Latest / Wits & Weights | Strength & Fat Loss Over 40 / The 3 Million Steps Challenge for Massive Fat Loss in 2025 (Compound Effect) | Ep 267

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The 3 Million Steps Challenge for Massive Fat Loss in 2025 (Compound Effect) | Ep 267 · Wits & Weights | Strength & Fat Loss Over 40

• 0:01
  Philip Pape: Think your daily movement doesn't matter much for fat loss.
• 0:03
  Philip Pape: Recent research shows that simply hitting 8,000 steps a day dramatically reduces mortality risk and boosts your metabolism.
• 0:11
  Philip Pape: Today, we're using the engineering principle of compound effects to reveal why 3 million steps this year 2025, could transform your physique and health, and how small increases in daily movement create exponential results over time.
• 0:27
  Philip Pape: Welcome to Wits and Weights, the podcast that blends evidence and engineering to help you build smart, efficient systems to achieve your dream physique.
• 0:45
  Philip Pape: I'm your host, philip Pape, and today we're exploring how one engineering concept, the compound effect, reveals why taking just a few more steps each day this year could be the missing piece in your lifting and nutrition strategy.
• 0:59
  Philip Pape: Now you're already putting in the work at the gym, I hope lifting weights, tracking your protein, focusing on progressive overload.
• 1:06
  Philip Pape: If you're not doing those things, I would set those foundations up before you try to ramp up your steps.
• 1:11
  Philip Pape: But if you're not paying attention to your daily movement, you're missing a crucial catalyst for better recovery, nutrient partitioning and your overall results.
• 1:21
  Philip Pape: Recent research in the Lancet Public Health tells us that mortality risk decreases significantly as steps increase, especially up to about 8,000 to 10,000 steps per day.
• 1:33
  Philip Pape: But most lifters fail to hit these targets because they're trying to change too much too fast, they're not consistent, they're missing the power of compound effects entirely.
• 1:44
  Philip Pape: Today we're gonna break this down into three parts First, how the compound effect in engineering systems explains why small movement creates exponential results.
• 1:54
  Philip Pape: Second, the science behind why our target of 3 million steps lands perfectly in that research-backed sweet spot and can amplify your training results.
• 2:03
  Philip Pape: And finally, the exact system you'll use to build up to this goal this year, based on your current starting point.
• 2:10
  Philip Pape: Before we dive in, if you're ready to join others who are taking up this challenge for themselves this 3 million steps in 2025, and you want some accountability, some support, a place to share and track your results, join our free Wits and Weights Facebook group.
• 2:24
  Philip Pape: You can search Wits and Weights on Facebook or just Facebook.
• 2:27
  Philip Pape: Facebook or click the link in the show notes and you will there find a community of like-minded people who are just sharing their progress.
• 2:35
  Philip Pape: They're posting every day, they're supporting each other and you can look up the hashtag 3millionsteps2025 to specifically follow along in this challenge.
• 2:44
  Philip Pape: Again, join our Facebook group, click the link in the show notes or search for it on Facebook.
• 2:49
  Philip Pape: Now let's start by understanding the compound effect from an engineering perspective.
• 2:55
  Philip Pape: We like to do that on these Wednesday episodes.
• 2:57
  Philip Pape: In engineering systems we see this principle everywhere, from thermal systems, where tiny improvements in insulation can lead to big savings in energy, to electronic amplifiers, where a small signal gets stronger through a feedback loop, and chemical reactions, where catalysts compound the rate of change.
• 3:16
  Philip Pape: The key here?
• 3:17
  Philip Pape: You don't have to understand these systems, but it's the principle behind them.
• 3:21
  Philip Pape: They don't just add up changes linearly, they multiply them over time through positive feedback loops.
• 3:29
  Philip Pape: James Clear captured this perfectly in Atomic Habits when he talked about how a 1% daily improvement compounds to a 37x improvement over a year.
• 3:39
  Philip Pape: So it is an incredibly important principle that can definitely work with your body, because things in the fitness realm work the same way.
• 3:49
  Philip Pape: Every additional step that you take creates a cascade of positive feedback loops.
• 3:55
  Philip Pape: Notice I'm not just talking about adding steps and that's the end of the story.
• 3:59
  Philip Pape: Listen to this chain of events.
• 4:01
  Philip Pape: First, when you move more, yes, you are increasing your what we call NEAT, your non-exercise activity thermogenesis.
• 4:09
  Philip Pape: Higher NEAT then boosts your daily calorie burn.
• 4:13
  Philip Pape: That higher calorie burn, or higher energy expenditure, improves a lot of things, such as your insulin sensitivity and, of course, the amount of food you can eat and the amount of fat loss you can achieve.
• 4:24
  Philip Pape: Enhanced metabolism also makes future movement easier.
• 4:28
  Philip Pape: You are now a healthier person.
• 4:29
  Philip Pape: You have better cardiovascular health, better blood sugar control, on and on.
• 4:33
  Philip Pape: And then all of this improved fitness leads to potentially more spontaneous activity that you may not even be aware of, further increasing your NEAT.
• 4:41
  Philip Pape: This is why active people burn a lot more calories, even above and beyond what you would think.
• 4:46
  Philip Pape: Because of this cascade, because of this compound effect of one little thing that upward spirals into multiple behaviors, sometimes unconsciously.
• 4:59
  Philip Pape: Now one of my clients, jerry I had him on the podcast a while back.
• 5:02
  Philip Pape: He had already lifted for many years.
• 5:04
  Philip Pape: He built a ton of muscle.
• 5:05
  Philip Pape: He was carrying a little bit extra weight, so we wanted to work on fat loss, but he was only getting like 3,000 steps a day because he was an attorney on his butt all day behind a computer Raise your hand virtually if that is you and so we got his steps up to about 8,000 steps per day.
• 5:20
  Philip Pape: It wasn't like 12.
• 5:22
  Philip Pape: It was eight.
• 5:22
  Philip Pape: And within I'll say within weeks, if not days his resting heart rate dropped dramatically.
• 5:29
  Philip Pape: But he also saw that his expenditure climbed as he was in fat loss, which was almost a little I'll say a little bit surprising.
• 5:36
  Philip Pape: It wasn't surprising for me I've seen this happen but the fact that he'd already built most of his genetic muscle that's what made it a little bit surprising the power of adding some steps, and that was just for his expenditure.
• 5:48
  Philip Pape: We saw his health markers improve as well from the movement alone, before he had even lost very much weight at all.
• 5:56
  Philip Pape: So keep that in mind if you're facing a plateau, if you're having issues with recovery, with training, with the amount of food you're eating, how powerful steps can be.
• 6:12
  Philip Pape: Now let's get into why this specific number.
• 6:13
  Philip Pape: So I came up with this challenge.
• 6:14
  Philip Pape: I'm calling it the 3 million steps challenge.
• 6:15
  Philip Pape: It's not a challenge that you sign up for.
• 6:16
  Philip Pape: It's just a goal that you can aim for for the year, and then you join our Facebook group and together we are going to help each other achieve it.
• 6:25
  Philip Pape: And that specific number may not even be your goal.
• 6:28
  Philip Pape: We'll get there.
• 6:29
  Philip Pape: But I want to explain that number first.
• 6:31
  Philip Pape: If we break it down to a daily number, it comes out to 8,200 steps per day.
• 6:36
  Philip Pape: And here's where the research gets interesting.
• 6:38
  Philip Pape: A 2022 meta-analysis in the Lancet showed that the sweet spot for health benefits lies between 7,000 and 9,000 steps per day.
• 6:49
  Philip Pape: So this target of 8,200 lands right in the middle, right smack dab in the middle of this evidence-based range.
• 6:56
  Philip Pape: And for those of you already committed to strength training, which I'm going to mention multiple times today, you've got to be doing Walking is not enough, you've got to be strength training.
• 7:06
  Philip Pape: The benefits directly support your goals and they compound them and they spiral them upward.
• 7:12
  Philip Pape: So let's go through those benefits.
• 7:13
  Philip Pape: I have quite a list based on what we've seen in the research.
• 7:16
  Philip Pape: First are the metabolic benefits.
• 7:19
  Philip Pape: Walking enhances your insulin sensitivity, which means better nutrient partitioning when you're trying to grow muscle.
• 7:26
  Philip Pape: Now we know strength training also vastly improves this as well, so they go hand in hand.
• 7:31
  Philip Pape: Related to this is it improves blood sugar control, which helps you with recovery, reducing fat storage as well.
• 7:39
  Philip Pape: If you have historical issues with blood sugar maybe you're pre-diabetic or diabetic it's as powerful, if not more so, than metformin, which is the leading type 2 diabetes medication.
• 7:50
  Philip Pape: When you go for a walk after a meal so that's always the first place I advise people putting their walks is after a meal.
• 7:56
  Philip Pape: It increases your NEAT, which we mentioned before, and that can account for up to half yes, half of your daily energy expenditure if you are a big time walker, and it also helps with your appetite regulation energy expenditure if you are a big time walker, and it also helps with your appetite regulation.
• 8:12
  Philip Pape: So it just naturally helps you get in better tune with your hunger signals and makes the intuitive aspect of eating food easier.
• 8:17
  Philip Pape: While you're tracking and getting to that point and I see this all the time with clients who increase their steps they're like wow, I didn't know it would help me with my yeah, my BMs and my digestion, but also with my hunger signals.
• 8:28
  Philip Pape: Awesome, so those are metabolic.
• 8:29
  Philip Pape: Then we have the recovery and performance benefits that I don't think get talked about enough.
• 8:33
  Philip Pape: For example, it enhances your blood flow between your training sessions.
• 8:41
  Philip Pape: So it can actually not only help your muscles recover and repair, but also reduces DOMS, right Delayed onset muscle soreness.
• 8:45
  Philip Pape: It's a great way to just kind of mitigate some of the soreness that you might get, which you shouldn't always be sore, but if you're in fat loss or you're doing a new movement or certain high rep work, I get it.
• 8:55
  Philip Pape: You could, you could be sore.
• 8:56
  Philip Pape: Maybe a type of person that has some extra cardio in there, you might get sore.
• 8:58
  Philip Pape: So this is helpful.
• 8:59
  Philip Pape: It also lowers systemic inflammation, which actually supports better adaptation to training, which is more of an acute inflammation, right, like training is an inflammatory response to the muscle tearing, but we don't, which we want, but we don't want systemic inflammation, so walking actually lowers that.
• 9:18
  Philip Pape: It also improves your sleep quality.
• 9:21
  Philip Pape: Okay, if you're having trouble with sleep or getting good sleep quality and you're not walking enough, adding some walks in, especially later in the day, not too late, could be helpful.
• 9:30
  Philip Pape: See what it does for your sleep, and we know how important sleep then is for everything else Muscle growth, fat loss, you know, avoiding fat gain in your belly, all those things.
• 9:38
  Philip Pape: And then it helps reduce your stress.
• 9:40
  Philip Pape: Just walking itself can be stress relieving in many different ways right Walking out in nature, walking while you listen to a podcast or music, just being with your thoughts, being with people, being in the sun.
• 9:50
  Philip Pape: But it also just naturally reduces your chronic stress physiologically and that supports better testosterone and better growth hormone production.
• 9:58
  Philip Pape: We see how all this stuff is connected.
• 10:00
  Philip Pape: And then the last, not last.
• 10:02
  Philip Pape: I actually have four categories here.
• 10:04
  Philip Pape: So the third category benefits from walking, from steps, is the fat loss support which I know a lot of you came to listen to this based on my title, but it is very helpful and it's a great incentive.
• 10:15
  Philip Pape: So walking creates a calorie deficit.
• 10:17
  Philip Pape: Well, it creates a calorie deficit.
• 10:19
  Philip Pape: If you were previously at maintenance and now you add more steps, you're obviously going to burn more calories.
• 10:24
  Philip Pape: Something like if you add 4,000 steps a day, you might burn an extra, say, 150 calories a day.
• 10:29
  Philip Pape: That is not nothing.
• 10:30
  Philip Pape: That is pretty significant because that means if you were maintaining, well, now you could eat 150 more calories of food to maintain, or you can just eat the same and actually start losing you know, maybe a half a pound a week or not quite just by adding 4,000 steps a day.
• 10:46
  Philip Pape: Um, success studies show us that successful weight loss maintainers right, people who lose weight and fat and they maintain it.
• 10:52
  Philip Pape: They average about 11 to 12,000 steps and again, you don't have to go that high.
• 10:57
  Philip Pape: If you're doing a lot of other things, it's not going to be as necessary.
• 11:00
  Philip Pape: I do like those numbers if you can get there, but we're focusing on that 8,000 step minimum today and then over a year.
• 11:08
  Philip Pape: If you, let's say, you got 3 million steps, that is equivalent to about 120,000 calories burned right, and again, that's total.
• 11:17
  Philip Pape: Obviously, if you're getting 4,000 steps now, and you'd go up to eight.
• 11:20
  Philip Pape: You're getting 60,000 extra calories, not 120, but you get what I'm saying.
• 11:24
  Philip Pape: Just do the math.
• 11:25
  Philip Pape: So, as far as fat loss goes, those are helpful.
• 11:29
  Philip Pape: It also helps preserve muscle during fat loss phases because you are increasing your energy flux.
• 11:35
  Philip Pape: You're keeping your metabolism higher than it otherwise would be, which then allows you to eat more of everything protein, carbs, everything that supports muscle and helps avoid catabolism, the breakdown of muscle.
• 11:45
  Philip Pape: Super amazing thing that you might not be thinking about.
• 11:49
  Philip Pape: It's like well, if I'm in the same calorie deficit, what does it matter?
• 11:52
  Philip Pape: Well, wouldn't you rather be in the same calorie deficit with 200 more calories a day?
• 11:56
  Philip Pape: Yes, of course you would.
• 11:57
  Philip Pape: And finally, it supports insulin sensitivity, which we mentioned before, but that also makes your body more efficient at using nutrients, which can be helpful during fat loss.
• 12:06
  Philip Pape: And then, finally, we have lifting-specific benefits Better joint mobility, reduced stiffness between training sessions and, by the way, the best thing you can do for your mobility and joints is lift weights.
• 12:19
  Philip Pape: So don't take this to mean like, oh, we're gonna walk to offset how weights hurt your joints.
• 12:24
  Philip Pape: No, that's not the mentality.
• 12:25
  Philip Pape: The mentality is we need to lift weights.
• 12:27
  Philip Pape: That supports our joints, and then walking also supports our joints and helps with the blood flow, and all that.
• 12:32
  Philip Pape: It also improves your cardiovascular function, of course, which helps with your work capacity, which helps you get through workouts and get all the reps without feeling out of breath.
• 12:41
  Philip Pape: It gives you more stable energy levels throughout the day, partly because of the blood sugar control, and it gives you better cognitive function for focusing during intense training sessions.
• 12:51
  Philip Pape: And I didn't even mention the mental health benefits.
• 12:54
  Philip Pape: I don't know why I didn't have that in my notes, but the mental health benefits of walking are also well-demonstrated and worthwhile even just for itself.
• 13:02
  Philip Pape: I did mention stress, but anyway, now I wanna be crystal clear again Walking alone is not enough.
• 13:07
  Philip Pape: You absolutely need to be lifting weights with progressive overload to build and maintain muscle mass.
• 13:15
  Philip Pape: But for those of you who are already doing this, increasing daily steps is like adding fuel to the fire.
• 13:21
  Philip Pape: It's adding a catalyst to those efforts.
• 13:22
  Philip Pape: That's the compound effect, and I see it with clients all the time.
• 13:26
  Philip Pape: They add more walking in and so many things start to improve, almost surprisingly, like they'll fill out their check-in form and they'll say well, you know, I just all of a sudden felt like I had a lot more energy and I was actually walking more this week.
• 13:39
  Philip Pape: Like well, there's probably a reason for that, and so any one of these benefits might apply to you and they're worthwhile in terms of a reason to walk, all right.
• 13:48
  Philip Pape: So here's where we get a little bit more practical right.
• 13:50
  Philip Pape: Just like in engineering systems, we want to calibrate based on where you are starting from and where your baseline is.
• 13:57
  Philip Pape: So, even though 3 million steps for the year equals 8,200 steps a day, if you are currently getting 3,000 steps a day, I don't want you to try to get 8,000 steps this week.
• 14:07
  Philip Pape: Just add 500 steps this week and then add 500 more and then keep going.
• 14:11
  Philip Pape: Now, if you're already getting, say, 6,000 steps, well, maybe you're at the point where you can add a thousand steps this week instead of just 500.
• 14:18
  Philip Pape: You know, it's kind of like progressive overload for walking and just gradually progress.
• 14:23
  Philip Pape: Allow the compound effect to start working.
• 14:26
  Philip Pape: Don't overwhelm your schedule or your stress or your lifting or anything by feeling like this is a burden.
• 14:32
  Philip Pape: We don't want it to be a negative.
• 14:33
  Philip Pape: We want the walking just to be an easy little thing.
• 14:36
  Philip Pape: They're adding in and, by the way, 500 steps, that's like a quarter mile.
• 14:39
  Philip Pape: You can add that almost by just changing some of the way that you do normal day-to-day activities, your chores, where you park, when you go to the store, taking the stairs instead of the elevator, pacing around the house, when you're on a call, it may not even require a walk, quote unquote.
• 14:55
  Philip Pape: But then to get more steps than that, yes, it helps to have structured walks in there.
• 14:59
  Philip Pape: So how do we do this?
• 15:01
  Philip Pape: All right, step one is to get that baseline.
• 15:03
  Philip Pape: If you don't even know what you're getting, that's step one.
• 15:06
  Philip Pape: Track your current steps for a week or two using any old device that can do that.
• 15:10
  Philip Pape: They're all fine.
• 15:11
  Philip Pape: Your phone, a wearable, an expensive wearable, cheap wearable they all work and you'll get a good average right.
• 15:17
  Philip Pape: Some days are high, sometimes are low.
• 15:19
  Philip Pape: Don't beat yourself up just because you had a low day, because then you might have a high day.
• 15:23
  Philip Pape: Don't try to make it up.
• 15:24
  Philip Pape: Just see what your average is and then, based on where you honestly are now, you can choose how you want to increase from there and set your new floor.
• 15:34
  Philip Pape: And then make sure that you are doing this intentionally around your schedule with what's really going to happen in your life.
• 15:42
  Philip Pape: Don't just assume you can crank up the steps without any thought, right?
• 15:46
  Philip Pape: So that's step one.
• 15:47
  Philip Pape: Step two is so.
• 15:54
  Philip Pape: In other words, I want you to not feel like you're forcing yourself to do it.
• 15:58
  Philip Pape: I want you to set up the environment to help you be successful.
• 16:00
  Philip Pape: Park farther from the gym or the grocery store.
• 16:03
  Philip Pape: Take a 10-minute walk right after you train.
• 16:06
  Philip Pape: You know, since you're already at the gym, like, just add the walk to your gym session.
• 16:10
  Philip Pape: Think of it as a cool down, or do it before the gym session, that's fine.
• 16:14
  Philip Pape: Think of it as a warm up.
• 16:14
  Philip Pape: Schedule walking meetings if that's a thing you can do.
• 16:21
  Philip Pape: Add a 10 minute walk after meals, or even a five minute walk if that's all you can do.
• 16:23
  Philip Pape: Here's a hack that I like Use your rest periods between your sets in the gym and just walk around.
• 16:28
  Philip Pape: I mean, unless it's just like massively intense, like super heavy deadlifts, where you're just gassed and you need to sit, and that's better for you, unless it's that, use the periods between the sets to just get a bunch of steps.
• 16:42
  Philip Pape: You might get two or 3,000 steps during your training session just from that.
• 16:46
  Philip Pape: And then the final thing here is now that you've tracked your baseline, you've set a target and you've set up your environment for success is to build that feedback loop.
• 16:55
  Philip Pape: All right, log those steps Now.
• 16:58
  Philip Pape: Again, if you're using a phone, it does it for you pretty much.
• 17:01
  Philip Pape: I like an app called pedometer plus plus.
• 17:04
  Philip Pape: Uh, it's on iPhone, I don't know if it's on Android, but it's a free app.
• 17:08
  Philip Pape: You can donate to them too, but it's free, and it has a widget for your uh what do you call a complication for your Apple watch, so that you could set a target and see how you are tracking against the target.
• 17:18
  Philip Pape: Another way to build a feedback loop is to join our Facebook group and share your progress.
• 17:22
  Philip Pape: That's actually one of the most powerful ways is community support and accountability.
• 17:27
  Philip Pape: Jump on in there, show us your pretty face, take a picture of you walking, video of you walking outside, whatever.
• 17:33
  Philip Pape: Throw a screenshot of your GPS, track whatever floats your boat, and we'll just all jump in and give you the applause and the recognition, but also the encouragement to keep going and help with any issues along the way.
• 17:46
  Philip Pape: Also, look at how your increased steps helps everything else.
• 17:52
  Philip Pape: So you should be tracking your lifting performance at a minimum.
• 17:55
  Philip Pape: Is it helping with that?
• 17:57
  Philip Pape: Is it helping with your heart rate?
• 17:59
  Philip Pape: Right, you're probably tracking.
• 18:00
  Philip Pape: That was part of your.
• 18:01
  Philip Pape: If you have a wearable, is it helping with your sleep, with your energy, with all the?
• 18:05
  Philip Pape: Tie them together as an incentive for why increasing your step count is so helpful.
• 18:10
  Philip Pape: And then always celebrate achievements.
• 18:12
  Philip Pape: So if you went from 3000 average and now you're up to 3,500 average, celebrate that.
• 18:18
  Philip Pape: It is worth celebrating.
• 18:24
  Philip Pape: All right, the last fascinating kind of twist here I want you to think about with this compound effect is that it works both ways.
• 18:27
  Philip Pape: In other words, if you make a choice to take the elevator instead of the stairs and then you keep doing that, that's going to compound over a year in the opposite direction.
• 18:37
  Philip Pape: That's 365 opportunities.
• 18:39
  Philip Pape: If it's every day for the effect to work either for or against you, it's like a decision tree.
• 18:45
  Philip Pape: So it's just like how missing one workout is not going to kill your gains, but if you keep skipping sessions, it's going to cause you to detrain your daily movement.
• 18:55
  Philip Pape: Choices accumulate into either progress or regression.
• 18:59
  Philip Pape: So this is the year to think about which direction you want to go.
• 19:02
  Philip Pape: The compound effect is not just a abstract principle, right, it's a fundamental law of nature.
• 19:07
  Philip Pape: It really is.
• 19:08
  Philip Pape: We see it everywhere and by applying it to your movement through the 3 million steps challenge.
• 19:13
  Philip Pape: You're working with those natural laws to amplify your results instead of fight against them.
• 19:18
  Philip Pape: All right, join our Wits and Weights Facebook group to connect with others taking the hashtag 3 million steps 2025 challenge.
• 19:24
  Philip Pape: You could share your progress.
• 19:26
  Philip Pape: You could support, be part of a community that understands the power of not quick fixes, but small, consistent actions.
• 19:33
  Philip Pape: Click the link in the show notes to join the group or search Wits and Weights on Facebook.
• 19:36
  Philip Pape: Until next time, keep using those wits lifting some weights and Weights on Facebook.
• 19:38
  Philip Pape: Until next time, keep using those lifting some weights and remember every step counts.
• 19:43
  Philip Pape: I'll talk to you next time here on the Wits and Weights podcast.