Latest / Wits & Weights | Strength & Fat Loss Over 40 / Why Most Fitness & Nutrition Apps Fail People Over 40 (And What Actually Works) | Ep 401

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Why Most Fitness & Nutrition Apps Fail People Over 40 (And What Actually Works) | Ep 401 · Wits & Weights | Strength & Fat Loss Over 40

• 0:01
  Philip Pape: If I were to guess, you've probably tried many fitness, nutrition, and workout apps.
• 0:06
  Philip Pape: For a while, you use them and they help you make progress.
• 0:09
  Philip Pape: You might track your food, you follow workouts, and then something happens.
• 0:13
  Philip Pape: The scale stops, your lifts stop, and the app can't really respond to those.
• 0:18
  Philip Pape: What about all the obstacles along the way?
• 0:20
  Philip Pape: What is missing is often that interpretation layer.
• 0:25
  Philip Pape: The coaching that takes your data and tells you what to do next for your specific situation.
• 0:29
  Philip Pape: Today we're gonna break down why most fitness apps today fail in doing the thing you really need, and what actually works without having to hire a coach.
• 0:40
  Philip Pape: Welcome to Wits and Weights, the show that helps you build a strong, healthy physique using evidence, engineering, and efficiency.
• 0:57
  Philip Pape: I'm your host, certified nutrition coach, Philip Pape, and today we're gonna look at fitness apps in general, how they're designed today, the ones on your phone for nutrition, for workouts, uh maybe even some of the new lifestyle type apps, and why they're not giving you what you need.
• 1:14
  Philip Pape: I talk to people every day, every week, who tell me they're using this app or that app.
• 1:19
  Philip Pape: It might be a food tracker like my FitnessPal chronometer.
• 1:21
  Philip Pape: Of course, I will suggest upgrades like Macro Factor along the way, or some of the strength and workout apps that I like, like Boost Camp.
• 1:28
  Philip Pape: And a lot of folks using these apps, they listen to the show, they understand principles like progressive overload, they know they have to get enough protein, they know they want to track their numbers and kind of see how things change, but they're still stuck in some way.
• 1:41
  Philip Pape: And when I ask them, hey, you said you're using an app, you're following some sort of system.
• 1:46
  Philip Pape: How do you know what to do when this happens?
• 1:49
  Philip Pape: How do you know what to do when you hit a plateau of some kind, whether it is in your body fat or your lifts or food issues like emotional eating, you know, just the holidays coming up?
• 1:59
  Philip Pape: The answer is always the same.
• 2:01
  Philip Pape: The app doesn't really tell me that, right?
• 2:03
  Philip Pape: The app isn't smart enough to do that.
• 2:04
  Philip Pape: Maybe I go ask ChatGPT or something, or maybe I hire a coach or work with a coach or come into the Facebook group, right?
• 2:10
  Philip Pape: In other words, we usually seek out some extra intelligence, human connection, a third person, a third-party perspective, things like that, rather than something generic because this is about us as individuals.
• 2:23
  Philip Pape: And so that's the problem we're gonna solve today.
• 2:26
  Philip Pape: And tomorrow, Tuesday, November 18th, I am launching something that fixes this exact gap.
• 2:33
  Philip Pape: It's the whole reason that I uh designed what's coming out tomorrow.
• 2:36
  Philip Pape: Look, it's an app.
• 2:37
  Philip Pape: It is an app, but it's completely different than everything else in the space.
• 2:40
  Philip Pape: Today I want to show you why the gap exists in the first place.
• 2:44
  Philip Pape: So you understand why I spent all the time and effort over the past several months putting this together for you.
• 2:49
  Philip Pape: Before we get into it, if you want early access to the app that I'm launching tomorrow, join my email list at witsandwaits.com slash email.
• 2:58
  Philip Pape: There's a link in the show notes as well.
• 3:00
  Philip Pape: And if you're already on the list, you're already getting this information.
• 3:03
  Philip Pape: If you're not on the list yet, join, reply, and say, hey, I want the secret link to the app.
• 3:11
  Philip Pape: All right, and I will get it to you.
• 3:13
  Philip Pape: And you can get access to it right now, including the Black Friday pricing before anyone else gets it when it launches tomorrow.
• 3:18
  Philip Pape: All right, let's get into it today and start with what most fitness apps actually do quite well.
• 3:25
  Philip Pape: And the first one is that they're good at tracking data.
• 3:28
  Philip Pape: They're really good at this.
• 3:29
  Philip Pape: Whether it is MyFitnessPal, Chronometer, MacroFactor, Boost Camp, Strong, any of these, they will help you log the data.
• 3:38
  Philip Pape: And in some cases, they will use that with an algorithm or some sort of calculation, right?
• 3:43
  Philip Pape: Like we know MyFitnessPal doesn't really do much of anything other than let you log, but at least it shows you what you ate.
• 3:49
  Philip Pape: My macrofactor will take that data along with your weight and say, okay, here's your expenditure, therefore we can calculate your targets for gaining or losing weight, right?
• 3:58
  Philip Pape: So it takes it to that next level, which is very impressive that they can do that.
• 4:02
  Philip Pape: I really do.
• 4:02
  Philip Pape: You guys know I'm a big fan of MacroFactor for that reason.
• 4:05
  Philip Pape: You take a workout logger like Boostcamp and it will say, hey, here are your PRs, here's what you did last time, and now you can figure out what I need to do this time.
• 4:14
  Philip Pape: And sometimes there's a little bit extra intelligence, like a percent of your max or something like that.
• 4:19
  Philip Pape: And at the end of the day, tracking something that you care about is foundational.
• 4:25
  Philip Pape: It's a first principle.
• 4:26
  Philip Pape: You can't manage what you don't measure.
• 4:28
  Philip Pape: So I'm never gonna say don't track.
• 4:30
  Philip Pape: Absolutely not.
• 4:30
  Philip Pape: Tracking is invaluable.
• 4:33
  Philip Pape: But tracking is only the half the equation, and that's if you even know what to track, right?
• 4:37
  Philip Pape: Because there are a lot of things.
• 4:38
  Philip Pape: The other half, the part that drives the result is how do you interpret that data and take action based on it, right?
• 4:46
  Philip Pape: What does the data mean?
• 4:47
  Philip Pape: What should you do with it?
• 4:48
  Philip Pape: And what's interesting is in physique university, we've covered this multiple times when it comes to your macrofactor data or however you're tracking your data, of as much as as much of that you have in your app or your notebook or whatever, things happen that where the data doesn't seem to make sense, right?
• 5:06
  Philip Pape: Like people say, why is my metabolism dropping?
• 5:08
  Philip Pape: And there's 20 possible reasons.
• 5:10
  Philip Pape: I don't know until I look at it.
• 5:12
  Philip Pape: And then I'm gonna ask you 10 more questions, right?
• 5:14
  Philip Pape: I'm gonna say, okay, are you sleeping enough?
• 5:16
  Philip Pape: How's your stress?
• 5:17
  Philip Pape: What did you do?
• 5:18
  Philip Pape: You know, did you eat a bunch of salt and Chinese food?
• 5:21
  Philip Pape: Right?
• 5:21
  Philip Pape: Like there's a lot of these questions.
• 5:22
  Philip Pape: And as good as some of these apps are, like Macrofactor, it doesn't have that level of intelligence.
• 5:27
  Philip Pape: Maybe it will one day, but it doesn't today.
• 5:29
  Philip Pape: And that's where pretty much every app falls short today.
• 5:32
  Philip Pape: Even the AI apps, like the AI Fitness apps, I'll say that they're very narrow in scope.
• 5:37
  Philip Pape: You know, they're getting better, they they attack like one small problem, but not necessarily the full context.
• 5:42
  Philip Pape: So that's what we're gonna get to today.
• 5:44
  Philip Pape: Just bear with me.
• 5:46
  Philip Pape: So going back to this whole data thing, if again, let's say you're using MacroFactor and it gives you a target, if you hit the target consistently, you are probably going to get the result you want, at least initially, or part of that result.
• 6:01
  Philip Pape: But what's gonna happen is in reality, things change.
• 6:04
  Philip Pape: Maybe you walk less, maybe you get injured, maybe you are stressed out of your mind, and now your expenditure drops.
• 6:10
  Philip Pape: But the app can't predict that.
• 6:11
  Philip Pape: It doesn't have a crystal ball, right?
• 6:12
  Philip Pape: So it's gonna happen, and then all of a sudden you don't quite get the result you thought.
• 6:16
  Philip Pape: And the app's like, well, you didn't get the results, but but here's what's happening, so we're gonna keep adjusting you.
• 6:20
  Philip Pape: So it's it's reactive, and to be fair, it's very quickly reactive, but it's still reactive.
• 6:26
  Philip Pape: What if the problem really isn't your energy balance, though?
• 6:30
  Philip Pape: At the end of the day, it is, but there's a root cause that's upstream.
• 6:34
  Philip Pape: What if your protein's been inconsistent?
• 6:36
  Philip Pape: What if your step count dropped and maybe you're not even aware of it?
• 6:40
  Philip Pape: Maybe you're in a fat loss phase, you're moving a lot less than you thought.
• 6:42
  Philip Pape: What if your sleep's been terrible and you're underrecovered and that's affecting a lot of other things?
• 6:47
  Philip Pape: A tracker as it exists today is not going to tell you that.
• 6:50
  Philip Pape: It's going to show the numbers and try to crunch some algorithms to give you a little more to work from, but not nearly as much as you want, which is why most people need some level of accountability or coaching or partnership or, you know, a Facebook group or a community, somebody else to connect with them to help look at that data, not just that data, but all the data, right?
• 7:13
  Philip Pape: Yeah, it's your weight trend, it's your training feedback, your recovery signals, your biofeedback in general, your body measurements, your nutrition patterns, what does your food look like?
• 7:22
  Philip Pape: What's the quality of food?
• 7:23
  Philip Pape: What's the balance, the meal timing, the supplementation, right?
• 7:26
  Philip Pape: I can go on and on.
• 7:27
  Philip Pape: You guys are like overwhelmed.
• 7:28
  Philip Pape: I know all this.
• 7:29
  Philip Pape: I know it's like a huge list of the fitness pillars that we have to deal with.
• 7:32
  Philip Pape: But at the end of the day, like for me as a coach, when somebody pays me a bunch of money every month to personally look at their data line by line and understand what's going on, that's what I'm doing.
• 7:42
  Philip Pape: I'm trying to figure out, like a detective, here's what's happening, here's what's changing, here's what you have to do to address.
• 7:47
  Philip Pape: Now, many of you have done this on your own and done it fairly successfully.
• 7:51
  Philip Pape: There is a whole spectrum.
• 7:52
  Philip Pape: Some of you do it on your own successfully because maybe there isn't too much happening.
• 7:55
  Philip Pape: Others are just you're stressed out of your mind because you know you're in your 40s, there's perimenopause, the hormones are changing, you've got more belly fat, you're doing what you did before, but it's not working anymore.
• 8:06
  Philip Pape: You're doing everything that the influencers and the podcasters say and it's not working.
• 8:09
  Philip Pape: You're tracking all the apps.
• 8:11
  Philip Pape: Does this sound familiar?
• 8:12
  Philip Pape: Right?
• 8:13
  Philip Pape: Does this sound familiar?
• 8:14
  Philip Pape: And I'm sick of it, frankly.
• 8:16
  Philip Pape: I'm sick of I love helping people.
• 8:18
  Philip Pape: I'm sick of people not succeeding even when they put in the effort and they're smart and they're listening and they're taking action and they're changing their behaviors, right?
• 8:29
  Philip Pape: And so the next thing I want to talk about here is why this does matter even more for those of us that are older, right?
• 8:36
  Philip Pape: As you get into your 40s and 50s, I think that's kind of the sweet spot in someone's life where they're past the point where they can kind of do anything they want and get away with it.
• 8:46
  Philip Pape: And they're right in the point where life gets more stressful.
• 8:49
  Philip Pape: You have more obligations, you have family, you have uh your career, right?
• 8:53
  Philip Pape: Your body is uh starting to degrade a little bit, you're starting to lose that muscle mass, the hormones are starting to decline.
• 8:58
  Philip Pape: There is a reason that this is this midlife transition is so challenging for so many of you, right?
• 9:06
  Philip Pape: I get it.
• 9:06
  Philip Pape: Now, in your 60s and 70s, can it still be challenging?
• 9:09
  Philip Pape: Of course.
• 9:10
  Philip Pape: But I'm I want to hit on when this stuff starts so that we can understand what to do.
• 9:15
  Philip Pape: Now, maybe in your 30s you start to have issues as well.
• 9:17
  Philip Pape: It doesn't matter, it's not so much the number as kind of the general idea here, right?
• 9:22
  Philip Pape: Your body doesn't respond the way it did in your 20s.
• 9:24
  Philip Pape: You had your hormones raging, you had everything going for you, there was no degradation, no aging that had occurred really in your body at that point.
• 9:31
  Philip Pape: Your ability to recover was super high, your hormones were super good, well balanced, your life stress was less, right?
• 9:37
  Philip Pape: All of that.
• 9:38
  Philip Pape: And so if you just take the principles and a plan and then you try to apply it to you, that's a good start.
• 9:45
  Philip Pape: But immediately on day two, the plan starts to fall apart because of these issues.
• 9:50
  Philip Pape: And it might have to do with the training split, the training volume, the way you're trying to progress, your equipment, what you did last night, your joints are achy, you're exhausted every session.
• 10:02
  Philip Pape: What do I do for that?
• 10:03
  Philip Pape: What do I do when I have an energy crash in the afternoon and I can't help but raid the freezer for ice cream, you know, or muffins or whatever your thing is, right?
• 10:12
  Philip Pape: So again, if you're just trying to take a plan and track and then go, you might be frustrated because of these things.
• 10:20
  Philip Pape: You might start strong, make some progress, and then burn out.
• 10:24
  Philip Pape: Now, some of this has to do with misunderstanding of behavior change and habit formation, the idea that we're trying to go all out, or the idea that we're trying to create a so-called quote-unquote habit of working out, when really that's not the habit.
• 10:39
  Philip Pape: The habit is the little automated things that tie to your identity as a person who just, yeah, works out and trains.
• 10:46
  Philip Pape: There's a process to get there, right?
• 10:50
  Philip Pape: So it's not because of a lack of, I'll say willpower or discipline, although discipline depends on how you define discipline, right?
• 10:57
  Philip Pape: There's an element of discipline that actually is uh valid in terms of you've built up habits, you've changed your identity, you just do the thing.
• 11:05
  Philip Pape: There is that element of discipline.
• 11:06
  Philip Pape: But I'm thinking more of like just do it type discipline, right?
• 11:10
  Philip Pape: It's not because you're too old.
• 11:12
  Philip Pape: No, no, no.
• 11:13
  Philip Pape: Okay.
• 11:14
  Philip Pape: I've worked with people in their 70s and 80s who are just killing it, they're crushing it.
• 11:18
  Philip Pape: It's fine.
• 11:18
  Philip Pape: Their body responds, the human body responds pretty much till the day you die to any of this stuff at different levels, okay?
• 11:25
  Philip Pape: It's because the system they're using doesn't account for their physiology and their life circumstances.
• 11:32
  Philip Pape: Now, I've been hammering this message since the beginning on the show, but in the past, I hammered it in the context of hey, maybe you need to work with a coach or be in a community or get a training partner or someone else that can help you with this, or at least really learn these skills and this knowledge, which for a lot of you, it's it's overwhelming.
• 11:50
  Philip Pape: It's like, I don't want to be a nutrition expert, you know, I want to listen to a podcast or work with a coach and kind of be told what to do, or at least learn what to do for me.
• 11:59
  Philip Pape: So it's scoped down, right?
• 12:02
  Philip Pape: So the general principle here is having something that adapts, that evolves, that is dynamic with you, that says, hey, your sleep was terrible last night.
• 12:12
  Philip Pape: Let's think about what that means today for, I don't know, training intensity or capability, what it means for your emotions around food today because you're tired.
• 12:23
  Philip Pape: You know, if your protein has been consistently low for three days, even though you've averaged well for the past two weeks, but all of a sudden it's dropped.
• 12:32
  Philip Pape: What's going on?
• 12:33
  Philip Pape: What strategies do we do to fix that?
• 12:35
  Philip Pape: Is this a deviation from your habits that we want to look at?
• 12:39
  Philip Pape: Right.
• 12:39
  Philip Pape: So it gets kind of nuanced.
• 12:40
  Philip Pape: And that's what coaching does.
• 12:42
  Philip Pape: That's but a lot of people can't hire a coach or afford a coach.
• 12:45
  Philip Pape: You know, this is why over the years I've put together different levels like physique university, which is super affordable, but even some people can't afford that.
• 12:53
  Philip Pape: I get it.
• 12:53
  Philip Pape: It's super affordable, but it's more self-motivated, even though we have education, we have community accountability, right?
• 13:01
  Philip Pape: We do have some of that in there for sure.
• 13:03
  Philip Pape: We have real human coaches like myself and Carol who can you can tag and talk to.
• 13:07
  Philip Pape: And I think that's really, really important.
• 13:09
  Philip Pape: And a lot of people need that and want that.
• 13:11
  Philip Pape: But when we talk about doing it yourself or using an app or trying to scale this so it's super accessible to as many people as possible in the world, yourself included, because you may not want to deal with coaches and paying for coaches and dealing with all that, that is what's missing from fitness apps today.
• 13:28
  Philip Pape: Okay, that is what's missing.
• 13:30
  Philip Pape: And we're gonna talk about that in a second.
• 13:32
  Philip Pape: I did just talk about recovery, though, as a big piece of what is what is critical when you're over 40, right?
• 13:39
  Philip Pape: We have stimulus, which is the activity, the training, the things you're doing, and then we have the recovery, which is kind of everything else.
• 13:46
  Philip Pape: It's super critical.
• 13:47
  Philip Pape: So I just wanna give a shout out to today's sponsor, Cozy Earth, because they have helped me tremendously improve my sleep quality.
• 13:55
  Philip Pape: I'm actually really excited right now because we're at the tail end of our sheets before they have to get washed.
• 14:02
  Philip Pape: And so I know I have a few more days with the cozy earth sheets before we go to the inferior other sheets that feel, you know, harsh and dry and they I sweat in them, but the cozy earth sheets are amazing, guys.
• 14:15
  Philip Pape: They really are.
• 14:16
  Philip Pape: They make cozy earth makes bedding, but specifically sheets, but they make a lot of other things.
• 14:20
  Philip Pape: And it's derived from bamboo.
• 14:22
  Philip Pape: And I'm not exaggerating when I say they are the most comfortable sheets I've ever slept on because of how it regulates temperature.
• 14:30
  Philip Pape: You guys know I'm an engineer.
• 14:31
  Philip Pape: I love it when somebody comes up with a material engineering solution to a problem.
• 14:35
  Philip Pape: And I think they did that.
• 14:37
  Philip Pape: And I I know bamboo-dry fabric can be super luxurious and temperature regulating in other products, like like briefs.
• 14:44
  Philip Pape: I have personal experience.
• 14:44
  Philip Pape: I've joked about that before.
• 14:46
  Philip Pape: But for the sheets, you know, I want to sleep restfully.
• 14:49
  Philip Pape: I want to get that high sleep score.
• 14:51
  Philip Pape: I want to have really good recovery for muscle building.
• 14:54
  Philip Pape: I don't want to wake up too hot or cold or wake up in the middle of the night because of it, right?
• 14:57
  Philip Pape: And these sheets are amazing.
• 14:59
  Philip Pape: They stay soft after many washes.
• 15:01
  Philip Pape: I can attest to that.
• 15:02
  Philip Pape: We bought a second set, so I could almost have uninterrupted use of the sheets, I hope.
• 15:07
  Philip Pape: And at the end of the day, better sleep means better recovery, means better training, means better results.
• 15:12
  Philip Pape: It's just a piece of the overall pie, but it's a very, very important one.
• 15:17
  Philip Pape: If you want to upgrade your sleep quality, and again, if you're over 40, sleep is probably one of the highest leverage, the highest ROI variables that you're not optimizing right now.
• 15:26
  Philip Pape: Check out Cozy Earth, go to wins and weights.com slash cozy earth, use code wits and weights for 20% off.
• 15:32
  Philip Pape: Again, that's wits and weights.com slash cozy earth.
• 15:35
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• 15:37
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• 15:41
  Philip Pape: And they have all sorts of warranties and guarantees because the stuff is just that good.
• 15:46
  Philip Pape: So go to wits and weights.com slash cozy earth and use code wits and weights for 20% off.
• 15:51
  Philip Pape: All right, let's get back to now what actually works then if we want to fill this gap in the space, get you something that's really affordable as well, because I'm all about that, right?
• 16:02
  Philip Pape: People say, look, I want a coach, I can't afford it.
• 16:04
  Philip Pape: I want to join a group program, I can't afford it.
• 16:06
  Philip Pape: Okay, so what's the solution here?
• 16:08
  Philip Pape: Something you can use on your own, but we can't replicate a coach, can we?
• 16:13
  Philip Pape: Right?
• 16:14
  Philip Pape: Because the obvious answer is hire a coach.
• 16:15
  Philip Pape: And you're gonna hear coaches go on podcasts, and at the end of the day, they want you to hire them.
• 16:20
  Philip Pape: They want you to pay, pay them for their time, right?
• 16:23
  Philip Pape: Which is which can be definitely valuable if it's a good coach.
• 16:25
  Philip Pape: And you get someone who looks at your data, who interprets it, who tells you what to do next.
• 16:30
  Philip Pape: And that works.
• 16:31
  Philip Pape: That's what I do with private clients.
• 16:32
  Philip Pape: And I have clients who they run into financial difficulty and they'll say, Look, can you do something to work with me so I can still have that connection with you?
• 16:39
  Philip Pape: I'm like, Yeah, let's let's reduce the number of calls or let's, you know, let's just scale something down so that it's a win-win for both of us, right?
• 16:45
  Philip Pape: But not everyone can afford one-on-one or group coaching.
• 16:49
  Philip Pape: And honestly, and this is sacrilege, not everyone needs it.
• 16:54
  Philip Pape: What everyone does need is a way to interpret their results.
• 16:58
  Philip Pape: The thing that sits on top of your data and gives you coaching level feedback.
• 17:04
  Philip Pape: Now, that might come from your own brain, that might come from listening to a podcast, or we're all about efficiency here.
• 17:11
  Philip Pape: It might come from an app that can actually do these things, which is what I'm getting to.
• 17:15
  Philip Pape: And I know this sounds like one big sales pitch for the app, and you know what?
• 17:18
  Philip Pape: Frankly, it probably is.
• 17:20
  Philip Pape: But it is because I'm it's a passion project of mine that I created that I'm using myself that I love, and I think you will too.
• 17:26
  Philip Pape: But let me show you what this looks like in practice, okay?
• 17:29
  Philip Pape: The first thing you need from a training perspective, your training has to adapt to what you're doing.
• 17:35
  Philip Pape: Now, if you go back to something like starting starting strength, three sets of five, every session you go up five pounds.
• 17:40
  Philip Pape: Now, they don't really mean five pounds.
• 17:42
  Philip Pape: If you look into the nuance, they'll say, go up the appropriate level for how much you're adapting and getting stronger so that you don't miss any reps.
• 17:50
  Philip Pape: But then people are like, well, how much is that?
• 17:52
  Philip Pape: And if somebody fails the reps, I say, okay, did you go up the right amount?
• 17:56
  Philip Pape: Are you resting long enough?
• 17:57
  Philip Pape: Are you getting enough recovery?
• 17:58
  Philip Pape: It always comes down to that anyway.
• 18:00
  Philip Pape: And so even a baseline new beginner program like Starting Strength, they're not saying just get the three sets of five done, regardless of everything else.
• 18:10
  Philip Pape: They're saying get it done and do the other things to support getting that done.
• 18:15
  Philip Pape: And if not, if you fail reps, there's something else happening, right?
• 18:19
  Philip Pape: So then you're you're like, okay, well, how do I do that?
• 18:24
  Philip Pape: Well, that's where you have to ask questions of yourself or a coach asks you, how did that feel?
• 18:29
  Philip Pape: Was it easier the same or harder?
• 18:31
  Philip Pape: Did it feel like a grind?
• 18:32
  Philip Pape: How are you sleeping?
• 18:34
  Philip Pape: How are you eating, right?
• 18:35
  Philip Pape: Are you taking long enough rest between your sets?
• 18:37
  Philip Pape: I mean, now if a coach is looking at your data, they'll know that, right?
• 18:40
  Philip Pape: And then use that to decide how do what do we do next time?
• 18:44
  Philip Pape: Now, in a beginner program like that, like starting strength, you would then decide, well, we're still probably gonna go up, but maybe we're gonna go up a little bit less, right?
• 18:51
  Philip Pape: As you get more advanced, you're not necessarily going up in weight every session.
• 18:55
  Philip Pape: You might be adding reps, you might be adding sets, you might be, you know, switching the intensities around and rotating through rep ranges, all of those sorts of things, right?
• 19:03
  Philip Pape: We're not gonna get into that today.
• 19:05
  Philip Pape: The point is you have to make an adaptive decision based on your recovery and adaptation.
• 19:11
  Philip Pape: Okay.
• 19:12
  Philip Pape: And so if you think about real life, the best time this works is when you have a trainer and you have a conversation with them, right?
• 19:19
  Philip Pape: Like when I work with trainers, it's either a spreadsheet or a chat or something, and I'm like, this is how it felt, this is what I'm doing, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
• 19:27
  Philip Pape: And learn from that qualitative feedback instead of just the numbers, because the numbers are only gonna tell you part of the situation.
• 19:34
  Philip Pape: So on the training side, that's what you need.
• 19:36
  Philip Pape: Let's go to the food side, okay?
• 19:39
  Philip Pape: Now, you guys know I'm a big fan of tracking calories and macros.
• 19:42
  Philip Pape: However, this is gonna, this is gonna seem like a paradigm shift, but it's all consistent.
• 19:48
  Philip Pape: What most people need, when I start working with a client and they use macro factor, that's like 1% of the equation.
• 19:54
  Philip Pape: I'd love to have the data for sure, but even if you didn't have the data, what would you have to do?
• 20:01
  Philip Pape: Or I should put it this way, whether you have the data or not, what do you end up doing based on that data?
• 20:06
  Philip Pape: Well, what you end up doing is looking at the quality of your food, right?
• 20:11
  Philip Pape: Are you eating mostly whole foods that are satiating?
• 20:14
  Philip Pape: The micronutrients, the macronutrients, is there sufficient protein?
• 20:18
  Philip Pape: Are your meals balanced to help with appetite, hunger signals, even blood sugar?
• 20:23
  Philip Pape: Do you have enough meals?
• 20:25
  Philip Pape: Is the timing spaced accordingly to work with your life?
• 20:28
  Philip Pape: Is the timing around your workouts for protein and carbs adequate for fueling yourself and feeling your best?
• 20:35
  Philip Pape: So, what it gets down to is really analyzing the patterns of your meals.
• 20:41
  Philip Pape: By patterns, I don't just mean timing.
• 20:42
  Philip Pape: I mean all the information contained in how you eat, which goes far beyond calories and macros.
• 20:50
  Philip Pape: Now, if you only did calories and macros and tried to hit those, we've talked about this before, you could hit them with like Twinkies and pizza and hamburgers and like throw all that together and somehow hit your macros, but it's not gonna be a great diet because you're not gonna be fueled properly, you're not gonna feel great, your digestion's gonna be awful, your energy is not gonna be good, and you're gonna be hungry.
• 21:10
  Philip Pape: And so it isn't just those, it isn't just hitting your macros, is it?
• 21:14
  Philip Pape: Now, we know that hitting your macros and calories will cause you to control your energy balance, but it's only a tiny piece of the equation.
• 21:21
  Philip Pape: So, having said all that, what if a human being, or in this case AI vision, which has come so far and is so impressive and amazing, can look at your food and just look at one typical meal a day.
• 21:36
  Philip Pape: Analyze that food for color, for nutrients, for balance, for macros, even for calories based on the volume on the plate, and ask you some qualitative questions.
• 21:47
  Philip Pape: Oh, does that sound familiar?
• 21:48
  Philip Pape: Yeah, kind of like what we just talked about with training.
• 21:50
  Philip Pape: Ask you a few qualitative questions.
• 21:52
  Philip Pape: And what if those qualitative questions changed based on the situation and how you've been progressing?
• 21:56
  Philip Pape: Like if I were a if I, as a coach, I'm not gonna ask you the same exact question every time.
• 22:01
  Philip Pape: I'm gonna probably ask a different one based on what's going on, based on the context, right?
• 22:05
  Philip Pape: So if your protein's been solid, let's say you upload a meal each day, just one meal, and the app's like, is this a typical meal for you?
• 22:12
  Philip Pape: Sure, yes.
• 22:13
  Philip Pape: And it has a lot of protein.
• 22:15
  Philip Pape: And the app asks you at the end of the night, hey, how many protein servings did you have today, by the way?
• 22:19
  Philip Pape: Oh, you know, I have five.
• 22:20
  Philip Pape: And you say that every day and protein's been good, but then all of a sudden on the weekend, you're eating a lot more or in a different way, or you report less protein.
• 22:30
  Philip Pape: An intelligent analysis can infer from that pretty accurately that something's off on the weekends.
• 22:37
  Philip Pape: And now we need a different strategy, right?
• 22:39
  Philip Pape: That that's the impressive mind-blowing part about this.
• 22:42
  Philip Pape: So, guys, I worked a lot of uh on this in terms of brainstorming and talking with experts and reviewing some of the great information out there from you know, mass and the evidence and behavior change experts, all of that as I developed the app.
• 22:57
  Philip Pape: And so at the end of the day, I said, what is the lowest stress way to actually help you change your behaviors when it comes to eating to build up your micronutrients and your macronutrients, and then ultimately your energy without having to track calories and macros.
• 23:11
  Philip Pape: I know it sounds sacrilegious.
• 23:13
  Philip Pape: We're not talking about intuitive eating, we're still talking about tracking and analysis.
• 23:17
  Philip Pape: But in this case, you upload one photo a day, the AI then spots lots of different patterns and gets you feedback.
• 23:25
  Philip Pape: That is the difference.
• 23:26
  Philip Pape: Okay.
• 23:26
  Philip Pape: I also don't think it's like Noom.
• 23:29
  Philip Pape: Okay, Noom is I'm not gonna go down that road.
• 23:32
  Philip Pape: I don't want to compare to other apps like that.
• 23:34
  Philip Pape: Okay, let's keep going.
• 23:36
  Philip Pape: So I might do another episode about that if you guys want it.
• 23:39
  Philip Pape: Let me know.
• 23:39
  Philip Pape: So I've just covered training and nutrition.
• 23:42
  Philip Pape: The third thing that you need, okay, so training and nutrition are usually separate apps today.
• 23:47
  Philip Pape: It's rare that those are together.
• 23:48
  Philip Pape: There are a few apps that put them together, and when they do that, it's kind of less less well designed for both, right?
• 23:55
  Philip Pape: But that's just two pieces.
• 23:57
  Philip Pape: Another piece you need is education, reminders of the science and the evidence and what works, strategies, guidance, right?
• 24:09
  Philip Pape: A lot of the reasons you're probably listening to this podcast, but the problem with the podcast is it's it's kind of random.
• 24:13
  Philip Pape: It's all over the place.
• 24:14
  Philip Pape: We have over 400 episodes now.
• 24:16
  Philip Pape: I love sending people specific links to the episode that might work for them, and I'm always happy to do that.
• 24:22
  Philip Pape: You could also search.
• 24:23
  Philip Pape: But what if you had a quick briefing every day in the morning that was targeted exactly to what you needed that day, that adapt and evolved with your progress, that adapt with what you said your goal was.
• 24:37
  Philip Pape: For example, as I'm as I'm testing the app on my end, I'm trying to work on sleep.
• 24:42
  Philip Pape: So a lot of the briefings were relate to sleep.
• 24:44
  Philip Pape: Now, if all of a sudden my sleep gets locked down and it's good, the app is actually gonna change to my next biggest constraint, my next most immediate constraint.
• 24:52
  Philip Pape: That is as personalized as it gets.
• 24:54
  Philip Pape: That's again like if you had a human coach every day in the morning who said, Hey, hey, what's the big thing right now I can help you with?
• 25:01
  Philip Pape: But it's even more powerful than that because the AI knows everything going on, the data.
• 25:05
  Philip Pape: It has your Apple Health data, it has all anyway.
• 25:07
  Philip Pape: I don't want to get into the features of my app specifically, even though I'm doing that already more than I expected.
• 25:12
  Philip Pape: I want to talk about what's missing in current apps.
• 25:14
  Philip Pape: And I think that's a big one.
• 25:16
  Philip Pape: Personalized lessons, or even saying, hey, out of Phillips podcast, here's the one you need right now.
• 25:22
  Philip Pape: Maybe you've heard it, maybe not, but here's the one you need.
• 25:25
  Philip Pape: Your protein's been low, here's a strategy for getting more protein.
• 25:28
  Philip Pape: Your sleep is affecting recovery, here's sleep optimization, right?
• 25:32
  Philip Pape: So it the education itself adapts to your situation.
• 25:35
  Philip Pape: It's not just a static curriculum.
• 25:37
  Philip Pape: And, you know, I'm cannibalizing some of my own stuff here because in physique university we have courses that walk you through all the things.
• 25:45
  Philip Pape: But imagine if you can take one of those courses, take a piece out of it, and have it automatically fed to you on a given day that you needed it.
• 25:52
  Philip Pape: And then, of course, this is huge.
• 25:54
  Philip Pape: This is why people tend to join communities and hire coaches.
• 25:57
  Philip Pape: You need to be able to ask questions and get answers ideally immediately.
• 26:01
  Philip Pape: So all my clients have 24-7 access to me, but that doesn't mean that I respond at 3 a.m.
• 26:05
  Philip Pape: That means you send me a message at 3 a.m.
• 26:07
  Philip Pape: And then during business hours, I respond.
• 26:09
  Philip Pape: But what if you could just get an answer immediately?
• 26:12
  Philip Pape: So in my app, and again, I'm getting into the features of the app today.
• 26:16
  Philip Pape: You know what I did?
• 26:17
  Philip Pape: Today is a non-training day for me, but I wanted a form check on something I did yesterday.
• 26:21
  Philip Pape: And there wasn't an activity for that today because it's a non-training day.
• 26:24
  Philip Pape: So I went over into the coaching chat and I said, How can I give you a form check?
• 26:28
  Philip Pape: And it said, you know what?
• 26:29
  Philip Pape: I'm gonna create an activity right now for you so you can put a form check in.
• 26:32
  Philip Pape: And I did that, and it did that.
• 26:34
  Philip Pape: That's what I've designed the app to do.
• 26:35
  Philip Pape: It's it's it's it's blowing my own mind.
• 26:38
  Philip Pape: And I hope it blows your mind too, because of how on demand and adaptive it is.
• 26:44
  Philip Pape: So you don't have to wait for a call, you don't have to wait for a group call, you don't have to wait, you don't have to schedule something, you don't have to wait for your coach to wake up or get back to you.
• 26:52
  Philip Pape: You don't have to post some Facebook group and hope somebody responds, right?
• 26:56
  Philip Pape: Just ask the coach, hey, why is my weight moving?
• 26:59
  Philip Pape: I'm really struggling right now, I'm trying to lose fat.
• 27:01
  Philip Pape: Why is my weight moving?
• 27:02
  Philip Pape: And it can then help diagnose what is going on right now.
• 27:05
  Philip Pape: And it will know based on your data, hey, you know what?
• 27:08
  Philip Pape: Your sleep has been six hours a night lately, used to be eight.
• 27:11
  Philip Pape: That could be part of the issue.
• 27:12
  Philip Pape: Let's talk about it, right?
• 27:13
  Philip Pape: Incredible.
• 27:14
  Philip Pape: So that's what coaching does.
• 27:16
  Philip Pape: That's what human coaches do.
• 27:17
  Philip Pape: But imagine if an app can do that and make intelligent personalized decisions for you or suggestions for you.
• 27:23
  Philip Pape: Until now, as far as I can see, and I've done a lot of research, and I hope you guys have as well.
• 27:29
  Philip Pape: No app can really do that as good as an actual human coach.
• 27:33
  Philip Pape: But what if it could?
• 27:35
  Philip Pape: What if you can get that interpretation layer without the cost and the scheduling and the time and the effort of one-on-one or group or community-based coaching?
• 27:43
  Philip Pape: What if the app could do the interpretation for you?
• 27:45
  Philip Pape: And that is what I built.
• 27:47
  Philip Pape: And that launches tomorrow.
• 27:48
  Philip Pape: So there's your pitch.
• 27:50
  Philip Pape: There's your pitch.
• 27:52
  Philip Pape: Now, what's interesting about all of this is when I was building the app, I always came back to the same question.
• 27:57
  Philip Pape: What would I want myself if this was five years ago and I was starting my early 40s?
• 28:02
  Philip Pape: Because you guys know, you know, I didn't have my stuff together until then.
• 28:05
  Philip Pape: And I'm still figuring it out, like we all are.
• 28:08
  Philip Pape: But what if I could, what could I have back then?
• 28:11
  Philip Pape: Right.
• 28:11
  Philip Pape: Like when Macro Factor came out, I jumped out on day one because it was a game changer compared to what was available.
• 28:15
  Philip Pape: Well, I think this is going to be at least as much of a game changer in the space because back then I was, I was where a lot of you are now, right?
• 28:22
  Philip Pape: I had so much information.
• 28:23
  Philip Pape: I was up, I was gobbling up podcasts and videos and books.
• 28:27
  Philip Pape: I was reading, I was even reading studies directly, right?
• 28:30
  Philip Pape: And I understood the principles after a while.
• 28:32
  Philip Pape: It took me a while to learn it and absorb it.
• 28:34
  Philip Pape: But there's still so much guessw and detective work.
• 28:37
  Philip Pape: And like, is this training right for me?
• 28:40
  Philip Pape: Am I using the right intensity?
• 28:41
  Philip Pape: Should I add weight or reps?
• 28:42
  Philip Pape: Am I recovering properly?
• 28:43
  Philip Pape: What do I do with my food and my calories and blah, blah, blah.
• 28:48
  Philip Pape: Right.
• 28:48
  Philip Pape: And all the apps I used, it's they couldn't really answer those directly.
• 28:53
  Philip Pape: So I had to become my own coach, but I also had to work with some other coaches who coached me.
• 28:57
  Philip Pape: And then I became a coach because I realized people were struggling with this.
• 29:01
  Philip Pape: And now we have something with technology that can do that.
• 29:05
  Philip Pape: I think it's so impressive.
• 29:06
  Philip Pape: And you know what?
• 29:06
  Philip Pape: Maybe coaches are gonna hate me out there.
• 29:08
  Philip Pape: Maybe if you're a coach and you listen, you're like, Philip, you're gonna take our jobs.
• 29:11
  Philip Pape: You know what?
• 29:12
  Philip Pape: I don't know what the future holds.
• 29:14
  Philip Pape: I just know that when a solution exists and we can make things better and we can help people, let's try to do that.
• 29:20
  Philip Pape: And it especially if it's more accessible to more people.
• 29:22
  Philip Pape: And that's why I built Fitness Lab the way I did.
• 29:25
  Philip Pape: Not to replace your tracking apps, by the way.
• 29:27
  Philip Pape: Look, if you want to keep using Macro Factor for the calories and macros, I actually encourage that.
• 29:32
  Philip Pape: I encourage like a few different apps that are in your tool set that work really well together.
• 29:37
  Philip Pape: I believe you probably could replace those with just this one app.
• 29:41
  Philip Pape: But I would say, look, when this launches, it's brand new.
• 29:44
  Philip Pape: There's gonna be a lot of things I still want to add to the app going forward.
• 29:47
  Philip Pape: And, you know, don't just drop everything.
• 29:50
  Philip Pape: Try it, give feedback into the app, and we're gonna make it better and better over time.
• 29:54
  Philip Pape: But really, it's that coaching layer.
• 29:56
  Philip Pape: And once you have that, then whatever you are already tracking.
• 29:59
  Philip Pape: In the app or outside the app becomes exponentially more valuable because now it's driving decisions, right?
• 30:08
  Philip Pape: Instead of just sitting there in a logger, it's driving intelligent decisions.
• 30:12
  Philip Pape: All right, so let's wrap it up.
• 30:14
  Philip Pape: Most fitness apps are great at tracking data, terrible at interpreting it.
• 30:18
  Philip Pape: I think we've established that.
• 30:19
  Philip Pape: It's not their fault, it's just what we were capable of doing with modern technology.
• 30:24
  Philip Pape: That interpretation gap is where people get stuck, especially as we get older when recovery and hormones require a little more nuance.
• 30:31
  Philip Pape: You don't need more information, more tracking.
• 30:33
  Philip Pape: You need to take that data and understand what to do with it.
• 30:36
  Philip Pape: So tomorrow, Tuesday, November 18th, all right, I'm launching Fitness Lab.
• 30:40
  Philip Pape: It's the AI coaching app that fills this exact gap.
• 30:44
  Philip Pape: Daily coaching briefings personalized to you, meal photo analysis to spot your eating patterns, adaptive strength training that responds to recovery, real-time AI coaching when you get stuck.
• 30:54
  Philip Pape: Um, there's progress metrics.
• 30:56
  Philip Pape: There's so much.
• 30:56
  Philip Pape: There's so much I haven't even talked about.
• 30:58
  Philip Pape: And I'm gonna talk about it a little more tomorrow, so stay tuned.
• 31:01
  Philip Pape: But what matters most is I think it actually ends up teaching you how to coach yourself.
• 31:07
  Philip Pape: So I always joke that I want people to fire me once they've learned what they need to learn and know how to do this and have the confidence.
• 31:13
  Philip Pape: I think the app is gonna be a similar situation where you could get to a point probably where you're like, yeah, I probably don't need this app anymore.
• 31:20
  Philip Pape: I believe the app is gonna be so valuable and have so much runway that you're probably gonna not run out of ways that it can help you improve for many, many months.
• 31:30
  Philip Pape: And I hope years, of course, you know, from a as a business perspective, I hope it's years, but I still think it's going to teach you how to coach yourself.
• 31:38
  Philip Pape: It's not gonna hide that behind the scenes.
• 31:39
  Philip Pape: It's gonna explain why.
• 31:41
  Philip Pape: It's trained on all my podcast episodes, all my coaching guides, and a ton of manual instructions that I gave it to emulate our philosophy of this show: flexibility, sustainability, self-autonomy, and efficacy, right?
• 31:56
  Philip Pape: Not just getting the result, which is important, but how to read your body's feedback, how to make better decisions about everything, training, recovery, et cetera, and how to think like a coach about your own progress, but not have to stress about wondering what to do.
• 32:10
  Philip Pape: It takes the stress out.
• 32:11
  Philip Pape: And it's built specifically for adults over 40 who want to build muscle, lose fat, improve your body composition without guessing.
• 32:18
  Philip Pape: The Black Friday pricing is gonna be 20% off through Black Friday.
• 32:22
  Philip Pape: I don't know if there's gonna be any more discounts in the future, probably big holidays and stuff.
• 32:26
  Philip Pape: You know how these things go, but it'll be 20% off at launch.
• 32:30
  Philip Pape: If you want early access today, I know it comes out tomorrow, but if you want to get access today, just join my email list right now at witsandweights.com slash email, and you'll get an automated response that says, hey, if you want the secret link, let me know.
• 32:41
  Philip Pape: I'll send you the secret link.
• 32:42
  Philip Pape: It's the same link that's gonna go live tomorrow, but nobody knows what it is.
• 32:46
  Philip Pape: Okay, so I'm gonna send that to you.
• 32:48
  Philip Pape: And then tomorrow I'm gonna release a shorter bonus episode that walks you through how it works.
• 32:53
  Philip Pape: So check your email, join my email list, witsandwaits.com slash email, and keep following the podcast for that tomorrow.
• 33:00
  Philip Pape: If you want early access to Fitness Lab, be first in line before everybody else, witsandweights.com slash email.
• 33:08
  Philip Pape: Until next time, keep using your wits, lifting those weights.
• 33:12
  Philip Pape: And I'm gonna talk to you tomorrow with a full walkthrough of Fitness Lab.
• 33:15
  Philip Pape: My name is Philip Hape, and you've been listening to Wits and Weights.