Latest / Wits & Weights | Strength & Fat Loss Over 40 / 7 Ways to Lose Fat After 40 That ACTUALLY Work | Ep 420

Transcript

7 Ways to Lose Fat After 40 That ACTUALLY Work | Ep 420 · Wits & Weights | Strength & Fat Loss Over 40

• 0:00
  Philip Pape: If you're starting the new year ready to finally lose fat and keep it off this time, you need to know what actually works versus what the fitness industry keeps selling you.
• 0:09
  Philip Pape: Because after decades, 70-ish years of research, thousands of studies, science has identified seven principles that determine whether fat loss succeeds or fails.
• 0:21
  Philip Pape: These aren't trends, these aren't theories, they are evidence-based strategies proven over and over in controlled studies, in real-world applications.
• 0:30
  Philip Pape: And today I'm going to break down all seven with a very popular replay from earlier this year so that you can stop spinning your wheels.
• 0:38
  Philip Pape: You can start building the leaner, stronger physique that you want here in 2026.
• 0:43
  Philip Pape: Now, before we get into it, if you're looking for personalized guidance to do this on your fat loss journey, whether that's dialing in your nutrition, tracking your progress, figuring out what to adjust when the scale solves, and really, what do I do today?
• 0:57
  Philip Pape: Check out my fitness lab app.
• 0:59
  Philip Pape: It's like having a coach in your pocket who adapts to your data and tells you exactly what to do next.
• 1:05
  Philip Pape: And right now, through January 2nd, you can get 20% off at witsandweights.com slash app.
• 1:11
  Philip Pape: That wits and weight, that's wits and weights.com slash app.
• 1:14
  Philip Pape: Now let's get into those seven fat loss strategies that actually work.
• 1:20
  Philip Pape: 70 years of fat loss research, thousands of studies, millions of participants, and you could boil it all down to a few key principles that determine whether you succeed or fail.
• 1:32
  Philip Pape: So today we're going to give you seven tips from those 70 years of research, not trends, not theory.
• 1:38
  Philip Pape: It's based on conclusions from major studies, NASA's studies in the 70s, landmark trials published in major journals like the New England Journal of Medicine, metabolic chamber studies.
• 1:49
  Philip Pape: You'll discover why the biggest loser contestants regained all their weight six years later.
• 1:54
  Philip Pape: How one factor can swing your daily calorie burn by 2,000 calories, and why the diet that works best has nothing to do with cutting carbs or even counting macros.
• 2:05
  Philip Pape: I'm your host, certified nutrition coach Philip Pape, and today we're gonna cut through seven decades of research to bring you the only fat loss strategies that really rise to the top that actually matter.
• 2:37
  Philip Pape: And I get it, the fitness industry loves to overcomplicate fat loss, talk about optimization and new diets, new supplements, new exercise protocols.
• 2:48
  Philip Pape: There's always something promising to be the answer, the shortcut, the magic pill.
• 2:54
  Philip Pape: But when you step back and look at the seven decades of high-quality research from metabolic chamber studies to landmark trials involving thousands of participants that have held up over this entire duration, there are clear patterns that emerge.
• 3:10
  Philip Pape: There are things that we just know work.
• 3:12
  Philip Pape: And today I'm gonna share what those are seven principles that have stood the test of time, that are backed by studies upon studies upon studies.
• 3:20
  Philip Pape: And as much as science can never be perfect, we can never fully prove things.
• 3:25
  Philip Pape: There are things we just know that work because at any level of the evidence, from scientific research to coaching practice to anecdote to individual experimentation, we know that these things go far beyond hypothesis, opinion, theory.
• 3:41
  Philip Pape: They are as close as we could get to what we call facts or truth that are derived from investigating the key questions around fat loss.
• 3:50
  Philip Pape: Now, before we get into these seven tips, I want to give you something that will make implementing them just a bit easier.
• 3:56
  Philip Pape: I have a guide that's been around for a while.
• 3:58
  Philip Pape: It's a really solid, one of our most popular called the Ultimate Macros Guide.
• 4:02
  Philip Pape: It's actually an e-book that breaks down how to set up your nutrition for fat loss, preserving muscle, long-term success, but it also talks about a lot of aspects of nutrition and supplementation and periodization, all of it.
• 4:16
  Philip Pape: It's completely free.
• 4:17
  Philip Pape: It includes the approach that I use with clients and the philosophy we're discussing today that, again, is backed by the evidence.
• 4:24
  Philip Pape: Just go to witzawaits.com/slash free or click the link in the show notes to grab your copy of the Ultimate Macros Guide.
• 4:32
  Philip Pape: And by the way, it's been edited over the years as I've gotten feedback from many of you who have either challenged me on things that were kind of on the edge of evidence-based, or who just wanted their questions answered.
• 4:45
  Philip Pape: So go get your ultimate macros guide today.
• 4:47
  Philip Pape: Link in the show notes.
• 4:49
  Philip Pape: All right, so seven tips from 70 years of research.
• 4:52
  Philip Pape: I'm gonna give you the science, the practical application, and then most importantly, why this matters for your results.
• 4:59
  Philip Pape: So let's start with principle number one or tip number one.
• 5:02
  Philip Pape: A calorie deficit is non-negotiable.
• 5:05
  Philip Pape: Now let's let's talk about the elephant in the room, right?
• 5:08
  Philip Pape: Energy balance, calorie deficits.
• 5:10
  Philip Pape: And I know some of you are rolling your eyes thinking this is obvious, this is simplistic.
• 5:15
  Philip Pape: I've been listening to your show for a while, Philip.
• 5:17
  Philip Pape: Of course, calories in, calories out works, thermodynamics make sense, but there is so much nuance behind that, and it is always worth repeating and understanding what the evidence says over that 70 years of research.
• 5:30
  Philip Pape: So the science behind this was first quantified using metabolic chamber studies in the mid-20th century.
• 5:38
  Philip Pape: If anybody is as old as me, they've been around since that time.
• 5:41
  Philip Pape: I was born in 1980, just for reference.
• 5:44
  Philip Pape: Now we're talking about metabolic chambers are controlled environments, and researchers are able to measure what is eaten.
• 5:50
  Philip Pape: Every calorie that's consumed and burned, they use all sorts of equipment to figure this out.
• 5:56
  Philip Pape: And the first law of thermodynamics, you probably heard about it before from physics, it is the principle of the universe that energy cannot be created or destroyed.
• 6:07
  Philip Pape: It can only be transferred.
• 6:09
  Philip Pape: And that's really important to understand because we still have to validate that when it comes to human beings and our food consumption, our energy.
• 6:17
  Philip Pape: There's a study by Hall et al.
• 6:19
  Philip Pape: It was a landmark study in 2011 in science translational medicine.
• 6:23
  Philip Pape: And they took people and put them in a controlled inpatient setting.
• 6:26
  Philip Pape: Think of it like a laboratory for humans.
• 6:28
  Philip Pape: And when calories were matched, low carb and low-fat diets resulted in identical fat loss, identical.
• 6:35
  Philip Pape: And we've seen time and time again where calories are controlled, no matter what the macros look like, we tend to see almost identical results.
• 6:43
  Philip Pape: Doesn't matter if you're fasting, it doesn't matter.
• 6:47
  Philip Pape: When it's controlled for calories, we have the same results.
• 6:49
  Philip Pape: Very important.
• 6:50
  Philip Pape: Why this matters is any argument about this versus calories, hormone, it's my hormones versus calories, are missing the point.
• 6:59
  Philip Pape: In fact, the whole GLP1 Ozempic craze now is proving the fact that it is about energy balance because those medicines cause only one thing, you to eat less.
• 7:09
  Philip Pape: And when you eat less, you lose weight because you go into a calorie deficit.
• 7:12
  Philip Pape: This is just a law of physics.
• 7:15
  Philip Pape: Yes, hormones influence how much you want to eat and how much energy you expend, right?
• 7:21
  Philip Pape: And that's the other side of the equation.
• 7:22
  Philip Pape: We have to think about when we say calories in, calories out, the calories out side is highly influenced by so many complex factors, including calories in.
• 7:32
  Philip Pape: So even what you eat and how much you're taking in it affects how much you burn.
• 7:36
  Philip Pape: And so we can't override thermodynamics.
• 7:39
  Philip Pape: You know, again, the new GLP1 medications reduce appetite, which reduces calorie intake.
• 7:44
  Philip Pape: And that's a great uh modern proof of this principle.
• 7:47
  Philip Pape: So the takeaway is for fat loss to lose fat, you have to be in a calorie deficit.
• 7:52
  Philip Pape: Now, of course, people are gonna say, what about body recomposition where you gain muscle and lose fat?
• 7:57
  Philip Pape: That is a very tiny corner case, which does exist, where you're taking in enough energy to pack on some muscle while also losing fat.
• 8:06
  Philip Pape: But you're losing fat because you don't have enough net energy to support your current fat stores, and therefore your fat is lost.
• 8:14
  Philip Pape: But when we're talking about meaningful fat loss, right?
• 8:16
  Philip Pape: More than a few pounds, you're trying to lose fat, you have to be in a calorie deficit.
• 8:19
  Philip Pape: The method you create that deficit with, whether it's your food choice, your meal timing, how you train, how you move, even medication, that part is far more flexible than people realize.
• 8:34
  Philip Pape: And that's one of the messages of wits and weights is that there are many roads to get there, which is very empowering when you know that your food can be flexible.
• 8:43
  Philip Pape: It's just the guardrails around calories and then macros for other reasons besides weight loss that come into play.
• 8:50
  Philip Pape: So principle one is calorie deficit isn't non-negotiable.
• 8:55
  Philip Pape: Tip number two is that protein preserves muscle and controls hunger.
• 9:00
  Philip Pape: This is an important principle from fat loss research, because if you're not eating enough protein, you miss out on not only lots and lots of side benefits of eating protein, but the very purpose that protein, the that the very reason that we consume protein, which is the metabolic advantage for our muscle building and our muscle preservation while we're losing weight so that we don't lose muscle.
• 9:28
  Philip Pape: Now, there are lots of advantages of protein.
• 9:31
  Philip Pape: One of them is the thermic effect of feeding, meaning that the energy cost of digesting and processing protein is highest of all the macros.
• 9:40
  Philip Pape: It's about 20 to 30% of calories consumed compared to 5 to 10% for carbs and close to zero for fats.
• 9:48
  Philip Pape: So if you eat 100 calories of protein, your body's gonna burn 20 to 30 calories just processing the protein.
• 9:55
  Philip Pape: Perhaps more importantly for a lot of you though, when it comes to fat loss, is how protein affects your hunger hormones.
• 10:02
  Philip Pape: Paddon Jones and his colleagues showed in 2008 that protein suppresses ghrelin.
• 10:10
  Philip Pape: That's your hunger hormone.
• 10:11
  Philip Pape: It then increases GLP1, PYY, and CCK, which are your satiety hormones.
• 10:18
  Philip Pape: You literally feel fuller and more satisfied.
• 10:20
  Philip Pape: So it's kind of the natural GLP1.
• 10:22
  Philip Pape: Never like to overstate the effects compared to very powerful medications, but it's important to understand how protein increases fullness, satiety.
• 10:31
  Philip Pape: Also, this is what I alluded to as perhaps the most important reason we eat protein, is during a calorie deficit, right?
• 10:38
  Philip Pape: Tip number one, your body wants to break down tissue because it needs energy.
• 10:42
  Philip Pape: It's looking for energy.
• 10:44
  Philip Pape: And protein, especially when it's combined with resistance training, is telling your body, let's preserve muscle tissue when you're seeking out those energy sources.
• 10:54
  Philip Pape: Let's not go after that because that's important.
• 10:57
  Philip Pape: Let's pull it from your fat stores instead.
• 11:00
  Philip Pape: If you're not eating protein, if you're not strength training, the body's like, well, I'm gonna take it from where I can get it.
• 11:04
  Philip Pape: And that includes your muscle mass.
• 11:06
  Philip Pape: This is why people on GLP1 lose massive amounts of muscle for the most part when they're not training and eating protein.
• 11:14
  Philip Pape: And they're obviously crashed dieting is effectively the result.
• 11:17
  Philip Pape: Again, when lifestyle is not controlled for.
• 11:19
  Philip Pape: We've said it before, but I'll say it again.
• 11:21
  Philip Pape: Studies show we need about 0.7 to one gram per pound of body weight of protein, or about 1.6 to 2.2 grams per kilogram of body weight.
• 11:31
  Philip Pape: And that's a super optimal, well-supported range for the vast majority of people.
• 11:38
  Philip Pape: Now, Eric Helms, you guys know him, he's been on the show a couple of times, and his research team, they found that lean individuals in extreme deficits might need higher intake, up to, say, three grams per kilogram.
• 11:50
  Philip Pape: But for most of you, the 0.701 gram per pound, and I'm sorry, I'm such a between metric and imperial here, is the sweet spot.
• 11:57
  Philip Pape: So when it comes to protein, it's pretty simple.
• 12:00
  Philip Pape: It doesn't matter when you get it as long as you get your total.
• 12:03
  Philip Pape: It's helpful practically to try to spread it across your meals.
• 12:06
  Philip Pape: It also is good because of the satiety.
• 12:08
  Philip Pape: And there's a tiny optimal effect for muscle building and preservation when you spread it out, but it is very, very small because your body can utilize protein very intelligently no matter how you eat it, even if it's in large, what they call boluses, like you eat a lot at once, but practically it helps to spread it throughout the day.
• 12:26
  Philip Pape: So that's tip number two.
• 12:27
  Philip Pape: Tip number three is that resistance training beats cardio for body composition.
• 12:35
  Philip Pape: Now, this is important because some of you are gonna say, wait, I've heard recent studies that say cardio is actually really helpful for fat loss.
• 12:41
  Philip Pape: And yes, it can be to an extent.
• 12:43
  Philip Pape: Moving your body, increasing calorie burn can help.
• 12:47
  Philip Pape: But we're not talking about just dropping fat.
• 12:50
  Philip Pape: We're also talking about holding on to the muscle while doing that.
• 12:53
  Philip Pape: I should, I should reword what I just said.
• 12:55
  Philip Pape: We're not talking about dropping weight.
• 12:57
  Philip Pape: We're talking about holding on to muscle while dropping weight so that what you drop is mostly fat.
• 13:01
  Philip Pape: And that's where resistance training is by far the perhaps most important principle for how you actually look when you reach your goal weight.
• 13:10
  Philip Pape: Because it's not about the weight on the scale.
• 13:11
  Philip Pape: It's about losing fat, building muscle, becoming fitter, becoming leaner.
• 13:16
  Philip Pape: And so resistance training absolutely is non-negotiable for that.
• 13:19
  Philip Pape: So it is one of the three non-negotiables, besides protein and recovery, for fat loss.
• 13:25
  Philip Pape: Go look up my episode called the three plus three optimal model of fat loss.
• 13:30
  Philip Pape: And that is one of the three non-negotiables.
• 13:32
  Philip Pape: Now, back in the 1970s, NASA was studying what happens to astronauts in space.
• 13:38
  Philip Pape: And they discovered that without the mechanical loading, right, without the resistance training against your muscles, which we get from gravity here on Earth, muscle breakdown accelerated dramatically.
• 13:49
  Philip Pape: I mean, we know this now that in people in outer space, and this is one of the challenges of potentially going to Mars, is the significant muscle loss and what you have to try to do to hold on to that.
• 14:00
  Philip Pape: And it was one of the first major clues that resistance training provides a unique signal that you can't get from cardio.
• 14:08
  Philip Pape: And that's why astronauts are expected to use resistance of some form, right?
• 14:14
  Philip Pape: It's not definitely not going to be a barbell when you're up in the space station.
• 14:18
  Philip Pape: There's there's bands and there's all sorts of rigs that they have for this, but it's a a great way to show how resistance training is necessary.
• 14:27
  Philip Pape: There was a 2015 meta-analysis by Strasser and Schobersberger, and it looked at dozens of studies.
• 14:35
  Philip Pape: This is a study of studies that compared resistance training to aerobic exercise for body composition.
• 14:42
  Philip Pape: And no surprise, they found that resistance training preserved lean mass better than aerobic training every time.
• 14:48
  Philip Pape: And there was a recent study done by Dr.
• 14:50
  Philip Pape: Bill Campbell that I believe showed the same thing.
• 14:52
  Philip Pape: In his study, they showed what some people found surprising, which is that yes, cardio can actually be quite effective for fat loss, but resistance training was better at preserving lean mass.
• 15:03
  Philip Pape: So that's why when we talk about body composition, you need both.
• 15:06
  Philip Pape: You definitely need the resistance training.
• 15:08
  Philip Pape: And then moving through walking and through some strategic forms of cardio help move the needle a bit more on the being able to burn more calories without having to eat less, so to speak.
• 15:19
  Philip Pape: When you're dieting, your body is in an energy deficit, right?
• 15:22
  Philip Pape: Principle number one, it needs to get energy from somewhere.
• 15:26
  Philip Pape: And weight lifting or lifting weights, training, sends what we call an anabolic signal.
• 15:31
  Philip Pape: Anabolic means build.
• 15:33
  Philip Pape: We need to, we need this muscle tissue and we need to build muscle tissue to replace the tissue that's breaking down because we're in this energy deficit.
• 15:41
  Philip Pape: Without that signal, your body happily breaks down the muscle for energy because muscle is metabolically expensive to maintain.
• 15:49
  Philip Pape: And you don't need to live in the gym.
• 15:51
  Philip Pape: You don't.
• 15:52
  Philip Pape: You can train as little as two, and even some approaches you can get in, get away with once a week.
• 15:59
  Philip Pape: But for most people, it's gonna be three to four.
• 16:01
  Philip Pape: For older individuals, let's say over in their 60s, 70s, sometimes I see two being more effective because of recovery.
• 16:07
  Philip Pape: But for most of you, it's gonna be three to four sessions per week focused on the big movement patterns, squatting, deadlifting, pressing, rowing, pulling, right?
• 16:18
  Philip Pape: That's deadlifting, but other types of pulls as well, which work multiple muscle groups, right?
• 16:23
  Philip Pape: We call them compound lifts.
• 16:24
  Philip Pape: They work multiple joints, multiple muscle groups, they give you the biggest bang for your buck.
• 16:28
  Philip Pape: And you are progressing, you're using progressive overload, which is a gradual increase in weights or reps and/or sets over time.
• 16:36
  Philip Pape: You're challenging your body more and more over time.
• 16:38
  Philip Pape: And if you are not getting stronger, if you're not able to push harder, you're not providing the anabolic signal your body needs, with the caveat that while you're in fat loss and potentially losing weight, your relative strength is probably more important than your absolute strength because you don't have as many resources coming in.
• 16:56
  Philip Pape: But what I like to tell people is just train as if you're able to get stronger and build muscle.
• 17:01
  Philip Pape: And that should be sufficient to hold on to that muscle.
• 17:04
  Philip Pape: All right, tip number four is that diet adherence beats diet type every single time.
• 17:12
  Philip Pape: And for those of you newer to the show or to the philosophy we we espouse here, this might surprise you, especially if you're caught up in all the debates online about the right diet, keto versus plant-based versus carnivore versus intermittent fasting.
• 17:28
  Philip Pape: There's something new every day, especially with you know, TikTok and social media, you've got people inventing diets left and right.
• 17:34
  Philip Pape: You know, the sugar diets, I mean, all sorts of things that are all based on a type of diet, like exactly what you eat.
• 17:42
  Philip Pape: But we know that that actually doesn't matter.
• 17:44
  Philip Pape: What matters is are you able to adhere to your diet?
• 17:48
  Philip Pape: Because if you can adhere to it, it's sustainable.
• 17:50
  Philip Pape: And then once it's sustainable, you can tweak the levers to get to the goal you need and actually be able to do it.
• 17:56
  Philip Pape: There was a landmark study called the Diet Fits trial published in JAMA in 2018, and it followed 600 people for 12 months.
• 18:05
  Philip Pape: Half of them did low carb, half of them did low fat.
• 18:08
  Philip Pape: Guess what?
• 18:09
  Philip Pape: No significant difference in weight loss.
• 18:12
  Philip Pape: I alluded to this in principle one, tip number one about a calorie deficit.
• 18:16
  Philip Pape: No difference.
• 18:18
  Philip Pape: The A-Z trial did something similar.
• 18:20
  Philip Pape: They compared Atkins, Zone, Ornish, and learn the same result.
• 18:25
  Philip Pape: No meaningful difference when you look at the big picture and control for calories.
• 18:30
  Philip Pape: The SAC study in the New England Journal of Medicine tested different combinations of macros, of protein, fats, and carbs.
• 18:37
  Philip Pape: So it wasn't really about the food specifically, just different macros.
• 18:40
  Philip Pape: Again, no significant difference in fat loss when calories were controlled.
• 18:46
  Philip Pape: Okay.
• 18:46
  Philip Pape: And you might say, well, wait, what about you talk about protein and this and that?
• 18:50
  Philip Pape: Again, we're talking about what moves the needle versus what's optimal.
• 18:53
  Philip Pape: Yes, you need a sufficient amount of protein, but you don't need massive amounts of protein.
• 18:58
  Philip Pape: Most people are getting too little protein.
• 19:00
  Philip Pape: But when calories are controlled, that alone is going to have the biggest lever when it comes to the rate of weight loss.
• 19:07
  Philip Pape: So what actually matters?
• 19:08
  Philip Pape: Well, it's adherence.
• 19:09
  Philip Pape: Can you adhere?
• 19:10
  Philip Pape: The diet that works is the one you can stick to without feeling deprived or feeling restricted.
• 19:16
  Philip Pape: These elegant, scientifically designed diets, the ones in the beautifully polished books on the shelf or on Amazon or whatever, your Kindle, they're all worthless if you can't follow them.
• 19:27
  Philip Pape: Now, if you can follow them, they can be very helpful tools.
• 19:30
  Philip Pape: They really can be.
• 19:31
  Philip Pape: I'm not arguing that.
• 19:32
  Philip Pape: I'm not arguing that a well-prescribed set of foods and meal plans and recipes that give you some structure and direction that you can stick to because you enjoy it.
• 19:43
  Philip Pape: I'm not arguing that that can't also be successful for you because of the adherence factor.
• 19:48
  Philip Pape: In fact, I was on paleo for years, and part of the reason I was able to stick to it so long is it was flexible enough to have all the foods I enjoyed.
• 19:56
  Philip Pape: It had meats, vegetables, fruits, I think, yeah.
• 19:59
  Philip Pape: It just didn't have grains.
• 20:01
  Philip Pape: It had other forms of carbs, right?
• 20:02
  Philip Pape: Fruits.
• 20:03
  Philip Pape: And it had there was no dairy in there, but there's it depends on the version of paleo you follow.
• 20:07
  Philip Pape: But anyway, I was able to eat a lot of variety of foods, and there were a bunch of great recipes that I would make.
• 20:12
  Philip Pape: And so I was okay with it compared to how I eat now.
• 20:16
  Philip Pape: It wasn't nearly as flexible as how I eat now, because now I can enjoy just about any food, which is awesome.
• 20:21
  Philip Pape: And so this should be liberating.
• 20:22
  Philip Pape: That's my point.
• 20:23
  Philip Pape: You don't have to cut out entire food groups.
• 20:25
  Philip Pape: You don't have to eat foods you hate, and you can eat foods you love.
• 20:28
  Philip Pape: And you can build your fat loss plan around those and around your cultural preferences, your family, your schedule, your lifestyle, your vacations, your travel, all the things that life has for us that are amazing.
• 20:39
  Philip Pape: A lot of them are around food.
• 20:41
  Philip Pape: Just a quick reminder because I don't want to get off too off track here, but if you're finding value in these fat loss principles, I'm willing to grab my ultimate macros guide.
• 20:50
  Philip Pape: Go ahead and pause the episode, go to wits and weights.com slash free, or click the link in the show notes.
• 20:54
  Philip Pape: You're going to see a lot of these philosophies put out into practice, you know, explained in actual step-by-steps of what to do.
• 21:01
  Philip Pape: It's going to help you implement what we're covering today.
• 21:03
  Philip Pape: So you might want to follow along.
• 21:04
  Philip Pape: Go grab the ultimate macros guide, click the link in the show notes, or go to wits and weights.com slash free.
• 21:10
  Philip Pape: All right.
• 21:10
  Philip Pape: Tip number five.
• 21:12
  Philip Pape: Neat can neat.
• 21:14
  Philip Pape: I'm going to explain what that is.
• 21:15
  Philip Pape: Neat.
• 21:16
  Philip Pape: And I'm not saying neat for those of you who are Manipathan fans.
• 21:21
  Philip Pape: Neat can make or break your deficit.
• 21:24
  Philip Pape: What is neat?
• 21:25
  Philip Pape: Neat stands for non-exercise activity thermogenesis.
• 21:29
  Philip Pape: It is a component of your metabolism.
• 21:31
  Philip Pape: And I still believe it is the most underestimated factor in fat loss success.
• 21:38
  Philip Pape: There is research by James Levin published in Science in 1999.
• 21:43
  Philip Pape: And I love this study.
• 21:45
  Philip Pape: I love this study because it's eye-opening.
• 21:48
  Philip Pape: It showed that neat can vary, your non-exercise activity, thermogenesis, how much, how much, how many calories you burn from non-structured activity throughout the day can vary by up to 2,000 calories per day between individuals of the same size.
• 22:03
  Philip Pape: And it seems unbelievable, right?
• 22:04
  Philip Pape: That's it sounds like a massive number because some of you are saying, well, I burn 2,000 calories.
• 22:08
  Philip Pape: How is this possible?
• 22:09
  Philip Pape: Because that's the difference between, you know, maintaining your weight and losing two pounds a week, for example, or whatever the math comes out to be.
• 22:17
  Philip Pape: Neat.
• 22:18
  Philip Pape: So what does neat include?
• 22:19
  Philip Pape: It includes everything that's not structured, exercise or training.
• 22:22
  Philip Pape: So it includes, yes, walking.
• 22:24
  Philip Pape: Some people argue that, but it does include walking.
• 22:26
  Philip Pape: It's fidgeting, conscious or otherwise.
• 22:28
  Philip Pape: It's standing, it's doing chores.
• 22:30
  Philip Pape: It's even how much you move your hands when you talk, like I'm doing right now on video if you're watching the YouTube.
• 22:35
  Philip Pape: So it's all your spontaneous movement throughout your day.
• 22:38
  Philip Pape: And yes, even walking, which is not always spontaneous.
• 22:41
  Philip Pape: Sometimes it is, sometimes it isn't.
• 22:43
  Philip Pape: And the I'll I'll say the insidious thing when you are restricting calories and you're trying to lose fat is that your body then does a double whammo and subconsciously reduces your neat to conserve the energy that you're depriving it of.
• 22:58
  Philip Pape: Right?
• 22:59
  Philip Pape: People don't realize that that, oh, I'm in a fat loss phase.
• 23:01
  Philip Pape: I should, the weight should start flying off.
• 23:03
  Philip Pape: And all of a sudden I'm hitting this plateau.
• 23:05
  Philip Pape: And it could be because you're not moving as much in all these different ways.
• 23:09
  Philip Pape: Rosenbaum and Liebl's research from 2010 show that during weight loss, your body implements what is called adaptive thermogenesis.
• 23:17
  Philip Pape: Okay.
• 23:18
  Philip Pape: And I'm just mentioning one study that refers to this term in the last 15 years.
• 23:23
  Philip Pape: This is a concept we've known about for a long time.
• 23:26
  Philip Pape: It is the idea that your total, your metabolism, your daily energy expenditure drops because you of the unconscious reduction in your movement.
• 23:36
  Philip Pape: That's what it is.
• 23:38
  Philip Pape: There's a there are other reasons your metabolism drops during fat loss.
• 23:42
  Philip Pape: One of those being that you're losing weight and you weigh less, and the other being the hormones, the hormone down regulation.
• 23:49
  Philip Pape: But the fact that you're simply moving less due to your knee dropping and much of it is unconscious is also a significant factor, and you might not realize it's happening.
• 23:57
  Philip Pape: You might like take the elevator instead of the stairs.
• 24:00
  Philip Pape: You might sit more, you might fidget less, you might walk slower.
• 24:03
  Philip Pape: And the tiny changes then add up.
• 24:04
  Philip Pape: They accumulate up to hundreds of calories a day, potentially, right?
• 24:08
  Philip Pape: And so I think the solution is awareness of these things and tracking things like step count, right?
• 24:14
  Philip Pape: I think step count is a great proxy because all these things I just mentioned generally are reflected in your steps.
• 24:20
  Philip Pape: And so if you notice your steps go from 8,000 a day to like 7,000 a day, yeah, maybe it's only a thousand steps, but on average, you're now giving yourself, making yourself a little bit harder to lose fat.
• 24:30
  Philip Pape: And if you could aim for around seven to nine or 10,000 steps a day, you know, 10,000 has always been touted in popular media, but it's a good number.
• 24:39
  Philip Pape: It's a good round number to remember.
• 24:40
  Philip Pape: I always encourage clients to go for 10 to 12,000 if they can, really hit that 12,000 mark because that extra 2,000 calories or steps a day, which is like a mile, can make a difference, you know, just the right amount of difference between continuing with your dieting phase and feeling fine versus like feeling like it's you're too hungry and not eating enough, right?
• 25:04
  Philip Pape: It's it's finding that threshold and letting move your little bit of extra steps and movement push you past, push you up into that higher regime where you could eat just a little more and still lose at the same rate.
• 25:14
  Philip Pape: And so if you're tracking your steps, that's great.
• 25:18
  Philip Pape: But then you could also trigger yourself to change your behavior.
• 25:22
  Philip Pape: Walking after meals is awesome.
• 25:24
  Philip Pape: Love it.
• 25:25
  Philip Pape: It's great for blood sugar, right?
• 25:27
  Philip Pape: It's great for recovery, insulin sensitivity, all that great stuff.
• 25:30
  Philip Pape: It's one of the best times to walk if you're gonna pick a time.
• 25:33
  Philip Pape: Using a standing desk, pacing during phone calls, all the fun hacks, and just remind yourself to do it.
• 25:38
  Philip Pape: Set reminders, set yourself calendar notices, things like that.
• 25:41
  Philip Pape: The goal is really just to maintain or increase your movement when you're in a calorie deficit.
• 25:47
  Philip Pape: So if you're able to do this ahead of time before you go into your fat loss phase, and you know, hey, I'm getting 7,000 steps a day, I definitely don't want to drop when I go into a deficit.
• 25:56
  Philip Pape: If anything, I want to try to ramp it up a bit.
• 25:58
  Philip Pape: So that's tip number five is is neat and what a huge factor it can have in your metabolism.
• 26:05
  Philip Pape: Now, just to caveat the 2,000 calories, I believe that that difference was between sedentary people and then the most active jobs you can imagine, right?
• 26:14
  Philip Pape: Construction or what have you.
• 26:15
  Philip Pape: And so realistically, we're not expecting you to increase your metabolism by that much.
• 26:20
  Philip Pape: You're gonna be probably somewhere in the middle and you can bump it up by a few hundred calories, is what I would, the way I would frame this.
• 26:26
  Philip Pape: All right, tip number six out of seven from 70 years of research is that muscle mass is an insurance policy for fat loss, right?
• 26:36
  Philip Pape: Now, we all love muscle for how it looks.
• 26:39
  Philip Pape: We love it for its strength and function, but it also is a huge metabolic insurance policy.
• 26:47
  Philip Pape: I've talked before about how the industry, the fitness industry, overplays the fact that muscle is an expensive tissue and it burns a bunch of calories because it does, but it doesn't.
• 26:56
  Philip Pape: It burns calories, but it's like six to at most nine calories per day for each pound.
• 27:00
  Philip Pape: Now, if you have an extra 10 pounds of muscle, that's up to 90 pounds a day.
• 27:04
  Philip Pape: When you think about it, you're like, okay, that's decent, but it's not this huge game changer that people talk about.
• 27:09
  Philip Pape: Build muscle and you just ramp up your metabolism.
• 27:12
  Philip Pape: But muscle does so much more that then downstream actually does increase your metabolism and make a lot of things easier.
• 27:21
  Philip Pape: For example, your muscle is a huge sink for glucose.
• 27:25
  Philip Pape: It improves glucose disposal.
• 27:27
  Philip Pape: And that means that you can handle carbs better.
• 27:30
  Philip Pape: And I mean better by a mile, by you know, infinitely better to where you can consume massive amounts of carbs and make them go to good use.
• 27:39
  Philip Pape: And you then you open up the flexibility in your diet as well, and all the other benefits that come along with carbs, like reduced stress, better nervous system, more anticatabolism where you hold on to protein or you hold on to muscle tissue, like just so many benefits.
• 27:54
  Philip Pape: Muscle also enhances nutrient partitioning.
• 27:57
  Philip Pape: More calories then get directed toward muscle tissue rather than fat storage.
• 28:01
  Philip Pape: So it's like a virtuous cycle when you have muscle mass.
• 28:06
  Philip Pape: And of course, it provides a huge buffer against sarcopenia as you age, by definition.
• 28:12
  Philip Pape: Sarcopenia is the loss of muscle mass, and that is the root of many of the age-related problems, diseases, frailty, injury, and ultimately pharmacology, which is being on multiple medications, and death.
• 28:28
  Philip Pape: And I don't mean that to sound dire, and yet it is.
• 28:31
  Philip Pape: I'm a huge advocate of a muscle-centric approach to all of this.
• 28:35
  Philip Pape: Yes, we need to manage our body weight for sure, and our body fat, but muscle's part of that equation, so we might as well also try to maximize that.
• 28:44
  Philip Pape: Now, there's a lesson we can take from bodybuilding.
• 28:47
  Philip Pape: Since the 80s, bodybuilders have shown us that muscle can be manipulated pretty tremendously through bulking and cutting.
• 28:55
  Philip Pape: Now, whether they're on gear or not, right, whether they're on anabolic steroids or not, it's a model for the fact that you could eat a lot more food during a muscle building phase without getting that fat.
• 29:07
  Philip Pape: You know, if you eat it at the right rate, you can put on a lot of muscle and not too much fat.
• 29:11
  Philip Pape: And again, I'm even when you're natural, when you're not taking special drugs to gain this system, I've worked with many, many, many clients, and I've done it myself now, probably five times in the last five years, muscle building phases where you are deliberately gaining weight and you're putting on muscle and you don't gain that much fat.
• 29:31
  Philip Pape: You gain some fat, and then you diet down fat loss to lower body fat levels and preserve the muscle mass.
• 29:37
  Philip Pape: And of course, bodybuilders do this to an extreme, right?
• 29:39
  Philip Pape: They have the off-season, the improvement season, they call it.
• 29:42
  Philip Pape: They pack on all this muscle, they might gain 20, 30 pounds, and then they go into fat loss for a pretty long fat loss phase, way beyond what any of us need to do.
• 29:50
  Philip Pape: But again, it's an example of the extremes of what happens, and they go to extremely low, like vascular levels of quite lean body fat levels, and yet they're able to preserve their muscle mass.
• 30:01
  Philip Pape: And that's because they're building this metabolic engine.
• 30:04
  Philip Pape: They're focusing first and foremost on the muscle mass, and then only using the fat loss to reveal that muscle.
• 30:11
  Philip Pape: More muscle means you can maintain a leaner physique, probably at a higher scale weight while eating more calories.
• 30:17
  Philip Pape: Don't we all want all of that?
• 30:19
  Philip Pape: More muscle, more food.
• 30:21
  Philip Pape: And when I say higher scale weight, I know you're thinking, I don't want that.
• 30:24
  Philip Pape: But what it means is you can be leaner at a higher scale weight than you think, which gives you more flexibility regarding scale weight for how to live your life and sustain all of this, and then eat a good amount of food.
• 30:37
  Philip Pape: You have metabolic flexibility, you have better hormonal profile, you have higher insulin sensitivity, you have stronger, denser bones.
• 30:44
  Philip Pape: And what does this all translate to?
• 30:46
  Philip Pape: Right?
• 30:46
  Philip Pape: Not just looking good, better long-term health outcomes, period.
• 30:50
  Philip Pape: Right?
• 30:50
  Philip Pape: All the things we hear people complain about online and wondering what the fix is for, if they were just lifting weights and building muscle, the vast majority of those things would go away or be significantly mitigated, including many, many, many people who think it's their hormones.
• 31:05
  Philip Pape: So this is why resistance training is not optional.
• 31:08
  Philip Pape: It is the foundation of sustainable fat loss.
• 31:11
  Philip Pape: I wish people would not think of fat loss as like dieting.
• 31:14
  Philip Pape: I want people to think of fat loss as having muscle, right?
• 31:18
  Philip Pape: And supporting your metabolic engine.
• 31:20
  Philip Pape: And then you can manipulate your energy stores as needed to reveal your muscle.
• 31:26
  Philip Pape: That to me is fat loss.
• 31:27
  Philip Pape: It's not losing weight.
• 31:29
  Philip Pape: All right, tip number seven, the last tip from 70 years of research is that sustainability beats speed every time.
• 31:38
  Philip Pape: Now, we talked about adherence earlier, how the diet, the adherence of a diet is more important than the type of diet.
• 31:45
  Philip Pape: Well, this is related in a way, but it it also related to the concept of quick fixes and impatience in our modern world and the way things are marketed.
• 31:57
  Philip Pape: And it might be the most important one for your long-term success.
• 32:00
  Philip Pape: There was a study in 2016 by Fothergill and colleagues following up the biggest loser contestants.
• 32:08
  Philip Pape: Now, I did a separate episode just on biggest loser follow-up.
• 32:12
  Philip Pape: You can find it in my feed.
• 32:13
  Philip Pape: But they were looking at what happened six years later, after the biggest loser contestants lost all this weight in this comp, it was a TV competition.
• 32:21
  Philip Pape: And most had regained their weight and had very significantly suppressed metabolic rates compared to where they were before the show.
• 32:30
  Philip Pape: And this is six years later, right?
• 32:32
  Philip Pape: And for sure, our metabolisms can recover, but it's a matter of degrees and how much you've beat it up over the years tells you how long it's then going to take to recover.
• 32:42
  Philip Pape: It's kind of a symmetrical curve here.
• 32:45
  Philip Pape: And the reason here is because they used very aggressive dieting, very excessive amounts of cardio.
• 32:51
  Philip Pape: And that's exactly the opposite of what I've been discussing today that is supported by the evidence.
• 32:57
  Philip Pape: Rapid weight loss is going to increase your adaptive thermogenesis.
• 33:01
  Philip Pape: It's going to increase the muscle loss.
• 33:02
  Philip Pape: It's going to increase your psychological stress.
• 33:05
  Philip Pape: And that creates the perfect storm for the rebound weight gain, right?
• 33:10
  Philip Pape: And then the cardio and the lack of muscle and all of that stuff.
• 33:14
  Philip Pape: Research shows, conversely, that moderate sustained deficits of about 500 calories a day.
• 33:20
  Philip Pape: 500 calories a day, which is a nice round number.
• 33:22
  Philip Pape: It comes out to be a pound of weight loss per week.
• 33:26
  Philip Pape: For a lot of people, that's about a half to 1% of their weight, right?
• 33:29
  Philip Pape: It depends on how much you weigh, of course.
• 33:31
  Philip Pape: That moderate deficits around 500 calories are associated with better long-term outcomes.
• 33:37
  Philip Pape: We know we know smaller deficits than that, the problem is they're not enough to move the needle meaningfully, and your body might even adapt into them.
• 33:46
  Philip Pape: And then we know that much larger calories per day, it's just not sustainable.
• 33:51
  Philip Pape: It ends up causing all the problems we saw with the biggest loser, and maybe not to that extent, but to some degree along that spectrum.
• 33:57
  Philip Pape: And it's it's not just the physical side effects.
• 34:00
  Philip Pape: They're, you know, the when you have a sustainable rate of loss, which I'm a huge advocate of finding out, you know, what's the rate of loss you need to stick to the diet and don't care about the amount of weight you have to lose.
• 34:14
  Philip Pape: Let the rate of loss tell you how much you lose over a certain time frame.
• 34:19
  Philip Pape: And then you can say, okay, at this rate of loss, I'm gonna end up at this weight by this date.
• 34:24
  Philip Pape: And what are you gonna do also when you're at a sustainable rate of loss?
• 34:28
  Philip Pape: You're gonna preserve your muscle mass.
• 34:30
  Philip Pape: It's huge.
• 34:31
  Philip Pape: You're gonna maintain energy for the training itself because you're trying to preserve muscle mass via training.
• 34:36
  Philip Pape: And if you feel wiped out because you're crash dieting, you're not gonna have that energy.
• 34:41
  Philip Pape: It's gonna allow you to have a social life because now you're not saying no to everything that gets put in front of you.
• 34:47
  Philip Pape: You can still enjoy going out to eat and parties and things like that with some self-restraint, obviously.
• 34:55
  Philip Pape: It also helps you to learn skills and habits, sustainable habits.
• 34:58
  Philip Pape: What even does that mean?
• 35:00
  Philip Pape: So many of you are listening.
• 35:01
  Philip Pape: You've never had that in your life.
• 35:03
  Philip Pape: We, you know, I and I feel you because I used to be there.
• 35:05
  Philip Pape: The up and down, the crash dieting, the extreme approaches, the next quick fix.
• 35:10
  Philip Pape: You get to learn sustainable habits.
• 35:11
  Philip Pape: In fact, I just had a call with a client who we we went through a fat loss phase.
• 35:16
  Philip Pape: We did our pre-diet maintenance phase, we did the fat loss phase, and now we're at a sustaining phase.
• 35:21
  Philip Pape: And she's like, I don't even want to do anything different for a while because I realize that it takes skills to even sustain your result.
• 35:29
  Philip Pape: There are skills you have to put in place.
• 35:31
  Philip Pape: And if you're constantly trying to diet, especially do it aggressively, you're never gonna build those skills.
• 35:36
  Philip Pape: And then, of course, you're gonna avoid the psychological stress, the fatigue of the extreme dieting.
• 35:42
  Philip Pape: It's the white knuckling, it's the crash, you know, like I'm in diet mode right now.
• 35:45
  Philip Pape: I have to say no, I'm on a diet.
• 35:47
  Philip Pape: Like all that language effectively goes away when you're only in a moderate deficit.
• 35:53
  Philip Pape: A moderate deficit is just, you know, some good meal planning, some tweaks, a little more protein, more whole foods, it's just some tweaks.
• 36:02
  Philip Pape: A crash diet is a whole game change or a whole change in your entire lifestyle that doesn't make that's extreme.
• 36:10
  Philip Pape: So if you use things like diet breaks along the way, if you use maintenance phases, if you use periodization, if you use refeeds, all of those can reduce the physiological and psychological fatigue, even on top of the fact that you're going at a moderate rate of loss.
• 36:25
  Philip Pape: So think of fat loss as a series of strategically designed phases.
• 36:31
  Philip Pape: It's not a sprint to the finish line, I gotta get, I gotta lose weight.
• 36:34
  Philip Pape: If your mentality is, I gotta lose weight, you're already screwed and you're not ready for fat loss, to be honest.
• 36:40
  Philip Pape: Because the goal isn't to lose weight as fast as possible.
• 36:42
  Philip Pape: It is to lose fat while building the lifestyle where you can maintain that fat loss long term, involving all the tips we just talked about today.
• 36:50
  Philip Pape: So tying all these together, it's really isn't just about fat loss, is it?
• 36:55
  Philip Pape: It's really optimizing the way you live, right?
• 36:58
  Philip Pape: And when you do these things, you don't just lose fat.
• 37:00
  Philip Pape: You start to build a relationship with your body that is based on trusting yourself and rather than punishing yourself, rather than having guilt and a low sense of self-worth.
• 37:12
  Philip Pape: You trust yourself, you have confidence, you develop skills that then compound over time.
• 37:16
  Philip Pape: It is a form of personal growth and development.
• 37:18
  Philip Pape: And you become someone who understands how your body responds to the different inputs.
• 37:23
  Philip Pape: What it's what we're all about.
• 37:25
  Philip Pape: Because you know what?
• 37:26
  Philip Pape: No matter how much science you look at, it doesn't matter until you try it out for yourself and see how your body responds.
• 37:32
  Philip Pape: Because I guarantee you're gonna be an outlier with something.
• 37:36
  Philip Pape: And that's okay.
• 37:37
  Philip Pape: And you figure it out.
• 37:38
  Philip Pape: You'll figure it out doing it.
• 37:40
  Philip Pape: I've worked with clients who've implemented these principles.
• 37:43
  Philip Pape: And for years later, you know, obviously they they eventually fire me because they're like, okay, you just taught me everything I need to know.
• 37:49
  Philip Pape: Not everything I they a lot of them come back because there's there's next levels of knowledge here and optimization.
• 37:56
  Philip Pape: But still, they they have a confidence and a freedom that they can go forward and maintain the results and continue to approve, improve.
• 38:07
  Philip Pape: They may have come to me listening to the podcast, understanding the science, and still not quite getting how to make that work for them.
• 38:15
  Philip Pape: And when you put these all these principles into place, the sustainability, along with yes, the calorie deficit and the training, the protein, and the adherence, all of it, you know, doing at a reasonable rate of loss, et cetera, then you become physically and mentally stronger, you become more confident, and you have sort of a toolkit for your life that's going to carry you forward forever.
• 38:36
  Philip Pape: And remember, the research we've covered today, I deliberately wanted to go back as far as I could and say, how long have we been looking at fat loss?
• 38:43
  Philip Pape: And it's like anywhere from five to seven decades.
• 38:46
  Philip Pape: It's thousands of studies, millions of participants, it's decades of human experimentation, but it's more of a roadmap than anything.
• 38:53
  Philip Pape: It's a starting point.
• 38:54
  Philip Pape: Yes, you're gonna become strong, you're gonna become lean, you're gonna become healthy, that is what it's all about.
• 38:58
  Philip Pape: But you've got to try these things for yourself.
• 39:00
  Philip Pape: And the big irony with all of this, with everything that we talk about all the time on wits and weights, is if you focus on sustainability and principles instead of the next quick thing, you're probably gonna achieve your goal faster, right?
• 39:15
  Philip Pape: Because you're not constantly failing and starting over.
• 39:18
  Philip Pape: So there you have it.
• 39:19
  Philip Pape: All right, seven tips backed by 70 years of research.
• 39:22
  Philip Pape: Your calorie deficit is non-negotiable, but how you create it is very flexible.
• 39:27
  Philip Pape: Protein is your secret weapon for preserving muscle and controlling your appetite.
• 39:31
  Philip Pape: Resistance training is gonna beat cardio for body composition every time.
• 39:35
  Philip Pape: Diet adherence is going to matter more than diet type.
• 39:39
  Philip Pape: Neat can make or break your results, that's your movement.
• 39:43
  Philip Pape: Muscle mass, I'm up to number six, two hands here, is your metabolic insurance policy.
• 39:49
  Philip Pape: And sustainability always beats speed.
• 39:51
  Philip Pape: And these work, guess what?
• 39:53
  Philip Pape: Whether you're 19 or 79, whether you have 10 pounds to lose or 100.
• 39:59
  Philip Pape: Whether you're just getting started or you were advanced, these principles work just to different degrees and different levels of customization to the application.
• 40:08
  Philip Pape: All right.
• 40:09
  Philip Pape: If you're ready to implement these in practice, grab my ultimate macros guide.
• 40:13
  Philip Pape: It covers everything.
• 40:13
  Philip Pape: Witsandweeig.com slash free, or click the link in the show notes, gives you formulas, steps, explanations, the science behind this, all the things you need to care about, I'll say, to put in place what we've covered today and put it into action because knowledge, binging content without implementing it, this is just entertainment, folks.
• 40:32
  Philip Pape: It's just info that's gonna go in one ear and out the other.
• 40:36
  Philip Pape: And I want you to get results.
• 40:38
  Philip Pape: I want you to put this stuff into action.
• 40:40
  Philip Pape: And until next time, I want you to keep using your wits, lifting those weights.
• 40:43
  Philip Pape: And remember that when science speaks, smart people listen, but it's up to you to put it into practice.
• 40:49
  Philip Pape: I'll talk to you next time here on the Wits and Weights podcast.