Latest / Wits & Weights | Strength & Fat Loss Over 40 / Why NOT Lifting Weights Is the WORST for Your Health (Especially in Weight Loss) | Ep 408

Transcript

Why NOT Lifting Weights Is the WORST for Your Health (Especially in Weight Loss) | Ep 408 · Wits & Weights | Strength & Fat Loss Over 40

• 0:01
  Philip Pape: If you are trying to lose weight and you're focused on steps, your macros, your carbs, your sleep, your cardio, but you're not lifting weights, you're not just leaving results on the table, you are actively making things worse.
• 0:16
  Philip Pape: Today I'm going to explain why skipping strength training during weight loss massively suppresses your metabolism, wrecks your body composition, and almost guarantees you'll regain the weight and probably more body fat.
• 0:30
  Philip Pape: You'll learn why muscle is your metabolic engine, why diet alone leads to looking lighter but softer, and the minimum dose of lifting that protects everything you're working for.
• 0:51
  Philip Pape: Welcome to Wits and Weights, the show that helps you build a strong, healthy physique using evidence, engineering, and efficiency.
• 0:58
  Philip Pape: I'm your host, certified nutrition coach, Philip Pape, and creator of the Fitness Lab app.
• 1:03
  Philip Pape: Today we are addressing one of the most common and damaging mistakes I see in attempts at fat loss, and that is people who focus on diet, cardio, and steps, but they skip the weight room.
• 1:15
  Philip Pape: I alluded to this in the third trap of Monday's episode of our last episode about the three weight loss traps.
• 1:22
  Philip Pape: And I want to dive in deep on this one.
• 1:24
  Philip Pape: I'm not gonna sugarcoat it.
• 1:26
  Philip Pape: If you're trying to lose fat without lifting weights, you are actively sabotaging your results.
• 1:30
  Philip Pape: You're not just leaving gains on the table.
• 1:32
  Philip Pape: I think you are digging a hole that becomes harder to climb out of with every pound you lose.
• 1:38
  Philip Pape: So listen up.
• 1:40
  Philip Pape: Whatever age you are, you've got to start this.
• 1:42
  Philip Pape: This is a wake-up call.
• 1:43
  Philip Pape: This episode is for anyone who's been told that weight loss is just eating less and moving more.
• 1:49
  Philip Pape: For anyone who wants to strength train but hasn't been doing it consistently, for anyone who hears mixed signals in the fitness industry about whether you need to lift weights, all of these theories have some tiny bits of truth where they're coming from, but they're mostly dangerously incomplete.
• 2:06
  Philip Pape: Because how you lose weight determines whether you end up lean and strong or skinny, weak, and fighting your metabolism and making all of this more and more frustrating.
• 2:15
  Philip Pape: So let's jump into it.
• 2:17
  Philip Pape: And let me set the stage here with a scenario that I see a lot, and that is that someone decides they want to lose weight.
• 2:25
  Philip Pape: Probably the most common scenario in existence right now, right?
• 2:28
  Philip Pape: I gotta lose weight, I gotta lose 10 pounds, 20, 40, 50, 100, whatever.
• 2:32
  Philip Pape: And they do something, they dial in their nutrition, whatever that means.
• 2:36
  Philip Pape: Dial in could be calories, maybe they're cutting and restricting, but in their mind, they're dialing it in.
• 2:40
  Philip Pape: Maybe they're eating quote unquote clean whole foods, whatever.
• 2:43
  Philip Pape: Maybe they're walking more, maybe they add some cardio, and then the scale goes down, and then you think you're making progress.
• 2:50
  Philip Pape: But what's probably happening with the vast majority of people who lose weight, which is accelerated today because of the weight loss medications, is that without the stimulus of lifting weights, your body has zero reason to preserve muscle.
• 3:03
  Philip Pape: So as you lose weight, a significant portion of that loss is lean mass.
• 3:07
  Philip Pape: How much?
• 3:08
  Philip Pape: Well, research shows that without resistance training, up to 30% of weight loss during dieting can come from muscle.
• 3:17
  Philip Pape: It's the classic biggest loser effect.
• 3:19
  Philip Pape: And now we see it as the GOP1, somagatides, terzepatite, all the weight loss drugs affect as well.
• 3:25
  Philip Pape: I mean, I've seen numbers up to 40% even.
• 3:28
  Philip Pape: And I think it has to do with how fast you're losing weight.
• 3:30
  Philip Pape: It's not the meds, it's not about the medications, it's about the approach, right?
• 3:34
  Philip Pape: And this is where the math turns against people because muscle is so, so valuable, and we're already starting to lose it in our 30s and beyond.
• 3:42
  Philip Pape: And now you're just making the problem even worse.
• 3:45
  Philip Pape: And you get things like body fat overshooting, where when you regain the weight, which 95% of people apparently do, you're actually gaining more fat than you had before.
• 3:56
  Philip Pape: And you end up at the same or higher scale weight with even more fat and less muscle, which is just the opposite of what we're trying to do.
• 4:03
  Philip Pape: Muscle is an engine, it definitely is like the amount of muscle you have in your body.
• 4:07
  Philip Pape: Think of it as your engine.
• 4:08
  Philip Pape: We want a massive gas-guzzling engine, is what we want.
• 4:12
  Philip Pape: Super big, powerful engine that also burns a lot of calories.
• 4:15
  Philip Pape: Okay.
• 4:16
  Philip Pape: But, you know, physiologically, it does burn calories, but also handles glucose.
• 4:20
  Philip Pape: It also oxidizes fat.
• 4:22
  Philip Pape: People forget that like the muscle itself translates to the fat loss side of the equation as well, and to the insulin sensitivity and how you, you know, handle your carbs.
• 4:31
  Philip Pape: When you lose that wonderful tissue of muscle, a lot of things happen in the negative direction that lead to the ultimate decline and frailty of aging that we are, I guess, used to, unfortunately, seeing in the world.
• 4:45
  Philip Pape: That is, but that is not inevitable.
• 4:47
  Philip Pape: So, yes, your expenditure drops, right?
• 4:50
  Philip Pape: Your maintenance calories, that's one thing, one small thing that happens.
• 4:53
  Philip Pape: It's not the worst thing, though, even though it does make mean you know, you don't have as much room to eat while you're in a deficit, for example.
• 5:01
  Philip Pape: But worse than that is when your diet is over after you've lost weight and muscle, let's say you've lost 20 pounds and your metabolism has adapted downward, right?
• 5:11
  Philip Pape: Now what happens is because your metabolism has dropped even more than you probably expected, you're more ravenous, you're hungry, you're craving food.
• 5:20
  Philip Pape: Now you start to eat back the calories, right?
• 5:23
  Philip Pape: And and that's okay, right?
• 5:25
  Philip Pape: We want to get back to maintenance.
• 5:26
  Philip Pape: And even if you go just to maintenance, the problem is now you're what you're regaining once you start gaining more weight back, is fat, almost exclusively fat.
• 5:35
  Philip Pape: And it's usually more than what you lost because if you lost 20 pounds, and let's say five of those pounds were muscle and 15 of those pounds were fat, but now you gain 20 pounds back, you're gonna gain back 20 pounds of fat.
• 5:48
  Philip Pape: And so the net effect is you've lost five pounds of muscle.
• 5:51
  Philip Pape: This isn't hypothetical.
• 5:53
  Philip Pape: This is what happens to most dieters who do not lift weights.
• 5:58
  Philip Pape: And the cool thing is it's totally preventable.
• 6:00
  Philip Pape: That's why you're listening to this show.
• 6:02
  Philip Pape: That's why you're looking for the help and support on this journey.
• 6:05
  Philip Pape: It's what I had just couldn't discover until my 40s.
• 6:08
  Philip Pape: I always wondered why during my CrossFit days and doing paleo and doing diets and all that, lots of cardio, why I would lose weight and and look worse and worse.
• 6:17
  Philip Pape: And I thought, ah, it's genetics.
• 6:18
  Philip Pape: It's my age.
• 6:19
  Philip Pape: Like I'm skinny, fat, and then I'm fat.
• 6:21
  Philip Pape: And then I'm skinny, fat, and like, how do I actually look the way I want to look?
• 6:24
  Philip Pape: I don't, I don't get it.
• 6:25
  Philip Pape: So here's the piece that matters, even more than what I just talked about, is you are not trying to lose weight.
• 6:32
  Philip Pape: Like I thought I was trying to lose weight and that was the goal.
• 6:34
  Philip Pape: No, you're trying to look better, aren't you?
• 6:36
  Philip Pape: It's not just about the physique, but let's start there.
• 6:38
  Philip Pape: Let's let's be honest with ourselves.
• 6:39
  Philip Pape: Let's start there.
• 6:40
  Philip Pape: You want to see muscle definition.
• 6:42
  Philip Pape: You also want to feel strong and quote unquote functional.
• 6:45
  Philip Pape: That word is kind of a buzzword today, but you know, you want to function in your daily living at any age.
• 6:51
  Philip Pape: So maybe you're in your 60s or 70s and listening to the show, having trouble getting off the couch, right?
• 6:57
  Philip Pape: And that's a real thing that happens.
• 6:59
  Philip Pape: Okay.
• 7:00
  Philip Pape: And you want to be able to do that, you want to spring off that couch and have no problem with it.
• 7:04
  Philip Pape: And you want to also look like you put in the work, right?
• 7:08
  Philip Pape: You don't, you kind of look around and you see what happens with aging.
• 7:11
  Philip Pape: When your friends, when you get into your 40s and 50s, you see them on Facebook, you're like, wow, what has happened to them?
• 7:17
  Philip Pape: And it's not a matter of judgment and saying, oh, this person's fat.
• 7:20
  Philip Pape: No.
• 7:21
  Philip Pape: It's a matter of, are you doing the things that support your health and your body because you love yourself?
• 7:29
  Philip Pape: You do, right?
• 7:29
  Philip Pape: We all love ourselves.
• 7:30
  Philip Pape: So we want to give ourselves the best shot in this world.
• 7:33
  Philip Pape: We also don't want people to depend on us when we get older.
• 7:36
  Philip Pape: And so that outcome, as much as it somewhat depends on maintaining a healthy level of body fat, for most people, that end result of managing body fat is helped tremendously and almost exclusively by being able to build muscle, at least over the long term.
• 7:53
  Philip Pape: In the short term, you can drop a bunch of body fat with energy balance alone.
• 7:57
  Philip Pape: You're gonna lose muscle.
• 7:58
  Philip Pape: You might be in a healthier state than you were before because you had a lot of fat.
• 8:01
  Philip Pape: I'm talking about people who have a lot of weight to lose, right?
• 8:04
  Philip Pape: But once you get to that point, you've got to build muscle.
• 8:06
  Philip Pape: Body fat percentage is like it's more like geometry, whereas scale weight is like arithmetic, right?
• 8:14
  Philip Pape: We need to focus on the geometry of the body.
• 8:16
  Philip Pape: Geometry as in like the the space, the spatial distribution, because if you lose a pound of fat, but you also lose a pound of muscle, that's not a win.
• 8:25
  Philip Pape: You've lost two pounds on the scale, but that's that's setting, that's going backward.
• 8:29
  Philip Pape: That's becoming a smaller version of the same shape.
• 8:31
  Philip Pape: Lighter on the scale, but softer in the mirror.
• 8:34
  Philip Pape: It's it's that deflated look that happens when people diet without lifting.
• 8:38
  Philip Pape: You see it with the weight loss meds when people aren't lifting.
• 8:41
  Philip Pape: You're like, whoa, they lost a lot of weight, but they don't look great, right?
• 8:45
  Philip Pape: It's just the instinct we have in our head.
• 8:47
  Philip Pape: You might not say that out loud.
• 8:48
  Philip Pape: I'm saying it out loud for you.
• 8:49
  Philip Pape: And let's be honest, that's what we're thinking.
• 8:51
  Philip Pape: And we see them shrink, but they're not, they don't look healthier.
• 8:55
  Philip Pape: And healthy is a good word for this, I think.
• 8:57
  Philip Pape: Vibrant, healthy, right?
• 8:59
  Philip Pape: We don't have to say, not everyone's gonna be chiseled, jack toned.
• 9:02
  Philip Pape: We all have different body types and body shapes, right?
• 9:04
  Philip Pape: I'm kind of devolving a little bit into the whole body image thing here.
• 9:08
  Philip Pape: But when you do maintain or build muscle while losing fat, then your body composition changes.
• 9:12
  Philip Pape: So from an objective standpoint, that's what I'm talking about.
• 9:15
  Philip Pape: And objectively, what this looks like is hey, your waist gets smaller because you're not carrying as much of that visceral abdominal fat, which is not healthy for you.
• 9:23
  Philip Pape: Your shoulders look broader, your arms have shape, you know, you weigh the same or more than someone who just dieted, but you look dramatically different.
• 9:30
  Philip Pape: You look healthier.
• 9:31
  Philip Pape: And if it does, even if it is about vanity and physique, which again is fine if that's what one thing that drives you.
• 9:37
  Philip Pape: Most people's ideal physique, believe it or not, requires 10 to 20 pounds more pounds, 10 to 20 more pounds of muscle than they currently have.
• 9:45
  Philip Pape: Let that sink in.
• 9:46
  Philip Pape: That's a that's like a really good number.
• 9:49
  Philip Pape: 10 to 20 more pounds of muscle.
• 9:52
  Philip Pape: So if that's the case, your goal really isn't to get smaller, is it?
• 9:55
  Philip Pape: It's to reshape.
• 9:57
  Philip Pape: And you can't reshape without resistance training.
• 10:00
  Philip Pape: All right.
• 10:01
  Philip Pape: So let's talk about another layer here that gets overlooked.
• 10:04
  Philip Pape: The hormonal consequences of dieting.
• 10:06
  Philip Pape: Dieting is a stress.
• 10:08
  Philip Pape: Your body perceives a calorie deficit as a threat and it responds accordingly.
• 10:11
  Philip Pape: Your hunger goes up, your neat goes down.
• 10:14
  Philip Pape: I know you're you're like, hey, Philip, no, I'm getting more steps and fat loss.
• 10:17
  Philip Pape: Yeah, you might be getting more intentional steps, but you'd be surprised at the unintentional, unconscious movement that goes down, even inside your body.
• 10:25
  Philip Pape: Your leptin drops, your recovery gets worse, your whole system starts pushing back against the deficit.
• 10:30
  Philip Pape: It's a stress.
• 10:31
  Philip Pape: You may do it intentionally, yes, but it's a short-term stress.
• 10:35
  Philip Pape: And that's called metabolic adaptation.
• 10:37
  Philip Pape: That's why fat loss gets harder over time.
• 10:40
  Philip Pape: And if you're not strength training, these adaptations will hit harder and faster.
• 10:44
  Philip Pape: I've seen it in people's numbers.
• 10:46
  Philip Pape: Your body has less reason to hold on to metabolically expensive tissue like muscle, so it dumps it.
• 10:51
  Philip Pape: And so even those of you doing the UTAL YouTube workouts or the P90 or those types of workouts, Pilates, and you're not making any, you're not progressing, you're not increasing in weight or reps over time, you're not actually getting stronger.
• 11:02
  Philip Pape: And then you go into a fat loss phase, you're not really doing much for yourself.
• 11:06
  Philip Pape: You may, if you're lucky, hold on to some of your muscle, but you're still probably gonna probably gonna lose some muscle.
• 11:13
  Philip Pape: At best, you're never in a period where you're gaining new muscle tissue, if that makes sense.
• 11:19
  Philip Pape: And going back to my comment where most people need to gain 10 to 20 pounds of muscle, and that's beyond a baseline that I would say is when you're 30.
• 11:28
  Philip Pape: So if you're already 40, 50, 60 years old, you've lost some of that muscle too.
• 11:32
  Philip Pape: The goal is to get it back and then add those 10 to 20 pounds.
• 11:35
  Philip Pape: When you lift, you blunt the compensatory mechanisms.
• 11:40
  Philip Pape: Okay.
• 11:41
  Philip Pape: Resistance training signals your body that muscle is essential, that it's being used, that it should be preserved.
• 11:46
  Philip Pape: You keep your need higher, you maintain strength, you support insulin sensitivity, you stabilize your mood and sleep.
• 11:50
  Philip Pape: Yes, even during fat loss, it makes it a little bit easier, and you're doing the most important thing, which is holding on to that muscle.
• 11:57
  Philip Pape: And I definitely have seen stark differences between people who are not lifting properly or at all.
• 12:02
  Philip Pape: They they try to lose weight, and it's just this fight.
• 12:05
  Philip Pape: Whereas people who lift, they're like, we're gonna go in a moderate deficit, I'm gonna do all the right things, I'm gonna eat a high satiety diet, plenty of protein, and I'm gonna train.
• 12:13
  Philip Pape: And it actually feels, I'm not gonna say it feels easy, but it doesn't feel that bad at all.
• 12:16
  Philip Pape: You got a little bit of hunger, a little bit of stress, and you get through it in six, eight, 10, 12 weeks.
• 12:22
  Philip Pape: And now you've lost fat and you move on to the rest of your life being at maintenance or above.
• 12:26
  Philip Pape: This is a big distinction that changes how the whole process feels and how sustainable it becomes.
• 12:33
  Philip Pape: Now, before I keep going, I want to mention something for those of you who are ready to take action on this as we end the year.
• 12:40
  Philip Pape: If you've been putting off strength training or you know you need more structure heading into the new year, we are starting, we are running a three-week finish strong challenge designed to help you build that momentum and end the year strong instead of waiting until January.
• 12:57
  Philip Pape: It's not, hey, let's do a diet at the end of the year or let's do a fat loss phase at the end of the year.
• 13:01
  Philip Pape: That's gonna self-destruct, isn't it?
• 13:04
  Philip Pape: No, this is about getting the fundamental behaviors like strength training in place now and also having a flexible framework for doing so, no matter how stressful or chaotic the holidays get, or any time of year.
• 13:18
  Philip Pape: Because if you could get through that time of year, the rest of the year is gonna seem like a breeze.
• 13:22
  Philip Pape: It's building that foundation that protects your metabolism, your metabolic health, sets you up for real progress in 2026, even if, yes, even if you want to have a New Year's resolution to lose fat.
• 13:33
  Philip Pape: So you can sign up right now for that challenge.
• 13:35
  Philip Pape: Go to live.witsandweights.com.
• 13:37
  Philip Pape: The kickoff is on December 8th, but the challenge starts a couple days later.
• 13:41
  Philip Pape: So December 8th is a Monday at 5 p.m.
• 13:44
  Philip Pape: Eastern.
• 13:45
  Philip Pape: It would be great if you could be on the live kickoff, but if you're not, it's okay.
• 13:48
  Philip Pape: The replay will be available shortly thereafter.
• 13:50
  Philip Pape: And you'll have about a day and a half to watch it, to download the guide, to download all the wonderful resources that Carol has made for dealing with the holidays and all the situations you find yourself in, like at the airport, at the gas station, at the hotel, to download our minimum and bailout workout templates for hotel gym travel.
• 14:10
  Philip Pape: If you don't have access to a full gym, all of that stuff is included, as well as the replay.
• 14:14
  Philip Pape: Go to live.witsandweights.com.
• 14:16
  Philip Pape: Link is in the show notes, so that you can join the challenge and get started for the final three weeks of the year.
• 14:22
  Philip Pape: That's live.witsandweights.com.
• 14:24
  Philip Pape: All right, let's zoom out for a second because this isn't just about looking good at your goal weight, is it?
• 14:31
  Philip Pape: Right?
• 14:32
  Philip Pape: I I kind of have alluded, I've danced around the fact that physique, which by the way, I define physique as much more nuanced than a lot of people do.
• 14:40
  Philip Pape: To me, physique is everything about your body and mind.
• 14:43
  Philip Pape: But still, even if it's a vanity goal, we need to couple that with something more meaningful about our future self, our identity, so that we have it all, we have the whole package.
• 14:52
  Philip Pape: And that will really drive you to want to do this.
• 14:55
  Philip Pape: This is about the rest of your life.
• 14:57
  Philip Pape: Without lifting, sarcopenia, the loss of muscle mass, accelerates.
• 15:01
  Philip Pape: And I recently heard a podcast, gosh, I think it was Docs Who Lift.
• 15:05
  Philip Pape: They talked about, or was it barbell medicine, talked about how sarcopenia, we we often talk about it as a loss of muscle mass, but really it's a loss of function with our muscle, loss of strength.
• 15:16
  Philip Pape: And I think that's just as important, if not more so, than the muscle itself, because there's there's a reason we want to have that muscle.
• 15:22
  Philip Pape: And it's not just the look of it or to say we have more muscle, right?
• 15:26
  Philip Pape: So when we go through this age-related, but also functional muscle loss after 30, and that occurs because you're not doing something about it, it doesn't just affect how you look, does it?
• 15:38
  Philip Pape: It affects things like your bone density, your risk of falling, your ability to carry groceries when you're 65, to get up off the floor when you're 75, to live independently when you're 80 and above.
• 15:50
  Philip Pape: So at the end of the day, today's episode is a longevity episode in disguise.
• 15:56
  Philip Pape: Because there is no healthy aging without strength.
• 16:01
  Philip Pape: That's the statement I want you to remember.
• 16:03
  Philip Pape: Quote it.
• 16:04
  Philip Pape: Put it on Instagram, I don't care, put it on your post-it note, share it.
• 16:08
  Philip Pape: There is no healthy aging without strength.
• 16:11
  Philip Pape: Your quality of life in your 60s, 70s, 80s, beyond depends on the muscle and strength that you build and preserve now.
• 16:20
  Philip Pape: And I say now, I was gonna say in your 30s, 40s, 50s, it doesn't matter.
• 16:24
  Philip Pape: Now, starting now.
• 16:26
  Philip Pape: If you're already 70, start now.
• 16:28
  Philip Pape: If you're already 80, start now.
• 16:30
  Philip Pape: Testosterone, growth hormone, IGF 1, all of these track and they correlate with muscle mass.
• 16:36
  Philip Pape: When you let muscle go, your hormonal health spirals with it.
• 16:40
  Philip Pape: Whereas when you build and you maintain muscle, you support that hormonal environment that keeps you healthy and functional.
• 16:47
  Philip Pape: And I know there's a lot of talk about hormones today and hormone replacement therapy, but really it has to start from lifestyle.
• 16:52
  Philip Pape: I mean, the lifestyle has to be there regardless, is is is the way to think about it.
• 16:56
  Philip Pape: So this isn't just vanity, it's about remaining capable, remaining independent, remaining alive in a meaningful sense for as long as possible.
• 17:05
  Philip Pape: Lifespan, health span, and mind span.
• 17:09
  Philip Pape: Now, you know I think about this from an engineering standpoint.
• 17:11
  Philip Pape: I talk about engineering in the intro.
• 17:13
  Philip Pape: Some of you guys that are new to the podcast are like, where does engineering fall into all of this stuff about fitness?
• 17:18
  Philip Pape: I think it's a really important lens to use when we think about our body and how it ages over time.
• 17:24
  Philip Pape: For example, cardio.
• 17:25
  Philip Pape: It gives you some benefits today.
• 17:27
  Philip Pape: You burn some calories, you get some cardiovascular conditioning, but then it's done.
• 17:30
  Philip Pape: It's short term.
• 17:31
  Philip Pape: Tomorrow you have to do it again to get the same benefit, right?
• 17:34
  Philip Pape: Cardio is very short term.
• 17:35
  Philip Pape: Muscle is gonna give you benefit today, tomorrow, and the next decade once you add it.
• 17:40
  Philip Pape: That's incredible.
• 17:41
  Philip Pape: If you add 10 pounds of muscle in your 40s, that tissue continues to burn calories, support your metabolism, keep you strong for years.
• 17:48
  Philip Pape: You can kind of coast for a while and still be far better off than someone who never built it.
• 17:53
  Philip Pape: I know people who've built a lot of muscle through their lives, and just about everything they're doing is suboptimal.
• 17:58
  Philip Pape: They may even be sitting all day.
• 18:00
  Philip Pape: And still their health markers, their biomarkers, based on their blood work, are far superior than the average person their age simply because they have extra muscle.
• 18:09
  Philip Pape: And then when we work on things like walking more and a little bit of cardiovascular health on top of it, they get incredibly superior numbers without becoming an endurance athlete, right?
• 18:19
  Philip Pape: Just by a little, a little walking.
• 18:21
  Philip Pape: Now, the opposite is a pretty horrible situation.
• 18:24
  Philip Pape: If you lose 10 pounds of muscle because you're not lifting, then you're gonna spend the rest of your life fighting your body.
• 18:30
  Philip Pape: You're not gonna be able to eat as much.
• 18:32
  Philip Pape: Every time you want to do something that's physical, it's gonna get harder and harder.
• 18:36
  Philip Pape: Every time you do try to lose weight, it's gonna feel harder because you're not doing the right way and you're losing muscle.
• 18:42
  Philip Pape: Muscle compounds like interest.
• 18:44
  Philip Pape: Nothing or not lifting is like pulling money out of the stock market at age 40 and then wondering why you can't retire.
• 18:51
  Philip Pape: I always think it's a great analogy to think of muscle as like a retirement fund for your body.
• 18:56
  Philip Pape: Right?
• 18:56
  Philip Pape: That investment you make now is gonna pay dividends for decades.
• 18:59
  Philip Pape: Investment's not just financial, it's just lifting and eating the right way, et cetera.
• 19:04
  Philip Pape: Right?
• 19:05
  Philip Pape: So this is the uncomfortable truth about diet-only fat loss, which isn't even fat loss, it's just weight loss.
• 19:11
  Philip Pape: It creates more hunger, worse cravings, higher dropout rates, more weight regain, less satisfaction with your appearance.
• 19:17
  Philip Pape: When you diet without lifting, you're stripping away everything that makes the diet sustainable, believe it or not.
• 19:24
  Philip Pape: Like the lifting is almost exclusively what makes it sustainable in that it drives everything else around it, right?
• 19:31
  Philip Pape: You don't, because without it, you're not gonna have that food flexibility, you're not gonna use the nutrients in the best way, and you're gonna end up at a body weight that requires eating less and less just to maintain.
• 19:40
  Philip Pape: Whereas with strength training, you're building a buffer, you create the physique you want to maintain, it changes your relationship with the whole process, you feel progress every week, and it reframes what lifting is.
• 19:52
  Philip Pape: And when people say, Well, I don't like to lift, we've got to change that somehow.
• 19:56
  Philip Pape: We've got to change honestly, getting the result from it tends to be enough to tell somebody this is something I've got to do that's part of my identity that I want to do.
• 20:04
  Philip Pape: And so that's a good segue into the next thing, which is that some of you are thinking, you know, I'm busy, I don't have time for a routine, or I'm worried about doing too much.
• 20:13
  Philip Pape: I guess most people aren't worried about that last one necessarily, but I want to push back on all of this gently.
• 20:18
  Philip Pape: Most people listening to the show are probably undertrained, not overtrained.
• 20:22
  Philip Pape: I'm gonna repeat that.
• 20:23
  Philip Pape: Most people listening to this show are probably undertrained, not overtrained.
• 20:27
  Philip Pape: What you're actually doing is probably less than the minimum effective dose.
• 20:31
  Philip Pape: So you're worried about doing too much when you haven't even started.
• 20:33
  Philip Pape: Now, the too much might be in the form of cardio running, cardio endurance machines, but from a strength training perspective, three to four sessions a week is pretty much all it takes to preserve every ounce of muscle during fat loss.
• 20:45
  Philip Pape: Even two sessions is dramatically better than zero.
• 20:48
  Philip Pape: So the minimum effective dose to preserve muscle is actually shockingly low.
• 20:53
  Philip Pape: It's it's a quarter to an eighth of what it takes to build muscle.
• 20:57
  Philip Pape: It's pretty low.
• 20:58
  Philip Pape: So even starting there is a great place to be.
• 21:00
  Philip Pape: That's what I'm saying.
• 21:02
  Philip Pape: Better than zero infinitely.
• 21:04
  Philip Pape: So that's 45 minutes to an hour, three or four times a week.
• 21:07
  Philip Pape: You probably spend more time than that scrolling, doom scrolling, watching TV, Netflix, right?
• 21:11
  Philip Pape: The barrier for most people is not time.
• 21:13
  Philip Pape: I know if you're a busy mom, single mom, you've got kids, still, I found that there are plenty of other things that are far less effective than strength training that you're doing that takes a lot of time that can be supplanted by this wonderful thing of lifting weights.
• 21:27
  Philip Pape: And a home gym can be a really helpful thing for that for a lot of you.
• 21:31
  Philip Pape: It should be the priority because once you understand what's at stake, the priority itself becomes obvious.
• 21:35
  Philip Pape: And I hope today's episode is helping you frame that, right?
• 21:38
  Philip Pape: What message are you sending your body?
• 21:40
  Philip Pape: Without lifting, you're sending the message that your muscle is expensive and apparently I don't need it.
• 21:45
  Philip Pape: Let's dump it, let's hold on to the fat.
• 21:47
  Philip Pape: You're getting fatter.
• 21:48
  Philip Pape: When you lift, the message changes.
• 21:50
  Philip Pape: This muscle is important.
• 21:51
  Philip Pape: It's necessary for my survival, it's essential.
• 21:54
  Philip Pape: And when I need extra energy, I'm gonna pull from fat instead.
• 21:57
  Philip Pape: You're telling your body what to do and keep and how to reshape itself through your actions.
• 22:02
  Philip Pape: So that's the game.
• 22:03
  Philip Pape: Resistance training is the signal, it's communication with your own physiology.
• 22:06
  Philip Pape: And if you're not sending that during fat loss or really any time, your body's gonna make the wrong choice, or it's gonna make the natural choice, the one that you don't want.
• 22:14
  Philip Pape: All right, I have one more angle today, and this one is psychological.
• 22:18
  Philip Pape: When you show up in the gym, let's say three days a week, you start to see yourself differently.
• 22:24
  Philip Pape: You're not just someone on a diet, you are someone who trains.
• 22:28
  Philip Pape: You're an athlete, or at least you're becoming an athlete.
• 22:32
  Philip Pape: That identity shift is what changes everything else outside the gym.
• 22:36
  Philip Pape: You make better food choices because guess what?
• 22:39
  Philip Pape: Athletes fuel their training.
• 22:40
  Philip Pape: You prioritize sleep because athletes recover.
• 22:43
  Philip Pape: You think long term because athletes build over years, not weeks.
• 22:47
  Philip Pape: Whereas not lifting weights totally removes that anchor from your life.
• 22:51
  Philip Pape: Without the gym, you're now relying just on willpower, on restriction, on low-carb diets, on fasting, on all the gimmicks, all the supplements, all the things that are shortcuts.
• 23:02
  Philip Pape: And then willpower, of course, is gonna run out.
• 23:04
  Philip Pape: Restriction is gonna create all sorts of backlash that you're not gonna like.
• 23:08
  Philip Pape: Whereas with that training, with the gym, you have a practice, a ritual.
• 23:12
  Philip Pape: I will say it's a habit, but not really.
• 23:14
  Philip Pape: A habit is something automatic automatic.
• 23:16
  Philip Pape: This is more part of your identity, an identity-based set of behaviors which stick.
• 23:23
  Philip Pape: They're very sticky.
• 23:24
  Philip Pape: All right, they stick a lot longer than something that's goal-based or outcome-based.
• 23:29
  Philip Pape: This is process-based, identity-based.
• 23:31
  Philip Pape: And I see this again and again.
• 23:33
  Philip Pape: Those who lift consistently are not just getting the physical result.
• 23:37
  Philip Pape: They're transforming their self-concept, right?
• 23:40
  Philip Pape: And that and that is what makes the results last.
• 23:42
  Philip Pape: And by the way, in my app fitness lab, I worked really hard to incorporate this idea of identity transformation from day one.
• 23:49
  Philip Pape: After you onboard and start within a day or two, you're gonna get an activity that helps you develop the vision of your future.
• 23:56
  Philip Pape: Very simple.
• 23:57
  Philip Pape: A few simple prompts.
• 23:58
  Philip Pape: And the app is gonna use that to reinforce this meaningful drive that you have for your identity, which is a really cool part of the process.
• 24:06
  Philip Pape: All right, I'm gonna close with this.
• 24:09
  Philip Pape: After about the age of 35, things change, don't they?
• 24:12
  Philip Pape: Right?
• 24:13
  Philip Pape: Anabolic resistance increases, which means you need more protein.
• 24:17
  Philip Pape: Muscle protein synthesis slows down, recovery definitely becomes more important.
• 24:21
  Philip Pape: You know, your connective tissue is a little bit less pliable, life is a little bit more stressful, neat tends to drop, hormones start to shift in your 30s and 40s, don't they?
• 24:31
  Philip Pape: And lifting weights is the antidote to every single one of these, at least partially, if not completely.
• 24:40
  Philip Pape: It's not that you're getting older, it's that your training has to match the physiology of aging.
• 24:46
  Philip Pape: You might need more deliberate stimulus and more intention to build and maintain muscle.
• 24:50
  Philip Pape: You might need more attention to recovery and your protein.
• 24:55
  Philip Pape: You might need a system that works a little more subtly with nuance for your body, which means you have to have a feedback loop.
• 25:01
  Philip Pape: All of the things we talk about on the show, that's what the engineering side is.
• 25:04
  Philip Pape: The good news is that it works.
• 25:07
  Philip Pape: People in their 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s can still build muscle.
• 25:11
  Philip Pape: You can still get stronger, you can still transform your body composition.
• 25:14
  Philip Pape: The research is quite clear on this at this point.
• 25:17
  Philip Pape: But this is the big butt.
• 25:19
  Philip Pape: It doesn't happen by accident, right?
• 25:21
  Philip Pape: It only happens because you show up and you lift weights and you send the body the signal that muscle actually matters.
• 25:29
  Philip Pape: So the conclusion, of course, is lifting is not optional.
• 25:33
  Philip Pape: It is the infrastructure that makes everything else work.
• 25:37
  Philip Pape: So here are your actions from today.
• 25:39
  Philip Pape: First, if you're not lifting at all, just start with two sessions a week, which is dramatically better than zero.
• 25:46
  Philip Pape: I would encourage you to have three sessions.
• 25:49
  Philip Pape: But if two is the bare minimum that you could possibly get and you're gonna just utterly fail trying to go in for three, start with two.
• 25:56
  Philip Pape: Second, if you're already lifting, making make it make sure that you're training, I'll say hard enough.
• 26:02
  Philip Pape: And that's a whole topic.
• 26:03
  Philip Pape: I've done multiple episodes on this, but basically it's getting within a few reps shy of failure so that you get the appropriate mechanical tension and that you're going up in weighted reps each week to stay in that regime so you actually build the muscle.
• 26:17
  Philip Pape: Third, I want you to prioritize protein.
• 26:19
  Philip Pape: Your muscles need the materials that you get from protein.
• 26:22
  Philip Pape: So you've got to have that to go along with your training, aiming for 0.7 to one gram per pound of body weight.
• 26:27
  Philip Pape: Fourth, progressive overload.
• 26:29
  Philip Pape: I kind of alluded to this already in my training hard enough.
• 26:32
  Philip Pape: But not only do you have to train hard enough, you have to lift a little bit more over time to be able to train hard enough, or else it'll start getting easy and you'll stop making progress.
• 26:41
  Philip Pape: That's the adaptation that your body gets.
• 26:43
  Philip Pape: And then fifth and finally, be consistent.
• 26:46
  Philip Pape: And so this is the identity-based behavior change.
• 26:49
  Philip Pape: This is where uh something like a system or an app or program that keeps you consistent can be helpful.
• 26:56
  Philip Pape: Speaking of, if you want personalized guidance that adapts to your training and goals, helps you create the identity, helps you create those behaviors through daily activities, and has a coach built in in your pocket who can answer all your questions, check out the fitness lab app at witsandweights.com slash app.
• 27:17
  Philip Pape: This is like a coaching intelligence layer that I built based on my years of coaching and my content and the podcasts to help you navigate exactly what we talked about today.
• 27:27
  Philip Pape: How to structure your training, your nutrition, your phases over time.
• 27:31
  Philip Pape: It gives you personalized recommendations, it adapts every day.
• 27:34
  Philip Pape: If you're having trouble in some area of your life, it will notice that and it will start adapting the activities for that.
• 27:40
  Philip Pape: And that is how it helps build the behaviors without replacing whatever other tools you already use.
• 27:46
  Philip Pape: It complements other tools quite well.
• 27:48
  Philip Pape: So Fitness Lab is great whether you're starting out or you've been at this for years, whether you need a workout program or are following your own, whether you're tracking your own food or want the app to do it for you.
• 27:59
  Philip Pape: It helps you make those smart decisions faster.
• 28:02
  Philip Pape: Go to wits and weights.com slash app or click the link in the show notes.
• 28:05
  Philip Pape: That is Fitness Lab, witsandweights.com slash app.
• 28:09
  Philip Pape: All right, until next time, keep using your wits, lifting those weights.
• 28:12
  Philip Pape: And remember, your body is capable of incredible things, but it needs that signal of lifting weights to do it.
• 28:19
  Philip Pape: Send that signal by showing up in the gym and getting your training done.
• 28:23
  Philip Pape: I'm Philip Bates, and I'll talk to you next time here on the Wits and Weights Podcast.