Latest / Wits & Weights | Strength & Fat Loss Over 40 / 7 Sleep Quality Metrics You NEED to Track for Faster Gains and Fat Loss (Root Cause Analysis) | Ep 243

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7 Sleep Quality Metrics You NEED to Track for Faster Gains and Fat Loss (Root Cause Analysis) | Ep 243 · Wits & Weights | Strength & Fat Loss Over 40

• 0:01
  Philip Pape: Let's say you just got seven or eight hours of sleep, but you're waking up exhausted, or the numbers on your wearable just don't make sense.
• 0:09
  Philip Pape: Your sleep efficiency looks good, but your energy levels tell a different story.
• 0:13
  Philip Pape: And maybe you're tracking a bunch of metrics, maybe you're not and you're following all the standard advice and the hacks blue light, caffeine, no screen time but something still isn't working with your sleep.
• 0:24
  Philip Pape: Today we're going to get into this what sleep metrics actually matter, what they mean for your recovery and performance, and how to use an engineering approach to identify and fix the real issues disrupting your sleep.
• 0:35
  Philip Pape: Welcome to Wits and Weights, the show that blends evidence and engineering to help you build smart, efficient systems to achieve your dream physique.
• 0:53
  Philip Pape: I'm your host, philip Pape.
• 0:55
  Philip Pape: Today we're talking about sleep quality.
• 0:57
  Philip Pape: Measuring sleep quality is not as simple as just looking at the total hours or a single score on, say, your Oura ring or your Fitbit or other wearable.
• 1:10
  Philip Pape: When these numbers don't match how we feel, that is when we need a different way, a systematic way to decode what's really happening during those hours in bed.
• 1:18
  Philip Pape: And that's exactly what we're covering in today's episode First, the key metrics that actually matter for measuring sleep quality and then how to use root cause analysis to fix any issues we uncover.
• 1:30
  Philip Pape: Now I want to give a shout out to Aubrey, who is in our group coaching program.
• 1:34
  Philip Pape: She gave us the idea for this topic.
• 1:37
  Philip Pape: I think it is a very critical topic because we all have wearables many of us do and we track all these metrics and it can be confusing and we're like, hey, I'm getting this much deep sleep.
• 1:46
  Philip Pape: What does that mean?
• 1:47
  Philip Pape: What should I be aiming for and how do I link it to how I feel so that I can perform better?
• 1:52
  Philip Pape: And for those of us who want to be lifting and building muscle, we want to be recovered.
• 1:57
  Philip Pape: That can be even more critical.
• 1:59
  Philip Pape: Now, before we dive into this, if you enjoy this show, if you want more content that brings this engineering, this systematic mindset, this data-based way of thinking that allows you to really unlock what's going on with your body, hit the follow button just so you get notified of the next episode, and it will help others find the show as well and ensures that you just won't miss another episode like this.
• 2:21
  Philip Pape: All right, let's talk about what we are measuring when it comes to sleep quality.
• 2:25
  Philip Pape: You've probably seen dozens of metrics on your wearable device.
• 2:30
  Philip Pape: They're all a little bit different, they all have different levels of accuracy, and what I want to do today is just distill it down to the seven metrics that matter most, and I'm going to give you a target for them.
• 2:42
  Philip Pape: So this is a very prescriptive episode.
• 2:44
  Philip Pape: The first metric is total sleep time.
• 2:47
  Philip Pape: Now, this is the baseline.
• 2:49
  Philip Pape: This is where you want to get that seven to nine hours of sleep and the thing is, this number doesn't really mean anything without context, and what I mean is you could get consistently six and a half hours of sleep but be pretty refreshed, or you could be getting a very a half hours of sleep but be pretty refreshed, or you could be getting a very restless eight hours of sleep.
• 3:09
  Philip Pape: However, if you are getting far fewer than this range so if you're getting six or less on a regular basis then that could be a problem regardless.
• 3:18
  Philip Pape: In other words, forget about the rest of the metrics until you fix that, even though those other metrics can help.
• 3:24
  Philip Pape: You really have the low-hanging fruit to go after here, which is hours per sleep.
• 3:28
  Philip Pape: I mean hours, excuse me, hours per night.
• 3:34
  Philip Pape: Now, I know many of us.
• 3:35
  Philip Pape: It's very difficult to achieve eight or nine hours, unless your schedule allows for it, or you're retired or some situation like that.
• 3:38
  Philip Pape: But everyone has kind of that sweet spot where they know that it's just too restricted in their sleep and others, you know, six and a half, seven hours, maybe more than enough.
• 3:48
  Philip Pape: It always helps to experiment with more.
• 3:50
  Philip Pape: So anyway, let's start.
• 3:52
  Philip Pape: There's the baseline getting enough sleep.
• 3:53
  Philip Pape: I think you knew that, but it's one of the seven metrics, all right, metrics.
• 3:58
  Philip Pape: Metric number two is sleep efficiency.
• 4:01
  Philip Pape: This is the percentage of time in bed that you actually sleep.
• 4:05
  Philip Pape: And so think about, from the moment you lay down, put your head on the pillow assuming you're done, you know, doing something active, like reading a book, something like that and then up until the time you wake up and get out of bed.
• 4:17
  Philip Pape: We want 85% of that time to be actually sleeping right.
• 4:22
  Philip Pape: Think of this, like your, you know your workout efficiency right.
• 4:25
  Philip Pape: Are you spending your gym time training or are you scrolling on your phone?
• 4:28
  Philip Pape: So I'm a big fan of efficiency and I think you are.
• 4:31
  Philip Pape: So are you actually sleeping?
• 4:33
  Philip Pape: And that is gonna be another indicator of are you actually making the most of the time in bed?
• 4:38
  Philip Pape: Are you setting yourself up for success ahead of time outside the bedroom, before you get in to give you that high level of efficiency?
• 4:45
  Philip Pape: All right.
• 4:47
  Philip Pape: Metric number three is sleep latency.
• 4:50
  Philip Pape: This is how long it takes to fall asleep, and ideally this is under 20 minutes, under 20 minutes.
• 4:58
  Philip Pape: Now, I know personally it takes me about five, 10 minutes to fall asleep.
• 5:01
  Philip Pape: Whether that's good or not for an individual, it depends, obviously, if you're just crashing because you're so exhausted day after day, that's a different thing.
• 5:10
  Philip Pape: But conversely, if you have insomnia or you're being kept awake for whatever reason, that is your first clue that something might be off with your sleep system.
• 5:18
  Philip Pape: All right, sleep latency under 20 minutes.
• 5:21
  Philip Pape: The fourth metric is wake after sleep onset or WASO.
• 5:26
  Philip Pape: I don't know if people pronounce that, but wake after sleep onset is the total time that you spend awake after you initially fall asleep.
• 5:36
  Philip Pape: Let me repeat that again it's the time, it's the awake time throughout the night after you've initially fallen asleep.
• 5:43
  Philip Pape: And if you have like an aura ring or another wearable that shows you a little graph throughout the night with the different types of sleep and you'll see at the very top usually is higher number than that reveals that you have something stressing you out that keeps waking you up.
• 5:55
  Philip Pape: You know, as long as it's not your spouse kicking you and waking you up and it's internal to you.
• 6:13
  Philip Pape: That's what it reveals.
• 6:15
  Philip Pape: All right, let's continue with the fifth metric, which is deep sleep duration.
• 6:20
  Philip Pape: Now, this is where the magic happens for recovery physical recovery, cognitive recovery or no, pardon me, that's physical recovery.
• 6:30
  Philip Pape: The next one is cognitive, physical recovery.
• 6:33
  Philip Pape: That's deep sleep, which you know, for those of us lifting, where we have lots of stress on our muscular system during the day, we really want that and we want to target 15 to 20% of total sleep time.
• 6:45
  Philip Pape: So you notice a pattern here 20, 20, 20.
• 6:47
  Philip Pape: It's kind of a good number to remember.
• 6:49
  Philip Pape: We want at least 15 to 20%.
• 6:52
  Philip Pape: Sometimes, when you look at deep sleep on your graph and you see, oh, I slept eight hours and and an hour and a half or two hours was deep sleep, you might think, oh, that doesn't seem very much.
• 7:02
  Philip Pape: Is that okay?
• 7:02
  Philip Pape: Yeah, it's okay, it's totally normal to be.
• 7:04
  Philip Pape: If you're at least 15%, it's probably okay.
• 7:08
  Philip Pape: If you're not hitting that number, then your training recovery is gonna be compromised.
• 7:12
  Philip Pape: And that's where, like with my clients when they submit their biofeedback to me, and their recovery and soreness is higher than it should be given, than it should be given all the other variables, given their food and everything else.
• 7:22
  Philip Pape: We look at sleep quality and even if they're getting enough sleep, there could be a sleep quality issue preventing deep sleep.
• 7:28
  Philip Pape: The sixth metric, number six, is REM sleep duration.
• 7:33
  Philip Pape: Now this is for mental recovery and again, here's a little bit higher.
• 7:38
  Philip Pape: We want to aim for 20 to 25%, but again, the magic number 20 is a nice theme here, right?
• 7:44
  Philip Pape: Deep sleep is 15 to 20.
• 7:46
  Philip Pape: Rem sleep is 20 to 25% of your total sleep time.
• 7:49
  Philip Pape: So REM should be a little bit longer than deep sleep.
• 7:52
  Philip Pape: And this directly impacts your focus in your decision-making, which again translates to everything you do, including your training.
• 8:00
  Philip Pape: But also you know how emotionally susceptible you might be to decision fatigue, with your diet, for example.
• 8:08
  Philip Pape: So if you're worried about cravings and over-consuming food, oftentimes a lack of sleep and low sleep quality is what leads to these higher cravings, a very well-established link in the literature.
• 8:21
  Philip Pape: And then the final metric and you're probably thinking is Philip going to mention this as a metric is sleep consistency, and I think this is the most important in a way, assuming you have your bases covered, like the hours of sleep, I think consistency, the variation in your sleep and wake times or the lack thereof, right, the very low variation where you are going to bed and waking up within about the same 30 minute window every single day, including weekends.
• 8:51
  Philip Pape: This might be the most underrated metric of all, and you can extrapolate that idea to anything you're doing related to your body.
• 9:00
  Philip Pape: It has to do with our rhythms, circadian rhythms, ultradian rhythms, the idea that the body relaxes and responds very well homeostatically and metabolically to consistency consistent eating patterns and eating windows, consistent amounts of food, consistent training, consistent moving and, of course, consistent sleep.
• 9:19
  Philip Pape: All right Now.
• 9:21
  Philip Pape: And, of course, consistent sleep, all right Now.
• 9:26
  Philip Pape: This is where most sleep advice stops right, like you've got your numbers, you know your targets, but then what do you actually do when they're not where they should be?
• 9:31
  Philip Pape: And I think with wearables, that's the trap that we get into.
• 9:34
  Philip Pape: I have an aura ring and I love looking at the data, but then it's like what do you do with it?
• 9:38
  Philip Pape: Same thing with our training, with our nutrition.
• 9:40
  Philip Pape: It's great to track.
• 9:42
  Philip Pape: I highly encourage tracking, but oftentimes people say, well, I tracked my calories and I didn't lose weight.
• 9:47
  Philip Pape: Well, tracking doesn't do that for you.
• 9:49
  Philip Pape: Tracking just gives you the information to be informed from which you can make decisions and for sleep.
• 9:55
  Philip Pape: This is where root cause analysis comes in, which is the engineering framework I am linking with in this episode.
• 10:02
  Philip Pape: So root cause analysis kind of what it sounds like, right, it's a method engineers use to dig beneath the surface level symptoms and find the true, the root source, the root cause of the problem.
• 10:17
  Philip Pape: Right, not just the surface thing that you put a bandaid on, but the actual root cause.
• 10:22
  Philip Pape: It's kind of like when we have pain in our joints and you think that it's because you're doing a specific lift, but in reality it's some other lifestyle modification or movement pattern you're doing that's leading down the chain to that problem.
• 10:36
  Philip Pape: Okay, so let's apply root cause analysis to your sleep quality.
• 10:41
  Philip Pape: So step one is finding your specific problem using the metrics that we just discussed, the seven metrics.
• 10:46
  Philip Pape: Don't just say, oh, I sleep badly or I have poor sleep.
• 10:49
  Philip Pape: We need to identify exactly which ones are off target.
• 10:52
  Philip Pape: Maybe your sleep efficiency is low, maybe your deep sleep percentage is below 15%, it's, you know, 10% or very low.
• 10:59
  Philip Pape: So that's step one, of course, is just identifying the information and which ones are an issue.
• 11:04
  Philip Pape: Step two is using what engineers call the five wise technique, and I think I did an episode specifically on this in the past, but it's a very common framework I use with myself and with clients all the time, and you can use it any day, for any issue, and it's super effective.
• 11:21
  Philip Pape: Okay, and here's how it goes.
• 11:22
  Philip Pape: Let's say that your sleep efficiency is only 75%, right, instead of 80.
• 11:28
  Philip Pape: What's the target for that?
• 11:31
  Philip Pape: 85%?
• 11:33
  Philip Pape: I'm going crazy here.
• 11:34
  Philip Pape: So let's say it's only 75%.
• 11:36
  Philip Pape: So you would ask yourself a why?
• 11:38
  Philip Pape: Question.
• 11:39
  Philip Pape: Why is my sleep efficiency low?
• 11:41
  Philip Pape: Because I'm spending too much time awake in bed.
• 11:43
  Philip Pape: Why is my sleep efficiency low Because I'm spending too much time awake in bed?
• 11:45
  Philip Pape: Why am I awake so much?
• 11:46
  Philip Pape: Because I keep waking up through the night.
• 11:48
  Philip Pape: Why do I keep waking up?
• 11:49
  Philip Pape: Because my mind starts racing when I do.
• 11:52
  Philip Pape: Why does my mind race?
• 11:54
  Philip Pape: Because I'm worried about work deadlines.
• 11:57
  Philip Pape: Why am I worried about deadlines?
• 11:58
  Philip Pape: Because I'm not setting clear boundaries with my time, and so you can keep asking why it doesn't have to just be five, you can go three or you can go eight, whatever gets you to the root cause.
• 12:09
  Philip Pape: And notice what happened there.
• 12:11
  Philip Pape: We started with a sleep metric.
• 12:13
  Philip Pape: Right, our sleep efficiency is low.
• 12:15
  Philip Pape: Okay, that's not the problem.
• 12:16
  Philip Pape: The problem is a lifestyle factor that we need to address, related to setting boundaries with your time, better time management, whatever it is, and with fitness and nutrition.
• 12:26
  Philip Pape: We often find that's the case Like it has nothing to do with the fitness and nutrition.
• 12:29
  Philip Pape: I mean almost never.
• 12:32
  Philip Pape: I just talked to a new client yesterday.
• 12:34
  Philip Pape: We did our onboarding call and immediately two or three of these types of problems or challenges came up, such as, you know, skipping workouts, and so I asked why, well, sometimes I run out of time.
• 12:48
  Philip Pape: Well, why?
• 12:48
  Philip Pape: Well, I try to go in the afternoon and then work gets late.
• 12:51
  Philip Pape: Why, why, why.
• 12:52
  Philip Pape: And so it came down to why don't we just work out of the morning, right?
• 12:55
  Philip Pape: Or why don't we work out three days instead of four?
• 12:57
  Philip Pape: You know, you can get down to the real thing so that you no longer have the excuse, and it might reveal connections that you might never have considered right.
• 13:07
  Philip Pape: Another one she came up with was meal planning.
• 13:08
  Philip Pape: She says I don't have time for meal prep.
• 13:11
  Philip Pape: I said why, well, meal prep takes like four hours.
• 13:13
  Philip Pape: Well, why?
• 13:14
  Philip Pape: Well, I'm trying to make all these fancy recipes and, you know, prepackage them.
• 13:18
  Philip Pape: Oh, okay, so then we can get to the root cause of hey, how about you just get a family package of chicken breasts and a giant thing of green beans and cook them in like half an hour on a Sunday, and then you have your lunch for the whole week.
• 13:31
  Philip Pape: By the way, do you like eating the same thing every day?
• 13:33
  Philip Pape: Oh yeah, no problem.
• 13:34
  Philip Pape: Great, perfect solution for you, right?
• 13:36
  Philip Pape: Okay?
• 13:37
  Philip Pape: So that's step two is doing the five why technique to get at the root cause.
• 13:42
  Philip Pape: And so that's step two is doing the 5-Y technique to get at the root cause.
• 13:44
  Philip Pape: And then step three is creating the solution tree.
• 13:45
  Philip Pape: So you're going to map out the connections from your root cause, because it could be multiple, all right, so it could be multiple.
• 13:51
  Philip Pape: So you're doing your 5-Y and then you're doing it a few more times and then you can identify the easiest place to make a change, right?
• 14:03
  Philip Pape: So in the example I gave you, setting better work boundaries might have a bigger impact on sleep than taking another supplement, right?
• 14:07
  Philip Pape: Like I just need melatonin, or buying a better mattress or wearing a sleep mask.
• 14:11
  Philip Pape: Like there's, you know, uh, different connections where you can make changes, and some changes for you will be more low hanging fruit than others, and then it could be something else for someone else.
• 14:22
  Philip Pape: And then the last step, of course, is test it out and verify that the change actually helps.
• 14:26
  Philip Pape: If you make one change at a time and then you track guess what?
• 14:29
  Philip Pape: The exact same metrics we just talked about, which you're already tracking, you'll see the difference.
• 14:33
  Philip Pape: You'll see the difference and I can give you a couple simple examples for me.
• 14:37
  Philip Pape: Right, if I drink alcohol, I know my HRV is going to be off, my resting heart rate is going to be high, my resilience score goes down and I don't feel as well rested.
• 14:46
  Philip Pape: It all links together.
• 14:47
  Philip Pape: It all links together.
• 14:48
  Philip Pape: If I don't wear a sleep mask, sometimes my sleep quality is lower because of all the blue light leaking in from, like our night lights and other lights in the house.
• 14:57
  Philip Pape: And you just start to make these connections.
• 15:04
  Philip Pape: Now here's something fascinating that I've noticed working with clients the solution to poor sleep often has nothing to do with sleep itself.
• 15:08
  Philip Pape: Right, I think I've kind of alluded to this a couple of times with my other examples I had.
• 15:13
  Philip Pape: I had a client whose sleep percentage was really low, like consistently low, and we just did this simple why technique, the five whys, and we discovered, okay, he's training close, too close to bedtime.
• 15:25
  Philip Pape: I had just assumed he was training around four because he had been training in the afternoon, but it was actually getting closer and closer to bedtime and then his core temperature was going up.
• 15:34
  Philip Pape: His cortisol was, you know, getting thrown off.
• 15:36
  Philip Pape: And again, this is not a cortisol is a root of all problems, issue whatsoever.
• 15:40
  Philip Pape: Cortisol is just a downstream indicator of stuff.
• 15:43
  Philip Pape: Um, and so again, guess what?
• 15:46
  Philip Pape: We moved his workouts to the mornings.
• 15:47
  Philip Pape: It instantly improved his sleep metrics.
• 15:49
  Philip Pape: By the way, that is one of my favorite hacks to train in the morning.
• 15:52
  Philip Pape: Don't tell me that you're not a morning person.
• 15:54
  Philip Pape: Think about it and and see if it.
• 15:56
  Philip Pape: Try it out.
• 15:57
  Philip Pape: That's what I would say.
• 15:58
  Philip Pape: Try it out because it has so many benefits.
• 16:00
  Philip Pape: It allows you to manage your time because you get it out of the way.
• 16:03
  Philip Pape: Now your time is yours for the rest of the day.
• 16:06
  Philip Pape: It's gives you a big energy boost in the morning.
• 16:08
  Philip Pape: It actually helps with your stress and your cortisol throughout the day by taking care of that active, pent up energy in the morning.
• 16:14
  Philip Pape: Um, you sleep better when you train early in the day, and then it's often easier to manage your diet because now you've already accounted for the training window and now the rest of the day kind of falls in line.
• 16:25
  Philip Pape: It's predictable, right.
• 16:26
  Philip Pape: So there's a lot of benefits.
• 16:27
  Philip Pape: Okay, that was a side of a side thing, but I think it is one important way to potentially improve sleep for a lot of people.
• 16:33
  Philip Pape: So you probably know that I love combining these precise measurements with systematic problem solving.
• 16:40
  Philip Pape: The numbers tell us what's happening, but the engineering approach shows us why, and then that is where the solutions emerge.
• 16:48
  Philip Pape: All right.
• 16:50
  Philip Pape: So measuring sleep quality, it's not just collecting data for its own sake.
• 16:52
  Philip Pape: Right, we want to use the data in an intelligent way to improve your recovery, your performance, your health, your cravings, your fat loss, your muscle building, all of that fun stuff.
• 17:00
  Philip Pape: And if you combine those any metrics, really, you can apply this to your food tracking, to your biofeedback, to your lifting progress.
• 17:09
  Philip Pape: You combine it with simple root cause analysis, like we talked about here.
• 17:13
  Philip Pape: I literally gave you the whole framework, the five why technique.
• 17:15
  Philip Pape: It's not that hard.
• 17:16
  Philip Pape: You can, number one, know exactly which aspects of the thing in this case sleep need attention.
• 17:22
  Philip Pape: Number two, you could identify the true source of any issues.
• 17:25
  Philip Pape: And then, number three, make targeted changes and at the end of the day, you are in control.
• 17:29
  Philip Pape: It is fully under your control to improve your sleep, and it's not just following like the list of hacks.
• 17:35
  Philip Pape: Here's 10 hacks to improve your sleep.
• 17:37
  Philip Pape: It's not that.
• 17:37
  Philip Pape: It's understanding your personal sleep patterns and then systematically optimizing them.
• 17:42
  Philip Pape: All right again, if you enjoyed today's episode, if you want more of this type of content, please hit the follow button.
• 17:47
  Philip Pape: Support me by doing that.
• 17:49
  Philip Pape: That would be amazing.
• 17:50
  Philip Pape: I get to see how many followers we have and then it helps others find the show.
• 17:53
  Philip Pape: It helps with the algorithm and you can reach more people who can benefit from these things and also share this episode with anybody you feel is struggling with sleep.
• 18:02
  Philip Pape: Save, bookmark, add it to a playlist, whatever, so that you get it in the future, because I think the information here is among the most valuable that I've ever shared when it comes to sleep and will help you tremendously in one of the things that will unlock tons of recovery and gains in the gym and success with your diet.
• 18:20
  Philip Pape: All right until next time, keep using those wits, lifting some weights and remember, sometimes the best solution is hiding in your own data just waiting to be discovered.
• 18:30
  Philip Pape: I'll talk to you next time here on the Wits and Weights Podcast.