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Transcript

How to Lose Belly Fat After 40 (Cortisol is NOT the Problem) · Wits & Weights | Strength & Fat Loss Over 40

• 0:00
  Philip Pape: Today we're talking about belly fat again.
• 0:02
  Philip Pape: If you're over 40, your belly fat just won't budge.
• 0:04
  Philip Pape: One of the theories you've heard all over social media is it's got to be related to cortisol, that you need a cortisol cocktail or an adaptogen like ashwagandha.
• 0:13
  Philip Pape: Maybe drink less coffee, maybe work out less.
• 0:15
  Philip Pape: Today I'm evaluating the cortisol claims.
• 0:18
  Philip Pape: You'll learn how much cortisol really does have to do with belly fat, why lowering cortisol with a supplement probably doesn't do what you think, and what does shrink the deep fat, that visceral fat around your organs, once and for all.
• 0:30
  Philip Pape: You've seen the cortisol stuff.
• 0:58
  Philip Pape: The cortisol detox trend alone has hundreds of millions of views on TikTok.
• 1:03
  Philip Pape: You've seen cortisol belly, cortisol face, the cortisol detox, and the adrenal cocktail with orange juice and coconut water and a pinch of salt.
• 1:12
  Philip Pape: Please don't go off and make this thinking that that is the answer.
• 1:15
  Philip Pape: The story goes like this: you're stressed.
• 1:18
  Philip Pape: Stress raises cortisol.
• 1:19
  Philip Pape: Cortisol stores fat in your belly.
• 1:21
  Philip Pape: So lower the cortisol and the belly goes away.
• 1:24
  Philip Pape: And if you're over 40, and especially if you're in perimenopause or menopause or gentlemen, you know, with lower testosterone, that probably feels true, right?
• 1:32
  Philip Pape: Your life is stressful, your midsection has changed.
• 1:36
  Philip Pape: There are real physiological things happening.
• 1:38
  Philip Pape: And there aren't always great explanations online for why or what to do about it.
• 1:44
  Philip Pape: Now, I want to be fair because stress does matter a ton for fat loss.
• 1:49
  Philip Pape: I totally believe that.
• 1:51
  Philip Pape: That is part and parcel of the things that we try to control with our habits and our behaviors to improve our ability to lose fat and improve our metabolism.
• 2:00
  Philip Pape: But stress makes fat loss harder and cortisol puts fat on your belly, are two completely different claims.
• 2:08
  Philip Pape: It's like a leap of logic.
• 2:09
  Philip Pape: So today we're gonna separate them out for you.
• 2:12
  Philip Pape: This also builds on a few recent episodes: episode 501 on what perimenopause does and doesn't do to weight, 506 on sleep, and then 507, where we looked at carbs and menopause.
• 2:22
  Philip Pape: So we've been hitting a lot of these topics lately.
• 2:24
  Philip Pape: If you want to go back in the feed or hit follow, make sure you get new episodes going forward.
• 2:28
  Philip Pape: And then I wanted you to stick around to the end because I'm gonna give you the weekly dose of step count, the weekly walking dose that can potentially help with cutting that deep belly fat based on actual trials of postmenopausal women, could affect men and women.
• 2:43
  Philip Pape: They didn't change what they ate.
• 2:45
  Philip Pape: So we're gonna talk about that.
• 2:47
  Philip Pape: So first I'm gonna explain why belly fat is really a whole body fat problem.
• 2:51
  Philip Pape: Then we'll look at what the research says about cortisol, including studies that support the cortisol side, because there are a few of them.
• 2:57
  Philip Pape: Then we'll talk about what's really changing with your body after 40 and then what to do about it.
• 3:03
  Philip Pape: What is the fix, which is a lot cheaper and easier than a supplement, even if it does require effort, as any good solution does.
• 3:10
  Philip Pape: So if fat loss, especially if you're older, if you're over 40 like me, if it's felt like it stalls right in the midsection, this episode is for you.
• 3:19
  Philip Pape: Okay, let's start with the belly itself, because I think this is where the cortisol story gets its firm foothold, because we just want to lose that belly fat.
• 3:29
  Philip Pape: And, you know, a lot of us have something we're not happy with with our body, and it often goes right to that midsection, right?
• 3:34
  Philip Pape: When you say belly fat, you're talking about two kinds of fat.
• 3:37
  Philip Pape: There's subcutaneous fat, which is under the skin.
• 3:40
  Philip Pape: That's the fat you can pinch, right?
• 3:42
  Philip Pape: You can measure with calipers.
• 3:43
  Philip Pape: Then there's visceral fat, which sits deeper around your organs.
• 3:47
  Philip Pape: That is the fat tied to heart disease and diabetes risk.
• 3:51
  Philip Pape: And when people post about cortisol belly online, they usually mean both, and they mean the fat that seems to stay there no matter what you do.
• 4:01
  Philip Pape: You just can't get rid of it.
• 4:02
  Philip Pape: So, can you target that fat?
• 4:04
  Philip Pape: Can you do something that takes belly fat off your stomach specifically?
• 4:10
  Philip Pape: The research says pretty consistently, no.
• 4:13
  Philip Pape: I'm very sorry to say.
• 4:14
  Philip Pape: In a small 2011 trial, people did ab exercises for six weeks on top of a diet.
• 4:20
  Philip Pape: And compared with diet alone, the ab work didn't reduce belly fat.
• 4:24
  Philip Pape: A meta-analysis of 13 studies with more than a thousand people found that training a body part did not reduce the fat on that body part, no matter who they studied or what program they used.
• 4:35
  Philip Pape: And we can go on and on with countless studies that have tried to look at this and find things.
• 4:40
  Philip Pape: And you've probably heard, you know, you can't spot reduce a hundred times by now.
• 4:45
  Philip Pape: Well, the same logic applies to the hormone, cortisol, that supposedly targets your belly, and a supplement that supposedly untargets that thing to help with your belly.
• 4:56
  Philip Pape: So we're gonna get into those things.
• 4:57
  Philip Pape: Belly fat, however, does come off when your total body fat drops.
• 5:02
  Philip Pape: And your body's gonna decide in what order you lose fat.
• 5:06
  Philip Pape: Unfortunately, a lot of that is genetic.
• 5:08
  Philip Pape: For a lot of people that are older, the belly is the last in line to go.
• 5:12
  Philip Pape: I know it's frustrating.
• 5:14
  Philip Pape: It is frustrating.
• 5:15
  Philip Pape: It's also very normal.
• 5:16
  Philip Pape: I mean, I've gotten fairly lean.
• 5:18
  Philip Pape: I try not to get too lean because honestly, I'm not happy when I'm extremely lean and trying to maintain that.
• 5:24
  Philip Pape: Well, even when I get fairly lean, that belly is just pudging out there, you know.
• 5:28
  Philip Pape: And I'm sure a lot of you have that same frustration.
• 5:31
  Philip Pape: And, you know, I know there's a double standard sometimes between men and women where men can kind of get away with it, let's say, or often walk around with pride, you know, even the big beer guts and stuff.
• 5:40
  Philip Pape: And for women, it's a very different situation.
• 5:42
  Philip Pape: So uh it's a big thing for a lot of you, but it's also a health concern.
• 5:46
  Philip Pape: So if you've lost some weight and your belly looks about the same, that doesn't usually mean something's preventing you from losing belly fat.
• 5:53
  Philip Pape: It just means you haven't lost enough total body fat.
• 5:56
  Philip Pape: Or, and this is this is the part a lot of you are ignoring, the scale did go down, but you've lost some muscle.
• 6:04
  Philip Pape: So it's not really targeting fat.
• 6:06
  Philip Pape: And that's another important piece.
• 6:08
  Philip Pape: Especially if you go back and listen two episodes ago, we talked about what to track for fat loss.
• 6:13
  Philip Pape: When you diet without lifting weights and without enough protein, a meaningful part of what you lose can be muscle.
• 6:20
  Philip Pape: It gets accelerated when you go to more extreme diets.
• 6:22
  Philip Pape: It gets accelerated like if you're on a GLP-1 because it tends to help you lose weight faster.
• 6:28
  Philip Pape: It's not because of the GLP-1, but because of the rate of fat loss of weight loss.
• 6:32
  Philip Pape: And less muscle means you look softer at the same weight.
• 6:35
  Philip Pape: Sometimes we call that skinny fat, depending on how light you are on the scale.
• 6:39
  Philip Pape: So your belly looks just as big even when the scale goes down.
• 6:44
  Philip Pape: And then you think, okay, I lost 10 pounds and my stomach didn't change.
• 6:47
  Philip Pape: So then it must be hormonal.
• 6:49
  Philip Pape: Like I just can't lose the belly fat, right?
• 6:51
  Philip Pape: And then, of course, you go into your feed, and hey, there's a video about cortisol, and it's got like a really simple thing I can try, this detox, for example.
• 6:59
  Philip Pape: Okay.
• 6:59
  Philip Pape: And I'm simplifying, it could be one of a number of solutions.
• 7:02
  Philip Pape: It could be some legitimate, you know, coach trying to sell you a training program that targets, you know, belly fat.
• 7:08
  Philip Pape: I put it this way belly fat, especially with age, is a total fat problem and a muscle problem.
• 7:14
  Philip Pape: If you can solve those two, you're giving yourself the best chance where the belly fat will follow slowly and probably slower than you'd like.
• 7:22
  Philip Pape: Now, there are other factors like alcohol and things like that, assuming we've addressed those as well.
• 7:26
  Philip Pape: Okay.
• 7:26
  Philip Pape: Now, before we continue, I want to tell you about today's sponsor, True Nutrition, because protein, which is one of the really cool things that they sell, they let you do customize your protein, is what helps protect your muscle while you lose fat when you're strength training.
• 7:41
  Philip Pape: My personal target for protein is around 180 grams a day.
• 7:46
  Philip Pape: And I'll be honest, it's difficult to hit that on food alone.
• 7:49
  Philip Pape: It's definitely harder on the work days as well.
• 7:52
  Philip Pape: So a protein shake with protein powder is a great way for me personally to close that gap.
• 7:58
  Philip Pape: Now, what I like about True Nutrition, which I use almost daily, is you build it yourself.
• 8:03
  Philip Pape: You customize, you pick your protein, you pick your flavor, your sweetener, your boosts, and then you can save it as a mix.
• 8:09
  Philip Pape: You can save multiple mixes.
• 8:11
  Philip Pape: Mine happens to be whey, egg, and casein protein, so it's like a three for one with the flavor cookies and cream sweetened with stevia.
• 8:19
  Philip Pape: I added some psyllium husk because it gets me a little more fiber, a couple of B vitamins, mainly for the B12.
• 8:26
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• 8:27
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• 8:30
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• 8:34
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• 8:38
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• 8:42
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• 8:44
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• 8:52
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• 8:55
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• 8:56
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• 8:59
  Philip Pape: That's truenutrition.com/witsandweights.
• 9:02
  Philip Pape: All right, let's get back to cortisol.
• 9:05
  Philip Pape: What is it and why does it get blamed?
• 9:07
  Philip Pape: Well, cortisol is a hormone that your adrenal glands make every single day.
• 9:12
  Philip Pape: It rises in the morning to help you wake up, it helps regulate blood sugar and blood pressure, and it goes up when you're stressed or when you train hard, which is an acute stressor, and then it comes back down.
• 9:23
  Philip Pape: You need it.
• 9:24
  Philip Pape: Like every hormone, it is normal.
• 9:26
  Philip Pape: It is part of your body.
• 9:27
  Philip Pape: It isn't a toxin.
• 9:29
  Philip Pape: There's nothing to flush out, which is why the word detox is a little funny here when I see it used.
• 9:35
  Philip Pape: I would say detox is funny pretty much exclusively in the fitness industry because it almost is tied to some wild claim or product you don't need.
• 9:43
  Philip Pape: Now, there is a condition where cortisol really does put fat on your belly.
• 9:47
  Philip Pape: And that's called Cushing syndrome.
• 9:49
  Philip Pape: That's when your body makes way too much cortisol for a long time, usually from a tumor, not always, or when someone takes high-dose steroid medication for many months.
• 9:58
  Philip Pape: I've seen this in horses as well.
• 10:00
  Philip Pape: A lot of horses will have this.
• 10:01
  Philip Pape: People with cushions get central obesity, they get a rounder face, what you might call a fat pad on the upper back, muscle loss.
• 10:09
  Philip Pape: When it's treated, a lot of that goes away.
• 10:12
  Philip Pape: So the cortisol belly idea, I wouldn't say it just came out of the blue.
• 10:15
  Philip Pape: I think it probably came from Cushien's disease.
• 10:19
  Philip Pape: And a lot of trends start that way from a very narrow scope and application of something, kind of like the keto diet was for epileptics, and then it eventually became a general thing.
• 10:28
  Philip Pape: The flaw is taking what happens in a disease and then applying it to the general population, or in your case, to a normal stressful week.
• 10:37
  Philip Pape: Cushions is abnormally high cortisol all day for months or years, right?
• 10:42
  Philip Pape: But for you, dear listener, if you don't have Cushions, something like deadlines at work, financial pressures, rough night with the parents or the kids might cause a normal rise of stress inside a normal range and then drops.
• 10:56
  Philip Pape: And we're meant to handle those.
• 10:57
  Philip Pape: I was joking with my wife.
• 10:59
  Philip Pape: I was watching some show where half of an airplane got ripped off in midair and people started to fly out, and one person was holding on to the seatbelt.
• 11:06
  Philip Pape: This might have been the new season of American Horror Story, I think, actually.
• 11:09
  Philip Pape: And I was thinking, what would my body be doing if I was holding on to a seatbelt trying to prevent from flying out of the plane?
• 11:15
  Philip Pape: Well, I bet it would be pretty damn stressful, right?
• 11:18
  Philip Pape: And yet the body can handle those things because we evolved that way to handle super high moments of stress, acute stressors, and then it comes back down.
• 11:25
  Philip Pape: Those are very different things, right?
• 11:28
  Philip Pape: The disease-based stressor that we're not talking about here, and then the normal population, you, dear listener, and me.
• 11:36
  Philip Pape: So what about us regular people?
• 11:38
  Philip Pape: Does higher everyday cortisol go along with more belly fat?
• 11:41
  Philip Pape: Well, you thought I was gonna say no, but there is some evidence for that, but you're gonna see in a moment why.
• 11:47
  Philip Pape: Elisa Eppel at UCSF, she's a really well-respected stress researcher.
• 11:53
  Philip Pape: She ran a study back in 2000 with 59 women and put them through some different uh stressful tasks in her lab.
• 12:00
  Philip Pape: And the women who carried more fat around their midsection released more cortisol under stress.
• 12:06
  Philip Pape: And that included some lean women with more fat at the waist.
• 12:09
  Philip Pape: So that's maybe some of the best evidence for the cortisol side.
• 12:14
  Philip Pape: But when you look at what kind of study it is, it's correlational.
• 12:17
  Philip Pape: It's a snapshot.
• 12:18
  Philip Pape: It shows two things together.
• 12:19
  Philip Pape: It can't tell you cause and effect.
• 12:21
  Philip Pape: When you look at bigger studies, the relationship gets a lot smaller.
• 12:24
  Philip Pape: So there was a study of 2,500 adults in England between 54 and 87 years old that measured cortisol in hair.
• 12:32
  Philip Pape: And hair cortisol gives you a picture of cortisol over several months.
• 12:36
  Philip Pape: The correlation between hair cortisol and waist size was 0.08.
• 12:40
  Philip Pape: Now that's statistically significant because of the large sample size, but the actual value explained less than 1% of the difference in people's waistline.
• 12:51
  Philip Pape: So even though it was it was statistically significant, showing that there wasn't a difference.
• 12:56
  Philip Pape: Okay.
• 12:56
  Philip Pape: And then a 2022 meta-analysis of more than 34,000 people found the same pattern, a consistent but small correlations of like 0.1 to 0.2.
• 13:06
  Philip Pape: So there's a very, very, very tiny link, and it's probably correlational.
• 13:10
  Philip Pape: And there is, you know, research that the belly or belly fat can produce cortisol.
• 13:17
  Philip Pape: It's not that the cortisol is calling the belly fat.
• 13:19
  Philip Pape: That's where I think the key here is that the link is the other direction.
• 13:24
  Philip Pape: Your fat tissue has an enzyme.
• 13:26
  Philip Pape: I had to write this down.
• 13:27
  Philip Pape: It's called 11 beta HSD1 that turns inactive cortisone into active cortisol right inside the fat.
• 13:36
  Philip Pape: So people with more fat tend to have more of it.
• 13:39
  Philip Pape: So more belly fat may mean more cortisol instead of the other way around.
• 13:42
  Philip Pape: That's what I'm saying.
• 13:43
  Philip Pape: Now, to be fair to both sides, we we love nuance here.
• 13:46
  Philip Pape: Most of the evidence that this local cortisol causes belly fat comes from mice.
• 13:50
  Philip Pape: Okay.
• 13:51
  Philip Pape: Like much of the research, we have to basically limit our claims here to what we know and what populations we know, especially when it's not in humans.
• 13:59
  Philip Pape: Now, let's look at actual human trials, because this is what matters.
• 14:02
  Philip Pape: If cortisol were driving belly fat, stick with me.
• 14:05
  Philip Pape: If cortisol were driving belly fat, then lowering cortisol should lower belly fat.
• 14:09
  Philip Pape: That's pretty logical statement, I think.
• 14:12
  Philip Pape: The most popular way that people try to lower it, believe it or not, right now, is Ashwagandha.
• 14:16
  Philip Pape: Now, I'm a fan of Oswagandha in some cases.
• 14:19
  Philip Pape: It does seem to lower measured cortisol, but it lowers stress.
• 14:22
  Philip Pape: I've known many, many people, especially women at certain points in their life who've taken it and it's helped, but I've also seen it stop working for some and be more of a crutch or band-aid for others.
• 14:34
  Philip Pape: So it really depends.
• 14:35
  Philip Pape: There was a trial of 52 stress adults over eight weeks, and cortisol dropped more than with a placebo.
• 14:41
  Philip Pape: So this was on Ashrogonda.
• 14:43
  Philip Pape: The Ashrogonda group lost a couple of pounds more when you compare the change scores between the groups, but they didn't measure belly fat or body fat.
• 14:54
  Philip Pape: Also, the product was supplied by the company making it, if that matters to you, when you're thinking of conflict of interest.
• 15:00
  Philip Pape: And then the body weight at the end wasn't different between the groups.
• 15:03
  Philip Pape: And then when a much more recent meta-analysis this year in 2026 pooled together trials that did measure body fat, Aswagonda had no significant effect on body fat percentage.
• 15:15
  Philip Pape: So cortisol went down, but body fat didn't.
• 15:17
  Philip Pape: So isn't that interesting?
• 15:18
  Philip Pape: That's a fairly direct uh evidence from that at least that lowering cortisol and losing belly fat are two separate things, which is something I've been talking about for a long time anyway, but it's good to see studies that, you know, continue to reinforce things that you believe to be the case.
• 15:35
  Philip Pape: And that's how science works, because if it didn't, you'd have to change your mind about it.
• 15:39
  Philip Pape: Now, what about the rest of the toolkit here for cortisol?
• 15:43
  Philip Pape: The crazy social media TikTok toolkit.
• 15:45
  Philip Pape: You've got the adrenal cocktail, the orange juice, coconut water, salt.
• 15:49
  Philip Pape: You know, there are no studies behind this stuff, right?
• 15:51
  Philip Pape: Adrenal fatigue, which is the idea underneath a lot of this, came from a 1998 book by a naturopath who sold supplements for it.
• 16:00
  Philip Pape: And in 2016, there was a systematic review that concluded no evidence that adrenal fatigue is a real medical condition.
• 16:08
  Philip Pape: No endocinology society recognizes adrenal fatigue as a diagnosis, as far as I can find.
• 16:14
  Philip Pape: Cutting coffee.
• 16:15
  Philip Pape: Now that's another interesting one.
• 16:17
  Philip Pape: Caffeine does raise cortisol if you're not adapted to it, if you're not used to it.
• 16:22
  Philip Pape: But in a study where people took caffeine every day for five days, the morning cortisol response basically went away because their body adapted.
• 16:30
  Philip Pape: So your morning coffee is probably not the problem.
• 16:32
  Philip Pape: Although coffee late in the day can definitely affect your sleep.
• 16:36
  Philip Pape: We're going to come back to sleep later in this episode.
• 16:38
  Philip Pape: Now, what about I've I've heard people talk about skipping hard workouts because of the stress.
• 16:44
  Philip Pape: Now, to me, this is ridiculous because that is the stress that you want most of all.
• 16:50
  Philip Pape: Hard training raises cortisol for a few hours.
• 16:53
  Philip Pape: It also raises blood pressure, just in case you didn't realize that.
• 16:56
  Philip Pape: Also raises your heart rate.
• 16:57
  Philip Pape: You know, nobody complains about getting their heart rate raised, you know, which is a sign of stress, but somehow we haven't come around to the fact that hard training and higher blood pressure and higher cortisol from that is also a good stressor.
• 17:09
  Philip Pape: This is a normal signal.
• 17:11
  Philip Pape: This is a normal signal.
• 17:12
  Philip Pape: And we know from studies from meta-analysis that hard training can reduce total fat, belly fat, visceral fat, you know, when combined with proper nutrition and energy intake, of course, but there are forms of training like lifting weights and even sprinting that seem to have a unique benefit for reducing visceral fat.
• 17:35
  Philip Pape: So why would we be reducing our workouts, like those types of workouts?
• 17:39
  Philip Pape: I think it actually is the opposite.
• 17:42
  Philip Pape: Like you should be doing these things, not doing more.
• 17:44
  Philip Pape: I'm not saying go out and do a bunch of cardio, but doing the right types of, you know, lifting things.
• 17:48
  Philip Pape: Don't avoid them just because they quote unquote cause stress or increase your cortisol.
• 17:53
  Philip Pape: All right.
• 17:53
  Philip Pape: So if everyday cortisol isn't the main driver of belly fat, then what is?
• 17:57
  Philip Pape: Because something seems to be changing as we get to into our 40s.
• 18:02
  Philip Pape: You know, for many of you probably could have started in your mid to late 30s, in your 40s, 50s, you're not imagining this.
• 18:08
  Philip Pape: For women, the biggest change, of course, is perimenopause and then the menopause transition.
• 18:13
  Philip Pape: The Swan study we talk about all the time that followed thousands of women through menopause.
• 18:18
  Philip Pape: They see that when the transition of menopause begins, the rate of fat gain roughly doubles and lean mass starts to go down.
• 18:24
  Philip Pape: So you start to lose muscle and gain fat more quickly, and that keeps going until about two years after your final period and then levels off.
• 18:34
  Philip Pape: And there doesn't seem to be as much of a change on the scale because they're canceling out, right?
• 18:40
  Philip Pape: The fat you gain, the muscle you lose, is canceling out.
• 18:42
  Philip Pape: Um, I went through this on a few recent episodes.
• 18:45
  Philip Pape: Now, where does that fat go?
• 18:46
  Philip Pape: Well, Lovejoy and colleagues, I mentioned this on episode 507, the carb cycling episode.
• 18:51
  Philip Pape: They followed 156 women for four years and they used CT scans.
• 18:55
  Philip Pape: The women who went through menopause gained visceral fat, the deep belly fat we're talking about today, and it tracked with their estrogen falling.
• 19:04
  Philip Pape: But they also burned less energy while they slept, they burned less fat, and they moved a lot less.
• 19:09
  Philip Pape: So, what about cortisol during menopause?
• 19:13
  Philip Pape: The Seattle Midlife Women's Health Study looked at exactly that.
• 19:17
  Philip Pape: Sometimes we actually do have studies on this stuff.
• 19:19
  Philip Pape: Some women's cortisol did rise late in the transition, but once they accounted for the other hormones changing at the same time, stress and symptoms had very little to do with it.
• 19:29
  Philip Pape: And then the best evidence for a hormone uh lever or cause related to belly fat in this group is, of course, hormone replacement therapy, HRT.
• 19:38
  Philip Pape: So there was a study of 107 trials that found menopausal hormone therapy reduced abdominal fat by about 7%.
• 19:45
  Philip Pape: Now that's a real change.
• 19:47
  Philip Pape: That's a meaningful change.
• 19:48
  Philip Pape: Meaningful, modest, depending on what you think 7% is.
• 19:51
  Philip Pape: But HRT isn't recommended as a treatment for belly fat, but it's definitely a conversation with your doctor when it comes to symptoms.
• 19:59
  Philip Pape: And of course, if you get a benefit for belly fat, that's great.
• 20:02
  Philip Pape: But right now it isn't like indicated as a treatment to reduce belly fat.
• 20:07
  Philip Pape: Because going back to what I said earlier, it really ultimately comes down to are you lifting?
• 20:11
  Philip Pape: Are you managing your nutrition?
• 20:13
  Philip Pape: Are you managing your body fat?
• 20:14
  Philip Pape: That is what's going to make the biggest difference, as well as things like you know, sleep stress and alcohol.
• 20:18
  Philip Pape: For men, it's a bit simpler.
• 20:20
  Philip Pape: Men already store more fat around the middle.
• 20:22
  Philip Pape: And with age, less activity, you know, the gradual muscle loss only make that worse.
• 20:27
  Philip Pape: And you don't need a story about cortisol there either.
• 20:29
  Philip Pape: It's pretty obvious why it's happening.
• 20:31
  Philip Pape: A lot of men also drink a lot more alcohol and things like that.
• 20:33
  Philip Pape: So now where does stress come in?
• 20:35
  Philip Pape: Right?
• 20:35
  Philip Pape: Because I don't want you to think stress doesn't matter.
• 20:37
  Philip Pape: It absolutely matters, but it mostly matters as it ties to your behavior because it can throw off your sleep.
• 20:44
  Philip Pape: It can make you eat more, it can make you drink more.
• 20:46
  Philip Pape: It can make you get, I'll say, more apathetic or lazier and skip your workout.
• 20:51
  Philip Pape: Uh, maybe lazy is a harsh word, but you know, you feel less energetic, so you might skip your workouts.
• 20:57
  Philip Pape: So sleep is a big one as well, tied to stress, as I just mentioned.
• 21:01
  Philip Pape: In a Mayo clinic study, people limited to about four hours of sleep for two weeks, ate 300 more calories a day, and their visceral fat went up 11%.
• 21:09
  Philip Pape: That is crazy for two weeks.
• 21:11
  Philip Pape: All right.
• 21:12
  Philip Pape: Now, that was young, healthy adults, mostly men, but if it can happen in them, it can definitely happen in anyone else.
• 21:17
  Philip Pape: The pathway, as you see here, it's food and sleep.
• 21:21
  Philip Pape: That's how stress gets to your belly.
• 21:23
  Philip Pape: It's food and sleep.
• 21:24
  Philip Pape: It's training, it's lifting, it's movement, it's all the behavioral things we talk about on this show, not some mystery of your body producing more cortisol, if that makes sense.
• 21:33
  Philip Pape: So stress affects fat loss.
• 21:34
  Philip Pape: Yes.
• 21:35
  Philip Pape: Does cortisol cause your belly fat?
• 21:36
  Philip Pape: For most people, no.
• 21:37
  Philip Pape: That's the distinction I want to make.
• 21:39
  Philip Pape: All right, so what do you do?
• 21:40
  Philip Pape: This is the deceptively simple part.
• 21:42
  Philip Pape: Okay.
• 21:43
  Philip Pape: And I'll keep it to four things.
• 21:45
  Philip Pape: Number one, get into a calorie deficit that is reasonable for you if you're trying to lose belly fat at a decent clip.
• 21:53
  Philip Pape: Belly fat comes off when total fat comes off.
• 21:55
  Philip Pape: So you need to lose total overall body fat.
• 21:57
  Philip Pape: I'd rather see you run a moderate calorie.
• 21:59
  Philip Pape: Calorie deficit for a little bit longer than an aggressive one that you can't sustain.
• 22:05
  Philip Pape: But I'm all for aggressive deficits for people who are really good at tracking and I'll say are somewhat disciplined.
• 22:13
  Philip Pape: I mean, I hate to use that word, but it's true.
• 22:15
  Philip Pape: Something like a rapid fat loss, right?
• 22:17
  Philip Pape: You're gonna you're gonna track the right things, like your trend weight and your waist measurement.
• 22:21
  Philip Pape: And for many of you, your belly is gonna be the last thing to go.
• 22:24
  Philip Pape: So you might have to get fairly lean.
• 22:25
  Philip Pape: I'm just telling you the reality of it.
• 22:27
  Philip Pape: Number two is I want you to keep lifting weights with progressive overload, with the compound lifts, with the main, you know, prime movers of your movement patterns.
• 22:37
  Philip Pape: Now, lifting on its own isn't, I'll say, the strongest tool for visceral fat.
• 22:42
  Philip Pape: We know this from studies.
• 22:43
  Philip Pape: We actually see that aerobic exercise sometimes has a bigger impact on visceral fat, but lifting is what keeps your muscle, makes you stronger, improves so many other things, and you don't want to lose muscle mass.
• 22:55
  Philip Pape: But then combined with some appropriate cardiovascular exercise, including my one of my favorites, which is sprintine, you can really then jack up the ability to lose that belly fat.
• 23:03
  Philip Pape: Number three is, of course, protein.
• 23:04
  Philip Pape: I mean, we have to think of the nutrition side, always eating more protein.
• 23:08
  Philip Pape: Many of the studies that look at more versus less protein for keeping lean mass, you've got to have a certain minimum.
• 23:14
  Philip Pape: And there, the numbers are kind of all over the place, but they narrow in on a pretty reliable window, which is around 1.6 kilograms or grams per kilogram or 0.7 grams per pound, which I've said for probably years at this point, right?
• 23:28
  Philip Pape: So about 0.7 grams per pound of protein spread across your meals in whatever way worked practically for you.
• 23:33
  Philip Pape: A lot of you who live or listen to the show already eat more than that.
• 23:36
  Philip Pape: That's fine.
• 23:36
  Philip Pape: But if you're not even there yet, that is a very, very important metric for holding on to that muscle mass so that you can lose your belly fat and your body fat.
• 23:44
  Philip Pape: And then number four is add in walking or other cardio.
• 23:47
  Philip Pape: If you're not even walking, like at least say 7,000 steps, getting to that point is a big lever.
• 23:54
  Philip Pape: Like going from 3,000 to 7,000, huge.
• 23:56
  Philip Pape: But other forms of cardio as well.
• 23:57
  Philip Pape: We're not going to make this a cardio episode.
• 23:59
  Philip Pape: We don't want to overdo it with cardio where it's too stressful, right?
• 24:03
  Philip Pape: That's a whole different issue.
• 24:04
  Philip Pape: But definitely walking, definitely doing those fun, active things you like to do with your family, with yourself, with your dog, playing pickleball, going hiking, walking your dog, whatever.
• 24:13
  Philip Pape: And then other forms of cardio like sprinting.
• 24:16
  Philip Pape: Please, please, please protect those hours of sleep and your consistent sleep uh wake times.
• 24:21
  Philip Pape: Just do what you need to do with your schedule, with your loved ones in your house to make it work so that you can get the solid amount of sleep that you need.
• 24:30
  Philip Pape: Sleep is the stress management with the best evidence behind it for body composition.
• 24:35
  Philip Pape: So we can talk about mindfulness and stress and breathing and all that, but if you can fix your sleep, that's gonna be a big part of it.
• 24:41
  Philip Pape: And that's it.
• 24:42
  Philip Pape: You don't need a cocktail, you don't need an adaptogen, you don't need a cortisol test, you need the basics of behavior change, a calorie deficit, if indicated, lifting weights, enough protein, some cardio.
• 24:53
  Philip Pape: I know it sounds boring, but it's also the evidence-based combo that's gonna work for you.
• 24:58
  Philip Pape: All right, before we wrap up, I promised you how a weekly walking dose from a menopause trial.
• 25:04
  Philip Pape: I'm gonna give you that in just a second.
• 25:06
  Philip Pape: But if you know someone who's been drinking cortisol cocktails or spending money on adrenal supplements to get rid of belly fat, send them this episode, please.
• 25:14
  Philip Pape: Just text it to them.
• 25:15
  Philip Pape: It's one of the best ways you can support the show.
• 25:17
  Philip Pape: You'll save them some money and some frustration.
• 25:20
  Philip Pape: They'll thank you for setting them on the right path, I hope.
• 25:23
  Philip Pape: It helps the show reach more people needed.
• 25:24
  Philip Pape: Just text it to them.
• 25:26
  Philip Pape: Share this episode with a friend.
• 25:28
  Philip Pape: All right, if you want to lose belly fat after menopause, there is a study, a year-long trial in Seattle, looking at 173 sedentary postmenopausal women.
• 25:38
  Philip Pape: None of them were on HRT, and they were split into an exercise group and a stretching group.
• 25:43
  Philip Pape: Now, the exercise was mostly brisk walking.
• 25:46
  Philip Pape: Remember, they're sedentary, they don't lift weights or anything else.
• 25:49
  Philip Pape: They didn't change what they ate.
• 25:51
  Philip Pape: The exercisers lost between 3 and 7% of their deep belly fat.
• 25:56
  Philip Pape: And the women who did the most, which is a little over three hours a week, lost the most.
• 26:01
  Philip Pape: So, what does that tell you?
• 26:02
  Philip Pape: Perhaps look at a target of three hours of brisk walking a week, which is like 30 to 45 minutes most days.
• 26:12
  Philip Pape: And again, you don't judge it.
• 26:14
  Philip Pape: We're not gonna judge how much weight you lose on this.
• 26:16
  Philip Pape: This is interesting.
• 26:18
  Philip Pape: In the study, the difference was only three pounds of weight loss, but the walking group lost three to seven percent of deep belly fat.
• 26:24
  Philip Pape: That is really powerful.
• 26:26
  Philip Pape: So, brisk walking for me, that's like four miles an hour.
• 26:28
  Philip Pape: It's pretty fast.
• 26:29
  Philip Pape: For you, it might be three and a half, might be three.
• 26:31
  Philip Pape: All right.
• 26:32
  Philip Pape: An incline, things like that to make it harder probably help a little bit more, but definitely aim for whatever makes sense from where you are today.
• 26:39
  Philip Pape: All right, until next time, keep using your wits, lifting those weights.
• 26:42
  Philip Pape: And remember, cortisol isn't a toxin that you need to flush.
• 26:45
  Philip Pape: Your belly fat comes off the same way the rest of the fat does by doing the boring basics.
• 26:51
  Philip Pape: I'm Philip Hape, and I'll talk to you next time here on the Wits and Weights podcast.