Latest / Wits & Weights | Strength & Fat Loss Over 40 / The 12-Month Fat Loss and Muscle Gain Blueprint for Your Best Physique in 2025 | Ep 260

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The 12-Month Fat Loss and Muscle Gain Blueprint for Your Best Physique in 2025 | Ep 260 · Wits & Weights | Strength & Fat Loss Over 40

• 0:01
  Philip Pape: If you're tired of jumping from one fitness phase to another without a real plan, bulking for a few months, cutting for a few weeks, never quite getting the results you want, this episode is for you.
• 0:11
  Philip Pape: What if I told you there's a strategic way to plan your entire year to finally achieve that physique you've been chasing?
• 0:18
  Philip Pape: Today, I'm sharing my complete periodization blueprint for 2025 or any 12-month period that will help you build muscle and lose fat more effectively than random approaches.
• 0:29
  Philip Pape: Whether you're looking to get leaner or add serious muscle, or completely transform your physique, this episode will give you the exact roadmap to make 2025 your best year yet.
• 0:41
  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.
• 0:53
  Philip Pape: I'm your host, philip Pape, and today is my end of year gift to you as we head into a new year, 2025, a strategic periodized plan for building your best physique over a 12-month period.
• 1:06
  Philip Pape: Now, how about, instead of jumping straight into a diet or even an intentionally designed but aggressive fat loss phase in January, like everyone else, what if you took a more calculated approach, one that will make future fat loss even easier, that works with your body's natural rhythms and the seasons, builds lasting habits and systems and creates sustainable results.
• 1:30
  Philip Pape: That's exactly what you're getting today, and if that's not what you're looking for, this is not the episode for you.
• 1:35
  Philip Pape: And to get a head start on the fat loss phase which, if you follow my plan, will start in about eight weeks from the start of this plan, I've created something pretty unique.
• 1:46
  Philip Pape: It is my new Precision Fat Loss Guide that acts as a decoder ring where you pick and choose your goals, lifestyle and personal tendencies to pick the best of among six core fat loss strategies.
• 1:59
  Philip Pape: To get your free copy of the Precision Fat Loss Guide and get a head start on that, click the link in my show notes or go to winstonweightscom and click free stuff.
• 2:08
  Philip Pape: All right, let's start building the mental muscles so we can have better physical muscle and, overall, better lean physique over the next 12 months.
• 2:18
  Philip Pape: What we're going to cover today is five phases to map out for the next 12 months.
• 2:23
  Philip Pape: The first phase is going to be body recomp, and this is January to February.
• 2:29
  Philip Pape: Now again, if you're starting this in the middle of the year or some other time, it's fine.
• 2:32
  Philip Pape: This is just hypothetical.
• 2:34
  Philip Pape: January through February body recomp.
• 2:36
  Philip Pape: Phase two is going to be precision fat loss.
• 2:39
  Philip Pape: So that'll be March through May.
• 2:41
  Philip Pape: And then phase three is your beach ready maintenance and that is in June, followed by an anabolic muscle building phase from July all the way to December.
• 2:53
  Philip Pape: And then and I know I'm cheating a little bit we're going to do a mini cut shred January to February, the following year.
• 2:59
  Philip Pape: Now it's a little bit more than 12 months, but the reason I'm doing that is most of you are going to want to build muscle all the way through the holidays.
• 3:05
  Philip Pape: You can obviously cut that phase a little bit shorter if you need to or want to to fit in the shred earlier, but most people aren't going to care.
• 3:14
  Philip Pape: You want to go all the way through, say, christmas, the New Year's, and that's what it's going to look like.
• 3:18
  Philip Pape: A lot of this is flexible.
• 3:20
  Philip Pape: We're going to dive into each phase and understand how they work together to create a solid physique and really give you a strategy that you can then rinse and repeat for the rest of your life.
• 3:29
  Philip Pape: If you want Phase one body recomp this is an eight-week phase Now.
• 3:35
  Philip Pape: It can be six, it can be 12.
• 3:37
  Philip Pape: With my clients it ranges from six to 10 usually.
• 3:40
  Philip Pape: So an eight-week phase to create the foundation of your habits, while also improving your body composition.
• 3:48
  Philip Pape: Now I know what you're thinking.
• 3:49
  Philip Pape: Why aren't we just starting with fat loss right away?
• 3:51
  Philip Pape: I got to lose the weight.
• 3:52
  Philip Pape: I got to lose the fat A super common request.
• 3:56
  Philip Pape: Here's the thing Without the system, without the habits in place, any progress you make later will be temporary.
• 4:04
  Philip Pape: It's going to go back to the way it was before.
• 4:06
  Philip Pape: You're going to repeat the cycle that you've repeated in the past over and over again.
• 4:09
  Philip Pape: We don't want to do that.
• 4:10
  Philip Pape: So the philosophy here is simple Start where you are, not where you think you should be, and then focus on fundamentals.
• 4:19
  Philip Pape: Focus on those habits, not little hacks and extreme approaches, just the fundamentals.
• 4:24
  Philip Pape: For some of you, that's going to be quite a bit of behavior change over that eight weeks, and for others it's going to be much smaller.
• 4:30
  Philip Pape: Regardless, we're going to take a tiny habits approach to get there and you're going to start where you're at.
• 4:36
  Philip Pape: Consistency is going to carry you through forever.
• 4:40
  Philip Pape: It's going to beat perfection all or nothing any day of the week, and it'll give you the power that you need to do this yourself.
• 4:46
  Philip Pape: So we're talking about nailing the basics protein at every meal, hitting your fiber intake, staying hydrated, things that sound boring and not exciting at all.
• 4:55
  Philip Pape: Training, training consistently, three, four days a week, whatever makes sense.
• 4:59
  Philip Pape: These, however, are the bedrock of body recomposition and then, ultimately, body composition in general.
• 5:07
  Philip Pape: Second, we are going to take advantage of your potential for recomp while setting these things up.
• 5:13
  Philip Pape: So, unless you're going to jump right into a muscle building phase which is your right and an option you can just skip this and the fat loss phase and go right into muscle building.
• 5:21
  Philip Pape: I know a lot of you are looking to shed some excess fat first, get a little bit leaner and then build muscle.
• 5:26
  Philip Pape: So that's what we're talking about.
• 5:28
  Philip Pape: So we want to take advantage of your potential to build muscle and lose fat at the same time, initially without trying to diet, without trying to build muscle, but while setting up these systems, because at maintenance calories, eating the same amount of calories that you burn, so the scale weight doesn't change beginners and intermediates can actually burn fat and build muscle at the same time.
• 5:52
  Philip Pape: Now, if you're super advanced, it's going to take a lot longer to do that, but in this case you are primed for it, even advanced lifters.
• 5:58
  Philip Pape: They can tighten up and improve some definition through very meticulous consistency, but we're going for body recomp and we're going for building systems.
• 6:06
  Philip Pape: The third benefit, I guess, of this phase is we are going to track.
• 6:13
  Philip Pape: We're going to track all the things we want to track, but we're going to make it as low stress as possible.
• 6:17
  Philip Pape: And you might say, well, that's kind of contraindicated, because tracking itself is stressful.
• 6:22
  Philip Pape: Well, no, it doesn't have to be.
• 6:23
  Philip Pape: And if anything, the way I like to track allows you to free up decision-making and free up emotional responses the rest of your week and the rest of the month and give you the confidence to know what to do when you go into fat loss.
• 6:36
  Philip Pape: And all of that actually reduces your chronic stress.
• 6:38
  Philip Pape: It gives you confidence, which is going to reduce your stress and that's going to increase your metabolism.
• 6:42
  Philip Pape: So we love that, and I personally love Macrofactor as an app to track food and weight, because it also then gives you your metabolic rate, your expenditure, your metabolism.
• 6:54
  Philip Pape: It's the only app that does that in real time, dynamically, based on your real data, and all you've got to do is put in your weight and food daily.
• 7:02
  Philip Pape: Yes, daily, because daily is shown to have the best results for people and gives you the most confidence and precision.
• 7:09
  Philip Pape: And we're not going to obsess over what happens every day in terms of our scale weight, but we're going to track it.
• 7:15
  Philip Pape: Think of this as a calibration phase, where you're just aligning everything so that the next few phases there's almost no way you can go off track because you've got everything set up really well for success.
• 7:27
  Philip Pape: So that's phase one.
• 7:29
  Philip Pape: So phase one you're going to spend eight weeks at maintenance, going for body recomp, without trying to diet, without trying to gain, and what you're going to do during that time is going to highly vary based on your context, but I'll give you my big low-hanging fruit list.
• 7:44
  Philip Pape: Number one you're going to highly vary based on your context, but I'll give you my big low-hanging fruit list.
• 7:47
  Philip Pape: Number one you're going to be strength training using an effective program of progressive overload.
• 7:49
  Philip Pape: Now, that's outside the scope of this podcast to get into all the details on that.
• 7:54
  Philip Pape: I have other episodes that talk about that but you've definitely got to be training so that we can build muscle and then hold on to that muscle during fat loss.
• 8:02
  Philip Pape: Number two we already talked about tracking your food.
• 8:04
  Philip Pape: Along with that tracking, you're then going to understand your macros.
• 8:07
  Philip Pape: We need sufficient protein, we need sufficient carbs, we need sufficient calories and you're going to eat to that level of maintenance and if it seems like a lot of food, that's okay.
• 8:17
  Philip Pape: We want to slowly get there so that we're fully energized and well-fed and recovered before we go into fat loss.
• 8:22
  Philip Pape: Number three is going to be being active and moving right, getting your steps in.
• 8:31
  Philip Pape: For you, that might be going from 4,000 a day to 6,000.
• 8:32
  Philip Pape: Another person might be six to eight or eight to 10.
• 8:34
  Philip Pape: I would try to add 2,000 steps a day at first, make it sustainable and then get even more than that to aim between eight and 10,000.
• 8:40
  Philip Pape: And then, finally, we have things like sleep and stress.
• 8:43
  Philip Pape: Now, this is a huge topic.
• 8:44
  Philip Pape: We thousand.
• 8:45
  Philip Pape: And then finally, we have things like sleep and stress.
• 8:47
  Philip Pape: Now, this is a huge topic.
• 8:48
  Philip Pape: We're not going to cover it all today, but the idea is, if this is a red flag for you, whether it's because of unavoidable stress in your life or because of things that are fully within your control, we need to do little things like taking a break between our meetings and taking a breath and calming down and finding time to ourselves, finding time for play, those sorts of things that will help manage our stress.
• 9:05
  Philip Pape: So all of that is getting normalized and calibrated during this first phase and that is why we don't want to be doing fat loss initially.
• 9:14
  Philip Pape: So if you want to know more about that, send me a message.
• 9:17
  Philip Pape: I'll send you one of the previous episodes where we've talked about setting up for maintenance.
• 9:22
  Philip Pape: I have a few of them and it depends on what exactly you're looking for and I'll give that to you.
• 9:28
  Philip Pape: All right, so phase two after that, first eight weeks.
• 9:30
  Philip Pape: Now we're into March.
• 9:31
  Philip Pape: This is the fat loss phase.
• 9:33
  Philip Pape: This is the moment you've been waiting for and I'm gonna default this to a 12-week phase.
• 9:38
  Philip Pape: But, as I mentioned earlier, if you download my guide, you'll see that there are six different approaches.
• 9:43
  Philip Pape: You could take different durations, different rates, different philosophies based on your situation, but we're going to just talk in generalities here.
• 9:52
  Philip Pape: Okay, so let's assume 12 weeks.
• 9:53
  Philip Pape: I find that 12 weeks is enough to get a decent amount of fat loss, but not so long that it becomes a little bit of a grind and you get tired of it mentally and physically.
• 10:02
  Philip Pape: So we're going to drop fat strategically and the only way to do that is to drop scale weight while holding onto that valuable muscle mass.
• 10:12
  Philip Pape: And here's the key philosophy most people miss.
• 10:15
  Philip Pape: Fat loss doesn't need to feel like punishment.
• 10:19
  Philip Pape: It doesn't need to feel miserable.
• 10:21
  Philip Pape: I won't say that it is a walk in the park and that it's like going to Disney World other than Disney World in the summer or in the holidays, but it doesn't feel, it's not going to feel like that, but it also shouldn't be miserable.
• 10:34
  Philip Pape: So we want to build a plan that aligns with your lifestyle.
• 10:37
  Philip Pape: That just says okay, let me acknowledge what's happening.
• 10:40
  Philip Pape: Do I love to go out to eat?
• 10:41
  Philip Pape: Do I have travel coming up?
• 10:43
  Philip Pape: Do I like to eat these specific foods?
• 10:45
  Philip Pape: Do I love carbs?
• 10:46
  Philip Pape: Do I like to shift my calories around, based on the day, whatever it is, and build a plan that goes with it.
• 10:54
  Philip Pape: And we're going to focus on three core areas.
• 10:56
  Philip Pape: So I'm going to touch in more detail here on things that I just alluded to in the first phase so that you have those details.
• 11:03
  Philip Pape: So first is the rate of loss.
• 11:06
  Philip Pape: Using macro factor, for example, you could just plug in the rate of loss you want per week and it'll give you the targets.
• 11:14
  Philip Pape: If you're doing it by hand, you're going to just have to do some math, and what we're targeting here for most people is around 0.5 to 0.75% of your body weight per week over 12 weeks.
• 11:27
  Philip Pape: So you can do the math for yourself and you can realize, okay, that might be 10, 15, 20 pounds, depending on your body weight.
• 11:34
  Philip Pape: Some people can go a little more aggressive, some people less.
• 11:36
  Philip Pape: And again, if you download my precision fat loss guide, it has all of these prescribed out and written out and all of that.
• 11:44
  Philip Pape: And I see people trying to rush it.
• 11:46
  Philip Pape: So if I say a half to 1%, they're like I'm going to go 1%.
• 11:49
  Philip Pape: So I usually say a half to 0.75% to kind of constrain that and really leaning more toward the half percent.
• 11:55
  Philip Pape: And when you take half percent of your body weight times 12 weeks, it gives you a certain fat loss.
• 12:00
  Philip Pape: I would just say, whatever that number is, be happy with it.
• 12:04
  Philip Pape: Don't try to target a specific number, because after you build muscle later on we're going to do another small fat loss phase anyway and the building of muscle is going to help you be leaner, regardless of the scale weight anyway.
• 12:16
  Philip Pape: So we want to get like some fat loss here, some decent fat loss, but it's not all of it.
• 12:21
  Philip Pape: So quote, unquote, right, and in fact, the slower you go, the more easy it's going to be to preserve that muscle and to keep your hunger totally manageable, making it seem like, oh, it's not so bad, I'm getting through this very consistently, no big deal, as opposed to oh my God, I have to binge those donuts right now.
• 12:39
  Philip Pape: So that's one core area of fat loss.
• 12:42
  Philip Pape: The second core area is implementing any sort of breaks or refeeds or permission to yourself to go ahead and eat more calories and eat up to maintenance when you need to.
• 12:53
  Philip Pape: Now it's better that those are planned in than just happen randomly, because when they happen randomly, that is the opposite of consistency.
• 13:01
  Philip Pape: But when you plan them in, when you say, look, every day, every week, I have two days of the week where I know I'm just going to want to eat more, you might not even know what those days are.
• 13:08
  Philip Pape: So you're going to plan your calories to suggest five kind of normal or low-ish days and two higher days, and that's what your plan is going to be predicated on, whether that's like one maintenance calorie day every week, one a month, a whole week every month, whatever.
• 13:25
  Philip Pape: Those are all in my Precision Fat Loss Guide.
• 13:28
  Philip Pape: Again, if you go into there, we're not talking about cheat days, we're talking about psychological resets.
• 13:33
  Philip Pape: Some people call them hedonic deviations, where you give yourself a planned day of deviating up to so you can eat more food.
• 13:41
  Philip Pape: You might call it a strategic metabolic boost.
• 13:45
  Philip Pape: Whatever you want to call it, you're not going to increase your metabolism artificially higher doing this, but you are going to slow down and stop any metabolic adaptation for a moment before it continues back.
• 13:58
  Philip Pape: But it's more for the mental break and sustainability.
• 14:02
  Philip Pape: And then the third core tenet here of the fat loss phase and this is probably the most crucial, to be honest is we are training to retain muscle.
• 14:12
  Philip Pape: Your resistance training intensity stays high and intensity means a combination of things, but it primarily means you are training hard, close to failure, using progressive overload, still using your compound lifts and your accessories and all the same stuff.
• 14:27
  Philip Pape: You don't completely change your training program.
• 14:29
  Philip Pape: Most people can actually continue with exactly what they were doing in the fat loss and what they'll find is the first few weeks, maybe even the first few months, they can still make progress, especially if this is the first time you're doing it.
• 14:41
  Philip Pape: You might actually build muscle and strength even while in fat loss, because remember, you've only spent a couple months in the recomp phase.
• 14:49
  Philip Pape: You're still in that newbie gains phase.
• 14:51
  Philip Pape: If you're an intermediate lifter, however, you may not gain strength or muscle, but you should easily be able to hold on to the muscle, and so your lifts will either slightly go up or maybe they'll pause.
• 15:03
  Philip Pape: But remember that you're also losing weight.
• 15:05
  Philip Pape: So your relative strength is holding or potentially going up, if that makes sense, and then you're holding on to the muscle.
• 15:11
  Philip Pape: You're eating plenty of protein, all that good stuff, all right.
• 15:14
  Philip Pape: So your progress in the gym become your indicators for muscle retention, as well as your body measurements to an extent.
• 15:20
  Philip Pape: But remember, you're losing fat at the same time, so take that with a grain of salt, all right.
• 15:25
  Philip Pape: So we had phase one eight weeks of body recomp, building your habits.
• 15:30
  Philip Pape: Phase two 12 weeks.
• 15:32
  Philip Pape: You got two months, then three months, 12 weeks of fat loss, with a lot of flexibility on how to do that.
• 15:39
  Philip Pape: And again, the actual calories and macros are going to depend on your metabolism and your rate of loss.
• 15:45
  Philip Pape: So go, download Macrofactor.
• 15:47
  Philip Pape: I'll include the link in the show notes.
• 15:48
  Philip Pape: I'll include a video showing you how to set it up for maintenance initially, and then you'll be golden on that.
• 15:54
  Philip Pape: You'll get the right targets for your metabolism.
• 15:56
  Philip Pape: If you use MyFitnessPower chronometer, you're not going to get those targets, you are going to have to guess at them and you're going to be off.
• 16:03
  Philip Pape: You're going to be off and you're going to get frustrated.
• 16:04
  Philip Pape: Okay, so that's phase two.
• 16:07
  Philip Pape: Phase three is beach ready maintenance.
• 16:09
  Philip Pape: Now, this is just a very short blip.
• 16:10
  Philip Pape: This is a couple weeks.
• 16:12
  Philip Pape: You know, maybe I would say two weeks, but it could be one to three, but let's say two weeks.
• 16:16
  Philip Pape: This is like a little victory lap.
• 16:18
  Philip Pape: Okay, you've achieved your fat loss.
• 16:21
  Philip Pape: You're celebrating.
• 16:22
  Philip Pape: Now You're bringing the calories back up.
• 16:23
  Philip Pape: We're going to replenish that glycogen.
• 16:26
  Philip Pape: We're going to replenish your energy stores.
• 16:28
  Philip Pape: We're going to showcase what you've accomplished so far.
• 16:31
  Philip Pape: And by showcase I don't necessarily mean you have to go on the beach and show off your abs.
• 16:34
  Philip Pape: I mean you're just expressing physically with your physique, even if it's to yourself in the mirror, it doesn't matter that you've worked hard to this point to lose some fat and reveal some of that muscle.
• 16:48
  Philip Pape: And the philosophy is to enjoy the benefits of your hard work and celebrate that win, while priming your body for the most magical phase of your entire life coming up, which is going to be muscle building.
• 16:58
  Philip Pape: But before we get there, let's talk about this short beach ready maintenance phase.
• 17:03
  Philip Pape: The idea is, I don't like going from fat loss straight to a gain, because that transition is so drastic that both psychologically and physiologically it can cause a lot of second guessing and like misinterpretation of the data.
• 17:18
  Philip Pape: I'd rather you kind of bottom out, then go to maintenance and then go to muscle building and in that couple of week period what you're ending and then go to muscle building and in that couple week period, what you're ending up doing is refilling the glycogen in your muscles and it's going to make your physique look pop a little bit because you're kind of dehydrated and, I'll say, gaunt, almost from having dieted.
• 17:36
  Philip Pape: Now we're going to refill that and you might find, hey, I'm actually pretty darn happy where I'm at and you could stay there for a while.
• 17:43
  Philip Pape: You could stay there for weeks, months, years if you wanted to.
• 17:45
  Philip Pape: I don't recommend it.
• 17:47
  Philip Pape: I recommend going to the next phase and building a ton of muscle, which we're going to talk about, but you could so during this two week maintenance phase.
• 17:54
  Philip Pape: It's a very important phase even though it's short.
• 17:57
  Philip Pape: First, what we're going to do is we're effectively refilling everything without spilling over.
• 18:03
  Philip Pape: The biggest fear people have is oh, I'm going to gain all this weight back and I'm going to binge on all the foods I've been avoiding.
• 18:09
  Philip Pape: Well, first of all, you haven't been avoiding foods, right, you've simply been scaling things down and being strategic about eating your protein and high satiety foods, like fiber containing foods, like fruits and vegetables.
• 18:21
  Philip Pape: Right, you've been doing that while still having some carbs in your diet.
• 18:24
  Philip Pape: Well, what happens now is the carbs are going to get ramped way up, the protein is going to stay roughly the same, the fats are going to scale up a little bit and the carbs are going to scale up a lot.
• 18:34
  Philip Pape: Okay, and again, we're not getting into the actual numbers of all the macros.
• 18:38
  Philip Pape: I've got guides for that and you can reach out for that.
• 18:40
  Philip Pape: We could talk about your specific plan or just download Macrofactor and it'll give it to you, but the carbs are going to ramp way up and I do not like reverse dieting.
• 18:50
  Philip Pape: So if you hear people talk about reverse dieting reverse dieting is a way to guess your way up to your maintenance I don't want to guess and I don't have to guess because we've been tracking your metabolism Again.
• 19:04
  Philip Pape: If you're using Macrofactor or if you're doing it by hand on a spreadsheet, you know how many calories you're burning over the last week.
• 19:07
  Philip Pape: So if you're in a 500 calorie deficit, you just have to increase.
• 19:10
  Philip Pape: Add 500 calories back in and now you're at your true dynamic maintenance right now.
• 19:15
  Philip Pape: Now those maintenance calories are going to be lower than they were when you started the fat loss phase.
• 19:24
  Philip Pape: But why wait to get there?
• 19:25
  Philip Pape: Let's just recover.
• 19:25
  Philip Pape: You're not going to gain weight because it's your maintenance right.
• 19:26
  Philip Pape: And so we're going to increase our targets right to our maintenance, knowing that it's going to climb back to a more recovered, stable level and then probably continue climbing when we go into muscle building.
• 19:36
  Philip Pape: So why wait?
• 19:37
  Philip Pape: Let's recover.
• 19:38
  Philip Pape: And so your protein's still going to be around your normal target of 0.7 to one gram per pound.
• 19:44
  Philip Pape: You're going to see improved muscle definition as your glycogen stores fill, as your cortisol levels drop, your hormones get back to normal.
• 19:53
  Philip Pape: Right and again, if, depending on your experience in the past and how many times you've cut in bulk in the past, this is like your photo shoot phase, even if you're not taking pictures, right.
• 20:03
  Philip Pape: So, but if you haven't ever built muscle, you're probably not there yet, and I get it.
• 20:07
  Philip Pape: You're like well, I'm not quite happy with my physique, it's okay, we're just getting started.
• 20:11
  Philip Pape: And then the third thing during this phase is learning that there is a sustainable level where you can fine tune your social eating skills, your mindfulness, your level of indulgence, because you have more calories to work with.
• 20:26
  Philip Pape: You're no longer dieting, and so now you understand what it's like to diet.
• 20:31
  Philip Pape: Now you're going to get back to something that feels really solid in terms of energy and food, and you'll want to come to grips with that and see what it feels like, because that's where you would live for the rest of your life if you didn't go out, gone to the next phase and build muscle.
• 20:45
  Philip Pape: Right, and for many people that'll be amazing.
• 20:48
  Philip Pape: Right, you've gotten leaner, you've learned how to eat for fullness, for protein, fiber, and now you can kind of sustain that and it feels great.
• 20:57
  Philip Pape: But now let's go to phase four, and this is my favorite phase of all, and for some of you, I'm going to skip you right to this.
• 21:05
  Philip Pape: First, instead of fat loss because you only have five or 10 pounds to lose, I don't care about that, and by I I mean you shouldn't care about it either, because gaining five, 10, 15 pounds of muscle is going to serve you much more than just losing five or 10 pounds of fat.
• 21:19
  Philip Pape: If you have to lose 20, 30 or more, that's a different story, okay, and I have an episode I did a long time ago called what should you do first?
• 21:27
  Philip Pape: Uh, but anyway, you could follow this plan, whoever you are listening, and it's going to work for you.
• 21:32
  Philip Pape: So phase four is the anabolic muscle building phase.
• 21:35
  Philip Pape: Now we are into July, because we had two months for recomp, we had three months for fat loss and then we had a couple of weeks for maintenance, and so now we're pushing at just about the middle of the year.
• 21:48
  Philip Pape: So now I usually recommend building muscle for six months minimum.
• 21:52
  Philip Pape: So that's why this is going to take a full six months.
• 21:54
  Philip Pape: Now you can cut back on that a little bit to squeeze in a fat loss phase to like fit the exact 12 months, okay, but it doesn't really matter, because a few weeks here or there is not gonna make a difference.
• 22:06
  Philip Pape: I would just get as much as you can out of the muscle building phase, and so think 24, 26 weeks, right around there.
• 22:13
  Philip Pape: Six months, and this is where the magic happens.
• 22:16
  Philip Pape: The philosophy is simple but profound, and I talked about this in detail on my last Monday episode, so if you didn't catch that.
• 22:23
  Philip Pape: Go check that out.
• 22:24
  Philip Pape: I talk all about gaining to build muscle and how that makes you leaner and how that prevents you from getting fatter.
• 22:31
  Philip Pape: It's so profound.
• 22:32
  Philip Pape: Building muscle takes time, it takes patience, it takes trading the instant gratification you might've gotten in a fat loss phase for the long-term reward of having that extra lean tissue on your body at a higher scale weight, at a leaner, lower body fat percentage.
• 22:50
  Philip Pape: I mean it's so incredible.
• 22:52
  Philip Pape: Having gone through it myself and gone through several muscle building phases and not having done that till I was in my late 30s and early 40s I'm 44 now.
• 22:59
  Philip Pape: It has only taken me three years or so to build a decent amount of muscle to the point where I'm just walking around quite a bit heavier than I used to and way leaner than I was, and I still have a long way to go, which is very empowering and exciting for me because it gives me a drive to want to keep doing this and chances are you're in that boat as well, if not even in a better position, where it's early on right.
• 23:24
  Philip Pape: So this is profound and it's amazing and we're going to focus on three elements here during this muscle building phase.
• 23:29
  Philip Pape: The first is slow and steady gains, going at the right rate so that we build a ton of muscle and just a little bit of fat.
• 23:39
  Philip Pape: And I say it that way because you're not going to avoid fat gain altogether, but you can definitely avoid gaining too much fat.
• 23:46
  Philip Pape: How much do I mean?
• 23:47
  Philip Pape: I mean, if you're a beginner, you could probably gain, say, two-thirds to three-quarters of the weight as muscle.
• 23:55
  Philip Pape: How does it sound to gain 10 pounds?
• 24:01
  Philip Pape: And the response is kind of a little bit of freaking out.
• 24:05
  Philip Pape: I get it.
• 24:10
  Philip Pape: I get it, cause that's, as a percentage of your body weight, seems like a lot.
• 24:12
  Philip Pape: But what have I said?
• 24:12
  Philip Pape: Eight of those pounds is muscle.
• 24:13
  Philip Pape: Kind of changes the equation, doesn't it?
• 24:14
  Philip Pape: Because now, yeah, you gain 10 pounds, but seven or eight pounds is muscle, so very little of that is fat.
• 24:19
  Philip Pape: Your body fat percentage just went down, even potentially, before you even cut some of that fat back off.
• 24:24
  Philip Pape: I mean, it's amazing.
• 24:26
  Philip Pape: So slow and stay is what we want and again, we are going to aim for a rate around for most of you 0.3 to almost 0.5% of your body weight a week Men, women, any age, okay, Because we all have the same propensity to gain muscle.
• 24:44
  Philip Pape: Even if you're 70, you can gain muscle at a decent clip if you've never done this before, believe it or not.
• 24:49
  Philip Pape: So, 0.3 to 0.5% of your body weight a week.
• 24:57
  Philip Pape: Again, if you use macro factor, you just plug in the number and it gives you the targets.
• 24:59
  Philip Pape: Now is faster, better, yes, up to a point Beyond that 0.4 or 0.5%.
• 25:04
  Philip Pape: Now you're flirting with.
• 25:05
  Philip Pape: All you're adding is fat territory, but don't let that scare you from pushing it a little bit, especially if it's your first time, because the fat comes off easy.
• 25:13
  Philip Pape: The muscle is the one that's harder to put on, so why not give yourself the best shot?
• 25:17
  Philip Pape: So that's the first thing.
• 25:18
  Philip Pape: Is that slow and steady rate.
• 25:20
  Philip Pape: Secondly, we are going to prioritize the weak points during muscle building.
• 25:26
  Philip Pape: What I mean by that is you really want a solid, effective program of progression, so you're taking the most advantage of that anabolic environment.
• 25:34
  Philip Pape: Anabolic meaning growth.
• 25:35
  Philip Pape: You've got lots of calories coming in, protein, carbs, hopefully.
• 25:40
  Philip Pape: You're sleeping well and you're keeping stress manageable, and now you're training hard, three, four or five days a week.
• 25:47
  Philip Pape: What are you training for?
• 25:48
  Philip Pape: How are you training?
• 25:49
  Philip Pape: How are you progressing?
• 25:50
  Philip Pape: Are you building strength?
• 25:51
  Philip Pape: Are you building muscle?
• 25:52
  Philip Pape: Are you peaking?
• 25:53
  Philip Pape: There's lots of ways to slice this, and so I like an app called boost camp.
• 25:58
  Philip Pape: It's a workout app.
• 25:59
  Philip Pape: It's a free app if you use it.
• 26:01
  Philip Pape: Use my code wits and weights all one word, please, just to support me.
• 26:05
  Philip Pape: But if you go in that app, you can get free programs that are evidence-based by expert trainers and, honestly, any one of those.
• 26:12
  Philip Pape: If you pick, like you know, four days a week I'm focused on strength and muscle building it's going to spit out a bunch of great programs.
• 26:19
  Philip Pape: So you've got to have the tracking of progression of your strength and muscle.
• 26:25
  Philip Pape: So strength is shown through the numbers going up and muscles shown through your physique being developed.
• 26:32
  Philip Pape: Now you're going to be getting some fat too, so your waist might go up, but we also want to see our biceps going up and our thighs going up right and our chest going up and any other body part that you really care about that you're training.
• 26:45
  Philip Pape: So it's prioritizing and I said prioritize weak points, and what I mean by that is the points that have the most opportunity for growth.
• 26:52
  Philip Pape: You really want to go all in for that and the things that you really want to grow.
• 26:55
  Philip Pape: All right.
• 26:56
  Philip Pape: The third thing here is recovery becomes paramount, even though this is the irony even though you have a ton of calories coming in and that helps with recovery.
• 27:03
  Philip Pape: You're also training hard.
• 27:05
  Philip Pape: You are training hard.
• 27:07
  Philip Pape: So getting that sleep, managing the stress, getting deloads if that's part of your plan or at least doing resets and such in your training program, keeping yourself fresh, watching for injury, like really making the most of it, so you can continue it and get the six months of pure straight training for muscle.
• 27:26
  Philip Pape: Now things will come up in your life.
• 27:28
  Philip Pape: We're not talking about that.
• 27:29
  Philip Pape: If that happens, there's ways to deal with it.
• 27:31
  Philip Pape: You could take little breaks here and there, not a big deal, but really you want to just keep growing, growing, growing and have a blocked approach to get there.
• 27:39
  Philip Pape: Okay.
• 27:40
  Philip Pape: And then, once you've done that so now you've gone from like January to December you know you've gained 10, 15, 20 pounds on the scale, a significant portion of which is muscle.
• 27:50
  Philip Pape: You're bigger.
• 27:51
  Philip Pape: You probably have a little bit of extra fat, maybe too much fat, maybe you're like ah, you know I'm getting a little uncomfortable here, that's cool Now.
• 27:58
  Philip Pape: And you've gone through the holidays.
• 27:59
  Philip Pape: You've gone through Thanksgiving, christmas, all that.
• 28:01
  Philip Pape: You've had fun, you've had plenty of calories.
• 28:03
  Philip Pape: Your metabolism has probably ramped way up over that time.
• 28:06
  Philip Pape: Now it's time to do a little mini cut to just shred some of that fat off, okay, and just kind of gently come in at a sustainable spot that is heavier, where you were before.
• 28:18
  Philip Pape: We did the muscle, but you've got more muscle and less fat.
• 28:23
  Philip Pape: So you are leaner, your metabolism is higher, you're able to eat more food and now that's your new set point.
• 28:29
  Philip Pape: It's a beautiful place to be in.
• 28:30
  Philip Pape: What does this look like?
• 28:31
  Philip Pape: I'm going to suggest a six-week mini cut.
• 28:35
  Philip Pape: It's a really nice, super sustainable in and out.
• 28:39
  Philip Pape: Get it over with finishing touch on a year of hard work.
• 28:43
  Philip Pape: So six weeks isn't that long, it really isn't.
• 28:45
  Philip Pape: And if you went through a 12-week fat loss phase, this is going to be comparable, but it's going to be a little different.
• 28:51
  Philip Pape: It's going to be a little more aggressive, and the reason it's more aggressive is that it's short and we're going to reveal your physique.
• 28:57
  Philip Pape: We're going to get out.
• 28:58
  Philip Pape: You have the metabolic capacity and the muscle mass now to do kind of a quick fat loss phase and just get out, and that's what we're going to do.
• 29:05
  Philip Pape: So first we're going to talk about the rate of loss.
• 29:08
  Philip Pape: We want something more aggressive here, so I'm going to actually push for that 1% of body weight a week and I would use that as an anchor point.
• 29:17
  Philip Pape: If that's still too aggressive for you, because the calories that it brings you to go lower, and if you're like a bigger dude who you know has tons of muscle and a super high metabolism, you might be able to go 1.2, 1.3%, at least for three or four of the six weeks and have no ill precautions no, no ill repercussions and not lose any muscle mass.
• 29:40
  Philip Pape: Okay, so it's really variable.
• 29:42
  Philip Pape: Going to depend, um, and I do mention that in the fat loss guide as well and we're gonna keep protein high.
• 29:47
  Philip Pape: We're gonna do all the same things.
• 29:48
  Philip Pape: Okay, protein in this case might be even higher.
• 29:51
  Philip Pape: So, like, if you've been at a decent amount of protein, maybe this is the one point in your whole plan for the 12 months where you just jack it up just a little bit.
• 29:58
  Philip Pape: All right, depends on the amount of calories you have to play with, the amount of calories you have to play with, all right.
• 30:05
  Philip Pape: So that's the rate of loss up to that 1% of weight a week.
• 30:08
  Philip Pape: Second is this is where I the only time I actually suggest you might want to add some cardio in, deliberately right, other than other reasons for health, heart health and whatnot, because you enjoy it actually just to ramp up that metabolism a tiny bit, knowing you're doing it in a short duration so you're not going to adapt to it too much.
• 30:24
  Philip Pape: And so I would add like one or two at least zone two sessions.
• 30:29
  Philip Pape: It doesn't have to be hit, it could just be, you know, kind of a get your heart rate going too fast to have a conversation.
• 30:36
  Philip Pape: Level of exertion on a bike or pushing a prowler around or walking really fast or going on an up incline or wearing a rucksack, any, any of those things apply Other than running, I mean, unless you love to run different situation and that's going to support your deficit.
• 30:51
  Philip Pape: You're not going to overload your recovery in that short period.
• 30:54
  Philip Pape: Doing it like that, I would mix up the forms of cardio that will make you even less efficient, which means burning more calories, and just give that a shot.
• 31:03
  Philip Pape: Just add that in as a little extra jolt for your calorie burn.
• 31:08
  Philip Pape: And then the final thing is you know we're not chasing perfection, we're not chasing an end point.
• 31:13
  Philip Pape: We're not chasing this is going to be the be all end all physique.
• 31:16
  Philip Pape: All we're doing is taking some of the fat gain that you added in the building phase and reduce it, without going to an extreme but still flirting with what it's like to push and to go a bit aggressively.
• 31:29
  Philip Pape: If this is not for you, what you can do instead during this phase is just do another normal fat loss phase at a slower rate and then make the duration be as long as you need it to be.
• 31:40
  Philip Pape: What's going to happen here is you're going to have gone through every aspect of periodization for nutrition, for gaining, for losing and you'll know what your body feels like and what it takes to do each of those, and from that you can assess hey, this was harder here, but this was easier here.
• 31:58
  Philip Pape: I really like this.
• 31:59
  Philip Pape: I don't like this.
• 32:00
  Philip Pape: Use those subjective feelings, to be honest, to tell yourself is this the right way to do it for me?
• 32:07
  Philip Pape: Next time I do a fat loss phase, I'm going to go slower, or I'm going to put more breaks in, or I'm going to go more aggressively.
• 32:13
  Philip Pape: Some people love to go super aggressive for like four weeks and they're done right.
• 32:17
  Philip Pape: Or muscle building Heck, I really love that.
• 32:19
  Philip Pape: All the food I get to train hard, I'm going to muscle gain for the next two years.
• 32:24
  Philip Pape: It gives you all this flexibility and awareness and knowledge.
• 32:27
  Philip Pape: It's so amazing and that's why I love having a plan right, because the physical transformation is just a side bonus of all of this.
• 32:35
  Philip Pape: Believe it or not, it is a side bonus.
• 32:39
  Jenny: Hi, my name is Jenny and I just wanted to say a big thank you to Philip Pape of Wits and Weights for offering his free 50-minute nutritional assessment.
• 32:48
  Jenny: During that time he gave me really good tools on how I can further my health and fitness goals.
• 32:55
  Jenny: He asked really great questions and stayed true to his offer of no sales pitch.
• 33:01
  Jenny: I have since applied these things and gotten really close to my health goals and my weight goals, and now I'm able to flip over and work on my strength and my muscle conditioning using a lot of the things he offers in his podcasts, and I just am very grateful for his positive inspiration and encouragement for all of our health.
• 33:23
  Jenny: Thank you, philip.
• 33:25
  Philip Pape: The first time it happened for me, where I could see some muscle definition, feel a bit lean, feel a little bit more confident in a t-shirt, it was fantastic.
• 33:33
  Philip Pape: But the short-term feeling of that sort of normalizes right, it wears off, then you get used to it.
• 33:38
  Philip Pape: Then you're like okay, that is me now, that's my new identity, now what's next?
• 33:42
  Philip Pape: I think the long lasting benefit here is how each of these phases teaches you something.
• 33:47
  Philip Pape: Each of them builds upon each other.
• 33:49
  Philip Pape: They're interconnected in a way that teaches you how your body ebbs and flows, how you can adjust the way you live to what you want with the year and the season and not ever make it feel like too much of a slog or a sacrifice, even though there are trade-offs.
• 34:03
  Philip Pape: And if you kind of think about each phase right, the initial body comp phase, it's not just about hitting protein or setting up this habit, it's really skills.
• 34:14
  Philip Pape: It's an overall system.
• 34:16
  Philip Pape: If you can do that, you can then make a little change to then go into fat loss.
• 34:21
  Philip Pape: If you can't do that, in other words, if the body recomp phase that we started with where you're at maintenance, is not sustainable, that's a great feedback to tell you that fat loss wouldn't be sustainable.
• 34:32
  Philip Pape: So you're not going to go to fat loss until you've got that figured out.
• 34:35
  Philip Pape: So if it takes you 10, 12, or more weeks to do it, so be it.
• 34:40
  Philip Pape: If you need help, if you need help, if you need a coach, that's the kind of thing that I provide is support and accelerating that process to get you to that, you know.
• 34:48
  Philip Pape: So you don't have to be frustrated.
• 34:49
  Philip Pape: So that's the first phase.
• 34:51
  Philip Pape: And then you think of after the fat loss phase, when you go into maintenance I think we talked about it again it's not just like, okay, I'm going to hold steady.
• 34:59
  Philip Pape: It's now preparing for that mental shift, preparing your body, preparing your mind for the next phase, for the productive muscle building phase, the most productive of your life.
• 35:10
  Philip Pape: To be honest, if you've never done it before, it will change your life.
• 35:14
  Philip Pape: It will change your life.
• 35:16
  Philip Pape: So every one of these phases has a purpose beyond the obvious.
• 35:19
  Philip Pape: I want you to lean into that and really get deep with it, right, really sit with it and think about it and plan it out, write it down on paper and ask yourself what you're trying to gain here, what you're trying to accomplish, because it's not about the result.
• 35:32
  Philip Pape: The process itself is everything.
• 35:34
  Philip Pape: The result will come easily when the process is nailed down right.
• 35:39
  Philip Pape: And it's this compound effect and it makes the whole journey just so more powerful, so much more than some of the parts, and that's why I wanted to share this with you today.
• 35:48
  Philip Pape: So, as we wrap up, let's just focus on the overarching principles that make this kind of blueprint work for you.
• 35:54
  Philip Pape: First, sustainability is a non-negotiable.
• 35:58
  Philip Pape: Each phase is designed to be challenging because it has to change you physically and mentally, push you, but never overwhelming.
• 36:08
  Philip Pape: The phrase I've used before is expanding your comfort zone, but never far exceeding it.
• 36:13
  Philip Pape: The second principle is to celebrate that process.
• 36:18
  Philip Pape: Again, do celebrate the results as they come as well, but those are going to be fleeting and few and far in between the process, whether it's, you know, you've nailed a habit that before was a struggle.
• 36:30
  Philip Pape: You know, I go to sleep every night by 9.30, every night.
• 36:33
  Philip Pape: Now I am so proud of that, right, oh, I get 8,000 steps every day.
• 36:37
  Philip Pape: Sometimes it's 10 or 12, but every day I get my 8,000.
• 36:40
  Philip Pape: And maybe it's not every day, maybe it's, you know, three days out of the week.
• 36:51
  Philip Pape: I get my 10,000, whatever that goal is for you.
• 36:53
  Philip Pape: And, yes, even physical changes, seeing the definition slowly morph over time, correlated with objective measures like your body circumference measurements.
• 36:56
  Philip Pape: Hitting PRs is always fun because you're going to be training and growing a lot, especially during your muscle building phase.
• 37:01
  Philip Pape: Every single session is a win.
• 37:04
  Philip Pape: Even if you don't PR every lift, you know you might have some setbacks.
• 37:08
  Philip Pape: You're going to have a lot of them in every single session because you were constantly growing and getting stronger and building muscle, and so all of the success is cumulative and the wins come fast and furious if you look for them, if you accept them in.
• 37:20
  Philip Pape: And then the last principle here is I want you to balance the science.
• 37:25
  Philip Pape: You know the here's what you need to do, here's what works according to the evidence which I say all the time and anything you hear on this podcast or any other podcast.
• 37:32
  Philip Pape: I want you to balance that with your intuition and your biofeedback, so important.
• 37:38
  Philip Pape: With your intuition even if that's your feelings, I don't care.
• 37:41
  Philip Pape: Like you know, know yourself with your intuition and with your biofeedback.
• 37:45
  Philip Pape: So biofeedback is a little more objective tracked measures of your stress, your hunger, your digestion, your sleep, your libido and a few others that you might want to track.
• 37:58
  Philip Pape: I want you to balance the two and then let that data because that is your whole data set, that is your evidence Let that inform your decisions right, and always be listening to your body so that you are mentally engaged, and then the consistency comes from that engagement, because then you'll be able to, you know, pivot and jink Is that the word jink From Battlestar Galactica?
• 38:20
  Philip Pape: I forget the word Ships do in space.
• 38:21
  Philip Pape: All right.
• 38:22
  Philip Pape: So now, as you enjoy the holidays or the end of your celebrations, I want you to come up with your plan for the next 12 months based on this episode.
• 38:31
  Philip Pape: That is your action.
• 38:33
  Philip Pape: If you don't do that, you've missed a massive opportunity.
• 38:36
  Philip Pape: And if you do that, you're going to have questions.
• 38:38
  Philip Pape: And when you have questions, I want you to send me a message on Instagram at witsandweights or you don't use that platform, or prefer Facebook, join our Facebook group it's totally free and ask it there and ask other people who are on the same journey.
• 38:53
  Philip Pape: Now, in a few weeks from now, exactly six episodes from now, episode 266 on January 6th.
• 39:00
  Philip Pape: I'll be breaking down the six.
• 39:02
  Philip Pape: Get a theme here.
• 39:03
  Philip Pape: Six.
• 39:03
  Philip Pape: I'll be breaking down the six.
• 39:04
  Philip Pape: Get a theme here.
• 39:04
  Philip Pape: Six I'll be breaking down the six core fat loss strategies from the Precision Fat Loss Guide that I mentioned several times earlier.
• 39:11
  Philip Pape: So go download it and there you can pick the exact strategy for your fat loss phase, which again starts around month three of the 12-month plan.
• 39:20
  Philip Pape: I'm gonna be breaking that down in episode 266 on January 6th, but I want you to click the link in the show notes and download the guide now, get a head start on creating your plan.
• 39:30
  Philip Pape: I mean, in my opinion, what I put together there is unlike anything out there because it gives you different comparison tables based on your experience, your body comp goals, your lifestyle and your tendencies.
• 39:45
  Philip Pape: On your experience, your body comp goals, your lifestyle and your tendencies.
• 39:48
  Philip Pape: Like, each one has a table that says, of the six strategies, which ones are check marks, which ones are X's for you for that, and at the end of it you'll know oh, this one strategy is what's left, that's best for me, or maybe these two strategies?
• 39:59
  Philip Pape: I can pick one, all right.
• 40:01
  Philip Pape: And then, of course, you have to implement it, and that's part of what we talked about today with phase Two.
• 40:06
  Philip Pape: So to get your free copy of the precision fat loss guide, click the link at the top of the show notes, or go to wits and weightscom and click free stuff and you'll find it in there All right.
• 40:15
  Philip Pape: Until next time, keep using your wits lifting those weights and remember your dream physique isn't built in a day, but it is built with a plan.
• 40:23
  Philip Pape: This is phil Pape and I'll talk to you next time here on the Wits and Weights Podcast.