Latest / Wits & Weights | Strength & Fat Loss Over 40 / How Performance Bloodwork Reveals What's Really Blocking Your Fat Loss (Constraint Theory) | Ep 378

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How Performance Bloodwork Reveals What's Really Blocking Your Fat Loss (Constraint Theory) | Ep 378 · Wits & Weights | Strength & Fat Loss Over 40

• 0:01
  Philip Pape: If you've hit a plateau in fat loss or gaining muscle, the problem isn't always training harder or eating less.
• 0:07
  Philip Pape: It could be a hidden constraint in your physiology that no amount of willpower can overcome.
• 0:13
  Philip Pape: Today, I'm showing you how to use performance blood work to identify and fix the one thing that's actually holding you back.
• 0:20
  Philip Pape: You'll learn why your body is a system that has a weakest link, how to find that constraint using blood markers, and the exact process I use to prioritize interventions that move multiple systems at once.
• 0:33
  Philip Pape: Most people chase symptoms while ignoring the root cause, but by the end of this episode, you'll know exactly where to focus your efforts for maximum impact.
• 0:42
  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 today we're talking about something that could change how you approach your plateaus when you hit a wall with your fat loss, with your muscle gain, even with your health and fitness.
• 1:12
  Philip Pape: Before we continue, though, I do wanna share some recent client testimonials from Inside Physique University.
• 1:17
  Philip Pape: The first one is from Nadine.
• 1:20
  Philip Pape: She says the program has helped me reframe how I look at weight loss.
• 1:24
  Philip Pape: Instead of fighting the process and suffering through it.
• 1:26
  Philip Pape: I am embracing it with less judgment each day, thank you.
• 1:29
  Philip Pape: And then Michelle says I feel strong, seeing a lot of muscle, got PRs every lifting day.
• 1:35
  Philip Pape: The biggest win is that I finally feel more in control.
• 1:38
  Philip Pape: My AC1 is back in the normal low range.
• 1:41
  Philip Pape: And then the last one I wanted to share is more about education.
• 1:44
  Philip Pape: Catherine said I learned how much I love learning, is back in the normal low range.
• 1:47
  Philip Pape: And then the last one I wanted to share is more about education.
• 1:48
  Philip Pape: Catherine said I learned how much I love learning.
• 1:49
  Philip Pape: It has become some time since I had the opportunity to take the time to learn something outside my profession as well as reinforce what I learned through my profession.
• 1:56
  Philip Pape: As always, I thank the and I'm grateful for everyone who has submitted a question, a testimonial, a review, anything like that.
• 2:04
  Philip Pape: That motivates me to continue creating this content for you.
• 2:08
  Philip Pape: All right, so we're gonna get into blood work analysis soon, but of course, before we do, I do wanna mention that I am offering a performance blood work analysis now, which is a service that uses advanced pattern recognition and performance ranges again, performance ranges, not sick care ranges, not disease ranges, but optimal ranges to identify your biggest constraints and create targeted intervention plans.
• 2:32
  Philip Pape: If you want to learn more about how this could help you break through those plateaus, click the link in my show notes or go to witsandweightscom slash bloodwork.
• 2:39
  Philip Pape: That's witsandweightscom slash bloodwork for performance bloodwork analysis.
• 2:44
  Philip Pape: All right, let's talk about what your body does and why.
• 2:48
  Philip Pape: I believe that we can look at it in terms of constraints, and let me start with a question that might change things for you.
• 2:55
  Philip Pape: What if your physiology works like a system?
• 2:57
  Philip Pape: Okay, if that is the premise, and if you think like an engineer, we have something called the theory of constraints, where any system, whether it's a manufacturing line, a computer network and, of course, your body, which is a great analogy or metaphor for a system it's only going to perform to the level of its most limiting factor.
• 3:17
  Philip Pape: That's like a bottleneck.
• 3:18
  Philip Pape: That is your weakest link.
• 3:20
  Philip Pape: Remember that.
• 3:21
  Philip Pape: Show back man, it might be the 90s by now.
• 3:23
  Philip Pape: You are the weakest link, goodbye.
• 3:25
  Philip Pape: So that's going to determine your physical ceiling right now, and those weakest links can evolve over time, and it's not always the same thing.
• 3:34
  Philip Pape: Think about it this way you could have perfect training, you could have your nutrition all dialed in, you could have optimal sleep, but if your thyroid function is physically compromised it's, you know, physiologically compromised then your metabolic rate is going to be much lower than it could be and your fat loss is going to stall.
• 3:50
  Philip Pape: And you're going to wonder what the heck am I doing wrong, when it's not anything you're doing wrong.
• 3:53
  Philip Pape: It's your thyroid.
• 3:54
  Philip Pape: Now you could be eating enough protein, lifting consistently.
• 3:58
  Philip Pape: But if you have chronic inflammation right, which is indicated by your inflammatory markers in your blood, if that is tanking and feeding back to your recovery, you're feeling sluggish, fatigued, tired.
• 4:10
  Philip Pape: Your muscle growth is going to hit a massive wall because that affects muscle protein synthesis.
• 4:14
  Philip Pape: Your body doesn't want to build muscle when it's being highly stressed and inflamed.
• 4:19
  Philip Pape: A lot of you out there are trying to optimize everything at once and this is one of the biggest problems I see when people listen to the podcast and they want to take action.
• 4:26
  Philip Pape: I love action takers.
• 4:27
  Philip Pape: The problem is you try to change everything.
• 4:29
  Philip Pape: Not only does that create potential potential all in one.
• 4:33
  Philip Pape: What am I trying to say?
• 4:34
  Philip Pape: All or nothing thinking, or it's very hard to do that.
• 4:37
  Philip Pape: It might also prevent you from identifying where you truly need to focus, if that makes sense.
• 4:43
  Philip Pape: You're putting the cart before the horse.
• 4:44
  Philip Pape: You're fixing 10 things when you might need to fix one and that'll give you 90% of the results.
• 4:50
  Philip Pape: And then that's more efficient and less stressful on you and your body and your mind.
• 4:54
  Philip Pape: So you might be adding more cardio and cutting calories, going to a calorie deficit right away, adding new supplements, creatine, switching programs around right, and people are like well, I know what to do.
• 5:05
  Philip Pape: I listen to Winston Wade, so I'm going to do it all right now.
• 5:07
  Philip Pape: But if the real constraint is something like low vitamin D that's affecting your hormones, let's say, a lot of these surface level changes are going to hit walls rather quickly and you're not going to know why.
• 5:21
  Philip Pape: And that is why I'm a big fan now of blood not now, but blood work has always been something on the periphery of what I've talked about and done with clients and I finally decided to take the plunge and say let's get this into the system itself of the tracking and measuring in the before and after, because blood work isn't, it's not just a useful tool, it's actually essential because it can tell you things that are your constraints, that have nothing to do with the lifestyle and behavior.
• 5:45
  Philip Pape: Right, and this goes for hormones as well.
• 5:48
  Philip Pape: You've heard me talk to hormone experts a lot of times on the show, like Karen Martell and others, and we say how, even if your lifestyle is fully in check, something could be off, genetically or physically, due to age, due to, you know, hormonal decline.
• 6:03
  Philip Pape: Whatever that you have to address or else you're not going to get the full results.
• 6:07
  Philip Pape: You're going to feel frustrated.
• 6:09
  Philip Pape: Now, most blood work that you get through a doctor or through even through a clinic is going to be the, you know, let's check to see if you're dying right now blood work and if it's in the, if you're not, if it's in the quote, unquote normal range, you're good.
• 6:21
  Philip Pape: Right?
• 6:21
  Philip Pape: We know there's controversies here with hormones, right?
• 6:24
  Philip Pape: Testosterone oh, if your testosterone is between, you know, 250 and a thousand, you're good.
• 6:28
  Philip Pape: When we know, in reality, you know, optimal testosterone is up in the, you know, at least four or five hundreds for most men, if not higher, depending on the individual.
• 6:37
  Philip Pape: And so we talk about sick ranges or disease ranges, or normal population ranges versus performance, or optimal ranges, or normal population ranges versus performance, or optimal ranges, and those are based on looking at your physiology, not as a bunch of separate data points and markers in your blood, but how everything works together at the system level.
• 6:57
  Philip Pape: We're going to get into that a little more so you know what I mean.
• 6:59
  Philip Pape: Because, again, going to your doctor and getting a lab for your physical is not going to tell you that, it's just going to tell you each marker and where it stands.
• 7:06
  Philip Pape: Working with a functional doctor may get you a little closer to that, but even then, a lot of times they are missing out on a lot of the things that require machine learning and AI and lots of studies and lots of research to kind of pull together, and an individual in the functional space may not have all of that.
• 7:21
  Philip Pape: And so this is where I'm going with the labs and the blood work.
• 7:25
  Philip Pape: Standard lab ranges were designed for one thing catching disease.
• 7:28
  Philip Pape: If you're not actively dying, you're normal right.
• 7:35
  Philip Pape: But normal doesn't mean optimal.
• 7:36
  Philip Pape: So performance ranges identify where you need to be for peak function, for thriving, for doing your best, for not hitting those walls right.
• 7:41
  Philip Pape: I mentioned vitamin D.
• 7:42
  Philip Pape: It might be normal at 35 nanograms per milliliter, but for optimal hormone production and muscle protein synthesis you might want it higher, between, say, 50 to 80.
• 7:53
  Philip Pape: Your thyroid right, that's a big one.
• 7:56
  Philip Pape: Today Everybody's concerned about their thyroid, and for good reason.
• 7:59
  Philip Pape: Your thyroid markers might all fall within range individually, but when you look at it as a pattern or as ratios right and again, some functional doctors do this quite well when it comes to hormones you have to look at multiple biomarkers, how they connect together, and then you can spot suboptimal function before it becomes a clinical problem.
• 8:21
  Philip Pape: And that's the key before it becomes a problem.
• 8:23
  Philip Pape: So even if we are concerned about sickness and disease, why wait till you have all these symptoms and things are just feeling terrible in your 50s or 60s or 70s, when you could get way ahead of the issue?
• 8:33
  Philip Pape: And that's where most people get stuck.
• 8:35
  Philip Pape: Their blood work looks fine, the doctor says you're good, they're relying purely on the healthcare industry, but then they might have symptoms.
• 8:43
  Philip Pape: They healthcare industry, but then they might have symptoms.
• 8:50
  Philip Pape: They might feel terrible, or they simply might not be making progress.
• 8:51
  Philip Pape: Like your metabolism is not as high as you think it should be, or it drops fast when you go into fat loss phase, or there's some other dysfunction.
• 8:55
  Philip Pape: You know having to do with various symptoms.
• 8:57
  Philip Pape: So the performance approach is it uses what's called impact scoring.
• 9:03
  Philip Pape: So instead of flagging high or low markers like you would in a normal blood test, it's going to identify the interventions that are going to move the needle, the most kind of like your low-hanging fruit on multiple systems simultaneously.
• 9:17
  Philip Pape: Let me put it a different way it's going to identify that if you fix this one thing here, it's going to fix these five different areas of your physiology over here.
• 9:28
  Philip Pape: Now that's powerful.
• 9:30
  Philip Pape: You don't get that in a normal blood pattern and even in many functional workups right.
• 9:35
  Philip Pape: Most functional workups go like one degree or two degrees in, but they don't necessarily connect you know five or six different, seemingly unrelated blood markers to a pattern where they might have a common root cause.
• 9:48
  Philip Pape: And hasn't that always bothered you Like those of you listening, not in your head?
• 9:51
  Philip Pape: Think about it.
• 9:52
  Philip Pape: Hasn't it bothered you that we have all these separate blood markers and we get the result and we have them in our loaded in our app, or we go to quest or lab corp or whatever.
• 10:00
  Philip Pape: You look at the result and you have to, like, start Googling what these all mean and still it doesn't make sense.
• 10:05
  Philip Pape: You're like, okay, my erythrocyte pattern is high and my you know albumin is low.
• 10:09
  Philip Pape: How does it all connect Right?
• 10:12
  Philip Pape: And so this is this is the next thing I want to talk about is these hidden constraints that standard blood work misses.
• 10:18
  Philip Pape: That we're going to address.
• 10:19
  Philip Pape: We're going to address that.
• 10:19
  Philip Pape: So, individual markers again, they tell you part of the story.
• 10:23
  Philip Pape: Patterns are what tell you the actual story, the whole story.
• 10:27
  Philip Pape: So I'll give you an example.
• 10:28
  Philip Pape: I mentioned albumin.
• 10:29
  Philip Pape: Albumin is a protein made by your liver, but it's also what we call an acute phase reactant.
• 10:36
  Philip Pape: So when you have inflammation, albumin gets pulled down.
• 10:41
  Philip Pape: When you're dehydrated, albumin gets pushed up.
• 10:44
  Philip Pape: Well, what?
• 10:47
  Philip Pape: If you are both inflamed and dehydrated, the markers are going to cancel each other out.
• 10:52
  Philip Pape: Albumin will come back normal, even though you have two significant constraints affecting your recovery, your performance, your body composition.
• 11:01
  Philip Pape: This is why pattern analysis changes the game here.
• 11:06
  Philip Pape: Every blood panel, when it comes to performance analysis, what we are doing now in partnership with Vitality Blueprint, undergoes thousands of calculations that are looking at the relationships between the biomarkers, not just the individual values.
• 11:21
  Philip Pape: Somebody asked me hey, when I sent them information on the blood work analysis, because they were wondering what was some things weren't feeling well for their energy, for their sleep and also for their metabolism.
• 11:30
  Philip Pape: That used to be working fine.
• 11:32
  Philip Pape: And they say you know, I already get blood work and work at a functional doctor and I get like 80, 90, 100 different blood markers.
• 11:37
  Philip Pape: But those blood markers are being looked at in isolation and I said, well, are you able to spot the clues that are invisible to those based on the relationships between the biomarkers?
• 11:47
  Philip Pape: They're like no, I didn't know that even existed.
• 11:55
  Philip Pape: So the platform that I use runs over 20,000 calculations on top of 4,000 scientific references for every single blood draw.
• 11:58
  Philip Pape: So when you get a blood draw and I've done it myself for me, I did the standard version of this, which is 85 plus markers, which was like five vials it was three big vials and two small vials and the phlebotomist was really good, very experienced, simple pinch in and out.
• 12:13
  Philip Pape: It was good.
• 12:14
  Philip Pape: But I've done this myself and, based on the 20,000 calculations and the 4,000 references, you're looking at biomarker ratios, you're looking at calculations, multi, multi-factor patterns, and you're trying to find the hidden constraints.
• 12:26
  Philip Pape: So really, this all is about constraints and that's the level of analysis that I provide through our new performance blood work analysis, which I'm so excited to bring to you guys because I'm again, I'm doing it myself.
• 12:37
  Philip Pape: It's, it's incredible.
• 12:38
  Philip Pape: You get a comprehensive performance plan that I put together for you based on what the data is telling me, and this is not just me figuring it out.
• 12:46
  Philip Pape: This is built on a system that has already done all the heavy lifting, the calculations and the patterns that I mentioned, and then what I'm able to do is take a smaller choice set of interventions for you and, with my you know nutrition coaching hat on, identify the most effective ones that are going to give you the widest distribution of fixes and improvements in your constraints, and so that's a targeted plan that has lifestyle nutrition supplements.
• 13:12
  Philip Pape: All that and you know, wink wink.
• 13:14
  Philip Pape: I like to supplement that with some extra recommendations that you wouldn't even get from anyone else using this platform.
• 13:20
  Philip Pape: So if you want to do that, witsandweightscom slash bloodwork, at least check out what it's about.
• 13:25
  Philip Pape: We just launched this.
• 13:26
  Philip Pape: We have a couple of different plans.
• 13:28
  Philip Pape: There's a higher elite plan that has way more blood markers, but that's more for elite athletes.
• 13:32
  Philip Pape: I would say that most people are going to be fine with the standard plan with 85 markers.
• 13:36
  Philip Pape: We do take HSA and FSA payments, but it is out of pocket versus it's not covered by insurance.
• 13:43
  Philip Pape: So cause again, this is not a healthcare service.
• 13:46
  Philip Pape: This is performance blood work analysis.
• 13:48
  Philip Pape: There are medical professionals who actually look at your data and if there's anything out of range from a, from a, a what am I trying to say?
• 13:55
  Philip Pape: A health or medical perspective?
• 13:57
  Philip Pape: Uh, they will intervene cause.
• 13:58
  Philip Pape: That is outside my scope of practice, but you can go to witsandweightscom slash bloodwork for that performance bloodwork analysis.
• 14:05
  Philip Pape: All right, so I want to talk about these interventions and how this all works, because once you identify the constraints, you have to address them efficiently, and this is where the impact scoring is important.
• 14:14
  Philip Pape: I mentioned impact scoring before.
• 14:16
  Philip Pape: Not every intervention is created equal, right, some changes are going to improve one thing, others, like strength training.
• 14:23
  Philip Pape: All right, spoiler alert strength training is probably at the almost, if not, top of the list for improving blood markers in general.
• 14:32
  Philip Pape: But, of course, if you're already doing that many of you are you're already lifting weights.
• 14:35
  Philip Pape: Well, that may not move the needle at all for you because you're already doing it.
• 14:39
  Philip Pape: But by definition, you know some other mark, some other intervention over here that you hadn't even considered, like, say, a nutrient deficiency, might improve five, six, seven markers, and you didn't even realize that would happen because of the cascade and the relationships.
• 14:54
  Philip Pape: Right, the cascading impact Built on Vitality Blueprint, which is from Dr Andy Galpin, and it's in association with him and a few others it uses.
• 15:08
  Philip Pape: It grades every recommendation as accurate medium, high or maximum impact, based on how many markers it addresses in your specific case, based on your blood work.
• 15:20
  Philip Pape: So I'm able to use that to even further optimize your performance plan.
• 15:24
  Philip Pape: And, by the way, this is not coaching or anything.
• 15:26
  Philip Pape: I mean.
• 15:26
  Philip Pape: It is coaching in a sense that I'm giving you a plan to act on, but it's not like an ongoing coaching contract or anything like that.
• 15:33
  Philip Pape: It's a one-time thing.
• 15:34
  Philip Pape: Obviously, we could do a before and after or we can talk about an ongoing thing if you need it, but it's a one-time thing.
• 15:39
  Philip Pape: So if you are, for example, busy, if you're a busy person, like many of you are, you don't have a lot of time and I give you your plan and it says okay, here are the six interventions that make the biggest impact.
• 15:50
  Philip Pape: If you listen to this podcast, you know I don't want you to go out and do all six tomorrow.
• 15:54
  Philip Pape: I want you to focus on the maximum one first, which is your biggest immediate constraint.
• 16:00
  Philip Pape: Now, if you're motivated to optimize everything which I hope you are you can slowly work through the full list and you know that you're prioritizing correctly and that at any point you can get a follow-up blood panel to see how much you've moved the needle in each of those and, by the way, you will move the needle.
• 16:15
  Philip Pape: And how do I know that confidently?
• 16:24
  Philip Pape: Because, again, the interventions are based on decades of established science, which there's a lot of science when it comes to blood markers.
• 16:27
  Philip Pape: It's a much more objective, empirical type of research than a lot of the other things that we hang our hats on in the fitness industry, and you're going to hear a conversation coming up with Dr Eric Helms where we talk about how you evaluate all of these things.
• 16:40
  Philip Pape: So I'm very, very confident in the use of blood markers.
• 16:43
  Philip Pape: I'm less confident in the use of, for example, genetics, right, because that's a little more ambiguous today given the state of the science.
• 16:51
  Philip Pape: But blood markers are pretty solid.
• 16:53
  Philip Pape: So you can prioritize your list and then you create what I call the engineering feedback loop, right?
• 16:58
  Philip Pape: The test.
• 16:59
  Philip Pape: Identify the constraint.
• 17:00
  Philip Pape: Apply a targeted intervention, retest, identify the next constraint.
• 17:04
  Philip Pape: Now you don't you know if the constraint takes you three weeks to implement.
• 17:08
  Philip Pape: You're not going to just wait for months, get blood work before going to the next constraint, necessarily, although for some people who are super into this and have a lot of things they want to work on.
• 17:19
  Philip Pape: You could get blood panels, say, every three months or so.
• 17:22
  Philip Pape: That's probably enough time to go by.
• 17:24
  Philip Pape: Many, many people, myself included, are going to do it like semi annually or maybe even once a year.
• 17:30
  Philip Pape: And remember, this is totally different than your what do you call it?
• 17:33
  Philip Pape: Physical labs.
• 17:34
  Philip Pape: However, however, I do want to mention this If you go to winstonweightscom slash bloodwork, you'll see a plan that will save you some money if you already have labs that you could upload.
• 17:43
  Philip Pape: If they're recent labs, you could actually upload them and actually save money.
• 17:46
  Philip Pape: But if you don't have them, the plan includes the script and the instructions for the blood draw and how to schedule the blood draw through one of a couple very common labs that are near everybody.
• 18:00
  Philip Pape: I'm not going to name names here, but you'll find out if you go ahead and sign up.
• 18:04
  Philip Pape: You know when I got my blood work, I went 15 minutes away on a Monday morning and got it done at a lab corp nearby.
• 18:09
  Philip Pape: So we want this loop of continuous improvement.
• 18:13
  Philip Pape: You test, you identify the constraint, apply the intervention, retest, identify the next constraint.
• 18:17
  Philip Pape: It's the one variable at a time philosophy.
• 18:19
  Philip Pape: Now, of course, if you go ahead and you apply multiple interventions at once.
• 18:24
  Philip Pape: Well, good on you.
• 18:25
  Philip Pape: It is probably going to speed up the process in some ways, but it's going to maybe muddy a little bit, like what you did versus what the outcome was.
• 18:33
  Philip Pape: But for many of you are like I don't care, I just need to improve my lifestyle and I'm going to go ahead and do these things and if my blood work looks great next time, great, I've done it.
• 18:39
  Philip Pape: If not, you can drill down from there.
• 18:41
  Philip Pape: So as you fix one constraint, the cool thing is another constraint is going to emerge.
• 18:46
  Philip Pape: So if you fix a constraint that was connected to six biomarkers and then you get follow-up blood work and three of those six biomarkers are now cool or they're good, they're optimal, and the other three are not, what's going to happen is the new analysis is going to now pick a different constraint that's affecting those three.
• 19:04
  Philip Pape: So you can definitely have multifactorial issues in your body.
• 19:06
  Philip Pape: In fact, most people who are not living an optimal lifestyle are having multiple causes, affect multiple results, and that's where it gets so confusing.
• 19:16
  Philip Pape: So if we can figure out the likely causes, address those and then reduce what's left, that's going to help you make a lot of progress because you're systematically removing the bottlenecks that limit your performance.
• 19:32
  Philip Pape: Very, very important and powerful way to do this using something so objective at blood work, which seems like magic, but it's really just looking at everything that is in your body right now, signaling and screaming as to what is happening.
• 19:46
  Philip Pape: All right, now let me walk you through how this works with some examples in practice.
• 19:52
  Philip Pape: Let's say you have a fat loss plateau, you're trying to lose weight, you're trying to lose fat and let's say you're strength training.
• 19:59
  Philip Pape: Okay, if you're not even strength training, I can tell you right now don't waste your money on the blood work and start lifting weights for about I don't know six weeks and then get the blood work.
• 20:06
  Philip Pape: Like, I don't want your money if you're not lifting weights, cause, right there, that that kind of is a high signal among the noise.
• 20:13
  Philip Pape: If you will right, I think I'm going to do a whole episode about how, like, not lifting weights is the worst thing for your health.
• 20:20
  Philip Pape: It just really is.
• 20:22
  Philip Pape: It's way up there.
• 20:23
  Philip Pape: Let's just put it that way.
• 20:30
  Philip Pape: So how does this work?
• 20:30
  Philip Pape: If you have a fat loss plateau?
• 20:31
  Philip Pape: A lot of people think it's really that you're just not eating enough, or you're not eating few enough calories.
• 20:34
  Philip Pape: You're not in a big enough deficit, right?
• 20:36
  Philip Pape: That's what a lot of fit fluencers will say oh it's you probably just don't know you're eating more than you think.
• 20:41
  Philip Pape: You got to track your food you got, okay.
• 20:43
  Philip Pape: Yeah, the basic principle is if you're not even tracking, if you don't know how much you're eating, why are you even in fat loss If you can't induce the proper deficit?
• 20:50
  Philip Pape: Okay, right now, with this discussion, you want to go back to the basics of track your food, use macro factor, identify where your metabolism is, go into the proper deficit at the proper intake you know, see what happens and then you'll.
• 21:06
  Philip Pape: You'll have already eliminated one constraint, but most people think it's about calories or moving Like they're not moving enough.
• 21:13
  Philip Pape: Even if you've heard me talk over and over again how you can lose weight and you can lose fat successfully lifting weights and walking, with no other cardio, many of you are going to want to incorporate some strategic cardio.
• 21:24
  Philip Pape: But if your blood work shows your thyroid markers trending quite low and your inflammation is elevated, the constraint is it's not about the energy balance per se, it's about the metabolism side, which is part of energy balance, for sure, but you're not being as efficient.
• 21:41
  Philip Pape: We literally just talked about this on the last episode about recovery, and we do know that thyroid declines in a fat loss phase no matter what.
• 21:49
  Philip Pape: So it's not a bad thing in and of itself.
• 21:51
  Philip Pape: But if your thyroid has tanked a lot which again, I have some clients who came to me with much lower thyroid Even when they go on medication and they bring it up, they want to improve the lifestyle and then they can reduce or potentially go off that medication.
• 22:06
  Philip Pape: So if your inflammation is high, if your thyroid is low and there's a way to address that besides the strength training, which again is a very important way to do it strength training, which again is a very important way to do it the intervention might be you're doing too much and you need to tone it down and find a way to reduce that stress right and get more sleep.
• 22:22
  Philip Pape: I don't know, it's going to depend on, again, you, your individual intake and your blood work, but I'm going to be able to identify the very things that might help you reverse that.
• 22:33
  Philip Pape: Now, of course, not dieting is always going to increase in general increase your thyroid, naturally, but then you're not going to get the fat loss you want.
• 22:40
  Philip Pape: So we want to be able to do it in a healthy way, so that the fat loss resumes, without you having to go cut calories way low or to feel like you have to move a whole bunch more, which you shouldn't.
• 22:52
  Philip Pape: Growth like muscle gain, and I don't just mean a calorie surplus, I mean just in general, gaining muscle.
• 22:57
  Philip Pape: You may be doing that as a body recomp, where you're trying to build muscle and lose fat at the same time, something we help a lot of people with.
• 23:04
  Philip Pape: If you go to Physique University and check out what we're about, go to physiquewitsandweightscom, you'll see that you know that is what we are targeting.
• 23:12
  Philip Pape: We're trying to help you learn to build muscle the right way while losing fat, and for many of you, that means not doing a calorie deficit and getting all the negative consequences that come with that.
• 23:20
  Philip Pape: For some of you, though, you want to go the extra mile and go into a surplus and build muscle.
• 23:25
  Philip Pape: Either way, your strength training is a necessity.
• 23:28
  Philip Pape: It's dialed in.
• 23:29
  Philip Pape: You've got to be eating sufficient protein right, and again, if you come to me for blood work analysis, I'm going to want to know what you're already doing right now, to see if there isn't just an easy low-hanging fruit to the point where I might convince you not even to do blood work just yet, like I mentioned earlier, and just deal with a couple of these things first.
• 23:48
  Philip Pape: But it doesn't hurt to do them both at the same time.
• 23:50
  Philip Pape: It's fine, because you still may have some issue you want to address.
• 23:53
  Philip Pape: Now let's say you get your blood work and your testosterone is suboptimal and your vitamin D is really really low.
• 24:00
  Philip Pape: Well, the constraint here is probably not the training stimulus.
• 24:04
  Philip Pape: It may not even be your nutrition, other than the vitamin D piece, which is kind of a debate of how much can you address that through nutrition and through sunlight exposure versus supplementation?
• 24:16
  Philip Pape: I personally supplement vitamin D.
• 24:17
  Philip Pape: I live in the North.
• 24:19
  Philip Pape: I don't get nearly as much sun as I would like, especially in the winter.
• 24:22
  Philip Pape: I'm a white guy, favorite pale skin.
• 24:23
  Philip Pape: All of those factors hit against me and my vitamin D was low, and so I supplement with vitamin D.
• 24:30
  Philip Pape: I take what is it?
• 24:31
  Philip Pape: I take 10, 5,000 IU a day.
• 24:33
  Philip Pape: I think yeah.
• 24:33
  Philip Pape: So it's a moderate amount, it's not super high, it's not super low and when I get my blood checked, vitamin D is right in the range it needs to be, you know the optimal range, not just the non-sick range.
• 24:44
  Philip Pape: So if your hormonal environment for muscle growth is stunted due to a lot of factors like your hormones, with testosterone, but also the vitamin D, which is technically a hormone.
• 24:55
  Philip Pape: I don't know if a lot of people realize that then addressing these is going to translate into the muscle gain you want, because it's just going to jack up the pun intended, jack up the efficiency of what you're trying to do.
• 25:05
  Philip Pape: There's so many little things besides your movement and your training and your sleep and your recovery in your blood that can tell us that you don't have the right environment for muscle growth, regardless of whether you're in a surplus, just in general.
• 25:17
  Philip Pape: And then you could be frustrated because you, you know you do deficits.
• 25:21
  Philip Pape: Then you get out of a deficit, you maintain and you're in the gym, but things are not progressing like you expect.
• 25:26
  Philip Pape: What about energy and recovery?
• 25:28
  Philip Pape: Okay, our last episode talked about recovery and let's say you're doing all the things.
• 25:33
  Philip Pape: I know people are like I sleep eight hours, I'm well-rested, or I feel generally well-rested through my sleep, but then I feel sluggish in the gym or throughout the day my energy crashes or I feel like just my overall recovery isn't where it needs to be and you do your blood work and the inflammatory markers are high.
• 25:53
  Philip Pape: Okay, there's specific markers of inflammation in your blood that tell us that your cells are high.
• 25:56
  Philip Pape: Okay, there's, there's specific markers of inflammation in your blood that tell us that your cells are stressed.
• 25:59
  Philip Pape: We're not talking about the boogie word inflammation in the fitness industry.
• 26:02
  Philip Pape: That's meaningless.
• 26:03
  Philip Pape: We're talking about measurable, objective inflammation markers.
• 26:06
  Philip Pape: And let's say they're really high.
• 26:08
  Philip Pape: Right, I have an autoimmune condition, so if I weren't treating it, my inflammatory markers start to shoot way up.
• 26:13
  Philip Pape: Well, I know that that's what I have, so I treat it and therefore my inflammatory markers are just a little bit on the high end, but manageable, right, and you might have these higher than you realize, not even due to a condition, but just because, for example, your micronutrients are deficient.
• 26:27
  Philip Pape: I mean, a lot of it does come down to that People aren't eating quality enough food and they're probably not supplementing, and all of a sudden, you have some of these issues, and so it may not be your sleep, it's the quality of your recovery, because it's held back by the inflammation in your body and the gaps in your nutrition, and then, once you fix those, the sleep now becomes a huge complement to what you're trying to do and it makes sense to, you know, makes you more rested and recovered.
• 26:55
  Philip Pape: So this is also, by the way, why adherence matters so much.
• 27:02
  Philip Pape: Let me explain what I mean.
• 27:03
  Philip Pape: Adherence meaning sticking with and being consistent with your lifestyle plan, you know, your training, your nutrition, all of those things.
• 27:10
  Philip Pape: Not perfectly, but just being consistent.
• 27:12
  Philip Pape: Well, the system here, your body and your multiple blood markers, as they relate to each other, will provide multiple pathways to address each constraint.
• 27:24
  Philip Pape: I mentioned this earlier.
• 27:25
  Philip Pape: It's not as easy as okay.
• 27:28
  Philip Pape: These five things are a problem in your blood work.
• 27:30
  Philip Pape: Therefore, here's your one root cause.
• 27:32
  Philip Pape: No, it's.
• 27:32
  Philip Pape: These five things are a problem.
• 27:33
  Philip Pape: You have three potential root causes that could overlap with those five things.
• 27:38
  Philip Pape: Which one is the most likely?
• 27:40
  Philip Pape: Let's address that Now.
• 27:41
  Philip Pape: Once you address it, maybe you still have one of those five things.
• 27:43
  Philip Pape: That's an issue.
• 27:43
  Philip Pape: That's what I mean is there's multiple pathways to address each and then there's multiple causes of each pathway.
• 27:50
  Philip Pape: If you know what I mean, like it goes both ways.
• 27:52
  Philip Pape: So if you and I guess the power of all of that as well is that you have multiple choices you can make based on what you can achieve, what's doable, what's in your budget, you know those sorts of things where I'm not going to be the guy that says don't make excuses, do this.
• 28:12
  Philip Pape: It's more like, hey, there could be three things that are going to be helpful.
• 28:15
  Philip Pape: Let's start with the one that's the most accessible to you.
• 28:23
  Philip Pape: That helps with your adherence as well.
• 28:24
  Philip Pape: You know, if you prefer lifestyle changes, there are lifestyle solutions.
• 28:25
  Philip Pape: If supplements are convenient, I'm not going to knock you for that.
• 28:27
  Philip Pape: I mean, magnesium is something I tell everybody to take, right?
• 28:30
  Philip Pape: I just pretty much do only because everybody's deficient in it.
• 28:34
  Philip Pape: So why not?
• 28:35
  Philip Pape: And maybe you're not, maybe you're not.
• 28:37
  Philip Pape: But supplements can be convenient.
• 28:39
  Philip Pape: They're not a shortcut, but they can definitely help with things like nutrient deficiencies.
• 28:42
  Philip Pape: And then, of course, nutrition.
• 28:44
  Philip Pape: There's so many dietary interventions that you can do for nutrition.
• 28:47
  Philip Pape: Some of them are more extreme than others, and I say that not from the lens of don't do restrictive diets for fat loss, but from the lens of you may need to eliminate some things, to identify a root cause before you add those foods back.
• 29:02
  Philip Pape: You know what I mean.
• 29:03
  Philip Pape: So there's lots of ways to get to it.
• 29:06
  Philip Pape: And then the most powerful part of all of this is what happens over time.
• 29:10
  Philip Pape: A lot of people are just chasing symptoms.
• 29:12
  Philip Pape: They're going in circles.
• 29:13
  Philip Pape: You know they have low energy so they fix it with more caffeine or a stimulant and that just is a band-aid.
• 29:19
  Philip Pape: They have poor recovery, so they just think, okay, instead of working five days a week, I'm going to work out three days a week.
• 29:25
  Philip Pape: And they find it didn't really help, or the fat loss is slowing down.
• 29:29
  Philip Pape: So people do all sorts of things for that.
• 29:31
  Philip Pape: The simple things people try are just more cardio or cutting calories, but they also might try fat burners or, let's be honest, the GLP-1 weight loss drugs, which I've talked to.
• 29:42
  Philip Pape: Some amazing people lately, including Jamie Seltzer was on the show recently.
• 29:47
  Philip Pape: He was our last interview about how powerful and beneficial of a tool that is for some people.
• 29:52
  Philip Pape: But my point is people will chase a fix for something without fixing the root cause and, like Jamie did, address the root cause right, his root cause.
• 30:02
  Philip Pape: Well, one root cause was food noise, which the GLP-1 helped, but then the other root causes where he wasn't moving, he wasn't lifting weights, he wasn't doing something sustainable.
• 30:12
  Philip Pape: Now he has all those in place, so he's good to go.
• 30:15
  Philip Pape: So when you can identify and address your constraints, your biggest immediate constraint, okay, you are going to create the upward spiral, right, there's that term again for positive psychology an upward spiral, because you're going to fix one thing and it's going to boom, boom, boom like whack-a-mole, but it's going to knock some things out and those moles never come up.
• 30:33
  Philip Pape: And then there's two moles left.
• 30:34
  Philip Pape: Now you boom, boom, get Like.
• 30:40
  Philip Pape: Lifting weights is the first big one.
• 30:42
  Philip Pape: That's going to help a lot of these other things.
• 30:43
  Philip Pape: Better hormone function is going to improve your recovery.
• 30:47
  Philip Pape: Better recovery is going to improve how you adapt to your training and build muscle.
• 30:51
  Philip Pape: And then better training and adaptation gives you what Adaptation sorry, I'm slurring my words gives you what Improved physique and body composition and health, which is all you want.
• 31:00
  Philip Pape: Because what does that do?
• 31:01
  Philip Pape: It gives you more confidence and it helps.
• 31:08
  Philip Pape: You want to do this for the rest of your life because it's fun and helps you look good and feel good, and that is what we all want, isn't it All right?
• 31:11
  Philip Pape: You're going to stop fighting your physiology and just optimize it a piece at a time, but with some clarity and confidence, which I know a lot of us are lacking and we don't know what to do.
• 31:19
  Philip Pape: I get it.
• 31:20
  Philip Pape: That's why you're listening to this show.
• 31:21
  Philip Pape: Instead of being reactive, you're going to be proactive.
• 31:24
  Philip Pape: Instead of guessing and, I'll say, blindly experimenting, you're going to measure and then intentionally experiment.
• 31:32
  Philip Pape: Instead of the classic phrase spinning your wheels, you're going to actually have progress.
• 31:37
  Philip Pape: Systematic progress is the way I like to think it, one thing at a time.
• 31:42
  Philip Pape: The constraint theory approach we're talking about today treats your body as a system that can be finely tuned, where all the components support all the other components, and that's when these breakthrough results that you might be seeing other people get and you're not.
• 31:58
  Philip Pape: Therefore, you are going to become inevitable.
• 32:00
  Philip Pape: Instead of accidental, blind luck or never, and I think we want that to be the case.
• 32:06
  Philip Pape: We want to be intentional guys.
• 32:07
  Philip Pape: We want to make it happen through our choices.
• 32:10
  Philip Pape: It doesn't have to be super difficult, though, and it can be done with confidence.
• 32:14
  Philip Pape: Right, your body is not.
• 32:16
  Philip Pape: I don't want to think of your body as a mystery to be solved through trial and error.
• 32:20
  Philip Pape: Now, I might have used that analogy here and there, but it's not a mystery.
• 32:23
  Philip Pape: It's actually something that can be fairly well understood.
• 32:27
  Philip Pape: You don't have to understand everything.
• 32:29
  Philip Pape: I'll give you an example.
• 32:30
  Philip Pape: You don't have to understand all the things happening inside your body that cause you to burn calories.
• 32:36
  Philip Pape: You just need to know that when I eat this much and my body weight changes like this, I must be burning this.
• 32:42
  Philip Pape: It's a black box approach.
• 32:45
  Philip Pape: I don't know if I've talked about that term, the idea that you can simplify or use a proxy for what's happening in your body.
• 32:51
  Philip Pape: Well, I'm going to break that rule a little bit and say that blood work is actually a very precise, objective way to measure what is going on in your body.
• 33:00
  Philip Pape: The problem is, even then, it doesn't really tell you how it got there unless you look at multiple blood markers, look at the patterns and the relationships, use all of this data and machine learning that Vitality has already put into it Only company I'm aware of that has done it like that so far and then you can abstract it up to the level of, okay, five issues, potential issues, because of these 10 markers in my blood telling me something.
• 33:28
  Philip Pape: Now I can focus my efforts right, I can optimize, I can measure and have a targeted intervention.
• 33:34
  Philip Pape: And the difference between people who break through the plateaus and those who stay stuck, it's not their willpower, commitment or discipline or genetics.
• 33:41
  Philip Pape: It's identifying and addressing the right constraints at the right time.
• 33:46
  Philip Pape: The right constraints at the right time.
• 33:48
  Philip Pape: So stop guessing.
• 33:50
  Philip Pape: Stop working with coaches who want you to try this and then try that, and then try this, and you go months and months and then you're frustrated and you don't even get anywhere near the result you're looking for.
• 33:59
  Philip Pape: Right, stop trying to do it on your own, blindly.
• 34:04
  Philip Pape: You know, even if you are doing a lot of what we talk about here, which is okay I'm lifting, I'm training, I'm tracking my food, I'm tracking my biofeedback that's not necessarily everything.
• 34:12
  Philip Pape: You want to measure all the things that will tell you what you need.
• 34:15
  Philip Pape: Not necessarily to the level of biohacking where it's like two and three degrees of measurement that don't really matter, but at the very basic level, which blood work is an important part of.
• 34:27
  Philip Pape: That is what I've finally come around to realize.
• 34:30
  Philip Pape: That's why I'm doing this myself with clients, with anybody who wants to do it, and then you can get the results you've been working for, knowing there aren't any other constraints going on, because you've objectively measured it right.
• 34:42
  Philip Pape: So if you want to find out what is constraining your progress right now at the physiological level, I'm offering performance blood work analysis with this comprehensive performance plan, personalized interventions that I put together for you.
• 34:53
  Philip Pape: I'm also going to give you full access to the platform yourself, because you guys are like me.
• 34:58
  Philip Pape: You want to nerd out and go in and look at all the data and graphs, you want to see how everything connects, and that's going to give you the power to even put together your own plan.
• 35:07
  Philip Pape: That's different than the one that I put together for you, but you get both, and so that's that's my gift to you, to say I want you to have all the power of the tool possible.
• 35:17
  Philip Pape: So, wits and weights listeners, get 20% off the public price with the code vitality20.
• 35:23
  Philip Pape: This is the only place you're going to hear that, okay, in the show notes and here Vitality20,.
• 35:30
  Philip Pape: Go to whitsandweightscom slash bloodwork and use code vitality20, you know, because it's not the cheapest thing, right, like getting blood work, getting the labs, getting the performance and analysis, all that.
• 35:39
  Philip Pape: It isn't, you know, the cheapest thing in the world.
• 35:41
  Philip Pape: I get it Right, but it's the amount that it's going to save you down the road, because you're going to know what to do is pretty much priceless, and I'm trying to make it more accessible.
• 35:50
  Philip Pape: So, for those of you who listen to the podcast, I'm giving you this code vitality 20,.
• 35:55
  Philip Pape: Go to Winston weightscom slash blood work or click the link, It'll be in the show notes and let's identify your constraints so you can break through the plateaus, and I could just see you soaring in the future and getting that result that you want, whether it's fat loss, building muscle, improving your health and blood markers.
• 36:11
  Philip Pape: All of it, all right.
• 36:13
  Philip Pape: Until next time, keep using your wits, lifting those weights, and remember your body is a system waiting to be optimized.
• 36:19
  Philip Pape: I'll talk to you next time here on the Wits and Weights podcast.