Latest / Wits & Weights | Strength & Fat Loss Over 40 / Does the Perfect Fat Loss Plan Exist? (Black vs. Blue Line) | Ep 306

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Does the Perfect Fat Loss Plan Exist? (Black vs. Blue Line) | Ep 306 · Wits & Weights | Strength & Fat Loss Over 40

• 0:01
  Philip Pape: Maybe you've tried all the diets, you've tried all the plans, you've joined multiple programs for fat loss and you've stuck to the rules.
• 0:08
  Philip Pape: You've stuck to the targets.
• 0:09
  Philip Pape: Even if you have calories and macros and you follow them perfectly, somehow the results don't always match the promise.
• 0:16
  Philip Pape: Is it a lack of discipline?
• 0:17
  Philip Pape: Is it your genetics?
• 0:18
  Philip Pape: Is it your hormones?
• 0:19
  Philip Pape: Or could the entire approach be flawed from the start?
• 0:22
  Philip Pape: Today, I'm revealing an engineering concept called black line versus blue line thinking that will probably change how you think about your plan in the context of the real world.
• 0:34
  Philip Pape: This episode is going to give you a more counterintuitive approach that I think will lead to better, faster results than the perfect plan ever could.
• 0:42
  Philip Pape: Welcome to Wits and Weights, the show that helps you build a strong, healthy physique using evidence, engineering and efficiency.
• 1:00
  Philip Pape: I'm your host, philip Pape, and today we are examining a concept that I learned recently from the engineering and manufacturing world that will revolutionize your approach to nutrition and help you break free from the rigid all-or-nothing mindset that sabotages so many people.
• 1:17
  Philip Pape: You might have heard people talk about all-or-nothing before, but this is going to be a different look at that, because, whether you've tracked macros for years or you're just starting your nutrition journey, understanding the difference between the black line of perfect planning and the blue line of real world execution are going to change your approach to dieting and eating food in general for the rest of your life.
• 1:42
  Philip Pape: It is a paradigm shift.
• 1:44
  Philip Pape: It's been a game changer for my clients and now I have a framework to better explain it by.
• 1:49
  Philip Pape: It's going to give you both better physical results, but also better psychological relationship with food.
• 1:55
  Philip Pape: So today you're going to learn why pursuing nutritional perfection actually works against you, how strategically deviating from your plan can accelerate your progress, and then a framework to build intelligent flexibility into your nutrition plan.
• 2:12
  Philip Pape: I'm going to be specific today, as always, I'm going to give you tactics to navigate real challenges, like social events, like travel, those inevitable days when cravings feel overwhelming, and if you are tired of feeling like you're constantly falling short of your goals and trying to start again over and over.
• 2:31
  Philip Pape: I think this episode is a different perspective that aligns with both human psychology and the realities of daily life.
• 2:40
  Philip Pape: Now, before we get into it, if you are enjoying this engineering approach to fitness and nutrition, I think you're going to get tons of value from the Physique University, where I teach a complete system for transforming your body using evidence-based science strategies, engineering principles just like we are discussing today, in a very accessible way.
• 3:02
  Philip Pape: Students in Physique University learn to implement this kind of flexible approach to nutrition, to training, really to everything in life, while still achieving remarkable results.
• 3:13
  Philip Pape: And if you wanna join us there to take advantage of that, get your free two-week trial, get your free first challenge, get a custom nutrition plan and everything else that comes in there.
• 3:23
  Philip Pape: Go to witsandweightscom slash physique or click the link in the show notes Again witsandweightscom slash physique or click the link in the show notes.
• 3:34
  Philip Pape: So let's talk about this engineering concept called the black line versus the blue line.
• 3:38
  Philip Pape: It's something I actually just came across recently, but it explains this so well.
• 3:42
  Philip Pape: It comes from systems thinking and from human factors engineering.
• 3:47
  Philip Pape: I saw it in a number of places.
• 3:50
  Philip Pape: One place was an article by an engineer in LinkedIn.
• 3:53
  Philip Pape: His name is Jason Daring, I think is how you say it.
• 3:57
  Philip Pape: But the actual concept goes back to safety science and organizational psychology, where researchers like Sidney Decker, eric Hallnagel, pioneered the study of how work is actually performed versus how it's prescribed.
• 4:14
  Philip Pape: So listen up, because this actually applies to your job as well, not just nutrition.
• 4:18
  Philip Pape: So the fundamental concept is that the black line represents work as imagined, planned or designed.
• 4:26
  Philip Pape: So that is your idealized path, that is the perfect procedure, the flawless execution.
• 4:33
  Philip Pape: So in the engineering world it shows up as detailed procedures, steps, checklists, process documents right, so stick with me, because we're going to apply this to nutrition.
• 4:44
  Philip Pape: The blue line, however, represents the work as actually performed in the real world.
• 4:49
  Philip Pape: It's what happens when humans execute the plan in variable, complex environments where the conditions are constantly changing, and the blue line, naturally, of course, is going to deviate from the black line as people adapt to all the things going on, all the things that are changing, all the unexpected variables.
• 5:08
  Philip Pape: So this concept is central to what safety scientists call safety two thinking Okay, safety two, like not one, but two.
• 5:17
  Philip Pape: And that focuses on understanding why things go right most of the time, rather than just analyzing the failures.
• 5:23
  Philip Pape: Pretty cool, right?
• 5:23
  Philip Pape: Why do things actually do go right most of the time, rather than just analyzing the failures?
• 5:25
  Philip Pape: Pretty cool, right?
• 5:25
  Philip Pape: Why do things actually do go right most of the time?
• 5:27
  Philip Pape: And the insight that they found is that success doesn't come from perfectly following the black line, the plan.
• 5:33
  Philip Pape: Success comes from skillfully navigating the blue line, making smart adaptations, having flexibility, maintaining resilience when the deviations occur.
• 5:44
  Philip Pape: In fact, research in this area shows that things go right most of the time, not because people originally follow the plan and the procedure, but because they successfully adapt to the changing circumstances, which are inevitable.
• 5:58
  Philip Pape: And when things go wrong, it's rarely because people deviated from the plan.
• 6:02
  Philip Pape: Right, we don't blame the person.
• 6:03
  Philip Pape: When things go wrong, it's usually because of an outside force they encountered a novel situation beyond their experience or their adaptability.
• 6:12
  Philip Pape: So now let's translate this directly to nutrition.
• 6:14
  Philip Pape: Right, we talked about the black line versus blue line generally.
• 6:17
  Philip Pape: Now we're gonna talk about why, normally rigid plans usually fail with nutrition.
• 6:24
  Philip Pape: So the black line in nutrition is your perfect meal plan, right?
• 6:28
  Philip Pape: Your perfect nutrition plan, it's the calories and macros, tracking to those exactly the precisely measuring and weighing your food.
• 6:36
  Philip Pape: You know, having your meals with the right timing, the absence of, maybe, things you're trying to avoid.
• 6:42
  Philip Pape: It might even be the absence of complete food groups.
• 6:44
  Philip Pape: If you're trying to avoid.
• 6:44
  Philip Pape: It might even be the absence of complete food groups if you're trying to follow a rigid diet.
• 6:47
  Philip Pape: It's basically the plan that you design on Sunday night, that you say I'm going to start on Monday with the best of intentions, and this could apply to even when we do this right a proper fat loss plan where you do have some calorie macro targets and you know exactly what you're trying to do and you have a lot of flexibility in your food choices.
• 7:06
  Philip Pape: This could still be the black line.
• 7:08
  Philip Pape: You're assuming you're going to be able to hit those targets and your protein, fats, carbs, your meal timing every day right, you're going to assume that that's the perfect plan.
• 7:17
  Philip Pape: That's the black line.
• 7:19
  Philip Pape: The blue line is what actually happens in life.
• 7:21
  Philip Pape: Okay, you execute that plan and, starting on day two, things start to go wrong.
• 7:26
  Philip Pape: Your meeting runs late and you're starving right, it's what happens when your friend invites you to an impromptu dinner.
• 7:31
  Philip Pape: It's what happens when you're traveling and your options are limited.
• 7:34
  Philip Pape: It's what happens when stress, when emotions, when just the human cravings we all have start to influence your choices.
• 7:41
  Philip Pape: Okay, and most people approach nutrition with the first mentality, the black line mentality.
• 7:47
  Philip Pape: I can even accuse myself, when I have a brand new client, of having that to an extent, because I give you a plan, I give you an idealistic scenario of all the things that if we do them, we're going to get from A to B.
• 7:58
  Philip Pape: Right, that is a black line, where you believe that success means following the plan perfectly and any deviation represents failure.
• 8:06
  Philip Pape: And this perspective from engineering shows us why this fails.
• 8:12
  Philip Pape: And it's simple.
• 8:13
  Philip Pape: Think about it this way In a complex environment and guess what?
• 8:16
  Philip Pape: Daily life is right, complex, unpredictable.
• 8:19
  Philip Pape: There are simply too many variables to account for.
• 8:22
  Philip Pape: You just cannot account for everything that's going to happen.
• 8:24
  Philip Pape: Just like if you made a map and gave yourself directions from here to the store, you don't know if there's going to be a squirrel crossing the road construction along the way.
• 8:34
  Philip Pape: Just you don't know what's going to happen.
• 8:36
  Philip Pape: Somebody's going to sideswipe you, right?
• 8:37
  Philip Pape: Just as no procedure can anticipate every possible scenario, your plan, your nutrition plan cannot possibly, nor should it account for every situation you're going to encounter.
• 8:49
  Philip Pape: Um and and I think the driving example is apropos, right, because if you try to do that, if you try to tell somebody when they have to break, accelerate, change lanes et cetera, you're not, you're not going to account for what's what's happening, you're not gonna know when to put in those instructions.
• 9:03
  Philip Pape: You can try, and then, when you actually drive, you see how closely you follow your procedure.
• 9:09
  Philip Pape: In reality, you don't right it it.
• 9:10
  Philip Pape: So your procedure only captured the most basic aspects of that driving trip right, turn here, stop there, et cetera.
• 9:17
  Philip Pape: But then every trip you are actually successful and you get to the store.
• 9:21
  Philip Pape: You adapted and adjusted to tons of things that were not in your plan right, and so you didn't succeed because you followed your plan perfectly, but instead you skillfully navigated the variables and unexpected events.
• 9:34
  Philip Pape: So when we think of nutrition plans and why they fail, there's a few obvious reasons.
• 9:38
  Philip Pape: The first one they ignore the complexity of real life.
• 9:41
  Philip Pape: So, again, going back to the plan that I provide to clients, we go in already discussing from day one that this is an adaptable plan and that we're not.
• 9:49
  Philip Pape: We're probably not going to, it's probably not going to be working like you think by day two or three, because something's going to happen in your life and that's when we're going to have to have a conversation, coach and client um, to help you get through that.
• 10:00
  Philip Pape: So plans ignore the complexity of life.
• 10:02
  Philip Pape: They assume a level of control and predictability that does not exist, and so when you design a meal plan, for example, this is a good example of something too rigid.
• 10:12
  Philip Pape: A meal plan doesn't account for all the variables that affect your eating behaviors, from your emotional state at the moment, to your work schedule, to your social obligations.
• 10:23
  Philip Pape: Second is that rigid plans do create an all or nothing mindset.
• 10:27
  Philip Pape: The more rigid, the more of that mindset you're going to have, because when hitting that target exactly is the only acceptable outcome.
• 10:34
  Philip Pape: Any deviation is going to make you feel like a complete failure and that's what leads to what I call the diet spiral.
• 10:40
  Philip Pape: This is where a small deviation triggers that feeling of failure, like you let yourself down.
• 10:45
  Philip Pape: It leads to you giving up entirely the effort mentality and that leads to even more extreme behaviors in both directions.
• 10:55
  Philip Pape: The third thing is that rigid plans don't build the adaptation skills right.
• 11:00
  Philip Pape: So when I give my clients a plan, it's understood that this is just one little piece of an overall strategy.
• 11:05
  Philip Pape: But when your strategy is just stick to the plan perfectly, you're not going to develop the decision-making abilities, the skill needed to navigate the challenges that come up.
• 11:16
  Philip Pape: And this is a skill.
• 11:18
  Philip Pape: If you want quick weight loss, you can crash, diet on really low calories, you can cut out carbs, lose a bunch of weight.
• 11:24
  Philip Pape: You won't even know how you got there and if you try to do it again, it's not going to work.
• 11:27
  Philip Pape: And then what do you do afterward?
• 11:29
  Philip Pape: Right, you didn't develop any skills, and then you're extremely vulnerable to any situation that disrupts your routine in the future.
• 11:37
  Philip Pape: The last thing about rigid plans is they create psychological stress, and it's unnecessary.
• 11:43
  Philip Pape: It's just not necessary.
• 11:44
  Philip Pape: It's this constant pressure to be perfect.
• 11:47
  Philip Pape: It's the guilt when you inevitably deviate.
• 11:51
  Philip Pape: It's the anxiety about social situations.
• 11:54
  Philip Pape: Tell me if this doesn't sound familiar, right?
• 11:57
  Philip Pape: All of this decreases your quality of life.
• 11:59
  Philip Pape: It just makes life suck and then, ironically, guess what happens.
• 12:03
  Philip Pape: It makes the adherence to the plan harder and harder and harder, and so it's something I see with clients all the time who've come to me in the past having tried all these different approaches.
• 12:13
  Philip Pape: Usually it's specific diets keto, carnivore, whatever and they're rigid, right, it's like you have to cut out these food groups or you have to stick to this specific meal plan, and they always start with enthusiasm, they stick to it for a while, they get some quote unquote progress, and sometimes I'll even ask, hey, what's worked for you in the past?
• 12:30
  Philip Pape: And I say, well, keto worked for me for three months, but then it stopped, right, like you're not still doing it for a reason.
• 12:36
  Philip Pape: You feel like a failure.
• 12:37
  Philip Pape: You then abandon the plan.
• 12:39
  Philip Pape: You think all plans are like that, and even when you start a new cycle again, you have more and more skepticism for each one.
• 12:44
  Philip Pape: And then they come to me and they're like super skeptical, not even thinking they should hire a coach, because every other coach or plan they've tried hasn't worked.
• 12:52
  Philip Pape: And it's not a personal failure, um, it's a predictable outcome.
• 12:55
  Philip Pape: This is, those are.
• 12:57
  Philip Pape: Those are flawed approaches, because you're trying to follow the black line perfectly.
• 13:00
  Philip Pape: It's, it's.
• 13:01
  Philip Pape: It's not just difficult, this is not, guys.
• 13:03
  Philip Pape: This is not a matter of getting over the hump and doing it.
• 13:05
  Philip Pape: It is fundamentally misaligned with how humans operate in complex environments, and that's why I thought the black line versus blue line was really a really great concept, right.
• 13:18
  Philip Pape: And so if, if, rigid adherence to this straight black line, this perfect plan, is not the answer, how do we embrace this more curved, meandering blue line and still make progress?
• 13:30
  Philip Pape: Because, at the end of the day, you want to end up close to the black line anyway, don't you, right?
• 13:34
  Philip Pape: And so the key here listen up.
• 13:36
  Philip Pape: The key is to shift from a perfection-oriented approach to a resilience-oriented approach.
• 13:43
  Philip Pape: Go from perfection-oriented, where you're trying to stick to your plan, stay on track, stay on the rail, to a resilience-oriented approach, a very flexible, adaptable approach and instead of trying to eliminate the deviations right, which is just as good as trying to eliminate all the things that stress you out in life, you can't, you're not gonna eliminate them we need to get better at navigating them.
• 14:09
  Philip Pape: So here's how to do it.
• 14:10
  Philip Pape: Here we go.
• 14:11
  Philip Pape: All right, first, I want you to design a plan with flexibility built in from the start, and that means guidelines instead of rules, ranges instead of targets, identifying your non-negotiables, but being flexible everywhere else.
• 14:28
  Philip Pape: That is the kind of plan that I put together for you when you join Physique University or you work with me as a client, in that we give you yeah, we give you some protein and protein, or we give you some macro and calorie targets, but actually I don't even give you targets technically, we have you use an app that will determine the right targets for you flexibly based on your metabolism as it changes.
• 14:46
  Philip Pape: So already we're getting more flexible.
• 14:47
  Philip Pape: I also don't want you to hit the numbers.
• 14:49
  Philip Pape: I want you to get a minimum protein, but then stay within a wide range for your fats and carbs and a range for your calories, right.
• 14:56
  Philip Pape: I also want to allow you to eat all the things that you love to eat whenever you want to eat them, as long as you're sticking within the overall guidelines for your overall diet, that is flexibility.
• 15:05
  Philip Pape: That is flexibility.
• 15:07
  Philip Pape: That means you can eat whatever foods you want and as long as you're eating largely whole, nutritious foods with plenty of protein and fiber.
• 15:13
  Philip Pape: Right, hitting those minimums, getting into those ranges, but not hitting the exact targets, you're going to be good.
• 15:18
  Philip Pape: So instead of saying I have to eat 2000 calories every day because that's my target, you're going to say well, first of all, let's look at it across a week.
• 15:25
  Philip Pape: If I'm aiming for, say, 14,000 calories for the week, I just want to get close to that for the week.
• 15:30
  Philip Pape: So I can go, you know, 1700 one day, 2300 the next, no big deal.
• 15:34
  Philip Pape: I've got some up and down flexibility and then at the end of the week if I found that I was too far off one direction or the other.
• 15:39
  Philip Pape: That's just data that I know I can adjust from and it acknowledges the reality of the blue line right from the beginning.
• 15:46
  Philip Pape: The second thing you're going to do is have decision-making frameworks for common scenarios for you, things that all you know are going to happen.
• 15:54
  Philip Pape: Right, the goal is not to eliminate those, it's to intelligently foresee them and navigate around them or through them.
• 16:01
  Philip Pape: For example, you could develop your strategy for eating at restaurants.
• 16:06
  Philip Pape: Super common, everyone goes to restaurants, like 99% of people do, right?
• 16:10
  Philip Pape: So what are you going to do?
• 16:11
  Philip Pape: Are you going to download the menu ahead of time and pick what you want and pre-log it?
• 16:16
  Philip Pape: Are you going to look at the calories and macros if it's like a chain restaurant or get something similar to that?
• 16:21
  Philip Pape: Are you going to look at the calories and macros if it's like a chain restaurant or get something similar to that?
• 16:24
  Philip Pape: Are you going to have just a simple plan of I'm going to start from my vegetables, then lean protein, then carbs, I'm going to have two drinks, no more.
• 16:31
  Philip Pape: Or I'm going to have non-alcoholic beer right, you just have a strategy because you know you're going to the restaurant.
• 16:37
  Philip Pape: So I don't want you to go there with no strategy and then the next day say I went to a restaurant, couldn't help myself.
• 16:43
  Philip Pape: Or the reason I went over my calories and macros is because I went to a restaurant.
• 16:47
  Philip Pape: Well, you didn't have a strategy, right?
• 16:49
  Philip Pape: Same thing goes for any social event, a party.
• 16:51
  Philip Pape: We just had my wife's birthday and I knew for a fact I'd be eating cake and I'd be eating leftover cake for the next few days.
• 16:58
  Philip Pape: So, guess what?
• 16:59
  Philip Pape: That cake goes into my plan ahead of time and now I know what's left for the rest of the day, right, you know when you're going to have periods of high stress, the things for your kids you know play or sporting event or when you're going on vacation.
• 17:10
  Philip Pape: You know that 90% of these things you know.
• 17:13
  Philip Pape: And for the things you don't, you probably are 90% confident that they're going to happen at some point.
• 17:18
  Philip Pape: Like you know, your friend's going to ask you out on some given day.
• 17:21
  Philip Pape: So have a strategy, right?
• 17:23
  Philip Pape: And when I work with clients, we like practice these scenarios, we try to role play.
• 17:27
  Philip Pape: Or I will ask them what would you do when this happens?
• 17:29
  Philip Pape: And let's talk about your vacation in a month rather than, you know, tomorrow, the vacation starting tomorrow.
• 17:36
  Philip Pape: Let's give it some time and build confidence and competence about those scenarios.
• 17:40
  Philip Pape: So with that, let me share some practical strategies, of course, for implementing the blue line approach, because that's what we're all about.
• 17:49
  Philip Pape: So strategy number one is having a clear hierarchy of your priorities.
• 17:55
  Philip Pape: So what this means is list out on a piece of paper or in a note app the order of things as they are in terms of importance to you.
• 18:03
  Philip Pape: So what is the most important thing?
• 18:05
  Philip Pape: Is it your strength training?
• 18:07
  Philip Pape: Yes, that is part of your nutrition, believe it or not?
• 18:09
  Philip Pape: Threw you for a loop there, I know, or did I.
• 18:11
  Philip Pape: Is it your protein intake?
• 18:13
  Philip Pape: Is it your overall energy balance?
• 18:16
  Philip Pape: You know your calories and the deficit or surplus you're trying to be in.
• 18:19
  Philip Pape: Is it the whole food consumption?
• 18:22
  Philip Pape: Like, maybe you are eating a lot of processed foods or going out a lot and your goal is to shift more toward the whole foods for the nutrients and for the satiety right.
• 18:31
  Philip Pape: Any one of those might deserve more of your attention than just trying to hit exact numbers.
• 18:38
  Philip Pape: In fact, they always will.
• 18:40
  Philip Pape: So create a hierarchy of your priorities.
• 18:42
  Philip Pape: I don't talk about this a lot because sometimes we think of these as pillars, that we have to do all of them, but in reality we should do one at a time to start, unless you're working with a coach or a support system where you can really fall back on that as you slip along the way, which is going to happen at first.
• 18:59
  Philip Pape: I would just do one at a time and then you can make better real-time decisions when the deviations occur, because you'll know which aspect of the plan you're going to protect most fiercely, like if training's at the top.
• 19:12
  Philip Pape: You know that that's going to affect all the other decisions around it in terms of your schedule and what you're doing for your training.
• 19:20
  Philip Pape: So that gives you the flexibility elsewhere in all the rest of your schedule or all the rest of your plan, because you're protecting the one thing that is most important right now, and for food-wise, for nutrition-wise, this could be definitely protein intake.
• 19:35
  Philip Pape: Right, that might be the thing that you're going to fiercely protect, no matter what.
• 19:39
  Philip Pape: That's number one Strategy.
• 19:41
  Philip Pape: Number two is I alluded to this with Whole Foods, but it's the 80-20 principle.
• 19:45
  Philip Pape: We come back to this a lot, but it's because it's super simple and powerful and it's the rule of thumb that if you aim for 80% adherence to whatever it is your core principles, then you have 20% flexibility your core principles, then you have 20% flexibility.
• 20:04
  Philip Pape: Yes, this applies to the whole foods versus anything else, but it also applies to 80% consistency to your protein, 80% consistency to the calories, and it'd be when, when we say consistency, we don't mean, um, like 80% of the week, you try to hit your calories and then the other 20% you go hog wild with, like cheat meals.
• 20:24
  Philip Pape: That's not what we're talking about.
• 20:25
  Philip Pape: We're just saying you know you're going to try to adhere but in reality it's not going to be perfect.
• 20:30
  Philip Pape: So give yourself an 80% goal is my point, and however you want to define that 80%.
• 20:36
  Philip Pape: So, for example, if you eat four meals a day across seven days that's 28 meals in the week then that means 22 or three of those meals are going to align with your plan.
• 20:47
  Philip Pape: If you have 80% and five to six of them may not right Again, it's not cheat meals, it's just building in adaptability.
• 20:55
  Philip Pape: And you notice it's not a lot, it's five to six, but it's not zero either.
• 20:59
  Philip Pape: You're not giving yourself a completely rigid approach.
• 21:01
  Philip Pape: So that's strategy number two is apply 80, 20, wherever it makes sense.
• 21:05
  Philip Pape: Strategy number three this is if, then contingencies, pre-planned contingencies for common scenarios.
• 21:13
  Philip Pape: Like you know that Christmas is going to come on December 25th, so why haven't you budgeted and saved up for the gifts instead of spending it on your credit card?
• 21:21
  Philip Pape: Right, that would be what a financial person would chide you for.
• 21:23
  Philip Pape: I'm the nutrition guy, but I know a little bit about finance.
• 21:27
  Philip Pape: What I'm going to suggest is think about the situations that are most often derail your nutrition efforts, but are going to happen one way or the other.
• 21:35
  Philip Pape: They either happen on a consistent basis or they happen randomly, but they happen and then come up with strategies for handling them.
• 21:43
  Philip Pape: So, if work dinners right, if you you know work maybe you're an executive, maybe you're a lawyer or something and you have to go treat customers or suppliers, take you out for dinner all the time or whatever and that's a challenge then you might have a standard approach developed ahead of time.
• 21:57
  Philip Pape: You review the menu in advance, you decide on your meal before arriving, you pre-log it.
• 22:03
  Philip Pape: You have a protein shake beforehand or some other lean protein earlier in the day.
• 22:06
  Philip Pape: If you're concerned about portions etc.
• 22:08
  Philip Pape: Having some sort of plan, you can come up with that plan.
• 22:13
  Philip Pape: Right.
• 22:13
  Philip Pape: That's flexibility too.
• 22:15
  Philip Pape: You can come up with that whatever makes sense.
• 22:16
  Philip Pape: If I'm your coach, I'm going to help you come up with that, but ultimately it's on what works for you, and that means you can navigate any deviation with confidence.
• 22:25
  Philip Pape: Maybe not 100% of them, some things are going to surprise you, no matter what, but the vast majority of them you can foresee All right.
• 22:31
  Philip Pape: Strategy number four is what I call mindful deviation.
• 22:34
  Philip Pape: So when you deviate from your plan.
• 22:37
  Philip Pape: You will.
• 22:38
  Philip Pape: You always will.
• 22:40
  Philip Pape: You will many times.
• 22:40
  Philip Pape: Except that I want you to deviate mindfully rather than reactively.
• 22:48
  Philip Pape: Somebody else called this a planned reaction.
• 22:49
  Philip Pape: I think, or a what do they call this?
• 22:53
  Philip Pape: A proactive reaction.
• 22:54
  Philip Pape: It's a mindful deviation.
• 22:56
  Philip Pape: It's a conscious choice.
• 22:58
  Philip Pape: It's made with awareness as opposed to impulsively reacting to your circumstances.
• 23:03
  Philip Pape: This could be anything from pattern interrupts to Having your priorities in your head that we talked about earlier and then acting on those, to taking a pause and thinking about the emotions going through your head.
• 23:16
  Philip Pape: There's a lot of reasons, so I'll give you a specific example.
• 23:19
  Philip Pape: Choosing to enjoy your grandmother's special brownies at a family gathering is very different from mindlessly eating cookies because they're in the break room at work, right?
• 23:29
  Philip Pape: The former is a blue line adaptation.
• 23:33
  Philip Pape: The latter is you're just getting knocked off course, you're just letting it happen.
• 23:36
  Philip Pape: So even with deviations, they can be mindful, important distinction, all right.
• 23:42
  Philip Pape: And then strategy five is I want you to focus on the momentum rather than the adherence or the perfection, because if you think of the blue line approach, where we have a black line, that's a straight perfect line, and then we have this meandering blue line, that's reality.
• 23:56
  Philip Pape: Remember that success is not defined by adhering to the black line.
• 23:59
  Philip Pape: It's defined by your ability to maintain momentum right, even though it zigzags, even though you have inevitable deviations from the black line.
• 24:07
  Philip Pape: You're going to end up near the black line, but you're going to deviate constantly.
• 24:11
  Philip Pape: It's your ability to keep the line being drawn forward right.
• 24:16
  Philip Pape: And so that means, for example, celebrate when you get through a challenging situation reasonably well, instead of beating yourself up for not handling it perfectly.
• 24:27
  Philip Pape: Celebrate yourself for getting through it reasonably well.
• 24:32
  Philip Pape: Celebrate yourself for getting through it reasonably well.
• 24:36
  Philip Pape: It means quickly returning to your baseline after a deviation, right, getting up near that black line, but not necessarily on it, but close to it, rather than allowing one off-plan meal that you feel guilty about turn into an off-plan week.
• 24:48
  Philip Pape: So think about it visually that blue line it starts to deviate away from the black line.
• 24:53
  Philip Pape: That's your off-plan meal.
• 24:54
  Philip Pape: Well, all you have to do is deviate back to the black line the next day, instead of continuing to go farther and farther away from the black line and going off the page.
• 25:04
  Philip Pape: And then kind of putting this all together is using data to refine your approach to all of these things over time.
• 25:10
  Philip Pape: Right, you knew it would come back to data with me, didn't you?
• 25:13
  Philip Pape: I mean, one of the most powerful aspects of this concept, this blue line concept, is it creates a feedback loop, because you are tracking both your plan, which is the black line, and you're tracking what happens, which is the blue line.
• 25:25
  Philip Pape: Pretty cool, right?
• 25:26
  Philip Pape: You're actually tracking what you intend to do and you're tracking what you actually do, and that gives you an idea of the gap and the insights so that you can keep improving.
• 25:36
  Philip Pape: And the gap isn't something to beat yourself up over.
• 25:38
  Philip Pape: It's an acknowledgement of reality and how you're able to navigate and how you can better navigate in the future.
• 25:44
  Philip Pape: So if you, for example, notice that you consistently struggle with late night snacking on work days very common that is valuable data.
• 25:52
  Philip Pape: So instead of saying I'm going to try harder to resist, which is willpower, you might adjust your meal timing right To put a snack toward the end of the day to take care of your hunger.
• 26:03
  Philip Pape: Or you might change the composition of your meals to have more fiber and vegetables to make you fuller, more protein in your dinner right.
• 26:12
  Philip Pape: Whatever it takes to better manage evening hunger, other than dealing with emotional triggers and things like that as well, it may just be a simple solution like that that helps you get back near the black line.
• 26:25
  Philip Pape: So I wanna talk about something counterintuitive here, related to this.
• 26:30
  Philip Pape: That is directly from experience with clients.
• 26:34
  Philip Pape: Okay, as a nutrition coach, one of the most difficult things for me and the challenge that I fully embrace is getting clients to adopt this blue line approach to nutrition.
• 26:44
  Philip Pape: Now, I haven't called it blue line before.
• 26:45
  Philip Pape: I might start doing that, but there's this assumption that embracing flexibility means I'm going to slow down my progress, right?
• 26:55
  Philip Pape: Well, if I deviate constantly, aren't I going to get fat loss slower?
• 26:59
  Philip Pape: Right?
• 27:00
  Philip Pape: Aren't my results going to be mediocre because I'm allowing for constantly getting off track?
• 27:05
  Philip Pape: In reality, the opposite happens, because when you shift from a rigid, the black line mentality to the flexible blue line approach, your results usually accelerate, and the reason why is you're no longer caught in the cycle of perfect adherence followed by complete abandonment.
• 27:24
  Philip Pape: You maintain consistent progress.
• 27:27
  Philip Pape: That's all it comes down to.
• 27:28
  Philip Pape: You don't do it perfectly, and that's the point.
• 27:30
  Philip Pape: You do it consistently, though, and you keep doing it.
• 27:32
  Philip Pape: The small, deliberate deviations that you allow prevent the massive unplanned deviations that derail your progress completely.
• 27:40
  Philip Pape: I think even more importantly is that the blue line approach helps you build skills, what are called progressive adaptation skills.
• 27:48
  Philip Pape: Right, just like with training.
• 27:49
  Philip Pape: Think about it.
• 27:50
  Philip Pape: Just like with training, where progressive overload increases your strength and muscle over time, progressive adaptation with nutrition makes you more resilient, makes you more capable, makes you more skilled.
• 28:00
  Philip Pape: You're going to be able to teach this stuff, my friends.
• 28:02
  Philip Pape: If you work with me as a client, you are going to be able to come out the other end teaching other people how to do this, because you'll just know how to do it, and that's what I want for you.
• 28:16
  Philip Pape: I want you to know how to do this, because you'll just know how to do it, and that's what I want for you.
• 28:19
  Philip Pape: I want you to know how to do it.
• 28:19
  Philip Pape: You can get some of that from this podcast, but you get a lot of that doing it yourself.
• 28:21
  Philip Pape: And so what happens is some wonderful side effects.
• 28:22
  Philip Pape: Yes, you transform your body Great, we all want to do that but you also transform this relationship with food, because a lot of that relationship is tied up in the anxiety and those situations that cause the deviations.
• 28:34
  Philip Pape: You no longer fear social situations because you're prepared, or going on a trip because you have the skills to navigate them.
• 28:40
  Philip Pape: Food becomes a source of nourishment and fuel and enjoyment, yes, rather than anxiety and guilt.
• 28:47
  Philip Pape: And then, probably most powerful of all just to wrap this up and then I'll shut up is when you do this, you stop identifying progress with perfection and then you understand that any path to any goal not just nutrition, anything in life it's not a straight black line, but it's a winding blue one.
• 29:05
  Philip Pape: And not only is that okay, it's exactly how it should be, isn't that powerful?
• 29:11
  Philip Pape: I'm exciting myself as I talk about this, because when I came across the image of the blue versus black lines, that oh, light bulb clicked, got to share this with my audience.
• 29:20
  Philip Pape: So if we bring this all together, the black line versus blue line concept shows us that in a complex environment AKA life success is not from perfectly following an idealized plan, but from navigating with skill that you develop over time, the inevitable deviations, the inevitable adaptations that are required, because it's the real world.
• 29:47
  Philip Pape: So when we talk about adapting to your goals, your lifestyles, your preferences and all that which sometimes sounds like marketing speak, that's kind of what we're talking about.
• 29:55
  Philip Pape: And when you apply it to nutrition, your approach changes, your mindset changes.
• 29:59
  Philip Pape: You no longer try to be perfect, but instead you try to develop the skills, the strategies, the mindsets that allow you to maintain progress right.
• 30:09
  Philip Pape: Maintain progress despite the complexities of real life, and you're not lowering your standards by doing this.
• 30:16
  Philip Pape: You are not giving up on your goals.
• 30:18
  Philip Pape: It's approaching those goals in a way that aligns with reality, rather than fighting against it, and building a sustainable approach.
• 30:25
  Philip Pape: Boom, that's what it is.
• 30:26
  Philip Pape: That is what sustainability is.
• 30:29
  Philip Pape: So I'm going to encourage you right now to examine your own approach to your nutrition.
• 30:33
  Philip Pape: Are you caught in the trap of black line thinking, where any deviation feels like failure, or have you or will you embrace the blue line reality, where skillful navigation and adaptation lead to progress and lasting success?
• 30:50
  Philip Pape: All right, if you enjoyed this concept, if you found it helpful.
• 30:56
  Philip Pape: I'm all about frameworks.
• 30:57
  Philip Pape: I'm all about systems and applying engineering-type principles to your nutrition and training, because they work.
• 31:02
  Philip Pape: They reflect some of the most complex environments and situations in real life, and imagine if you can deal with your complex human body in the same way, with simple frameworks and systems that just finally help you break through and make it work.
• 31:17
  Philip Pape: If you want to do that, please join us in Physique University.
• 31:19
  Philip Pape: Link in the show notes.
• 31:21
  Philip Pape: You get a two-week free trial.
• 31:23
  Philip Pape: Tons of goodies in there.
• 31:24
  Philip Pape: We do masterclasses with guest experts.
• 31:27
  Philip Pape: Now we do challenges every month.
• 31:29
  Philip Pape: You've got courses.
• 31:30
  Philip Pape: You've got a free custom nutrition plan when you join, put together by me.
• 31:34
  Philip Pape: And remember that plan is the black line.
• 31:36
  Philip Pape: The blue line is what we teach you Evidence-based.
• 31:39
  Philip Pape: They work in the real world, not just on paper.
• 31:42
  Philip Pape: You can get all the details.
• 31:44
  Philip Pape: You can learn more Zero risk.
• 31:46
  Philip Pape: Go to witsandweightscom.
• 31:47
  Philip Pape: Slash physique or click the link in the show notes.
• 31:50
  Philip Pape: All right until next time.
• 31:51
  Philip Pape: This is Philip Pape reminding you to use your wits, lift those weights and remember that life is a meandering, flexible, adaptable blue line and if you follow it, you will get all of the results you ever dreamed of.
• 32:05
  Philip Pape: I'll talk to you next time here on the Wits and Weights podcast.