability

  Accountability, stakes, and the human factor

  Philip Pape 14:30

  and a check-in structure. Now you might say, well, isn't that the human part? Well, no, again, we're talking about activities. We're not talking about like empathy or motivation per se, although I'm going to argue that a lot of our motivation is intrinsic motivation that does come from checking in and accountability. So let me get a little more precise on this part, on the accountability part, because it there's nuance here. AI can scaffold a check-in, let's say. Let's use the word scaffold, right? Like a scaffolding around a building. It can ask you the right questions on the right cadence. What it cannot do, it doesn't care whether you lied to it, it doesn't know. There are no stakes, there's no aspect of like empathy to it. It's just cold calculated. And it's like, if this is the check-in you want to do it. And let me let me elaborate on this because there's there's a a data set in the research where they had 65,000 people using a coaching app and they compare people who had AI coaching alone versus people who had AI plus a human coach. The group with a human with the AI lost over 74% more weight than the group that just had the AI coaching. And it was the same app. The only difference there was a human in the loop. And the mechanism here is that the people with a human coach, they actually logged their food and their weight more often. And it's not like the human had secret knowledge, the human just created stakes that made them actually do the thing. So that's that's what's kind of interesting. That's a motivation piece. That's pretty cool, right? That's why humans are gonna be important for a long time, hopefully for the rest of eternity. But I wanted to talk about that difference, right? So, in other words, AI can be incredibly useful, humans are incredibly useful, and men put them together and you have a very powerful combination. Number three is a customized application of a general principle to your specific situation. Anyone take physics, right? Or, you know, you've heard of Einstein, where we talk about general relativity versus special relativity. So think about that. All the principles you read about or hear about on podcasts or this show, they're general principles. At least I hope they're talking to you in terms of principles and not telling you this is the answer, the one answer. Because there is no one answer. There are principles, and then you have your specific situation. So, like the principle of eating around 0.7 to one gram of protein per pound of body weight, everybody knows that. But what's your body weight? What's your goal? What is your schedule? What are you capable of eating? Are you vegan, vegetarian, blah, blah, blah? You know, are you dairy-free? Like, how do you hit that number? You know, all those things are the you parts of it. Are you in fat loss or not? This and that. That's where a real person gets stuck. That's where people get stuck. Okay. The translation, the translating that principle to your messy, chaotic real life, AI is great at. It's actually great at because it's not just retrieving a fact, it is taking all the data that you've told it, finding the patterns like we just talked about, and then translating it to you. And you actually don't need a human for that per se. Okay. Now, that's like there's a caveat on that because obviously if the AI is not asking the right questions or you're not feeding it all the data it needs, it can give you a garbage answer. Whereas a human might say, Whoa, whoa, wait a minute, I need to know this and this as well. But that doesn't mean AI can't do it. Okay. Understand the difference. It has to be good enough to do it and you have to use it the right way. And then number four is AI is good at asking the questions that you don't know to ask because you don't know what you don't know. So, as an engineer, I come from the world of requirements for a product, and there's things that you know, there's things you know that you don't know, and there's things you don't know that you don't know. So instead of like, hey, what's the best exercise to get bigger glutes? Because I want a big butt, you say, Hey, what am I not considering about my training or my protein as I go through menopause and given my program right now because I want a big butt, right? Or something like that. Like giving it that context and then have it give you what the blind spots are. You know, notice what I just said. What am I not considering about dot dot dot? Great prompt right there. What am I not thinking about? Right. And so that would turn AI kind of like into a coach that asks you questions that you wouldn't think to ask of yourself. So those are the four things pattern recognition in your data, an accountability structure, applying principles to your specific situation, and then uh kind of surfacing up these blind spots that you're not thinking of. Now, what does every single one of those have in common? Well, they all require you to bring something to the equation. That is your data, your plan, your situation, your context. I mean, until the day that AI is like hardwired into our brain, God help us all, you have to bring that stuff. Now, I just I mentioned before, sometimes it's integrated with Apple Health or Aura rings or whatever. And granted, that is kind of an automated way to do that. I'm not saying it doesn't have to be automated, just you have to bring that stuff. And so the good uses of AI, in my opinion, are a conversation about your actual life and getting some help on the blind spots and structure accountability, all that stuff. Whereas a bad way to use AI would just be a generic search, a generic question, using it as kind of like an advanced Google. Does that make sense? This

  Coaching that works with your data

  Philip Pape 19:58

  is honestly right now the perfect place to mention the thing that I've built that's out there that I think takes advantage of all of these in a very thoughtful way, where AI is the application layer. It's not an information fire hose. It just dumps information at you. It really is the this intelligence or interpretation on top of your data. And that's called Fitness Lab. This is my app. I'm giving you a shameless plug for it because it does exactly what I've thought through AI can do well, that can help in the fitness and training world, that also is pre-trained with lots and lots and lots of good evidence-based data, as well as my entire podcast, all my guides, all that fun stuff. It's all trained into there. Exercises, you name it. What I've found is that people are kind of sick of just having more trackers, more tracking apps, right? For training and nutrition, what do we need? Well, we need a way to track our workouts, a way to track our nutrition. And then we probably want to track some other measurements, right? Our weight, our measurements, our photos, things like that, body fat. And most people are tracking with a few of these apps. Some people have app burnout. That's what I find a lot. But even when you're doing all that, you don't have a way to bring it all together unless you have a coach. And we've talked before about human coaching, right? It's expensive, it's hard to get a good coach. It's getting more and more where it's, it's, you know, it's a tough industry, let's just say, for on both sides. Okay. And yet if I said, hey, I just want to use another yet another app, here's another tracker. You're just tracking, tracking, tracking, tracking. Even if you're tracking in a notebook, how are you using that information? Even if you're doing something like starting strength and you're using a notebook and tracking your lifts, do you truly know what decision to make at your next session based on that data? That's what Fitness Lab does. It is not trying to be your tracker, it can definitely track lots of things. It integrates with Apple Health, all that good stuff. We tried to reduce as much friction as possible on that side. But if you still are tracking in other apps like MacroFactor or a workout app, it can work alongside it in a really cool way. And it does what we talked about before. The more data you have, the better it can actually use that data to help you do what you need to do. So, what it does is the four things I talked about. It look at your patterns, it looks at your biofeedback, like sleep and hunger, et cetera, at things like your protein. If you've been feeding it meals, not like a tracker, but more like an analysis tool. Your training, it tells you what's going on. It tells you here's what, here's the pattern, and here's the questions I want to ask you to make sure you do the right thing next so that you don't have to stress about it. So basically gives you daily coaching. It gives you activities each day. It adapts to you. You can talk to it anytime and it can adjust any of those activities based on what you need. If you're like, man, I'm burnt out. I don't want to track, it'll say, okay, let's just limit it to one or two activities a day and we're still going to make progress. All right. Right now, we're running a summer special from June 23rd through Friday, July 3rd. If you're hearing this afterward, I want you to reach out to me. I can probably get you a secret discount. But during the promotion, it's 20% off going to our link witsandweights.com slash app. Go to wits and weights.com slash app. As of this episode dropping, you've got about five days left. And if you've been listening to all of this, you're like, okay, I get it. I need that application layer to do something productive with the data. I don't need more information. I want to lose fat. I want to get rid of that belly fat. I want to know how to train. I want to progressively overload and get stronger. I want to deal with my sleep issues. I want to deal with my food noise. All of that, it's going to help you with that. Go to witsaweeits.com slash app and grab that 20% off discount. I would recommend signing up for the year subscription because you'll save even more doing it that way versus the shorter one. Go to witzawaits.com slash app for fitness lab today.

  Bad AI prompts vs. better coaching questions

  Philip Pape 23:40

  Okay, let's get back to it and talk about okay, how do you use AI? I think the fastest way to fix this is with a few examples, right? A bad use versus good use of AI. So a bad use of AI is opening it up. And again, any AI I'm talking about. Heck, even my own app, if you just ask it this way and you say, like, what's the best workout for a woman over 40? Or weight loss for women in perimenopause is a super common search. Well, you're gonna get a perfectly reasonable, totally generic plan that you will not end up doing. That's that is the honest answer. You'll just see it, you'll say, like, okay, that's nice. Kind of like an article in the newspaper. That's nice. You see this, honey? Okay, moving on. I'm gonna go have my uh oatmeal now. All right, now why aren't you gonna do it? It's because it has nothing to do with you, your lifestyle, your equipment, your dieting history, your particular issues, right? We've we've kind of nailed this or hammered this to death, but you know what I mean. It's an answer to a question that unfortunately has a thousand correct answers, kind of like the infinite universes, the multiverse, right? Spider-Man, the multiverse. Anyone watching Nick Cage and Spider-Noir, awesome show on Prime. Uh, when do I find time to watch TV? I I'm only one episode in. So anyway, it's a thousand permutations of an answer, and it's not going to help you. That's the information fire hose. That's more plan, but no more progress. We don't want that. A good use of that would be pasting in your current program, the one that you're actually running right now. So it could be a screenshot from your workout app. You can type it in, you can take a photo. There's lots of ways depending on what you're using. Like if you use Fitness Lab, you can go into the chat and you could do audio or what you could do video or files or text or whatever. And you say, okay, here are my constraints. I train three days a week. I only have dumbbells. I don't have any micro plates, my knees are cranky. Like, what's the weak link here? That's a great way to question, ask it. Like, what are the blocks? What am I missing here in my plan? I mean, you could say, hey, just give me a better plan, but I love to start from finding the weak spots. Right. So now that helps you learn where the plan doesn't stack up and improve what you're following for the things you just told it are your constraints. And that's super powerful. And you could have all sorts of constraints, right? The days of the week that you can do it, like anything, you know, you hate doing this exercise, whatever. So, do you see the difference between those two? In the first one, you get a generic answer based on information, but the second one is diagnosing you and giving you the blind spots and how to improve. And by the way, you're gonna learn in the process as a human. You're not hopefully not just blindly following it and moving on, but it's like, okay, now I understand why it's working. And again, my app, Fitness Lab, is is kind of cool because it it talks to you like I would, if you will, for better or worse. And it kind of tries to explain it in an accessible way. Here's another, here's another bad example, right? Or bad versus good. You say, is creatine good for women in menopause? I don't know why I keep hammering on the women in menopause, but it's probably because I hear a million questions in about that. So is creatine good, right? And and honestly, that's a question I get, I get that question over Instagram or people had just found the podcast. Hey, is creatine, should I take creatine? I'm like, really? That like that's your question. Sorry, I don't mean to judge people, but like we need to, we need to put more effort into our questions, but I get it, I get it, because maybe you've never heard of creatine you just heard about, you're like, what is this creatine thing? Is it good to do? I would say a good use of AI or asking a question would be, hey, I'm I'm thinking of starting taking creatine. Here's my goal, here's my routine, here's my other supplements, how much do I take, or how do I remember to take it every day, or how do I know it's working? Like there's a lot of ways. I'm not telling you that there's one right way to ask the question, but almost pretend like it's a coach in front of you that you're picking their brain. That's really what you're trying to do. All right. You're not just trying to get a generic fact, you're trying to find out how it's gonna work for you. And again, the more data you give it, the better. I hope this episode isn't going too long, but I do have one more. This is this is for all of us here. Why am I not losing weight? Okay, well, it's an interesting question, right? Because some people say, Why is my metabolism too low? Why am I not losing weight? One of the most common questions. And as a coach, I would say, Well, I need to learn a lot about you right now, based on that. In fact, people sign up for coaching calls with me just to dig in and kind of figure the heck out of this stuff. Because last I counted, there are at least 13 specific reasons for a plateau. And I've built them into like the tools that I create to help people understand where your plateau is coming from. But then even to get to one of those 13 answers, you need like 1300 pieces of information. I'm I'm I'm exaggerating, but you know, you need data indicate data out. So if you just ask the question generically on Google or AI, you're gonna get all a list of all the things. Now you have to go figure out, okay, which of those lists apply to me? Calories, sleep, stress, right? The usual suspects. Or you're gonna get fear-mongering, like, oh, it's your hormones, it's cortisol, right? It menobellies called by cortisol caused by cortisol or something like that. So it's generic, it's useless. And look, you already know a lot of those, don't you? Yeah, I think you do. Or if you listen to the show, you do. Maybe maybe you don't. That's fine. Basic information's cool, it's good education, but it's not gonna help you. A good use of AI for this, if you're not losing weight, is take three weeks in a row of your data. Now you're like, oh crap, I don't actually have data. Well, listen to my podcast for a while, folks, because you're gonna learn how much I love tracking. And if you feel like tracking is a chore, there are easy ways to do it that are low friction. It's a problem we deal with all the time. Okay, but if you don't track, how the heck can you tell what's going on? You've got to track something, right? You've got to track something. So, and maybe this will motivate you to do it. Knowing that you can get an answer may motivate you to do it. So take three weeks of your food log, your training, your weight trend, your biofeedback, like your sleep, and then you paste it all in. Maybe you have lab work too, but I would keep lab work to the side initially unless you really suspect something. And then ask the AI, hey, what patterns do you see? And what would you change first if my goal right now is to lose weight or to lose fat? Okay, and if if you're using Fitness Lab and you ask it, it might even push back and say, hey, we're not trying to lose weight, actually, we're trying to lose body fat. It's gonna, it's gonna mansplain to you, but actually in a general uh gender neutral way, I guess. But I'm joking, kind of. It will then help you understand. Ah, okay, here's the thing that's the most important for you right now. That's pretty cool. That's pretty amazing. Like if you all you have to do is have data, and I get it takes work and effort to track data, but really not that much, guys. Not that much. Okay, just a few things can be very powerful. So the through line on all of these, I've heard the word through line lately. It's like jargon buzzword I hear everywhere. Maybe it's because of AI. I don't know. The through line on all of this is that every good use of AI or a human coach, but we're talking about AI today, starts with you giving it some good data. Your plan, your goals, your data, your constraints, all of that fun stuff. The the incorrect use of AI is without that. It's just asking questions, but not, and it's lazy. It's a lazy use of AI that's gonna give you a lazy answer that's gonna result in you not getting any progress. Okay. So I am I am not saying that AI is useless for fitness. I clearly don't believe that. I built an entire tool around it, Fitness Lab. We talked about it. I'm not saying information doesn't matter. It doesn't, it does. If you are genuinely like at a zero out of 10, you got to learn stuff. You gotta learn the principles. Go ahead and use AI to learn them. That's fine. Be a little bit cautious and careful on where the data is coming from, right? Again, that's where if you had Fitness Lab, you can learn as part of the process. In fact, in Fitness Lab, every day there's a briefing that teaches you something. That's pretty cool. So that helps you level up on your knowledge. I'm not saying you should trust AI blindly. That absolutely you shouldn't, because the tools tend to want to agree with you and like give you a pat on the back and say, like, hey, great thinking there, even when it's terrible thinking, I'm sorry to say. And there is good research showing that they still have a strong tendency to just go along with what you say, even when you're wrong, because they're built to be that way. So they're not a substitute for an actual human coach who's gonna give you, I'll say, tough love, something that you don't want to hear. Now, caveat on that, we're gonna get back to at the end of the episode. Can you train your AI to give you some tough love? Yes, you can. So hold on. I'm also not saying AI replaces a human. I mentioned that 74% improved results when you had the human with the AI. And I get we can't all afford a human or whatnot. So pick the best combination of tools for the job that you could afford that fits within your life. That's what I'm saying, right? The bottleneck for almost everyone is not the information, especially who listens to this podcast. You got the information. It's applying it and doing it consistently. And AI is a phenomenal application tool, but it's like a mediocre information toy. I mean, it's great for information, but what I mean is it's not going to do anything for you just by having the information. All right, before we wrap up, I did promise you a one-line prompt that can train your AI and turn it from a yes man into something that will help

  The one prompt that makes AI stop being a yes-man

  Philip Pape 32:36

  you more. I'm gonna give you that in a second. But if if this episode has surfaced all the things you've been thinking about and wondering about AI, and you're like, yeah, now it makes sense that, you know, I've got all this information, I follow so many people, but I don't have the results. That is the gap Fitness Lab was built to close for you. I am so passionate and supportive of what we did here. I think it's a fantastic tool. People are using it, love it, and they keep renewing because it's helping them. Those who actually use it, it's helping them. It is that layer that looks at your data and it coaches you on those patterns and it helps you keep consistent instead of just handing you more information. And again, we have a summer special right now. Go to wits and weights.com slash app, 20% off. When you go to that link, you take a very short two-minute quiz and it gives you what your plan would look like if you decide to use the app and you don't have to then use the app if it's not right for you. So it's a really great zero risk way to check it out. Go to witsandweights.com slash app. Link will be in the show notes. Okay, here's the one-line trick that changes how AI will talk to you. So if you ask AI, hey, is my plan good? Or what do you think of my plan or spot check my plan, it's basically gonna agree with you. It's kind of the default setting. Depending on how you ask it, it might go a little bit deeper than that, but you have to force it out of that. And this is where prompting is very important. Now, in some tools, depending on your account, what you have access to, like Claude or Chap GP or whatever, you can go into your profile, into your settings, and you can give it instructions that it always looks at. In other words, it's like global instructions all the time. And I actually have some of those. But even if you don't use that and you just want to type it right into the chat, what I would do is, you know, paste your data in and then you add, put your question and then put the following act as a skeptical coach. Argue against this plan. Tell me the three things most likely to fail and why. That's it. Now, if you guys want to know what I use in my instructions, I have a very detailed uh set of instructions on like, hey, don't sugarcoat it, don't tell me what I want to hear. I want you to push back. Like, I have all this stuff because I've learned over time how to make it more and more tough on me so it's a more realistic. But just in the chat, do what I just said, go back and listen. I'll repeat it right now, actually. Act as a skeptical coach, argue against this plan, tell me the three things most likely to fail and why. That's it. That instruction turns it from this sycophant, this cheerleader, into a critic, like in a good way. It's gonna give you helpful critique, and that's where the gold is, right? That's where the gold is. That's what you need to hear.

  The real reason most people stay stuck

  Philip Pape 35:20

  Okay. So I hope that was helpful. I hope this whole episode was helpful. I know I pitched my app in there a lot because I truly believe in it and I think it does what we are talking about. It's why I made it. I hope this tool, this episode helped you in even just day-to-day use of AI. And just go forward and conquer and get those results, please. I'm rooting for you. Until next time, keep using your wits, lifting those weights. And remember the answer was never the thing you were missing. The doing is. I'm Philip Pate, and I will talk to you next time here on the Wits and Weights podcast.

How to Eat 400 Fewer Calories a Day Without Trying (Abbey Sharp) | Ep 480

Body recomp, weight loss, and nutrition get harder when hunger runs the show. What if the problem isn’t your macros, but how your meals are built? What if you could lose fat without battling cravings all day?

Registered dietitian Abbey Sharp, author of The Hunger Crushing Combo Method and host of Bite Back podcast, breaks down the satiety science behind protein, fiber, and healthy fats. We talk about why protein matters for muscle building and metabolism, why fiber is a game-changer for fullness and gut health, and how to include “naked carbs” without triggering food noise or binge cycles.

You’ll learn why tracking macros can be useful without becoming obsessive, how strength training protects muscle during fat loss, and what GLP-1 users need to know about nutrition, protein, and long-term results.

Get Fitness Lab now 20% off through July 3, to become your healthiest after 40 with the most personalized fitness app. Daily coaching that adjusts to your energy, recovery, and schedule. No calorie counting, no guesswork.
https://witsandweights.com/app

Join Eat More Lift Heavy to build strength, lose fat, and learn what works for your body, 1 week at a time. Learn to eat more and lift heavy with confidence. 

Timestamps

0:00 – Five signals your body sends
2:49 – Hunger-crushing combo basics
8:56 – Protein hype and marketing traps
10:53 – Fiber, fullness, and gut health
17:02 – Restriction, cravings, and food noise
21:49 – Where naked carbs fit
24:46 – Tracking without obsession
35:36 – Rebuilding metabolism through muscle
40:08 – Eating well on GLP-1 meds
45:44 – Family food skills that stick

Episode resources

• Book: The Hunger Crushing Combo

• Podcast: Bite Back with Abbey Sharp

• Facebook: @AbbeysKitchen/ 

• Instagram: @abbeyskitchen/ 

• YouTube: @AbbeysKitchen 

• Transcript

  Five signals your body sends

  Philip Pape 0:00

  You've heard me say it a hundred times on this show. Eat enough protein, track your macros, be in a moderate deficit for fat loss. And that's all true, but what if you're doing all of that and you're still struggling through every afternoon, still thinking about food constantly, still one bad day away from a binge that wipes out a week of progress? My guest today is a registered dietitian who has spent a decade studying why even well-designed nutrition plans often don't work. And that's because there's a foundational skill we're often ignoring. It's not about eating less, it's about building meals that crush your hunger. And when she shows you the data on what happens when people get this right, including spontaneously eating 400 fewer calories a day without trying, you'll understand why I invited her on. So stick around to learn this powerful approach that will change the way you put your meals together forever. 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 I've invited on Abby Sharp. She is a registered dietitian who built one of the largest evidence-based nutrition platforms in the world. She's the author of the best-selling book, The Hunger Crushing Combo Method, host of the Bite Back podcast, and works with women every day who are stuck in that cycle of unsustainable eating and insatiable hunger often. And that cycle is what this episode is about. Now, most of us, most of you dear listeners, are adults who lift weights. Many of you are over 40. Many of you understand the basics like protein, calories, fiber, micronutrients. And Abby and I are going to explore the satiety science underneath all of that. Why do hunger and food noise really get in the way of the best plan? Why is the combination of macros or compounds in each meal important when it comes to hormones that control hunger? Why is food composition and satiety important to fueling your body to give it both what it wants, also what it needs? And of course, we want to love our food and what we eat. Abby's going to show us how to build every meal so that hitting your goals feels more spontaneously effortless than just white knuckle boxing mats with your hunger and cravings, like we're all familiar with. Abby, welcome to the show.

  Abbey Sharp 2:20

  Oh my goodness. Thank you so much. That introduction was just what a great start to my day. Thank you so much. Thank you for having me.

  Philip Pape 2:29

  Thanks for coming on and thanks for what you do. I think your podcast is awesome. And I think the listeners are going to get a lot out of this because we are very much aligned. And, you know, it's not that we're in an echo chamber, but there are things that surprisingly people still aren't familiar with that can really help them, that can really help them out. Yeah.

  Abbey Sharp 2:45

  Absolutely.

  Philip Pape 2:46

  Yeah. And, you know, protein, of course, you call it the

  Hunger crushing combo basics

  Philip Pape 2:49

  king of the satiety hierarchy in your book. I completely agree. And my listeners mostly get, if they're they've heard a few episodes of the podcast, how important it is. But you argue that protein by itself only gets you part way there. And that people are missing, I guess, the whole picture, the other compounds that complete this picture. What is that full formula? What is the secret?

  Abbey Sharp 3:09

  Yeah. So, I mean, just to give you kind of a little bit of a background on this method that I call the hunger crush and combo method. So, you know, essentially, you know, we know most of those kind of crash diets, any of the diets that we see come up in our feeds every single day, all of them are telling us to cut something out, to restrict something. And you and I both know that our bodies like fight tooth and nail against deprivation with all these different compensatory mechanisms, you know, physiologically and psychologically. And that psychological piece is so important because when we put ourselves in a state of scarcity mentality, it almost always triggers this hyperfixation and obsession and food noise and binging. And then eventually we just throw in the towel because this is just not sustainable. So the hunger crushing combo method flips that script because it's working with our biology and our psychology to focus instead on adding nutrition, not always taking away. This is a really important mindset shift. And so we're specifically going to be adding fiber protein healthy fats. And so if we want to break each one down and why they're so important, you know, protein, as again, many of your listeners may know, you know, there is this kind of collective obsession right now with protein. And I think for for one, good for good reason, but nobody needs like protein candy. But, you know, when it comes to like most of our goals when it comes to weight management or building muscle, you know, A, protein slows digestion. So it's going to keep us fuller longer. It's going to help to stabilize our blood sugar. So we're not riding high, crashing low, looking for another quick fix. It boosts our satiety hormones like GLP1, peptide YY, you know, really important for staying full. Three, it has the highest thermic effect of food, meaning it burns the most calories out of any other food component just to break it down. That's about 20 to 30%. So if you are, let's just say, consuming 100 calories worth of pure protein, you may only actually be kind of utilizing or absorbing 70 to 80 calories of those because it takes so much energy to actually digest and absorb it. And then of course, it builds and supports lean muscle mass preservation because we don't just want to lose weight, we actually want to lose fat. And when you're in a calorie deficit, our proteins are going to be very high to protect that metabolic muscle. So protein is one, two, fiber. Now, fiber is really key because it stretches the stomach because it's volumous, which can activate our fullness signals. It boosts so satiety hormones, it quiets our ghrelin or our hunger hormone. And what's really cool about it is that it has the lowest calorie density out of any other food component, meaning you get to eat a lot of food for not a lot of calories. And it's really cool. I mean, if you just think about that, like you, yeah, you could eat a third of a cup of Ben and Jerry's or you could have 30 cups of spinach, which I do not recommend anybody does. But the the the point I'm trying to make is that there's really cool research showing that the volume of food we consume every single day is actually relatively consistent, even if total calories change. Meaning if you are typically only full when you eat a dinner size plate of food, you are gonna have a hard time duping yourself into feeling full eating a salad plate of food, even if the calories are the same. So the fewer calories we take in in each bite, the fewer calories we consume in a meal across the day over time. And that means basically we're getting the best satiety bang for our caloric buck. Also, fiber nourishes our gut microbiome. And I can speak to this afterwards, but you know, the gut microbiome also affects our weight. So that's the fiber piece. Then there's healthy fats, and this is where people kind of get tripped up because they're like, especially when they're trying to lose weight in a calorie deficit, on a cut, whatever, they're like, well, fats have the most calories out of all food components. That means like I've just got to cut out if it's if it's high in calories, it's gonna be bad for weight loss. No. Healthy fats and fats in general give food staying power and satisfaction. It literally carries flavor and provides the mouthfeel that makes a meal feel complete. Because if you just think have you if you've ever had to try to try to have this a salad with no dressing, no cheese, no nuts, no avocado, like it leaves a little something to be desired. So, you know, fat also triggers the satiety hormones, it slows digestion. But because it is higher in calorie density, my kind of takeaway in the hunger crushing combo method is that we want to choose what I call whole food dual citizen fats. And that means the healthy fats that contain fat, but also contain either protein or fiber. So that could be salmon, for example, has healthy fats, has protein. Or it could be something like, you know, avocado, which has the healthy fats and it has the fiber. So that's how these things are working together: fiber, protein, healthy fats. You know, and generally what I say is one at a meal is essential, two is better, all three is gonna hit like tick all the boxes.

  Philip Pape 8:22

  Yeah, I think that's awesome. And and I know we didn't even get into secondary effects here on like maybe blood sugar or energy regulation, things like that.

  Abbey Sharp 8:30

  That's a whole other huge piece.

  Philip Pape 8:32

  All right. So you mentioned protein candy, and it made me think of like protein water. And I go, if I'm in like Target in the grocery aisle and they'll have high protein bars that have five grams of protein, you're like, Come on, people, what are you doing? Like, I like that they're like thinking about protein, but then it creates this backlash too, where I've heard mainstream podcasts talk about protein as a fad. And I'm like, wait, wait, wait, wait a minute. It's just like you're saying here, Abby, it's additive. You're adding protein

  Protein hype and marketing traps

  Philip Pape 8:56

  because it's a sufficiency thing and it's an adequacy thing, let alone satiety and all the other stuff. Whereas restriction is really what happens with fad diets. You cut things out and you eliminate. So just to make that point clear, because you you kind of touched on the obsession with protein, but also that we're adding it into additive nutrition. So kudos. Yeah, yeah.

  Abbey Sharp 9:17

  Oh, yeah. I mean, that the protein craze thing is getting out of control. And like you said, like it's frustrating for those of us who've been singing the praises of protein all this time. And now suddenly we have everything slapped with a protein label on the shelves. And unfortunately, because marketing is so persuasive and the and these health halos are just so easy to basically overlook any other of the nutrition components of those foods. We have protein cookies that, yeah, might have 15, 16 grams of protein, but people are not turning it around and seeing that that protein cookie is also coming with 450 calories. It's not efficient at all. Right. At the end of the day, like, yeah, they might have a few more grams of protein than the original recipe, but it still has not got basically what I call like a good protein to calorie ratio. And so that's what we're talking about with the Hunger Crush and combo method is getting the best satiety bang for your caloric buck. And let's be real like a protein candy, a protein cookie, a protein, you know, whatever it might be, is a Pop Tart is not a replacement for a chicken breast on your salad.

  Philip Pape 10:25

  And they don't taste that good either, trust me.

  Abbey Sharp 10:27

  No, they don't.

  Philip Pape 10:28

  They don't as something like that. I mean, what did I had today? I made an omelet with leftover chicken thigh, and it's just, oh, you know, just so good. So then the fiber piece, again, that that's a whole that could be a whole episode itself. What I want to target on the fiber, and not just the satiety and the stretching and and all of that. But what about the health benefits or lack thereof in the context of people who think you don't even need fiber?

  Abbey Sharp 10:51

  I mean, we have plenty of data

  Fiber, fullness, and gut health

  Abbey Sharp 10:53

  that like really colon cancer rates are on the rise. And what is the one of the major reasons for that? Not getting enough fiber. Fiber is so important. It's not just the poop nutrient, right? Like it's this is not just, I know we always think, oh, you need fiber to poop, but we also need fiber to essentially like feed that good, the good bacteria in our gut. And our gut microbiome is associated with the health of every other body system: blood sugar management, hormone regulation, mood, you know, immunity. The list goes on, including our weight. And this is a really interesting area of research that I think I want to kind of tell you a little bit about because you know, I think again, a lot of folks, when they're kind of in the diet space, they just might think, oh, well, calorie is a calorie. Like as long as I'm hitting my macros and I'm hitting my calories, nothing else matters. Fair, calories are king. Let's be clear about that, but they're not everything. And so I think what people have to realize when it comes to that argument is that, you know, the number one determinant of long-term diet retention is appetite management. And what's one thing that fiber does really good? It keeps us full for very few calories. And the interesting thing that that fiber does when it comes to the gut microbiome is that let's say naked, what I call naked carbs or unrefined, like, you know, or sorry, refined kind of low fiber carbohydrates are not necessarily absorbed and digested the same as fiber-rich carbs in the gut. So the calories we get in a day is not based on what the package of the food says or what my fitness pal says it has. It's actually based on how many of those calories we uniquely can absorb from those food. And so when a food is higher in fiber, basically, and also when our gut microbiome is healthier and more vibrant because we are feeding it with fiber, we actually basically absorb fewer calories that we consume. So essentially, naked carbs or sugary carbs or refined carbs are absorbed very rapidly in the upper GI tract. So we actually absorb more of the available calories in those foods. But high fiber carbs travel down to the large intestine where our gut microbes kind of await their feast. And we, if we have a vibrant, healthy gut microbiome, it's gonna gobble up more of those available calories in those foods. So we end up absorbing fewer calories overall. So, in other words, if we consume 100 calories worth of apple juice, for example, which has the fiber strained out of it, or 100 calories worth of a whole apple, we might consume close to the full 100 calories of juice, but hypothetically, we could absorb, let's say, 80 calories worth of the apple. And if you're tracking calories and macros to a T, this, you know, people were not accounting for this. And there's a really interesting metabolic word study where they were carefully measuring the inputs and outputs via poop. And they gave one group a highly processed diet with lots of what I call naked carbs, highly refined carbohydrates, you know, very highly processed foods. And the other group got a calorie-matched diet with high fiber whole foods, exact same calories in, and then they tracked basically how many calories were kind of quote unquote lost in the poop. The high fiber group lost 200 and 400 calories in their poop compared to the low fiber, kind of highly processed diet group who only lost 100 calories. And so this actually can make a real difference, not just in your fullness capacity, so how satiated you feel on your diet, how well your appetite is managed, but even if you were to muscle through the discomfort of feeling hungrier on a lower fiber diet, you're actually just absorbing more of those calories. And so this is one of the unique ways that fiber plays a role in weight management. It's really fascinating.

  Philip Pape 14:59

  I'm glad you talked about that because both protein and fiber have these unique elements where simply jacking them up to some sufficient, I'm gonna say sufficient. People are way woefully under malnourished on these, can help with all these other things, including your intake, just ad libitum, as they say, right? Just like spontaneously. And the fiber thing's interesting, right? So people listen up because like that is a game changer. And actually, Abby's whole philosophy here is based on the idea of making these simple changes so you don't have to, you don't even have to track macros and calories, although I like I love them as a lagging indicator at least to see what's happening when you do this. For sure.

  Abbey Sharp 15:34

  Yeah. And there's just such interesting, like, this is exactly that the philosophy is like, how can we make this effortless and intuitive? So that exactly these calorie deficits are essentially happening spontaneously. And there was one study that found that when folks went from a diet of 10 to 15% of their total calories from protein, which is the standard North American diet, when they basically doubled that to be 20 to 30% of their total calories from protein, they saw a three-fold bump in fat loss. And another study that found that going from 15 to 30%, they spontaneously, effortlessly just slashed 400 calories. They weren't even thinking about it. Not even like, oh, I'm on a diet, which again triggers that scarcity mentality. They just did this ad libidin. And then with the fiber, similar kind of outcome, simply adding 14 grams of fiber to their day just naturally slashed 10% of their calories without trying. So this is the magic of thinking about adding, not, oh, I'm on a diet, can't eat this, have to cut this out. It really does make a difference.

  Philip Pape 16:38

  It does. It does. Okay, so here's the interesting thing. You mentioned psychology and physiology. And I've always thought the interplay between the two is fascinating because there's definitely a bi-directionality going on there. And some people are more affected by one or the other more than others. Like when we look at the weight loss drugs now and you look at food noise, which is something you talk about, you know, you talk about it as this like all-consuming,

  Restriction, cravings, and food noise

  Philip Pape 17:02

  inescapable, debilitating racket in the brain that could only be quieted temporarily with food. But then I believe you go on to connect some of these principles of eating and food choice with the ability to reduce the food noise as opposed to some psychological or genetic or brain-related solution or some exotic thing. Does that make sense?

  Abbey Sharp 17:24

  Yeah. I mean, the really like when we are in a state of of restriction, just food becomes more salient and more, and so the food noise will ramp up. This is, we have tons of evidence that, you know, one of the biggest predictors of a binge or really over-consuming food is restriction. We put ourselves in that state of scarcity mentality. I can't eat this. Oh, I shouldn't have had that. That food noise is gets louder and louder. And I mean, yes, we do have growing evidence that there are some folks who may just biologically or neurologically experience food noise even when they're not restricting. But again, for the for the average bear who is probably listening to this podcast, that food noise and those incessant food cravings are coming from a history or current state of deprivation.

  Philip Pape 18:15

  Yeah. Yeah. I think in one of your recent podcasts, you talked specifically about food noise, and you mentioned just the underfueling and the malnutrition and the deprivation and under-eating causes it. And it what's interesting is I could see someone who's gained a lot of weight or is overweight saying, How's that possible when I've been gaining weight all these years? Like, what would you tell somebody in that category? Who has just been consistent gaining weight? The vast majority of people who are obese and maybe consider GOP1 drugs and they have food noise, but and then they hear, oh, it's because you're malnutrition or under eating. And they're like, How's that possible? Because I'm I've been gaining weight. Yeah.

  Abbey Sharp 18:52

  And you know what? A lot of the times we are gaining weight. And again, like I don't want to pigeonhole people because there are, like I said, a lot of folks that we've now discovered there are some genetic predispositions, some specific, you know, gene pathways that may predispose people to over, you know, overwhelming food noise. Having said that, a lot of folks who are finding themselves kind of gaining weight over the years have been essentially on these kind of crash diets on and off, on and off. And with each kick of the can, you know, chances are we're gonna see a little decline in metabolism each time. And we've probably lost some muscle mass because let's be honest, most of these crash diets are not, they're not like thinking about, oh, I've got to be, you know, go low and slow, I've got to make sure that I'm getting enough protein. They're just like, how do I lose weight as quickly as I possibly can? Once we lose that muscle, very hard to get it back. Muscle burns three times as many calories at rest compared to fat. So our metabolism is going to slow down each time. And so it becomes harder and harder to keep the weight off and basically kind of find a way of eating that is actually something that they can stick to long term. And that's really what I'm trying to shift for folks is getting out of that. Oh, I need to cut out all the things, which let's be honest, most of us cannot stick to again, because that's scarce mentality. And find a way of eating that is sustainable long term. And so that is one of the kind of common pitfalls and cycles that I see people get into and get stuck in. And we're really trying to unlearn that now with this gentle kind of additive framework of the hunger crushing combo.

  Philip Pape 20:33

  Yeah, thank you for clarifying that. There's a seeming contradiction that isn't really a contradiction when you look at the yo-yo pattern. You look at body fat overshooting, like you said, you're gonna lose muscle, gain fat, lose muscle, gain fat. There's the fact that you probably never even let your body recover out of these diets. Exactly. Like so your metabolism is suppressed and and all of those things. So now if you can shift to the protein and the fiber and the healthy fats, like you said, and then even including the naked carbs for fun, like you said, for to enjoy your food, balance is really important. So, what about those naked carbs? Because there's the people who use the word carbs kind of blanket, right? Carbs, donuts are carbs, pizza is carbs. I'm like, no, those aren't carbs, those are carbs and fats. But even you make a distinction between naked or refined carbs and the high fiber carbs, like you just mentioned. Where is the place for naked carbs?

  Abbey Sharp 21:24

  Yeah. I think it's really important that, you know, part of the reason for the hunger crush and combo method being so successful for folks is because we are doing away with this kind of black and white, good, bad, like, you know, off the diet, on the diet. It's again, we are getting out of that obsession with food needing to be put into these dichotomous categories as this is a food that I'm allowed to eat. This is not food I'm

  Where naked carbs fit

  Abbey Sharp 21:49

  not allowed to eat. And so, you know, I'll kind of give you a little bit backstory on how this was born. But essentially, when I was in my late teens, I was struggling with an eating disorder or withhrexia, kind of basically clean. Eating taken to an extreme. And as part of my recovery, I was basically putting myself through exposure therapy. And my kind of fear food naked carb was like sugary cereal, like frosted flakes, and you know, lucky charms. Lucky charms. I can name them all. I grew up in a lot of them, right? Like, so if I had them in the house, I was going to just binge that whole box, like in a flash. And then so I started to just allow myself to eat a whole bowl of Lucky Charms by itself, naked carbs in the birthday suit, like and just see how that felt. Very, very quickly, I it kind of lost its allure, it lost its power over me. It was no longer something that I was like, oh, I like, you know, I needed to binge on because I was just like, this is just a normal food. And then I was starting to listen to how my body was responding to that big bowl of naked carbs. I was hungry again soon after, obviously, because A, they're not very, very satiating. My blood sugar was spiking, crashing, and I was looking for another sugary quick fix. So I started to realize, okay, I'm not gonna put the sugary carbs, the cereal on the no-no list again because we know where that landed me. I'm going to dress them up and I'm gonna start with protein. I've got a bowl of Greek yogurt. Okay, protein there. I'm gonna add some fiber, some berries on top. Cool. I'm now gonna add maybe some seeds or some, you know, a little bit of sprinkling of almonds or some hemp parts. That's my healthy fats. Then I'm just gonna add a little handful of the lucky charms on top. So I'm no longer gonna allow myself to get into that state of scarcity mentality, but I'm anchoring those sugary carbs, those naked carbs with the hunger-crushing compounds. That is gonna keep me fuller longer. It's going to stabilize my blood sugar. So I am not riding high, crashing down, and then looking, you know, for a donut basically an hour later. It is going to completely get rid of that food noise and those cravings because I have the sugary food that I like obsessed about basically on my plate already. It's not on the bad foods list. It's not on the off-limits list. I'm eating it regularly. And that alone helps me stick to the plan long term.

  Philip Pape 24:10

  I love that. So great strategy. I really love that because it's it's flexible, but it's not not only flexible, it's intentionally including the thing, which is important because a lot of people don't talk about that. So, okay, given all of that, a lot of this sounds like food selection and plate construction. What about tracking these things? What are your thoughts on tracking and the different flavors of that? Because there's like calorie counting, there's apps, there's like general awareness. Like, where are you on that spectrum?

  Abbey Sharp 24:40

  Yeah. Listen, I think like tracking macros or calories, like it's really just one tool in the

  Tracking without obsession

  Abbey Sharp 24:46

  toolbox. And ultimately it can be very helpful for some folks, but it can also be a slippery slope. So I think it's very helpful when it's used more as like a teaching tool to really help you learn what is in your food, like help you build some general awareness to inform your day-to-day meal planning. And also ultimately, it needs to feel like neutral and flexible and not obsessive. So I think it's it's it can be helpful to combine it with like food journaling to help you in a non-judgmentally, like very objective way to collect data on how foods make you feel. So, kind of like what I just spoke about, where I was like basically eating bowls of lucky charms. I didn't track the calories or the macros in that because I just assumed, okay, that's just pure naked carbs. But I was able to very quickly collect data objectively without judgment. And this is the important part without judgment. Okay, I don't feel great when I just eat the lucky charms on its own. So, you know, for example, you could be tracking to see, okay, when I have the bagel and cream cheese and it's only got like 10 grams of protein, maybe I feel a little lethargic after my workout. But when I add in like a Greek yogurt cup on the go, I'm in a rush, I feel better. My recovery feels easier. And actually, with the hunger crushing combo method in the book, I have a very comprehensive kind of cheat sheet of different protein and fiber and healthy, fat-rich foods and they're vert, they're kind of visual portion sizes to help people basically meet some of the meal recommendations that I they share in the book for these kind of macro recommendations. Where I think it becomes more counterintuitive or a slippery slope is when it's overriding your innate body wisdom, just to kind of meet whatever, you know, arbitrary numbers that were spit out by your like My FitnessPal or whatever app you're using. And I know we talked about in a moment ago about like basically the discrepancy in calorie absorption, which could easily affect your just like perfectly calculated calorie deficit that you figured out on your My FitnessPal calculator. But there's all a lot of other reasons why just like these meticulous, inflexible calorie counting can be just wildly inaccurate. So, for example, food manufacturers are legally allowed to be off on their package numbers by 20%. So that means if you think you are eating a 500-calorie meal, you could actually be eating a 600-calorie meal. And over time, this could easily undo the calorie deficit that you just like so perfectly thought you were crafting. So I think that's where things become counterintuitive and counterproductive and not actually helpful when you're going against what your body is telling you, just so that you can, you know, meet the macros on your app.

  Philip Pape 27:32

  Yeah, that sounds a lot like my thinking has evolved as well over the years, right? Like I still, so I used to do that macros, if if it's your macros, like as a leading indicator, and then realize, hey, you know, this is it's a great lagging indicator. Like you do the things, you listen to your body, your biofeedback, which I love, and there's different types of biofeedback. So we to kind of put it all together, now we have specific populations who listen to this show. And I know in your book you've talked about some slight nudges in different maybe ratios or amounts of these compounds, like for perimenopausal women. What's the logic behind shifting the amounts for people? Like, how would people even know what the right amount is, besides just listening to their body, which might be enough?

  Abbey Sharp 28:14

  Yeah. And I mean, ultimately, that that is the that is you should be your number one indicator, your body. Because yeah, I can communicate what the data says is best practices, which is what I do in the book, because I believe we I don't censor science and I believe in communicating, you know, evidence-based care. But at the end of the day, like we could be wildly off based on what the data tells us is the best kind of, you know, amount of protein per kilogram of body weight for you to get the best results for you. So I want that to be kind of like top of mind. This is, these are like the guidelines that if you are working with a registered dietitian, that they would start with and then we would tweak based on what we see in terms of what's going on with your results. So I think, you know, just to give you some examples, like weight loss. Okay. This is probably a lot of folks who are trying to specifically lose fat. I always like to kind of clarify that because we don't, I know we kind of just like colloquially we say weight loss, but really we're talking about fat loss because I don't want you to lose your muscle. I don't want you to lose your bone. And losing water is just like whatever, useless, to be honest. It just motivates you for a day and then it's over, and then you feel like you've plateaued. So weight loss, and so you know, when we look at the best practices in the data, it's showing between 1.2 to 1.8 grams per kilogram of body weight when you're in a calorie deficit. And the reason for that, like protein is really just like the the king of this entirety hierarchy. What I like people to focus on when it comes to weight loss mostly is the protein and the fiber piece. Protein because we need to protect metabolic muscle mass when we are in a calorie deficit. Fiber because it offers the best calorie bag for a caloric buck, the lowest calorie density. When it comes to diabetes, often there's also kind of a fat loss element to that as well, right? So, you know, a lot of folks who have diabetes, not all, but a lot of folks are also trying to maintain or manage their weight and prevent excess fat gain because we know that that can play into insulin resistance and blood sugar management. So it can be roughly the same amount, but fiber is really important when it comes to diabetes management because fiber can, you know, of course, slows down the absorption of carbohydrates, helps to reduce the glycemic load of the foods that you're consuming. So I really do urge folks that are managing, you know, insulin resistance, diabetes, PCOS, make sure you're really thinking about fiber because only 10% of North Americans are getting enough fiber, period. Meaning most of the people listening right now are not getting enough fiber. And I don't really want to promote you just eating like fiber bars. For the same reason I don't want to like, yeah, like the same reason I don't want you to like just focus on getting like those like protein enriched snacks, because yeah, and a pinch of fiber bar can be fine, but a lot of the fibers that are being added to these bars are a very bloating, like hella bloating. And they're not going to offer you the whole food matrix of whole food fiber-rich plants, which come packaged with all of these different antioxidants, micronutrients that can support overall health, but also offer variety of different types of fiber to support satiety, blood sugar management, gut health, you know, all of those kinds of benefits. Oh, muscle gain, that's another one. Obviously, with muscle gaining, like there's often an element of fat loss, but you need more calories when you are trying to gain muscle. So while you might have a slightly higher, you know, gram per kilogram for protein, for example, maybe up to 2.2 grams per kilogram, you know, your overall calories are higher. And so you might actually have a smaller percentage of total calories, right? Coming from protein compared to fat loss, because you also need more carbs. You also want to get those carbohydrates in there as well. So, you know, and then fat, of course, can take a bit of a backseat when it comes to muscle gain.

  Philip Pape 32:25

  So, a couple of really great things we should dial in on. First of all, the the percentage of protein, I always think about that and laugh about it because when you say, hey, increase your protein, people, I can't get that much, right? You've heard women say, I can't get 120 grams of problems. Are you kidding me? Until you do it and you get used to it and you realize it's no big deal. But as a percentage of calories, you're right, it's only 20%. You've gone from 10 to 20. So it's not like a high protein, it's like adequate protein. It really is. It really is. And then when you're in fat loss, it tends to be a much higher percentage of your calories, like 30, 40, even 50, depending. But that's an important point. Now, the fiber types, you said something really important is the types of fiber. So I joked about fiber tortillas because I do occasionally buy these like tortillas because I like tortillas and I might as well get the ones that have extra fiber. But you don't want to rely on that. And like you said, there are not just the types of, or not just the compounds that are in those fruits, many of which aren't on labels, right? You don't see on a nutrition label everything chemically that's in the thing, but also like polyphenols or whatever, but also the types. And we've had some gut experts on like actual scientists, not the influencers, who talk about just like you literally don't need a fiber supplement or any like a seed or one of those types of probiotics either, if you're getting enough different types of different fruits. Like, for example, try to eat different colors and types of apples, different breeds. So you kind of alluded to that. I don't know. Do you talk about that in the book?

  Abbey Sharp 33:50

  I do. I in detail actually, because that is one of the benefits of the hunger crushing combo method again. Because again, like most of these diets out there, they overcomplicate nutrition, where you now have to think about did I get enough of this micronutrient? Did I get enough of this macro? Did I get a did I cut this food out? Did I cut that food out? No, you're really only thinking about these three things: the fiber protein, healthy fats. And with those foods comes the whole food matrix, including when we are getting a variety of plant-based foods through plant-based proteins and also fiber-rich fruits and vegetables, you know, nuts, seeds, all of the kinds of foods that the Hunger Crush and Camo method promotes, we are going to, by default, get in a variety of different fiber types. And so we need to get a variety of fibers in our diet from different types of foods through, you know, whole grains, through nuts, through seeds, through fruits, through vegetables, different types of fruits, different types of vegetables. All of those have a very unique kind of fingerprint of nutrients. And when we're getting a variety, our gut is going to get a variety. And for our for us to have a vibrant, varied gut microbiome, we need to have a varied diet of these plant-based foods.

  Philip Pape 35:11

  Okay. So one other thing you mentioned. You mentioned muscle gain, and that got me thinking about just recovery and gaining in general. So one of the micro problems that people experience a lot when trying to recover from all these years of dieting is a fear of weight gain, which implies that they care about the scale, which is the fat loss versus weight loss thing. Like maybe you shouldn't be focusing on the scale. Yep. But, you know, and you also mentioned water is part of your lean mass, right? You've got your organs and your

  Rebuilding metabolism through muscle

  Philip Pape 35:36

  bone and your water and your muscle. So you're going to gain some weight potentially when you go through this process. How do you deal with that problem that people have?

  Abbey Sharp 35:44

  Yeah, I think that, you know, low and slow is always key here. I mean, Afghan, there's definitely situations where we can't afford to go slow. But I think that being kind to your body and just trust, trusting the process. I know it can be really hard and scary, but know that you are actually trying to rebuild your metabolism, which is going to serve you long term, right? Muscle and bone is so critical to longevity. I know we're we're having this like longevity conversation moment, which is all like situated around peptides and these like supplement stacks. I'm like, babe, longevity comes down to muscle and bone. Lift weights. That is really the longevity secret sauce here. And so, you know, we need to be investing in not just what our body looks like today, but what our body is going to look like and feel like and be able to do most importantly in the long run. And so that is going to take some rebuilding. And yes, you may, you may gain fat in the in wet in the process of trying to, you know, restore your metabolism, restore your stores, your organs and your muscle and bone and and lean lean tissue, but that is going to, you know, do dividends long term for your health. And once you have regained that muscle, which again is going to require you probably needing to eat more calories, like hard stop. You can't really like cheat your way around that. Once you've regained that muscle, that is then going to increase your metabolism. Again, I mentioned earlier it burns three times as many calories at rest compared to fat, which again is going to help with long-term body composition goals.

  Philip Pape 37:29

  Yep. We need to hammer that message home over and over again. And it's not that we're saying you have to bulk or you have to be in a large surplus. In fact, the evidence has become a little more conservative on that to be able to still gain a ton of muscle, but you do have to be fed and fueled and do all the things you're saying. So, but let's say we do want to go into a a little bit of a bigger surplus. We alluded to it briefly. It's more calories. And I'm guessing that you're going to push us to for more density, more calorie density in some way, perhaps. Maybe more naked carbs or more fats and stuff like that. What are your tactics there?

  Abbey Sharp 38:03

  Yeah, I mean, and that's the really cool thing about the hunger crushing comma method is that it can be applied to any goal at any time in any stage of life. And so, yeah, when we are in a kind of more kind of bulking situation, we're going to need more carbohydrates for sure, especially compared to the kind of more weight loss or fat loss goals. And so, you know, carbohydrates could be 45 to 65% of total calories. We're going to be bumping up those calories. We're going to be choosing more, you know, perhaps fat-rich protein sources. Protein's going to be important, of course, if we're trying to gain muscle, but we can have more fats, less the tiny bang in some cases for our caloric buck because we need less hunger crushing. Right. A little less hunger crushing. And but we are still utilizing the bones of this framework, knowing that this is the key to getting the best nutrient bang for our caloric buck as well. So, really important that, you know, but my goal is to help people reach their goals in the healthiest, safest way possible. And that's why this method really does work for so many people, because it teaches them the tools for long-term, not just the in like the immediate goal or body kind of composition that they want right now.

  Philip Pape 39:23

  That's the key. And what I take from that is like it's your scaling up and down and you're shifting between them, between this flexible framework. Dirty bulks, like I did one or two in my life, and they're kind of fun, but you actually do feel it like when you're eating not great food, like you said, your body's telling you, and you have a little more resilience against it because you're gaining, but you also can feel so I like that you said that. Now, there we have the opposite problem in the GLP1 community where the hunger is suppressed chemically, and it often comes through a different mechanism than just, I mean, GLP one is obviously a gut hormone, but it also affects the brain and the food noise aspect of it. And so one of the problems I see is when people want to change their lifestyle and want to eat better, it's hard almost because now they're trying to eat more volume,

  Eating well on GLP-1 meds

  Philip Pape 40:08

  but they can't. And also for some people on GLP1s, they re find processed foods kind of revolting, which I guess is a good thing, but then when they get off of it, a lot of that reverts. So how do you handle that population?

  Abbey Sharp 40:22

  Yeah. There is unfortunately this thought, like, oh, if I'm on a if as long as I'm on a GLP one, then like nutrition doesn't really matter. But in fact, it actually matters more than ever. And because every bite counts. And this is what I talk about in the book is that, you know, we have to maximize nutrition at a time when our appetite is at its lowest and we're like not interested in food and nutrition, but we have to think harder about it. And the reality is that, you know, GLP ones, while all folks are on it, if you come off, you know, the research shows that, you know, people regain about two-thirds of the weight back. And so we have to learn the skills while we are on these medications. So, you know, this is again where protein becomes king in small, regular, consistent doses. If we're really struggling with our appetite, eating a mountainous salad with like zero calories, it's not gonna get us the nutrients that we need because we actually see malnutrition on these medications, where up to 40% of the weight loss is coming from lean tissue, which is not what we want. And so I think it's really important, again, to think about protein when we're choosing fiber-rich carbs, which is very important, not only for overall gut health, for satiety management, for blood sugar management, but also for dealing with some of the side effects of GLP1s like constipation and bloating. We wanna be choosing those that are offering the best nutrient bang for a caloric bug. So think about avocado, for example, which is gonna get you fiber, but it's also gonna get you some healthy fats, which is very important. We need healthy fats still in our diet for hormonal regulation. Thinking about things like sweet potatoes, for example, which again, we're not pop, we're probably not gonna be able to eat a lot, a big portion, but it's still gonna give us some carbohydrates, some extra nutrients, the calories that we still need to not be malnourished, and also those fiber, the fiber in there. So, you know, I think people like to just assume that, oh, nutrition doesn't matter. I can just live off as few calories as humanly possible and just ride this low appetite so I can drop those, those, that weight fast, it will backfire. And so again, low and slow is actually important here, as long as, you know, work with your doctor, of course. But if you're finding that you physically do not have an appetite to eat, you know, if you're and you're eating 800 calories, you are not gonna meet your nutrient needs hardst. You're not gonna meet your protein needs. And so it might be worth talking to your doctor about, you know, adjusting dosage so that you can still meet those base core needs.

  Philip Pape 42:57

  And sometimes that's a good problem to have if it's a sign that you are shifting that diet. And of course, you the implication of what you said, you've got to be lifting weights too. I mean, I just almost at this point, it's implied when I talk on this show, but like I forget there's new listeners tuning in. I know. I've 100% like, no, no, you gotta be lifting weights because the 40% you just talked about muscle loss is just because you're not lifting and you're going at this rapid rate of loss. So yeah, it's an interesting one. What about the brain receptors for pleasure reward? And I know there's a lot of stuff that's out, the jury's still out on addiction and those aspects because I had a guy on the show, Jamie Seltzer, he was like almost 700 pounds, he's now under 300 pounds. He did it through GLP ones and lifting weights and changing his nutrition at the same time. But he feels like he will always be on those because of how crazy the food noise was and and like a brain related thing. When we introduce fiber and the variety and protein and all this, is there a correlation with that uh that kind of overrides those signals? The the retrains your brain with the the the receptors for. Pleasure, reward, you know, the dopamine and all that stuff.

  Abbey Sharp 44:03

  Yeah. So the amazing thing is that these nutrients, I mean, for protein, for example, we have some good evidence showing that it does actually reduce food cravings, for example, later on in the day. You have a protein-rich breakfast, you just actually have less food noise, less food cravings later on in the day. And protein does boost GLP1, which is the hormone that we're talking about, that people are putting into their bodies as a injection. And so, yeah, like there's no one should ever be making a claim that diet is some kind of dupe for a powerful, you know, anti-obesity medication like a GLP1 receptor agonist. However, when we are overlapping these things, especially as we are titrating down, coming off these medications, we need to utilize the power of the hunger crushing combo, fiber protein healthy fats, which do have impacts on our satiety hormones. Certainly not to the degree of a medication, but they absolutely do help. And so that is really critical. These are skills that are critical to learn while you are on these medications. So that as you come off them, these are already habit stacked, as this is the way I eat.

  Philip Pape 45:19

  I'm glad you called them skills because that's what they are. They take, they take time and effort, but you build them over time and they become skills for life. You know, I get a lot of books from people who come on the show, but this is one of one of my favorites so far because honestly, Abby and I are highly aligned, and I would definitely get the hunger-crushing combo because there's a lot of stuff we didn't cover in here. There's supplements, there's all the specifics about the foods. If you go to the menus in the back or even the lists of foods,

  Family food skills that stick

  Philip Pape 45:44

  it's all the delicious things you want to eat anyway, but it just gives you those ideas. So given that, and given today's context, Abby, is there anything else you want me to ask you or anything I should have asked that you want to bring up before we wrap up?

  Abbey Sharp 45:56

  Oh, uh, you know what? Like there's a lot of overlapping goals. And the in the book, The Hunger Christian, Calma Method, we have chapters for weight loss, for blood sugar management, for paramenopause and menopause, for sports nutrition goals, and just also like feeding a family and how you can apply this framework for, I'm sure a lot of your listeners are women with kids, and they themselves, who may be on a fat loss or a weight loss or a body recomp journey, are also thinking, okay, how do I raise my kids in a way that's not gonna mess them up in this diet culture ridden world? While I am also trying to make peace with my body or even change my body in some kind of way. And so I do offer a lot of practical advice on that as well, because we are living and breathing in this skinny talk, you know, pro, you know, eat as little as possible era. And it's just gonna become harder and harder to be able to make sense of it all. But this is such a bible that allows people to learn those skills and then also pass those skills on to their kids if they have them.

  Philip Pape 46:59

  For sure. I mean, you're a hypocrite, I think, just being frank. If you're a parent who doesn't walk the walk and now you want their kids to learn something else because it's not gonna happen. I have a 12-year-old and 14-year-old daughter, you know, and and again, they see everything, they absorb everything. No judgment on people. It's just just take it, you know, take take up the mantle and do what Abby's suggesting and really try to improve yourself in conjunction with your kids. So, Abby, thank you so much for coming on the show. We're gonna point people to the book for sure, but where else do you want them to connect with you?

  Abbey Sharp 47:26

  Yeah, you can listen to my podcast, Bite Back with Abby Sharp. I've also got a YouTube channel, Abby's Kitchen, and I'm on TikTok and Instagram at Abby's Kitchen as well. So you can find me in all those places.

  Philip Pape 47:37

  All right, we're gonna throw all that in the show notes. Thank you so much, Abby, for coming on and sharing your wisdom. I had a really good time just reinforcing, but also learning some new things with our audience together today. So thank you, Abby, for coming on. Thank you so much.

Rapid Fat Loss vs. a Long, Slow Cut (Who Aggressive Dieting is For) | Ep 479

When does a fast, aggressive cut (rapid fat loss) beat a long, slow one?

The answer depends on your body fat, your training, your timeline, your history with dieting, and whether you are perimenopausal or over 40.

This episode revisits rapid fat loss and the case for a strict, short diet when the slow-and-sustainable default doesn't work as well for you (or simply because you want to use it). Make sure to download my FREE Rapid Fat Loss guide to follow along with the episode.

We examine the research on how to lose fat quickly without losing muscle, including studies on rate of loss, protein during a steep deficit, and protein needs for people lifting weights. 

Learn what a structured protein-sparing protocol with built-in refeeds actually involves, why strength training and protein are so important for preserving your muscle (and thus losing fat), where metabolic adaptation fits in, and the clear line between a smart aggressive cut and a crash diet.

This episode is designed for adults over 40 who lift, track their food, and want to know whether they are the exception to the "slow" fat loss rule.

Download the free Rapid Fat Loss Guide with my step-by-step 14-day protocol. This is an aggressive dieting plan for serious lifters only who know how to build muscle and track their food. It includes everything you need to know to lose, on average, 3-5 lbs (or more) of pure fat in just 2 weeks:
https://witsandweights.com/free

Timestamps:

0:00 - Slow fat loss and the adherence problem
4:57 - The case for moderate fat loss
8:05 - When going slow stops working
10:46 - What a structured aggressive cut looks like
12:38 - Protein and carbs as muscle insurance
15:47 - Scheduled refeeds and how they work
18:05 - Strength training during a cut
19:16 - Water loss, fat loss, and using it as a tool
20:30 - Step-by-step rapid fat loss guide
21:54 - Preserving muscle on a steep deficit
26:12 - Refeeds, diet breaks, and metabolic adaptation
28:33 - Who an aggressive cut is for (and NOT for)
32:25 - Considerations in perimenopause and over 40
34:12 - Bonus: Deficit to make your fat loss easier

Mentioned:

• 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, where we can guide you through any fat loss phase (rapid or not) and make sure the results LAST

• Transcript

  Slow fat loss and the adherence problem

  Philip Pape 0:00

  When it comes to fat loss, we often talk about going slow, being patient, using a small calorie deficit, and playing the long game. And for most people, most of the time, that is the right call. But for some of you, the long game is what is holding you back because you get about six weeks in, maybe you get bored, maybe you start to drift off track, and then you quit. And so it becomes an adherence issue. Today I'm making the case that for some, a shorter, stricter, more aggressive cut, aka rapid fat loss, can sometimes beat dragging out a moderate deficit for several months. Who it actually works for, what the research says about sparing your muscle when you are dieting hard, and the line between a smart, aggressive cut and a crash diet, which are not the same thing. 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 today we are revisiting rapid fat loss. If you've been around this show for a while, or really around any evidence-based corner of the fitness world over the past few years, you've probably absorbed the key message for successful fat loss, and that is slow and steady, use a moderate or small deficit so that you don't lose too much muscle and you can stick with it, lose maybe a half pound to a pound a week. You know, it depends on your size and your metabolism. Be patient. You want to build the habits, you want to play the long game. And I've said that versions of that myself, right? The long game is sometimes the fastest game because for many, if not most people in most situations, that's the right call. Now, recently we did do an episode about mini cuts and mini books where I push you more on the aggressive side to say that some people benefit a little bit from short duration fat loss phases that are a little more aggressive. And today we're gonna go even further than that. We're gonna get a little uncomfortable and poke at our own orthodoxy. And in reality, I've I've talked a lot about nonlinear approaches and the fact that everyone responds to different things, both physically and psychologically. And so that's why that's why it's good to have a spectrum. So the slow or moderate approach, it rests on an assumption, and that is that the hardest part of dieting is sustaining it, right? When we say sustainability, that's what we mean. Adherence. Can you stick with it to be successful? And so then the move here is well, let's make it a little gentler, let's make it a little longer. And for certain types of people in certain situations, that assumption doesn't always hold up. And for those people, going longer sometimes kills the diet or it causes you to bounce back and forth and never really quite get what you want out of it. Now, to be really clear up front, because I think this gets highly weaponized online on social media. I'm not here to sell you on crash dieting. I'm not saying that this is at all something a beginner should do. I'm not telling you, hey, eat 800 calories a day, even though that that number could be the number for you at a very short duration based on your current maintenance calories. But I'm not just gonna make a blanket statement. What I am gonna do is take a protocol that actually exists, that has structure, that has evidence behind it, show you who it fits and who it doesn't, especially for those of you who, hey, maybe you're perimenopausal, post-menopausal, and you have recovery issues. Maybe you're on the older side. We really wanna understand what you've been doing in your lifestyle to this point and what you're doing right now to see if it works. It's all about context. And then I want you to stick around to the end because I'm going to give you a simple rule at the end for how to set your rate of loss on any cut. It's a very simple way that I use with clients and our members and eat more lift heavy, where you can get a little creative about how you approach the beginning of the diet and then as you get into it. So we'll talk about that at the end. You could use that on your next fat loss phase. But for today's episode, here's what we're going to cover. The first thing is why slow is usually the default, but then when it stops working for a subset of you out there. What an actual structured aggressive cut or rapid fat loss phase looks like, because you've probably heard of lots of folks out there, like Lyle McDonald, for example, and different protocols. I'm just gonna keep it simple and straightforward. I'm gonna give you a version that has the protein sparing aspect to it and built-in refeeds, not a let me starve you to death version, because there's a difference. Also, what does the research say about losing fat quickly, but not losing muscle? And then I think the maybe the part that matters the most here is when is an aggressive cut a bad idea and how to tell if you are the exception to that rule. So I know it sounds like a lot, but it's all gonna come together. I want to start with why slow and sustainable is kind of the default and not create

  The case for moderate fat loss

  Philip Pape 4:57

  any straw men here, right? The case for moderate fat loss is a really, really strong one that I strongly advocate for a lot of folks. And when I start with a person who's never quite done this before, that's generally the approach we take. It, however, the duration itself can still be its own challenge in terms of a variable, even when you are going slowly. So when you lose weight slowly, when you have a smaller deficit, we know that it's much more easy to hold on to most, if not all, of your muscle. It's easier. It doesn't mean it's going to happen. Conversely, going aggressive doesn't mean you're going to lose muscle, right? I want to be clear about that. There is a classic study by Garth in 2011 that gets cited a lot where they took elite athletes and they split them into a slow fat loss group, losing about seven-tenths of a percent of body weight a week. So that's 0.7%. And then a fast group losing 1.4% per week. And it was the same total weight loss. Both groups are lifting weights, both eating, you know, enough protein. The slow group increased their lean mass by about 2%. The fast group basically flat on that without gaining any lean mass. So the slower the fat loss, these the you know, assumption is or the conclusion is that it's more sparing of your muscle. And you might even gain a little bit if you're newer to this. And that's not super uncommon when we look at body recomp scenarios. Beyond that, slower dieting seems to protect your metabolic rate a bit better. And it's just a function of the aggressiveness. It's not like a magical thing. In other words, the math all works out whatever way you look at it, because what you're trading off by going slower is just slower fat loss, right? So if we look at, for example, this 2020 meta-analysis by Ashtari Larkey, they pooled a bunch of the research together and found that when you match total weight loss, the gradual dieters, the those who take it slowly, held on to about 97 calories a day more of their resting metabolic rate than people who went very fast, right? So 97 calories. And it's not that big of a difference, maybe, and you know, it depends on how big of a difference the aggressiveness was here, but we tend to see a difference. And it kind of makes sense, but again, you're trading off faster fat loss, right? Then there's the behavior part of this, which is probably the most important, almost bar none, the most important from everything I've seen. And that is that a moderate deficit is easier for people to deal with with their real life, right? You can go out to dinner, you can practice the skills of eating well, portioning your food, hitting your protein, navigating like the planning for restaurants, restaurant menus, going to parties, social events, all that stuff that you need, those skills that you need forever, those skills that are honestly the bread and butter of what we tend to help people with in our programs as well, because that's what pays off. That's what allows you to get that independence and know how to sustain and live at maintenance and have that long game, right? And that is the good argument for this. And then when you want to do a fat loss phase, it's just a matter of scaling some of those things, you know, bringing down the carbs a bit, maybe shifting the nutrition

  When going slow stops working

  Philip Pape 8:05

  density of the foods. So, why am I doing this episode? Well, we've covered rapid fat loss a couple of times in the past, and it comes up a lot, and there's a lot of assumptions and misconceptions about it. If we think of slow and sustainable, it assumes that the binding constraint, right, the thing most likely to fall down in this chain of variables, let's say, is your ability to keep going, your adherence. So then the fix is we need to make it easier, make it gentler, make it longer. And for a lot of people, that works really well. But for some of you, that's not the constraint. For some of you, patience, engagement, interest is the constraint. You start really strong, things start to move, you're very excited and motivated. And then usually around week six, I will say, about a month and a half in, the novelty is off, the progress slows down, and you start to get frustrated, you start to drift, your tracking gets sloppy. I see this all the time. People are like, oh, I'm sorry, I actually haven't tracked for the last two weeks. Okay, what are you doing, man? Or woman, what are you doing? The weekend bleeds into the week, especially if you're doing the same calories every day. So it gets kind of boring. And eventually you're not really dieting, you're kind of uh thinking about dieting, and maybe you're tracking, maybe not, and you're kind of trying to, but you're not quite doing it, and you're sort of at maintenance now, right? So for that person, the long moderate deficit maybe not is not the best choice. Also, there's a corner case of folks, like, for example, some women I've I've had as clients, maybe they have thyroid issues, maybe they don't, but they're over-responsive when they go on a diet where their metabolism drops pretty quickly, and then they're like, they have to keep up with it by trying to cut calories again. And it's this frustrating thing of, oh my gosh, I can never actually lose weight. And it's not that you can't, it's just you have to go more aggressively. Sometimes you have to go way more aggressively, but for a short duration. And this actually aligns with some of the research Dr. Bill Campbell has done lately, like very recently down in South Florida, putting women on a very, very aggressive deficit with a lot of movement. Now, his protocol is extreme, but it's extreme for a purpose. It's kind of to prove out whether, you know, a woman who has the menopausal symptoms more severe than other women can actually lose weight. And of course they can, right? Like if you just starve yourself, you're gonna lose weight, but that's not the necessarily the way we want to do it. But it gives us a lot of clues as to what might work. So the just go slow can can be a problem for a subset of people. And again, staying engaged is very important here. So ironically, sustainability for some means going faster and then getting out. So getting in, getting out, and doing that multiple times over the year or over several

  What a structured aggressive cut looks like

  Philip Pape 10:46

  years. So now let's talk about the aggressive cut. Okay. If if longer is a problem, then the alternative is shorter and more aggressive. So again, we've got a couple of variables we can play with. The duration, how aggressive, like how big of a calorie deficit, which means how how little are we gonna eat technically? And then the the variety within that. So, like, do you shift the calories around and all of that? Okay. And we're actually gonna hit on these. So I don't mean wing it and starve. I don't mean doptavia, optavia or whatever it's called, 800 calories a day of packaged foods that they ship, like none of that nonsense. I mean an actual structured protocol because structure is the point. Planning ahead is the point. Being in control is the point. We've talked on this show about how two groups of people who have refeeds. So, in other words, they are dieting and then let's say on the weekend they eat more, the people that treat it as a cheap meal will actually be less successful than the people who are completely on top of planning it out. Like they plan it as simply a higher day that's a refeed. It's not a cheat day, it's not a, you know, let's let's just have fun and eat whatever. And we see that. So there is a psychology behind this. And this idea has been around in the evidence-based world for a long time. Lyle McDonald wrote about it a version of rapid fat loss years ago. A lot of people reference him. A lot of my clients are into his stuff. He's great, he's very grumpy, grouchy guy. You know, you gotta love him. And a lot of what he says holds up and are great models for how to do this. We've also done our own rapid fat loss challenges and episodes. And I have a guide based on when Dr. Bill Campbell was on here and a settler did an experiment based on one of his protocols. So I'm gonna walk you through that today, but it doesn't matter whose protocol you use, the principles are what matter in terms of doing a smart aggressive cut

  Protein and carbs as muscle insurance

  Philip Pape 12:38

  versus like a crash diet. Okay, so let's go through those. Let's go through those. Principle one is you're gonna have to go into a very aggressive deficit, yes, which means you're just gonna eat a lot fewer calories, but you are gonna anchor it to a really high amount of protein. Okay, protein and fibrous foods is the second piece of that, but it's really about the protein sparing your muscle and then eating in a way that minimizes the hunger, but you can't get rid of the hunger at this level. You're going to have hunger, okay? The version that I like is you go into about a 45% deficit. So you take your maintenance calories, that's the amount of calories you actually burn, which you need to know that. So you have to be tracking ahead of time and be kind of at maintenance for a while before you do this. And then I recommend the tool MacroFactor. It's my favorite app. Use code Wits and Weights, all one word, get a two-week free trial, try it out. Okay. You need your maintenance calories and then you go 55% of that. So a 45% deficit. So it's about half. I mean, it you could you could say roughly half, but it's a little more than that. So if you burn 2,500 calories, you're gonna be around 1,375 on your deficit days. And that's very aggressive. Now, a lot of you are starting way lower than that. You're starting at 1800 calories, and now you're gonna go down to something like 950, right? Or maybe even lower than that. And that's why you could be at seven or eight hundred calories for an individual, but that that's the point is it's gonna be extremely short. Here's what keeps it from being a crash diet. You're gonna set your protein really high. You're gonna set it to at least a gram per pound of body weight, but it could go higher, 1.2, 1.3, 1.5. It could be pretty much exclusively protein, things like white fish and shrimp and chicken breast, right? And vegetables. And I know it almost sounds like paleo or something like that, but that's the point. It's very, very short. You're gonna keep those amino acids flooding in, you're gonna keep strength training, and that is going to hold on to the muscle because that's what we want to do. We want to lose fat and not muscle. Principle two. So principle one is the protein. Principle two is we're gonna keep the carbs in, but we're going to use it as refeeds for the most part, depending on how many carbs you have to play with during the week. You might have some carbs during the week, but you're gonna be eating mostly fibrous vegetables and including a little bit of fruit is what I would recommend. So when we look at starvation diets or crash diets, oftentimes they just cut carbs, right? Things like keto, you know. And that can be counter-counterproductive. We know carbs are muscle sparing, they give you a little bit of energy, but they are gonna be highly limited. Let's just admit it, because you're taking up most of the diet with protein. When you run out of carbs, your body's gonna start pulling from other sources. So it's gonna try to pull from fat, maybe a little bit from protein, converting to glucose, and from a it's not going to rebuild muscle. In other words, muscle protein breakdown outpaces muscle protein synthesis. So it's not that it's like eating your muscles if you are lacking in protein and carbs. It's just that your body will not have what it needs to rebuild the muscle. So we do keep carbs in the picture. They end up moderate to low, just like the fat ends up being pretty low. Protein is taking up the vast majority of

  Scheduled refeeds and how they work

  Philip Pape 15:47

  a calorie budget. And then the principle three we're gonna get to now with refeeds, that's where you're gonna really take advantage of carbs. So principle number three is schedule built-in refeeds. And the way I run it, you go four days in a deficit, then one day in a refeed, four days in a deficit, one in a refeed, four more days in a deficit, and you're done. So that's 14 days that include two refeeds. Now, there are different protocols. Again, Lau McDonald has his protocol. You can look it up. There's lots of different ways to do that. Some people get creative and mix it around. It's fine, right? Some people stretch it out a little bit and they might do four days, two days, or they might do a typical like seven-day period of five days, two days. That's that's also pretty common. So on the refeed days, what do you do? Well, you bump your calories back up to maintenance almost entirely with carbs. And, you know, I like carbs like fruit and starches, you know, rice and things like that that are pretty easy to just jack up carbs and consume them because you actually might, even though you're probably hungry and you're looking forward to the food, you also don't want to stuff yourself and get distended and feel like really terrible. So you tend to go uh and pick, you know, the right types of carbs that kind of balance a sweet spot between satiety and ease of consumption. And so your refeed days are up at your maintenance calories. So if you were burning 2,500 calories and you're dieting on, what did we say, 13 something, now you're going back to 2,500 on those days. Now, there are some camps that say, look, if you don't feel like you need all that amount, you know, go part way there, go two-thirds or 80% of the way there. You're gonna have to experiment with yourself to see if that gets you all the benefits or not. For some people, it's like not enough. And then they feel like they've never quite had a relief. For others, that's actually beautiful because then it actually gives them a little bit more of a deficit as part of the process, right? The goal here is top off your muscle glycogen. It kind of really gives you a little boost for the next training day, but mainly it gives you a psychological breather, a day that you can look forward to, but in a planned way, not in a cheat way. Um, and that helps you get through the two weeks. Two weeks doesn't sound like a lot on a podcast, but when you're actually in this thing, this is a challenging thing to do. And by the way, you could stretch this out to three weeks in different ways. You can have a slightly less aggressive deficit, you can have two extra refeed

  Strength training during a cut

  Philip Pape 18:05

  days in there. You know, there's different ways to do this. The fourth principle is the training, the strength training, right? And we've talked about this in the past. When you go into fat loss, a lot of people want to train a different way. You want to do like lighter, more reps, add a bunch of cardio, et cetera. No, you're not gonna have much energy. So the best way to burn fat to hold on your muscle is a high stimulus, keeping the intensity or the weight on the bar or on the dumbbells or machines high. So, whatever you're already doing, probably just keep doing that because we're only talking about two weeks. We're not trying to hit PRs necessarily. So rep range, auto-regulated type programming tends to work well here. But for most of you, you're probably already doing something like that. And you might might lose a touch of strength because of the low energy, but you know, you hit it hard, get close to failure like you normally would, even if it's a few reps less less. Keep the weight up there, keep the load up there. Don't deload, don't bring it down. In fact, that's the worst time to combine with the delo. I always tell people when they're gonna deload in their normal course of their lifestyle, that's actually a good time not to be dying in. That's actually a good time to eat more, not the opposite. But anyway, heavy lifting, high protein, keep that muscle and burn the fat. That's the engine that's going

  Water loss, fat loss, and using it as a tool

  Philip Pape 19:16

  on here. So, two caveats here so that I don't oversell this to people. The first one is that when you run this, and your scales, your scale is probably gonna drop a lot in the first few days. It may or may not. Like people respond differently, but if it does, most of that it's gonna be water and stored carbs that are leaving your body. The real fat loss over, say, the two-week protocol we're talking about here is more like at most three to five pounds. Now, that is excellent for a mere 14 days. That really is. And that's why you can string together, say, three of these in a year, and now you've got nine to 15 pounds of fat loss within that year just for six total cumulative weeks of diet, and that's not bad at all. That's kind of what we're going for. The second thing is this is a tool. This is not a lifestyle. It makes your overall life more sustainable for some people to be able to only have the two weeks of aggressive dieting, but the dieting itself is a very defined, structured block with a start and finish, and then you come back out to maintenance deliberately, you don't extend it. One of the biggest mistakes people make is hey, Philip, I'm feeling okay. I just got you know, some fat off. Should I keep going? I'm like, probably not. Probably not. Can you extend it by one week?

  Step-by-step rapid fat loss guide

  Philip Pape 20:30

  Maybe. You've got to look at your biofeedback, your performance, all of that stuff. You know, maybe, but don't push it too hard or you're gonna start losing muscle, it's gonna start messing with your hormones, all that other stuff. So I just gave you the principles, I just gave you the broad numbers. If you want it spelled out, like exactly what do I eat on each day, how do I do the math, and all that. I do have a guide, my rapid fat loss guide. I've had it for a while. I'll put the link in my show notes. If you go to witsandweeights.com slash free, you can see all of my guides, including rapid fat loss. But I will put the link in the show notes to the rapid fat loss guide. This is one of the more detailed guides I have. It's Google Doc that actually walks you through everything and it step by step. It does the calorie math, it gives you the protein, it gives you the structure, the four four one one-off structure, tells you even how to set it up in macrofactor. There's lookup tables, you can find your body weight, maintenance calories. There's a whole bunch of really good stuff in there. Again, I'm saying that rapid fat loss is not for everyone, but it's it's good to look at it and see what it would take for you to do it. And if you are one of the people that is a good fit for this, we're going now to talk about who that is so that you could just be educated and make the right choice. Okay. So again, go to wit'saways.com slash free if you want to find the rapid fat loss guide or click the link in the show notes. So the protocol is very structured, but does it does rapid fat loss work as you would expect?

  Preserving muscle on a steep deficit

  Philip Pape 21:54

  Can you actually hold on to your muscle? Because you probably heard, you know, oh, if I go more than 500 calorie deficit, I'm gonna start. Losing my muscle. No, there's a dose response factor and there's also a high training stimulus factor. I will say generally, what I've found is if people are really consistent at training hard with the proper effort, okay, just like we talked about, I think it was our last episode about what actually builds muscle. If you are doing that with enough volume and effort, you have a lot of leeway on dieting if you keep the duration short. Even if you are a 45, 50-year-old woman with declining progesterone and estrogen, all the fear-mongering out there about menopause, you can't lose weight anymore, and this and that. If you do this, you can have very good results. And this may be what you need as either a jump start or a little bit of you know boost to get it done if you do it right. There are two things it depends on the protein and the lifting. So it really comes down to that. And that can be challenging though. The lifting, not so much if you once you get into it, like you just keep doing it. But hitting that amount of protein when it's mostly just that protein, you've got to be very dialed in. Like you can't be eating ribeye and 80% ground beef for the most part during this phase. You could eat scallops and seafood. Seafood's great, like whitefish, you know, chicken breasts, things like that, some forms of pork, maybe. But the the reason the protein's so important, we've known this from studies. There's one back in 2016 by Longlin, where they took young men, they put them on a 40% calorie deficit, which is aggressive by any standard. They did it for four weeks. They did hard resistance training and intervals. And then they split them by protein. So one group had moderate protein intake, one had about up to 2.4 grams per kilogram. So the high protein group on the 40% deficit gained two and a half pounds of lean mass and lost 11 pounds of fat. So they actually body recomped on a huge deficit. The lower protein group just held on to their muscle and they lost less fat. So it's the same deficit, different body composition outcome. The only difference was the protein and the fact that they train hard. And I will say we're gonna do an upper another another episode soon digging into that whole protein phenomenon about how magic can occur when you increase your protein in terms of fat loss, even when you're in a deficit, or I should say, even when you're in a surplus, and then all of a sudden you start to lose fat. And it's like, this doesn't make sense, does it, based on calories and calories out? It does, but it's kind of a secondary effect that occurs on the energy outside of the equation. So anyway, protein is very important. And the muscle loss that everyone is worried about, it's not really about the size of the deficit. It's whether you are lifting hard, keeping the protein high, and keeping the duration short. And there's a whole body of work from Eric Helms that goes back to 2014, so a decade, where he basically, to just to paraphrase, the leaner you are and the more aggressive the deficit, the more protein you need. So in practice, for a lifter, that's where we get to the gram per pound of body weight. Now, the minimum you really need in general is like 0.6.7. It's not nearly that much. But when you're in an aggressive deficit, that's where we need to create a higher floor. So the floor I use in the protocol is just one, but I've definitely seen people be more successful jacking that up. Okay, jacking that up. It helps with satiety and all the other things as well. And it really does move the needle on body composition for some people in a in a surprising way. Now, remember earlier I mentioned the difference between those two groups with the aggressive versus not aggressive, and they were their metabolism dropped faster in the more aggressive group. Well, in that study, the problem is the rapid groups were usually they didn't have very high protein, and in many cases, they weren't lifting weight, lifting weights. So of course they're gonna lose muscle. So a lack of protein in training will itself accelerate your drop in metabolism as well. And look, a lot of you when we talk, forget rapid fat loss, just talk about life in general. You get into your 40s, 50s, where like, oh, my metabolism's not what it used to be. That's what's happening. You're losing muscle mass. You need more protein as you age, not less, and you probably didn't have much to begin with. You're if you're not even lifting weights, that's the biggest piece of all. That's the biggest piece of all. So whoever you are lifting weights, eating enough, eating enough protein, it solves most of these issues, guys. All right, now what about the refeeds and diet breaks?

  Refeeds, diet breaks, and metabolic adaptation

  Philip Pape 26:12

  Okay, the the structured higher calorie periods that are in these protocols. Well, I would say the evidence is still mixed. It's really hard to tease things out. There's the famous Matador study where they did the blocks, the intervals that we've talked about. I think it was like two weeks on, two weeks off. And it seems like they had better results, but it could just be an adherence thing. We've had studies that compare continuous dieting to dieting with breaks that did not find a difference between fat loss, muscle, metabolic rate. So I think the strongest case for a refeed and why we include them is adherence and the psychology of it, right? Knowing that refeed is coming up in four days, it helps you get through those four days. However, there may be a physiological benefit as well. And this is again where you will have to experiment and see. And this is why you may not need the full maintenance calories. That was my point. Like if the only benefit is adherence, then that logic means you don't necessarily have to get fully up to maintenance on those days, right? Because the whole leptin argument that has been debunked. So, where does that leave metabolic adaptation itself in this conversation? Well, it's probably gonna happen, but it's not gonna be that big and it's temporary anyway. So don't worry about it. In fact, when I run people through a two or three-week rapid fat loss phase, we're not really even paying attention to what happens to our expenditure during that time because you can't really have that level of precision. Even if you are using macrofactor, it's too short of duration, and then you're done with the diet. Well, what can you do with that information? You're not gonna change your calories as a result because you're already doing these big swings anyway, from dieting to refeeds, right? The size of the adaptation on your meta in your metabolism tends to track with the size of the deficit, how much fast you lose, fat you lose, and the duration. But then it's going to bounce back. All of your metabolic rate is gonna come back. And the only change will be if you are lighter on the scale than before the diet, you're gonna burn fewer calories from that. But if you have more muscle, you'll burn more calories from that. So I would use the smallest deficit that gets you the loss that you want. But then in this case, what we're talking about today is that deficit being extremely high, but for a short duration for those who have trouble, sticking with a longer, slow diet. That's really what I'm talking about. So, who is this for? And who isn't it for? This is very important. And as always, I like to be direct here. So

  Who an aggressive cut is for (and NOT for)

  Philip Pape 28:33

  knowing that this protocol exists and works in a certain context is different from you should do it, because I know everybody listening, especially if you've heard this for the first time, you're hearing this for the first time, you're like, oh my God, I didn't know this exists. I don't want to do a crash diet, but yeah, I would love to do this rapid fat loss phase. I can drop like five pounds of fat. Let's do it. All right, here we go. So I think this is ideal if, for example, you carry a lot of body fat to start with. So it's kind of like you have fuel in your body already. I think it's great. If you are, you know, quite overweight or even obese, perfect. Okay. I would say if you have a deadline, an event, a trip, a specific date, and you're just trying to do a quick cut for that, as much as I cringe a little bit on time-based constraints for these things, for some people, they're like, okay, I have the day, I might as well do it the right way. And assuming you've already done proper, set up your nutrition properly ahead of time and you've been training, go for it. Don't do it though if you've never done a fat loss before phase before and you haven't done all the things you're supposed to do for a fat loss phase, like strength training. Okay. If you know yourself well enough that longer diets are really hard, but you actually can do really well for a short duration aggressively and be disciplined and all that, you could be this could be perfect for you. A short block, clear finish line to you might be more sustainable, right? Over the macro period, like over the months, over the years, to have those short bursts in there. And I think the research backs it up. There's actually a study I found by Purcell in 2014 that was kind of counterintuitive. People losing weight rapidly were more likely to hit their target and less likely to drop out than a slow group. And it's because of this psychology of humans love to go after things and like to have events and goals. A clear, fast, defined push toward this goal, it kept more people in the game. And that finish line is motivating, right? So that's not just me theorizing about psychology that we do have evidence for this. And then one more thing on the rate of loss, where coat guys like Brandon DeCruz talk about this a lot. The right rate of loss is not even necessarily fixed across a single cut. Now, a rapid fat loss phase is so short, you're not even worried about the rate of loss. You're just setting up the deficit and doing it and you're done. But if we're talking a little longer, like a mini cut or longer, you don't have to stick to the same thing the whole time. We're gonna touch on this again in the end of the episode because this is where I think people don't think out of the box, and we should, and it would make things easier. Also, though, you should not do an aggressive cut. Okay. This is so this is the this is who it's not for. You should not do an aggressive cut or rapid fat loss phase if you have any history of disordered eating, period. Not worth worth the risk. Not worth the risk. I just had a call with somebody yesterday who has a history of very low calorie binge restricted cycles. She's actually in a muscle building phase, which is awesome. Okay. And I said, let's let's crank that out for like six months. And then when you're ready for a fat loss phase, we're gonna do it very moderate and we're not gonna do it for that long. And I said, who cares if it's like five pounds? It will prove to yourself you can do this in a sustainable way. So that's a different situation. She's not gonna do rapid fat loss. I would never recommend it. If you're already pretty lean, it's hard as well because I think you have a higher risk of muscle loss. If you cannot or will not hit that protein level while you're lifting hard, obviously you got to do that. It's probably not for you. In other words, you if you already struggle to hit your protein not on a diet, you're not ready. You've got to get there. You have to be ready for it and go to maintenance and successfully build those skills, right? That's something we do and eat more lift heavy. Just to throw my program out there is build that skill, those skills of each of those things. How do we track? How do we eat our protein? How do we solve all the problems in our own lives first? And then we can go to fat loss, whether it's rapid or not. Now, if you're a lady, if you're a woman in perimenopause and menopause, a lot of you listening, you're over 40. I would say for some, the downside risk is higher. And for others, this is exactly ideal. It's really individualistic.

  Considerations in perimenopause and over 40

  Philip Pape 32:25

  Okay. When you're concerned about things like bone density and energy availability and stress and holding on to estrogen with lower or holding on to muscle with lower estrogen, all that stuff. As long as you are lifting consistently and with the proper effort and volume, and you can hit the protein like we've already talked about, and you're the type of person who's not really super responsive to longer diets, give it a shot. Why not? Like go for it. However, pushing energy too low is probably gonna have an impact on your hormones, like thyroid output, on your recovery, your sleep, your mood, your cycle. And it happens very fast. So my honest position is be very careful about setting yourself up for success during this, following the protocol the way it's supposed to be, doing the prerequisites. Don't be be honest with yourself that you are ready for it. But it could be a great tool. So the difference between a proper aggressive fat loss phase, rapid fat loss phase that works well is really in this level of precision, monitoring, protein, training, and then just watching how it works for you and tracking whatever you can so that next time you do it, you know what things you want to adjust. Should I go higher on the protein? Should I add another refeed? Should I go shorter or longer? Should I go more aggressive with the deficit, et cetera? So to put the whole thing together, slow and moderate is still the right default for the vast majority of you here. I would say 80%, 90% of the time. Another 10% are probably better off with mini cuts. And then maybe 5% of you, 10% of you are good with these rapid fat loss phases, just as a default. Anybody can do the rapid fat loss phase or experiment with it, of course. But listen through this episode again and go download my guide and just walk through the protocol. Wits and weights.com slash free or use the link in the show notes. Get the rapid fat loss guide. Okay.

  Bonus: Deficit to make your fat loss easier

  Philip Pape 34:12

  So before we wrap up, I promised you a rule for setting your rate of loss that's out of the box that's going to help you out. And again, the resource today is a rapid fat loss guide. Go to wits and weights.com slash free. Get the link in the show notes. If you need more help than that, reach out, go to eatmoreliftheavy.com and see how we can help you develop the skills needed to get ready for successful fat loss, whether it's done this way or not. That's eatmorliftheavy.com. All right. Here is what I call the descending deficit. And it's something that I stumbled across randomly while working with clients and doing it for myself. And then I noticed folks like Brandon DeCruz and others talking about this. And it is stop picking just one rate of loss and trying to hold it the whole way. Instead, plan out a very, very aggressive rate of loss that then titrates down as you go. Because what's good, what it's going to do, it's going to feel like you're actually eating more food because you are eating more food as you go into the diet, which sounds counterintuitive, but it actually makes a lot of sense. Because at the start of a cut, your motivation's super high. You don't have any diet fatigue. You're carrying the most fat you're going to carry for the phase. Your muscles at the lowest risk it will be for muscle loss. That's when you can push. That's when you can jack it up to say 1% of your body weight a week. Or for some of you that are larger, even more than that. And then as you get leaner and the fatigue starts to build, you ease it off down to 0.75, down to half a percent a week as you're getting lean. Now, these are for longer diets, maybe not a it's not for the rapid fat loss phase, but it's an little tip that I think is super helpful if you're planning a longer diet. It's fat, you're doing it faster when it's easy, when it's safer, slower, when it gets harder and risky. And then you actually, you know, you're eating more food as you go. You're actually increasing the calories up into a smaller deficit. And it's interesting, right? Psychologically. A lot of people do the opposite. They start kind of cautious, they dip their foot in, they're like, I'm gonna go with a moderate deficit because I've heard I need to hold onto my muscle. And then they just kind of like barely get going, right? And then they start to get tired. And, you know, then you try to get more aggressive because you're making up for it, but now you're getting more metabolic adaptation and more diaphysic. It's the wrong way to do it. So try very aggressive and taper off to less aggressive. And by the way, when you start very aggressive, if you find that you can stay there for a little bit longer, go for it, right? It'll kind of tell you where your limits are. All right, until next time, keep using your wits, lifting those weights. And remember, the right speed for fat loss isn't slow or fast. It's the one that matches what you're capable of to stick to it and get the result. I'm Philip Pape, and I'll talk to you next time here on the Wits and Weights podcast.

What REALLY Builds Muscle After 40 | Ep 478

What REALLY builds muscle after 40?

The honest answer comes down to 3 things: sufficient effort for growth, how many hard sets you need each week, and recovery.

This episode covers mechanical tension as the proximate cause of muscle growth, what the research says about training close to failure and reps in reserve (RIR), the how many weekly hard sets (volume) drives muscle growth (hypertrophy) vs. diminishing gains, and how sleep, protein, and recovery enable muscle growth.

Plus, what changes for lifting weights over 40 and for women in perimenopause and menopause, and a 30-second test you can run in the gym to find out how hard you are training.

Try Fitness Lab, the AI coaching app that works alongside the tools you already use to calibrate your effort, dial in your training volume, and tell you what your data means for building muscle and losing fat over 40.

Timestamps:

0:00 - 3 things that build muscle
6:39 - Mechanical tension and mechanotransduction
9:30 - Size principle and proximity to failure
11:19 - Reps in reserve and calibrating your effort
14:28 - Volume as the dose for hypertrophy
15:52 - Hard sets per muscle per week
17:45 - What makes a set count
18:44 - Building your week of training
21:50 - Effort tracking and programming over 40
23:24 - Recovery as a permissive factor
25:18 - Sleep, protein, and strength training over 40
26:21 - Building muscle through perimenopause and menopause
30:21 - Bonus: 30-second test for whether you've hit "failure"

• Transcript

  3 things that build muscle

  Philip Pape 0:00

  If you've been changing up your exercises, chasing the perfect rep range, switching programs every few weeks to keep your muscles guessing, and you're still not seeing the muscle you'd expect for how hard you feel like you're working, this episode is for you. Today I'm going to show you the three things that actually build muscle and why everything else that you've heard about on social media or elsewhere is more for optimization. If you can get these three things right, the rest really don't matter as much as you think. 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 I'm over 40. Many of you are as well. You're probably lifting weights, and maybe you've been doing it for a while. Maybe you are a gym rat. I don't know your situation, but you've heard maybe a hundred little rules about how to build muscle and different rep ranges. What range is best? How heavy should I go? Is eight to twelve hypertrophy versus say, you know, one to five is strength? You do you have to mix things up to confuse or to challenge the muscles? Do you have to switch your program every X number of weeks following a D-load? What exercise selection do I do so I'm not wasting my time? What about effective reps? What about training close to failure? And the list goes on and on. And I think the fitness industry is just making a ton of money selling you all the variables to optimize this stuff, all the programs you need. And I'm sure you've poured a lot of your hard-earned cash into these things, or at least a lot of time on social media. So the problem I see with a lot of you, and I've dealt with this in the past for years and years and years until I finally figured things out with the help of some amazing people, is you're working incredibly hard. Now, if you're not even going to the gym at all, okay, fine, let's stop right there. You're gonna have to train, you're still gonna take a ton away from this episode. In fact, you're gonna be ahead of the game. But many of you are spending your effort and your attention on variables that do not move the outcome, or you're going to the gym and not even progressing at all, and you're just moving weights around. Yeah, you feel good. Maybe you get a sweat. Maybe you're just kind of hold on, you know, holding on to what you have, but you're not really making any progress. And that can be very frustrating. But really building muscle comes down to just a few key principles. Okay, that is what we're gonna talk about today. Everything else is optimization, everything is dialing in, maybe, but we're gonna focus on what matters. I'll say that this is not a beginner episode necessarily. Like we're not gonna talk about, okay, step one, here's how you train. Step one, right? This is really, if you already know the basics, you know what a deadlift is, you know what a squat is, you've been already listening to podcasts, reading articles, et cetera. And maybe you're a little tired being told, okay, here's another thing you have to do. Maybe you listen to Mind Pump or something like that, which I love these shows, but they can confuse you because there's just so many things that they throw out there as information or tips. But it's more liberating sometimes when you just have simplicity. So we're gonna try the two, we're gonna try to do that today. And then if you stick around to the end, you know, I always like to throw in something special at the end of the episode. Today I'm gonna give you something to do in the gym to tell whether you're training hard enough and also whether you're training close enough to failure versus what you think you are. We're gonna do it very objectively. A lot of people would get that part wrong and it kind of holds you back on progressing the right way. Today you're gonna learn the one thing that's the actual proximate cause of muscle growth. It's just one thing. Also, why proximity to failure matters more than weight on the bar. I know shocking to hear me say that. How many hard sets per muscle you actually need in a week, because there's a lot of confusion there, and then the role of recovery, which may have some surprises in store for you today. So let's start with what most people believe building muscle is about. Okay. If I ask the average dedicated lifter, Jim Goer, what they're focused on, I will hear specifics like, okay, I'm doing these rep ranges, these are my exercise selection and variation. Sometimes people talk about, you know, mixing it up and making sure they're trying to hit all the muscle groups. You know, we talked about muscle confusion in a recent episode. Go look that one up. It's actually a pretty cool discussion. I hear about sometimes time under tension and tempo, about mind muscle connection, about this split or that split. Now, those are tactics. None of that is worthless. I would say it's you've got to learn, you've got to find what works for you and understand that there's a spectrum of stuff tactically that influences muscle growth. But all of these are downstream. They are like the trim on the house. And we want to focus on the foundation of the house, not the paint on the wall, but the frame of the house, the foundation. So I want to reframe, pun intended, this whole concept today using the way that I like to think about things, which is an engineering problem. When you have a system that isn't producing the output you want, you've got to fix the system. You don't fiddle with the dials. You identify the constraint. What is the one bottleneck that is limiting the results? And then put all your resources there. That is a very efficient approach. For most lifters, especially as we age, we're over 40, over 50, and you're not building muscle the way you want. The constraint is almost never exercise selection, guys. And yet that's often the top of the list. Oh, what exercises should I do to X, Y, Z? It's almost never the rep range. Oh, should I be working in five to 10 or 10 to 12? I get that question a lot. The constraint for most of you is this you are not training hard enough on the sets that you do, and you're not doing enough of those hard sets across the week. That is it. That is the whole game for most people. Listen up, I'm gonna repeat myself. You're either and either or not training enough, hard enough on the sets that you do, and you're not doing enough of those hard sets across the week. Now, notice actually, neither of those is technically volume in and of itself. It's effort and frequency that leads to volume and ultimately will tie to the one principle that glues it all together that we're gonna talk about. So those are the things you're gonna want to nail. Now, I know you're a lot of you are saying, wait, I do train hard. I'm wiped out when I go to the gym. Well, hold that thought because we're gonna test that out. All right. Getting wiped out, being sore, being, you know, and sweating is not a primary variable. Those aren't primary variables of what actually drives muscle growth. So if it is not, let's say, rep range and it's not exercise selection and it's not variety, then what

  Mechanical tension and mechanotransduction

  Philip Pape 6:39

  is it? Well, the answer that we definitively know at this point is mechanical tension. Mechanical tension is the proximate cause of muscle growth. It is the cause of muscle growth. That is the thing that your muscle fibers respond to. It's not the burn or the pump, not the soreness, not any of those things. Although those can come along for the ride. They can be there for sure for different reasons. But the signal that tells a muscle to grow is high tension, mechanical tension on the fiber, repeated and accumulated over time. So it's not a one-off, but repeated and accumulated over time. And here's why that matters in plain terms. When a muscle fiber is under high mechanical load, that physical force gets converted into a chemical signal inside the cell. This is fascinating. The science term is mechanotransduction, mechano, as in mechanical, transduction as in trans, you know, transduces or uh changes or converts into chemicals. The upstream part of how the force becomes the signal is actually still not understood, guys. That's why I use the term proximate cause. The upstream part in your body of how that force becomes that signal, even by people who study this for a living, tell us we don't quite know. But the downstream part is very clear. That signal, right, from the mechanical tension into the chemical signal, that signal then ramps up your muscle protein synthesis through a pathway called mTOR. And that's what builds new contractile tissue. And I think there's a newer name for mTOR today, but we're gonna go with mTOR because that's what everybody knows and loves. Now, for a long time, we talk about or we have talked about three drivers of growth mechanical tension, metabolic stress, which is like the that burning feeling you get when you lift weights, and then muscle damage, which often is correlated with soreness. That's what we used to talk about. Over the last decade or so, the field has consolidated to no, it's mechanical tension. That's the one that matters. That is the one that matters. So please consider this an update in your scientific library. The other two, the burn and the soreness, they mostly seem to matter to the extent that they help you produce more tension, or they are just byproducts of the work. The source, soreness is never the goal. It's like a side effect of sometimes what you're doing correctly here with mechanical tension. But the question is, how do you produce high tension on a muscle fiber? Because what we care about is what do you do? As a human being, going to the gym with a fitness lifestyle, what the heck do you actually do? So let's get practical. Your body recruits muscle fibers in a specific order. Smallest and weakest first, biggest and strongest last. It's called the size principle. The fibers with the most growth potential,

  Size principle and proximity to failure

  Philip Pape 9:30

  growth potential, the high threshold ones, those only get called into the game when your effort gets high. And that's either because you're lifting something genuinely heavy as a percentage of your max, or listen up, or because you fatigued the smaller fibers enough that your body has to recruit the bigger ones to keep the set going. So do you see what this means? It means that the last few reps of a hard set, the ones that get difficult, the ones that, let's be honest, you are attempted to not do because it's getting hard, right? Those are the reps where the magic happens. Those are the reps that put you your most responsive fibers under the real mechanical tension. If you stop a set when it starts to feel hard, you're actually walking away right before the part that grows the muscle. Now it's it may not be as close to failure as sometimes claimed. So there's a little bit of a window there for sure. Okay, we we can talk about that nuance, but it's the principle we're talking about here. And so this brings us to the single most important number in this conversation, and that is proximity to failure. Like if we need a metric, it is proximity to failure. How close are you actually training to the point where you can't do another rep? And the research here is pretty consistent. Muscle growth increases as your sets get closer to failure. You don't have to go all the way to failure, and I'm gonna come back to that, but you have to get close. And by failure, I simply mean, again, you your form would completely break down and you literally can't do another rep. The most useful way to think about this proximity to failure is reps in reserve, R-I-R. Now, there are two systems there's rating of perceived exertion, RPE,

  Reps in reserve and calibrating your effort

  Philip Pape 11:19

  and then the inverse of that is R I R. We're just gonna go with IRR. R-I-R, it's a really easy way to think about it because it's how many reps are left in the tank. RPE gets confusing, so we're not even gonna go there. So let's say if you have five more in the tank, that's five R I R. And so as you can see, the smaller the IRR, R I R, the closer you are to failure, all the way to zero R I R, which is complete failure. And the closer you are, generally with a dose response that is mitigated somewhat by how much fatigue you're getting in the set, we're gonna talk about that, affects how you build muscle. Now, this should affect how you train significantly if you weren't doing it right the first time and if you're not getting a result. Now, we take somebody like Dr. Eric Helms, who I very much respect, and his colleagues, they've done a lot of work on this. And there's a finding that keeps coming up in the research. Most people, especially less experienced lifters, which I know a lot of you are. Heck, I've been training now for about five years pretty well. And I consider myself pretty experienced when I compare my form to, say, someone who's newer, but I have a long way to go and a long way to learn. I'm always trying to improve. So let's just assume we're all less experienced. Many of you dramatically underestimate how hard you're actually training. You think you're one or two reps in reserve, but you're actually five or six. This is very common. In one set of studies, when trained people were pushed, okay, trained people, people who already resistance trained regularly, when they were pushed by a coach, they got an average of five, two, six more reps than they predicted on a load or a weight on the bar that they thought was their limit. So that's five or six more that they were able to get. That is a lot. That's a difference between a set that really does effectively grow muscle and one that's kind of on the edge, or maybe it's not even really moving the needle for you. It's just burning calories, makes you feel like you did something, but now you're gonna need a lot more volume or time to get where you want. And if you're let's say in a bulk or a maintenance or body reconp, you're just not getting everything out of it you can with your training stimulus. So that's why I'm sharing this with you guys. This is so important. That's why this episode is called What Really Builds Muscle. I think I think it's after 40, but it really is for everyone. So we've established a mechanical tension as the driver, and that the effort you put in that gets close to failure is how you produce that tension. Now we have to talk about how much because that effort without enough repetition, without enough volume, does not get you there. You're gonna get detrained. You need to continue to challenge your body to continue so that it adapts onward and upward. I mean, that makes sense, right? Like if you have the best gym session you've ever had in your life, you train hard, you're in the gym for two hours today, and then you never train the rest of your life, well, obviously you're not gonna keep building muscle. Okay. So the framing I love comes from Brad Scheinfeld uh and others like him. It's basically this if intensity, okay, intensity in this case is proximity to failure, I apologize because we also use intensity to mean load on the bar. But if if proximity to failure is the drug, if we're talking about dose response and that's the drug,

  Volume as the dose for hypertrophy

  Philip Pape 14:28

  that's the stimulus, then volume is like the dosage. Okay. You need both of them together. So it's not that volume in and of itself is anything special, it's that volume at high mechanical tension is special. So then what is that dose? What is that volume? Well, when we talk about volume for muscle growth, we typically count hard sets per muscle group per week. It's a nice, easy metric that you can quantify. Not the total time or tonnage or how trashed you feel or how sore you are, not even how many days in the gym, right? Because you can you can at work, you can get a good volume from three days or from six days. It's hard sets. Okay, and the research is really clear on this. A recent large analysis that pooled dozens of studies, so we call that a meta-analysis, found that more volume reliably produces more growth with essentially 100% certainty in the direction, but with diminishing returns as you go up. So the curve starts to flatten, diminishing returns. So when we talk about dose response in fitness or nutrition, it almost invariably is an asymptotic curve for my math nerds out there. In other words, it it increases, but by less and less as you go. So the marginal increases get smaller. It's not a linear relationship, it's more of a curve. Very important to know because then you want then you can find like that sweet spot

  Hard sets per muscle per week

  Philip Pape 15:52

  where you get a lot of the response, but you don't have to put in significantly more effort for a little extra, which also, by the way, has negatives in terms of fatigue and recovery. Okay. For most people, what does that look like? Well, the responsive range of volume is around 10 to 20 hard sets per muscle per week. If you are newer to lifting or if you're short on time, you could get a lot out of that low end, that 10 sets. That 10 sets. In fact, if you look at the dose response curve, you can go as low as five and still get a response. You're just leaving some stuff on the table. That's my point, right? You going from zero to five is a massive improvement. And then five to ten is another big improvement, but then between 10 and 20 is a decent improvement, and it depends on how much you want to put in. And if you're newer, you're gonna get a huge responsiveness anyway, even with fewer sets, which is why I don't focus as much on volume for new, new for uh newbies for beginners. I focus more on, hey, get in the gym three days a week and do the main lifts for a decent amount of, you know, for like three sets, and you're you're generally covered. If a specific muscle is a priority and you're recovering well for that muscle group, then you might say, okay, I need 15 to 20 sets on that upper range. I'm gonna do a little specialization. One of my all-time favorite coaches, Andy Baker, he puts it simply, he's like, look, if you want to get bigger arms, you got to do it twice a week, two different exercises, which, you know, depending on the number of sets, can put you around 15 to 20 because you also have a lot of indirect work generally hitting those muscle groups, right? So specialization in one exercise, you just got to think about the number of sets. Beyond that, beyond the 20 sets, the evidence is a little murky. It's also very individual. And for a lot of us who are older, this is where the over 40 piece, the recovery is really an important variable. And if you're training too much, you could just be constantly fatigued and underrecovered, let

  What makes a set count

  Philip Pape 17:45

  alone if you're not sleeping well, if you're stressed, and if you're not eating enough. Right? Those stack on. Now, we take everything I just talked about, and now let's tie this together because what does it mean? Well, a set only really counts toward that volume if it was hard, which means reasonably close to failure. If you had 20 lazy sets with the same, I hate to say pink dumbbells, but whatever weight you did last time, and it's five, six, seven, eight, nine reps in reserve, every time, even if you feel like you got some work done because you're sweating, you're just not gonna get the same result. In fact, you might not be getting, you might not be putting pushing the needle enough to get stronger over time and actually increase the weight. And next time you go to the gym, you can't do any more until you train harder. So it's not just about counting the sets, it's counting the ones that are hard. Now, for those of us logging, you're gonna count all your sets. The point isn't to only count hard sets. The point is make sure that all your sets are hard. Okay, that's my point here. All right. Warm-up sets don't count. In other words, you should track your warm-up

  Building your week of training

  Philip Pape 18:44

  sets, in my opinion, so you can kind of repeat them next time, but only the working sets that are close to failure. So let's say you go to the gym on Monday or whatever your next training day is, you're gonna pick the movements that you can load up and repeat week to week and actually progress on. You don't need 12 exercises per muscle. You don't need to do body maxing or whatever you want to call it here, full body maxing. You just need a handful that you can develop skill on and get better at because there's a neuromuscular piece and then there's this the muscle piece. And you're gonna take, I'm gonna say, all of your working sets to within one to three reps of in reserve. Bigger lifts tend to be farther, like three, maybe four reps from failure, whereas smaller lifts, isolation work, bodybuilding type accessory work is gonna be closer to one rep in reserve, maybe even zero. I'm generally working around one to two for almost everything. If I'm doing major squats, major benches, something like that, I might have a set. My first set might be three sets or three, maybe four reps shy from failure, but generally three. So that's kind of my thought there. And then you're gonna count up your hard sets per muscle across the week and aim for that 10 and up range. Now, you should do this ahead of time by planning out your workout that way. If you're following a decently designed program, it should cover those bases. One thing I noticed in the program I built for myself recently is somehow I totally forgot to put in lateral delts, even though I'm trying to build up my shoulders again since my surgery, and I had too much rear delt work. Now, rear delt work is great when you've had rotary call surgery, but I had like way too many sets of that and very few of lateral. So I'm getting very specific in terms of muscle groups. You don't have to do it that way. You can generalize to shoulders, upper legs, arms, right? It depends on, you know, back. You could do it that way as well. But you've got to find where you're responsive, what you need, and then you're gonna build from there. So that's kind of the program. Notice I didn't tell you what exercises, when, what order, none of that. Those are tactical details. The point is 10 to 20 hard sets per muscle group per week. That is what works to give you mechanical tension, repeated enough so that you keep getting stronger and building muscle. It's not about muscle confusion, it's not about the perfect rep range, because like I just said, mechanical tension can occur at a wide rep range. It can occur anywhere from like three reps to 30 reps, believe it or not. And I know it sounds crazy, but if you do something for 25 reps, yes, it's a lot lighter. But man, if you are one rep shy of failure on that 25th rep, you're still hitting those muscle fibers we talked about before, and you're still going to get the mechanical tension. It's pretty mind-blowing in a way. Now, we're not talking about strength, we're not talking about specificity. Those are different. We're not talking about bone density and some of the other benefits of lifting heavy, heavy meaning more down in the four to six rep range. Okay, that has its own unique benefits. We're not talking about that today, but there's a lot of overlap that you can take advantage of when designing programs for efficiency. Now, you're listening to this,

  Effort tracking and programming over 40

  Philip Pape 21:50

  you're like, okay, I'm sold on this, but how do I know if I'm hitting one to three reps in reserve? How do I track my heart sets across a week? How do I design my program? What program should I? Build. And we have an app called Fitness Lab that solves that for you and will give you exactly what you need. Fitness Lab is my AI coaching app. It is not a tracking app that stores your numbers. It works alongside tools that you have. It integrates your data. If you have an iPhone, it connects to Apple Health. And it can prescribe for you workouts across any combination you can imagine. And it could even work with you if you have a trainer or your own workouts. So it can do either mode. And it's, I don't want to say vibes. I hate that term. But it asks you questions about how the session felt, how close you got to failure, and things like that in plain English. So it's beyond like, okay, for example, macrofactor workouts and boost camp are two of the workout loggers that I like as well, personally. But they're much more numbers-based, they're objective. Fitness Lab does that plus the subjective piece, like you had a coach, and you're like, hey, this is how it felt. This is what I did. By the way, here's a video of my lift. Give me a form check, and we have amazingly advanced AI that will give you feedback on your form. Now, isn't that incredible? I think it is. I think it's awesome. Go to witsandweights.com slash app. Go to wits and weights.com slash app. And you know what? I thought I wouldn't do this, but I will. We are not in a promo right now. But if you send me a

  Recovery as a permissive factor

  Philip Pape 23:24

  personal email, okay, join my email list, witsandweights.com slash email, and reply and say, hey, I want your discount. I can give you a private link for 20% off. So that's witsandweights.com slash app to check it out. But again, send me an email if you want a special link for 20% off. All right, so we've covered tension, effort, and volume. There is a fourth piece here, very, very, very, very important. And that is, you guessed it, recovery. I want to give the right frame on recovery though, because I think a lot of people put the cart before the horse. Recovery does not cause muscle growth. Training causes muscle growth. Recovery is permissive of muscle growth. It allows your adaptation to occur. Okay, think of it this way: your training is like the seed. If you were to plant something in your garden, recovery is the soil of the garden where the soil doesn't grow the plant, right? It gives it nutrients, but it doesn't grow it. If you plant a seed in bad soil, you don't get a plant, but you still have to have the seed, is my point. So training is the seed. Is that I hope that's a good analogy? Because like without training, it's there's nothing. You have to have the training. So you have the training, that's the seed. You have your recovery, that's the soil. When the soil is bad, when you don't have good sleep, when you don't have enough protein or calories, when you're stressed to your gills, the same hard workout results in less of a result. Does that make sense? So you did this work and you don't get to get the result. I don't like that equation for you guys. I don't. And that is exactly what makes people quit, besides a lack of consistency or it's not enjoyable enough or whatever. The biggest reason is, man, you're just tired, you can't fit it in, you don't get enough sleep, you're not eating enough, you don't get the result, you start to get sore, your joints start to hurt. A lot of that is a recovery issue. And I think the biggest levers are sleep and protein, or I should say sleep and calories. It really depends on who you are. Some of

  Sleep, protein, and strength training over 40

  Philip Pape 25:18

  you, some of you are getting enough protein, but not enough calories. Carbs, I would put off to the side, although I'm a big fan of carbs, that's usually not the main issue for folks. It could become an issue if other things are dialed in as an optimization. Again, going back to the big rocks versus the small optimizations here. We know that a single night of bad sleep can drop your muscle protein synthesis by up to 20%. Okay. We also know we have to have enough calories and protein to support our muscle building. And protein at least 0.7 grams per pound. There's also evidence is as we get older. Again, this episode is titled After 40, because as we get older, we tend to be a little bit less responsive to protein and training. And that's not an excuse not to do it at all. No. It just means, hey, you've got to be getting that protein and you've got to be getting the right training, but not so much training that it impedes your recovery. So that's why it's a nice little balancing act that we have to do. That's why tracking, that's why being time efficient, that's why using compound lifts, all of these things are super effective to master the fundamentals. And it's

  Building muscle through perimenopause and menopause

  Philip Pape 26:21

  where I see people go wrong as well. Because they're trying to do a lot of things that like a 25-year-old would do. All the pillars here, you know, get 15,000 steps and get nine hours of sleep and then, you know, train six days a week. You can't do it all. You can't do it all. So you need to be efficient. And then for the women, the ladies who are listening in perimenopause or post-menopause, okay, this is in this is really encouraging. Okay. I'm not a fearmonger about this stuff. Resistance training builds muscle and strength just the same, regardless of your age and your hormone status, as a percentage of your current body mass, as when you were young and as when you're old. It's all the same. In other words, the relative gains you're going to make are the same, even when you weren't in menopause, and they're the same as men. Yes, you have less absolute muscle to begin with, but so what? The change, the amount you can grow and build, the rate is the same. Now, the falling estrogen might make the job a little bit harder and recovery a little more sensitive, but it doesn't take away your biggest tool here, which is training. You can't afford to coast on effort, no matter who you are. And that's not sexy and it doesn't sell programs to say you need to work hard. But it really comes what comes down is it's really what it comes down to. But when you do that work and you get the result and you're 55 and looking better than ever and feeling great and functional, and knowing that no, you're not gonna end up in a nursing home. No, you're not gonna end up having trouble getting off the toilet. No, you're not gonna have trouble playing with your kids or grandkids and being active. Holy smokes, isn't that so empowering? Because you put in a little bit of extra effort and you actually feel so good about it that the effort is something you start to look forward to. Now, I'm not saying rep ranges don't matter. I'm not saying exercise selection doesn't matter. A lot of that matters for other reasons. It might matter because of the equipment you have, it might matter because you enjoy something more than others. Like some people say, Oh, I don't know if I could lift heavy. When you start lifting heavy, you sometimes find sets of four are more enjoyable than sets of 14. You know, even though they're super heavy, there's a difference, mental difference as well. All right. Also, you don't want to go to complete failure on everything because that's gonna create a lot of fatigue. So almost never going to complete failure except for on the small movements, one to three basically captures all the growth from that mechanical tension at a fraction of the fatigue cost. All right. Now, if you're an advanced competitor, if you're an athlete, you're trying to squeeze out the last 5%. This episode's probably not for you anyway. You know this stuff and you know that you need to take it really right to the edge and maybe even a little bit beyond. Let's be honest. If you're a competitor, if you're an athlete, you're gonna sacrifice and make some trade-offs. You're gonna, you're gonna live with some pain. But that just is what it is. I'm watching the documentary about Rafa, you know, Rafael Nadal, tennis. I'm not a tennis guy, but it's incredible to see how much he makes himself suffer and how much intensity he puts into the game. And that's why he's successful. And I'm not saying that's for you. Those of us listening, we just want a really, really great result and we want to feel great and look great. And you're going to, if you if you listen up and follow the principles in this episode. All right. So this is the foundation. Stop worrying about the trim of the house. Worry about the foundation of the house. Train each set close to failure, accumulate enough hard sets across the week. That's 10 to 20 per muscle group. Sleep and eat to support it, and rinse and repeat. It is not exciting, but it works. Not exciting, but it works. All right, before we wrap up, I wanted to give you a 30-second test to see if you are training hard. Okay. I'll give it to you in just a second because it's super, super helpful. If this episode reframed how you think about building muscle, I want you to do things. First, hit follow so you get more episodes like this. If you're not already a follower in your app, just hit follow. Second, if you've got a friend who is frustrated or they want to learn, or you know this can help them, just send it to them. Please text this to a friend. Say, hey, check out Wits and Weights. I really love this. Or give them your favorite episode. And I would be super, super grateful. We we need more people to learn this stuff and go to the gym and really get the results they're looking for. All right, here's a test you can run on your next training session. It

  Bonus: 30-second test for whether you've hit "failure"

  Philip Pape 30:21

  takes 30 seconds on your last set of an exercise. So I want you to do this like on a machine or cable or isolation type exercise, something safe where you're not gonna get pinned or super heavy. I want you to first predict how many more reps can you do or do you think you can do when you would normally stop? All right, how many more reps do you think you could do when you'd normally stop? Like, is that two reps? Whatever it is. So you're pre-logging your R your R I R right now. Then doing the exercise, when you get to that point, instead of stopping, keep going and do what's called an am wrap, as many reps as possible. And take that set to the point where you cannot do another rep, absolutely bar none, complete failure. I don't want you to get into bad form, tweak your back or anything like that. That's why you picked like a simple safe exercise here or a safer type of exercise. And I want you to count how many you got. So this is the am wrap technique. And I do this a lot on first sets as well, sometimes if I'm starting a new program just to kind of calibrate. But this is more to see what true failure is for you and compare it to what you thought it would be. So if you guessed that you would be too RIR, but you got five more reps, well, that just taught you something profound. You've been leaving more in the tank than you realized every time you lived. So that is like muscle gains you're leaving on the table, and you can start to close this gap. That's it. You can recalibrate. Now you know what the effort really is. Now you can get yourself to push a little bit harder. Now it helps to have a training partner or a coach sometimes for some of us to push us to do that. But try it out and let me know how it went. All right. And you can let me know by the way on Instagram at wits and weights, or you can send me an email, go to witsandweights.com slash email, get on my list, and then reply to any of my emails. All right, until next time, keep using your wits, lifting those weights. And remember, you do not build muscle by finding the perfect program. You build it by doing the basic things hard and then doing them again. I'm Philip Pape, and I'll talk to you next time here on the Wits and Weights podcast.

Retatrutide Promises 28% Weight Loss (What About Muscle?) | Ep 477

Is retatrutide, the new triple agonist GLP-1, the next big thing in weight loss (or even rapid fat loss)?

That depends on how the drug works, what the results are, the reality between the headlines and the evidence, and what happens to your weight when you stop.

This episode breaks down retatrutide, the GLP-1, GIP, and glucagon triple agonist behind the largest weight loss numbers ever recorded in this class. It covers the Phase 2 obesity trial and the Phase 3 Triumph results, plus why cross-trial comparisons to semaglutide and tirzepatide deserve skepticism.

We examine the body composition data (or lack thereof), and why a bigger number on the scale just amplifies the stakes for muscle mass, weight regain, and the off-ramp. Especially relevant for adults over 40 who are taking, considering, or planning to come off a GLP-1.

Enroll 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, including support for lifestyle changes needed while taking GLP-1s (and to come off them if desired).

Timestamps:

0:00 - Retatrutide and the biggest question for GLP-1 users
3:08 - How this new triple agonist works
4:46 - Phase 2 and Phase 3 weight loss numbers
5:38 - Cross-trial comparisons and their limits
6:23 - Fat, muscle, and what the trial did NOT measure
8:30 - Strength training over 40 and accelerated muscle loss
10:07 - Building the lifestyle (alongside using the drug)
14:10 - Resistance training and protein
16:00 - Rate of loss on a powerful drug like retatrutide
17:30 - The off-ramp when you stop
18:23 - Weight regain and body fat overshooting
22:03 - Retatrutide access and the gray market
24:11 - Bonus: 3-question test to keep your results

Episode Mentioned:

• Sometimes More Is More (The Sedentary Lifter Problem)

• Transcript

  Retatrutide and the biggest question for GLP-1 users

  Philip Pape 0:00

  There is a new weight loss drug in the headlines right now. It is a triple agonist called retatrit. Some people call it retatutride. And the numbers are the biggest that we've seen so far, up to 28% of body weight in the latest trial. So if you're on a GLP1 or you're thinking about one, you're probably wondering, does this change anything for me? Today I'm going to show you what the data shows, what it doesn't show, and one thing that this huge amount of weight loss is not actually going to fix, no matter how good the drug gets. And I'm not talking about muscle. 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 a few weeks ago, we did a full episode on GLP1 medications as a category. The whole picture, miracle drug versus is it cheating, what the body composition data says, all that stuff, the science behind it. Today we're gonna get a little bit more narrow and very timely, very trendworthy because there's a specific drug, retatratide. And by the way, pronunciation can go both ways. Eli Lilly and their CEO call it retatrotide. A lot of people will say retatrutide, like semaglutide, because of some linguistic, you know, rules, let's say. I don't care. I'm gonna say retatrotide because a lot of the guys I follow call it that. It's been all over the news. The phase three trials came out, and the weight loss numbers are the largest ever recorded. I have some former clients and even current clients who have experimented with it on their own, not under my supervision, and report, you know, incredible results. There are things about it that seem to go above and beyond weight loss as well, potentially for liver fat and stuff like that. Uh, but I'm getting a lot of questions about it. People want to know, you know, is this something I should do? There's a lot of or consider, there's a lot of discussion in Reddit and in the body composition forums about like rapid fat loss. It's kind of an interesting, you know, designer approach to rapid fat loss among bodybuilders. Very interesting, uh, the way, the way it's being talked about compared to the other ones. And then, of course, there's the whole muscle loss issue, right? Which we'll address briefly, but you know, it's not gonna be the main thing here. I really want to do two things today. First, I want to separate what the data shows from what I think it means very deliberately with nuance. They're different things. A lot of the coverage in the news just smears all this stuff together. It's very surface level. And then I want to give you a framework, right? Not a hot take, just a framework. How do we think about this drug or any other drug that's coming down the pipeline? Because more are coming. I think retatrotide is not the last one. There's other drugs on the other side of the spectrum for what do you call it, you know, preventing muscle loss as well, that we're looking at, like myostatin blockers, et cetera. Then I want you to stick around to the end of today's episode. I'm gonna give you a 30-second self-test to tell you whether you've done what you need to do to keep the weight off after you stop a medication like this. And honestly, a lot of these things are things you should be doing regardless of that. But I think it's important to ask yourself these questions so that you could actually maintain your results.

  How this new triple agonist works

  Philip Pape 3:08

  All right, let's talk about what this drug is retatrotide and the weight loss and all of that, because the mechanism is important. You've heard of semaglutide, that's osempic, that's wagovi, that's a single agonist. It hits one receptor, GLP1, that is a hormone that your gut releases that tells your brain that you're full. And then it slows down how fast your stomach empties. And by the way, side tangent, if you take, if you eat a lot of fiber, you're gonna get a lot of that naturally, just FYI. Okay. Then there's terzepatide, which is Manjaro and Zep bound. That's the dual agonist. It hits GLP1 and a second receptor called GIP. So that is two targets. And in the trials, it outperforms semaglutide on weight loss. And again, semaglutide, semaglutide, doesn't matter. Retatrotide is then the next step, which is a triple agonist. It hits GLP1, GIP, and then a third one, glucagon. And that's the interesting part. And I want to explain why. The glucagon is really interesting. The first two receptors, GLP1 and GIP, they work mostly on the energy inside, right? They turn down your appetite. But the glucagon piece, the third piece for retatrotide, is theorized to work on the energy out side. It acts on your liver and it's thought to increase energy expenditure and burn liver fat directly. So, in theory, you've got here appetite suppression on one hand and a bump in how much energy you're burning on the other. And we love talking about metabolism and how important that is. And that's why this could be so powerful. And so when you look at the numbers, it backs

  Phase 2 and Phase 3 weight loss numbers

  Philip Pape 4:46

  it up. In the phase two obesity trial published in the New England Journal of Medicine, people on the highest dose of retatrotide lost 24% of their body weight over 48 weeks. So that's just less than a year. And it wasn't, it didn't plateau by that point. It was still going when the trial ended. And then the phase three trials came out, they call it Triumph 1. And the highest dose, they got 28%, but that was over 80 weeks. And then there was an extension group that had even more severe obesity and they got past 30% weight loss. So if we put it in context, semaglutide in in the big trial that we know about there got to people, got people to about 15%. Terzepatide got to 21, maybe 22%. And now we've got a drug flirting with almost 30%. So that is a huge amount of weight loss just from the drug. Now, a real important caveat that's going to apply to the rest of the episode.

  Cross-trial comparisons and their limits

  Philip Pape 5:38

  The comparisons I gave you were like the 15 versus 21 versus 28%. These are across different trials, right? They're different people, different starting weights, different lengths, different decades of life, et cetera, which it means they're not head-to-head, which for practical reasons you could understand why. There are different drugs being tested under different, maybe different protocols and different groups and so on. So there's never been like a head-to-head trial for tatrotide against trusepatite, semaglutide. So when you see the comparisons, just you know, put a little skepticism on any of these claims because these are cross-trial comparisons. I don't know. That's just a caveat I thought I'd mention again, because we like nuance here. So that's the drug, that's how much weight loss. And now what we want to do is dig down a little bit deeper.

  Fat, muscle, and what the trial did NOT measure

  Philip Pape 6:23

  So when you lose 28% of your body weight, the obvious question, I think this is potentially the most important question, right? Is what was the weight that you lost? Was it fat, was it muscle, and how much of each? That is what we care about on this show when we talk about body composition, health, physique, you know, muscle mass, is that when you lose weight, you want to lose body fat. You don't want to just lose weight. And when you look at the biggest trial, the one I mentioned in the New England Journal of Medicine, they didn't measure body composition. They did there's no DEXA scan, no lean mass data, no fat mass data. And it kind of floors me a little bit that they wouldn't measure those things because they're so focused on just weight loss, which I'm not saying weight loss isn't massively important for moving the needle for so many people when it comes to their health, because it is. I'm also not saying that it isn't helpful for the reasons why people struggle to lose weight, right? With like the food noise. Super important things. I get it. But when you hear retatrotide being talked about on body composition and bodybuilding forums and Facebook groups and whatever, and saying, hey, this is more muscle sparing, there's no evidence for that. There is zero evidence for that. It's the same as any other form of weight loss. You're gonna have to do the right thing to preserve your muscle, which is lift weights. Uh, you know, eat protein, yes, but mostly the training stimulus is what holds on to the muscle. And the the only retatrotide body composition data actually comes from a smaller group in a separate trial. It was a diabetes trial, and they did get DEXA scans. And guess what they found? The proportion of weight losses lean mass was similar to other obesity treatments. Not any better than it wasn't, it didn't protect their muscle mass or whatever. So just I want to get that out of the way right now because you may have seen that kind of misinformation online already. And if we look across the GLP1 drugs, when you don't strength train and you don't pay attention to protein, you can lose somewhere around a quarter to up to, in some cases, 40% of the weight is lean mass. Now, not all of that is muscle, that's lean mass. Some of it's water, some glycogen, some of it's your liver getting smaller, which is actually a good thing in this case, but a huge

  Strength training over 40 and accelerated muscle loss

  Philip Pape 8:30

  chunk of it is muscle mass, right? The contractile, metabolically active tissue that we really, really love and care about. So if we think about the math, if retatrotide loses, you know, causes a loss of lean mass at the same proportion as the rest, but it takes you to a bigger total weight loss, then of course, the raw, absolute pounds of muscle you're gonna lose is even more in the same amount of time, right? Now, I again I mentioned like a former client who experimented with this, and we're at a place where you can only experiment with it until it's approved and available. And you know, he was lifting weights. So, of course, he got the benefit of the fat loss piece of it. The appetite side is obviously super important for a lot of people. And so just changing the energy in, and then now the potential energy out can be, of course, very powerful. And I just wanted to sit with this for a bit because it's super important, you guys listening. Most of you are in your 30s, 40s, 50s beyond listening to this show. We have a lot of women who listen to the show, probably two-thirds of the audience. If you're in your 40s or 50s, if you're going through perimenopause or past that, if you're already fighting the accelerated muscle loss that occurs with age, and that's why you're listening to the show because you want to lift weights, you want to have a better uh lifestyle, and you want to, you know, feel better in your body, you want to have better energy and function, then listen up, right? Because, you know, if your estrogen is dropping or testosterone's dropping, it's harder to build and keep muscle. Well, it's not harder to build muscle, it's harder to keep it if you're not building the muscle. Let's just put it that way, and you're at most risk of that accelerated muscle mass. Now you then go on to this drug and you're not already doing something to preserve that muscle. Now I think you can see the problem, right? So that's that's kind of the gist on retatrotide.

  Building the lifestyle (alongside using the drug)

  Philip Pape 10:07

  And, you know, one thing I like to tell people is look, that doesn't preclude you from working on your lifestyle while taking these drugs. In fact, you need to, you have to work on the lifestyle. We help people with this all the time in what's called eat more lift heavy. And I know I talk about my program a lot, as you would expect, because it's our program and we bring you this content for free. And this is the way that we support the podcast and our business. But when you're on tursepatite, or in the future, I'm gonna see more people on retatrotide, there's an interesting phenomenon that happens. Your appetite is highly suppressed, right? And now you're starting to lose straight weight, and you maybe you're a little bit excited. Maybe you are lifting weights, but then you start to have issues because you sometimes you can't eat enough or you can't eat enough of protein, and you're not in touch with their hunger signals as much. And so now it's this weird limbo kind of you know, middle ground of, okay, do I titrate down a little bit as I'm building in the lifestyle? You know, some people have such severe appetite issues that they don't, it doesn't actually cause a concern. They could just stay on the drug and they can eat enough and they can, you know, lose fat and weight at the right glide path, let's say, while they're lifting and getting their protein locked in and all of that. But what we like to help people with is figure out from your own data, from your own hunger signals, from your food, how you're logging it, where the issue is. And just this, just the last couple of weeks, we have someone in the group who talked to their doctor and they say, you know what, we're gonna slowly get you off this drug because you may not need it anymore. You you're on Phillips program and something magical is happening to you. What's going on? He's like, Well, I'm lifting consistently. I'm tracking my food, I'm trying to get enough protein, I'm eating more fiber, and I'm losing weight, but I'm almost losing it too quickly. And I don't have enough appetite to eat the minimum that I need to eat to stay at the right level of fat loss. Isn't that crazy? So if you go to eatmoriftheavy.com, you'll learn all about what we do. Um, it's a very guided, structured approach over a six-month period where each week we drop a little nugget of knowledge to help you move forward. And it's not information, it's actually do this this week. Do this this week. And it helps you set the skills up for the tracking and the lifting and the eating and all the other things. And so if you're on GLP1 or, you know, a trazepotide or maybe or tatritide, you've got to have a structured approach to put in the lifestyle in parallel. And that's really my key message with any of this stuff when I talk about GLP1s. It's not that they're a shortcut or, you know, you didn't have the will to do it yourself or you didn't know how to modify your behavior. It's like, no, okay, you chose to use this tool for one reason or another because you needed it, wanted it, your doctor suggested it, you struggled with something, whatever. Doesn't matter. I don't care. That's great. You're a human being with your own struggles, like we all have. Now let's work to incorporate the lifestyle you need. It doesn't guarantee for you as an individual you're gonna completely come off the drug. You might have such massive food noise and emotional eating issues that it's necessary and helpful for that from a medical perspective. But for many, it helps you titrate down and sometimes get off of it completely or use it as a tool when you need to. And then from a budget perspective, it can be helpful because these things are darn expensive. So let's that that's kind of the climax of the episode. But, you know, the fix for retatrotide is the same fix for every other drug. There's no special GLP1 protocol. Don't get scammed into like a special GLP1 diet or GLP1 book. I do know a couple of folks in the industry who I respect who have come out with GLP1 protocols and I'm a little bit kind of cringe or I feel a little icky about it, right? Because it it's kind of like the preying on women who are in peri and postmenopause where your body's broken and it doesn't work anymore. And so I'm gonna fix everything for you. We need to balance your hormones. It's that kind of language, which I don't like. I'm perfectly fine saying, hey, if you're in perimenopause and your hormones are declining, now's the time to step it up and lift and learn to eat better for your body. But we would do that anyway, whether you're in perimenopause or not. But like now's the time to do it, but without preying on the fears. And I think the same thing goes here with like the GLP ones. You don't need a special protocol. What do you need

  Resistance training and protein

  Philip Pape 14:10

  to do though? Okay, four pieces. Number one is absolutely resistance training. This is the biggest lever in your life for the rest of your life that has to be part of a routine. That has to be part of your routine. It's more important than cardio, probably more important than steps and movement. In fact, I would say it is because you have to do it. In other words, if you had to pick lifting or steps, I would pick lifting. Of course, it's not a mutually exclusive thing. I don't want you lifting and sitting around all day. We just did an episode about the sedentary lifter one or two episodes ago. So go check that out. But lifting is the number one lever because the stimulus for your muscles is the only thing that prevents muscle loss when you're losing weight, but also helps you preserve and build muscle even when you're not losing weight as we get old. So that's number one. Number two is having a certain minimum amount of protein. Now, the more and more I talk about this and the more evidence we find, we see that number one, the amount you need isn't a crazy amount. Okay. Yes, we talk about up to one gram per pound of protein, but the minimum is more like 0.6, 0.7. And if you're there, you are in great shape. You've got like 90, 95% of the benefits. Total protein for the day, 0.7 grams per pound of goal body weight is really the idea here. So if you're quite overweight and you're trying to lose weight, you don't have to quite get 0.7 grams per pound of your current body weight. It could be toward your target body weight. But don't pick a ridiculously, you know, 100 pounds less body weight, just something reasonable for the next, say, six months where you're gonna get to. So that's kind of the floor. And the problem when you're on a GLP one drug is your appetite is lower and protein is very, very filling. So if you are now bringing it up and you're on these drugs, that's where you might run into the wall of, oh my God, this is too much to eat. I mean, we see it all the time in eat more lift heavy. You come in and they're like, okay, I know I need to get this much protein. I

  Rate of loss on a powerful drug like retatrutide

  Philip Pape 16:00

  even know what foods make it up, but I can't physically do it, Philip. I'm too full. How do I do it? Yeah, I've tried the shakes. Yeah, I've tried more frequency. Well, sometimes you just actually have to lower the drug dose. And that's a great problem to have if many of you see that as a place you want to get to. But protein's very, very important. Uh, number three is how quickly you are losing weight. So with one of these drugs, especially retatrotide, which is so powerful, you can lose weight faster than your body can handle without it losing muscle. And again, number one and two, training in protein are gonna massively mitigate that. But there is a cliff that you can go off of here where you're just losing way too fast. Now it depends on the duration. Depends on the duration. So this is why I think retatrotide comes up in the rapid fat loss discussions, which we're gonna do an episode on that topic pretty soon. Is that bodybuilders are like, okay, I'm gonna go on retatritide for like four weeks and I'm gonna lose a massive amount of weight, but I'm gonna keep my, I'm gonna do like a protein-sparing modified fast, and then I'm not gonna have the hunger. And you know what? I can't, I can't argue with the logic. I really can't argue with the logic. So the problem is right now is you can't get these drugs legitimately. And somehow people are talking about retatrotide as if it's special versus the other two. It's special in the sense that it has a third agonist that affects glucagon in your liver. That that's actually pretty cool. And that could move the needle in its own way. I totally acknowledge that. But it's not special in

  The off-ramp when you stop

  Philip Pape 17:30

  terms of the weight, in terms of like the muscle mass preservation part. So just take that with a grain of salt. Okay, so that's a third is the rate of loss. And then the fourth piece is the off-ramp. What happens when you stop, not just on the drug, but even when you're not on the drug? What happens when you stop a fat loss or weight loss phase? Well, why don't we dig into that? Okay, so let's dig into that one for you guys, because I think that is important to sustaining your results. And I, you know, I keep mentioning our program, Eat More Lift Heavy, but my goal with that was to take what I've learned with me and my clients who get to sustain, who get to fire me and never have to come back again or hire another coach, is how the heck do I sustain my fat loss and stay lean for a life? If that is your goal. Now, many people they get lean and now they're like, okay, great, now I'm gonna go in a muscle building phase, pack on some more weight, but do it for the right reasons. But how do you maintain whatever you want to maintain? All

  Weight regain and body fat overshooting

  Philip Pape 18:23

  right. So if we look at the drugs like semaglutide in the big trial for that, there was an extension part of the trial where they tracked people when they came off the drugs. And within a year, people regained two-thirds of the weight they'd lost. And then the metabolic improvements that came with the weight loss, blood pressure, blood sugar, those went back to where they started as well. And now, if you think about retatrotide, you're just ramping that hole up. You're you're just amplifying the that amount. You're losing up to 30% of your body weight, and say two-thirds of that comes back. You know, the bigger loss, the more there is to regain. And again, if you're not protecting your muscle and lifting weights, you're gonna regain mostly fat. That's called body fat overshooting. You're gonna be worse off than when you started. You're gonna have a higher body fat percentage than when you started, even if you're at the same weight, right? And the problem is these drugs, they do something powerful. They suppress appetite while you're on them, but they don't give you any specific skills, behaviors, or habit changes. They don't teach you how to eat, they don't teach you how to build lift weights or even to lift weights, they don't give you the skill of navigating weekends or vacations or stressful weeks, you know, without the the wheels coming off. Let's say, you know, the training wheels. It it completely takes over the appetite piece, which is great until it's not, and you realize you didn't do the things you wanted to do. And not only that, you you know, you may have lost muscle, et cetera, like we've already talked about a million times. So the deceptively simple fix, the premise of this show is this that the time that you're taking these meds, that is not, I'll say, the end goal. That is the window of opportunity where your appetite is quiet enough now, your food noise is quiet enough that you can build the skills while it's easy for you. And you're gonna need those skills later when it gets a little bit harder. And the funny thing is, when I say hard, when you build the skills while taking the drug, you actually make the hard moderate or you make the moderate easy. Does that make sense? Like now that you're having more protein, you're eating nutritionally or nutritiously, you have more fiber, you know how to track and how much you eat, you know how to lift, you're getting more steps and movement, hopefully. You have structure and planning around your food and your routine. All of that, you build those skills while taking the drug. Then when you come up, now you have the behavior. The drug gave you, you know, a lower appetite, but now when you get off it, you get to see what your true regulated appetite and hunger signals are. And you could do that in a titration way. You can slowly come off or you can go off big time. I I one of my earliest clients, she was like in her mid-60s, she hadn't lifted weights before. She took Ozempic for diabetes. And I saw this when we went into a fat loss phase. Her hunger was non-existent. I thought it was incredible. I'm like, okay, let's take advantage of this and keep the gas pedal down as aggressively as possible so you don't lose muscle. She was lifting three days a week. She was doing deadlifts, squats, all that fun stuff. First time in her life, doing amazingly. And then she went off the drug kind of cold turkey overnight while in a fat loss phase without me knowing. And then her next check-in, she's like, oh, I have a lot of hunger all of a sudden. Like, yeah, that makes sense because we hadn't gotten to the point of build finish building the skills, plus you came off a cold turkey, plus you did it while in a fat loss phase. So there's like three things stacking on top of each other. So my suggestion is to do one thing at a time, right? Build the skill, start to titrate, not be in a fat loss phase, and then come off. Something like that, right? And I'm not a medical doctor, it's not medical advice. This is just a suggested Approach that could be uh sustainable. Okay.

  Retatrutide access and the gray market

  Philip Pape 22:03

  All right. So a quick word of caution before we wrap up on the science. Again, retatrotide right now, as I record this, is not approved anywhere, not by the FDA or anywhere, as much as you might trust the FDA or not. You can't get it at a pharmacy. The only legitimate way to take it now is in a clinical trial. So for the rest of you, taking it, buying it online from a peptide site, from a compounding source, just like with peptides, it's a Wild West. You are taking a risk. There's no guarantee of the dose, the purity, the safety. So please, I'm not your doctor, but the term gray market or black market applies here. And whatever risk tolerance that means to you, please take that to heart. Just take it to heart. That's all I can say. All right. Before we wrap up, remember, I'm going to give you three questions for 30 seconds. It tells you whether you've built what actually keeps the weight off. I'm going to give you that in just a second. But first, if you're one of my listeners who are taking these medications or you're considering taking them and you're worried about the off ramp and the lifestyle, man, that is what we help with in Eat More Lift Heavy. Go to eatmoreliftheavy.com. That is the whole design of it. The reason that it is 26 weeks long and not a quick fix or just a course. And it builds the behavior while you've got the appetite working in your favor. You've got two human coaches in there. Carol and I will take you through getting your nutrition dialed, getting strong. And then by the back half of the program, we start to hand the controls to you. In other words, you build independence. That is the off-ramp. We built it that way on purpose. That is the difference between losing weight and getting it back on and losing fat, getting lean, strong, healthy, feeling great, and staying that way. So if you want to be the person who still has their results a year, five years, 10 years after they stop, and you don't need to hire another coach again, go to eatmoreliftheavy.com and take a look. That's eatmoreliftheavy.com. And look, if you have questions, just reach out to me. It's Philip at witsandweights.com. Philip with one word at witsandweights.com, but go to eatmoreliftheavy.com.

  Bonus: 3-question test to keep your results

  Philip Pape 24:11

  All right, here's a 30-second test you can run on yourself right now. It's three questions. I love these little quizzes at the end of these episodes. Question one, if the drug disappeared tomorrow, like if you didn't have access to these at all, do you have a nutrition plan that you're confident with right now, especially hitting protein? Do you even know how much of protein to hit and how to hit it and do it consistently? So that's question one. Question two, have you trained by lifting weights using resistance training at least twice in the last week, challenging your muscle, not just moving, but challenging and pushing each time in the gym? Question three, do you have a plan for when things get hard, like a vacation, a stressful week, the holidays, where your structure is there even when your motivation is not and everything is changing? If you answered no to any of these, that is a good sign that you might have trouble keeping your results. Those are skills. And again, this is whether you're on the medication or not. It's just very important because if you are on them now, you want to have these skills in place before you come off. That's just my opinion on that. The drug handles the appetite, but all of these other things handle your life and how you deal with this going forward. All right, until next time, keep using your wits, lifting those weights. And remember that a bigger weight loss on the scale is not the hard part. The skills that you build, that is the real story of success here. I'm Philip Pape, and I'll talk to you next time here on the Wits and Weights podcast.

5 Signals That Your Body's "Off" Even When Your Labs Are Normal (Dr. Stephen Cabral) | Ep 476

You’re lifting weights. You’re eating well. Your labs look “normal.” So why do you still feel exhausted, bloated, wired at night, moody, or like your body is aging faster than it should?

Dr. Stephen Cabral helps us decode why fatigue, bloating, poor sleep, and mood swings can show up even when your labs look fine. We talk about the five signals your body sends through sleep, energy, digestion, mood, and skin, plus how they connect to hormone health, metabolism, inflammation, and recovery.

You’ll learn why sleep comes first, how digestion can drain energy, why stress and gut issues can affect mood, and how to build a rhythm that supports evidence-based nutrition, lifting weights, and long-term wellness.

Join Eat More Lift Heavy to build strength, lose fat, and learn what works for your body, 1 week at a time. Learn to eat more and lift heavy with confidence. 

Timestamps:
0:00 – Five signals your body sends
2:10 – Dr. Cabral’s personal health journey
8:05 – Foundations before advanced protocols
12:42 – Sleep as the first lever
21:14 – Energy, cortisol, and daily rhythm
27:44 – Digestion, bloating, and gut signals
35:32 – Mood, inflammation, and overwhelm
40:06 – Skin, hair, and biological age
47:00 – The weekly rhythm reset action

Episode resources:

• Website: stephencabral.com 

• Podcast: The Cabral Concept

• Facebook: @drstephencabral 

• Instagram: @stephencabral 

• YouTube: @stephencabral 

• Transcript

  Five signals your body sends

  Philip Pape 0:00

  Perhaps you have a pretty good training and nutrition routine, you're getting decent sleep, and your blood work is fairly normal. Yet you still feel exhausted, your digestion is off, you have restless sleep or insomnia, perhaps unexplained mood swings, or your hair is thinning and your skin is breaking out. My guest today has run over 300,000 clients' consultations, and he says we need to pay attention because everything I just mentioned is your body sending five specific signals. Many of us have learned to ignore, suppress, or even medicate or supplement away. You're going to learn what the five signals are, what each one is correlated with inside your body, and the order of operations to follow before you spend another dollar on supplements at home lab panels or the next protocol promising to fix you. 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 discussing the gap between, hey, my blood work is quote unquote normal, and I'm not actually feeling so great. So what is going on? Specifically for active adults like you who are potentially doing the work, lifting weights, moving your body, trying to eat well, maybe getting enough hours of sleep, and yet you still have symptoms like fatigue or bloating, maybe your sleep is restless, mood swings, skin issues, the list goes on, and there isn't a clear root cause. My guest today is Dr. Stephen Cabral. He is a board-certified doctor of naturopathy who has trained thousands of practitioners through the Integrative Health Practitioner Institute. Before that, he's done a ton, he's had quite a career, but he was also a strength coach who ran his own training studio for over a decade. He was an award-winning trainer, and his new book, Personomics, argues that symptoms are signals. They're not problems. And if we can understand them, we can unlock what's next and maybe work on and fix them. So there are five specific signals we should all be paying attention to, and we're going to get into that today. You're going to learn what they are, how to tell which underlying issue each one is correlated

  Dr. Cabral’s personal health journey

  Philip Pape 2:10

  with. Understand kind of the order of operations so we can respond to maybe the most important thing your body's telling you without necessarily jumping into some advanced tests or random supplements. Stick around to the end because Dr. Cabral is going to tell you the single most important thing you can do at home this week to start to better understand and address your health concerns. Steven, welcome to the show.

  Dr. Stephen Cabral 2:32

  Great to be here. Thanks so much for having me. Appreciate it.

  Philip Pape 2:34

  So before we get into the signals, which I know everyone wants to know about, I'm really curious how you narrow down the list to begin with, because I understand that is really the premise of the personalized health paradigm that you talk about.

  Dr. Stephen Cabral 2:46

  Yeah. So for us, it, I mean, it really started with my own understanding of health and medicine. So when I was 17, I woke up one morning and literally swollen glands over my entire body. My mom takes me to the pediatrician, just like she did, probably a half a dozen other times a year for whatever common cold I would have. And what I didn't realize was this day it wouldn't get better. So it would be a 10-year journey into trying to heal my body. And ultimately, what I ended up having was Addison's disease, an autoimmune issue. I had something called POTS, which is postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome. So basically, walk up a flight of stairs, heart rate's going like 150 beats per minute. Like you literally are not able to control your vestibular-based system as well. I had high histamine level, so mast cell activation syndrome, and I had type 2 diabetes. So I had a whole host of issues, allergies, insomnia, et cetera. And they kept giving me labels like, oh, you have rheumatoarthritis, you have type 2 diabetes, you have addicts, you have acid reflux, or whatever you want to call it, GERD. And each one of those, all it allowed them to do was put me on another medication. So I was on Prilosec for the acid reflux, fluorinef for the POTS, I was on Cortef for the Addisons, and like it just kept going like that. I was on Benadryl for my allergies and Pseudafed in the morning. And it was, it was just, again, it was a terrible way to live. I felt awful. I had flu-like symptoms every day, brain fog, all sorts of hormonal issues. And what I realized was just over time, I started, especially this is in the later 90s. So I just slowly started to understand more about natural health and meet with other practitioners. What I realized was that diseases are nothing more than a pattern of symptoms we give a name to, so that we can then have a medical code, which can then be given to prescribe a pharmaceutical. And I'm not saying there's not a time and place for pharmaceuticals. They can be life-saving, but they will never fix a chronic health condition. And almost every chronic health condition can be overcome. So it took me 10 years to find the right practitioner. But when I met Dr. Pete, it actually took me 10 years to fail enough to finally be ready to get well. That's kind of partly true. And I meet my mentor, Dr. Pete, and I'm better in six months. No more rheumatoid, no more type 2 diabetes, no more Addison's, no more of any of these things. Allergies took another year or two to solve, but then I was better. So no more diagnosed diseases anymore, which means it's not just your genetics, it's not just the environment itself, it's how we rebalance the body at a fundamental and foundational level.

  Philip Pape 5:16

  So the body is so complex. And what I'm hearing you say is the best we can do in the medical industry, and this is before we had AI, machine learning, and everything, because who knows if we did it from the ground up today, is we take all of these symptoms and we correlate them to a pattern and then basically try to fix it, fix the end of that chain, let's say, with medication.

  Dr. Stephen Cabral 5:37

  And it simply masks the symptoms, exactly. So we don't want to fix the underlying root cause because if you come off the medication, the disease is back. So we're just masking the symptoms, not fixing the disease itself.

  Philip Pape 5:50

  So then you talk about symptoms as being signals, which appeals to me in the term of biofeedback and data from our body. So mechanically, I guess, mechanistically, physiologically, I don't know what word we want to use. Like, what is the body doing as we walk around every day living our lives? That then leads to all of these complicated factors that gives us these signals. If that makes sense.

  Dr. Stephen Cabral 6:12

  Yeah, it does. And so the second book, personomics, is how to like literally brass tacks, because I am a brass tacks individual. How do we just figure out what's wrong with you? So that comes down to deficiencies and toxicities. Your body has too little of something. So it doesn't have literally the raw material to be able to mount the immune attack or whatever it might be, right? And then toxicities is your body's so overwhelmed with heavy metals, environmental toxins, microplastics, viruses, like whatever it might be. It's just weight, mold, right? It's just weighing on the body. So we have to reduce that toxic load and bring up your deficiencies. Personomics is literally how do we figure that out? Now, the first book, though, the rainbarrel effect is what we're talking about now. I published that eight years ago. It's still prevalent to this day, but it's basically like the prequel. So it's here's how we get sick. And over time, your body's telling you that it's not right. So when I was growing up, I had allergies, I had insomnia, I had brain fog. Like those are signals my body is sending me that something's not right. Like though, that is not a natural human state, it is one of energy in the early part of the day and then less energy at night so that we fall asleep. So cortisol is up and then cortisol comes down in rhythms with the sun, right? We are diurnal beings in a diurnal world. Nocturnal animals come out at night. We are not nocturnal. We better hide at night because we can't see in the dark to it like a nocturnal animal, right? So the signals that I talk about in personomics are what we need to be more aware of. Now, I wear an aura ring. Again, I'm not sponsored by them. I wear different biometric devices that make it a little bit easier to also keep track of these signals. But there are primal signals that we should be looking at and we can break down. One is digestion, the other is overall energy, another one is our sleep, another one is

  Foundations before advanced protocols

  Dr. Stephen Cabral 8:05

  our skin, and the last one is our mood in no particular order. And we can break them down however we want. But you will find over time, typically as children, all of these should be on point. And then things can happen. We took antibiotics. Would this happen? And then they start to go downhill. That is your first sign and signal that your body is not optimal.

  Philip Pape 8:24

  Now, before we get into that, so yes, we're going to get into the signals and then what to do about it. One overriding factor, I guess it's tied very much to skepticism of this whole industry, as well as the idea of the 1%, the idea that a lot of people are not doing the basic fundamentals for their health. You know, they're sitting around all day with desk jobs, they're not moving, they're not exercising, they're not eating well to begin with. And I'm always curious like this is a bi-directional thing sometimes. How much effort and value should be taken to shore up those things first and rule out 80% of potential issues, I don't know what it is, and then deal with this as maybe the 1%, or is it more integrated than that and kind of there's a parallel approach to it?

  Dr. Stephen Cabral 9:08

  Yeah, it's a great question. So in our practice, literally forever, over two decades, what we've always done is we said, if you have more than 30 to 40 pounds to lose, we're helping you lose weight. And the reason is this, because I started, just as you mentioned in the intro, I started as a personal trainer and nutritionist. Literally, I just started at 18 with an ACE certified personal trainer and NASM. And then I got my C SCS and then like I just kept going, right? But like that's how I started. And here's what I found I didn't know anything about health. I helped people lose weight, and like all of a sudden they got healthy, like, hey, I don't have a high blood pressure anymore. I'm like, oh, that's I that's cool. I had no idea, right? So the big thing is like what you need to do in order. Again, I don't want to, I'm not talking negatively about GLP1 drugs, but they are not doing the things that got you there in the first place. They are a shortcut, and sometimes when you take a shortcut, again, not speaking negatively about them because we might recommend them in cases where someone's a hundred plus pounds overweight, but we need a long-term plan because we don't want to end up, this person doesn't want to end up with osteoporosis. And I could go on and on, right? Potential thyroid issue, potential vision issues, et cetera. So what we say is this though. What we need to do in order to lose 30 to 40 plus pounds over your ideal weight may just fix all of your health issues, right? But if they don't, and now you don't need to have six-pack abs. That that's not a you know prerequisite. Now we work on wellness. If there's anything left, we're working on the autoimmune issues, the hormone imbalances, et cetera, et cetera. Because we know we can help you lose 30 to 40 pounds, I'm sure, just like you, in six months. Like we we we know we can do that. Okay, so now that's done. Anything left in six months? Yes, there is. Okay, because yeah, weight loss doesn't solve everything. Then we work on that. We run something called the big five labs, or we get more specific. We find out what's this person's deficiencies and toxicities, then we fix that. Now there's one more part, and this is the part where everybody's jumping to too quickly: longevity. They're doing, they're using nicotinamide ribozino, nicotinamide mononucleotide, and spermidine and transveritrol, and all these great things when they haven't fixed the foundation yet. And that's the biggest issue. You need to earn longevity or it's not going to work. So that's that's our model, and hopefully that that answers your question.

  Philip Pape 11:24

  It does. It does. And it it's it makes a lot of sense. The the losing weight part, given the correlation with metabolic disease and a lot of the other issues people have. Where does muscle mass come into that before we get into the signals?

  Dr. Stephen Cabral 11:36

  So we would never have someone use a GLP one or start a weight loss program without doing at least two days a week of strength training. It's okay, short-term, like that's, but again, we live in a world of short-term wins. And believe me, when I was sick, I wanted to get well yesterday, not in six months from now. So, like, I totally understand that. However, you you really don't want to go out on a boating trip with a boat with holes in it, right? Like it's like that's a disastrous, it's going to sink eventually. We just don't know how quickly. And so, but inevitably we know it's going to happen. So the strength train strength training twice a week is table stakes. That's for every human. Ideally, when I ran all my practices in person, we still do it to this day, we just make virtual programs. It's three days a week. And the reason is that you could do a Monday and Wednesday, but now it's nothing on Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. We've got four days off. Metabolically, that's too long to go without stimulating the furnace and the machine. So we like a Monday, Wednesday, Friday, or Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday. And then we'll move in cardio or sauna or other things on top of that. So that's

  Sleep as the first lever

  Dr. Stephen Cabral 12:42

  built into our weight loss programs. And you don't even need a lot besides that, besides your nutrition and your strength training in terms of cardio, just walking, right? But what is really important is sleep. And I don't know if you want to go there now, but like that's critical. Or you could have elevated blood sugar levels, dysregulated testosterone, and et cetera, et cetera.

  Philip Pape 13:01

  Right, perfect. So that's a segue into the signals. I have them in order of what's in your book, but if we're talking sleep because it's so important, why don't we just jump into sleep and just talk about the main, you know, this is like the dashboard for our body. So people have heard about sleep before, but really, what are they looking for?

  Dr. Stephen Cabral 13:16

  I think uh myself included, everybody's looking for like that magic number. There is no magic number for how much sleep you need. The more output, and that's not just physical, it's also mental, the more recovery you need. And the older you get, the more that becomes important. So when, you know, I was giving advice even at 22 years old or 18 years old, it's like, well, it's hard to understand someone that's had three kids, two working two jobs and whatever. Like, you can't recover from grueling boot camp style workouts if you're not eating well and getting sleep at night, right? So it's like the the output also needs to match the sleep. And we want strong output. Like we want to be able to do metabolic resistance training. We want to get that body going. But in order to do that, to maximize that, we need to actually start the night before. And so sleep is really the foundation, I would say, which is crazy over nutrition or movement. And it's because if you don't have that, the other two can't be at their maximum. And so seven to nine hours are what most people need, but it's not seven to nine hours in bed. It's actually seven to nine hours of sleep. So if you're tracking it, then it breaks down to okay, like we can really get granular. Are you getting 75 to 90 minutes of deep sleep? That's on an aura. On a whoop strap, they always give you above two hours. It's just way too high. Again, nothing against whoop. I just think it's a little exaggerated in terms of deep. Um, REM should be above two hours, but then there are other factors. Like you actually want to see your heart rates drop within the first four, three to four hours in bed, and you want to see your body temperature come down at least 0.2 degrees. And so these are all really nice factors to look at, or you're recovering. Now, I will give one caveat: nobody's perfect. And that's why I say for me, two nights a month, probably not gonna have a great night's sleep. And that's okay. But the other 28, that's what I need. That's what I'm good. When you start to see multiple nights strung together, that's when we start to get a little bit more worried because inflammation is going to be higher, recovery is going to be poor, testosterone's going to dip in men, and we're going to start to see as the cortisol rises, we're going to start to see blood sugar elevated as well.

  Philip Pape 15:26

  So, you know, I want to take this from the signal to the fix. And you you jump to the fix, which I love. Like, not just the fix, but you you told us what we want to measure in terms of deep sleep and REM and everything else. Is there something, even if you're not tracking those things, that the signal is ever present, like restfulness, how many times you get up, you know, insomnia, any anything like that, like that that jumps out.

  Dr. Stephen Cabral 15:50

  Yeah. So I mean, for men, if you're getting up more than once a night to use the bathroom to urinate, you know, there's there's real inflammation there, maybe not just with the prostate, but inflammation in the body. So that's an important one. Now, maybe it is too much fluid consumption within three hours of bed. That's possible, no doubt about it. But we're looking at, you know, kind of the overall picture. And the older you get, potentially the more inflammation, you know, there is and the more swelling in the prostate. Like prostatitis is pretty common in men over 45 years old. Not prostate cancer, but some level of inflammation. But beyond that, for every individual, if you're waking up and you're groggy and you need coffee or you need caffeine, that means you didn't recover. Like there is a definite deficit and you've just become accustomed to it, right? Like you've just gotten used to it. That, well, of course I'm going to be groggy in the morning. It's not in a course. Like within 30 minutes of waking up, you should get the cortisol awakening response. And that should be enough energy that your body gets going. The problem is when cortisol is too high on the other end of the night, it suffers in the morning. So we get this inverse ratio, elevated at night, lower in the morning. And we see that all the time. You know, that's that's one of the biggest ones we test for. It's what we call the stress metabolism test. But again, let's say you can't do any lab testing. So you're looking for grogginess. Caffeine is something that you need to give your body basically a kick, give your adrenals or HP axis a kick to get going. Another one is brain fog in the morning. That's a big one too. So the brain and body don't have the energy they need. Reaction time, people literally, clients of mine, they were like, like, I drop things. I never used to drop things before. And it's like, okay, like the reaction time is part of it, like how quick you are reflex-wise. And I would say then cognitive recall. You know, when cortisol levels are too high or too low, recall and memory suffer. So one is there's brain fog, your cortisol levels are too low. The other one, you're in a heightened sympathetic nervous system straight state, and you just can't literally remember because you have such tenal vision where you put your keys or who the person is that you just met. So those are like my foundational ones. But also in terms of training, if you're sore every day, if you're inflamed every day, maybe you are overdoing the gym, but also maybe you're just not getting enough sleep and especially deep sleep, which happens in the first four hours of the night, typically between like 10 and midnight, 10 and 2 at the latest.

  Philip Pape 18:12

  Is there any like newer evidence or evidence that you are aware of of the downstream effects of sleep deprivation? We, you know, we don't talk about too much that are pretty insidious.

  Dr. Stephen Cabral 18:21

  Well, the the first one that I still think is not mainstream is that if you get less than seven hours of sleep per night, real sleep, not just not in bed, you're most likely going to have a higher fasting glucose level than someone, all other variables the same. They just got an hour extra sleep. So now you're battling pre-diabetes or a road to diabetes, type 2 diabetes, just from sleep alone, not carbohydrates, not anything like that. And so that's a really crucial one. The second one is I work with a lot of men that are using TRT, trying to come off, or they're trying to boost their testosterone levels naturally, or they're trying to work on fertility. And I test them, and their free testosterone might be like a 75. And ideally, I want it somewhere around 110 to 140, right, for their free testosterone, naturally. And so when I look at that, I say, okay, you're weightlifting three to four times a week. You're eating, you know, plenty of protein. So like you're you're doing those things right. There seems to be enough vitamins and minerals that your body needs, the zinc, the vitamin C, all the things that your body needs, right, to make testosterone. Oh, but you're sleeping six hours a night. Okay. Can we fix that? And if the answer is yes, great, then we do that. And six weeks later, testosterone's surging again. Like it doesn't take a lot to reboot. Um, so inside of your brain, you have something called the hypothalamus. The hypothalamus is the master regulator. It then signals the pituitary gland to send out signals to the individual glands. So the master one would be the HPA axis, so sends a signal, hypothalamus pituitary to the adrenals, right? The adrenals, are we stressed or not? Hopefully, we're not stressed all the time. Hopefully we're not in chronic stress, right? And hopefully cortisol is low at night so that melatonin can rise. So if melatonin rises and cortisol is low, then testosterone can then rise the next morning. But that doesn't happen if you don't get good sleep and cortisol stays elevated. So then the next one, though, is the HPT axis. That's the thyroid that's affected. Happens in more women, about double the rate, right, of low thyroid than men, but it does happen in men. And the last one is the HPG axis. That's the hypothalamus pituitary gonad or gonadal axis, ovaries in women, testes in men. So you throw off the first one, the HPA, it throws off the other two, and that includes testosterone production.

  Philip Pape 20:34

  Great. Yeah, people need to hear this. People need to hear this.

  Dr. Stephen Cabral 20:37

  So it's a little complex, but the truth is that, but like it's like so those are real underlying root causes, right? Yeah. Elevated levels of stress with not enough sleep being aka recovery leads to low testosterone. And so if you do test low testosterone in your 30s, it's my opinion, but having done this for 26 years, longer with part-time, you don't need testosterone in your 30s unless there is an actual medical condition. And then we could talk about that. Because once you go on it, it's not as easy to come off as people think. You can, but so I'm just saying, use it when you need it, when the time is right, if you choose to, but let's try to stave off that as long as possible if we can.

  Energy, cortisol, and daily rhythm

  Philip Pape 21:14

  Right. Because we're concerned about endogenous production and all that when you start going on it.

  Dr. Stephen Cabral 21:18

  The root causes as to why it was low in the first place, right? So you can go and test ostolone in your 30s and 40s, and trust me, you will feel better. But you never fix the things that may cause heart disease or type 2 diabetes in your 50s. And guys are susceptible to heart disease in their 50s. That's legitimate.

  Philip Pape 21:34

  All right. So that's sleep. Now that I get a I guess a good corollary would be one of uh would be energy, because it's kind of some for a lot of people, it's somewhat in the same ballpark or there's a little bit of overlap there. So maybe we let's go to energy. What do we mean by that? Because it's kind of a nebulous term. Do we mean like that afternoon crash? Is it related to cortisol? Like we've been talking. Is there something bigger than this?

  Dr. Stephen Cabral 21:53

  So when it comes to energy, what we want to look at is that normal diurnal rhythm. So what that means is that cortisol, so that's the Energy hormone produced by our adrenals, sometimes called the stress hormone, but it's really important because when I had Addison's disease, it means you can't produce cortisol. No cortisol, no anti-inflammatory. So when you think of taking pregnisone, which is a steroid, but it's a catabolic versus anabolic, you're basically decreasing inflammation. Well, one of the reasons why I felt like I had flu like symptoms all the time is that I wasn't producing cortisol. So it isn't very necessary. So cortisol is typically produced between six and eight in the morning at its highest peak. And then it just slowly falls through the day. And its lowest point is based on the sun and based on the season, but it's usually around 9:30 p.m., which is a signal to us as to when we should really be in bed, right? So we don't get that second wind as it starts to rise again. So, in terms of energy, we sometimes we have unrealistic energy expectations. So I believe we should have energy all day, but it doesn't mean that at like eight o'clock at night or even seven o'clock at night that we should be rearing to go like we were at seven in the morning. That would be stress-based energy, not natural production of energy. So naturally, we want to start to wind down with the sun. Literally, that is how our hormones are built into nature around us. And it would be very apparent if we still lived outside. So let's say you just say we lived in, you know, tents or anything like that. When sun rises in the morning, cortisol rises, melatonin drops, we're waking up. It's just the way that it is. And then as the sun starts to set, we're getting tired. But also, think about all we have is maybe a fire for light. How much are we really going to do? Not a lot. Work's done for the day, right? So we tell stories, we chat, we commune, then we go to bed, and then we wake up with the sun. That's a normal diurnal rhythm. Now I know some people work overnight, they've got night shifts, they have all those things, but that doesn't mean it's necessarily healthy. So you do that for as long as you need to. And then ideally, if you can start to shift into a more normal routine, we want that. So, yes, no energy post-lunch is not ideal. No energy, brain fog, grogginess, all of that in the morning, not ideal either. We'll talk about the no energy post-lunch, because that then feeds into digestion. That remember, digestion takes like a third of our energy for the day. And if you have weak digestion, even more, which is zapping your energy. So the goal is what takes out our energy, what brings it in? When I work with clients with energy-based issues, I said, I want you to look at your life and all the activities and ask yourself this does it bring in energy, like a walk, a nice conversation, meditation, relaxation, bineural beats, sauna, parasympathetic things. Or is it giving out energy? Hard workouts, maybe even cold plunge, which excites the nervous system, all the different things that gives out energy. And then we say, for right now, we want to do as little of the things that give out energy and more of the things that bring it in while working on the deficiencies and toxicities.

  Philip Pape 24:49

  I like that concept because there's this additive symmetrical piece to it that I think we don't talk about a lot, which is that bringing in part, where I think oftentimes we think food is energy, but like nothing else brings in energy because we're existing and metabolizing and burning energy all day, even if you are meditating or walking. So tell us just a little more about that, how it brings in energy. Is it a function of the two types of the sides of the nervous system? You know, is it another component related to cortisol? Like physiologically, what are we doing there?

  Dr. Stephen Cabral 25:20

  So when we look at all the activities that I name, binaural beats, breath work, sleep, walking, those are all parasympathetic nervous system inducing. So you named basically the autonomic nervous system or specifically the central nervous system, which then branches to the sympathetic nerves, that's fight or flight, and the parasympathetic, which is rest, relax, digest, right? Repair. So anything that shifts us away from the fight or flight allows us then in a repair mode, because our body knows how to heal. We need to get there. And that's why sleep is really so important that when you're sleeping, ideally, you're always in parasympathetic nervous system. So that's when you heal. So when you're not feeling as well or you're an athlete that's training for hours a day, like I work with triathletes, I mean, their average race is like 10 to 13 hours with the people that I work with. That they're training for three plus hours a day. You need a lot of sleep. It's not seven hours of sleep for a triathlon for a triathlete.

  Philip Pape 26:16

  If sleep is dialed in, let's say you're hypothetical, let's say sleep is 100% dialed in, you could still have energy issues, correct? And then what are those caused by?

  Dr. Stephen Cabral 26:25

  Oh, 100%. So I work actually, I work with a lot of women in my practice. And what we'll see is we'll see lower levels of progesterone, lower levels of cortisol production, lower levels of thyroid production. And all of those are needed in order to have proper energy as well. So they'll end up with estrogen dominance. Low thyroid is basically low metabolic rate. It's not just low metabolism, it's not just weight gain. Your metabolism is so much more than your weight. It's literally your metabolic function, your cellular function. So we look at everything from mitochondrial issues with ATP production to the thyroid itself to estrogen progesterone, low levels of testosterone will lead to low, low energy. So, besides the vitamins, the minerals, if you're low calorie, low carb, you could be low energy. So we look at that as well. I mean, everything goes into energy, right? Like that is how your body's functioning. And if you're depriving it of nutrients or you're zapping it of nutrients because there's too much of the sympathetic nervous system with not enough of the nutrient ad back, that can be detrimental. Meaning, like most people don't do well with a one meal a day diet once they're past their like 20s. They simply don't have the reserve capacity to be able to work all day on fumes. That's a pretty tough one. But I will say at the same time, and I know that we'll eventually get there,

  Digestion, bloating, and gut signals

  Dr. Stephen Cabral 27:44

  some people feel better not eating, and they feel better not eating because their digestion is so bad that they cause an inflammatory event and so much energy being used to break down food. So for them, like, no, I have more energy when I don't eat, right? With no calories coming in. Well, what are you living off of if there's no calories, right? It can't be ketones alone because that's not enough.

  Philip Pape 28:04

  Let's go to the next one because you did mention post-meal type energy and how it's tied to digestion and maybe elimination. And that brings up the gut and you know, bowel movements and gut health in general. So let's go there.

  Dr. Stephen Cabral 28:18

  Yeah. So digestion does encompass just what you said right there. So when you eat, you should be able to digest your food without bloating in gas. Like that's a big part to it. You shouldn't be burping, you shouldn't have a lot of gas, you shouldn't have bloating. Now, if you have those things, that's a signal. The signal is there's some breakdown in digestion, not enough hydrochloric acid or acid production in the stomach, right? Not, and we can talk about acid reflux and all that, which is very rarely from too much acid, or unless it's from a histamine-based issue, et cetera. There can be issues with the lower sulfageal sphincter, so not actually closing when you're eating, that can lead to acid reflux. There might not be enough enzymes, there might not be enough bile dropping from the liver, you might poor job food combining. There simply might be too much volume of food at the meal that it's literally overstuffing the stomach. That can be an issue as well. So then, you know, as you said, eliminating, are you having bowel movements at least once or twice a day? If you're not, you're either under-eating or you're constipated in some way, or there's another breakdown again with bile production, et cetera, that we're not getting all of this moving down. There's not enough peristaltic movement potentially from tension, or you're dehydrated. There could be so many different reasons, but you should be eliminating at least once or twice a day. If you eat three times a day, you should be eliminating at least once or twice a day. And so we look at that. And then digestion should not also cause fatigue. If digestion causes fatigue, it could be it could be a food sensitivity issue, it could be an immune issue, it could also be that your body is not balanced from an autonomic nervous system standpoint. You're in fight or flight. All of a sudden you put food in, your body's like, now we need to digest. And it switches gears too much. There's too much of a pendulum swing from sympathetic nervous system to parasympathetic. Now you're in all parasympathetic nervous system. You might even see like more pale color in your face, and you're exhausted. And so that is not a normal functioning HPA axis or even vestibular system, which keeps the body balanced. So that's how we look at overall digestion. You should be able to eat food, digest it well, it's in and out of the stomach in just a couple hours, and you have proper elimination on a daily basis. It doesn't cause acne, it doesn't cause skin rashes. Those are all the things we look for.

  Philip Pape 30:36

  So that's a lot. If you were just to simplify and say, like, what are most people not doing that's pro or doing that's contributing to that? What have you seen?

  Dr. Stephen Cabral 30:43

  Well, one of the biggest issues, so there's five main things, and I know five seems like a lot, but it's only five, which is really great, right? Because then you can just do process of elimination. So you can have candida overgrowth in your gut, typically from taking antibiotics. The second one is you can have SIBO, usually from taking antibiotics or high levels of stress. And I can talk about why that might be caused in a second. You can have parasites, very common, like 25% of people have a parasite, right? Could be from salad bars, undercooked meat, sushi, et cetera. And then the next one is H. pylori, very common bacteria that like 25% of the world has as well. Okay. And it's the same place you can get it. And then the fifth is food sensitivities. So food sensitivities, though, usually come after the gut's already inflamed and permeable, where the immunoglobulin A, M, and G can basically come in, start to attack what's inside the gut or the gut wall, or as it starts to move out, when people say 80% of your immune system is around your gut, it's true. That's where the gut-associated lymphoid tissue is that's essentially responsible for everything that comes out of that gut wall. Now, in an ideal world, we're just essentially excreting all the healthy things for the body: amino acids, individual glucose molecules, fatty acids, nutrients, et cetera. And then it's being processed through the liver and other parts of the body. So that's healthy. Unhealthy is that gut's permeable, lipopolysaccharides are coming out, essentially this bacteria that sets off the immune system. The immune system is now inflamed, and that is now where your genetics get set off. That's when the autoimmune issues happen. There are almost no autoimmune issues without gut issues. Almost none. 90% of all autoimmune issues have at least some origin in the gut. Now, there might still be heavy metals and high levels of stress and other things, no doubt about it. But the gut in the immune system, obviously it makes sense, 80% of the immune system there has a level to do with the inflammation and immune system in the body.

  Philip Pape 32:35

  It makes a lot of sense when you see that often the solution is to do an elimination diet and start to reintroduce certain foods. At least you see that in the simple if this then that kind of medical advice. So candida overgrowth, SIBO, parasites, H. pylori, food sensitivities. So then, as far as like dealing with this, is there is there something, is it diet related or something else, or is it integrated with these other things like stress that a lot of people can benefit the most from as they're trying to address these?

  Dr. Stephen Cabral 33:04

  Mindful eating is a huge one. So basically, just literally just stop and do three minutes of breath work, usually resonance breathing. So breathing in as you see the circle expand, breathing out as the circle shrinks, best thing that you can do. It's very simple. Free YouTube videos, it's all over the place. Elite HRV app, your Apple Watch, they all have a breath work type thing for bioresonance breathing. So now you already moved to the parasympathetic, and that will allow for better digestion. It still won't get rid of the Candida overgrowth and the SIBO and the parasites and the H. pylori if you have it. So there is no way that diet alone takes care of that. And we know that because people will go on a keto diet or carnivore diet because they do. They can't have carbs because the carbs are feeding the yeast and the bacteria. Not all carbs, but they're, you know, they don't know specifically what ones, right? And so I get it, I totally understand. But once you have carbs again, it's just going to grow back in kind because you didn't repopulate and rebalance. So that is why I tell people so forever, Ayurvedic medicine, 6,000 years old, traditional Chinese medicine, 3,000 years old, and we have other forms of amazing medicine as well. They all use something to help the gut. So you do have to do something. We do what's called something called a CBO protocol, and it rebalances the gut over 12 weeks. It's a gentle approach, it works. What do they use hundreds and thousands of years ago? Oregano, cloves, thyme, uva ursi, like all of these things help to kill pathogenic bacteria in the gut. But again, like you can use those, but it's better to use a protocol that's structured and kind of proven to work. But everyone for the history of time, Amazon medicine, et cetera, have always used herbs to be able to remove what's there. The difference now today is we also use enzymes that remove the biofilm where a lot of these heavy metals and parasites can live as well.

  Philip Pape 34:48

  That makes a lot of sense. And we're gonna we're gonna leave the T's on that one for folks to check out your CBO protocol, right? When we connect them with you in the interest of talking about the other two symptoms. Because this is just the tip of the iceberg, guys. I mean, there's so much behind all of this, but it starts with education and awareness that I do like, you know, starting with the signals and understanding there's something you can do about this. There's something your body's telling you right there. You don't need special devices. A lot of this, like you said, is grounded in, you know, I'll say ancient medicine, but it's really just human knowledge that that persists to this day, is a better way to put it.

  Dr. Stephen Cabral 35:18

  So ancient medicine that's now clinically proven on PubMed. Like that's the nice thing. I mean, that's the amazing thing because I have a like I am very much still skeptical and science-minded, but all I do is just look at what do they use? What do the clinical

  Mood, inflammation, and overwhelm

  Dr. Stephen Cabral 35:32

  studies show? Oh, lo and behold, like they work, right? And so, like, that's the great thing is that we're able to now prove these things to be clinically true. Because the alternative is okay, you take rife or you take diflucan or nystatin, right? For these for these yeast or bacterial overgrowth, but the relapse cases are quite high because you never repopulated the gut as well.

  Philip Pape 35:51

  Yeah. All right, so let's move on. We've got two more signals to talk about. I think the next one, uh, mood and mental clarity is a good one as well, because again, this could be a little bit nebulous to understand what we mean by this. So I'm sure you'll help us uh make it a little more objective and a signal that we can read.

  Dr. Stephen Cabral 36:06

  So, one of the biggest things I've seen with people, with often with fatigue as well, is that over time it leads to irritability, overwhelm, and usually worry. So, but you don't know why. Just all of a sudden now you're someone that's just more irritable and overwhelmed and anxious, and that's not you. And so when you look at that, you say, why is that happening? A lot of it is from your body being inflamed. There might be gut issues, and there's low energy. So if we kind of step back again, we say, okay, well, what else has its own brain? Well, the gut does, right? And the enteric nervous system. And it sends signals, right, through the vagal nerve to the brain. Now we've got an inflamed gut, an inflamed body with low energy and poor digestion, telling the brain something's wrong. How does the brain register it? It can't get the direct signal. They're not talking, they're sending signals, something's wrong. We react with, okay, I have no low energy, I'm in low mood, right? But now I'm inflamed, I'm irritable, and now everything is overwhelming because you no longer have the same ability to respond to life. And when you can't have the energy, and everything, again, is so much on your body because your rain barrel is overflowing, you're irritable and overwhelmed. And so I see this all the time in my practice, and there isn't a medication for that. The solution is to figure out what caused the overflowing of that rain barrel so that your body, which then your mind can be less overwhelmed. So literally, we're trying to empty the rain barrel, and now there is no overwhelm or overfilling of the barrel. So that's how mood plays in. And it is usually gradual. It's usually not one thing, although we know a lot of people who, you know, got, I'm putting that in air quotes, got long COVID, which is, by the way, been around for decades. It's called post-viral inflammatory syndrome. Like we've already known about it. It's just we gave it a fun name for the media called lone COVID, that immediately leads to low mood, low energy, low libido, all the lows, plus irritability overwhelm because your body's so inflamed. It can't, everything is now too much for the body. When you're in survival mode, you're not focusing then on thriving. And so everything makes the shift. You don't have the same get up and go, the same interest in life. You don't look forward to vacations or set big goals for yourself because all you can do is get through the day. And I was there. I mean, I was literally there for a decade. And so I totally get that and empathize with my clients. There's no hope for the future because the present is so dim.

  Philip Pape 38:49

  Yeah. And anybody who has any, anybody who has experience with a physical ailment, let's say I have personal experience with shoulder issues where you can't train or you can't do this or you're limited in life, we know that it cascades to mental issues and your mental health. So it totally makes sense. Even when it's deep inside, almost hidden inside you, except it's not hidden inside you because you're listening to this podcast and Steven's telling you how to how to read the signs. So leading to the case.

  Dr. Stephen Cabral 39:19

  But now that the mind's feeling it, it sends signals back to the body and it makes you even worse. So that's why it's a vicious cycle because your psychology affects your physiology, like your physiology affects your psychology. And so that is why we need to work on both. But if it didn't start in the mind, which most likely it didn't, it started most likely in the nervous system or the proprioception of the body. That is ultimately where we need to figure it out, which will then help the mind. And yes, in the short term, the ashwagandhas, the phospholocerines, the Lthenines for calming, or the rhodiolas and liquor shrub, et cetera, for the getting going, great. You can use those, but they're not underlying root causes, right? Because you don't have a chaga or liquor shrug shortage, right? That wasn't that wasn't the cause.

  Skin, hair, and biological age

  Dr. Stephen Cabral 40:06

  So, but they're good. Don't get me wrong. I definitely, Ayurveda's recommended them, so has TCM for thousands of years. Who am I to go against that? What I'm just saying is we need to figure out what the real issues are in terms of the deficiencies and toxicities.

  Philip Pape 40:18

  100%. We want to flip that around too and take that vicious cycle and make it a positive upward spiral, which because it goes the other way too, which is great. So the final signal, skin, hair, and nails, it's an interesting one. I was listening to, oh geez, probably it was my wife listening to a podcast with a an aesthetician and talk. They asked her, you know, do guys, most guys you talk to care about anything you you care about? They're like, pretty much no. Like guys will just use shampoo as soap, and they don't most of them don't think about their skin and hair now. So I always see something like this, and I like want to kind of put it to the bottom, but I know it's super important as well as a symptom and a signal. And I want to understand why.

  Dr. Stephen Cabral 40:56

  Yeah, so it's interesting because again, I'm probably like a lot of guys, I don't have a seven-step face protocol. I like to get in and get out of the bathroom as you know, as quickly as possible. But that doesn't mean that how we appear in the mirror is not a signal for what the inside of our body looks like. Meaning the more inflammation, which by the way, inflammation always has a root cause, and the more degeneration or catabolism taken on inside of the body shows itself on the outside. So if we have, and again, losing your hair is not a sign of poor health. I just want people to know that. It can be, but there are many people due to genetic presusceptibility, androgenic alopecia, which is the specific type of convert, higher conversion to DHT, it doesn't mean that you're unhealthy. But like I said, but it can be that that is something to look at. But when your skin starts to really wrinkle and thin out, and you start to get age spots or skin tags or things like that, they are real signs that inside the body there is damage and you're not repairing it as quickly as you could. Now, do we all get wrinkles? Yes, without a doubt. Does all of our skin get a little bit thinner? No matter what. By the time now, this might change by the time you and I get to 80, but for right now, all of us age and we can't stop it. We can slow it. So what we try to do is just say, well, what does help with collagen production? What does help with inflammation inside of the body? And hopefully then we are not looking our age. That's really about like I don't have a particular issue with people getting older. I'm not one of those individuals. I'm gonna get older and I'm totally okay with that. But I don't need to be older than my time, and it is probably an expression of my biological age because they show people that look older, they have an older biological age than their chronological age or at least a one-for-one. My goal is to always keep my biological age at least a decade younger than my chronological age. I so far have been able to keep it at about 15 years younger. Now, maybe with a viral illness or something like that, it might change for those months or so because that does actually take a hit on the body, but you recover and that's what you want to maintain. So let's say that your skin, sorry, let's say that your hair doesn't grow very quickly, or your nails don't grow very quickly. That's often a sign of catabolic nature, low vitamin mineral potentially content, low protein intake, et cetera. So I do, or even low thyroid. So I like to share with people these are signals, not that we need to, you know, try to, as they say now, look smacks or anything like that, but do things that are beneficial more for the inside than the outside. All the creams and all that are not going to help too much in the long run. What really matters is what's going on underneath the skin.

  Philip Pape 43:41

  So give us one or two of those, right? You mentioned protein intake. Let's just maybe mention one foundational thing that a lot of our listeners are probably eating enough protein, but maybe not. One of those, and then maybe one that's a little more counterintuitive or people aren't aware of.

  Dr. Stephen Cabral 43:54

  Yeah. So, I mean, a lot of people are going to get their protein requirements met, and this might be controversial. Commercial at about 0.6 grams per gram of body weight, that will go up the more you train. And it will go up, like you'll do it higher if you're on a low carb diet. And it will go up if you're an athlete. So, like again, I have some people at one gram per pound of body weight. They're athletes, they're doing specific things. Okay. But we do need to make sure that that's at least met. On a 160-pound person, it's still 100 grams. And a lot of people are only getting 50 to 60 grams. So certainly they're not getting enough, right? So we need a certain amount of protein to meet our requirements. And the more we train hard, the more that we need to recover, the more protein we need. That makes sense. Okay. So we have that. Then we do really need not a specific amount of carbohydrates, enough to meet our needs, but we need the brightly colored fruits and vegetables because they provide the polyphenols that ultimately improve overall inflammation in the body. So that's really important. And then fats, fats vary widely, part of it based on genetics, part of it based on metabolism. And that can be anywhere from 10% to 30% of your diet. Again, it varies on some people. Now, of course, if you're on a keto diet, you're at like 70%. But I would say, and I would argue all day long, that that's not a great long-term diet. Maybe you use it in the short term, but not long term. So it is balanced, but it's really healthy, clean proteins, brightly colored fruits and veggies, and then quality fats. And the best quality fats, without a doubt, are olives, olive oil, and avocados. So you can eat other fats, not that you can't, nuts and seeds, great, et cetera. And you'll get fat from meat. You don't need to add more necessarily there. But the mono and saturated fats are one of the best things that we can do for overall heart and inflammation of the body.

  Philip Pape 45:33

  Yeah. I can't argue with any of that. And we were joking how I first heard you on Mind Pump. And I'm, you know, those guys are all about balanced and macros and everything. And, you know, the it's nice to hear these concepts repeated again just for intake because people tend to be confused. But that 0.6, 0.7 grams per pound of protein, 30% of fats, of calories from fat, you know, mono and polyunsaturated fats, you know, unlimit your saturated fats. And then carbs are great. And we love carbs, especially if you're trying to build muscle, but definitely have the fibrous, colorful fruits and vegetables in there. Love it. Okay. Good stuff.

  Dr. Stephen Cabral 46:03

  I just want to say carbs are the only thing that cut cortisol. Right. So, like, yes, if you want to look at like if you're stressed and you're low carb, that's a recipe for just destroying your thyroid and further aggravating your adrenals and poor sleep. You have a little carbs at dinner, sleep's already better. So it's like, because it helps produce more serotonin and GABA. And so, you know, all that calms the nervous system. So carbs shouldn't be the enemy. I'm like, I mean you may be on there as well, but like on an island over here being like carbs aren't the enemy, you know? And so, because when you look at like you legitimately unbiased, well, here's the thing: if your main goal is body transformation, I get it. You're gonna go higher protein, higher fat, a little lower carbs. Totally get it. I've been doing that for years with my clients, right? So makes sense. But ultimately, if it's about wellness and longevity and you don't need to be single-digit body fat, we can start to look at it a little bit differently. We say, okay, well, if max fat's about 30% and protein is about 20% of the diet, because like just depending on how many calories you're eating, okay, then what's

  The weekly rhythm reset action

  Dr. Stephen Cabral 47:00

  carbs? Well, we just do the 50%. Oh, 50%.

  Philip Pape 47:02

  Yeah, exactly.

  Dr. Stephen Cabral 47:03

  Exactly, right? And then it could just be lower glycemic and it could be veggies, and anyway. So, but yeah, that's that really is. If you just it's I know it's a generalization. Now we're looking at the Mediterranean diet, which is has the most foundation around it, and you can just tailor that for your cut your specific needs.

  Philip Pape 47:20

  Okay, maybe the last thing here then is you know, people are hearing all this, you've got all these signals. Is there anything someone can start with this week to maybe make it less overwhelmed if they're feeling stressed hearing this, like, oh my God, everything's wrong with my body? It's let's flip it around. No, these are things you can learn about your body. And and and there's these just five things. How can people start this week and take one action that would really benefit them?

  Dr. Stephen Cabral 47:41

  Well, if we put sleep in the superposition where everything gets better if you get good sleep and everything's worse if you get terrible sleep that night, then we have to talk about sleep first. So, what I say is this, and I'm not the first one to mention it, but three, two, one sleep formula is a great framework. Three hours before bed, no more eating. Two hours before bed, stop drinking any fluids, maybe just a little bit with your supplements if you take any before bed. And then one hour before bed, no more blue light. Blue light blocking glasses, but really you got to turn the lights off unless they're like wrap around blue light glasses. And then, you know, read a good book or something like that, or meditate or breath work, anything to calm the central nervous system is excellent. So, what our clients do is basically in an ideal world, I know we don't all live in an ideal world, stop eating around six, seven if you have to. Don't eat again for 14 hours. Most of our clients, the perfect formula is six at night to eight in the morning. By eight in the morning, you're getting going. You need to fuel the day. They eat at eight, around 12:30, around 5:30. And like it's a nice formula for three meals per day. Glucose levels might rise a little bit, then they fall before the next meal, up, then down a little bit. Now, for me, I do a peri-workout nutrition shake, which is late afternoon, only like an hour away from my dinner, like right before it. But that's then customized for you. That's what I'm saying. You have a framework, like the Mediterranean diet, and then you customize it. Like I follow the Mediterranean diet for the most part, but I don't eat a lot of bread, right? So it's like you don't have to, that doesn't have to be part of your diet, right? You can eat other whole grains if you would like. So that is my biggest takeaway for people is that you need a rhythm to your day. When you eat, when you go to bed, when you wake up, once you start to create a rhythm, your body knows what's coming next. You automatically start to have more energy, even if there's other things still off in the body. So creating a rhythm is my top recommendation.

  Philip Pape 49:25

  I love that. Yeah, it creates that safe environment, that predictable environment, a routine structure, just so many benefits. Love that. Steven, this has been awesome. I'm glad we were able to get through those. I want to connect people with you in the best way possible so they can then learn more, continue to implement, continue to take action, and improve their lives. Where can they do that?

  Dr. Stephen Cabral 49:42

  Yeah, I appreciate that. So it's stephencabral.com, just my name, Steven with a pH. You'll find the new book there, the podcast, the Cabral Concept, social media, all of those things. And for me, I just love to teach. So if you can you want to learn more, you can check out the book, you can check out the podcast, and of course, you can let us know if there's any questions where we are here to help. But I appreciate everything that you do in your community and spreading what I believe to be the truth. I think we're on the same page for the majority of things. And I think it's all really backed by science without any hype. You know, there's no real like marketing hype behind us. Like it's not, it's not a special diet, it's not a special workout program. We can customize it for you, but these are the things that we know to truly work.

  Philip Pape 50:21

  Yeah, education number one, I learned today. So that's one of my goals as well, selfishly. And I'm glad the listener can learn a ton and takeaway today. So thank you again, Steven, for coming on the show. We'll send folks to stephencabral.com, put that in the show notes, and it's a true honor and pleasure.

  Dr. Stephen Cabral 50:35

  Thank you, Philip. Appreciate you.

Brain Aging and Barbells (How Lifting Weights Slows Cognitive Decline) | Ep 474

Can lifting weights slow how fast your brain ages?

A new study used brain scans to measure exactly that. The results show that resistance training is a uniquely beneficial tool for brain health that works through different pathways than cardio.

Lifting weights can make the brain test younger on functional MRI, and the benefits may keep compounding even long after you train. 

Learn what brain age measures, why the prefrontal cortex matters for Alzheimer's and cognitive aging, the muscle-to-brain signaling system activated by strength training, and how heavy lifting compares to moderate intensity for protecting the brain after 40. Plus a quick self-check for strength-related dementia risk, especially after 40. 

Enroll in Eat More Lift Heavy, the 26-week coached program where adults over 40 build the nutrition and training skills to lift heavy, build muscle, lose fat, and stay strong and sharp for decades. 

Timestamps:

0:00 - Lifting weights and brain aging
0:47 - Dementia risk and strength training over 40
3:58 - Aerobic exercise and the hippocampus
6:00 - Prefrontal cortex and muscle signaling
7:48 - Recent study and brain age scans
10:21 - Brain age gap and dementia risk
11:30 - Results across both lifting intensities
13:12 - Myokines, irisin, and BDNF
16:57 - How to build skills for lifting weights
18:30 - Lifting protocol for brain health
20:45 - Entry points for new lifters
24:15 - Grip strength and dementia risk

• Transcript

  Lifting weights and brain aging

  Philip Pape 0:00

  If you've heard for years that aerobic exercise is what protects your brain from dementia, a brand new randomized controlled trial might give you a new perspective. One year of lifting weights made people's brains test almost two years younger on a functional brain scan. And then the effect kept growing for a full year after the training stopped. And the brain regions involved are not the same ones targeted by cardio. Today I'm walking you through what is happening inside your skull with your brain when you lift weights, why it works through pathways more associated with lifting weights than cardio, and a dead simple lifting protocol with the most evidence behind it if you're trying to improve your brain age. Welcome

  Dementia risk and strength training over 40

  Philip Pape 0:47

  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 if you are aging, which we all are because we can't go back in a time machine, especially if you're over 40, over 50, you know, I'm 45 years old. My grandmother had Alzheimer's. There's dementia in our family, there's dementia risk in my genetics. And you, maybe in the back of your head, there's a worry about dementia or Alzheimer's. And maybe it's a parent or grandparent that has it. You have personal experience. Maybe it's, you know, just you walk into a room and you forget why you walked in, or somebody asks you a question, and you forget what you were going to say. Maybe it's all the headlines about Alzheimer's and the anxiety behind that. And every time you, you know, hit the Google machine about what to do about it, a lot of the advice is super generic because a lot of this is cutting edge right now. The research into Alzheimer's, and a lot of it is more bio more about the biology and the pharmaceuticals and things like that. Or you see advice like, hey, you've got to just move more, you've got to walk more, you've got to run more. You know, just general, generic, kind of worthless advice, in my opinion. And so I'm all for encouraging people to move. I definitely think the vast majority of the older population is way too sedentary, and it has led to the frailty and the lack of strength and also often lack of function, polypharmacy, you know, all the things we're trying to avoid in general, but it also affects your brain massively. You know, things like muscle mass affect your brain massively. We're going to be talking about lifting weights today, but really the brain is so important. I mean, just doing this podcast and the work I do and being an engineer and all that, having a family, trying to solve problems, wanting to live a long life, wanting to lift weights. I'm like, if I didn't have my brain, where would I be? And the research on resistance training and the brain has been building over the last few years. I'd say the last decade and a half, uh, we've seen some more studies. And there's a study that came out a few months ago that's really strong evidence, yet again, I will say, that lifting weights uniquely does something for your brain that nothing else, including aerobic exercise, can replicate. And it's not just like one area of your brain, like the hippocampus, it's not just memory. It's it's how the front of your brain kind of wires together, the whole, you know, neurostructure of the brain, if you will, if that's even a proper word. Forgive me, I'm gonna butcher a lot of probably fundamental science here for the neurofolks out there, but I'm gonna do my best. So today I'm gonna walk you through that study. I'm gonna show you the mechanisms that make it work, and I'm gonna give you a lifting protocol that is evidence-based that can go along with all of this. And then stick around to the end because I'm going to share a 30-second self-test that might give you a little bit of a read on your own dementia risk having to do with this topic. I'll tell you the muscle metric that we really care about the most, a statistic from one of the biggest cognitive aging studies ever done, a specific stat that you want to care about, and then what to do if you don't like what the information is telling you.

  Aerobic exercise and the hippocampus

  Philip Pape 3:58

  What do we need to do differently, guys? Okay, so I'm gonna give you a little history here because this is one of those situations where I think the advice is probably outdated or there just isn't good advice. So, starting in the early 2000s, a group of researchers led by Art Kramer at the University of Illinois, they ran a series of randomized trials and they showed that aerobic exercise, especially walking, increased the size of the hippocampus in older adults. Now, that's the part of your brain that handles the formation of memories. And then their 2011 study in adults over 60 found that one year of walking grew the hippocampus 2%, which is very meaningful when the typical trajectory with age is a one to two 1 to 2% shrinkage per year. And so that study and a bunch like it became the foundation for the exercise protects your brain message that you hear everywhere now. And that's a good message, right? Walking is great, cardio is great. I'm definitely not anti-any of that. We need to move more. Almost everybody listening to this podcast probably has to move more in the right ways, let alone also lift weights. But where I think a lot of this gets oversold, which could be detrimental, let's say, is that, you know, because it's easy to standardize aerobic exercise and research and it gets more studied than lifting. And because the assumption is, okay, the brain is all about blood flow and oxygen delivery. So of course cardio is going to be aligned with that. I would say the resistance training side just didn't get studied to the same level for a long time. And so, you know, it's it's more of an omission, let's just say, or a lack of study. It's kind of like women's health, you know, where there's a lack of a lot of information because certain populations of women just aren't being studied. So I would say there are three things I want to challenge with some of the research to date so that we can lead into talking about the topic. The first one is the brain is really, really complicated. It isn't just one tissue, right? It's

  Prefrontal cortex and muscle signaling

  Philip Pape 6:00

  a very complex structure that we still don't know a lot about. And the hippocampus is one part of it. And I think, you know, looking at the research, cognitive aging and the hippocampus has been tied together quite a bit. But there's also the prefrontal cortex, and that's right behind your forehead, a different, completely different part from the hippocampus. That part handles decision making, planning, your working memory, it's called, and impulse control. And it's also the part that we look at that tends to fail early and the first thing that goes in Alzheimer's, as well as in just normal cognitive aging. And it responds to different stimulus in the hippocampus. So again, now we we add to some of the nuance. The second thing I want to challenge is that muscle, muscle mass is just incredible and does things to your body that we did not know about 10 years ago. For example, when you contract your muscle against load, against resistance, it releases proteins called myokines into your bloodstream. Now, myokines by themselves are incredible. Some of those proteins cross the blood-brain barrier. Some of them support the growth and survival of brain cells. We have discovered an entire muscle-to-brain signaling system we didn't know existed not long ago. And it's primarily activated by lifting weights and having muscle mass. So, and this is just a tiny scratching the surface. I'm gonna do an entirely separate episode soon, very soon. It's on my list, about why you need to bring build muscle and it and it's gonna cover the holistic view of it, you know, well beyond just general health and fitness. The third thing I'm gonna challenge is, or not challenge, the third thing I want to bring up is that we now do have resistance training studies. And I'm gonna walk you through the new one that I mentioned earlier. So here we go.

  Recent study and brain age scans

  Philip Pape 7:48

  The study is a Danish trial published in the journal GeroScience in February. So February 2026, I'm recording this in late May 2026. It's out of a group called the LISA study. LISA stands for Live, Active, Successful Aging. And I did come across this study again through Bill Campbell's Body by Science Research Review. I love that guy. I love Bill. He was on Lane Norton's podcast recently too. That's a great episode you guys should check out. And if you don't subscribe to his review or really any reviews and you're into this stuff, consider it because it's a good way to get the latest and greatest studies that's kind of filtered through some of the good uh evidence-based academic guys today. So, anyway, Bill Campbell's been on the show. He's a great science communicator, and it was him, his review that turned me on to this. So, what they did is they took 309 adults aged 62 to 70, they randomized them into three groups for an entire year. Okay. Group one had heavy resistance training three times a week on machines, and it was supervised, so they were working in the 70 to 85 percent of their one rep max range. And they did six to 12 reps per set. Okay, so good heavy traditional resistance training. Group two did moderate resistance training, so they did mostly bands and body weight, and it was just one supervised session a week, plus two at home, in the 50 to 60 percent rep range or yeah, one RM. So lighter, right? Light, lighter work. And then group three was the non-exercising control group. They were just told to keep doing what they're doing. And so they did this for a year, they trained for a year, or didn't train for a year, depending on which group, and then they stopped and then they checked everyone again later. Oh no, then they checked everyone a year after that. So it's like a two-year arc to the study. Now, here's the wild part, okay? They didn't just measure strength or body composition, they actually put everyone in an MRI scanner and they ran a machine learning model on their brain scans. And the model had been trained already on over 2,400 other brains. It looks at how different regions of the brain communicate with each other. So the patterns of functional connectivity between the brain, and then estimates how old the brain looks compared to a typical person of that chronological age. And then the difference is called the brain age gap. So I wanted to set it up this way so you guys know this is some pretty serious science. It's not just some random, you know, DNA test or something like that. Now, I want to explain

  Brain age gap and dementia risk

  Philip Pape 10:21

  why this matters. I'm gonna let me slow down on this for a bit. Okay, so first, the brain age gap. Let's just explain that real quick. It's been linked in multiple large studies to dementia risk, to mortality, to Alzheimer's risk. There's a 2025 paper that looked at the UK Biobank. This is over 38,000 people, and they found that every one-year increase in brain age gap was associated with a 16% higher Alzheimer's risk and a 12% higher all-cause mortality risk. So a younger-looking brain is actually a healthier brain when it comes to things like dementia Alzheimer's. Okay, so back to the study. They scanned everyone, they ran the model, you had the two-year time frame. So, what were the results? All right, the heavy lifting group, their brain age dropped by 1.4 years after the first year of training. The moderate group, it dropped by 1.39 years, so almost exactly the same. So 1.4, 1.39. So it's 1.4. And then the control group had no change. So both lifting groups at both intensities, they they

  Results across both lifting intensities

  Philip Pape 11:30

  cut a year and a half of their measured brain age a year later, you know, within a year. And then I would say one of the surprises from the research is that when they checked again a year later, after everyone stopped the formal training, the brain age reductions actually grew. So the heavy group was now even younger with their brain, 1.8, 40 years younger. The moderate group was 2.26 years younger. So the brain kept getting younger after they stopped lifting. This is just so good. I mean, think about that for a second. Okay, it wasn't just the benefits in the moment or right after they were done, but they continued, they compounded. How often do we talk about that principle when it comes to health and how much good you're doing for yourself by starting now? It's never too late. And then there's another piece of data I want to give you for the practical stuff today, in that the researchers looked at which brain regions change the most. The heavy lifting group, only the heavy lifting group, right? Not the moderate, definitely not the control group, only the heavy lifting group showed significantly increased functional connectivity in a big cluster of brain regions, primarily the prefrontal cortex, the exact part of the brain that handles executive function, working memory, decision making. Like we mentioned earlier, the part that tends to degrade first in aging, in dementia, in Alzheimer's. So both intensities of lifting weights helped reduce the brain age. And then only heavy lifting also reshaped the connectivity of the prefrontal cortex. And that's gonna be useful when we come back to the protocol a little bit later in this episode.

  Myokines, irisin, and BDNF

  Philip Pape 13:12

  So let's talk about why this works. I think the mechanisms are really cool to understand. This is where I nerd out, and I hope you enjoy this podcast for this reason. Muscle is an endocrine organ. It's an endocrine organ, something that we didn't even really frame it as like a decade ago. When you do a heavy set of squats or rows or pulldowns or whatever, your muscle fibers contract and release a bunch of signaling proteins into your bloodstream. I mentioned the myokines earlier. And the two that get the most attention right now in brain health research specifically are irisin or ericin, I think it's ericin, I-R-I-S-I-N, and cathepsin B. So iricin is really, again, I don't know if I'm pronouncing these right, guys. So iricin is released from the contracting muscle and crosses the blood-brain barrier. And in animal studies, boosting the levels of iricin in your brain actually retrieves memory or recovers, helps memory recover in Alzheimer's models. And in humans, erizin levels in the cerebrospinal fluid are actually lower in people with Alzheimer's. This was, I think this was published in Nature Medicine in 2019, if you want to look it up. Cathepsin B is another myocine and also crosses the blood-brain barrier. It directs directly supports the birth of new brain cells in the hippocampus. So that's what we call neurogenesis, the creation of new brain cells in adulthood, and it's driven by muscle contraction. I mean, that is so cool. I'm smiling as I record this because I just love how we have control over this, guys. We really do. Just by using your body as it's meant to. And I think this paper was from cell metabolism in 2016. So these are legitimate publications, legitimate scientific groups, you know, oftentimes, well, these aren't randomized controlled trials, but they're high quality, let's just say. And then there's BDNF, brain-derived neurotrophic factor. You probably heard about this on lots of different podcasts. I've talked about it on the show before. It's like miracle growth for your brain. Other than maybe that's a bad analogy because then we think of pesticides and stuff. Don't think of that. It's like steroids for your brain. That's not a good analogy either. Anyway, it supports the survival of neurons, and it also supports the growth of new connections between neurons. There was a 2024 meta-analysis of 35 randomized trials in older adults, and they found that resistance training raised the resting BDNF levels with an effect size larger than aerobic exercise did. Okay. So the mechanism, like summary, it goes as follows. If we would put all this together, lifting weights tells your muscle to release these chemicals, these myokines. Those chemicals tell your brain to grow. Aerobic exercise, right? Cardio does some of this too, but not all of it and not always to the same degree. And the prefrontal cortex connections and structure, that seems specifically responsive to heavy mechanical load from resistance training. So not only lifting weights, but making sure it's at a high enough level, which is interesting because I've been talking about osteoporosis as well and how some of the benefits of preserving bone density come from higher loads. So it's not just about hypertrophy. If all you care about is muscle size, fine. A lot of this wouldn't necessarily apply. But if you care about the other 90% of things that affect your health and dementia, brain risk, all of this, then lifting heavy occasionally could actually be its own unique benefit. So doing cardio for your brain, no longer the whole picture, right? There's this entire signaling system activated by resistance training and muscle mass. And this is just one study that's a pretty good piece of evidence that lifting weights is good for your brain.

  How to build skills for lifting weights

  Philip Pape 16:57

  Speaking of lifting weights as brain medicine, if you need a little bit of help with lifting, how to lift, how to progress, how to support your lifting with your nutrition and the other things that support your brain and your lifestyle, everything from sleep to stress, whether you're in perimenopause, menopause, over 40, dealing with hormonal changes, you've tried things before and they don't work, or what you did in the past doesn't work anymore. That is what I created Eat More Lift Heavy for. This is our six-month program. It walks you through building skills one week at a time, and we help you hit your goals in a sustainable way so you can maintain them. Not only that, by the end of the program, we will have taught you how to judge your own data and approach so you really never need a coach again. That is the ultimate goal. And if you want to accelerate your results far more than what you can get just by absorbing information on this podcast, I encourage you to check it out. Go to eatmore liftheavy.com. EatmoreLiftheavy.com. The reason I bring it up in this episode is because, you know, the women and men in EMLH are not lifting to look a certain way necessarily. Of course they want to look better and they're going to look better. I mean, they like the muscle, but the deeper motivation is what we're talking about today. They want to be sharpened to their 60s, their 70s, their 80s. They want to read books and play with their grandkids. They want to keep their independence. And lifting heavy, now heavy is a subjective term. We can get into that on another episode, is how we do that. So eat more liftheavy.com. Check it out.

  Lifting protocol for brain health

  Philip Pape 18:30

  Now we're gonna get to the protocol, right? So you've heard the study. What does the research show? What are the mechanisms? Now what do you do? And the answer is pretty simple. You want to lift weights at least twice a week. Three if you can swing it. I generally tell people three is a good solid minimum to get the most of the results, but two will get you a lot of results. And honestly, one will get you far more results than zero as well. But I really hope you strive for at least two, if not three. Anything less than twice a week from the brain perspective, we're just not sure. But in general, I would say you need a bit of frequency to stimulate your muscles to grow, to get enough mechanical tension from the volume, et cetera. Okay, so that's the amount per week. I would say full body sessions are perfectly fine and sometimes quite effective as opposed to splitting it until you get a little bit more advanced. Today we're talking about brain health. So I want something that is, I'll say the minimum you will absolutely do the shortest sessions you could do, again, at a minimum, to get your muscles moving and also to give them the load they need. And so this is where things like compound movements, variations of squatting and deadlifting, you know, hip hinge, pushing, pulling are hugely beneficial. You don't have to do the power lifting variations of those, like the conventional deadlift per se. I'm gonna do another episode in the future talking about why most lifts are safe if you do them right. So that's not the concern here. It's just a function of what you want to do and why. As far as the actual programming, that is an episode in and of itself. But if you're working in, say, the six to 12 rep range and the last two to three reps feel genuinely hard and you are, you know, two or three reps shy from failure, or even as little as zero to one if it's a smaller movement, that's gonna give you the mechanical tension you need to support strength and muscle growth. And so if you could do two or three sessions a week, 30 to 45 minutes, it's a great protocol to start with. And that is the whole thing. Now, obviously, I have lots more resources behind this. If you join Eat More Lift Heavy, we give you

  Entry points for new lifters

  Philip Pape 20:45

  all sorts of training templates. We give you the protocols on breathing and bracing and adjusting programming and all that, but that is the basics. Now, you might be saying, Philip, I am listening to your show. I'm 55, I've never lifted a barbell, or I've never lifted out lifted weights, or I'm really not sure what to do in the gym. It sounds intimidating. All right, two things. First of all, the LISA subjects or the participants in the LISA study were 62 to 70 years old, and the moderate lifting group that still got a benefit from the brain age. And remember, they were using bands and body weight. They weren't even using barbells or going to the gym. So it's still far, far, far better than not lifting weights. That's that's the first thing I'm gonna say is like, what is your entry point? It doesn't have to be barbell squats per se. The entry point is like showing up and getting some load that is difficult for you so that you can grow and difficult in a good way, right? It challenges you and you're gonna get stronger and progress over time. Start where you are. Number two, I'm gonna say that heavy, heavy is relative. Heavy doesn't mean a ton of weight or more than the next the person next to you, or you know, strong for your body size or weight. No. Heavy means it's challenging for you on this day, and for someone. Who's never lifted, you've got to test that out as you get started. It's okay to go too light and then realize, oh, that's too light and easy. And now I get it. I get what Philip's saying. I need to get to where I don't have too many reps left in the tank. Okay. And there's lots of ways to test that and push that and ever. But as long as you're progressing on the same lifts over time, you're going to be able to find where that is and start to hit those walls that make it feel heavy enough where you know you're at that point. All right. Now that said, remember the heavy group got an extra advantage with the prefrontal cortex. All right. So there are definitely advantages to lifting heavy loads, and there's ways to do it safely. And there's a payoff to all that, including bone density, including strength, et cetera. Function, we can go on. But I want you to start where you're at at least two or three times a week, full body, compound movements, make the last few reps hard. Do that for six months. And I'd love to hear how that affects your brain, especially if you're on the older side and starting this out in your 60s, 70s, maybe 80s. I mean, look, people have built muscle mass in their 90s who didn't lift before. We've seen it in some of the literature. Before we close out, I promised you a 30-second self-test for your own dementia risk. I'm going to share that in a second. But, you know, quickly just another reminder: if today's topic landed for you, if you've been hearing me talk about lifting weights for your brain and for your bone health, for body composition, for visceral fat, all of that stuff. And you're like, okay, where do I even start? That is what Eat More Lift Heavy is for. I mentioned it earlier. I mentioned it one more time. Just check it out. EatmoreLiftheavy.com. It's a nutrition and training program that includes human coaching, includes live calls, and includes tons of support and accountability, but it helps you build skills. It doesn't just help you get quick weight loss, it helps you build skills. And that is the point. So go to eatmoreliftheavy.com, take a look, see if it fits. Doors always open. EatmoreLiftheavy.com. So here is a finding from a study called the Rush Memory and Aging Project. This is this is the thing I promised you, okay? Researchers followed over 900 older adults for four years and they measured their muscle strength at the beginning. And then every one

  Grip strength and dementia risk

  Philip Pape 24:15

  standard deviation increase in muscle strength was associated with a 43% lower risk of developing Alzheimer's. Now, the most, I'll say accessible, the easiest way to measure your own muscle strength is grip strength, in terms of if you're trying to compare it to uh charts and data points and studies and things like that. It's not something that I train. I don't ever, I've never told anybody to train them grip strength. Some old school, you know, factory workers and manual laborers and like our grandpa probably had stronger grips just from their day-to-day job. And it predicts a lot of things, including dementia, mortality, recovery from illness. I know that when I had my, what was it? One of one of the first surgeries I had, they had me test my grip strength later on. I think it was for my shoulder, right? For my rotator cuff, uh, by squeezing this device. And I remember how, you know, the physical therapist is like, okay, we never have to do this again. You've got more than sufficient grip strength. And that's because I had already trained for years before that point. I stayed strong. I started training after I had surgery right. And it's a good, you know, the fact that they're telling me to test that, and there's some expectation that some people will not have good enough grip strength tells you there's a link there. And you don't need a fancy device to do it, though. You can hang from a pull-up bar and see how long you can hold and then kind of like progressively overload that, if you will, which comes with strength. You can, you know, obviously, if you know that it's hard to open a jar or something on a good day, like that gives you a signal as well. There are grip strength little devices you can get, like at Amazon or whatever. But regardless, my point is you're not trying to fix your grip specifically. You're just trying to get stronger generally. And so if you start lifting, if you do it regularly, if you do all the different parts of, you know, exercise all the parts of your body, build that engine, your grip strength will also go up as well. But I'm just telling you that this is a good sign that if you feel like you have a very weak grip, you're probably not very strong and you have a lot of potential. That's that's where I'm going with that. All right, until next time, keep using your wits, lifting those weights. And remember, your muscle strength and muscle mass isn't just about looking good in the mirror, being generally healthy. It protects everything else, including your mind. I'm Philip Pape, and I'll talk to you next time here on the Wits and Weights podcast.

The Satiety Diet (How to Lose Fat Without Fighting Hunger) | Ep 473

What does a fat loss diet look like when you build it around satiety (fullness) instead of restriction or willpower?

The answer is based on the biology of post-diet hunger, 5 satiety levers that decide how full you are after a meal, and the targets you can set at your next meal.

Most fat loss attempts fall apart around week 5 or 6. The reason is rarely willpower. Hunger is a measurable physiological state that intensifies the longer and harder you diet, and most nutrition plans don't account for it.

This episode covers a study on hunger hormones that stayed disrupted a full year after dieting, the five satiety levers, from how calorie-dense your food is to how fast you eat it, and a simple way to audit your own meals for fullness without counting every calorie. It is built for adults over 40, especially women navigating perimenopause and menopause, who lift weights and want to lose fat in a way you can sustain

Ready to build a fat loss diet around fullness instead of willpower? Enroll in Eat More Lift Heavy, the 26-week coached program where adults over 40 build the nutrition and training skills to lose fat, build muscle, and manage their physique for life. 

Timestamps:

0:00 - Hunger as the price of fat loss
3:11 - Hunger as a biological signal
5:30 - Hormones a year after a diet ends
9:06 - Engineering a diet for fullness
9:54 - Energy density and food volume
12:58 - Protein and spontaneous calorie intake
15:01 - Viscous fiber and gut hormones
17:20 - Eating rate and fullness
19:58 - Hyper-palatable foods and the supermarket
23:09 - How to design your satiety diet
24:45 - Satiety targets per meal and per day
27:18 - 2-to-3 swap rule for your worst meals
32:07 - Bonus: 200-calorie reality check

Episode Resources:

• Download my favorite nutrition app MacroFactor and use code WITSANDWEIGHTS for an extended 2-week free trial

• Transcript

  Hunger as the price of fat loss

  Philip Pape 0:00

  You've probably heard that along with fat loss comes some level of hunger, and that you have to sit with it sometimes, sometimes you have to push through, and it is the price of admission. I've seen many fat loss attempts fail because of this willing acceptance for hunger. And today I want to walk you through what a fat loss diet looks like when you instead design it around fullness. There are five big satiety levers that the research tells us can really, really help when it comes to adherence with your diet, which ultimately is the thing that will make you successful. So we're gonna go over that, the specific targets that you can hit at your next meal, and a 200-calorie reality check that's gonna change how you evaluate what is on your plate. 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, founder of the Fitness Lab app, and today's episode comes from basically a lot of the misunderstandings I see relative to fat loss phases and appetite. If you're over 40, especially, if you're a woman in the perimenopause or post-menopause transition, you've probably run the following experiment. You decide to lose fat, you of course cut calories to go in a deficit, you have some level of discipline for the first few weeks, you're motivated, and then maybe around weeks five or six, the hunger starts to increase more and more. It gets really loud. You start thinking about or even obsessing about food more than you want to, and then you start to slip. You eat a little bit extra at night, maybe you sneak in a snack here or there. Maybe the foods that you go for are a little bit more calorie dense than you anticipated. And then it starts to stall or push back or slow down your fat loss phase or end it all together. And on one hand, yes, you should have some level of feeling of hunger or some appetite because your body is trying to draw from its energy stores, from its fat cells. And there's going to be hunger that comes along with that. There are a lot of hormonal changes that occur. But also, we shouldn't look at hunger as this like character test, you know, that we like, okay, you've just got to be in this massive level of hunger. That means it's working. That's the thing I hear all the time. It means it's working. This is a measurable physiological state that you should be in that scales with how long and how aggressive a deficit is. And that's fine, but why don't we work with that as best as possible and minimize the effects? Because a lot of you, the way you're eating, whether you're in a fat loss or not, is not really contributing toward the most satisfy or high satiety, I should say, full diet that will make fat loss a bit easier. And by easier, I mean not just that you get through and adhere. That's obviously very important, but you can manipulate the variables, like how aggressively you can go, and maybe you can then shorten the duration because you've made it a little bit easier on yourself, let alone some of the more aggressive experiments like a rapid fat loss phase, which we're gonna be covering in an upcoming episode as we revisit that topic.

  Hunger as a biological signal

  Philip Pape 3:11

  So we're doing three things today. First, the actual biology of post-diet hunger, including a study where people were still hungrier and had altered hormones 12 months after the diet ended. Second, we're gonna talk about the five satiety levers. These are the big variables that research pops up when we think about why do some meals leave us full for many hours and some just don't satisfy us. And then that's when we lead to the midnight snacking or what have you. And then third, we're gonna give you some practical targets that you can set or target or audit for your next meal. I'm not talking about calories, macros, I'm talking about around satiety. And then at the end of this episode, I'm gonna share a 200-calorie reality check. These are just some different foods that are 200 calories each, so you can compare in your head differences in calorie density and nutrient density that will help you with fullness because that's the principle of all of this. All right, so let's start with the framing here that okay, fat loss requires hunger. Eat less, move more, push through the discomfort. You need to be in calorie deficit, energy balance, all that's great. And yet you've heard me talk about the value of behavior change where discipline and willpower are very difficult things to rely on and motivation, right? We don't want to have that. We want to kind of engineer our approach to work with the reality of the situation rather than trying to push through the reality. So when you treat hunger like a thing you have to have and a hat you you have to expect it during fat loss, it also becomes its own moral signal, which is interesting, right? Sometimes we talk about food as good or bad, but also I've heard I've seen on social media talking about hunger as like it's a sign of weakness if you can't outlast your hunger because that's necessary for the fat to come off. Now, this isn't always the framing. A lot of the framing is actually quite the opposite, like, oh, you're not gonna have any hunger at all, and you could lose fat so easily. Well, I think that does a disservice as well. Uh, but but hunger is not a moral thing either. It's just a biological output of your energy state, driven largely by hormones, driven by some other things, but primarily by hormones. And that it gets louder and louder the more that you restrict and the longer you restrict. It's a feedback signal. And for some of you, it's stronger than

  Hormones a year after a diet ends

  Philip Pape 5:30

  others, right? We have brain-related genes. This is why the GLP1s, for some people, when they go off with them, they immediately go back to their prior behavior. And for others, it kind of they can titrate off or even change their behavior while on them. But anyway, I want to share a study with you. Okay, this is Smithran or Sumithran and their colleagues out of the University of Melbourne. And this is published in the New England Journal of Medicine back in 2011, so about 15 years ago. And it's it's a phenomenal piece of work, in my opinion. They took 50 overweight adults, put them on a 10-week diet, and they lost about 13 kilograms on average. Okay, so far, so good. Then they followed them for a full year. And what they found at the 12 months mark after the diet, a year after the diet ended, was almost every hormone that regulates hunger was still abnormal. So ghrelin, the hunger hormone, was still elevated. Leptin, the fullness and energy storage hormone, was still lower, uh, peptide YY, GLP1, cholecysokinin, all the natural satiety signals were all depressed from their previous state. And also the subjective hunger ratings were much higher than they were before the diet started. So that's 12 months after the diet. Now you think about that, the body was still acting like it was being starved, and the hunger wasn't going away. And these were people who were not actively dieting anymore, right? So this is interesting because it's a measurable state of biology, your biology or physiology that could seem to persist after a deficit ends. There's another piece of research I want to share here. It's Rosenbaum and Libel, and this is at Columbia University. And they've been doing some good obesity research for maybe the last three decades. They did some fMRI research that showed that your brain's response to food images literally changes after weight loss, where the reward regions light up more, the prefrontal uh control parts of the brain that say, like, you know, no thanks, I'm full, I'm I'm good, light up less. So when you've lost weight and then you, you know, go back, go past that bakery that you like the cannolis from, and I'm not talking from personal experience, am I? Uh, it's not that you've also be all of a sudden become weaker or something. It's that your brain is processing that smell of those foods with a little bit of a different signal than before. And when in the study they gave leptin to restore the leptin to pre-diet levels, the patterns normalize. So it was the biology, it was the hormones driving the behavior. Now you're like, oh my gosh, that means I shouldn't go into a fat loss phase. I shouldn't diet, I shouldn't lose weight, because then it's gonna be worse. Well, no. What do we do with this information? Obviously, you can lose fat. People do it all the time. I've worked, I've worked with people all the time, clients, people and eat more lift heavy that lose it, and they're actually far better off than when they started, both from a health perspective, but also in managing things like their hunger signals. What I am saying is that just trying to fight willpower is not gonna help you long term when other things are amplifying your hunger all the time, sleep, stress, changes to hormones and things. So I think the best move here is to design your diet so that you trigger less hunger per calorie of deficit in the first place, and you normalize these things and eat in a way in your diet that you would eat not in a diet. The only difference being some of these things are scaled down. Calories are scaled down, maybe a protein scaled up, maybe carbs are scaled way down during a diet, just to, you know, be in the proper energy

  Engineering a diet for fullness

  Philip Pape 9:06

  balance. So if you want to engineer a diet for fullness, the question becomes so this is the title of the episode the satiety diet. What are the variables you have to manipulate? When you look at satiety research from the last 30 years, and I'll tell you, listening to a lot of other experts on this over the past couple years, it's very difficult to tease apart real conclusions. Let's just put it that way. It's it's a mess. Okay. But there are there's been a lot of activity in the last even five years that we can maybe look at. And it seems like five things I'm gonna talk about today really move the needle the most. And those five things are energy density, protein, viscous fiber, the rate at which you eat, and then what we call hyperpalatability. So we're gonna focus on those five

  Energy density and food volume

  Philip Pape 9:54

  things. All right. So the first one is energy density, and this is the calories per gram of food. How many calories are packed in the same volume of food? Barbara Rolls at Penn State, she has been this, I guess, volumetrics person when we talk about volume, volumetrics for decades, really. She built this stream of research, what I'd call the seminal stream of research here. The bottom line is that humans eat to a relatively fixed weight of food per day. Interesting, right? Like we tend to want to eat the same quantity, physical quantity of food. We don't eat to a calorie target. We eat to a volume target, which means, by definition, hey, if you can lower the energy density of what's going in your mouth, what's on your plate, you can eat the same physical amount of food and ingest fewer calories without feeling deprived. Okay. Many of you are like, yeah, I've heard that before, or I know that. That's that seems to make sense. Well, what am I going to do in this modern food environment, right? No. So when we look at specific numbers, very low energy density would be considered less than 0.6 calories per gram. So what is that? Most non-starchy vegetables, that would be broth-based soups. That'd be fruits like melon and strawberries. That's very low energy. That's why I think broth-based soups, for example, are great during fat loss, you know, vegetable soups, fruits like berries. Okay. Then that's a very low. Now, low is 0.6 to 1.5. So that would include fruits, starchy vegetables, low-fat dairy, beans, whole grains, like cooked whole grains, lean meats. So now we're we're expanding to a lot of the wonderful, delicious whole foods we love to eat that include carbs, fats, or carbs and protein primarily, and a little bit of fat in there, but not much. Okay. So then medium energy density, we get up to one and a half to four calories per gram. This would be like the typical Western diet sandwich and meat and cheese zone. Okay. So you're starting to introduce more fats, more fatty forms of the different foods, higher fat dairy, you know, meats, et cetera. Then high energy density is like four to nine calories per gram. Now we're talking about processed foods like crackers, chips, cookies, but also whole foods like nuts and chocolate, which are very energy energy dense. And then the most energy dense is like pure oils, so pure fats and butter and things like that. That's nine calories per gram, which is just fat. Okay. Fat is nine calories per gram. So like a pure fat source is gonna be, by definition, the most energy dense. So if your daily average for your whole meals or your whole uh food log for the day is two to two and a half calories per gram, then you're gonna be eating a small physical amount of food for your calorie budget versus if it's like closer to one to two, right? And hopefully you're if you're and if you're sitting much higher than that, then then you've really got low-hanging fruit, pun intended, to go after here, right? And so these all matter because of things like stretch receptors and your gut hormones. So that's the first big lever, is simply energy density. Lever

  Protein and spontaneous calorie intake

  Philip Pape 12:58

  two is protein, protein percentage. Now I know what you're thinking. You're like, okay, I lift weights, I already eat my protein. This isn't new. I hear about protein all the time. But I want to talk about the satiety data specifically here, okay? Let alone all the other benefits of protein, which we're going to have an episode soon about some counterintuitive aspects of protein, like, hey, you might be able to actually eat more protein, all things equal, and not gain weight or fat and actually lose fat. Anyway, that's beside the point. Let's talk about satiety. So there's a study by Wagel and colleagues in 2005. They took people from a normal diet at like 15% protein. You know, most people don't get very much protein, and they bumped them to 30% protein. But they said you could eat whatever you want, you just have to hit the protein. So all they're tracking is protein, hit your protein. Their spontaneous calorie intake dropped by 441 calories a day without any conscious restriction. The body just said, hey, I don't need as much food. I don't need as much food because you increased your protein. Now, if you look at the average American, you know, at around 15% of calories from protein, that's like the control group that was inadequate. So for many of you, if you're not deliberately upping your protein already, then this is a big lever. Okay. And the practical target we often talk about here is 0.7 to 1 grams per pound of body weight. But 0.7 is more than sufficient for most people, for the average person. If you like to eat more, if you want to eat more, if you can't eat more, go for it. Nothing wrong with it, unless it's so high that it crowds out carbs or fat. But it tends to be kind of on an average diet, eh, 30% of your calories. We don't think percentages for protein. I usually tell you, you know, grams per pound because it's gonna depend on your body size and your goal. But aiming for 30 to 40 grams per meal is usually the way to get there. And we often see that front loading that at breakfast can give you extra benefits. There's also the benefits of, you know, how much leucine you have and hitting muscle protein synthesis and all that. But all I care about here is total protein. Okay, so that's a good one to just to re uh iterate.

  Viscous fiber and gut hormones

  Philip Pape 15:01

  Lever three is interesting. It's viscous fiber, viscous fiber, not just any fiber. Okay, we're talking about a high satiety diet, viscous fiber. Now, this is fiber that thickens the water in your gut. So this would be oats and beta glucan, which beans, legumes, uh, psyllium. You know, some of you actually do use cilium husk as a supplement, chia seeds, flax seeds. Okay. A 2019 meta-analysis by Sally and colleagues looked at the effect sizes of different soluble fibers on subsequent calorie intake. Guar gum had an effect size of negative 0.96, which is actually huge. Beta glucan was negative 0.42, pectin was negative 0.22. So you don't have to understand exactly what that means, just that they are highly correlated with reducing how much you eat subsequently. And when we look at the mechanism, viscous fiber slows the rate at which food empties from your stomach. So it slows gastric emptying, as they call it, and therefore your stomach stays full longer. It also slows the rise of blood glucose. Again, we've talked about eating more balanced meals that include fiber, and that tends to slow down your increase of blood sugar in addition to walking after meals. So as it ferments in your colon, it produces short-chain fatty acids that trigger your gut to release more GOP1, more peptide peptide YY. These are your natural fullness hormones. You know, the GOP1. We know that is the same thing that weight loss drugs are trying to replicate. And again, again, we we don't want to compare them to the drugs. The drugs are far more powerful in terms of the dose. But the average American gets not very much fiber at all, about I think 10 to 15 grams of fiber a day. And we want you at 25 to 40, you know, more for men than women, just due to size and how much you eat. And if you could aim for, let's say, eight to 15 of those from viscous sources, like if you want to be very specific based on this tip in your high satiety diet, look at foods that have higher viscous fiber and make those a per uh a good chunk of the fiber you get every day, not to mention increasing fiber in general. Don't do it overnight. If you get low fiber, don't go from low to super high. That could be not great on your gut. You know, titrate it up over, let's say, a

  Eating rate and fullness

  Philip Pape 17:20

  week. All right, lever four is eating rate, how fast you eat, how fast food enters your body. And this is wildly underrated. And for those of us who love to shovel food down our mouths or love to eat while watching TV or looking at our phone or not eat mindfully, listen up because this could be your biggest lever. Ford and colleagues, they took pooled data across 327 foods and they found that unprocessed foods, so unprocessed foods are eaten at about 35 calories a minute, whereas processed foods are eating eaten at 54 calories a minute. Ultra processed foods at 69 calories per minute. So an ultra-processed meal will be eaten and go into your body twice as fast as a whole food meal. Why does that matter? Probably a little bit obvious, but let's get into it. Your gut takes about 20 to 30 minutes to send a fullness signal to your brain, like a true hey, I am full. Okay. If you front load 800 calories in like 12 minutes, then you're not gonna get that signal until you're already done eating, and now you're thinking of dessert. Okay. So this could this is gonna hit on both mindful eating and calorie density that we already talked about. There's a 2024 crossover trial out of Japan by Habano and colleagues, where they fed people the same calories and macros, same protein, fat, carbs, but in one week the food was ultra-processed, and in the other week it wasn't. So on the ultra-processed week, people ate 813 calories a day. So that's that's a lot of food, just you know, we're talking about the the one meal. And the mechanism behind that was the chewing frequency. There was fewer, there was less chewing, faster eating, and so they consumed more food. So the the lever here for you is really texture, solid versus liquid, intact food versus I'll say pureed or processed food, fibrous versions of food, whole grains and such versus refined foods. And then the mindful eating part as well, like setting your fork down between bites and not being distracted while you're eating. You know, I'm sorry, these are boring, like long-tested pieces of advice, but they're gonna work for slowing down your eating and increasing your fullness just from that. And look, when you're in fat loss and you're not eating very big meals, maybe not even as many meals, wouldn't it be nice to just actually enjoy what you're eating and not just scarf it down and be like, okay, now the hunger starts to hit and I'm trying to lose fat? So it's a very important one.

  Hyper-palatable foods and the supermarket

  Philip Pape 19:58

  The last lever here for a high satiety diet is hyper palatabil hyper palatability. And this kind of overlaps the most of what people think of as junk food and highly processed food, but I want to be careful here because hyper palatable foods, okay, that's a term, I think it comes from Terra Focino at the University of Kansas, based on what I could discover. Hyperpalatable foods are foods that combine fat with sugar, fat with salt, or carbs with salt at specific concentration thresholds, right? Hence they are super palatable. They're so super delicious. Okay, we're we're separating this out from calorie density, which was lever one, even though there can be some overlap here. About 62% of items in the US food supply meet the definition of ult of hyper palatable. Okay, that's 62%, that's like two-thirds of what's in the supermarket, which isn't surprising if you go into a supermarket, but it's still insane. And when we talk about the food environment and engineered foods and the nutrition science and all that behind all this stuff, where the foods are engineered deliberately to bypass your fullness signals. And I think they're trying to even amp that up further since people are eating less on GLP1s, you know, without going into conspiracy theorists, capitalism and the drive to, you know, give people something that's delicious so they buy more of it. I mean, if we buy it, they're gonna make it, is what it comes down to. I'm not gonna blame them. If we're gonna buy it, they're gonna make it. Now, there's been research that that looks at, you know, when you control for energy density, that was lever number one, and then hyperpalatability, hyper palatability, it's not that foods are labeled as ultra-processed that's the problem. It's how it's engineered, one food's engineered versus the other. So, for example, some ultra processed foods are low in energy density and they're not hyperpalatable. And so I put them under the, I'll say, fine condition from a satiety perspective. And then some so called whole foods, whole foods like trail mix or granola are densely caloric. They have a lot of calories and they're engineered for palatability. And they will absolutely get past your fullness signals and you can eat too much of them very easily, which honestly is why people seek them out for going on a hike and having a lot of energy on your hike. It's easy to eat, doesn't fill you up too much, and you get a lot of calories. So if you're trying to lose fat, if you're trying to control for that, you've just got to be aware of hyper palatability in particular, independent of whether it's an ultra-processed food. So those are your five levers: energy density, protein, viscous fiber, rate of eating, and hyperpalatability. Palatability. Now, two meals with the exact same calories can produce wildly different hunger depending on how they score on these variables. A 500-calorie burger and fries versus a 500-calorie, say, chicken, beans, sweet potato vegetable plate are probably going to feel different. You're going to probably be hungry after the burger and fries. I mean, anybody who's ever eaten Chinese food probably feels hungry like an hour later. All right. So before I move into the practical fix here, I want to address something because I know what you're thinking.

  How to design your satiety diet

  Philip Pape 23:09

  You're like, okay, this sounds great, but how do I figure out where my current diet falls on these levers? What do I do? How do I know if my protein percentage is where it needs to be, my average energy density, the hyperballiathy, all that? Well, I do want to mention something that we have. It's a program called Eat More Lift Heavy. It's 26 weeks of skill by skill by skill. And in phase one, we actually set up how you measure these things. Not just calories and macros, but measuring your fiber and energy density and really comparing it to some other things going on, including your biofeedback, like your hunger. And we don't, you don't have to track all of these things and look at all of them. All you have to do is log your food, compare it to how you're feeling, and see where the correlations might be, and then start to tweak the right variables. So that's something we help you with. Obviously, you can do these things on your own if you, you know, apply all these systems, if you have a system, but we give you that system. Go to eatmore liftheavy.com. Um, you get human coaching in there. Carol and I are inside providing coaching. There's live calls. There's the one focus per week that you learn and apply and get accountability from. And we help you become independent when it comes to these things. And I'm all about that. That is my mission is to help teach all of you to become independent in this world without having to become a nutrition scientist. So go to eatmorliftheavy.com. That's eatmore liftheavy.com. By the way, when you go in there, you'll see there's something called dialed in, which is closer to a personalized one-on-one coaching experience we have as well. And honestly, I think it's far more affordable than typical,

  Satiety targets per meal and per day

  Philip Pape 24:45

  a typical one-on-one coach because of the systems and tools we put in place. So go to eatmore liftheavy.com. All right, so now we have the five levers. How do you use them? I'm gonna give you some specific targets for these, and then you can decide. You know, do you want to track all of these? Do you want to go after one at a time? That's generally what I would recommend. Do you already know which one is the biggest lever that you could attack right now? So let's talk about the meal level for the targets. I would say 30 to 40 grams of protein per meal, eight to 12 grams of fiber per meal is gonna take you very far. And within that fiber, per today's episode, some of that being viscous fiber, like maybe aim for half of it to be viscous. So that the total energy density is ideally under one and a half calories per gram. You're like, I've got to do math. It's pretty simple. Like log it in your in your tracker. I love to use macrofactor. Please, if you want to support the show, download macro factor and use my code WIT's and weights, all one word, and you get your a nutrition summary there, and you can easily tell how many calories per gram based on the total gram weight of the food. And you don't have to do this every time. I would say do it occasionally to kind of audit yourself. Also, slow the rate you eat and don't have a ton of hyperpalatable foods, even though you can have some, because again, we don't demonize any particular foods on this show. There is no one bad food on the planet, not seed oils, not sugar, not any gluten, none of that. Okay. And we talked about that on a recent episode. Now, what about at the daily level? So that's at the meal level. You know, at the daily level, it really comes down more to your macros. Are you getting enough protein? Are you getting that 0.701 grams per pound? Are you getting enough fat? For many people, that's 20 to 30 percent of their calories, the rest of their calories from carbs. And then specifically within those carbs, are you getting a good chunk of fiber, 25 to 40 grams of fiber, depending on how much you need, and 8 to 15 of those as viscous. So that's on a daily level, which again, you could do it at the meal level, the daily level, whatever makes sense for you. This is something we help help you analyze on an individual basis and eat more lift heavy if you need that kind of support. But you're looking for the average daily energy density of your food, again, in that like 0.8 to 1.5 calories per gram range. And of course, you got to have enough sleep because I know we didn't even talk about that, and I was hesitant to do so, but sleep is gonna actually affect hunger a lot, a lot. All right, so the rule to apply this,

  2-to-3 swap rule for your worst meals

  Philip Pape 27:18

  okay. I don't want you to get overwhelmed and panic that you gotta do this every single meal, every day, all the time. There's something what I call the two to three swap rule. Okay. Two to three swap rule. Audit your current diet, just audit it. Find the two or three meals that score the worst on these levers. So if you if you log for like a week, you've got probably 21 or more meals to choose from. And there's probably a few that you know are just like not as great when it comes to these things, like maybe they have a lot more fat or processed foods or something. And find the two or three worst meals. Heck, you could probably use AI now. Take the macrofactor export, throw it into AI and say, hey, do what Philip just suggested for me. Okay. And for many of you, it's gonna be breakfast where you've got like a granola bar with like the processed yogurt that doesn't have much protein, right? Or a lot of sugar in it or whatever. And again, sugar's not bad. It's just what crowds out what. Maybe it's a snack, right? So, hey, you went for a bag of crackers because they're sitting on the counter. Maybe it's lunch where you have a sandwich. We have our habits, don't we? We have our habits. So find the two or three meals and just replace those with versions that hit these different targets, right? If you're already eating great dinners, like maybe it's fish and some grains and vegetables, it's fine, right? Pick the worst ones and just upgrade them. That's how you kind of slowly shift the whole thing where you want to be. We're adding then the things you want. We're not saying what you have to cut out. So, a concrete example is like if you have this granola bar at breakfast or something equivalent of it, where it's hardly any protein, it's a ton of sugar, it's easy to consume super quickly. Well, swap that one out. Take a couple scrambled eggs with cottage cheese. And when I say with cottage cheese, oh, it's so great to combine them. Delicious, you'll get fluffy, almost like cheesy eggs with a lot more protein, or you can add egg whites, or you can have the cottage cheese on the side. I don't care. However, you want to eat it, and then a piece of fruit, for example. Right? We're talking about swaps here. We're not talking about going perfect and ideal or optimizing. No, we're just talking about swaps. And it's the same amount of calories, but now you've gone from, say, four grams of protein to 30 grams of protein. You've put in something that you have to chew, you've got some fiber from the fruit, the energy density of the meal drops. Now you hit like four of the five levers and you didn't add any calories. Now, sometimes you might add calories. So what? As I mentioned before, sometimes when you add protein, you actually consume fewer calories later in the day because of the satiety. So that's that's a big piece. And then the last thing I want to mention for this is like your mental model each day. Are you comfortably full? Particularly when you're at maintenance calories, like when you're not in a deficit. And then once you've got that set up successfully, I would do that before you ever you do a fat loss phase. Then in a fat loss phase, you probably have some mild hunger per meals between meals, which is fine. That's your biology, but it would be less than it would otherwise. And or it allows you to gain maybe go maybe more aggressively on the on the fat loss phase because now you can handle a little a little bit more hunger, if that makes sense. Right. If you're feeling ravenous though, especially if you're not in fat loss, I mean, let alone in fat loss, go through the questions and ask yourself again about protein and fiber and the you know calorie density and how fast you ate and and then other things like did you sleep enough, et cetera. Okay. All right, before we wrap up, I told you at the beginning of the episode I was gonna give you a 200-calorie reality check. And I'm gonna do that in just a second. But again, if if everything I described today felt useful, but maybe a little overwhelming, that is the problem that we solve with eat more lift heavy. And I'm really serious about this. I'm very genuine about this because we used to have a program where people would come in and be overwhelmed. And I feel like a lot of people working with one-on-one coaches sometimes feel overwhelmed because on day one, they're like, you've got to increase your steps, you have to train, you have to increase your protein, you have to do this, this, this, this. I prefer an approach where each week you focus on one small thing and build it up slowly over time so that the fast approach is the slow approach, if that makes sense. In other words, taking a reasonable skill-building approach results in long-term success and sustaining what you're trying to do. So eat more lift heavy. If you go to eatmoriftheavy.com, you can read all about it. No pressure to sign up, just check it out. It's a 26-week guided coaching program. And in the very first phase, this is where we help you set up the measurement system. Figure out, hey, where does my current diet actually fall across the levers that we covered? Some are relevant to you, some less so. And then you start to execute to that and build and build and build. You start to master your protein, you start to understand your patterns, you know how to get around plateaus, how to get the fat loss, whether you're going for 10 to 20 pounds of fat loss, how to see your muscle definition, and so on. Okay, eatmorliftheavy.com. Go to eatmorliftheavy.com. All right, so here is the 200 calorie reality check.

  Bonus: 200-calorie reality check

  Philip Pape 32:07

  We are going to give you five foods that are all 200 calories, so you can visually in your mind or on a plate compare them so you see the difference in energy density and chewability, okay, which are a couple of the levers we talked about. So, 200 calories, what does that look like? That is a full pound of strawberries or half kilogram of strawberries. Takes you like 15 minutes to chew a pound of strawberries. Okay, I wanted to start right there just to kind of set the baseline. Similarly, broccoli, what about broccoli? What does 200 calories look like? That's five cups of broccoli. I mean, I almost never, ever, ever have 200 calories of broccoli on my plate. If there's broccoli for dinner, if I cook it or my wife cooks it, it's almost hardly hardly any of the calories in there. In fact, more calories probably come from the little bit of olive oil we baked it in. So five cups of broccoli to 200 calories, you probably would distend your stomach and you wouldn't even eat that much. But I'm just, you know, giving you it as an example. Potatoes, three medium boiled potatoes. Now, think about you ever cook potatoes, you know, and you chop them up. Imagine three of those big suckers, you eat them. Okay. By the way, this is the highest scoring food on the satiety index. So you would be stuffed, and that's only 200 calories. Now, what about almonds? Well, okay, 200 calories is only two ounces of almonds. So that's a very small handful. Chomp, chomp, chomp, you're done. All right. Now, I always think about tree nuts and the fact that like our ancestors would have to actually pick them and like shell them and all that, which would slow things down. But we don't do that. We just buy them all ready to go, salted often, sometimes dipped in chocolate, and boom, in your mouth. And you can you can apply that to peanut butter as well. Like 200 calories of peanut butter is just a tiny amount. And then finally, olive oil, tablespoon and a half of olive oil. All right. So that's not a surprise. And olive oil is great, but a little goes a long way. And so you've got to be aware of these calories. Um, and sometimes set things like salad dressings and sauces are full of oils, so they're very energy dense. So that's 200 calories visualized across some very different amounts of uh foods, some that would make you really full, some of them you would hardly notice, like the almonds or the oil. And really that's the premise of the satiety diet in just like a minute. It's the same energy coming in, but it's a way different level of fullness. And that can be the game changer for you when it comes to fat loss. All right, until next time, keep using your wits, lifting those weights. And remember, hunger is just engineering your diet and working with your signals. It's not a matter of morality or character or gutting it through. I'm Philip Pape, and I'll talk to you next time here on the Wits and Weights podcast.

Brain Fitness, Micro-Habits, and Your Health (Thoryn Stephens) | Ep 472

Why is it so hard to stay consistent with nutrition and fitness, even when you know what to do? What if the answer is not more discipline, but better systems?

Thoryn Stephens joins me to talk about why adherence is the real bottleneck in behavior change. We cover how to build simple health protocols around nutrition, exercise, sleep, stress, connection, and metabolic health without getting buried in data or overwhelmed by tracking.

You’ll learn why friction matters, how wearables like Oura and Garmin can help when used correctly, and why recovery, HRV, resting heart rate, and even unitasking can support better performance. We also discuss longevity, dementia prevention, brain training, and how small daily actions can influence long-term health.

Join Eat More Lift Heavy to build muscle, lose 10-20 lbs of fat, and learn what works for your body, 1 week at a time. Eat more and lift heavy with confidence:
https://eatmoreliftheavy.com

Timestamps:

0:00 - Why consistency breaks down
2:40 - Six pillars of health protocols
5:46 - Connection and longevity benefits
11:58 - Micro habits and adherence
17:11 - Choosing daily non-negotiables
20:48 - Tracking without overwhelm
28:41 - Dementia prevention through lifestyle
33:30 - Brain training and neuroplasticity
40:48 - Unitasking and cognitive performance

Episode resources:

• Brain.One

• Instagram: @ragearea 

• Transcript

  Why consistency breaks down

  Philip Pape 0:00

  You've heard of lifespan, you've heard of health span. There's a third one most people aren't aware of called mind span. It's the longevity and performance of your brain. And it might explain why you keep falling off your nutrition and training plan every few weeks, even when you know exactly what to do. Usually when that happens, your first thought might be, I need to track more closely, get more accountability, plan ahead better, follow a stricter schedule. Any very smart, capable person who is building a career or business, maybe raising a family, that advice seems like it should work. And yet this often works for only a few weeks before you're back at square one. My guest today has a background in molecular biology and knows a lot about the human brain. He's going to tell us what mindspand actually is, how microhabits and cognitive capacity connect to your training and nutrition, and the surprising and counterintuitive fix for inconsistency. 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 if you've ever fallen off your training or nutrition plan and tried to fix it by adding more, adding more structure, more tracking, more accountability, more planning, today's episode is going to challenge that thinking because we're going to talk about something called mind span. The idea that your brain's performance and longevity is an important variable in and of itself, because in fact your brain and your cognitive capacity might be the real bottleneck in your ability to be consistent. My guest today is Thorin Stevens. Thorin started in molecular biology, spent over a decade in data science and analytics. He now runs Brain One, a platform focused on brain fitness and behavioral protocols. He's all about neural performance and how to optimize human health to increase things like focus, energy, resilience. Today we're discussing mind span and why it matters for your physical health and fitness, how things like microhabits and cognitive capacity connect to your ability to accomplish your goals and strategies to make your routine even more sticky and sustainable. Thorin, welcome to Wits and Waits.

  Thoryn Stephens 2:15

  Thank you so much. Glad to be here.

  Philip Pape 2:17

  So we often describe consistency as a behavior problem, right? And I think what I've learned from your work is that you might say it's more of a brain-related or cognitive problem in terms of your ability to even execute those behaviors. Is that a fair way to characterize it?

  Thoryn Stephens 2:31

  I think humans are immensely complicated. And getting a human to do one small thing routinely is very challenging in itself. So I

  Six pillars of health protocols

  Thoryn Stephens 2:40

  believe there's rigor you can put behind how people learn new habits fundamentally. So I think there's definitely opportunity there.

  Philip Pape 2:47

  So let's let's go a little deeper on that then, because you're all about the brain and brain fitness, right? So when you talk about the rigor of setting up those behaviors, are we talking about a system, a structure? Is it more about I mean, what is it? Yeah.

  Thoryn Stephens 3:00

  Yeah. So just super briefly on my background, I'm a molecular biologist, went into data science, and then I started doing marathons and Ironman's and were using essentially health protocols to organize how I was training. And that really applies to other areas of my life as well, you know, relative to like my day-to-day health protocol. You know, when you get up in the morning, what do you do? And so when we talk about brain optimization, what we've seen through our own testing and research and also just looking at, you know, thousands of longevity papers and so forth, I mean, you have to really start with the basics. So ours are nutrition, exercise, sleep, stress, connection, some sort of metabolic, you know, just optimization as well. Those are kind of like the six pillars that we generally see. So if you're not sleeping, then you're not going to be neurologically active. It doesn't matter what nootropics you're taking or, you know, what magic pills. You really have to start with the foundation. And then from there, layering in a, you know, additional microhabits is what we call them, just small structured, you know, incremental things that you do that then have, you know, bigger sustained game over time.

  Philip Pape 4:03

  Okay. So I got three things out of that I want to dig in. One is the longevity connection. The two is the sixth or the fifth and sixth piece of those pillars, which you imagine connection and metabolic optimization. And then three is this layering on. So starting with longevity, why is longevity important in and of itself? Because I know there are short and long-term goals. And sometimes, you know, I know when I went through my nutrition coaching, right, you learn that there's these trade-offs between physique and athleticism and longevity. And so why is that important?

  Thoryn Stephens 4:34

  I think it depends on the human, right? I look at things such as this as a spectrum. And like over here, you have Brian Johnson, who is doing everything he can to optimize his biology to live longer. You know, most humans are kind of over here. You know, they know they want to live for a long time, but you know, maybe aren't making changes. You know, I don't know, maybe we're maybe over here a bit, following some sort of a structured plan. I think it depends on on the human and ultimately their own motivations. Not everyone wants to live forever. And, you know, as you look at these protocols for this, you know, supposedly to add, you know, additional years on that health span, those remaining years of your life, does that impact your quality of life, you know, and the things that you love to do? So it's in my mind, it's always a balance in these these things.

  Philip Pape 5:14

  And is the balance between health and lifespan or is this extra mind span variable layered in there now?

  Thoryn Stephens 5:18

  I mean, I think it's kind of all of the above, you know, like again, doing the things that you love, anything that you love that's done in excess generally is you know negative relative to your mind span, health span, all the above. So I think you know, the balance of it is really important.

  Philip Pape 5:34

  That's a good way to put it, right? Anything in excess, because that's often what we talk about is doing too much handing that back. Putting extra weight, yeah, exactly.

  Thoryn Stephens 5:41

  Everything of course. So, but yeah, those are some of the principles that

  Connection and longevity benefits

  Thoryn Stephens 5:46

  we really try to, you know, round around, basically.

  Philip Pape 5:48

  Okay. Yeah. Well, I I like principles. So when you meant you said you start with the pillars and then you lay around microhabits, and we talk ad nauseum on this podcast about nutrition and training and sleep and stress. You did mention though, connection, which I assume you mean like human connection, community, things like that. Is that what you're talking about?

  Thoryn Stephens 6:05

  Yeah, I mean, I would expand it a bit. You know, so I'm a molecular biologist turned data scientist. So, you know, my life has revolved around data, but you know, I'm not obsessive about these things. And I went and met with the Center for Brain Health out of UT Dallas a couple years ago. I was just starting Brain One and you know, had this vision. And I met with uh one of the founders, Dr. Sandra Chapman, and I was like, you know, Dr. Sandra, we have all this amazing data sets, and I'm looking at my bar markers and my, you know, my my wearable data, and then we're amalgamating it and I'm seeing all these patterns. And she's like, Yeah, Thorin, that's really cool. You know what's really cooler? Connection. And humans that have connection, whether it's to themselves, it's to the higher power, it's to their family, you know, it's to their community, live longer. Like, period. I mean, the data absolutely suggests, you know, how much longer? I don't know, 10 to 15%, depending on the study, you know, but a number of years. And so people ask, like, what is the secret of life? I think it's fundamentally simple. It's waking up and doing what you love. And if you are doing something you don't love, you'll wake up and then you'll be disgruntled and so many impacts there. So as we think about those things, you know, waking up with, you know, a an inspiration or just a desire to do something, you know, whether whatever that is, again, spending time with your family. And community is an integral part of that, you know, quite literally. And then there's other small things. It can be a book club, it could be chess club, it could be, you know, playing soccer with the friends, whatever it is. But there's absolutely a connection both to longevity, but also just neurological optimization relative to community and connection.

  Philip Pape 7:35

  I think it's underrated. Uh I definitely, you know, because we don't we don't measure it, right? So like you kind of assume there's this black box or this myopic kind of view of wearables and measurement and everything. And it's like, who I mean, I do know people in different spaces who have that as a thing that they track, right? Which some would say, Oh, that's crazy. Why would you track these squishy things like relationships or how often you talk to your wife? But you know, I mean, it's sometimes you have to have targets and goals, right?

  Thoryn Stephens 8:00

  Uh I think that's very, very interesting. How are they tracking those relationships? Just curious.

  Philip Pape 8:04

  I mean, there's different approaches. There's, you know, uh a rate yourself on one to ten in a context of like 10 things you care about, those kinds of things, right?

  Thoryn Stephens 8:12

  Yeah, yeah. Awesome. Yeah, that's really interesting. I mean, there's also the social side of all of this, which I think can be a bit nefarious, how you think about your social circles, connect things. But yeah, so I would say the measurement behind this is what's been the most interesting to me throughout my career when I was in biotech initially, and then I went into user behavior research and you know, so forth. That's really been the thread line, is the measurement of these different attributes.

  Philip Pape 8:34

  So I'm curious what the on the connection side, because I have a small background in applied psychology, Martin Seligman Seligman, right? And then the follow-on work where they talked about flourishing and happiness and how connection was like the number one related variable to happiness.

  Thoryn Stephens 8:47

  Yeah.

  Philip Pape 8:48

  When we think about connection, you mentioned a bunch of different examples, but like when someone is trying to improve themselves, today we have, and you said nefarious, and I don't know if you're talking about like social media and and some of that when you said nefarious, but how does self-motivation theory, I think SMT, right? Which has relatedness as one of its factors, how does that factor into this?

  Thoryn Stephens 9:09

  Yeah, that's not my area of research, just to be honest, but I can tell you what I've seen anecdotally. Again, you know, people who wake up and have that connection and that spark are more emphatic and generally feel and live longer, ultimately. So what is that based on? I mean, I think that's a great academic uh question. I would also say, you know, going to the prior point, yeah. I mean, we generally think about you know the world in microhabits, small incremental changes, protocols, and then programs that you can build, you know, to reach that desired objective, you know, such as connection. So that's why I appreciate your thoughts around, you know, how to measure that. I do believe on the other side of the coin, when you talk about things like social media, I think that's personally entirely negative. As a data scientist, when I was looking at this user level data, this is back in like, you know, 2012 through 14, 15, back when like Facebook had an open API, Twitter had an open API. And, you know, we could see in the data, you know, which was guised as connection, you know, you're connecting to children from your childhood and you know, people from your past and so forth, but not really the case, you know, and how that data can be used very nefariously to optimize your behavior through an algorithm, you know, which is what we're seeing now. And so all the recent, you know, press around meta being find with you know young adults, you know, this was all known a decade ago. This was not new. I mean, again, the data was already there. It's unfortunate, it's taken this long, an entire generation of humans, you know, to have been so susceptible to this because it's really preying on some of the negative sides of that connection and game theory, and you know, you get like the number of likes and all those pieces.

  Philip Pape 10:45

  And the dopamine, yeah, yeah.

  Thoryn Stephens 10:48

  Yeah.

  Philip Pape 10:48

  Yeah, a friend of mine, you know, was telling me about where he's sending his kid to school. So we homeschool our kids, they used to, but now they're in public school. But it's, you know, he he went out of his way to find a school that didn't use technology because you're seeing that pushback as well among public schools. And one of the anecdotes was that the Chromebooks led to more cyberbullying just because of the easy access to emailing each other and stuff like you're just like, man, the world has changed, and yeah, that stuff is not almost never positive.

  Thoryn Stephens 11:15

  Yeah. Yeah, but again, it's a balance. You know, we can't expect our children, you know, or community to like live out in the forest be a Luddite. Yeah. Quite literally. So, you know, my feeling I get it asked is constantly, you know, it's like my my feelings on AI, and I feel like you actually need to truly understand it and you need to learn these tools. You need to see what's happening with Claude because it's moving so fast. And otherwise, you know, then you're going to be making your decisions, maybe not based on the most empirical data. So I think it's great to know these things and you know, expose, but again, you know, always in moderation.

  Philip Pape 11:48

  Yeah. So before I lose the audience with some of the some of these tangents, which I I enjoy academically, but going back to the microhabits, let's get into that because we've had a

  Micro habits and adherence

  Philip Pape 11:58

  lot of guests on here that talked about habit theory. We've gotten in atomic habits and and you know, the how long it takes to build a habit and having either, you know, very hard and fast rules to take you out of temptation from coming off a habit and lots of different approaches. Just what lane are you in that's supported academically by the research you've seen?

  Thoryn Stephens 12:16

  I mean, we follow a general CBT, so cognitive behavioral therapy type of framework, right? You know, where it's Q reward fundamentally, which is in line with like James Clear and the atomic habits of framing. You know, what I've found in this research is again, it's really about motivation. You know, we have a platform called Brain One. We work with clinicians, we work with individuals, and one of the metrics we track is adherence. You know, you ask a human to do a thing to improve sleep, weight, you know, metabolic health, whatever it might be. Do they do the things that you ask them to do? And I'm sure you've seen this in your training. It's incredible, like so the technology here I find very easy. You know, we can build easy, accessible technology to help support this. The challenge is the human behavior. Like that is the crux of all of this. And getting one human to do one thing regularly as a new, you know, again, microhabit, you know, part of their day is just incredibly challenging. So what I've seen again, it's that cue reward, those are rewards and ultimately those motivations.

  Philip Pape 13:12

  So let's get into that. Somebody I heard maybe a year or two ago, Dr. Karen Norden. I don't know if you're familiar with her. She's a bit in behavior change, and she was the first one to say, and maybe this is just a contrarian way to present it, you know, when it comes to nutrition or training, let's talk about training and exercise. You know, the act, that whole systemic act of having your exercise routine itself is not a habit because it's at two too large a level, it's too macro. And the habits are the automated things that go down all the way to what you said, the Q reward system. So how do we find that level? If you agree with that, you know, tell how do we find that level that truly is a habit that becomes automatic versus this systemic combination of habits? Yeah.

  Thoryn Stephens 13:55

  Yeah, that's interesting. I'll definitely check out her research. What we've seen empirically, again, I think humans are more successful if they have a structure behind it, period. So my personal example, I was athletic as a youth. I went to a high school for snowboarding and US ski team, Olympians, and so forth. But then when I went to college, I studied biotechnology. And then after college, you know, I was kind of just debating on what to do next. And long story short, I started running. And it started off with Susan G. Comb and 10K, and then a half marathon, marathon, and then I went to triathlons and Ironmans and so forth. And it was through that experience I began to use what we call a health protocol. And so we'll break down the protocol, which again are just the things that you do, you train, take case of triathlon, swim, bike, run, weights, but then your nutrition. And nutrition is such an integral part of these types of races because you're in real time optimizing your health, you know, using things like heart rate. That's really where I started back when we had these giant chunky garments that were like, you know, the size of your. So generally that's how we think about the world. Again, microhabits, you know, things that you do, nutrition, the building blocks, a measurement, which could be wearables, it could be other different types of measure, you know. And so I think it's really critical to understand in each of these areas, you know, what is your baseline, and then how are you going to improve, and then how are you going to measure that? And, you know, to that regard, like I've been, you know, I came out of biotech and I've been using protocols to synthesize DNA. I've been using protocols to, you know, do these like long distance, you know, triathlons and so forth. Fundamentally, your protocol is just your daily routine. It's the things that you do, you know, when you get up in the morning. And so what we found is putting that into a system can be helpful and it drives adherence. Some people come every day and track, some people don't, and that's okay. Just getting it on paper is the first step, you know, really beginning to understand where you can improve, and then you're layering the data on top of that, and then you can work towards a plan. But, you know, some people will never look at an app, you know, period. So you really have to meet them where they're at.

  Philip Pape 16:29

  Yeah, and and I'm people know I'm a huge data nerd. I do love tracking, and I do find that on day zero, if you can track the challenge I found for folks is what to track, how to measure it, which you've kind of implied so that you have something to baseline and actually improve. And where my mind goes with that is the body is complex and there are direct things we can measure and there are proxies for things, and then there's things we may not even know quite how to measure. So, for example, nobody's gonna do doubly labeled water tests to measure their caloric expenditure, but we know that you eat food and you gain or lose weight, and therefore your body as a black box burns calories. And then we say, okay, well, now the composition of what you eat is important. So we're gonna measure protein

  Choosing daily non-negotiables

  Philip Pape 17:11

  and on and on, right? So, like, just how do you think about that to not overwhelm somebody who like should they even get to that step before they're doing some of these pillars at a rough level? Or do you need this at the beginning at a very light level to do the pillars, if you know what I'm saying?

  Thoryn Stephens 17:28

  Yeah, I think it's probably the latter is you know what I've seen in our own research anyway. I think it's really good to, again, starting with the goal of what they're trying to achieve, but what are the non-negotiables? You know, like what are the things that pretty much all of us should be doing every day? An example could be circadian regulation, you know. So we all generally have challenges with sleep. You know, we hear sleep, anxiety, and gut are the three nonstop, right? And so they're all related, of course, but you know, when you talk about sleep, it's not necessarily all your preparation at night, it could be your preparation in the morning. And so, how much direct sunlight do you get? You know, what does that do to cortisol? And then ultimately, you know, really just the your hormone, you know, throughout the morning and then the rest of your day, it's so critical. So that would be like a non-negotiable. And that's hard for some people. I mean, I'm you know, myself included, I live in the mountains in Colorado. We don't even actually get direct sunlight until about nine, obviously up at six, but you do the best you can, you know, and that would be an example is getting as much direct sunlight as you know early in the morning as possible. Another could be a hydration, another could be, you know, prayer gratitude, you know, depending on the human. So we have a set of non-negotiables we try to try to follow, but they also are completely in line with the core pillars of you know, nutrition, exercise, sleep, stress, community, metabolic health, and those pieces. So all related.

  Philip Pape 18:44

  Yeah, they're all related. So you said it starts with a goal, and even that could lead to not an argument, but a discussion I've had with people about, you know, do we even set a goal before we set a timeline? Maybe we have a timeline, then a goal, whatever. I don't want to go down that rabbit hole. Actually, you start with a goal. So let's say your goal is just you want to feel and look better, right? Like you're the average person who is generally dissatisfied with the habits they've developed over many years. They're probably in their 30s or 40s at this point because that's when things start to catch up physically and energy-wise, and of course the hormonal decline and all that fun stuff. People listening to this podcast and they're like, hey, Thorne, I just want to look a little better, feel a little better, lose that belly fat, and just kind of maybe live a little longer and be healthy. Like a lot of people just state that as their general goal. Do you work on them to hone that further first?

  Thoryn Stephens 19:32

  You certainly do. I mean, we have a system that helps support them. Yeah. I mean, that's, you know, we try to be as specific as possible, I guess I would say. You know, are you really like relative to neurological optimization? Is it, you know, your decisioning? Is it your executive function? Is it just memory? You know, what's specifically there? Or, you know, relative to other indications, sleep as an example. And then what's the baseline? How do we measure it? How do we build a plan around it?

  Philip Pape 19:57

  Okay.

  Thoryn Stephens 19:57

  Yeah.

  Philip Pape 19:58

  So then where does the mindspan concept come into this? I didn't have a lot of time to research this, but I understand it's related to cognitive capacity and brain health overall. Like where does that fit in?

  Thoryn Stephens 20:09

  I mean, it's not so personally, I would say an example of my pursuit of mind span will be three through, like microhabits like consciousness. You know, how are you thinking about consciousness, consciousness expansion? I've spent a lot of time with plant medicines and psychedelics over the years. So that is one of the tools that I personally use, which I don't necessarily advocate. But, you know, if someone's curious, happy to have a conversation.

  Philip Pape 20:33

  Okay, and that's it. Okay. I was hoping for a little more, right? Like with the whole mind span thing, just because it seemed to be a key piece here with as like a holdup or root cause behind why some people might have trouble executing on these microhabits.

  Thoryn Stephens 20:47

  Okay.

  Tracking without overwhelm

  Thoryn Stephens 20:48

  Not something in our research, to be honest. That's not something very focused on. But yeah.

  Philip Pape 20:52

  All right. So yeah, yeah. No, no, for sure. So then we get into the intersection of okay, so you're trying to develop these microhabits. You identified what you want to measure and improve. Now, how do you do it? Like, how do you make it stick? You mentioned Q reward, like what are the practical ways to do that?

  Thoryn Stephens 21:05

  Yeah. So we have again a structured framework that we follow and that we've developed. Really, at the end of the day, it's a tracker. And it is, again, understanding the high-level goal that you're working towards, and then what are these small microhabits, these incremental changes that you're doing to actually get you to that goal without overwhelming the human? I mean, that's the number one thing that we hear. And that's why so many of these plans, I think, fail, is because people get overwhelmed and there's too many things to do. And just getting one human to do one thing regularly is a massive accomplishment, let alone, you know, a select category. But it also depends on, you know, the types of people out there. Like if you've ever done any competitive, you know, athleticism marathons as an example, then you've probably followed some sort of a training plan. But that type of discipline, and that's another really integral, I don't even call it a microhabit. It's almost like a non negotiable, but you know, following these types of plans that are outlined that have some level of reward. And then I'm also a big believer in In the data without having the person be overwhelmed, or you know, you can also have like analysis paralysis where people get so obsessed with the data that's actually negative. You know, when you wake up in the morning, you look at your phone, you're like, oh my gosh, my readiness score from aura is like it's only a 45, I'm gonna have a horrible day. But you actually could have had a great day if you just took a minute to really, you know, connect yourself and see how you feel.

  Philip Pape 22:23

  So yeah, those are some of the small things that I'm laughing because I have an aura ring and some days I'm like, I can predict what it's going to say. And I'm like, I don't know how it's helping me. I just you know, I drank I drank last night, I haven't drunk in two months. I know it's gonna be well, but it helps.

  Thoryn Stephens 22:36

  So you know, I hear that a lot too, and it's interesting, right? Because some people then stop using the wearables because they're like, oh, I already know what it's gonna say, which is true. But even just having that baseline data, I think is absolutely critical because it's something you can measure against. And the old quote, you cannot manage, cannot manage what you can't measure. I mean, I agree with that, you know, and so having at least some understanding, but you know, it also should be intuitive. It's like, how do you feel? You know, you know when you wake up in the morning, the data helps support it. You know, I look at certain metrics regularly, like resting heart rate and HRV. You know, those are kind of my go-to relative to my recovery, my parasympathetic nervous system, and just, you know, all the things going on in my life. I definitely see a direct connection, you know, both on the behavioral side as well as, you know, if I just have a glass of wine, how does that impact, you know, literally?

  Philip Pape 23:24

  For sure. Yeah, we talk about those all the time. Those are really even just resting heart rate because it's so easy to measure and changes so quickly within days based on your activity. So and there's another one I've been talking to people about. It's just a simple heart rate recovery, like in real time, like an acute heart rate recovery, right? Like if you're if you're exercising, for example, how fast does your heart rate recover? And I don't know if what does your anything you do measure that? No, I'm actually not familiar with that matter. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, where you could you could shorten that time over time and as as a measure of cardiovascular fitness. But anyway, yeah, that makes sense. So you mentioned rewards, and and that's another thing that comes to mind is are we talking intrinsic, it's extrinsic, or it kind of depends? I think it depends.

  Thoryn Stephens 24:04

  Yeah. Depends on the human, depends on ultimately what they're trying to you know achieve. Yeah.

  Philip Pape 24:08

  Okay. Yeah. Cause the habit thing with the data, you mentioned an so we talk about an aura ring, and I think, okay, what I like about something like an aura ring or step track or whatever is it's automatic. It like zero friction, it's capturing the data for you. How much is friction as a variable to be considered when you're setting up these systems?

  Thoryn Stephens 24:27

  Oh, I think it's everything ultimately. And again, it really that's where you have to hone in on the persona, age is a big factor. We work with certain clinicians that have an older population. You can build the best app tracker in the world. It doesn't matter, they're not going to use it. So we've looked at other mechanisms, even like just having notebooks and you know, paper trackers people can follow. I think that's interesting. SMS, you know, how do you but truly meet the person where they're at? So that's a really kind of integral part in all of the.

  Philip Pape 24:55

  Yeah, man. I could I I could relate. I I love spreadsheets, and a lot of people don't. Here, use this spreadsheet. Even like the best.

  Thoryn Stephens 25:04

  But you know, for a normal human, it actually might not be, you know, ultimately. Yeah, we we've been testing adherence with just a single text message. You know, you get one in the morning, like, hey, these are your three microhabits for the day. If you want more, you can click on it, it takes you to the platform or not, you know, and at least you know, at least you have a framework, you know, and I think there's just there's so much value in that getting it on paper. And again, even if you don't do it every day, and you shouldn't be too hard on yourself, but you know, do the best you can and ultimately have the measurement to try to reach whatever you're trying to achieve.

  Philip Pape 25:32

  So you just said something interesting there every day. And that that's another argument I've had with folks because let's say you want to lift weights, right? And we know you could train as little as one or two days a week, all the way up to six, or if you're crazy, seven days a week, lifting weights. And and there's like a school of thought that says, well, even if you're gonna lift three days a week, the other four days you have something in that block or something to kind of check off as part of your fitness routine, like a walk or something. What are your thoughts on that theory of like seven days a week theory versus these less frequent things?

  Thoryn Stephens 26:05

  Yeah, I would say I I now that said I'm a highly aggressive human relative to my exercise. Yeah, I live here in Colorado, try to ski snowboard almost every day, you know, during the winter, in the summertimes, it's trail runnings, it's cycling, it's mountain biking. So I am out all the time. My core routine, I do hot Pilates. So I get the sweat plus weights and then, you know, some cardio and so forth. And that's at least three to four days a week. So personally, I mean, I would say I always listen to my body first and foremost. I mean, I try to do Pilates every single day, but if I wake up and my HRV is dipped because I hit it too hard the day before, I'll listen to my body and just not go to that class, you know, fundamentally. But I think in all things, I mean, again, going back to you know the brain and neuroplasticity, you know, you want to have periods of recovery. I mean, that's absolutely as critical as actually doing the exercise yourself yourself. And as you know, that's literally when you know the muscles actually rebuild is during that recovery period.

  Philip Pape 27:00

  So absolutely Yeah, true. I agree. Sometimes we talk about recovery as like the overriding variable for all of this, and then it you back into. But kind of what I was really asking very poorly was with brain science and stickiness and discipline, is having the daily habit, whether even if it changes. So like I have a daily movement habit, and it might be training this day, it might be hot yoga this day, it might be walking slowly this day. Does that lead to more success or stickiness with your habit than not?

  Thoryn Stephens 27:30

  I think we've seen both in our data. Again, I think it depends on the human. I mean, some people do really well with like strong structure, six days on, one day off, you know, whatever it might be. But I I feel that it really does vary. And again, I go back to the motivation of the human, what they're trying to achieve. But yeah, I mean, that's the that's the hardest part in all of this, Philip, is that behavioral piece like period. Again, the rest of this, the plans, the technology, you know, we're in biometrics, biomarkers, we just added face scans. So we get 40 biomark or 30 biomarkers off of a face scan as an example. Interesting, you know, what we can now do with that data to look at the time series. But if the human's not doing the thing that they want to do or whatever their objectives, their goals are, then you know, ultimately we're failing.

  Philip Pape 28:12

  So yeah, just always curious about this stuff because there's, you know, if if you cherry pick any particular study, then you you go down a rabbit hole where things conflict. Like I remember learning about a study maybe two years ago that looked compared five days to seven days of weigh-ins. So it wasn't even looking at like frequent weigh-ins versus infrequent, it was looking at five versus seven, and it found better, you know, sustaining of weight loss results when it was seven versus five.

  Thoryn Stephens 28:37

  That's interesting.

  Philip Pape 28:37

  Right. You see those little things, and I'm like, well, that's an interesting, right?

  Dementia prevention through lifestyle

  Philip Pape 28:41

  The variable changed just a little bit.

  Thoryn Stephens 28:43

  Exactly.

  Philip Pape 28:43

  Yeah. So, and I know there's some folks that that subscribe to that, but but maybe it is individualistic, just like study data is based on a population and you can be an outlier or whatever.

  Thoryn Stephens 28:51

  Yeah.

  Philip Pape 28:52

  What was the other thing you mentioned about? I'm totally off track of all the original stuff I was going to talk about because it's very interesting.

  Thoryn Stephens 28:58

  I mean, if you think we dive into a little bit more is again around the concept of these microhabits and behavior change, and that I always come back to so my background's in molecular biology, but gene expression, in that I think this is a really important point people don't necessarily understand, like dementia prevention, right? Everyone listening to this is terrified, maybe for themselves, maybe for their parents, their grandparents. And so there are, there's a paper, uh, it's a Lancet 2024. I might include it or share it with you, but it outlines essentially 14 different behavioral modifications. These are things that you can do, we can do, our grandparents can do to help prevent dementia. And again, there's no silver bullet here. It's not like this is going to help prevent dementia for every single human. I think the statistic was roughly about half of global cases. There's about 55 million globally. So it's a significant amount. And the the thinking behind this is again, you can have a genetic predisposition for something like Alzheimer's. Now, if that's the case, you know, you're not going to, through lifestyle, prevent the onset of the disease. But what you could do is start to stave off some of the impacts relative to the progression, basically. And we've seen this in the data, and I think that's pretty tried and true. But the the overarching point, then something like dementia, where you know, you do have an opportunity to help, you know, really again support, you know, the onset of the disease through some of these microhabits. And like a couple examples. So one, connection, actually, is on the list. You know, that's a very prominent one. You know, it could be things like hearing loss in your old age, it can be education, but all of these things essentially that we have the opportunity to improve. And so from a gene expression perspective, you have your genetic blueprint, you have what's called your proteione. So you have your DNA, and then in between you have RNA, which I think more and more people know about now. And then you have things like methylation or genomics, epigenetics. You know, essentially that's the regulation of your DNA, RNA, and ultimately to proteins. And we are an expression of our proteins or proteome. And so it's just interesting to think that we have the opportunity to optimize, you know, essentially a good chunk of our DNA. What's the number? It depends on the tissue, depends on a number of factors, but maybe 30 to 50 percent-ish, you know, of your DNA, you actually can impact based on your lifestyle and based on microhabits, all the things that we've been talking about. And so, you know, I'd like to think that's a bit empowering. You know, people feel like, you know, this is my DNA. I'm stuck, you know, and this is my life. I can't make changes when, you know, there is a level of optimism and that we can positively change these things.

  Philip Pape 31:32

  Yeah, I totally agree. I mean, epigenetics is fascinating. I I feel like we didn't know. I mean, I was born in 1980. I I know it it wasn't something we talked about growing up. It wasn't until the last like couple decades that the general public became aware of it, but it gives you more power, like you said. The Lancet thing, is that the one that they added like three more items to last year? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. That's a good one. I should do an episode on that because you're right. There are a lot of factors in there. It reminds me almost of there's like 13 cancers that are related to lifestyle as well.

  Thoryn Stephens 32:02

  100%. Yeah. Yeah, I'd be happy to give you a protocol you can give away to the audience, you know, for these things.

  Philip Pape 32:06

  Uh, yeah, for sure. We'll throw that in.

  Thoryn Stephens 32:09

  What these microhabits are, and then the impacts on, in that case, dementia, or you know, in other case it could be cancers.

  Philip Pape 32:15

  The evidence that would be awesome, actually. Yeah, and I might even rip up an episode kind of going over that for folks. That would be cool. Oh, we could totally do that.

  Thoryn Stephens 32:22

  Yeah, I'd love to love to partner or support in any way possible.

  Philip Pape 32:25

  Because again, yeah, go ahead. No, that's fine. You go.

  Thoryn Stephens 32:29

  No, I it's just, you know, we're an artifact of our behaviors, the people we surround ourselves with, the conversations that we have, you know, and so much that you know, our environment, literally, where do we live? You know, I've lived in big cities, I'm much more happy out in the country. Everyone's different, you know. But whatever that is, and you know, really listening to that, getting a tune, I think is really important.

  Philip Pape 32:49

  I think you'd you'd like it out here too. We're in Connecticut, like five acres, got the woods in the back. It's really nice. Quiet.

  Thoryn Stephens 32:55

  Yes, I appreciate the quiet.

  Philip Pape 32:57

  I remember the first night we moved out here and there was there were no street lights or sound. It was just it was amazing, but it was also a little bit eerie, you know. You could get used to that. And I like reading dystopian fiction too, which has that too, but not in a good way. Yeah. We're in it's like the mass border, so Connecticut Mass border. Yeah. And you're in Connecticut, or you're in Colorado.

  Thoryn Stephens 33:15

  Colorado, yeah. Cool. Out in the mountains. Got another couple weeks of snow, and then it's officially spring.

  Philip Pape 33:20

  Are you at risk of wildfires where you are or no? Oh, yeah.

  Thoryn Stephens 33:23

  Yeah, pretty much.

  Philip Pape 33:24

  I hear that a lot from friends out there.

  Thoryn Stephens 33:26

  So California, not good.

  Philip Pape 33:27

  And yeah, yeah, yeah. And very volatile

  Brain training and neuroplasticity

  Philip Pape 33:30

  politics too, but we won't get into that. We're not so all right. So, you know, we mentioned the Alzheimer's thing, and I think you and I were talking about like brain training. That might have been even before we recorded. And like how much value do you place in some of those? Because I've heard mixed results.

  Thoryn Stephens 33:44

  Yeah, I think some of them are great. I think some of them are scandalous, you know, which has also been proven out in the data. I don't know if I'll name any companies offhand, but you can probably do the research. I think brain HQ does a great job. I sat down with a founder not too long ago. Again, we would think of brain training as a microhabit as part of your overall protocol. So it's great. I mean, I think everyone really should be doing these types of exercises, especially in your older ages. And they had some great recent paper, I believe it was the neurotransmitter was acetylcholine. They were seeing like a, you know, positive results and a very specific neurotransmitter based on these brain training games. I mean, that's awesome, especially as people are getting older. So I think those, yeah, I think brain training is great as part of an overarching lifestyle and you know behavioral uh protocol.

  Philip Pape 34:28

  Yeah, and I think that the result you're talking about was a very specific subset of the training. So it's like you really have to know what you're looking at and looking for to potentially get the benefit, I would imagine.

  Thoryn Stephens 34:37

  I think they hopefully they've made it, they've productized it and made it easy. You know, so you don't even need to think about it. You go, you do, but yeah. I mean, again, even the concept of brain training, and to your point, epigenetics. I mean, these things, brain training's been around for quite a while. Epigenetics has only been around, or at least really studied the last couple decades. So a lot of this stuff is, I would say, generally new. And you know, humans don't think about neuroplasticity or the fact that their brain is an organ just like your bicep. You know, just like your bicep, you need to regularly exercise it, you need to allow it to rest and recover, all of those pieces.

  Philip Pape 35:09

  So I'm laughing because there was just today. Speaking of social media, Dr. Mike Isertil posted what seemed like a very serious question. He's like, I have a very serious question for you guys. Do you want bigger biceps or bigger triceps? So I'm like, Do you want a bigger brain or bigger? I'm just thinking about that.

  Thoryn Stephens 35:24

  Yeah, you should add that in there. I mean, exactly. You know, I mean, I guess it's all of the above, but yeah, people generally don't think about their brain as something that they exercise. And I think that's something we're hopefully trying to start to shift.

  Philip Pape 35:38

  Good, good. Yeah, hopefully we some of the our our podcasts helped do that too, just by making you think differently. So, okay, one question I did have that came back to me was so if somebody's somebody has a specific goal, like, okay, I want to start lifting weights. I know it's good for me. I know I want to lift at least three or four days a week, but I don't do it right now and I never have. Like, where would you start from that point to break down to the microhabits?

  Thoryn Stephens 35:58

  So they want to work out, I guess, what is their, you know, what are they trying to achieve? I mean, specifically.

  Philip Pape 36:02

  Let's say they're trying to just get stronger.

  Thoryn Stephens 36:05

  Yeah. I mean, what we could literally do is we could essentially take their information, run it through our AI, and come up with a protocol and see how it compares, you know, cool. Something we, you know, we've been working on the last year, year and a half. And it's actually pretty shocking how accurate it gets. We had one woman recently who she, you know, created a protocol, re-ran it through it, and she's like, Oh my gosh, honey, look, it's the it's like 10 of the 12 microhabits I just listed on my like last night. And he's like, Oh my gosh, honey, you're correct. So side note, that's one of the mechanisms we can get there. Yeah, I think again, starting small is critical, you know, like they want to work every day, understanding their motivation. What is it about that human, you know, that you can help motivate them relative to the thing, the reward, you know, that they're working towards. Humans love instant gratification, of course, which is why in some of the tech that we're developing, we you know, this new facial scan that we've added, you can actually see changes in your HRV in, you know, like pre and post-breath work as an example. So that's cool. You know, you actually do breath work and you can see how your parasympathetic nervous system is is impacted. But those types of like small wins, you know, I think are are really important. How you look in the mirror. And again, I don't focus as much on the weight training side, but it's all related.

  Philip Pape 37:19

  So yeah, you know, the thing about the getting the immediate feedback is really helpful. I know that could go awry if it's not the right thing, right? If you're not measuring the right thing, but we hear a lot about gamification and streaks and stuff. And I I just recently dived into that for an episode. And it was interesting how much of how things are gamified isn't effective, right? For changing your behavior. But something like that where there's actual progress seems to be effective. So again, the listener should, you know, should look into this stuff and become curious. I like the idea of starting with a goal and working back not only to what the protocol could be, but what is your motivation and then tying that together. Full disclosure, I have an app, I have a it's called Fitness Lab. And one of the things you do in week one is a future, a future vision exercise. Awesome. Because that's so powerful, right? Because we've seen that so powerful. So I love that you're saying that. When you said that 12 microhabits in the example, would your would the app or protocol then decide what the best three are, or two or one to start with?

  Thoryn Stephens 38:20

  Yeah, we can. Again, it depends if the human's working with a clinician, they're working with a practitioner, you know, a coach, whatever it is, and then just meeting them really where they're at. You know, most part of that again is like their experience level. So novices, we would never give 12, you know, maybe three to start, maybe even one, just depending on the human, or upwards of you know, a dozen, depending. And that could include things, you know, like peptides, you know, potentially, or people use this as a peptide tracker. We have another use case with like even stem cells. So we're really focused on the measurement, whatever it is. We don't really care the intervention, any of those that I just mentioned. But but ultimately having that baseline and then understanding the you know time series improvement.

  Philip Pape 39:01

  Okay.

  Thoryn Stephens 39:01

  Yeah.

  Philip Pape 39:02

  Yeah. No, that makes sense. And peptides and stem cells, two very controversial areas that have like very polarizing people out there because there's some great stuff, but it gets so muddled by so much junk and slop in in the wellness space. But I love that you mention it because there are some bright spots in there. What was I gonna ask about that? Oh yeah, yeah, go ahead.

  Thoryn Stephens 39:23

  No, no, go ahead.

  Philip Pape 39:24

  Totally interrelated. But as you were talking about the microhabits and doing like one or two or whatever, is it do we know for sure it takes a certain amount of time to make a habit sticky? Because it I used to think 21, and I I feel like James Clear mentions that, but then recent research I've seen is 45 because there seems to be two tripping points to the human brain's need to get back to like what it used to do. And like the first one's almost a false success point, and then you could revert easily until you get past the second point. Uh, is that BS what I'm saying, or is there something to that?

  Thoryn Stephens 39:56

  I think there's something to that. I think we've seen that in some of the data for sure. Yeah.

  Philip Pape 40:00

  Okay. So is it like six weeks? I mean, is there a number?

  Thoryn Stephens 40:03

  I don't know if I have a number. Uh we can definitely look at that. I mean, I would say four to six weeks is kind of anecdotally what I've heard, but and it also depends on the microhabit. And then it really depends on the human, you know, like what are you actually asking them truly to do? So I think there's a number of variables there.

  Philip Pape 40:17

  All right. And then you just a couple of personal questions, like besides mind altering stuff, what's another microhabit that you do like every day?

  Thoryn Stephens 40:25

  Yeah, I'm again pretty rigorous. So a really big proponent of the sweat. And so whether that's a sauna, you know, we have one here, or I do the hot Pilates where I guess I get both well sweat, I get some cardio and I get weights. So I do heavy weights, like 50 pounders. So that's one of my like non-negotiables. Try to go three or four days a week. And then other microhabits.

  Philip Pape 40:46

  Do you measure sweat? Do you measure like how much you sweat,

  Unitasking and cognitive performance

  Philip Pape 40:48

  or what do you measure?

  Thoryn Stephens 40:49

  Well, I measure I actually have water bottles that do have measurement on them. So like per class, I average about two liters of water, you know, at least. So, but again, I'm not that obsessive about it. Like I just always go with how I feel, you know, fundamentally. Another microhabit that we don't talk about a lot, but also is is related to cognition is the concept of unitasking versus multitasking. And again, this kind of goes in that non-negotiable category because it's not something you're like doing every day, but it's one of those things you can kind of put into your protocol that you can just try to adhere to. And so, you know, we're very much caught, you know, like you're you're constantly, you know, in the hustle and you have your, you know, your phone and your laptop and the TV and the kids running around. But when you're trying to focus on very specific, you know, tasks at hand, if you're trying to do four things at once, you're because of cognitive drag, you're actually going to be less neurologically optimized and probably get them done, you know, not only well, less efficiently, we could say. Um, so that idea of again, unitasking versus multitasking, I think is another really interesting one. Is that related to like the Pomodoro technique where you focus on one thing at a time or I don't know the pomodoro technique specifically, but it's probably it's that idea that again, when you're focusing on something and then you shift to another, even if it's small, just like looking at your phone and then going back, you have cognitive drag. And it takes milliseconds, you know, to then reorient yourself on the conversation, whatever it might be.

  Philip Pape 42:12

  So that is so true, man.

  Thoryn Stephens 42:14

  That is so true. Well, and you know, where it's like it's kind of the antithesis of what we're taught, you know, in the grind. You know, gotta hustle and like not really. If you just are more efficient with your time, then you actually will be, you know, higher efficiency longer term.

  Philip Pape 42:27

  Yeah, it makes sense. Okay, so even though you don't obsess about this stuff, you definitely are I know into wearables. And you mentioned the aura ring. Is there another wearable you use that maybe is unique that we we can learn about? Not unique.

  Thoryn Stephens 42:37

  So I use my favorite actually is aura for sleep and then Garmin for activity, just relative to resolution. I like Aura because it's you know very small. I've been training with Whoop. I don't love it personally, but we and we have integrations with over 300, so we're kind of agnostic. I mean, at some point it doesn't really matter what you use as long as consistently and you're looking at the trends. You know, your HRV in Aura is absolutely going to be different than in your Apple Watch, which is okay. But again, as long as you're looking at the trends, it doesn't really matter. But yeah, those are kind of my my go-tos, you know, on the day-to-days, Aura and Garmin. And then, like I said, we've been doing some interesting testing with facial scanning and then also voice, so voice biometrics, and then looking at your voice. And we've seen high and medium correlations to HRV through your voice, basically. So if you're stressed, you're gonna hear in the voice because it might be a little bit higher pitched and you know, da-da-da. It's all this stuff we kind of inherently know, but now we're actually able to start to see it in the data. And the reason why these metrics are or these you know, outcome measures are important again, whether it's a face scan or a voice, is because if a human doesn't have a wearable, then they could just use the system and then get a biometric from it immediately. So that's really cool too. So those are some of the newer modalities that we've been been testing.

  Philip Pape 43:46

  I love that stuff, man. And combined with machine learning and AI and everything, it's just insane. Like we had the founder of Spranton, and and they do like, you know, just a quick visual of your body composition, your anode gyneod ratio, all that stuff, literally just. From a photo, right? And none of these suits anymore and special measurements you had to do in the past. It's crazy.

  Thoryn Stephens 44:06

  Well, I mean, in the inferences as well. I mean, that you can now learn from this data. Like on the face scan, it's measuring the microcapillary fluctuations of your face. And you know, it's just it's pretty crazy. And in what we've seen is it's very, you know, very highly correlative to both like HRV and even blood pressure. So that technology is only going to get better and better. I think where a lot of these companies though fail, and this is something that we're really razor focused on, is what do you do with that data? It's like, okay, your HRV is, you know, whoop, I think is like one of the worst. It's like, oh, your HRV is down 35%. You know, take it easy out there. And you're like, okay, but like really, is there nothing more I can be doing to help support my parasympathetic? Like maybe, you know, a cold plunge, you know, another microhabit that I do, or breath work, you know, another great microhabit that you can do anywhere for free. So yeah.

  Philip Pape 44:54

  That is a very fair critique. That that's probably where my brain was going when I thought, what am I gonna do? Because it the advice really isn't that high quality there. But it's like, okay, take the data and put it into this other system over here to figure out what to do. Now that's friction, you know. So I know.

  Thoryn Stephens 45:09

  And that's this is when we're trying to solve the same problems. Yeah. It's and and so to your point, again, it's making it as frictionless as possible. And that's where I think it's also in part meeting people with where they're at. You know, how do you collect the data? That's why we like, you know, some of these scans where if someone doesn't have a wearable, and then ultimately what do you do with it? And how do you drive action from it? You know, that's the most important.

  Philip Pape 45:29

  How do you drive action? The friction part's interesting with apps because so like my favorite food tracker is macrofactor, and people have heard me mention a billion times because I'm an affiliate and like I use it, my clients use it. But they actually, one of the things they tout as a differentiator is their speed on certain actions, and they've done the testing, and it's like getting everything down to as few taps as possible and as fast as possible. And then when you look at like your time screen time for the day, it's like two minutes, you know, for logging your food, whereas in some other app it might be 10. And that alone could be the difference.

  Thoryn Stephens 46:00

  Everything 100%. Yeah, no, we we very much agree with that type of optimization methodology. It's nice. What we talk about is actually time to protocol. Like how long does it take for a clinician, practitioner, or just a human to create a protocol, literally? And what does that look like? It could be a list of microhabits, it could be, you know, Taylor Swift's protocol they found online that they want to upload. I mean, whatever it is, and then literally, how do they then have a tracker that they can follow? So make less, especially in this day and age with you know the declining attention deficits, you know.

  Philip Pape 46:31

  Oh, I know it because people are they can't wait, and it's like, I'm just gonna go to AI and get the answer. It's not always the best answer, depending on how you ask it.

  Thoryn Stephens 46:38

  Yeah, which is terrifying in itself. That's a whole other episode. Exactly.

  Philip Pape 46:42

  All right, man. Well, we we've covered a lot of really cool things. You know, I didn't know where this would go, but I definitely think there's a lot of practical lessons, I guess to tie it up in a bow before we tell people where to find you and all that is like given all the data you've analyzed for both issues that people have, you know, the challenges that people have, like sleep you mentioned versus the microhabits, is there a couple that just float to the top all the time with people you see when it comes to like challenges that they're trying to fix and then microhabits they tend to have to use.

  Thoryn Stephens 47:12

  Oh, yeah. I mean, again, like sleep, you know, gut, which related to nutrition, depending, and then stress. I mean, those are like the three ultimately. I think every one of us, you know, to some degree could improve upon. So, and then from there, you know, getting into yeah, the specifics, you know, so things like again, stress, you know, exercise for me. I mean, that's one of my biggest, that's why I do the hot Pilates so frequently. And then the, you know, cathartic release physiologically that you're getting from the sweat specifically, but from the exercise. So when I come out of that Pilates class, I'm a different human, you know, side note. So again, it and I know these things sound fundamental. It's like, oh yeah, exercise, great. Another exercise recommendation. But how and where, and again, the plan that you follow, I think is also part of the difference. And then further, if you can start to measure it, that really shows the progress. So yeah, I think that's great.

  Philip Pape 48:04

  No, I you're right. There's like the principle of it and the benefit you get from it, but the how, where, and plan is the tailored to you. Here's your life, here's your schedule, here's you know, your body. I just had two an extra day off from training because of travel, and it wasn't worth like trying to fit in the hotel and all that. So when I worked out today, it was cathartic. Like you said, I just the body, my body was like, Thank you, you know, like thanks for doing this again because you get in that habit. And I think, you know, I was gonna ask you, like, does time of day matter that that? But we're gonna get into detail those are details. Like, I think it could maybe, but it depends on who you are and your schedule and all that.

  Thoryn Stephens 48:38

  Yeah, I mean 100%. Like, I mean, I get up at five and that's when I do my best thinking. You know, my wife is working until one in the morning, she's more of an artist and creative. So I think it it definitely depends. But, you know, to the prior point, you know, again with exercise, I feel personally I'm more neurologically optimized after the exercise, you know. So all these things are related, you know. And then of course you have like sleep as like the you know, longevity hack. Everyone's looking for like, oh, what can I take to you know live longer and be healthier and look younger? It's like sleep. That's it, like one thing, you know, let alone obviously the other pillars that we discussed. But starting with starting with the big picks.

  Philip Pape 49:16

  There was an analogy I heard someone you might have heard it. He was talking about like, what did he say? Something like if you went to a college and everybody was doing drugs, you'd be like, these people are insane. Like, but if you went and everybody was not getting sleep, you'd say, Oh, that's normal, but they have the same effect. Or you know what you know what I mean? Yeah, I think something like that. Or something, maybe it wasn't drugs, maybe it was alcohol. I don't know, but it had the same effect, right? Right. But we don't put it in the same category. Okay, man. So I know we're gonna share something that lets people identify some microhabits or a protocol you mentioned earlier.

  Thoryn Stephens 49:46

  Sure, I'd love to. Yeah, I mean, I have a dementia prevention uh protocol I can share with you that you can disseminate to the audience. That's great.

  Philip Pape 49:52

  And besides that, where do you want people to look you up?

  Thoryn Stephens 49:54

  Yeah, so they can check out brain.1. That is our neurological platform. And then we also have peptides.one with an S. And that's what we built around peptide measurement for all of our friends and family that are struggling with measuring if their peptides actually work.

  Philip Pape 50:10

  Got it. So brain.1, peptides.one, we'll get everybody the protocol. Look for those in the show notes. And this has been awesome. Thank you so much, Thorne, for coming on wits and weights and sharing your wisdom and your knowledge and your energy as well. So thank you so much.

  Thoryn Stephens 50:22

  Thank you, Philip. Really appreciate it.

"Broccoli Is Making You Fat!" (Why Single-Food Blame Is Nonsense) | Ep 471

Can broccoli make you fat? Or cause inflammation? What about sugar, carbs, seed oils, dairy, gluten, lectins, fructose, or ultra-processed foods?

Why does every fitness influencer blame a different food for your health problems? Learn about the composition fallacy in nutrition, where we blame one food for what the whole diet (or lifestyle) is responsible for.

This episode covers the logical error underneath every single-food blame claim, the evidence on the 4 loudest food villains right now, and how to think about food without organizing your diet around fear.

We examine studies on linoleic acid and inflammation, plant oils vs. butter,  ultra-processed foods, flexible vs. rigid dieting, and the prevalence of orthorexia. If you're over 40 and navigating fat loss, body composition, and decades of contradictory food advice, learn to avoid rigid food rules, binge cycles, or wellness panic.

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, WITHOUT restrictive food rules.

Timestamps:

0:00 - Food villain claims
2:57 - Composition fallacy
8:01 - Seed oils, linoleic acid, and inflammation
10:36 - Sugar and the Twinkie diet experiment
13:28 - Ultra-processed food and how fast you eat
16:44 - Celiac, gluten sensitivity, and carbs
18:48 - Skills vs. food rules
19:56 - Energy balance and food quality
22:30 - Sumo wrestlers and Paracelsus
25:10 - 80/20 flexible eating framework
27:30 - Orthorexia and binge eating cycles
29:16 - Bonus: 3-question food villain test

• Transcript

  Philip Pape: 00:00

  Broccoli is making you fat. I'm not kidding. Eat too much of it, drowned in butter and cheese sauce day after day, and you probably will gain fat. All right. That claim probably sounded ridiculous initially until I added some context to it. But I've actually heard the claim that broccoli is going to be a problem, just like seed oils are a problem, just like sugar is a problem. The list goes on and on. Carbs, you name it, it's the same logical structure as every food villain claim you've heard. Lectins, gluten, dairy, processed food, take your pick. Today I'm gonna show you why this entire category of advice is a logical error called the composition fallacy. What the actual evidence says about the top demonized foods, and a three-question test that you can run on the next person who tells you that a single food is the source of all your problems. Welcome to Wits and Weights, the show that puts popular 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 if you are trying to lose fat, you're trying to build muscle, you're trying to eat healthy, you've been told for years that some specific food is the reason it's not working. Maybe it was sugar as far back as when I was a kid in the 80s and 90s, then carbs in the 90s to the 2000s, starting with Atkins and then later on keto. Dietary fat before that, going way back to like snack well and olestra. And now it's seed oils and ultra-processed food. Every few years, a new villain rotates in. The old one gets a little half-apology, like, eh, we weren't quite right about that one. And then you're supposed to feel like, okay, now I know what's truly right as we move forward. I'm not gonna tell you whether seed oils are good or bad. I'm gonna show you the logical structure underneath these claims. Because once you understand that, you can make the decisions for yourself from an informed position and not listen to a podcaster tell you what is right or wrong. Stick around to the end because then I'm gonna give you a three-question test I call the food villain test. So the next time anyone, usually a podcaster or influencer, tells you that a single food is insert claim here, making you fat, making you inflamed, causing you any sort of issue, whatever it is, you can turn to this three-second test and know whether to take that seriously or not. And hint, probably not most of the time, but it's good to know what questions to ask. All right, so for today, we are gonna talk about the logical error in every food villain claim and why it's so sticky from a psychological perspective. The actual evidence on the four biggest food villains right now, which it's it might surprise you on one of them, so stay tuned for that. And then a model for how food affects body composition.

  Philip Pape: 02:57

  Okay, so let's start with the logical error. Philosophers call this logical fallacy the composition fallacy. Now, I don't know a lot about logical fallacies other than what I've learned from my own kids because we homeschool our kids. My wife has spent several years helping them learn about logic, and they are always calling out politicians and conspiracy theories and things that sometimes I don't even notice, like in marketing. And that's where these fallacies come from. So the composition fallacy is simple. You take a feature of one component of a system, and then you blame that component for the behavior of the whole system. That's the composition fallacy. So I'll give you an example that is outside of nutrition. Imagine I told you the steering wheel was the reason that a car crashed. The steering wheel is part of the car. Now, was it involved? Of course it was involved. It's part of the car. Could a bad steering wheel cause a crash in some cases? Of course, theoretically it could. But in most crashes, the steering wheel is probably doing what steering wheels do, and the crash happens because of how the car was driven or how another car was driving, or the road, the speed, the brakes, all of it working together as a system. So it would take some investigation to understand if truly the steering wheel was the cause of the accident. Now, food works the same way. Your body's a system. Calories come in, calories go out. You've got your hormones that get modulated, you've got hunger that goes up and down, your sleep, which affects recovery, your training, which affects everything, insulin sensitivity, nutrition, partitioning, whatever you name it. And then the result of all of that stuff coming together is how you look, how you feel, how you perform, right? Your physique. So when somebody points at a single food and says, ah, that's the reason that you're stuck, that's the reason you're fat, that's the reason you're inflamed, that's the reason XYZ, that is the steering wheel thing. They're taking a component and assigning it the behavior of the whole system. Now, sometimes a specific food is truly involved, the way steering wheel sometimes is, but you always have to zoom out and you have to look at it and understand the constraints. And far more often than not, it's more systematic than that or more complex than

  Philip Pape: 05:06

  that. So, why is this so psychologically sticky, as we say sticky as in it just like something we just latch onto? Well, the first reason is it gives you a villain. We love villains, we like boogeyman, it gives you an answer, it makes it simple. Before you've done anything else, you feel like you have something to go after, right? That you've made progress, you have an enemy to go after. The second thing is it gives you control. So a single food is something you can avoid today. And this is something I've dealt with for many years in the past, right? Cutting carbs, I can control that. Like literally just cut them out, don't buy them, don't put them in the fridge, don't go to the grocery store and get them. It's easy, okay? But it's easy, and it's easy in comparison to the things that actually work, which tend to be harder. Like energy balance is harder to manage, hormones are hard to manage, sleep is difficult. So the simplicity of the action substitutes for the difficulty of the real problem. And then the third piece, which I think is underrated, is it gives you a tribe to belong to. And you know this is true. Like, am I really calling you out? No, I admit myself, I've been in tribes. If I was in the CrossFit tribe and the Zone Diet tribe and the Paleo tribe and the keto tribe, right? All the tribes, the cut the running tribe. Once you are anti-seed oils, oh, you are with the other anti-seed oil people, and all the others are like, man, they don't know what they're talking about. Like, I feel I feel bad for them. I'm gonna pray for them. Or what they say in the South, bless their heart, right? There's a whole community that is waiting to embrace you on villainizing seed oils. And then once you've publicly declared it, whether you're an influencer or even if you're just listening and you've told all your friends and neighbors, hopefully you're not, I don't know if you're talking to your neighbors about this stuff, but walking back from that is very hard to do. As human, we're it's hard to admit that we're wrong and it it costs you what's what's called social capital. And people don't want to do that, right? So it's not, it's not people being stupid. This is a logical error. It's psychologically engineered to feel like it's correct. And calling people out or ridiculing people who fall for the claims. Okay, I'm all for ridiculing people who who push them knowingly for the wrong reasons. That's not what I'm talking about. But ridiculing people who are just subject to them, like all of us, that just makes people dig in even harder. And the way out is to really understand the mechanism so well that the claims of food villain, food villains just stop being interesting anymore. Like at this point, I and many of you who listen to this show, if you've listened to it long enough, you almost don't pay attention when someone says, Oh, this is bad, this is bad, this is bad. You're like, Yeah, probably not. Like, you could pretty much eat any food on the planet and be fine as long as it's meeting your goals as part of a flexible dietary pattern, something we've talked about before on this show. So let's go through the four top villains,

  Philip Pape: 08:01

  all right? The big villain number one is seed oils these days for whatever reason. It's super loud. People are calling it out online. Um, and that includes soybean oil, canola, corn oil, all of that. Supposedly it's driving the obesity epidemic. It causes inflammation because of the linoleic acid or because of the processing or rancidity or whatever, name whatever reason you want. But what the actual evidence says, okay, through meta-analysis of dozens of randomized controlled trials, which is the best quality type of study, thousands of people looking at what happens to inflammatory markers when you increase your linoleic acid intake, which is comes from seed oils, the result is no effect on inflammation, like CRP markers, IL6, interleukin 6, TNF alpha. Those are the three big inflammatory markers that we're all worried about. There's zero effect. And then on the other hand, to further compound the fact that seed oils aren't an issue, and in fact, might be better for you, there is just last year, 2025, JAMA Internal Medicine published a what's called a pooled cohort. 221,000 adults that were followed for up to 33 years. It doesn't get much better than that. And the main finding is that people who consume more plant oils had 16% lower total mortality. People who ate more butter had 15% higher mortality. If you could swap just 10 grams a day of butter for plant oils, there's a 17% lower mortality. So, and this is this is the finding I'm far more inclined to support because of the preponderance of the evidence for it. So, where does the seed oil panic come from? Well, two places that I could identify. The first is rodent studies, where the mice are fed soybean oil for like half their lives in environments that have nothing to do with how humans eat. And the second one is people conflating seed oils, linoleic acid with something called conjugated linoleic acid, which is like a structurally different compound sold as a weight loss supplement, which does increase inflammatory markers. And so the name sounds similar, the molecules are different. I don't know how many people are going with the first one or the second one, but there is no evidence to support that seed oils are the villain that everyone wants to make them out to be. And in fact, there's strong evidence that reducing your saturated fat and supplementing with these types of oils on a one-for-one basis is actually correlated with far-improved health outcomes and actually is in line with the American Heart Association recommendations. So the data doesn't match the narrative. That's the first

  Philip Pape: 10:36

  one. Villain number two is sugar. All right. You've heard for years and years and years, okay, sugar is the cause or the source of all our fat, especially corn syrup, that, you know, because it's processed, it just bypasses your appetite regulation. It spikes insulin, makes you store fat. So I'm gonna tell you about a guy named Mark Haub. Okay, Mark Haub is a nutrition professor at Kansas State. And back in 2010, he ran a 10-week experiment on himself. Okay, I love this guy for doing this. This time it's fun. I know it's like clickbaiting, it gets attention, but it's it's cool when people do this. So he ate Twinkies, little Debbie snacks, Doritos, Oreos, sugary cereals. Like 60% of his diet was just straight, let's call it junk food. Okay. He took a multivitamin and ate some vegetables on the side, but the bulk of what was going into his mouth was sugar and processed carbs. But the one thing he controlled was calories. He ate about 1,800 calories a day, down from his usual 2,600 calorie maintenance level. So that puts him in what? Do the math, 800 calorie deficit. Well, what happens when you're in a deficit? Well, you lose weight. He lost 27 pounds, but this is the cool thing. His LDL cholesterol dropped 20%. That's the bad cholesterol we call it. His HDL went up 20%, his triglycerides dropped 39%, his BMI went from 28.8 down to 24.9 while eating all of this junk. Now, is the conclusion go eat Twinkies as a diet? Of course not. He himself didn't recommend that. It was the principle of the thing that even on a diet that most would call the most awful diet ever, if you're in a calorie deficit, you can lose not only weight, but lose body fat and improve your health and blood markers because of the correlation between those. All that sugar didn't override physiology and thermodynamics. That's my point. Okay, not to eat Twinkies, but the fact that sugar is not the problem. There's also a 2020 meta-analysis in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition that looked at isocaloric swaps, that means one-for-one swaps of sugar for starch. And they found very modest changes in LDL cholesterol and really no differences in body composition. Sugar's role in obesity in the real world, IRL, as they as the kids would say, where it shows up mostly in liquid form like soda, you know, sugary sodas. This is why I recommend diet soda, so you can lower the amount of calories and sugar you get just in general. But it's found in soda, juice, sweetened coffee drinks, you know, those big calorie bombs from Starbucks. The role of obesity there is absolutely real, but it's not because of the sugar. It's not because of the glucose. Okay, it's because of the calories. It's because you're consuming too many calories in too easy a way. And sugar does make it very easy to do that. So let's separate the fact from fiction

  Philip Pape: 13:28

  there. All right, villain number three is ultra-processed food. I know you're thinking, Philip, are you gonna actually defend ultra-processed food? No, remember, today's episode is about showing you that you cannot name a single type of food as a universal villain. There's a famous study that everybody cites to prove that ultra-processed foods make you fat. And it's the same study I cite all the time, not to prove that ultra-processed food makes you fat, but to prove that having a diet that includes primarily ultra-processed food leads to overconsumption. Those are two different things. So this is Kevin Hall's 2019 inpatient study at the National Institutes of Health. And Kevin Hall is a researcher I do respect a lot. He is a smart guy. He's careful with his data. He doesn't overclaim. And he took 20 people for two weeks on ultra-processed food, two weeks on minimally processed food. So it's a what they call a crossover design. It was matched for calories for macros, sugar, salt, fiber, but people could eat as much as they wanted. And the result was that people ate 500 extra calories per day on the ultra-processed diet, and they gained about two pounds in two weeks. So ultra-processed food makes you fat, right? Let's now let's add the nuance, okay? Which which Kevin Hall did. He looked at the why, he looked at the root cause. And the answer is how fast you eat and the energy density of the food. So on the ultra-processed diet, people were eating 48 calories a minute. On the minimally processed diet, 31 calories a minute. So the ultra-processed food was 50% faster to consume. Makes sense. It's processed, it's like denser, right? It's more calorie dense. And people still felt the same hunger and fullness on both diets. They just ate faster before their satiety signals could catch up. Now that's a behavioral mechanism. It's not a metabolic mechanism. And so the conclusion here is the food environment makes it easier to eat more calories. Okay, so that's different than saying ultra-processed food itself makes you fat. Then we have a 2025 follow-up in Nature Medicine by Dicken and colleagues. And it was the same kind of crossover design over eight weeks, but with a little bit of a twist to it. Both arms of the study had to follow national nutrition guidelines. So that means the ultra-processed side got fiber-rich, uh, high-protein ultra-processed foods, as opposed to what we normally think of, which are hyperpalatable snacks. And both groups lost weight. The minimally processed group lost 2% body weight, the ultra-processed group lost 1%. But but the researchers have predicted the ultra-processed food would gain weight. And they didn't. But they they lost weight just less than the other group. So ultra-processed food isn't something that just automatically causes cat fat gain. It's just a category of food that, in its hyper palatable form, makes it easy to overconsume. That's it. So if you structure your choices toward more fiber, more protein, even with ultra-processed food, it actually causes less of that. Now I'm not telling you go and eat just high protein, high fiber processed food. I'm just saying those are the things that matter, not the fact that they are ultra-processed. Okay.

  Philip Pape: 16:44

  The last villain is gluten, and I want to keep this short because the data is super clean here. Celiac disease affects 1% of the population. Those are people who absolutely cannot have gluten. Non-celiac gluten sensitivity, which is that broader category that everyone seems to have these days, for some reason, everyone has a gluten intolerance, apparently. The latest 2025 meta-analysis puts that at 6% of adults. That's it. And then when researchers do what's called double blind challenges, where people get either gluten or placebo and they don't know what it is, only 24% of self-reported gluten-sensitive people actually have reproducible systems, symptoms. So that means 94% of adults have no clinical reason to avoid gluten. And of the ones who think they're sensitive, three-quarters are responding to something other than gluten. It's often FODMAPs. Sometimes the overall improvement they get will come from cutting something like refined wheat products because of the FODMAPs. There's a lot of reasons. This is why people go on carnival and they're like, yeah, I went on carnivore, it solved all my problems. Well, you know what? You just did an elimination diet. You eliminated something that was causing you issues, but it's not all plants. Okay. So, and I feel bad for you if you think it is, and then you live the rest of your life just cutting out so many amazing foods and not getting enough fiber, et cetera. So if you feel worse with gluten or with any other particular food like dairy, don't eat it. Like I'm not telling you to eat it. I'm just saying the universal claim of gluten is making us all fat, all inflamed, causing all sorts of other issues with our gut, whatever. It's not a real thing. There's a very small, small, small effect with people that may have an issue like celiac, but it's being scaled up to apply to everyone, and the evidence does not support it. Okay, I'm very passionate about this episode for some reason. So let me take a pause and let me just take a breather here because a lot of you are thinking, okay, what do I actually do with all this information? How do I structure my eating without falling into these food fear traps? Like, what do I eat? Tell me like what the alternative

  Philip Pape: 18:48

  is. Well, that's why we have what we have. It's called Eat More Lift Heavy. It's a program, it's a 26-week coaching program. It's mainly for women over 40 who have spent years cycling through all of these diets, all of these food rules, all of these villains. You know what I'm talking about. Cut this, add that. This is poison. That's a superfood. Rinse and repeat. Well, what if we replace all of that with a structured, flexible, much more liberating approach? You track your numbers for awareness and you learn to read your own data, but then you eat in a very, very flexible way, not only in terms of food, the food on your plate, but also how you go through phases of fat loss maintenance and muscle building so that it feels much more sustainable. It's easy to do. You're excited about it, you enjoy it. I want you to go to eatmore liftheavy.com to check it out. It's called Eat More Lift Heavy for a reason. It's a great thing to do. Go check it out. Go to eatmore liftheavy.com. And if you're tired of having to cut carbs or cut whatever else it is and feel like you're restricted, we've got the alternative. Go to eatmore liftheavy.com. All

  Philip Pape: 19:56

  right. So if no single food is making you fat, what is? The honest answer is energy balance. Okay, nothing new here, folks. But if you're new to the podcast or you wanted a refresher, let's just get into it. The amount of energy you take in from food relative to the amount your body burns and expense. So if you have a net surplus over time, you gain weight. If you have a net deficit over time, you lose weight. That's it. That's the governing law. Every diet that has ever worked has worked through this mechanism. Whether the people running the diet acknowledge it or not, okay, even the carnivore people, the keto people, anyone selling you the seed oil-free lifestyle. Heck, people that are selling you you don't have to count calories or you don't have to track or whatever, it still comes down to calories. Now, it's not all about calories. Energy balance and losing weight on a pure physics and math basis is about calories, but food quality does matter. Okay. So this is the straw man people use. They hear calories in, calories out, and they're like, okay, so that you're saying food quality doesn't matter. Nope, absolutely not. The actual position supported by what we have in the evidence is energy balance is the boss in terms of weight gained or weight loss. Food quality is helps you with your body composition, how you look, how you feel. See, so they each do a different job for you. So when we talk about food quality, what does it affect? Well, first, satiety, fullness per calorie. So if you're eating more whole foods, vegetables, lean protein, fruit, beans, whole grains, all of these give you more grams, more volume on your scale, right? More fiber per calorie. And by the way, fiber has fewer calories per gram than other carbs. And so they make controlling those calories easier. Okay, now we're getting somewhere. Second, micronutrient density. A long term diet dominated by low nutrient processed foods are going to be worse for your health outcomes, even if your body composition stays the same or stays in a good range. You can still be lean and still be unhealthy, is my point. And then third is the rate of eating, which is the research we talked about earlier. Hyperpalatable processed foods make it easier to consume more calories before your brain registers the fullness. But again, food quality doesn't override thermodynamics. You can't eat enough quote unquote clean food, but be in a calorie surplus and stay lean. And you can't eat dirty food in a deficit and gain fat. You're actually going to lose fat. Isn't that interesting? Okay. All things equal, of course. We're not even talking about lifting weights and preserving muscle and all that fun stuff. I love a really good example here. It's sumo wrestlers. Okay, sumo wrestlers. So awesome. I haven't talked about them in a long time. So the staple meal of a sumo wrestler is called chanko nabe. It is chicken, fish, tofu, vegetables, and rice. What is that? Well, that's whole foods. It's some of the most nutrient-dense, traditional type of meals or cooking on the planet. And they eat five to eight thousand calories a day. They are among the heaviest athletes on the planet Earth. So they eat what we'd call clean food in a massive calorie surplus. So they have massive body weight. Just a very simple example. Now, what's interesting is we can go into the fact that they have healthier blood markers than you would expect for their weight because they have a massive amount of muscle. Totally different topic, but worth maybe worth doing an episode sometime, right? And I the the example of Mark Hobb with the Twinkie diet, that was kind of like the opposite of the exact same thing, right? He was eating a totally junk diet and then losing weight. Again, it came down to energy balance. And we're not saying that that's a good thing, depending on your lifestyle and the quality of the food, right? Just what we talked about. So at the end of the day, I would say the dose matters when it comes to these foods. There's a saying from a physician back way back in the 1500s, a guy named Paracelsus. I think it's Celsus or Paracelsus, I don't know. He said, the dose makes the poison. That's where we get that phrase from. Water can kill you if you drink too much of it. It's called hyponneutremia, and people died from that. If you have too much oxygen in too high of a concentration, it can damage your lungs. Right? So nothing is safe at every dose, and nothing is dangerous at every dose. The dose in the context of the system, that's what determines the outcome. So seed oils at say 7% of your calories in a diet rich in vegetables, lean protein, fiber, there is zero evidence of any harm, and there's possibly some benefit if they're replacing saturated fats. Whereas if you have seed oils at 35% of your calories in a diet full of full, you know, fried foods, low fiber calorie surplus, which guess what? That's like the standard American diet. And that's the problem, is we're we're comparing apples and oranges. Okay. Just because you eat a lot of seed oils and you're fat doesn't mean it was the seed oils. You're probably getting them from ultra-processed foods and you're drinking lots of soda and you're over consuming calories, et cetera, and you're not lifting weights. I could go on. Okay? It's not the seed oil that's the cause, it's the dose in the context of your overall diet and your dietary pattern. Same with sugar, same with ultra-processed food, same with everything. And that is, in my mind, very liberating. Like to me, that's the essence of flexible eating. So let's talk

  Philip Pape: 25:10

  about that. What is the framework that you can use that has worked with the hundreds of clients that I have coached? It's very simple. Roughly 80% of your calories from whole, minimally processed foods that you enjoy, about 20% from whatever you want. Now notice how I said that. The 80% are whole, minimally processed foods, but you're still gonna enjoy them. You're gonna pick the ones that you like. Okay, don't force force yourself to eat quote unquote healthy or clean foods that you don't like. There's plenty of foods that you should or or will like. And then 20% whatever you want with nothing off limits. There is no villain on your list. There's no moral hierarchy of foods. And the evidence supports this. There's a randomized controlled trial from 2021. Conlin and colleagues published in the Journal of the International Society of Sports Nutrition. They took resistance-trained adults, put them on a 20% calorie deficit for 10 weeks, and they randomized them to either flexible dieting or rigid dieting. So the same calories, the same protein. The only difference was the rules around which foods you were allowed to eat. During the diet phase, both groups lost similar amounts of body weight and fat. But then they did something smart in the study. They followed both groups for 10 more weeks of free eating. And that's where they saw differences. The flexible eating group gained 1.7 kilograms of lean mass back. The rigid group lost 0.7 kilograms of lean mass. So flexible dieting ended up with more muscle and better long-term outcomes. And the reason is because rigid dieting predicts binge cycles. Decades and decades of eating disorder research has shown this. When you label foods as bad or forbidden, those foods become psychologically supercharged in your mind. The all-or-nothing mindset kicks in. You're either perfect or you're a failure. And then eventually, guess what happens? You crack, you let go, you binge, you swear off the food again, you start over. It is a vicious loop or cycle. Flexible dieting prevents that loop because you're including the foods you enjoy at a small dose regularly. It is not a moral issue, and it loses its status as this forbidden thing. It becomes just food. That is it. So when I push back on food demonization on wits and weights, the what's underneath it is this idea of like orthorexia, this obsessive preoccupation with eating pure and clean foods, the binge eating cycles, the eating disorders, that's what I'm concerned about for folks. Okay, it increases food fear, it increases social anxiety around eating, it predicts these cycles. So the fix is to lower all of those moral stakes around food, knowing how the human brain works, and instead raise the stakes around the system itself, like energy balance, protein training, recovery, the big levers that you can work around that actually align with your goals. All right, before I wrap up, remember I'm gonna give you the food villain test. Three questions takes 30 seconds, coming right up. But if this episode made you realize, hey, the problem isn't a specific food. It's not carbs, it's not sugar, it's not seed oils, whatever. Maybe you're on carnivore right now and you're like, ah, I can't do this the rest of my life. The problem is really a lack of a structured system that does work for you. That is why we built Eat More Lift Heavy. That is the 26-week coach program. You learn a skill one week at a time. And if you're done cycling through all this food nonsense, if you're done with worrying about what's poisoning you and your hormones and starting over constantly, this is going to fix that with you because it is super sustainable. It's skill building, it's positive. We empower you, we support you along the way. It's very flexible, and you're gonna come out the other side feeling so strong, empowered, able to do whatever you want to do for your physique and health for the rest of your life. EatmoreLiftheavy.com. That is the whole point. I want you to fire us when you're done. Okay, you don't need a coach forever. You need to build the skills and the structure so that food is not ruining or running your life anymore. Go to eatmore liftheavy.com and we'll see you there. All right,

  Philip Pape: 29:16

  here's that 30-second food villain test. It's three questions. Question one, at what dose? That's it. At what dose? If someone cannot tell you a dose where the food becomes harmful versus a dose that is fine in context, then they don't understand the food. Okay. If they say seed oils is harmful at any dose, sorry, that is not true. Question two, in what context? So if the claimer on the food doesn't account for the rest of the diet around it, calorie balance, training, the individual's health, that's the composition fallacy we started with in this episode. Okay. You're pointing at one thing and blaming it for the whole. And then question three, what human studies support this? Now, I'm not a big fan of like calling people out and saying, tell me the study, link the study. You know, it's more of hey, the preponderance of evidence should be there somewhere. And I'm fine if you, instead of asking the person, because you might be talking to a regular person as opposed to like a quote unquote expert, go ahead and look it up yourself. Like go to scholar.google.com and start looking up. Try to use AI and really do your searches. Try to avoid, you know, you want to avoid cherry picking here, but at least ask for the studies that support it so that you can look into those. If the studies are just like a mouse study over here, a testimonial over here, a case study over here, a documentary on Netflix, okay, that's not really the evidence we're looking for. So those three questions can really help you decide. Which at the end of the day, do you even need to ask these questions? I don't know. I would say probably not, because just about any claim about a single food being a villain is probably false, but it's worth going through the exercise. All right, until next time, keep using your wits, lifting those weights. And remember that no single food is making you fat, causing you inflammation, or anything else. The dose, the context, the system are where it's at. I'm Philip Hape, and I'll talk to you next time here on the Wits and Weights Podcast.

Why "Muscle Confusion" Might Actually Work for Hypertrophy | Ep 470

Is "muscle confusion" just bro science, or does recent strength training research actually back it up? You migh be surprised...

We get into how muscles grow, why exercise selection changes which regions of a muscle develop, and the role of muscle length in hypertrophy.

This episode covers the last decade of research on exercise variation and hypertrophy. These include studies on leg press vs. leg extension and on triceps and hamstrings at different muscle lengths.

We distinguish the original P90X version of "muscle confusion" from the systematic variation (aka periodization and mesocycles) that you can intentionally plan into your strength training programming.

This framing matters most for adults over 40 who've been told to pick a few compound lifts and add weight to the bar forever (sound familiar?).

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 - Muscle confusion and exercise variation
2:25 - Where "muscle confusion" came from
4:00 - Mechanical tension and progressive overload
5:52 - Muscles as regional structures
7:30 - Regional hypertrophy in the quads
10:24 - Muscle length and hypertrophy
14:30 - Strategic exercise selection
15:45 - Training programming for adults over 40
17:01 - 3 rules for planned variation
20:42 - Caveats on variation
23:35 - Bonus: lengthened-position swap per muscle group

• Transcript

  Philip Pape: 00:00

  If your training program looks basically the same as it did a year ago, because every coach tells you, just pick your lifts and add weight to the bar, but your muscle growth has stalled in spite of doing everything right. This episode is for you. We're gonna look at research from the last three years in the area of quote unquote muscle confusion, and some of it's gonna surprise you. I'm gonna show you what kind of exercise variation actually does grow more muscle, which ones waste your time, and a simple way to balance all of this along with your progressive overload. 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 we're gonna talk about the concept of muscle confusion. It probably sounds like something from the 90s, from P90X, from classic bodybuilding days, you know, random workout, shock the muscle, uh, progressive overload, what's that? Maybe not tracking, you know, none of the good stuff we often talk about these days. And a lot of coaches, you know, even evidence-based for the last decade or two have said, hey, that that that concept is nonsense. Let's focus on just muscular tension and growth and progressing our lifts. And I generally agree. I still generally agree. But honestly, there is there are aspects of bro science that do hold up in a way. And I like to address these because I think it's fun to tease apart reality from myth. And the phrase muscle confusion, I think, covers different things, two specific ideas, and we're gonna separate those. One of those ideas doesn't make any sense at all, complete nonsense. The other, the one that is a real driver of muscle growth, uh, especially the older you get and the more that you train, might give you this extra advantage once you understand it. And then stick around to the end of this episode because I'm gonna give you the single highest payoff exercise swap for each major muscle group. If you only change one thing in your training this week, this bonus at the end is the one that you can incorporate. All right, in this episode, I'm gonna cover why the original P90X version of muscle confusion was indeed broscience and what Tony Horton himself has admitted about it. The actual research from the last two to three years on regional muscle growth and muscle length training, and then a simple rule of thumb to set up your accessory work so you're getting the most out of every

  Philip Pape: 02:25

  session. All right, let's start with what muscle confusion originally meant, because I think a lot of people argue against it without realizing what they're arguing against. Okay, so the phrase actually predates P90X. We can go back to Joe Weeder. Joe Weeder was writing about something called the muscle confusion principle decades ago in the old bodybuilding magazines, and then it finally hit, I guess, what you'll call the mainstream, is in the infomercials about 20 years ago, the mid-2000s, let's say, Tony Horton. And the pitch was that your muscles get used to exercises and then they stop growing. So you need to constantly shock them with new movements to force adaptation. Monday is Plyo, Wednesday is Kenpo karate, Friday is yoga X with weighted curls. You know, you get the idea you've probably done something like this. Maybe you're laughing out loud right now. And if it kind of sounds like nonsense to you now, especially if you listen to Wits and Weights, you're definitely not alone because Tony Horton has admitted on multiple podcasts that it was a marketing term. Muscle confusion was a marketing term. The team made up the phrase as a label for what was just variety. That's it. And we call this something else generally. It's called periodization. So generally that, you know, labels are mean a lot, especially when we think about the fitness industry and marketing. There was another interview where he said muscle confusion and periodization are the same thing. So again, variety. That's really what we're talking about. And so that's the piece we're gonna say could work for certain reasons. We're gonna get into it. Now,

  Philip Pape: 04:00

  the bro science piece of this is the idea that muscles, you know, memorize your exercises or they get bored or whatever. Nonsense. Skeletal muscle responds to mechanical tension. That is the primary driver of hypertrophy. And you need sufficient volume with that mechanical tension to induce progressive overload, right? You have to have enough of the stimulus over time and the tension to grow. I mean, you don't want, you can't use mechanical tension today and then skip training for three weeks and hope for it to work because you're going to get detrained. So if you do the same lift week after week and you keep adding load or reps because you are pushing close to failure and inducing muscular tension, your body will adapt and you'll get stronger for next time. And that is the process. Very simple, full stop. You don't need muscle shock or any of this crazy nonsense. Randomly changing exercises, especially if you're doing it every session, that actually destroys the thing that drives long-term growth, which is your ability to track progressive overload and get enough frequency and stimulus on a specific movement pattern. Can you still grow in some ways? Yes, there are definitely programs where they rotate a lot and you still grow, but it's very hard to tell that you're getting stronger on your bench if every Wednesday is a completely different pressing variation drawn out of a hat. And again, it doesn't preclude growth if you're stimulating the same muscles. It just may not be very efficient. So when we push back on muscle confusion, there's a lot of validity to that. And the idea of picking a small set of exercises and just sticking with them is a great way to drive progress. And I would recommend that to all beginners and most intermediate lifters. And I've said that on this show many, many times. It's why I do like programs like starting strength. They're very basic compound lift style programs, especially when you're a beginner.

  Philip Pape: 05:52

  So we want to talk about some new evidence though in the last few years that addresses a narrower question. Does it matter which exercises you pick? And does loading those same muscle groups from multiple angles because of that variation produce different growth than loading it from just the one angle you get in a single movement pattern? And the answer, surprisingly, maybe, is yes. Yes, it does. And it does so in a way that has some practical implications for your accessory work. And that's where things get useful on this show. We want to tell you how to actually implement this in your real life. Okay, so to understand why exercise selection matters more than we used to think, I want to drop an assumption on you that a muscle is a single object. This is an assumption many of us have, right? That like there is a muscle. That is not true. A muscle is a structure and it has regions. For example, the biceps has a proximal portion near the shoulder and a distal portion near the elbow. So proximal is near, distal is far. The quadriceps, right? The quads of your leg have four separate heads, hence the word quad. Each head has a top, middle, and bottom. The triceps has a long head, a lateral head, and a medial head, right? Tri-three. And they all have different geometric relationships to the shoulder and to the elbow. So when you do an exercise, the load gets distributed unevenly across that muscle, that muscle belly. And it gets concentrated in regions where the geometry of the exercise puts the most tension. The more you understand that, the more you understand why different exercises produce different growth patterns, even when they technically target the same muscle group. So even when you're when you swear in the gym that I'm training my chest, you might be growing different parts of your chest. Case in point, flat bench versus incline. For anybody who knows anything about that at all, you know that they hit different parts of the chest. So I want to share some data because numbers are really helpful. I'm an engineer, I like data, and I always like to tie it back to metrics and numbers. Um, and this some of this stuff might surprise you. So it's interesting. There's a foundational study by Fonseca and colleagues in 2014. They took young men and split them into two groups. One group did only back squat for 12 weeks, another group rotated among squat, leg press, deadlift, and lunge across the same training week. So all back squats versus four different leg exercises each week. But the total weekly volume was matched. The total quad growth was the same between the groups or similar between the groups, but when the researchers looked head by head, so muscle, muscle head, the squat-only group had gaps in certain heads of the muscle, the rectus femoris and the vastus medialis. You don't have to know what these are, those are, you can look them up. The varied group, the group that had multiple exercises, grew all four heads of the quad more uniformly. And so that was kind of the first sign in the literature that exercise selection affects which regions of a muscle grow beyond just how much total growth happens. Now, again, we're talking hypertrophy, we're talking muscle growth. A lot of this growth, a lot of this isn't gonna translate one-on-one with strength if that's your goal, right? There's significant overlap for sure. But if you, for example, have already well-developed heads of the muscle, you may benefit more from the big movement patterns in a systemic way. So that's just a caveat. Anyway, fast forward to very recent research back in 2024, Burke and colleagues, they did an in-person or a within-person study. Uh, and this one's pretty compelling. They had each participant train one leg with leg press and the other leg with leg extension for eight weeks. So within your own body, you're training each leg different ways. Kind of interesting, right? So one leg gets a leg press, the other the leg extension, and then they measured the rectus femoris and the vasus lateralis using ultrasound. So again, two heads of the quad. And what they saw is the leg extension leg grew the rectus femoris more, and the leg press grew the vasus lateralis more. So same person, same effort, different exercise, different regions, different regions growing. And the statistical probability of this correlation was as high as 0.99, which is almost a perfect correlation. So that's kind of the regional heads finding. The second

  Philip Pape: 10:24

  piece of this mechanism is muscle length. And this one might be even more important because you've heard a lot of talk about the short and long positions of the muscle and lengthened partials, things like that. So now there's a series of studies showing that loading a muscle in a lengthened position produces more growth than loading it in a shortened position for the same number of sets and reps. And just quick caveat before you jump to ah, I see, see, I need to be training lengthened. We're gonna find that it's still beneficial to train the full range of motion for a variety of reasons. But let's just look at this. So Mayo and colleagues 2023, they had their subjects do triceps extensions overhead with one arm and triceps pushdowns at the side with the other arm. So again, this is a within person type of deal. And both arms got the same training volume. So after 12 weeks, the long head of the triceps had grown 29% on the overhead side and only 20% on the pushdown side, the whole triceps grew 20% versus 14%. Now, isn't that interesting? Isn't that interesting? So in the overhead, now I've always thought or I learned a long time ago that overhead triceps work tends to be, tends to blow up your triceps more, and that it's because of the length and position, because of that extra range of motion. By the way, the overhead group used less weight than the pushdown group. Now, not that it translates directly, but that's just interesting, right? So the length and position was the the real key variable here, not the load. The overarm, the overhead arm grew more despite working with lower absolute weight on the bar. I think I said that right, right? Yeah, the overhead group used less weight but had more growth. So that's interesting. The same lab, they tested hamstrings the same way. So they did a seated leg curl where your hip is flexed, your hamstring is stretched over the hip joint, right? A seated leg curl versus a prone or lying leg curl where the hip is extended and the hamstring is shorter. After 12 weeks, the total hamstring volume grew 14% on the seated side and only 9.3% on the prone side. So it's 50% more growth from the same movement, but done in a different muscle length. So the seated seems better than the prone. And then in 2023, another group looked at the big calf muscle called the gastrosinemius. The group that trained mostly through the bottom stretched portion of the range, remember, this is calf raises. We talk about it all the time, how important it is to stretch at the bottom, have that height, and really have that ankle come down. So you stretch at the bottom, produced more than twice the muscle growth of the group that trained mostly through the top shortened position. Same load on the bar. The difference just where in the range of motion the muscle was working the hardest. So I think you get the picture from all of these studies. The same muscle can respond differently to different exercises and to different parts of the range of motion. And the mechanism here is straightforward. Mechanical tension drives growth, and different exercises apply that tension to different regions of the muscle at different points along the strength curve. So it's not muscle shock, muscle surprise, novelty effect. It's just physics and geometry. That is fascinating. As an engineer who loves to explain things with science, that is so cool. It still comes down to mechanical tension, right? But now you're talking about how you get to apply that tension in the proper way for what your goal is. And this is where the idea of imbalances actually carries some validity, right? Because if you're overdoing it in one region of the muscle, um, you could get an imbalance. Now, I'm gonna go way back to my starting strength days and say, you know, if you're if you're training the full movement patterns, by definition, you shouldn't be as imbalanced because everything's working together as it should. However, because of life, because of injury, because of improper movement, because of, because, because we do still see some level of imbalance. Plus, a lot of you want to do hypertrophy and grow your muscles and look better and all that. And so you might even create imbalances by training too much of the same thing, for example. And that's kind of what we're getting at when we talk about this concept. So that brings us to strategic exercise selection, where you cover different regions and different muscle lengths to drive more uniform growth across the whole muscle. And that is in concert with the major movement patterns, which also, in a sense, do a similar thing, but may hold you back if your bottleneck is a weak area of your muscle and the movement pattern doesn't stress that muscle group. Does that make sense? That's where I think variations can blow you up if you are in that situation. Whereas for others, they may not add anything and they may just add fatigue and volume that are unnecessary. So it's very interesting. All right, now if you're hearing this and thinking, all right, it all makes sense, but I don't want to spend a ton of time researching which exercises go with which heads of my quads. All right. And I get it. And you know, most lifters don't want to be their own programmer. They want to lift, they want to see the numbers go up, they want to know that someone else has thought about the program or the training. And that's why we built Eat More Lift Heavy. This is our program, Eat More Lift Heavy, where the programs are available already to cover a variety of goals, days per week, equipment, and skill level. And we assign it to you on day one based on what's going on with your intake, your life, your equipment, your experience, your goals. Right? We don't just give you a content library of a million templates or an app that has unlimited selection. We actually tell you here's what you can do to make the most out of where you are right now. And typically they're based on compound lifts with accessories rotating on a certain type of schedule. And the more advanced you are, the more of this kind of rotation and variation you might have. So this muscle length and regional growth stuff I'm talking about today is baked into how I like to structure our programs. And Coach Carol, who is also in Eat More Lift Heavy, she has written up some excellent training programs as well. Because many of you, you can't afford to spend hours and hours trying to research this stuff. So Eat More Lift Heavy, it's a 26-week coached program built around these ideas. Eat enough, lift heavy, progressive overload, know exactly what to do, focus on one thing a week. Don't get overwhelmed. You know what to do next. You focus on your biggest constraint, you make progress, you get accountability. It's as simple as that. There's a lot of extra bells and whistles, there's live coaching calls, there's a private community, there's lots of resources. That's all fine and good. But the main thing is that you actually implement the information to make progress. If you want to learn more, go to eatmore liftheavy.com, check it out, go to eatmore liftheavy.com. All right, I want to get practical

  Philip Pape: 17:01

  now. How do you use this stuff? Okay, assuming you're not, assuming you don't join our program and we just make it easy for you and you want to program your own stuff. How do you do it? I'm gonna give you three rules. If you apply these three rules, you'll get the most benefit from what the research tells us works. And again, it all comes down to mechanical tension, but it's more complicated as always. And you're gonna get the progressive overload that does build your muscle. All right, rule number one anchor your compound lifts. What I mean by that is the main lifts in your program shouldn't change much. Okay, until you get into advanced, like something like conjugate or powerlifting style thing, anchor your lifts, your squat or your hinge variant, your horizontal press, which is usually a bench press of some kind, vertical press, rowing, andor pull downs. Okay. I think I covered them all, or deadlift as well. I said hinge variant, but squat and deadlift. So even if it's a Romanian deadlift, even if it's a JM or an AD press, whatever, the variation is keep them stable for like eight weeks, maybe 12 weeks. Don't rotate them. All right, that way you build the neuromuscular adaptation. Your body learns the movement patterns. It's essentially a skill, and you'll be able to load it heavier from session to session. You're gonna be using your natural movement patterns. I think that's really, really important. All right, don't switch around from leg press to split squat to step-ups and just all over the place. Do not do that for your main lifts. Okay, so that's the first one. That's like your stable platform for the program. Rule number two is to choose complementary exercises, but rotate them on what's called a mesocycle. This is it's not too complicated. A mesocycle is just a long enough period of time, like four or six weeks, maybe eight weeks, where you swap out your accessories to start hitting different regions of the muscle groups. Okay. And you might already be using hitting different regions within your week, like if you do triceps on two days a week and you hit the long and short heads, you may, or the two, two, two of the two or the three of the heads, you might already have that built in, but then you're going to swap things out for slight variations after, say, six weeks, even if the compound lifts stay the same. And that gives you some variety as well, makes it fun. It's something to look forward to, but you need a long enough runway for your biceps, your triceps, your calves, your hamstrings, your delts, you know, direct chest, like pec work, that you actually make progress and then you rotate over these mesocycles, these blocks within the big block. And then rule number three is at least one exercise per muscle group should definitely load that muscle in a lengthened position. Now, if you're doing full range of motion, you are hitting the lengthened position generally, but certain exercises will hit it harder. Right? So if you're gonna pick two to three exercises per muscle group across the week or across your block, make sure one of them stretches the muscle really nicely under load. So for triceps, that means overhead. Like have an overhead thing in there. Oh, I'm always thinking triceps have something overhead. Don't just do press downs. For hamstrings, a movement where your hip is flexed. Okay, where your hip is flexed. For chest, a fly with a deep bottom stretch or press where the dumbbells go below the line of your chest. For biceps, an angle where the arm is behind the torso. So in this case, I love incline bicep curls. So I think you get the pattern, right? I think you get it. And I'm gonna give you a specific swap for each muscle group in the bonus at the end of today's episode. So hang tight for that. That's it. That is how you upgrade your programming to take advantage of this and get a really effective workout. You anchor the compound lifts, you rotate your accessories using a mesocycle, and you hit one lengthened position movement per muscle group. All right. Now I

  Philip Pape: 20:42

  want to address something that I know you're probably thinking, because I love nuance. We always lose nuance. That's why I like podcasts, long form. Okay. I am not saying that variation is more important than volume or progressive overload. Not even close. Okay, you have to go near failure on enough sets with enough frequency and progressively overload those lifts. You have to eat enough, you have to need enough protein, probably enough carbs. Are you sleeping? These matter way more than exercise selection. I'll tell you that right now. Okay. I'm also not saying that every study tells us this is exactly how it is. There are some studies that suggest maybe the benefit is really in the combination of all these things. And you're gonna get that just from a normal, well-structured program that we've talked about today. And I'm not also not saying you you make this a random variation where you're constantly switching around because that is not gonna help you out either. All right. I would call variation a refinement on top of the fundamentals. That's it. It's a refinement on top of the fundamentals. It's something to think about. One little thing I didn't mention, I'm just throwing it in there right now, is a finisher. This is just a bonus. You can add a finisher at just the lengthened position. Look it up, go to Google or YouTube, check it out, what I'm talking about. Just look up lengthened partials, and you can use that as a finisher, might. Be an extra fun thing to try. So that is where we land on this with the principles. Before we wrap up, I want to remind you that I promised I'm going to give you a single highest payoff swap for each major muscle group in just a second. But if any part of this episode connected with you, if you realize I haven't been running things quite the right way for my program and I'm not quite sure what to do, that is why we built Eat More Lift Heavy. It is going to level you up so much in your skills, which is my mission in life is to help you build these skills so you don't need to depend on another coach again. I'm sorry to all the other coaches listening where I'm ruining your long-term revenue per client or whatever. But I want people to fire me. I want people to learn and be excited. And you know what usually happens is you learn, you get excited, you grow, you build muscle, you lose fat, you look better. You're like, okay, what's next? I want to level up to the next skill. And that's how this thing should work. So eat more lift heavy, eatmore liftheavy.com, a 26-week coach program, primarily for adults over 40, to build the nutrition and strength training skills to build and preserve muscle, lose fat, manage your physique and sustain it and eat well and sustainably eat for the rest of your life. No diets, okay, no cutting carbs, none of that nonsense. You're gonna get a coach-assigned training program, monthly live coaching calls, a community where you can get accountability in addition to just the program itself, which is one skill per week that you focus on. It's very achievable. And it's an incredible program. Go to eatmoreliftheavy.com. I would love to see you there. You can learn everything about it on the page, eatmoreliftheavy.com. All right. If

  Philip Pape: 23:35

  you only change one thing in your training this week, swap one accessory per muscle group for its lengthened position version. So here we go. Triceps. Trade cable pushdowns for overhead rope or dumbbell extensions. Hamstrings, trade one set of prone leg curls, that's lion leg curls, for seated leg curls. Biceps, swap a preacher curl for an incline dumbbell curl. Okay, where your arms hang behind your torso. Your arms should be basically straight down when you're sitting. Chest, swap a flat dumbbell fly for an incline dumbbell fly with a deep stretch at the bottom. Alternatively, you can use a pec deck if you have one available. Calves, trade one set of standing calf raises for one where you let your heel drop as deep below the platform as you can. Now, this may be the same exercise, just positioning it differently, getting a higher box or platform or whatever. That's it. I think you can experience some more growth by just making these tweaks and have fun in the gym next time you go train. All right, until next time, keep using your wits, lifting those weights. And remember, growing more muscle comes down to loading the same muscle well with mechanical tension from more than one angle. Nothing fancier than that. I'm Philip Pape, and I'll talk to you next time here on the Wits and Weights podcast.

The 20-Minute Fix for Menopause Belly Fat | Ep 469

Can you target menopause belly fat?

The surprising answer is... yes! It involves how metabolism shifts after 40, why visceral fat behaves differently than subcutaneous fat, and THIS time-efficient form of conditioning that outperforms steady-state cardio in the latest postmenopausal research.

This episode covers 2026 metabolic chamber research on how the menopause transition independently changes metabolism and substrate oxidation, the visceral fat redistribution that drives the menopause belly experience, and sprint interval research in postmenopausal women.

Plus how to fit short sprint sessions around lifting heavy, who should start this protocol, and the speed-drop test that tells you whether the protocol is working. Built for women in perimenopause, postmenopause, and adults over 40 working on fat loss, body recomp, and strength training over 40.

Get the free Sprinting for Fat Loss guide by joining my email list and replying to ask for it. The 6-page PDF includes the full protocol, equipment options, and how to fit short sprint sessions around your lifting schedule:
https://witsandweights.com/email

Timestamps:

0:00 - 20-minute fix for menopause belly fat
2:20 - Metabolism drop in menopause
7:06 - Substrate oxidation and fuel preference
9:58 - Sprint research in postmenopausal women
13:08 - Sprint adaptations and visceral fat
15:30 - Sprinting protocol
18:48 - Equipment hierarchy for sprint training
20:12 - Fitting sprints around lifting
24:48 - Bonus: speed drop test

• Transcript

  Philip Pape: 00:00

  There is a specific fix for the kind of belly fat that shows up in the menopause transition, and it takes about 20 minutes per session, twice a week. In one of the best studies we have on this, that was enough to drop visceral fat 24% in just 16 weeks. You don't have to change your diet. You don't have to have any hours in the gym. Today I'm gonna walk you through what the research shows about menopause belly fat and this one form of conditioning that targets it specifically. If you're under 40 or you're a guy, this still applies. The mechanism is the same. I think you're gonna enjoy this one. 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, founder of the Fitness Lab app. And today I want to talk about something that I'll say surprises almost every woman that I coach who is over 40, and that is that the belly fat you get during the menopause transition, it happens to everyone. Every woman knows what belly menopause belly is about. There is a fix for this that is actually meaningful, that actually moves the needle. And it's not walking more, it's not just losing body fat, it's not abloaded training, it's not the reducing alcohol or having more sleep. All of those things are good. All of those are goodness. It is not chronic cardio, it's not a new eating protocol. It's something that takes 20 minutes per session, twice a week, and it targets the specific kind of fat that gets redistributed during menopause. I'm gonna pull together two pieces of evidence today for you. The first is data from Dr. Bill Campbell. He's a researcher at the University of South Florida. He is awesome. He's been on the show several times before. He runs a monthly research review. It's one of the ones I pay for called Body by Science. We actually, or he actually featured me a while back, ironically, in an article or an issue related to abs and ab training. And his latest issue and a recent workshop he did looked at this finding from the research, which is that menopause independently lowers your metabolism in a way

  Philip Pape: 02:20

  that aging alone does not explain. It's menopause, it's not aging. It's very interesting because we always say, well, no, it's just the muscle mass, but there is some research suggesting there's something independent going on. The second piece of evidence is exercise research on what reduces visceral fat. That's the belly fat we're talking about when we say menobelly or menopause belly. And this is where a lot of women are headed off in the wrong direction because oftentimes the advice of you just gotta lose body fat, you just have to move more, you just have to lift weights, which again are all great things, it doesn't target this specific problem. So we're gonna talk about that today. And then stick around to the end because I'm gonna give you a single question test that tells you whether you're doing this protocol correctly. Okay, so we want to do this right once you know what it is. Here's what we're going to cover. I'm gonna walk you through why the metabolism drop in menopause is a real independent factor and what the best study ever done on this looked at. I'm gonna show you why visceral fat is specifically what is driving the my belly fat has gone up even though nothing changed experience. And then I'm gonna give you the 20-minute protocol that I use with my clients and with myself, along with who should start doing something else first before they do this. Okay, so let's talk about the experience of women that I hear. Obviously, I'm not a woman. There's a lot of things I don't experience, including what men experience. So I have to listen, I have to empathize, I have to hear your experiences. And our women over 40, which is roughly 70 to 80% of our clients and our members of Eat More Lift Heavy, are going along, eating about the same as you always have, training about the same. And suddenly there is belly fat that wasn't there before, right? Your clothes just fit differently. The scale might not even be that different. If you go listen to our last solo episode, all about three metrics before summer. If you're trying to lose fat, we talk about the scale weight there. Your scale weight may not be different, but your body distribution has changed. And it feels like everything that you've used in the past to help with this is are not working. Even dieting, even exercise, even moving. And so the intuitive response, though, is to try those things again. You're gonna eat a little less, move a little more, add some cardio. I appreciate the intuition, right? When something has worked in the past, we feel like it should work again. And energy balance still matters. It's physics at the most basic level. But what the research shows that's happening explains a bit why those don't always produce the same results in this window. Let's talk about that. Dr. Bill Campbell, love the guy. Okay, he's he's just such a great science communicator and educator. And in his March 2026 research review, and then he did a workshop for coaches, he looked at a study. The study he broke down followed 158 women for four years. All of them started pre-menopausal. All of them were at least 43 when they entered the study. And a subset of 34 women spent 24 hours inside a metabolic chamber at the beginning of the study and 24 hours inside the same one four years later. And that's kind of a gold standard for measuring metabolism, you know, as best we can, so we can measure the actual calories burned. Here's what they found. Pretty cool. The women who remained pre-menopausal over the four years, they lost about 150 calories a day of their metabolic rate. That's their metabolism went down by 150. And that's just aging, right? And happens all to all of us as we age a little, likely due to due to the loss of muscle mass. So that's kind of its own factor that affects everyone. The women who transitioned from pre- to post-menopausal over those same four years lost 200 calories a day. That's 50 calorie per day difference. And it was specifically attributable to menopause, not to aging, not to activity differences. They controlled for activity inside the chamber. Now, 50 calories doesn't sound like a lot, but think about what that adds up to. Just do basic math. 50 calories a day over four years equals five pounds of extra body fat from the metabolism drop alone, with no change in eating or moving. Right? So, this is that little tax on menopause that we're trying to understand as really good researchers actually study this population, which we haven't studied women in menopause, let alone women, let's be honest, in much of the research for all these years. The second piece of this data that again is not talked about too much, is what fuel your body is burning. Let me explain. They measured something called substrate

  Philip Pape: 07:06

  oxidation, which just means are you burning fat, carbs, or protein for energy? Well, the postmenopausal group was burning significantly less fat to fuel their daily life compared to the women who stayed pre-menopausal. And they were burning more protein, which basically means they were losing lean tissue. So your body has shifted its fuel preference away from fat and toward muscle. Less fat burn, more muscle burn, more fat stored. Again, burn is a very loose, unscientific term, but you get the idea. And then guess where you store that fat? In the belly. Belly fat, yes. So that is the setup to this story. You're dealing with a metabolism that's compensating downward, a body that shifted its preference towards storing fat in the belly, specifically. Your body is really good at compensation, and that's the whole problem here. You can you can add 30 minutes of, say, moderate movement and lose a chunk of that back in reduced movement throughout the rest of your day because your body compensates. Millions of years of evolution optimizing for keeping things in homeostasis. What your body doesn't compensate well against is what we're going to talk about today: a brief maximum intensity signal that could potentially do something about your belly fat. Oh, let's talk about it. Okay. The menopause transition, it doesn't just add body fat, right? We've been talking about the fact that it adds specific fat in your visceral, your abdominal area. There's two main places that your body stores fat. Subcutaneous fat is the fat right under the skin. That's the fat that you can pinch and see. It is, I'll say, metabolically calm or quiet. It doesn't do much besides just sit there. Visceral fat is different. That's the fat in your abdomen. It's wrapped around your organs. It is metabolically active. It pumps out inflammatory signals, which we can measure in the blood. It drives insulin resistance. It's the fat that correlates with cardiovascular disease, type 2 diabetes, and even cognitive decline. So when we say menopause belly, we're not talking about subcutaneous fat. We're talking about a body-wide redistribution of fat toward the visceral compartment, driven largely by the drop in estrogen. And this is this is not arguable. Like this is not debatable. Menopause research studies have looked at this. We know this happens. Cross-sectional studies, longitudinal, metabolic chambers, they all say the same thing that during menopause, your visceral fat goes up and it goes up quite a bit. So the question is what targets visceral fat? Because if we're going to invest our time and recovery, which is limited, into something, we want it to work on the thing that all of you are frustrated about. So here's where it gets interesting. For about a decade, the research has been pointing to something that now we have pretty good confidence in.

  Philip Pape: 09:58

  There was a landmark study by a French researcher named Baylard in 2016. He took 17 postmenopausal women with type 2 diabetes and he had them do two short cycling sessions per week for 16 weeks. So these are about 20-minute sessions. They didn't change anything else, not their diet, not anything. The result was that their abdominal fat dropped 8%. Visceral fat specifically dropped 24%. 24% in 16 weeks. That's crazy with two 20-minute sessions per week on a cycle. And for today's episode, the the key here is that those sessions were sprint intervals. They weren't steady state cardio. Because we know this, the moderate steady state group in the same study did not see significant visceral fat reduction. Isn't this incredible? And by the way, we're gonna we're gonna touch on this a few times, but you guys know I've been talking about sprinting for a long time. I just hadn't quite been able to connect it to this specific benefit yet. And now we can, and this is just just this is just incredible. A follow-up study from Dupuis in 2020, why'd I say it that way, 2020, extended this to non-diabetic postmenopausal women, and they found the same thing. Sprint intervals reduce their abdominal and visceral fat, whereas moderate cardio didn't change it in the same way. And then when they added resistance training on top of sprinting, guess what? They got fat loss and they got increased muscle mass. And of course, that's the only combination that did that, which makes sense. We've got to lift weights if we want to add muscle. Now, let's all we always have to be honest about research and how reliable it is. The the broader meta-analysis that compared sprint intervals to moderate cardio on total fat showed them as roughly equivalent when you match for total work. In other words, from the thermodynamics perspective, sprints aren't magic, which is consistent with everything I've been talking about, right? Like the type you do doesn't matter. But in this context, the the way they target physiologically the visceral fat is a difference that matters. And there's a practical aspect here, and that is the time efficiency. So let's start with that one real quick. Sprint intervals can produce the same or better results in about a third of the weekly time. When we talk about conditioning and cardio, okay, specifically. Aside from walking, like a lot of us love to walk, and I encourage walking, and honestly, you can walk a lot. And I don't necessarily like to compare walking to sprinting in terms of time efficiency. It's a different thing, right? So for women in menopause whose recovery capacity is getting more limited, this is a really big deal because your limited time, limited recovery, there's a stress component to this. And then if you have these long, frequent sessions of cardio, now you get compensation on top of an already stressed system. That's why we don't like that necessarily. Why I encourage a lot of women to do less, to be more efficient with their time in the gym and outside the gym. So sprint intervals are a really good tool in that perspective. The second one is more specific, and this is the one that's the most interesting about visceral fat, belly fat. Listen up.

  Philip Pape: 13:08

  In post-menopausal women, specifically, sprint intervals outperform steady-state cardio for reducing visceral fat. Like the Maylard and the Dupuis findings that I just talked about, which are not isolated. The, you know, there's this popular narrative that sprints burn belly fat through a calorie afterburn effect. No, that is not correct. And if I've ever said on this show, I would I retract it and say that I was wrong as well. We call that epoch exercise post-sector, or I never know, I never say this right, but it's like post-uh oxygen consumption. Exercise post-oxygen consumption. And that's burning calories after you do the exercise. It's very minimal. It's like 40 to 50 calories. The real benefit is the chronic adaptation. There is a catecholamine response that occurs over weeks and months. And what it does, this is technical stuff. I had to write it down. It increases the beta, the beta andranergic sensitivity of your visceral fat. All that is, in plain English, it's the receptors that let your body mobilize fat for fuel. That's what it is. So guess what? You're increasing the sensitivity of those. That is awesome. Your skeletal muscle insulin sensitivity goes up. That is awesome. Your mitochondrial function improves. This is energy. That is awesome. These are long-term changes that compound chronically in a good way, in the best of ways. So the summary of this piece is sprinting, it doesn't magically melt belly fat in one session. We don't care about post-exercise consumption or afterburn effect or any of that. You can't just sprint once and boom, there goes your belly fat. What they do is over time, if you do these two sessions, 20 minutes each, there's an adaptive pressure on visceral fat that keeps showing up when we do these studies. And we can't ignore that. That is amazing data. And it's time efficient, so it doesn't affect your recovery. It's actually anabolic when we talk about sprinting as well. It supports your lifting. You can continue lifting heavy in parallel. This is just an incredible combination of things that you can go after as you develop your training and movement routine. Just so good. So good.

  Philip Pape: 15:30

  Okay. Now, before I walk you through the exact protocol, I do have something that's going to make things a lot easier for you. I do have a written guide called Sprinting for Fat Loss that I try to keep updated with some of this research. In this case, it has the sprinting protocol that I recommend. It's about six pages long, and it has the protocol I'm going to describe now. It has the equipment options in terms of what you should start with, the warm-up, a little bit of a weekly template so you can fit it around your lifting, and even how to track progress. All in a PDF, all free. I've given it to you for free. The only thing I need you to do is join my email list so I can send it to you. So go to witsandweights.com slash email. That's witsandweights.com slash email. Then once you're on the list, just reply to the welcome email and ask for the sprinting guide. If you're already on my list, just reply to any email you get and ask for the sprinting guide. I'll send it right over. And that is it. Okay. Witsandwaits.com slash email. Join the list. Ask for the sprinting guide. Done. I don't have a special link. Sorry, you're gonna have to do it that way. Wits and weights.com slash email. So let's talk about that protocol. All right, the protocol I use with clients and myself, I pull it directly from Brad Kearns, who runs the B Rad podcast. He was on the show back, I think in episode 286. He introduced me to this structure. I've used it ever since. It is awesome. Okay, it's simple. Four to eight sets of all out sprints. Each sprint is 10 to 20 seconds. Never go past 20 seconds, never go past eight sets. Importantly, the rest time is six times the sprint time. So if you sprint 10 seconds, you rest 60 seconds. If you sprint 20 seconds, you're gonna rest two minutes. Make sense? And that's it. Now you can rest longer, but don't rest shorter. So one to two sessions per week, four to eight sets of all-out sprints for 10 to 20 seconds with six to one rest to sprint. If that's confusing, get get the guide. It's all written down for you. So if you do the two sessions, then one of them, in my recommendation, should be flat brown, only one of them should be flat ground sprinting with good minimalist footwear. The other one should be on a low impact machine, like a cycle, a rower, a stair climber. You can do them both on the machine, that's fine. But don't do both as flat ground sprinting until you get adapted to it and you feel like it's appropriate and you can handle that. The progression rule is the most important thing in this protocol, okay? Because just like progressive overload with your lifting, you want to progress with your sprinting. You do not do that by going past the 20 seconds or doing more sets. You do it by getting faster within the same constraints. Now, if your sprints are less than 20 seconds, well, then your goal is to get them up to 20 seconds. If the number of sets is less than eight, well, your goal is to eventually get them to eight. But eventually you're gonna cap out at eight sets, 20 second sprints. Now the goal is just to get faster, more power, more speed, and you'll you'll get adapted and you'll get better, and that's exactly what's gonna happen over time. And that's it. That's it. Now, a lot of people ask me, okay, what do I actually do for the sprinting?

  Philip Pape: 18:48

  Well, let me give you kind of a hierarchy. If you're brand new, start on a bike, an assault bike, stationary bike, spin bike, doesn't really matter. It's the easiest way to get to near maximum effort without any joint risk. You could just quickly get to those fast sprints. And it's also the type of modality they use in most of the sprint studies. So there's a nice correlation there. And then you can progress to something like an elliptical, a stair climber, or a rower, which are all low impact. They're still anaerobic. They're a little bit tougher. They have a little bit of skill involved. If you want to go to ground-based sprinting, like actual sprinting, you can work up to it using hill sprints or incline sprints, which you could do on a sp on a treadmill, but I really discourage a treadmill at all for sprinting just because of the safety factor and the inability to easily get to full speed as quickly. I would rather you just do it kind of on your own with one of these other machines or outside. The incline reduces your max speed, which preserves your hamstring. That's why it's a good way to build your tissue capacity before you go to flat ground. But again, do not use a treadmill. I know people do it. Again, safety and the ability to accelerate, decelerate is very difficult. And you're also not going to go all out on a treadmill. Some part of your brain knows that you can't bail on it. And so as a result, you clamp down on the effort, if that makes sense, as a safety mechanism. And then that's not sprinting, it's just jogging really hard.

  Philip Pape: 20:12

  So, how does this fit into your schedule? If you're lifting, all right. I would use a, for example, three, three-day full body lifting split as an example here. Let's say it's Monday, Wednesday, Friday. Sprinting could be Tuesday and Saturday. Not the morning of a lift day, not right before the lift. Ideally, 24 hours removed from a lower body session. If you're on a four-day upper lower, you can sprint on your upper days or your off days. If you're on a five day, like a bodybuilding, power building type split, you could sprint on your off days or a few hours after upper body training. Two quick rules. One, you have to feel fresh before the sprint session. If you're already fatigued, if you didn't sleep, if you're coming off a hard lifting day, push it to another day, right? Sprinting while fatigued, that is how you get injured and you're not gonna be at your best performance. The second rule is if your speed drops off during the session, like you get to set, I don't know, five, and your speed drops way off, you're done. Stop. Don't just rest longer and keep going. Stop. The session is over. That's the session is over. This is gonna tie to what I talk about at the end of the episode. So I'm gonna come back to it. Also, warming up. Warming up's important. If you're doing machine sprints, you could go say three to five minutes on the machine at a moderate speed. And then you could do some 10-second buildups if you'd like. If you're doing flat ground, you could do again three to five minutes of just light jogging or leg swings or high knees or butt kicks or any of that stuff. And then maybe two or three progressive accelerations and then get into it. Okay. If you're cold, you got to warm up. The more adapted you get to this, probably the less warm up you need. And then the whole session ends up being maybe 15 to 25 minutes, including the warm up, the sprint sets, the cooldown, all of that. Two of those a week, that's 30 to 50 minutes. Of sprinting, excuse me, per week. And that is a fantastic dose for being correlated with a massive drop in visceral fat. So everyone listening, especially ladies, especially in peri postmenopause who have the belly fat, who are writing in about this, who are curious about this, do this protocol and try it out and let me know how it goes. One more thing shout out to Dr. Bill Campbell again, because he said on a recent interview that for menopausal women specifically, he prefers short sprint sessions with fewer total sprints as opposed to a high rep hit because of the recovery burden of the hit. The goal is not to get your heart rate up. The goal is to get a brief maximum signal to trigger the adaptations that we're talking about today and then let your body recover and adapt. That's really, really important.

  Philip Pape: 22:49

  All right, before we wrap up, I told you at the beginning I was gonna give you one single question test that tells you whether you actually sprinted or if you just ran hard and you're not getting all the benefits. That's coming up in just a minute. But if you're listening to this and you're thinking, okay, I get the sprinting, but I also know my lifting is inconsistent or my protein's probably too low. And nothing has worked for me in the last two or three years of trying to get leaner, especially if as I get older, maybe I'm over 40, 50, beyond. That's who we built Eat More Lift Heavy for. Eat More Lift Heavy is my 26-week coaching program along with Coach Carol. It replaces our old physique university. It is a huge upgrade. The core premise is that most women over 40 or adults over 40 who are stuck with their physique are under-eating and under-recovering. They're under-eating, under recovering. It's not on you. It's not a discipline problem or will problem. We've got to eat more, especially protein, sometimes carbs, sometimes calories in general. We have to lift heavy with progressive overload. Heavy doesn't mean too heavy or unsafely heavy. It means the right level of intensity to push the strength and muscle growth. So that is what it's about. Eat more, lift heavy. It's structured in three phases. Phase one helps you stop guessing. You set up your measurement system so you know what you're working with. Phase two is the eat more, lift heavy phase, where you execute the plan along with our support and live coaching. And phase three is to trust yourself. You graduate with the skills to manage your own physique with everything you've learned. There are monthly coaching calls, there are training programs. You get one assigned to you on day one. There's coaches who respond in the community within 24 hours. We have a 30-day satisfaction guarantee. All of that go to eatmore liftheavy.com. That's eatmoreliftheavy.com. Let's get you out of this cycle for good. Get you on your way to a wonderful life, a wonderful physique, happiness with who you are in your body. EatmoreLiftheavy.com.

  Philip Pape: 24:48

  All right, here's a question that tells you did I actually sprint the way Phillips talked about on this show that reduces belly fat? Or am I pushing it hard but not quite getting there? The question is, did my speed drop more than 10% across my sets? And this is where data is helpful that you need to measure. If your first sprint was a 15-second effort, and by the fourth set, you're two or three seconds slower over the same distance, you're done. Do not rest longer, don't push through another set, stop the session. The reason that sprinting works is because of neural recruitment of your fastest fibers. Once those fibers are fatigued, any additional set is just practicing running slower. You're not getting the sprint adaptation anymore. You're actually piling up fatigue. It's kind of like junk volume of running for no benefit. So the test is simple here. You need to time your sets, track your sets. If your top speed is holding, keep going. If it drops more than 10%, the session is over. Go home. You're done for the day. You need to adapt to get a little faster and stronger so you can go further next time. That's cool. That tells you where you are. And that's the difference between training and working out, just like when you lift weights. All right, until next time, keep using your wits, lifting those weights. And remember, Menopause belly does have a targeted fix, and it's more in your control than you think. I'm Philip Pape, and I'll talk to you next time here on the Wits and Weights podcast.

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.

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:

• Website: Empowered Diabetes

• Podcast: The Diabetes Podcast®

• YouTube: @TheDiabetesPodcast

• Instagram: @empowereddiabetes

• Transcript

  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.

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.

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

• Transcript

  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.

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.

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

• Transcript

  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.

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

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

• Transcript

  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.

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, 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

• Transcript

  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.

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.

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

• Transcript

  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.

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. 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

• Transcript

  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.