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Midlife Metabolism Myths That Keep You Stuck (and How to Fix Them) · Wits & Weights | Strength & Fat Loss Over 40

• 0:00
  Philip Pape: Hey, this is Philip, and on today's bonus episode, I am bringing you my appearance on Zora Benomu's show, Hack My Age.
• 0:08
  Philip Pape: Zora works with women navigating peri and post-menopause, and she had a lot of great questions about metabolism, muscle loss, hormone replacement, fasting, and why the approach that worked in your 20s often stops working in your 40s.
• 0:21
  Philip Pape: So we covered a lot of ground.
• 0:23
  Philip Pape: She even came up with a new term as we chatted called menopenia for menopause-related muscle loss, which I liked.
• 0:29
  Philip Pape: Here is that conversation.
• 0:31
  Philip Pape: Welcome to the show, Philip Pape.
• 0:34
  Zora Benhamou: How are you?
• 0:35
  Philip Pape: I'm great, Zora.
• 0:36
  Philip Pape: Good to see you again.
• 0:36
  Philip Pape: Thanks for having me on.
• 0:38
  Zora Benhamou: So I've been listening to your podcast.
• 0:39
  Zora Benhamou: I love it.
• 0:40
  Zora Benhamou: You got such a great attitude and you have great information there.
• 0:43
  Zora Benhamou: And I think for all types of people, but what I focus on today is more menopause and nutrition and training, recovery, GLP1s.
• 0:53
  Zora Benhamou: I want to cover it all.
• 0:54
  Zora Benhamou: So let's see how far we get.
• 0:55
  Zora Benhamou: But I liked what you had to say about metabolism.
• 0:58
  Zora Benhamou: And I just launched this mini offer about midlife and metabolism.
• 1:03
  Zora Benhamou: And I'd love to hear your thoughts on it as well.
• 1:05
  Zora Benhamou: So you said that metabolism doesn't slow because of age, mostly because of muscle loss.
• 1:10
  Zora Benhamou: So why don't you explain how this works?
• 1:12
  Philip Pape: Yeah, I think metabolism is one of the most confusing topics out there, right?
• 1:16
  Philip Pape: Because we have our baseline metabolism, and then we have all the other things that stack on top of that, like how we move intentionally and not intentionally, as well as how we eat, that affects how many calories we burn every day.
• 1:28
  Philip Pape: And there's really shocking, I guess, research to some people by Herman Ponser, who has studied populations all over the world regarding metabolism that shows from the age of 20 to 60, metabolism really doesn't decline at all among the population, except for when accounted for fat-free mass.
• 1:45
  Philip Pape: So when you start looking at body composition, we see that people start losing muscle in their 30s, 40s, 50s, and then it really ramps up in their 60s and beyond.
• 1:53
  Philip Pape: That's where we see some of that metabolic decline.
• 1:57
  Philip Pape: But then layered on top of that is age-related lifestyle.
• 2:01
  Philip Pape: Not age, but age-related lifestyle, especially for women.
• 2:05
  Philip Pape: You're chronically stressed, probably been under-eating many, many times.
• 2:09
  Philip Pape: We know women go through like over 100 diets in their lifetime.
• 2:12
  Philip Pape: You are not getting enough sleep, and then the muscle mass is declining and you're not doing anything to hold on to it or to build new muscle mass.
• 2:20
  Philip Pape: So when you stack all that together, we see in your 40s, for example, or 50s, where you used to be able to eat 2200 calories to maintain your weight.
• 2:27
  Philip Pape: Now you're at 1800.
• 2:28
  Philip Pape: And that 400 calorie difference feels huge and frustrating because it's exacerbated because you're not moving as much and all the other things we just mentioned.
• 2:36
  Philip Pape: So it is partly muscle mass, but it's also a lot of lifestyle.
• 2:40
  Zora Benhamou: Yeah, I agree too.
• 2:41
  Zora Benhamou: And I do remember this course that I took when I was studying gerontology that the professor out there was like, age mage.
• 2:48
  Zora Benhamou: We're just sitting on our butts.
• 2:50
  Zora Benhamou: Like I was like, what?
• 2:52
  Zora Benhamou: We are age-related muscle loss.
• 2:54
  Zora Benhamou: That's sarcopenia.
• 2:55
  Zora Benhamou: And yeah, as we age, we are losing our muscle, but a lot of it has to do is because of our lifestyle.
• 3:02
  Zora Benhamou: But I'm wondering also, you said that muscle loss maybe accelerates more in your 60s.
• 3:08
  Zora Benhamou: But what I learned is that when we're going through the menopause transition through perimenopause, we can lose up to 10% just in that transition alone.
• 3:17
  Zora Benhamou: It could be like five years up to 10 years, more or less, or some people have it admit more, but let's say about in five years.
• 3:23
  Zora Benhamou: And that's a lot of muscle loss in a short period of time.
• 3:27
  Zora Benhamou: So I think what you're looking at is maybe men and women together, but I think women have that acceleration happening during perimenopause.
• 3:36
  Philip Pape: Yeah, it's interesting, right?
• 3:37
  Philip Pape: Because this is getting a lot of study right now.
• 3:39
  Philip Pape: Like Dr.
• 3:39
  Philip Pape: Bill Campbell and others are looking at hormone-related and age-related menopause, muscle mass loss, and body composition changes.
• 3:47
  Philip Pape: And there is a lot of variability, but there's kind of on average at the population level, when you're, let's say, 30, you start to lose what, 3% to 8% muscle per decade, is what we've seen.
• 3:56
  Philip Pape: And then it accelerates after 50, 60, is what I was getting at.
• 3:59
  Philip Pape: But when you have the estrogen decline, you have the progesterone changes, you have all of that, you have a counterforce of increased body fat and worsening body fat distribution, right?
• 4:09
  Philip Pape: Like visceral fat around the organs.
• 4:10
  Philip Pape: And that actually exacerbates the muscle loss as well.
• 4:14
  Philip Pape: So I think what you're saying is that at the end of the day, what women care about is that they feel like they have to eat less, they feel like they can't lose weight, it's weight loss resistance, low energy, and they're not happy with their body because they're getting more belly fat and less definition in their physique, right?
• 4:29
  Philip Pape: I mean, that that's about the sum of it all.
• 4:30
  Zora Benhamou: Yeah.
• 4:31
  Zora Benhamou: So I just came up with the new word.
• 4:33
  Zora Benhamou: So we know sarcopenia was we could say it's the age-related muscle loss.
• 4:38
  Zora Benhamou: I think we have should have a menopenia, the menopause-related muscle loss.
• 4:43
  Zora Benhamou: Like that should be something we should all look into because the hormones do have a significant impact on our metabolism and all of this, and in addition to everything else.
• 4:55
  Zora Benhamou: It's just like it's not the only cause, but I think it does have a lot to do with it.
• 4:58
  Zora Benhamou: And especially, let's say, even not directly, but even indirectly, if you're not sleeping well because you're having night sweats or you're anxious, or you're you can't deal with stress like you used to because of the loss of hormones.
• 5:10
  Zora Benhamou: Well, then the moment you are able to correct the hormones, then you sleep better.
• 5:14
  Zora Benhamou: And then if you sleep better, you tend to go to the gym.
• 5:16
  Zora Benhamou: And then you go to the gym, you can work on muscle, and then you feel like eating something healthy.
• 5:20
  Zora Benhamou: Like it all kind of spirals in a good way for just getting the hormones right.
• 5:24
  Philip Pape: It is so connected that people don't even realize how much it's connected.
• 5:28
  Philip Pape: Take, for example, what makes you hungry and what fills you up, right?
• 5:31
  Philip Pape: We have hormones related to that, ghrelin and leptin, and those are directly affected by your reproductive hormones, and they're affected when you're dieting.
• 5:38
  Philip Pape: So a lot of the women I see in that age range, it's not that their metabolisms have tanked by 800 calories.
• 5:45
  Philip Pape: It's that they might be lower by 100 calories, but they have much more craving.
• 5:49
  Philip Pape: Cravings are eating more, they're less active, they have less muscle mass.
• 5:53
  Philip Pape: And even if they're not gaining weight, a lot of them are, but even if they're not gaining net weight on the scale, they're not happy with how they look.
• 5:59
  Philip Pape: You're looking softer and maybe maintaining your weight, maybe not, and looking worse.
• 6:03
  Philip Pape: So, hormones, you think of thyroid.
• 6:05
  Philip Pape: How many women say they have thyroiditis or hypothyroid hypothyroidism or Hashimoto's haven't been diagnosed?
• 6:11
  Philip Pape: Dieting alone can drop your thyroid by five to 10%.
• 6:14
  Philip Pape: And if you're always dieting, you're always suppressed.
• 6:17
  Philip Pape: You're always in that adapted state.
• 6:19
  Philip Pape: So just eating more food, fueling, and lifting weights, like you said, combined with the sleep and recovery, can mitigate that tremendously.
• 6:26
  Zora Benhamou: Yeah.
• 6:27
  Zora Benhamou: It so there's a lot of moving parts here, but Philip, you're a diet and fitness coach and you've helped countless women transform their body composition and metabolism.
• 6:36
  Zora Benhamou: So I got to ask you, what's the fastest thing that can speed up our metabolism, especially in midlife?
• 6:43
  Philip Pape: I mean, if I had to pick one thing, it would be start lifting weights, period.
• 6:46
  Philip Pape: I think I think strength training is the non-negotiable fastest way to build muscle tissue, which is very hungry, hungry for carbs, it's hungry for calories, and you're gonna love that.
• 6:56
  Philip Pape: But you also have to support that with how you eat and how you move.
• 6:59
  Philip Pape: So you can't be lifting three days a week and then sitting on your butt all day, right?
• 7:02
  Philip Pape: You can't be lifting and under eating all the time and not eating protein.
• 7:06
  Philip Pape: So to me, I'd love to say one thing, it's strengthtaining, but then you also have to support that with your movement, sleep, and what did I just say?
• 7:12
  Philip Pape: Diet.
• 7:13
  Philip Pape: Food.
• 7:14
  Zora Benhamou: Yeah.
• 7:14
  Zora Benhamou: Yeah.
• 7:14
  Zora Benhamou: I always say muscles, muscle is our metabolic spanks.
• 7:18
  Zora Benhamou: I think this is such a great way to explain it because when we have more muscle mass, the metabolism seems to be revved up.
• 7:26
  Zora Benhamou: Like we need to eat more.
• 7:27
  Zora Benhamou: And you feel that hunger.
• 7:28
  Zora Benhamou: At least most people do, and most people I work with and myself is if I'm training more, boy, that hunger kicks in.
• 7:34
  Zora Benhamou: And we need to feed the muscles.
• 7:37
  Zora Benhamou: We can't grow muscles if we don't feed them, right?
• 7:40
  Zora Benhamou: So yeah.
• 7:41
  Zora Benhamou: Or at least it's hard.
• 7:42
  Zora Benhamou: It's just much harder if you if you don't.
• 7:45
  Zora Benhamou: So I always think, yeah, like you, like you, they go hand in hand, but then, like you said, the sleep, well, yeah, we need we have growth hormone that's activated while we're asleep.
• 7:53
  Zora Benhamou: So if we're depriving ourselves of sleep, then how are we gonna grow these muscles?
• 7:56
  Zora Benhamou: Because they're not getting the sleep that they need, right?
• 7:59
  Zora Benhamou: And then the stress component as well.
• 8:01
  Philip Pape: Yeah, muscle, muscle is underrated.
• 8:03
  Philip Pape: I did an episode called something like why your muscle burns more calories than you think.
• 8:07
  Philip Pape: And it was based on the premise that all the fitness influencers, they love to say, hey, muscle's metabolically active.
• 8:12
  Philip Pape: You're gonna burn a bunch of calories adding muscle.
• 8:14
  Philip Pape: Well, yes and no.
• 8:15
  Philip Pape: Yes, in the sense that the muscle itself will burn something like six to nine calories per extra pound of muscle, which is not nothing.
• 8:22
  Philip Pape: That maybe that might burn you an extra 100 to 200 calories.
• 8:25
  Philip Pape: It's not nothing.
• 8:26
  Philip Pape: But there's the downstream, the secondary effects of having muscle and the act of training to build muscle that does what you're saying, which really ramps up your metabolism.
• 8:34
  Philip Pape: You've got signaling that's going on to your fat cells, you've got glucose disposal and glucose storage that increases insulin sensitivity.
• 8:42
  Philip Pape: You've got the hormonal stress, the good stress when you train with your IGF, right?
• 8:48
  Philip Pape: Your growth hormone and your testosterone, even the reproductive hormones, because you're using your body in a way that's very fit and healthy.
• 8:55
  Philip Pape: And then all of that is supported when you eat.
• 8:57
  Philip Pape: So having muscle mass from a inflammation, from an insulin, from a fitness lifestyle, all of it just adds up.
• 9:05
  Philip Pape: Bone density, right?
• 9:06
  Philip Pape: Where do we we can just keep going, Zora, and the if it's there are so many.
• 9:10
  Zora Benhamou: I get stuck.
• 9:11
  Zora Benhamou: When I say the magic bullet, if I'm interviewing somebody about sleep, I'm like, no, sleep is the magic bullet.
• 9:15
  Zora Benhamou: Now I'm like, no, no, no, muscle is the magic bullet.
• 9:18
  Zora Benhamou: There are so many magic bullets that don't cost us anything either.
• 9:22
  Zora Benhamou: So, and I'm I might that was my next question is to ask you about the other benefits of building muscle because when I talk about it or people hear about it, I'm afraid that they're going, no, I don't want to be a bodybuilder.
• 9:34
  Zora Benhamou: They don't even want to look like you.
• 9:35
  Zora Benhamou: Like I, you can see I have muscle mass.
• 9:36
  Zora Benhamou: I don't even like that look.
• 9:38
  Zora Benhamou: And I try to say it's not about the way you look, it's about all the other things that you just listed.
• 9:44
  Zora Benhamou: And as a gerontologist, we know that as we go through life, we are more likely to lose our muscle mass.
• 9:53
  Zora Benhamou: But when we keep it, we are more independent.
• 9:56
  Zora Benhamou: Ask any older adult what they want.
• 9:58
  Zora Benhamou: They want to be independent, they don't want to have their kids take care of them.
• 10:02
  Zora Benhamou: They want to be living in their own homes.
• 10:04
  Zora Benhamou: But you can't live in your own home if you can't lift your groceries up the stairs and you can't take care of yourself and you can't open your jars.
• 10:11
  Zora Benhamou: And this requires muscle.
• 10:12
  Zora Benhamou: And it sounds kind of scary because you go, Oh, well, I'll never be like that because we can't imagine ourselves when we're 70 or 80.
• 10:18
  Zora Benhamou: But wait until you get there and you'll be sorry if you don't build this muscle.
• 10:22
  Zora Benhamou: And again, it's just not about looks, it's about all the things that you said.
• 10:27
  Zora Benhamou: And when you mentioned bones too, we gotta figure you understand that the bones are so impacted by the amount of muscle we have.
• 10:35
  Zora Benhamou: And if you're worried about frailty or falls or fractures, and that's going all over the social media now, and then you okay, do your bone density protocol, but part of that protocol has got to be the muscle, right?
• 10:47
  Philip Pape: Oh, 100%.
• 10:48
  Philip Pape: There's a term now in the research, osteosarcopenia, which combines the bone loss, osteopenia with muscle loss, sarcopenia.
• 10:56
  Philip Pape: Actually, Megan Dahlman, she introduced me to that term, and I started seeing it in the studies, and it's the idea that our body is very systematic or systemic, right?
• 11:03
  Philip Pape: Everything is connected.
• 11:04
  Philip Pape: Our hormones are connected to our fat cells, to our nutrient partitioning, to our muscles, to our bones.
• 11:10
  Philip Pape: And they all, when you improve one, it improves the other, but it improves them both beyond the sum of their parts, right?
• 11:16
  Philip Pape: If that makes sense.
• 11:17
  Philip Pape: So when you lift heavy, and by heavy, we can get into that.
• 11:19
  Philip Pape: It doesn't mean you have to be a power lifter.
• 11:21
  Philip Pape: It's just heavy enough to stimulate your muscles and your bones, your bones will get more dense.
• 11:26
  Philip Pape: They have to.
• 11:27
  Philip Pape: They're responding adaptively to that.
• 11:29
  Philip Pape: And when your bones get more dense and your muscles there, they start to signal each other.
• 11:33
  Philip Pape: And I don't even understand all the chemic biochemistry behind it, right?
• 11:35
  Philip Pape: There's myokines, which counteract cytokines and right inflammation and all that.
• 11:40
  Philip Pape: But if you're concerned about frailty and you're concerned about functionality and getting off the toilet and picking up your groceries into your 80s and 90s, then that's what lifting weights is for.
• 11:49
  Philip Pape: It's not, it doesn't have to be for looks or muscles.
• 11:52
  Philip Pape: Women are not gonna get ever get big unless you're either enhanced or you're working like a beast, like an athlete.
• 11:58
  Philip Pape: And I mean like to the extreme, you know what I mean?
• 12:01
  Philip Pape: You're just not, because men have trouble doing that.
• 12:03
  Philip Pape: Let me tell you.
• 12:04
  Philip Pape: That's what I always come back to.
• 12:05
  Philip Pape: It's very hard for men to do it.
• 12:06
  Philip Pape: So you're gonna be eat more food too, and your metabolism supported, and you're just gonna feel like just a badass, right?
• 12:12
  Philip Pape: Like that's a good thing.
• 12:14
  Zora Benhamou: I'm also thinking, well, men also have a hard time, and I'm guessing that's partly due to testosterone, and women have a hard time building muscle as we go through menopause because we don't have the estrogen on the board and the testosterone also goes down.
• 12:26
  Zora Benhamou: So I'm wondering with your clients, because you work with so many women as well, are you seeing those who are on HRT having an easier time, or is it just kind of equal all across the board?
• 12:38
  Philip Pape: I'm gonna challenge one little thing you said, Zoro, which was that women have a harder time building muscle, because I think the evidence doesn't necessarily support that.
• 12:45
  Philip Pape: I think women can build muscle at the same rate as men far into their life, like 80s and 90s.
• 12:51
  Philip Pape: So I just want to put that out there, right?
• 12:52
  Zora Benhamou: Yeah, no, I meant harder, harder without the hormones than it was previously with our hormones.
• 12:57
  Philip Pape: Yeah, exactly.
• 12:58
  Philip Pape: It might be harder for you as an individual than it was before.
• 13:01
  Philip Pape: And all I meant by that, Zor, is a lot of women aren't even training, right?
• 13:04
  Philip Pape: There's kind of a frailty narrative that I see that I think takes away your power, right?
• 13:10
  Philip Pape: And it's like just lifting weights at all, you're gonna add muscle that you never had, you're gonna recover the muscle you've lost, no matter what.
• 13:17
  Philip Pape: It might be at a different rate than somebody else, or it might be slower than you were when you were younger, but you probably weren't doing it when you're younger.
• 13:22
  Philip Pape: Let's be honest, a lot of you listening haven't been lifting weights.
• 13:25
  Philip Pape: So, but to your question about HRT, so I think of HRT as a really powerful tool when clinically and symptomatically indicated.
• 13:34
  Philip Pape: Actual prescription of that's outside my scope of practice, but what I've learned from both men and women is that if you can spend three to six months, let's say, putting together the lifestyle component, the lifting, the movement, the sleep, distress, whatever's important for you that are the big red flags, do it before and after with your labs, with your blood work.
• 13:52
  Philip Pape: If you had suppressed hormones because of your adaptations and your lack of lifestyle, they may recover.
• 13:59
  Philip Pape: And then you can pinpoint, okay, no, progesterone specifically is an issue for me, not all these other ones.
• 14:05
  Philip Pape: Men, the same thing with testosterone.
• 14:06
  Philip Pape: You either have suppressed testosterone because you have excess body fat and you're not healthy, or you just no matter what you do, you have low testosterone, then you need HRT.
• 14:16
  Philip Pape: That's my philosophy.
• 14:17
  Philip Pape: I did an episode called strength training versus HRT, and spoiler alert, there wasn't a versus.
• 14:21
  Philip Pape: It's they can go together and it's individualized.
• 14:24
  Philip Pape: So that's my thought on that.
• 14:26
  Zora Benhamou: I gotta still go listen to that episode.
• 14:27
  Zora Benhamou: Like send that one to me.
• 14:29
  Zora Benhamou: And I'll put that in the show notes if I if we can remember that.
• 14:32
  Philip Pape: If you need HRT and it's indicated, go for it.
• 14:35
  Philip Pape: That's my opinion.
• 14:36
  Zora Benhamou: Yeah, now I do hear women from my community who are pre-hormones, they struggle, it's so hard.
• 14:42
  Zora Benhamou: And then post-hormones, it all seems to get better.
• 14:45
  Zora Benhamou: And again, is it the hormones or is it just because they're sleeping better now?
• 14:49
  Zora Benhamou: Or is it because something else?
• 14:50
  Zora Benhamou: We don't really know.
• 14:51
  Zora Benhamou: But that's why I've always I don't work with that many women in terms of their fitness and their training.
• 14:55
  Zora Benhamou: So I always love to pick people's brains who do and say, See, what are you saying?
• 14:59
  Philip Pape: So well, let's just I we just want to isolate the variables so you're not spending thousands of dollars on 12 hormones that you don't need.
• 15:06
  Philip Pape: You know what I mean?
• 15:06
  Philip Pape: Maybe you need one or two in there that are gonna move the needle.
• 15:09
  Philip Pape: So if you're not lifting, if you have excess body fat, if you're not sleeping, etc., etc., is some of that caused by the hormones?
• 15:16
  Philip Pape: That's what you posed, is like, is my poor sleep by the hormones?
• 15:19
  Philip Pape: Yes, maybe, and you're not doing all the other things.
• 15:21
  Philip Pape: So do all the other things, see what happens as an experiment.
• 15:25
  Philip Pape: It won't take very long.
• 15:26
  Philip Pape: And if things aren't moving, great, you've got your isolated variable, right?
• 15:30
  Philip Pape: Like, I need this.
• 15:32
  Zora Benhamou: Are you enjoying these episodes, but have a question that I just didn't ask?
• 15:36
  Zora Benhamou: Well, then why don't you meet our guests for a live QA session just for you?
• 15:40
  Zora Benhamou: Yeah, face to face on Zoom in a safe and intimate setting.
• 15:45
  Zora Benhamou: And this is one of the perks of joining the private women's only menopause support group, Biohacking Menopause.
• 15:51
  Zora Benhamou: Every week we have live QA sessions with me and our podcast guests.
• 15:56
  Zora Benhamou: It's it's a chance to dive even deeper into a topic or just get a more personalized perspective of the topic and perhaps a second opinion.
• 16:06
  Zora Benhamou: And there's a lot more going on here from monthly challenges, giveaways, breath work classes, menopause resources, and an incredible group of really smart ladies who share their own experience biohacking menopause.
• 16:18
  Zora Benhamou: It's really an invaluable source that you just won't find in any other menopause space.
• 16:23
  Zora Benhamou: So find all the details at biohacking-menopause.mn.co or find the link in the show notes.
• 16:30
  Zora Benhamou: And I'll see you there.
• 16:31
  Zora Benhamou: Have you seen this woman floating around Instagram, at least my Instagram, Ginny?
• 16:36
  Zora Benhamou: And she's an American ninja, age 71.
• 16:39
  Zora Benhamou: And she's amazing.
• 16:40
  Zora Benhamou: She and I invited her to the podcast, she accepted.
• 16:43
  Zora Benhamou: I'm super excited.
• 16:44
  Zora Benhamou: I'll connect her to you if you want to.
• 16:46
  Zora Benhamou: Awesome.
• 16:46
  Zora Benhamou: Because what she was doing, if anyone knows what American Ninja is, it's like this obstacle course, it's insane.
• 16:52
  Zora Benhamou: You have to hold on to things like it's her grip strength was out of this world.
• 16:58
  Zora Benhamou: What she was doing, it wasn't, it was balance, it was mobility, it was her proprioception.
• 17:03
  Zora Benhamou: It was unbelievable.
• 17:05
  Zora Benhamou: And what was most interesting is that she started to work out at 63.
• 17:10
  Zora Benhamou: And it just shows you it's never too late.
• 17:13
  Zora Benhamou: And I want her to come onto the show because one thing for me, or even you, to be like, yeah, well, you know, build Wasshole, protect yourself later on in age, and it's different for me to say it than it is for her to say it.
• 17:23
  Zora Benhamou: And I'm really excited to get her on the episode because she's just such an inspiration, and it just shows it and just kind of hopefully it will validate what you and I are talking about, hearing from another person.
• 17:35
  Philip Pape: 100%.
• 17:36
  Philip Pape: I was on a guy's show, he was an 80-year-old bodybuilder, and there's a gentleman on Instagram to add to your name is Bruce.
• 17:43
  Philip Pape: Bruce and Jan Train.
• 17:44
  Philip Pape: Yeah.
• 17:46
  Philip Pape: And I connect with him too, and he they're in their 70s.
• 17:49
  Philip Pape: He actually just started sprinting following a protocol that I suggested, but I stole it from Brad Kearns when he was on my show.
• 17:55
  Philip Pape: And he started doing that, and he doubled his power output over four months of training sprinting at 73.
• 18:00
  Philip Pape: You know what I mean?
• 18:01
  Philip Pape: So how do you measure power output?
• 18:03
  Philip Pape: He uses a device that can measure its wattage, so it's like force over time.
• 18:08
  Philip Pape: I don't know.
• 18:08
  Philip Pape: He just, I don't know how exactly how, but yeah.
• 18:11
  Philip Pape: I mean, you don't need to use power, you can use speed, you can use other measures, you know what I mean?
• 18:15
  Zora Benhamou: Oh, that's so cool.
• 18:16
  Zora Benhamou: I just I love those my Instagram like search feed is just full of people like that who are just smashing it in their older age.
• 18:24
  Zora Benhamou: So I just get so inspired by them.
• 18:26
  Zora Benhamou: It is so okay, we're gonna assume that you've got your sleep hygiene on and that you're managing your stress and all the other things that are really important.
• 18:35
  Zora Benhamou: But what does an ideal fitness program look like for a woman in midlife who is looking to stay strong and independent and protect her cardiovascular and mental health and lower injury risk?
• 18:46
  Zora Benhamou: So describe your typical client and walk us through the week.
• 18:50
  Philip Pape: Yeah, I was wondering how to answer this question.
• 18:52
  Philip Pape: Should I talk about principles or an actual prescription?
• 18:55
  Philip Pape: I'm gonna do a little of both.
• 18:56
  Philip Pape: And I'm the first thing I'm gonna say is the principles of training for strength and muscle and being active apply to everyone, no matter your gender, no matter your age.
• 19:04
  Philip Pape: That's a powerful and helpful thing to know because that means what whoever you are as an individual, as long as what you're doing satisfies those, there are a lot of ways to get there.
• 19:14
  Philip Pape: There's a lot of equipment to use.
• 19:16
  Philip Pape: There's a lot, and that could feel overwhelming, right?
• 19:18
  Philip Pape: So that's where I'm gonna give you a little bit of prescription.
• 19:20
  Philip Pape: But the basic principles are gonna be lifting with enough frequency and enough volume so that you can actually get stronger and build muscle using what's called progressive overload, right?
• 19:30
  Philip Pape: Which is challenging yourself more and more with time.
• 19:32
  Philip Pape: It's using normal human movement patterns when you do that by loading yourself somehow, right?
• 19:37
  Philip Pape: We're gonna talk about weights, machines, whatever.
• 19:39
  Philip Pape: And then it's being active in the rest of your life, not in a stressful way with like chronic cardio and tons of running or something that you hate, but things you enjoy, play, sprinting, walk, and walking, lots of walking and just moving throughout the day.
• 19:53
  Philip Pape: Like that's the principle of it.
• 19:55
  Philip Pape: So, what does that look like?
• 19:56
  Philip Pape: I would say for a beginner, it's probably two to three.
• 19:59
  Philip Pape: Sessions a week, anywhere from a half an hour to an hour, depends on your schedule, of working on the basic movement patterns, squatting, picking things up, pressing, pulling, which many of us know what exercises translate to that.
• 20:12
  Philip Pape: Squats, deadlifts, bench press, overhead press, rowing, the basic stuff.
• 20:17
  Philip Pape: And again, now it sounds like bodybuilding, but you can do the do those with dumbbells, with a machine.
• 20:21
  Philip Pape: You can do it just with your body.
• 20:22
  Philip Pape: If you are really out of shape, you have a lot of extra weight to lose, your joints hurt, your back hurts, you've never done this before.
• 20:29
  Philip Pape: Start where you're at, find a good coach or really good videos.
• 20:33
  Philip Pape: It's hard for people though.
• 20:34
  Philip Pape: You mentioned pro perception.
• 20:35
  Philip Pape: Most people are pretty clumsy and klutzy when it comes to trying to get good at lifting the first time.
• 20:41
  Philip Pape: And even people who think they're good, I'm raising my hand, find that they have a lot of things to fix when they finally talk to a coach after two years of thinking they're squatting the right way.
• 20:49
  Philip Pape: Doing those movement patterns and progressing them over time is your foundation.
• 20:53
  Philip Pape: And then getting a lot of walking in and being active is going to complement that.
• 20:57
  Philip Pape: Food is a different topic, but to me they go hand in hand, but we can keep that aside.
• 21:02
  Zora Benhamou: Let's stay in the fitness part first because one of the part of that question was lower injury risk.
• 21:07
  Zora Benhamou: Because as we're getting older, I mean, I'm 55 and I don't want to get injured.
• 21:13
  Zora Benhamou: I feel that it it's especially when we lose our hormones.
• 21:15
  Zora Benhamou: Again, this is another symptom is that do you seem to be injuring yourself more or you have maybe loss of bone density and maybe you get a fracture?
• 21:22
  Zora Benhamou: That's not as common in menopause, but or in perimenopause.
• 21:26
  Zora Benhamou: But I want to keep being active, but I realize that I may be putting myself at risk if I keep pushing it like I used to.
• 21:35
  Zora Benhamou: So, what are some things that you recommend to still get the gains and still have strength and power and muscle mass, but yet lower that injury risk?
• 21:45
  Philip Pape: The first thing is to dispel some myths that lifting is even a cause of injury in general, because it's not, it's one of the lowest risk activities we can do in the world.
• 21:54
  Philip Pape: Running is number one, soccer is like number two, right?
• 21:57
  Philip Pape: Contact sports are up there.
• 21:59
  Philip Pape: So it's actually quite safe.
• 22:01
  Philip Pape: And that's why I mentioned the thing about form.
• 22:03
  Philip Pape: If you can put your body into the correct movement pattern, neutral back and correct depth and correct balance and all that, you will start where you're at, which means you may be lifting a 15-pound bar, or you might be lifting 10-pound dumbbells to start.
• 22:18
  Philip Pape: For most people, that's gonna seem like you hardly challenging yourself.
• 22:21
  Philip Pape: So if you can do that without injury, you can then progress to heavier and heavier weights slowly.
• 22:26
  Philip Pape: And as you do that, every time you sleep, your body is taking those amino acids, putting them into your muscle cells, making them a little bigger and stronger.
• 22:33
  Philip Pape: Your bones are getting a little denser.
• 22:35
  Philip Pape: Next time you go in, 10 pounds is gonna feel light.
• 22:38
  Philip Pape: 15 pounds is gonna be what you push.
• 22:39
  Philip Pape: Then the next time, 20 pounds, then 25.
• 22:42
  Philip Pape: And you just have to push it that way.
• 22:43
  Philip Pape: Injury comes from doing stupid things, doing it fast, not resting long enough, trying to do CrossFit type stuff when you have no training and don't know how to lift the weights.
• 22:52
  Philip Pape: But slow and controlled lifting with focus, with mindfulness, and some coaching and support to do the right form.
• 22:59
  Philip Pape: Once you've got this foundation, you can then progress for the rest of your life and not have to worry about that.
• 23:04
  Philip Pape: To add to that, Zora, is a lot of people with problems of injuries, joint issues with their knees, with their elbows, back issues, they see those go away when they start lifting.
• 23:13
  Philip Pape: Because now you're getting stronger and you're supporting your spine.
• 23:16
  Zora Benhamou: Yeah.
• 23:16
  Zora Benhamou: And I always think that people should get, if they don't never done this before, please get a coach and some guidance.
• 23:22
  Zora Benhamou: And because I wouldn't know where to like when I first started lifting or doing exercises, I was like, I don't know.
• 23:27
  Zora Benhamou: And then when I'd get a coach, he's like, You're doing it wrong.
• 23:30
  Zora Benhamou: I was like, Really?
• 23:31
  Zora Benhamou: I I feel your appropriation is off a little like you think you're doing it right, but if somebody's looking at you, take a photo of you, they show you your form isn't right.
• 23:39
  Zora Benhamou: So it's really hard to do this on your own.
• 23:41
  Zora Benhamou: So I encourage people to get a trainer, at least invest in one for the beginning until you get the foundation right, and then yeah, progressively go on.
• 23:50
  Zora Benhamou: But I'm a big fan of blood flow restriction, targeted compression training.
• 23:55
  Zora Benhamou: There's many ways to say it.
• 23:57
  Zora Benhamou: And I love this device because these are tools that we use.
• 24:00
  Zora Benhamou: We put them on our arms or these bands that you put on your arms or your legs, there's so many different kinds, and some are cyclical and some are constant, but they all seem to do the same thing in the end.
• 24:12
  Zora Benhamou: And that helps us not lose muscle mass if we had surgery or injury and we can't do that.
• 24:17
  Zora Benhamou: But it also may help us get some gains with lifting lighter weight.
• 24:23
  Zora Benhamou: Because if I asked my 85-year-old father-in-law to go lift heavy weight, he's like, There's no way.
• 24:29
  Zora Benhamou: But putting these bands on and doing something body weight may help.
• 24:33
  Zora Benhamou: So I would love to know your thoughts.
• 24:34
  Zora Benhamou: If you know anything about blood flow restriction and you've ever used it.
• 24:38
  Philip Pape: Yeah, I've used it.
• 24:38
  Philip Pape: I've used it for years.
• 24:39
  Philip Pape: I have smart cuffs.
• 24:40
  Philip Pape: I have the really expensive ones.
• 24:41
  Philip Pape: Uh-huh.
• 24:46
  Philip Pape: I think the general consensus, and when we look at the studies and even the owners of these businesses, just to disclose if conflict of interest, is it's a great supplement to regular lifting, and it's great for rehab, like you mentioned.
• 24:59
  Philip Pape: There's it, there's its own misery and pain with using blood flow restriction that some people will find mentally hard, harder or just as hard as just lifting a few reps heavy.
• 25:08
  Philip Pape: You know what I mean?
• 25:09
  Philip Pape: So I think the word heavy gets diluted when we talk about lifting.
• 25:14
  Philip Pape: I did an episode called Strength versus Hypertrophy.
• 25:16
  Philip Pape: It's a really good one that walks you through the whole thinking of different percentages of weight relative to your max to show you that if you just want to build muscle, you've got a wide range of load such that you can lift as little as 35% of your maximum, which is like 20, 25 reps, or you can do really heavy up to 80, 90%, where you're down to doubles or sing or triples.
• 25:39
  Philip Pape: So I don't want people to get scared by the idea of lifting heavy.
• 25:43
  Philip Pape: You can definitely lift moderate 8 to 12, 12 to 15 reps, make tremendous gains.
• 25:48
  Philip Pape: And then blood flow restriction is a nice supplement.
• 25:50
  Philip Pape: And, you know, if you like it, it's great for a really wicked pump as a finisher as well, and doing isolation work too.
• 25:58
  Zora Benhamou: Yeah, I think it's a great addition.
• 25:59
  Zora Benhamou: And I use I've been using them for ages because I had osteoarthritis.
• 26:03
  Zora Benhamou: I couldn't move, I couldn't do impact.
• 26:04
  Zora Benhamou: And I was like, oh my God, I'm gonna lose my muscle mass.
• 26:07
  Zora Benhamou: Didn't lose it, and I even gained it with just the simple rehab, the limited mobility I had.
• 26:13
  Zora Benhamou: So I'm a hundred percent convinced.
• 26:14
  Zora Benhamou: But I also have been talking about this for years and years, but even before then, and I hear a really great feedback, all different kinds of I mean, I've gone through all the whole gamut, and yeah, the constant ones are yeah, a little harder.
• 26:27
  Zora Benhamou: And you'd see your heart rate going up when I lift a baby weight with the cuffs on, and then if I don't have any weight, or if I don't have the cuffs on but the same weight.
• 26:37
  Zora Benhamou: So I see my I can measure it through my data and my watch or whatever device that you're using.
• 26:43
  Zora Benhamou: And it is not only about hypertrophy, at least depends.
• 26:46
  Zora Benhamou: Maybe the devices have some distinctions, but it's also good for vascular health, for your heart.
• 26:52
  Zora Benhamou: True.
• 26:53
  Zora Benhamou: Yeah, or for many other things that I think that would aren't are not even counted blood flow.
• 26:58
  Zora Benhamou: It's incredible what these things do.
• 27:00
  Zora Benhamou: It's not just about, I mean, I was so happy with the muscle that, anyways, I mean, it's just it is a little bit more than I I gotta I'm gonna dive deeper because I only am familiar with a couple of devices, and I really want an expert who can be give us the overall picture and teach us a bit more about all those fine details of the benefits of blood flow and who should do it and who shouldn't as well.
• 27:23
  Philip Pape: Yeah, I should I should connect you with the owner of Smart Smart Tools because they they're a good company that's done a lot of studies in the area.
• 27:28
  Philip Pape: It's kind of like weighted vests, it's a really good tool.
• 27:31
  Philip Pape: It doesn't completely replace lifting.
• 27:34
  Philip Pape: I will say to the cardiovascular piece, if you wear the leg cuffs and walk or bike, I mean that you will feel that pump.
• 27:41
  Philip Pape: Like you will feel that challenge.
• 27:43
  Philip Pape: I also am always concerned that people hear that and they're like, oh, now I have to get this extra thing.
• 27:47
  Philip Pape: I have to learn how to use it.
• 27:48
  Philip Pape: It's just one of those points of friction.
• 27:50
  Philip Pape: So if you're listening, there's a lot of ways to roam, a lot of roads to roam, and everything we're telling you here could work.
• 27:56
  Philip Pape: Find what works for you.
• 27:57
  Philip Pape: Can do it at home with stuff you already have with your body.
• 28:00
  Philip Pape: Can you do it at home with dumbbells or bands?
• 28:02
  Philip Pape: Do you have access to a barbell or a gym?
• 28:04
  Philip Pape: What is the thing that you it's easy?
• 28:06
  Philip Pape: And just and don't make any more excuses.
• 28:08
  Philip Pape: Just get in there.
• 28:09
  Zora Benhamou: I'm using a device called Suji now, and I've been using the katsu as well.
• 28:13
  Zora Benhamou: They're both great.
• 28:13
  Zora Benhamou: And even before that, just a typical cuff with a blood pressure.
• 28:17
  Zora Benhamou: And that's like the cheapest way to do it if people really want to get into it.
• 28:21
  Zora Benhamou: I didn't realize that there's a mode that Suji has called recovery mode.
• 28:26
  Zora Benhamou: And so they're using these bands for recovery, which I'm just completely discovering now.
• 28:31
  Zora Benhamou: And so you just put them on and it's and you just sit and let it just sit.
• 28:34
  Zora Benhamou: And it's a little bit more of a cycle.
• 28:35
  Zora Benhamou: Yeah, it's on, it pumps up for a couple of minutes and then off for a couple of minutes.
• 28:40
  Zora Benhamou: But I'm I want to talk this about recovery.
• 28:43
  Zora Benhamou: So, okay, that's one way to recover.
• 28:44
  Zora Benhamou: But in menopause, yeah, it's just like that was the segue.
• 28:48
  Zora Benhamou: Yeah, but I want to talk about recovery because in menopause, we seem to need a little bit more time to recover.
• 28:55
  Zora Benhamou: At least I'm seeing this, and people in my community are seeing this, where we say, Oh, it's just one day, boom, we're off to the races again.
• 29:00
  Zora Benhamou: And now we're like, oof, I think I need two days or maybe even more.
• 29:03
  Zora Benhamou: So, what are your top strategies to support better recovery in between workouts?
• 29:08
  Philip Pape: I mean, we can't stop mentioning sleep, but sleep specifically would be not just the hours of sleep, because everybody's like, oh God, there he goes again, get eight hours of sleep.
• 29:16
  Philip Pape: No.
• 29:17
  Philip Pape: Okay, if you can only get six hours, six and a half hours of sleep, the game changer is going to be consistent bedtimes and wake times and understanding that your wake time is something that almost becomes programmed as part of you.
• 29:27
  Philip Pape: It's very hard to change.
• 29:29
  Philip Pape: And so if you assume that as your starting point, okay, I always get up at 6 a.m.
• 29:33
  Philip Pape: no matter what.
• 29:34
  Philip Pape: Even if I go to bed at 3 a.m., my body gets me up at 6 a.m., right?
• 29:37
  Philip Pape: Can you relate?
• 29:38
  Philip Pape: And so back that into what you would need to get like your deep sleep and your REM sleep.
• 29:43
  Philip Pape: From a recovery standpoint, if you care about tracking and metrics, tracking your sleep stages can be really helpful.
• 29:49
  Philip Pape: And then you'll see the difference based on your bedtime and your consistency of that bedtime.
• 29:54
  Philip Pape: Because I've known people that just push it back by half an hour and all of a sudden they get an extra hour of deep sleep from that half hour.
• 30:00
  Philip Pape: So to me, that's the recovery thing.
• 30:02
  Philip Pape: You could do all the other hacks for sleep.
• 30:04
  Philip Pape: That's a whole podcast, right?
• 30:05
  Philip Pape: I'm sure you've talked about the cool dark room and the no screens and all that stuff.
• 30:10
  Philip Pape: Yeah.
• 30:11
  Philip Pape: It is important.
• 30:12
  Philip Pape: I also think food is the biggest underused recovery mechanism for women.
• 30:16
  Philip Pape: And that means eating enough calories and eating enough carbs.
• 30:20
  Philip Pape: Carbs, yes, carbs, carbs, if you're lifting weights, are massively beneficial for recovery.
• 30:27
  Philip Pape: They're beneficial before you work out because you got that glycogen in your muscles, you got the glucose in your blood, and now you're you can get through that session with lots of energy to push hard, to get all the reps, to not feel winded, and it feels good.
• 30:40
  Philip Pape: And then it helps with your recovery afterward because you won't be sore and you won't feel like as much muscle tearing and that that metabolic stress from the metabolites and stuff, right?
• 30:50
  Philip Pape: So that's important.
• 30:51
  Philip Pape: Then the carbs and the food afterward are helpful for recovery too.
• 30:55
  Philip Pape: And then just having overall enough energy to match your metabolism, right?
• 30:58
  Philip Pape: Or maintenance calories, as we call it, at least, if not slightly more than that.
• 31:02
  Philip Pape: Yes, you risk gaining a little weight, but you that most of that's gonna be muscle, is the biggest thing you do for energy.
• 31:09
  Philip Pape: So sleep and food.
• 31:10
  Philip Pape: And then beyond that, we can go into all the one percenters.
• 31:13
  Zora Benhamou: So, okay, one question quickly.
• 31:16
  Zora Benhamou: Which tracking device do you use for your sleep?
• 31:18
  Zora Benhamou: I have an aura ring.
• 31:20
  Zora Benhamou: Aura ring.
• 31:20
  Zora Benhamou: Okay.
• 31:21
  Zora Benhamou: Now you said about the food, the calories and the carbs.
• 31:24
  Zora Benhamou: And I want to get a little bit granular with this for somebody who's listening.
• 31:26
  Zora Benhamou: Is like, well, what does it mean?
• 31:28
  Zora Benhamou: And how many calories and what kind of carbs?
• 31:30
  Zora Benhamou: And I wanted to find a little bit the carbs because I'm one of these people, I'm like, I get plenty of carbs.
• 31:34
  Zora Benhamou: I eat tons of vegetables, and I eat a little bit much too much fruit now in the summertime.
• 31:40
  Zora Benhamou: But I don't eat a ton of the potatoes, the sweet potatoes, the quinoa, and all these other great carbs.
• 31:46
  Zora Benhamou: I eat them, but not as much.
• 31:48
  Zora Benhamou: So I'm wondering, is there a big difference?
• 31:49
  Zora Benhamou: I know probably the sugar, but what's the big difference in terms of somebody who's trying to build muscle and speed up their metabolism with these two types of carbs?
• 31:59
  Philip Pape: It's it's gonna be very individual.
• 32:00
  Philip Pape: So when you say you don't eat a lot, do you know how many grams you eat a day right now?
• 32:04
  Zora Benhamou: How many grams of what?
• 32:05
  Zora Benhamou: Carbs?
• 32:06
  Zora Benhamou: Carbs.
• 32:06
  Zora Benhamou: Oh gosh, it's I eat when I was tracking it, it was probably around 100 to, and then now it's probably closer to 200 because I'm eating a lot of fruit.
• 32:16
  Philip Pape: Okay.
• 32:16
  Philip Pape: And for a female of your stature, height, whatever, I'm not gonna guess your weight and put all that, but you know, I could just guess that 150, 200 grams of carbs probably passes that threshold where it's enough to refill your glycogen for your training and to recover and to support muscle building and all that, right?
• 32:32
  Philip Pape: So it's not like you need 500 grams of carbs.
• 32:35
  Philip Pape: The problem, I think, is people cut carbs and they restrict and they go way low, like far below 100 grams, right?
• 32:41
  Philip Pape: To try to do keto or whatever.
• 32:42
  Philip Pape: And they're doing it thinking that there's a benefit for fat oxidation or fat sort sorge.
• 32:48
  Philip Pape: And there isn't.
• 32:48
  Philip Pape: At the end of the day, it's your energy balance, right?
• 32:50
  Philip Pape: Your calories and calories out that affect how much weight you gain or lose.
• 32:54
  Philip Pape: Carbs, though, are so powerful for muscle mass and body composition.
• 32:58
  Philip Pape: And people don't realize that because when you eat enough carbs, it spares your body from having to convert protein into energy.
• 33:07
  Philip Pape: So you get enough energy there.
• 33:09
  Philip Pape: It also increases your or reduces your stress.
• 33:12
  Philip Pape: This is another side effect of carbs, people don't realize.
• 33:14
  Philip Pape: I've had women, it's almost like a guaranteed split test.
• 33:18
  Philip Pape: Add in 100 grams of carbs, and all of a sudden all the stress stuff starts to feel better, your energy is better, you don't have the energy crashes, all of that, right?
• 33:26
  Philip Pape: And then you mentioned vegetables.
• 33:28
  Philip Pape: Well, what's a big part of carbs?
• 33:29
  Philip Pape: It's fibrous nutrient-containing foods.
• 33:32
  Philip Pape: So if we're talking about food quality and micronutrients, if even if it is starches like potatoes and quinoa, oats, or vegetables or fruit, you're getting all your fiber needs, and that has its own set of benefits for gut health and satiety.
• 33:46
  Zora Benhamou: Okay, so it doesn't matter so much what kinds of carbs we get.
• 33:50
  Zora Benhamou: I mean, we want not the junk food carbs, but in terms of starchy carbs versus non-starchy carbs, it doesn't matter?
• 33:58
  Philip Pape: It matters in certain scenarios.
• 34:00
  Philip Pape: So like it matters as a pre-workout.
• 34:01
  Philip Pape: So you want fast digesting carbs, right?
• 34:03
  Philip Pape: More simple sugars like fruit before workout, and you don't want to dilute it with fats and fiber as much fiber, which would slow things down.
• 34:10
  Philip Pape: After a workout, it's less important because you've got a nice long window to recover, so it doesn't matter.
• 34:15
  Philip Pape: I would say if you're worried about blood sugar, so if you're diabetic, you definitely have to be in tune with your blood sugar spikes.
• 34:22
  Philip Pape: If you're not diabetic, you really don't have to be worried as much if you're lifting weights, if you're living a good lifestyle, if you're walking.
• 34:28
  Philip Pape: But if you're concerned about that, this is where having balanced foods, balanced meals is helpful, and that's where the fiber-containing carbs are important.
• 34:36
  Philip Pape: Now, potatoes, they're the highest satiety food on the planet.
• 34:39
  Philip Pape: Like people don't realize that.
• 34:41
  Philip Pape: White potatoes, not French fries, when you add oils and everything, but white potatoes.
• 34:47
  Philip Pape: So it doesn't matter, no, but I think nutrient density, quality, and whether you're training are variables.
• 34:54
  Zora Benhamou: Okay, good.
• 34:54
  Zora Benhamou: Yeah, for muscle, yeah, probably not.
• 34:56
  Zora Benhamou: But I would like to keep those starchy carbs at night.
• 34:58
  Zora Benhamou: I eat them more towards bedtime because I feel like oh, this sleep should make me sleepy.
• 35:03
  Zora Benhamou: They should keep my blood sugar more regulated in the evening.
• 35:06
  Zora Benhamou: I'm not doing the blood sugar monitor.
• 35:09
  Zora Benhamou: I'm doing the the ultra human.
• 35:10
  Zora Benhamou: I don't know if you know ultrahuman, it's like the aura, but they have I'm testing out their thing.
• 35:15
  Zora Benhamou: And yeah, I notice if I oh, I need lentils plus olive oil before I go to bed, like right before I go to bed.
• 35:21
  Zora Benhamou: They always say we should leave three hours in between.
• 35:23
  Zora Benhamou: And I realize for me, I learned that a long time ago with other experiments that I should not be doing that because I go so hypoglycemic when I leave too much time.
• 35:32
  Zora Benhamou: And I usually go for a walk after dinner, and I just like poof, my blood sugar is too low.
• 35:37
  Zora Benhamou: So I've I realize my best blood sugar balance will be eating something right before bed.
• 35:42
  Zora Benhamou: Crazy.
• 35:43
  Philip Pape: Well, and that's the importance of tracking these things and your biofeedback and experimenting by changing one thing at a time.
• 35:49
  Philip Pape: You and I were joking, I think before we started recording, about how AI can give you all these answers to your questions, but they can't give you the answer for you necessarily unless you're able to really give it a lot of context and know what to tell it.
• 36:02
  Philip Pape: Oh, I'm telling it.
• 36:03
  Zora Benhamou: I'm telling it.
• 36:03
  Zora Benhamou: Yeah, you're telling everything.
• 36:04
  Zora Benhamou: Yeah, yeah.
• 36:05
  Zora Benhamou: Her name's Sheila.
• 36:07
  Philip Pape: Sheila, okay.
• 36:08
  Philip Pape: So, yeah, exactly.
• 36:09
  Philip Pape: I love it.
• 36:10
  Zora Benhamou: Crazy, yeah.
• 36:11
  Philip Pape: So meal timing is a huge aspect because I know we have people fasting.
• 36:15
  Philip Pape: That's another topic we could get into.
• 36:17
  Philip Pape: People trying to play with different feeding windows, people work out in the morning first thing, right after they take thyroid meds.
• 36:23
  Philip Pape: How the heck do I eat?
• 36:24
  Philip Pape: There's all these individual scenarios, and there's not a right answer.
• 36:28
  Philip Pape: It's for everyone, there's a right answer for you.
• 36:30
  Philip Pape: And so, like your lentil and fat thing is a solution for good blood sugar management and sleep, right?
• 36:36
  Philip Pape: Somebody else, it might keep them up, it might keep them waking up in the middle of the night and feeling stressed.
• 36:42
  Philip Pape: So yeah.
• 36:43
  Zora Benhamou: It is so individual, and it's hard to remember everything.
• 36:45
  Zora Benhamou: That's why I like AI.
• 36:47
  Zora Benhamou: Like remember, remember this or remember touch tests say I can't even remember anymore.
• 36:53
  Zora Benhamou: But but I think some of these apps, like the ultra human, are using artificial intelligence to help you remember some of these things and remind you, hey, you know, you you plugged in that you ate lentils and olive oil before bad, and that was really good.
• 37:07
  Zora Benhamou: And today you didn't do it, you used taurine or I don't know, did some other hack, didn't work as well.
• 37:12
  Zora Benhamou: So maybe it it's this is the future as well.
• 37:15
  Zora Benhamou: We'll get a little easier as it in terms of trying to pick out what are those levers, because when we're doing these little experiments, honestly, we don't really know.
• 37:24
  Zora Benhamou: Is it the lentils, or is it because I don't know, I did something else that day that impacted it?
• 37:29
  Zora Benhamou: It could there's just too many variables, but maybe in the future we'll have a better time with this, or it'll get a little bit easier to weed those things out personally, personally, not just yeah, to personalize it.
• 37:42
  Philip Pape: Yeah, and I'm a big fan of all the biohacking in the data.
• 37:44
  Philip Pape: And at the same time, I know some people who listen, depending on what podcast it is, want to major in the minors, right?
• 37:50
  Philip Pape: As they say, they want to go straight to those solutions before they're just eating enough protein, right?
• 37:55
  Philip Pape: So I always like to say, what's your hierarchy?
• 37:57
  Philip Pape: What's your level one, two, three?
• 37:59
  Philip Pape: If your level one is you're sleeping five hours a night, you're eating 40 grams of protein.
• 38:03
  Philip Pape: Well, right there I can tell you, don't worry about the other stuff just yet.
• 38:06
  Philip Pape: And then when you get all that dialed in, start looking at the other metrics.
• 38:10
  Philip Pape: That's that's my philosophy on it.
• 38:12
  Zora Benhamou: As I was listening to your podcast, you've been lately doing a lot of episodes on GLP ones.
• 38:17
  Zora Benhamou: These are those weight loss peptides that everybody's hearing about.
• 38:20
  Zora Benhamou: And I don't know, I think I heard a stat.
• 38:22
  Zora Benhamou: I know, so you or somebody else, like one in seven Americans are now on some kind of peptide to lose weight.
• 38:28
  Zora Benhamou: And so a lot of people are using it.
• 38:31
  Zora Benhamou: And I'm wondering, are you I myself, I kind of know your stance on it, but I'd love for you to share a little bit what you're seeing with your community and what your thoughts are.
• 38:39
  Zora Benhamou: But tip targeted to woman going through this perimenopause and menopause transition.
• 38:47
  Philip Pape: So I did an episode, you probably are alluding to this, about called Ozempic envy, right?
• 38:53
  Zora Benhamou: Ozempic envy, yes.
• 38:54
  Zora Benhamou: Right?
• 38:55
  Philip Pape: And that was a term I made up.
• 38:56
  Philip Pape: I don't know if you Google it, maybe somebody else said it before, but the idea that we are we've got weight loss camps, and some people are taking Ozempic for different reasons.
• 39:05
  Philip Pape: Some are prescribed because they have diabetes, others are prescribed the corollaries that are not for diabetes for weight loss, especially if they're extra weight to lose.
• 39:12
  Philip Pape: And then there is a subsection doing it purely maybe for vanity or for as a shortcut, right?
• 39:18
  Philip Pape: So there's all different categories.
• 39:19
  Philip Pape: I'm not going to generalize.
• 39:21
  Philip Pape: I think, like HRT, it's a tool, it's a very powerful tool, though, almost miraculous.
• 39:26
  Philip Pape: Like it's insane, especially the dual and now triple agonists they're coming out with that hit not only those peptides, but the liver, like the glucagon-based ones.
• 39:34
  Philip Pape: Can like reduce liver fat.
• 39:35
  Philip Pape: Wow.
• 39:36
  Philip Pape: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 39:37
  Philip Pape: I have a former client who we together went through fat loss, like I'll say all naturally, right?
• 39:43
  Philip Pape: Doing the normal things.
• 39:44
  Philip Pape: And then later on, he decided to do a research experiment with Eli Lilly as a participant for the new triple agonist.
• 39:51
  Philip Pape: And he lost weight.
• 39:53
  Philip Pape: He lost like four pounds a week over like 12 weeks.
• 39:56
  Philip Pape: Like it was extremely rapid.
• 39:58
  Philip Pape: Now he lifts weights, he's doing the right thing.
• 39:59
  Philip Pape: Things, but he said he did like a body composition analysis and a liver test, and like his fatty liver dropped precipitously.
• 40:07
  Philip Pape: It's crazy, right?
• 40:09
  Zora Benhamou: So wait, but how do we know?
• 40:11
  Zora Benhamou: Because he's wifting weights too, like how much of the impact because he lost so much, it was rapid weight loss, but probably because he was doing the two things at the same time.
• 40:19
  Philip Pape: Exactly.
• 40:19
  Philip Pape: So you always have to say if you did that naturally, if you simply just ate less, like that causes you to do, would you have the exact same results?
• 40:27
  Philip Pape: I can't answer that for the more advanced ones.
• 40:29
  Philip Pape: They may have other mechanisms they tap into that are like the super soldier version of something that you can't replicate.
• 40:35
  Philip Pape: Kind of like when we hear about myostatin blockers in the future where you could just get jacked without lifting weights.
• 40:40
  Philip Pape: I don't know.
• 40:40
  Philip Pape: This is the future of humanity.
• 40:42
  Philip Pape: But your question is, what what do I think about them?
• 40:46
  Philip Pape: I think if you need a tool and you're willing to put in the work to address the lifestyle root causes, and the tool enables you to get rid of something that prevents that, it can be helpful.
• 40:56
  Philip Pape: Like the food noise, the brain-related genetics that lead to appetite dysfunction, people who've yo-yo dieted many times in their life.
• 41:03
  Philip Pape: Some of them just so struggle with emotional eating and binge eating.
• 41:07
  Philip Pape: This is the catalyst they need.
• 41:09
  Philip Pape: And I've seen it, I've seen it work wonders in that way in a very positive way.
• 41:13
  Philip Pape: People on Terzepatide, for example, seems to be a really popular one, Manjaro, right?
• 41:17
  Philip Pape: In that they will start to lose weight, they'll hear my podcast, they'll reach out, they'll be like, what should I be doing at the same time?
• 41:23
  Philip Pape: Because they're not getting advice, by the way, from the medical industry for the most part.
• 41:26
  Philip Pape: And I'm like, all right, let's get you lifting, let's eat your protein, let's track your food.
• 41:31
  Philip Pape: Because what's gonna happen is you're gonna eat too little on this drug, most likely, especially if you're lifting weights.
• 41:36
  Philip Pape: And you're gonna want to actually eat more than your appetite's telling you, which is one of the challenges, right?
• 41:41
  Philip Pape: I had a guy who was, he was like, Yeah, I just eat a thousand calories, it turns out, without thinking about it.
• 41:45
  Philip Pape: He's like a 200-pound guy.
• 41:46
  Philip Pape: Like, okay, okay, we got to get that up because you're gonna lose muscle no matter what, even if you're lifting weights at that aggressiveness.
• 41:53
  Philip Pape: So they do it, and you start to put in the lifestyle, you start to change your diet to more protein and fiber and nutrient-dense foods.
• 42:01
  Philip Pape: And then what you can do is titrate down with your doctor's help and see how that affects your appetite and then everything else.
• 42:08
  Philip Pape: And what you should see is a better appetite regulation when you're doing the lifestyle component so that you can maybe get off the drugs permanently and then maintain that lifestyle.
• 42:18
  Philip Pape: And what the way I like to do it is have it coincide with the fat loss phase, like a glide path, come out of the drug and then start eating at or above maintenance to counteract the ramped up appetite for a while, and then things will normalize.
• 42:31
  Philip Pape: That's what I've seen.
• 42:32
  Zora Benhamou: So the yeah, the game I think people don't understand, but they want to try it out, you test it out, and then what?
• 42:38
  Zora Benhamou: Can you afford it still?
• 42:39
  Zora Benhamou: Are you what's gonna happen when you stop?
• 42:43
  Zora Benhamou: If you hopefully you will stop.
• 42:45
  Zora Benhamou: And I'm always wondering what happens to the people who have eating disorders.
• 42:51
  Zora Benhamou: And I did a podcast episode with the specialist in eating disorders, and she argued that the problem is still there.
• 42:59
  Zora Benhamou: The emotional eater is there because of deep trauma or a wound that happened in childhood, and that doesn't go away.
• 43:06
  Zora Benhamou: The GLP ones will take away the food noise and help that person, and they may lose weight, but the moment they go off of it, it's back again.
• 43:14
  Zora Benhamou: And so she believes that they need to resolve the issue and maybe and using the GLP ones that would maybe getting help, professional help in addition to the GLP ones, if that's that person, I think would be another tool in the toolbox, just like lifting weights and dialing in the protein and getting the nutrition right, because I've seen too many people who are not doing the work.
• 43:39
  Zora Benhamou: It's just too easy and they're having a great time eating whatever they want and they're not eating that much, and then I and then they gain it back.
• 43:47
  Zora Benhamou: But I do see plenty of women and men as well who are doing it right.
• 43:51
  Zora Benhamou: And there are ways to do it.
• 43:52
  Zora Benhamou: And I'm glad that you are guiding them through this.
• 43:55
  Zora Benhamou: But I'm wondering if with the emotional eaters that you're working with, or if you have any, how are you helping them navigate this space?
• 44:04
  Philip Pape: So emotional eating is one of those things that you could, I would say, categorize, right?
• 44:10
  Philip Pape: And I if somebody has a true eating disorder, an ED or they're anorexic, or even an overobsession with a certain way of eating that's just mentally connected to their mental health.
• 44:20
  Philip Pape: I'm gonna refer them to someone else.
• 44:21
  Philip Pape: I know other coaches who are have clinical backgrounds in dealing with that.
• 44:26
  Philip Pape: And I don't, I'm not qualified, or even if I was, I don't want to take that on personally.
• 44:31
  Philip Pape: And I'd love to help people, but I have my limits and I know my limits.
• 44:34
  Philip Pape: So that's over there.
• 44:36
  Philip Pape: Then there's the bucket of, I'll call it emotional eaters, which is just most humans.
• 44:40
  Philip Pape: Let's be honest, we all have some level of emotional eating in our background.
• 44:44
  Philip Pape: And it I like a tools and process-based approach, like managing your environment, pre-planning, adding structure with flexibility.
• 44:53
  Philip Pape: Doing all the things we know the research shows us is the opposite of what led to a lot of that emotional eating in the first place, like restrictive dieting.
• 45:01
  Philip Pape: So if we can do these more flexible approaches and see if that just resolves it in general for someone, that's awesome.
• 45:07
  Philip Pape: But then you have the people kind of in the middle who you use tools with them and things get better and then they relapse.
• 45:15
  Philip Pape: And then they have some major binge episodes.
• 45:17
  Philip Pape: And you're like, I don't know if I'm not going to diagnose an eating disorder or not, but if like happens occasionally, is that an eating disorder?
• 45:23
  Philip Pape: Again, I don't know.
• 45:24
  Philip Pape: And do they need to work on that emotional trauma or do they need to just work with what they know their reactions tend to be, and it actually is okay, whatever the result is.
• 45:36
  Philip Pape: You know what I'm saying?
• 45:37
  Philip Pape: So it's very complicated, is my point.
• 45:39
  Philip Pape: There's a gentleman in our group who was doing great, and he's like, I went on a vacation and I ate 6,000 calories in multiple days, and I gained 35 pounds.
• 45:48
  Philip Pape: And first of all, he didn't gain 35 pounds of fat.
• 45:50
  Philip Pape: This is another thing I talk with people about all the time.
• 45:52
  Philip Pape: You have to overconsume by 3,500 calories for one pound of fat.
• 45:55
  Philip Pape: And if you just looked at his numbers, he maybe gained 10 pounds over two weeks, right?
• 45:59
  Philip Pape: Still a lot, but not 35.
• 46:01
  Philip Pape: A lot of that's glycogen and fluid and stuff.
• 46:03
  Philip Pape: But uh, he reminded me of a different client I had who loved to binge at barbecues and he would eat like 7,000 calories.
• 46:10
  Philip Pape: But because his goal was an average of like 3,500 a day, and he only did this once or twice a month.
• 46:16
  Philip Pape: We played the numbers game.
• 46:17
  Philip Pape: We said, you know what?
• 46:18
  Philip Pape: That's actually fine if you just want to plan to go hog wild, pun intended, at a barbecue and plan it in, and that's the only time that ever happens, practically for your life.
• 46:28
  Philip Pape: Does that is that okay?
• 46:29
  Philip Pape: Right.
• 46:30
  Philip Pape: And it was.
• 46:31
  Philip Pape: So it's complicated, Zora, is my point, right?
• 46:33
  Philip Pape: Like we're all that's the thing.
• 46:36
  Philip Pape: We're we're all individuals.
• 46:37
  Philip Pape: Yeah.
• 46:38
  Zora Benhamou: Tell some of our when I was health coaching more back in the day.
• 46:41
  Zora Benhamou: I was telling women let's who didn't want to give up their X, Y, or Z.
• 46:45
  Zora Benhamou: I just said, let's see how much we can get away with.
• 46:47
  Zora Benhamou: That's all.
• 46:48
  Zora Benhamou: It's not saying take this out forever.
• 46:50
  Zora Benhamou: Like just where is your point?
• 46:53
  Zora Benhamou: And you would see all different people with different, different levels.
• 46:56
  Zora Benhamou: Some can get away with high amounts and others with very little.
• 47:00
  Zora Benhamou: So that's where we biohack our way through our fitness and nutrition, right?
• 47:05
  Philip Pape: It's an engineering problem.
• 47:06
  Philip Pape: And I hate to be cold and calculated about it, but it really is for a lot of people.
• 47:10
  Philip Pape: It's like a numbers problem.
• 47:11
  Philip Pape: And if you could figure out the numbers, you get the confidence back and you're like, yeah, I can have my pizza now.
• 47:15
  Zora Benhamou: Yeah, exactly.
• 47:17
  Zora Benhamou: So I wanted to hear your thoughts on fasting for women in midlife and considering all kinds of women, like athletic, obese, sedentary, injured, diseased, 80 plus, whatever it is.
• 47:28
  Zora Benhamou: What are your thoughts?
• 47:29
  Philip Pape: We're talking about fasting in general, right?
• 47:31
  Philip Pape: Like intermittent fasting and time-restricted feeding and it's a big umbrella word because yeah, just sleeping is fasting.
• 47:37
  Zora Benhamou: We're all fasting, okay.
• 47:38
  Philip Pape: Right, right, exactly.
• 47:40
  Philip Pape: All right.
• 47:40
  Philip Pape: So fasting has, I'll say, a couple benefits that we need to acknowledge.
• 47:45
  Philip Pape: It has many claims that are not benefits we need to dispel, and then and then a lot of negatives.
• 47:51
  Philip Pape: Okay, so let's just put it that way.
• 47:52
  Philip Pape: The biggest benefit of fasting to me is I call it time restricted feeding because that's what's in the research, is structure.
• 47:58
  Philip Pape: You can create a feeding window that is structured, just like your meal timing.
• 48:03
  Philip Pape: Like when you eat and also how much you eat can be better controlled.
• 48:06
  Philip Pape: If you're in a fat loss phase with in a calorie deficit and you are only eating, let's say 1400 calories, it might be easier to do that with a restricted window.
• 48:14
  Philip Pape: That's the main benefit.
• 48:16
  Philip Pape: Now, there's a lot of claims about fasting, like autophagy and longevity and cellular function and the brain fog goes away.
• 48:23
  Philip Pape: And you've heard them all.
• 48:24
  Philip Pape: And some of those are anecdotal.
• 48:26
  Philip Pape: Some of them we see them in the population, but we see just as many have the opposite effect.
• 48:30
  Philip Pape: I started fasting and it actually got worse.
• 48:33
  Philip Pape: And so a lot of that, there's explanations for them, but it seems like long term, it doesn't matter.
• 48:38
  Philip Pape: If you fast or don't fast, you're gonna have the same result it when matched for calories, right?
• 48:43
  Philip Pape: We know that when matched for calories, you're gonna have the same result.
• 48:45
  Philip Pape: The negatives, however, for women over 40 are it's highly stressful on you to fast in many cases.
• 48:52
  Philip Pape: If you're training fasted, there's a lot of negatives there because you might not be able to push as hard.
• 48:56
  Philip Pape: Like we talked about the pre-workout banana.
• 48:59
  Philip Pape: I don't know if I mentioned banana.
• 49:00
  Philip Pape: My favorite pre-workout.
• 49:02
  Zora Benhamou: I do banana, banana and cottage.
• 49:03
  Zora Benhamou: It's great.
• 49:04
  Zora Benhamou: Like my thing.
• 49:06
  Philip Pape: Because it's moderate fiber, it's high in simple carbs, and it also has electrolytes.
• 49:11
  Philip Pape: So it's great.
• 49:12
  Philip Pape: It's a great pre-workout.
• 49:13
  Philip Pape: But one of the easiest hacks for most of my clients is like, add that banana before you work out, let me know how you feel.
• 49:17
  Philip Pape: And it's like, oh my God, you know, I felt so much better in the gym, and then I wasn't sore, and this and that, and the other.
• 49:22
  Philip Pape: The claim people make, or you probably hear this, is I'm gonna burn more fat when I'm fast, right?
• 49:26
  Philip Pape: Intermittent fasting or fasted training.
• 49:29
  Philip Pape: It is true you're gonna oxidize more fat when you don't have food in your system because you don't have the blood sugar available.
• 49:34
  Philip Pape: But let's take a simple example.
• 49:37
  Philip Pape: Eat a banana before training or after training.
• 49:39
  Philip Pape: Let's compare the two.
• 49:40
  Philip Pape: Let's say you eat a banana before training, it's a hundred calories.
• 49:43
  Philip Pape: Then you train.
• 49:44
  Philip Pape: Well, now you have that blood glucose to use.
• 49:46
  Philip Pape: And let's say you burn 100 calories and you net out zero, right?
• 49:49
  Philip Pape: Eight a hundred, burned a hundred, no change.
• 49:52
  Philip Pape: Or let's say you do it fasted.
• 49:54
  Philip Pape: You burn a hundred calories, that's gonna have to come from fat.
• 49:57
  Philip Pape: Oh, great, I just burned fat.
• 49:58
  Philip Pape: Well, now you're gonna eat that hundred calorie banana afterward, and it's gonna get stored as fat.
• 50:04
  Philip Pape: It's gonna get converted from carbs to fat.
• 50:06
  Philip Pape: So at the end of the day, it nets out, doesn't it?
• 50:08
  Philip Pape: People on keto, yeah, ketones, fat burning, and all that are burning a lot more fat.
• 50:12
  Philip Pape: They're eating a lot more fat.
• 50:14
  Philip Pape: At the end of the day, it's just two different energy sources.
• 50:17
  Philip Pape: And I know I'm getting into kind of a different topic, but I do think it's kind of related.
• 50:20
  Philip Pape: So I'm not a fan of fasting unless you know as an individual it's optimal and you feel great and it helps you perform.
• 50:26
  Philip Pape: 95% of people don't feel that way, other than the structure piece of it.
• 50:32
  Zora Benhamou: I imagine in your world and very often in mine too as well, because I attract people who are a bit more athletic.
• 50:38
  Zora Benhamou: Yeah, it doesn't seem to be working out so well for this population.
• 50:42
  Zora Benhamou: This is what I'm seeing.
• 50:43
  Zora Benhamou: The guys do better when I was working with men, I was like, why are the guys doing better?
• 50:48
  Zora Benhamou: And the girls not so much.
• 50:50
  Zora Benhamou: And and then, of course, yeah, as we're going through menopause, all the hormonal changes, like our adrenals have enough of a hit, like to put it in that state.
• 50:57
  Zora Benhamou: But I can't deny that I've worked with women and usually they're a bit more sedentary or a bit more obese, and they have really fabulous results with fasting.
• 51:06
  Zora Benhamou: So I think it's all what can I say?
• 51:09
  Zora Benhamou: Research says this, but you have a great result, or research says this and you have a bad result.
• 51:14
  Zora Benhamou: Again, I think it kind of goes down to we're all bioindividual, and you just got to do your own experiment and see what works for you.
• 51:21
  Philip Pape: Yeah, and I have not ever told somebody not to fast and train if they want to and if it feels good for them and if it's practical, right?
• 51:28
  Philip Pape: I mentioned the thyroid meds in the morning.
• 51:30
  Philip Pape: This is a common one, and they're like, I just want to get up and work out and I have to take the meds so I can't eat.
• 51:34
  Philip Pape: Okay.
• 51:35
  Philip Pape: In that case, do what I think is working for men.
• 51:38
  Philip Pape: It might one of my theories you mentioned men is first of all, they have more muscle mass and maybe more glycogen storage, but also they're probably eating more, right?
• 51:45
  Philip Pape: They're eating more calories in general, and that probably translates to like bigger dinners with more carbs that then translate into the morning if they're training in the morning.
• 51:52
  Philip Pape: That that's my one of my theories.
• 51:54
  Philip Pape: I've seen guys be more resilient, is what you suggested.
• 51:57
  Philip Pape: So if it's practical for you, great.
• 51:59
  Philip Pape: Experiment.
• 52:00
  Philip Pape: Experiment, add the banana before you work out and see what happens.
• 52:03
  Philip Pape: And then as far as weight loss and fat loss, that's down to calories.
• 52:06
  Philip Pape: So if your adherence and sustainability is better on fasted training, then that's a reason to do it, or fasting in general.
• 52:12
  Philip Pape: Yeah.
• 52:13
  Zora Benhamou: Yeah, you're right.
• 52:14
  Zora Benhamou: It's everybody has their preferences.
• 52:15
  Zora Benhamou: Not only how do they respond, but does it is it going to fit in with your lifestyle and what you like and don't like?
• 52:22
  Zora Benhamou: And that's why you do what you do is you coach everybody through this.
• 52:25
  Zora Benhamou: Important.
• 52:26
  Philip Pape: Yeah.
• 52:26
  Zora Benhamou: So my last question, then, as a diet and fitness coach with one of the top performing podcasts in nutrition, what is the one thing women in midlife need to do to understand about her changing body?
• 52:39
  Zora Benhamou: That you have more control than you think.
• 52:41
  Philip Pape: You have more control than you think.
• 52:43
  Philip Pape: You know, your body's not broken, everyone is a little bit different.
• 52:46
  Philip Pape: But the approach that worked when you were younger, eating less, doing more cardio, it's not gonna work anymore.
• 52:52
  Philip Pape: It probably didn't work as well as you thought then.
• 52:54
  Philip Pape: Maybe it kept you skinny.
• 52:55
  Philip Pape: But other than that, it's not gonna work.
• 52:58
  Philip Pape: Your hormones have changed, the muscle mass loss, the stress levels are probably higher.
• 53:03
  Philip Pape: But what's amazing is that just moving the needle a little bit by being active, by training, by eating the protein and doing the things we talked about today, experimenting and understanding your body.
• 53:13
  Philip Pape: I mean, this can be the best phase of your life.
• 53:16
  Philip Pape: That's all I'm gonna say.
• 53:17
  Zora Benhamou: Yeah, I like that ending.
• 53:19
  Zora Benhamou: It should be the best years of your life.
• 53:21
  Zora Benhamou: And we can make it that way.
• 53:23
  Zora Benhamou: There's plenty of women who are smashing it and showing it.
• 53:26
  Zora Benhamou: So I am gonna have links to that amazing podcast, Wits and Weights, in the show notes.
• 53:32
  Zora Benhamou: And you got a menopause fat loss over 40 guide, which is cool.
• 53:36
  Zora Benhamou: I can't believe I didn't open that.
• 53:38
  Zora Benhamou: I usually open all of these things and I'll have to go do that myself.
• 53:41
  Zora Benhamou: And then you have a strength training for hormone health, and I'll have a link to your Instagram, which is Wits and Weights.
• 53:46
  Zora Benhamou: And wow, thank you so much, Philip, for all your knowledge.
• 53:49
  Philip Pape: All right, that was my conversation with Zora.
• 53:52
  Philip Pape: If you want to check out her show, it's called Hack My Age.
• 53:54
  Philip Pape: I'll link to it in the show notes.
• 53:57
  Philip Pape: And I do have a quick question for you.
• 53:59
  Philip Pape: I'm trying these bonus replay episodes to give you a little more content without adding to my production load and filling in a space where we wouldn't have an episode anyway.
• 54:08
  Philip Pape: So I want to know, do you enjoy these particular styles of episode?
• 54:13
  Philip Pape: Would you rather hear more guest appearances like this one or something else, whether it's QA, any other deep dives, any other types of bonus content besides what you're already getting three times a week?
• 54:25
  Philip Pape: I'd love you to leave a review on Apple Podcasts and tell me what you think there.
• 54:30
  Philip Pape: Five stars would be very much appreciated because reviews help the show reach more people who need this message and understand what we talk about.
• 54:39
  Philip Pape: And then I read these to hear what's landing and what you want to hear more of.
• 54:42
  Philip Pape: And I like to give shout outs as well.
• 54:44
  Philip Pape: Thank you so much for listening, and I will talk to you next time.