Latest / Wits & Weights | Strength & Fat Loss Over 40 / The Smarter Approach to Fat Loss Beyond Calories and Cardio | Ep 261

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The Smarter Approach to Fat Loss Beyond Calories and Cardio | Ep 261 · Wits & Weights | Strength & Fat Loss Over 40

• 0:00
  Philip Pape: Hey, it's Christmas week and I'm taking some time off to be with family, but I didn't want to leave you hanging, so I've selected three of our most powerful episodes from 2024 to share with you this week.
• 0:11
  Philip Pape: These aren't just random replays.
• 0:13
  Philip Pape: They're episodes that consistently get mentioned in DMS, in our Facebook group, in reviews, and people reaching out to me as the game changers for people's approach to fitness, to fat loss and everything else.
• 0:24
  Philip Pape: Out to me as the game changers for people's approach to fitness, to fat loss and everything else.
• 0:26
  Philip Pape: And we're going to start with this one today, which is about metabolic health.
• 0:29
  Philip Pape: And what's fascinating about this is the more we learn, the more we realize how oversimplified most fat loss advice really is.
• 0:37
  Philip Pape: Now this episode became one of our most downloaded of 2024 because it challenges the tired eat less, move more mentality and reveals what actually drives sustainable fat loss.
• 0:49
  Philip Pape: Whether you're stuck in a weight loss plateau or if you're tired of your metabolism working against you, the comprehensive approach that we explore in this episode might change how you think about fat loss, and that is really the goal with this podcast.
• 1:02
  Philip Pape: Let's revisit this discussion about metabolism, hormones and a smarter path to lasting results.
• 1:09
  Philip Pape: Are you tired of hearing the same old advice to eat less and move more when it comes to fat loss.
• 1:16
  Philip Pape: In this episode, we're going to dive into the science behind metabolism and hormones, revealing why this oversimplified approach fails to give you sustainable results.
• 1:26
  Philip Pape: You'll learn how to audit your own metabolism for improved hormones and fat loss.
• 1:32
  Philip Pape: I'm basing my notes off today, the free metabolism audit that I have on my website, which you can access by going to witsandweightscom, and you click the free audit button the big blue button at the top right and you can take this very quick audit and you will get an assessment from me and my team as to what exactly it means.
• 1:52
  Philip Pape: And if you wanted to go through that now, while you're listening to the podcast, the details that I'm sharing today are going to align with those questions, so that you understand why I'm asking you them, and I'm gonna be totally transparent.
• 2:04
  Philip Pape: If you listen to this show and you follow along with the audit, you could almost do your own assessment.
• 2:09
  Philip Pape: I encourage you to submit it anyway, because we go into a little bit more detail than that and clue in on the specific things that are opportunities for you, let's say, or strengths for you, and so if you want to get that free audit.
• 2:21
  Philip Pape: Just have to go to witsandweightscom and click the free metabolism audit in the top right or click the link in the show notes.
• 2:28
  Philip Pape: Always in these episodes I have a section called episode resources right below the text that gives you a concise bullet list of resources that you can go to that we talk about here.
• 2:40
  Philip Pape: So before we get into the whole metabolism discussion and I think it's going to be very comprehensive today Sometimes I get into metabolism and we cover one specific area.
• 2:49
  Philip Pape: Today it's kind of the whole ball of wax and will allow you to decide what's important to you and where are the areas that potentially you fall short, that you want to improve.
• 2:59
  Philip Pape: Before we do that, I wanted to share three more recent five-star reviews from Apple, and I'm always grateful for these because not only do they give me good insight into how people perceive the show, but they also help others who are browsing judge the value of it and whether they should listen Like is it for them.
• 3:18
  Philip Pape: And if you are listening right now and you haven't ever submitted a review, this is one of the best ways you can support me honestly.
• 3:25
  Philip Pape: Just head over to whatever app you use Most of you that's Apple and Spotify and just submit a rating if it's Spotify, or a rating and review If it's Apple.
• 3:35
  Philip Pape: Just take you three minutes.
• 3:36
  Philip Pape: If you need any help on what to write or how to write it, I can let you know.
• 3:40
  Philip Pape: But, honestly, if you just sent me a testimonial, it'd be that.
• 3:43
  Philip Pape: Put that in the review and I would really appreciate it.
• 3:46
  Philip Pape: Okay, so the three reviews.
• 3:48
  Philip Pape: The first one is from number two always helpful and insightful.
• 3:52
  Philip Pape: Always learn from this gentleman, good presenter of good info.
• 3:55
  Philip Pape: And I just wanted to include that because I rarely get called a gentleman from somebody who calls themselves number two.
• 4:01
  Philip Pape: Pretty cool, all right.
• 4:02
  Philip Pape: The next one is to the point and helpful.
• 4:05
  Philip Pape: I really like Philip's approach to the whole body fitness, from muscles to mindset.
• 4:10
  Philip Pape: He's a great podcast host, energetic and thoughtful about the content at each episode, great show.
• 4:16
  Philip Pape: That term, whole body fitness, that's great.
• 4:18
  Philip Pape: I don't know that I've ever used that.
• 4:20
  Philip Pape: Some people use the term holistic, which I'm I'm not a huge fan of, just because it has some baggage.
• 4:25
  Philip Pape: That goes with it, I guess.
• 4:26
  Philip Pape: But whole body fitness, including your mind, is a great way to put it.
• 4:31
  Philip Pape: And then, oh, and that's from Lin Sol Sorry, I didn't include the name and the last review is from Symphonix Excellent info.
• 4:39
  Philip Pape: I appreciate Philip's no-nonsense delivery of the facts.
• 4:42
  Philip Pape: As someone looking to lose weight but retain muscle, I feel like I'm in the right spot.
• 4:46
  Philip Pape: Great podcast, easy to listen to, etc.
• 4:49
  Philip Pape: Awesome.
• 4:49
  Philip Pape: Appreciate those reviews.
• 4:51
  Philip Pape: Concise, to the point.
• 4:52
  Philip Pape: They tell me how you feel and what you get out of the show and continue to inspire me and the listeners to keep producing these episodes.
• 4:59
  Philip Pape: All right, let's get into today's topic.
• 5:01
  Philip Pape: Why eat less, move more is terrible advice for your metabolism, hormones and fat loss.
• 5:07
  Philip Pape: All right, let's be honest.
• 5:09
  Philip Pape: For years, for years and even to this day in the diet industry, in the fitness industry, we've been told that the key to losing weight and getting healthy all right, and we can question whether even losing weight is the right goal.
• 5:20
  Philip Pape: We can go there, but the key to this is just eat less and move more.
• 5:24
  Philip Pape: I see it all the time.
• 5:25
  Philip Pape: I see people posting on I don't know social media and they ask for some advice and occasionally you'll get commenters in there and they're like eat less, move more.
• 5:33
  Philip Pape: It's that simple.
• 5:34
  Philip Pape: Like, just do that.
• 5:35
  Philip Pape: You know like all these other commenters are just going on and on and you just got to eat less and move more.
• 5:42
  Philip Pape: The problem is this advice, besides being simplistic, like any bad advice, it overlooks the role of your metabolism and your hormones in regulating body composition and overall health, because both the eat less and move more sides of the equation can backfire big time.
• 6:02
  Philip Pape: We'll get into the details why you know, piece by piece here we are going to break it down, but just at a very high level, and I get asked about this on podcasts too, where they talk about why doesn't that work?
• 6:14
  Philip Pape: Like what's the biggest misconception?
• 6:16
  Philip Pape: And one of the biggest misconceptions is that, number one, weight loss is a worthy goal and number two, weight loss via a lot of running or cardio and then cutting your calories dramatically is the way to go.
• 6:27
  Philip Pape: The problem is, the body is very good at adapting.
• 6:30
  Philip Pape: The body's very good at saying, okay, you wanna run a lot, we're gonna get really good at running and very efficient and burn as few calories as possible because you like to run and your metabolism goes down.
• 6:40
  Philip Pape: And then you have to run more and more and more if that's the method by which you're trying to lose weight.
• 6:45
  Philip Pape: And then the eating less side well, the less you eat, the more your metabolism adapts downward metabolic adaptation and the more your hormones downregulate and the more your body fights back by being conservative and causing you to eat less and less.
• 7:01
  Philip Pape: So both sides of that equation actually do the opposite of what we're trying to do.
• 7:05
  Philip Pape: But, rather than just hype on that theory or principle or idea, the reason I created this metabolism assessment is to help you understand your individual metabolic health, because you might be doing 10 out of 20 things perfectly fine to help your metabolism, and then the other 10 things are the opportunities.
• 7:24
  Philip Pape: You might not know what those are and why they are contributing to an inability to lose weight.
• 7:29
  Philip Pape: And again, we don't want to just lose weight, we want to lose fat.
• 7:32
  Philip Pape: So that means we want to lose weight while lifting weights.
• 7:35
  Philip Pape: Separate topic, though, and throughout this topic, we're going to tie the concepts from that metabolic assessment to the theme of why eat less, move more fails to address all of these complexities.
• 7:46
  Philip Pape: So let's get into some some of the science behind it, you know, behind metabolic health, and we're going to see what's more.
• 7:52
  Philip Pape: Uh, I'll say, a comprehensive approach, which, by the way, none of this can be explained in a 30 second reel on Instagram.
• 7:58
  Philip Pape: So you know, keep listening to the podcast.
• 8:01
  Philip Pape: Okay, so the first, uh part of the of the assessment, and I might jump around a little, but questions one, four and five focus on the concept of the importance of muscle mass for metabolism.
• 8:15
  Philip Pape: A few things we have to understand.
• 8:17
  Philip Pape: First, muscle tissue is metabolically active and all that means is that it burns calories, even at rest.
• 8:24
  Philip Pape: Right, that's not something that fat tissue does, adipose tissue and so the more muscle you have, the higher your resting metabolic rate will be.
• 8:32
  Philip Pape: And this is why building and maintaining muscle is crucial for fat loss and metabolic health, because it gives you that higher baseline of metabolism.
• 8:41
  Philip Pape: Now, before you say, okay, I'm just going to build muscle and that's all I have to do, and now I'm going to burn 500 more calories a day, it doesn't quite work like that.
• 8:48
  Philip Pape: The evidence shows us that maybe six to nine calories per pound of muscle that you add.
• 8:56
  Philip Pape: So if you added 10 pounds of muscle, you would burn up to, say, 90 extra calories a day.
• 9:01
  Philip Pape: Now that's not nothing.
• 9:02
  Philip Pape: But where that gets compounded is that by having more muscle mass, you're probably able to eat more and live at a higher scale weight, because the muscle is denser, you look lean, you look great and healthy and you can carry more weight on the scale.
• 9:16
  Philip Pape: That burns more calories on top of the muscle.
• 9:19
  Philip Pape: And being stronger and fitter means you're healthier to be able to go to the gym more often and push and not be as ill and injured, and the list goes on.
• 9:28
  Philip Pape: And all of that also helps with your metabolic health and even just calorie burn because you're active and more active.
• 9:35
  Philip Pape: Okay, so that's, that's covered by questions one, four and five.
• 9:40
  Philip Pape: Now to support that muscle growth and maintaining your muscle during fat loss, we have have to consume adequate protein Very common thing we talk about a lot, but if you're new to the show, it's always good as a refresher.
• 9:52
  Philip Pape: And this is covered by question two of the assessment.
• 9:54
  Philip Pape: It's about protein.
• 9:55
  Philip Pape: You know protein is the building blocks for muscle tissue.
• 9:58
  Philip Pape: It prevents muscle breakdown and here we are just supporting that by including as much protein rich food as we can.
• 10:06
  Philip Pape: Simple rule of thumb is eat protein every time you eat If you didn't want to track step, whether it's animal products like meat, dairy or plants like legumes or even protein powder, totally cool with all of that.
• 10:31
  Philip Pape: Include lots of protein-rich food in all of your meals and snacks and you'll help your metabolism tremendously for a variety of reasons.
• 10:40
  Philip Pape: Protein is more satiating, it burns more calories, it helps with body composition, it helps with muscle All right, so these all work together synergistically.
• 10:48
  Philip Pape: In addition to protein, of course, the big thing that we all want to be doing and hopefully that's one of the reasons you're listening to the show or will stick around is engaging in regular strength training, resistance training, putting a load on your body, and the best approach to that, the principle that we care about here, is proximity to failure combined with progressive overload, and, if you want to make it even more simplistic, I call this training hard or lifting heavy, is really all it is.
• 11:20
  Philip Pape: It's lifting heavy, enough weight for enough volume, as close to failure as you can, and by close means anywhere from like zero to three reps from failure, and then progressing in one of those training variables over time.
• 11:35
  Philip Pape: That's it Okay.
• 11:37
  Philip Pape: And questions four and five focus on the frequency and progression of strength training.
• 11:44
  Philip Pape: That is so important.
• 11:45
  Philip Pape: It's not enough to say am I strength training?
• 11:47
  Philip Pape: It's do I have the proper frequency and progression of strength training?
• 11:52
  Philip Pape: Frequency is necessary to give you the stimulus to adapt and then go into the gym again and push to the next level.
• 12:00
  Philip Pape: If you don't have the frequency, for example, if you go to the gym on Monday and you don't go again for six more months, well, you're not going to be able to progressively overload because you wouldn't have maintained that adaptation.
• 12:11
  Philip Pape: But if you go Monday and then Wednesday, there's a very good chance that that's the frequency you need as a beginner to progress and get stronger each session.
• 12:21
  Philip Pape: So if you don't have enough frequency, you're not going to do it, and then, if you don't actually progress, you're not going to build muscle, and then the gym time is effectively going to waste and becoming more of exercise or more of just, you know, cardio.
• 12:34
  Philip Pape: And so if I were to give you a simple rule of thumb here, I would say most people would do well to resistance train at least three times a week and then challenge yourself by gradually increasing the weight and or the reps over time.
• 12:46
  Philip Pape: Simple, okay, simple, but not easy, as are many of these concepts.
• 12:51
  Philip Pape: Now let's talk about the advice eat less, move more again, because what it usually leads to is muscle loss If you are just moving more in form, in the form of cardio, and you're not training, or you're not training effectively and you're eating less.
• 13:04
  Philip Pape: And you know, I've heard people say who lift weights.
• 13:07
  Philip Pape: I'm going to go into a fat loss phase and now I'm going to stop lifting weight so that I can burn more fat, and that is ass backward.
• 13:14
  Philip Pape: Okay, that is the opposite, because you're just going to you're just going to lose muscle and get skinny fat, right.
• 13:21
  Philip Pape: So eat less, move more often leads to muscle mass loss, and then that slows down your metabolism, because when you drastically reduce calories and you increase your exercise volume, your body is probably going to break down that muscle tissue for energy.
• 13:34
  Philip Pape: It needs the energy, right, and this lowers your metabolic rate.
• 13:38
  Philip Pape: It also makes hard to maintain fat loss in the long run, right, it makes you live at a lower metabolic rate, and so, instead of focusing on this, let's prioritize building and maintaining muscle through adequate protein and regular strength training.
• 13:50
  Philip Pape: Okay, I'm beating a dead horse on that one, but it's got to be the top priority for most people here.
• 13:56
  Philip Pape: All right, so then we get to the next section of the assessment.
• 13:59
  Philip Pape: And, by the way, I'm not sharing this.
• 14:02
  Philip Pape: So even if you're watching on YouTube, I'm not like showing the questions.
• 14:04
  Philip Pape: But again, if you go to whatsonweightscom and you click the big button at the top right free metabolism audit you could see the 20 questions, just 20 questions, a scale of one to five and you can take the whole test in like three minutes.
• 14:15
  Philip Pape: So now let's talk about the importance of fueling your body properly and staying active for metabolic health, which is different than eat less, move more.
• 14:24
  Philip Pape: We're talking about fueling and we're talking about activity in general, not necessarily moving more at all costs and for all modalities.
• 14:34
  Philip Pape: So question three in the assessment talks about carb intake, carbohydrate intake, and I'll just say it again, if you're new to me, if you've never heard me before I love carbs.
• 14:43
  Philip Pape: I believe and I believe the evidence supports that they are essential for energy, for recovery and performance in your workouts.
• 14:52
  Philip Pape: If you're sedentary, if you're not training, yeah, carbs aren't going to do you a lot of good, just like most calories aren't going to do you a lot of good, and you're just going to have to try to maintain your weight as best you can, keep the protein high and avoid losing as much muscle as you can.
• 15:04
  Philip Pape: That's not a great place to be.
• 15:05
  Philip Pape: That's surviving.
• 15:06
  Philip Pape: I want to thrive.
• 15:11
  Philip Pape: I want to be strong and fit until I'm 95 and I croak doing a deadlift, something like that.
• 15:15
  Philip Pape: That's my dream.
• 15:15
  Philip Pape: So carbs are going to help you do that because most of the time you should be spending building muscle, not losing fat, because that is going to pay off big time and carbs are going to help you do that.
• 15:26
  Philip Pape: All right.
• 15:26
  Philip Pape: Contrary to popular belief and I don't know why it's so popular, other than lots of great marketing cutting carbs to extremely low levels is not necessary at all for fat loss and it can hinder your progress even during fat loss.
• 15:41
  Philip Pape: So when I work with clients and we get down to you know kind of tight calories and fat loss, the carbs definitely come down.
• 15:47
  Philip Pape: And if you're a female who's at like 1200 calories or something like that, the carbs can be around a hundred grams or less, maybe.
• 15:53
  Philip Pape: Uh, but it's a temporary state of of being and it's still higher than they probably would have been if they were doing keto or low carb.
• 16:00
  Philip Pape: If your metabolism is much higher than that which is, I'll say, two thirds of people it's going to be higher than that Then you're up in the mid 100s or higher for carbs, which most people wouldn't say is low carb, and that's during fat loss.
• 16:11
  Philip Pape: While you're building muscle, you could be up in the 200s, 300s, 400s or more.
• 16:15
  Philip Pape: You know, big guy might be more than that, and you know, the more the merrier.
• 16:19
  Philip Pape: As long as you've met your protein minimums and your fat minimums, all the rest goes to carbs, all right.
• 16:26
  Philip Pape: Having said that, people will say, well, so are you advocating for high carb?
• 16:29
  Philip Pape: No, I'm advocating for what I'd call moderate carb.
• 16:31
  Philip Pape: It's just most people are used to low carb.
• 16:33
  Philip Pape: Same thing with the protein equation.
• 16:35
  Philip Pape: Are you advocating for high protein?
• 16:36
  Philip Pape: No, it's actually moderate protein.
• 16:38
  Philip Pape: When you look at percentages of this kind of balanced approach, they're actually all reasonable.
• 16:42
  Philip Pape: They're just different than what we're used to.
• 16:45
  Philip Pape: So aim to include a balanced amount of carbs in your diet if you want to support your workouts, especially around your workouts, and this could include everything from fruits to grains to vegetables to starches and, like plant you know, legumes and things that have carbs as well.
• 17:03
  Philip Pape: Anything, any carbs.
• 17:05
  Philip Pape: You know I'm not asking you to consume a bunch of added sugar or anything like that.
• 17:09
  Philip Pape: So that's where you know people get into these straw man arguments.
• 17:12
  Philip Pape: I'm talking about mostly whole foods.
• 17:14
  Philip Pape: All right, so that's how you fuel your body.
• 17:17
  Philip Pape: You fuel your body with what it needs.
• 17:19
  Philip Pape: We talked about protein and we talked about carbs, and then, in addition to proper oh, by the way, I don't even know if I cover this in the assessment.
• 17:25
  Philip Pape: But step one for most people is just eating more so that you're not accidentally dieting, and that's part of fueling your body as well is knowing that to perform and to build muscle you cannot be dieting.
• 17:36
  Philip Pape: All right, all right.
• 17:38
  Philip Pape: So, in addition to proper fueling, daily movement and low intensity cardio with a little bit of medium and high intensity sprinkled in, can support metabolic health.
• 17:49
  Philip Pape: This is very different from thinking I need to go on the treadmill seven days a week and run for an hour, all right.
• 17:55
  Philip Pape: So questions six, seven and eight in the assessment focus on this concept.
• 17:59
  Philip Pape: And while high intensity exercise can be beneficial, for sure, if your priority is lifting and building muscle and overall metabolic health, I think it's important that it becomes almost like third on the list after training and low intensity cardio, and by high intensity I mean both medium and high intensity.
• 18:21
  Philip Pape: So, for example, medium intensity would be like jogging and high intensity might be sprinting right.
• 18:26
  Philip Pape: Medium might be going for a slightly vigorous bike ride, um, whereas high intensity would be like spinning.
• 18:32
  Philip Pape: You know, super intense, um, medium intensity.
• 18:35
  Philip Pape: So I think the less intense the cardio, the more the body's ability to do more of it, you know, higher volume of it during the week without it interfering with the other priorities.
• 18:46
  Philip Pape: Simple scale.
• 18:47
  Philip Pape: So if you talk about walking, you could pretty much do as much of that as you want, right?
• 18:51
  Philip Pape: Is there a limit to that?
• 18:52
  Philip Pape: Even potentially at like 30,000 steps or something, where now it's eating into everything else you're trying to do?
• 18:59
  Philip Pape: But for most people you can walk as much as you want.
• 19:01
  Philip Pape: Then you scale up to medium intensity and I would say you could do several hours of that a week with no issue.
• 19:07
  Philip Pape: And if you're in great cardiovascular health, potentially up to like eight hours a week or even 10 hours a week, if it's like truly just medium intensity where you can do it for a sustained amount of time.
• 19:17
  Philip Pape: And then I would say high intensity, which is like HIIT training, interval training, tabatas.
• 19:21
  Philip Pape: You know, I would limit that to like an hour at most a week.
• 19:24
  Philip Pape: So those are kind of the upper limits.
• 19:26
  Philip Pape: A lot of people are doing too much overall anyway and you've got to listen to your body, you've got to listen to your recovery capacity.
• 19:31
  Philip Pape: If you're in fat loss, it's probably going to be less of the medium intensity and more of the low intensity, and then the high intensity kind of stays in that same range of up to an hour a week, and so it's a matter of balance, right?
• 19:43
  Philip Pape: The activities, all of this movement definitely helps you to cardiovascular health.
• 19:48
  Philip Pape: Okay, no doubt about that.
• 19:50
  Philip Pape: They can also increase your energy expenditure, which is why a lot of people think they need to do it right to burn more calories, and that's true to an extent.
• 19:59
  Philip Pape: Again, if you do it too much, your body will adapt.
• 20:02
  Philip Pape: This is why I like modes of cardio that change up and where your body doesn't really get used to a particular mode for too long and become efficient at it.
• 20:10
  Philip Pape: The other thing is cardio can support your recovery from workouts, so don't always think of it as this bad thing.
• 20:16
  Philip Pape: Cardio is going to kill your gains.
• 20:17
  Philip Pape: We've got to get out of that old school mindset and think about a nice balance of having it in there.
• 20:23
  Philip Pape: The other thing I want to mention here and I'm talking about it more lately is not being sedentary.
• 20:30
  Philip Pape: That's different from moving, and here's why it's different.
• 20:34
  Philip Pape: Think about your typical day or week.
• 20:36
  Philip Pape: If you're a lifter, you might go to the gym three or four days a week for an hour, hour and a half.
• 20:40
  Philip Pape: All right, great, you got that covered, then you might walk a lot.
• 20:43
  Philip Pape: Right, you go for a walk after lunch, go for a walk after dinner, you got that covered.
• 20:47
  Philip Pape: But now how many hours are you sitting in between those activities?
• 20:51
  Philip Pape: Probably quite a bit.
• 20:52
  Philip Pape: Most of us who have desk jobs or work remotely are working at a desk sitting, even standing, like I'm standing recording this podcast.
• 21:00
  Philip Pape: But I'm in one place and I know I need to fidget and kind of move around and otherwise my back will start to irritate me just standing in one place for too long.
• 21:07
  Philip Pape: So there's evidence that says not being sedentary is independently beneficial of being active and, of course, strength training.
• 21:15
  Philip Pape: So I think of them as three different modes.
• 21:17
  Philip Pape: There's kind of all the cardio modes, there's strength training and then there's not sitting around for too long at a time.
• 21:25
  Philip Pape: Okay, the eat less, move more.
• 21:29
  Philip Pape: Let's tie it back to that, that approach.
• 21:32
  Philip Pape: One of the reasons it's so destructive is it leads to under fueling, which you just talked about.
• 21:38
  Philip Pape: How detrimental that is just to building muscle.
• 21:40
  Philip Pape: And also over training, right, and so over training disrupts your metabolism and can lead to burnout and can lead to injury.
• 21:48
  Philip Pape: It can inflame your joints you know inflammation and on and on, you know tendin, all of those things.
• 21:53
  Philip Pape: So when you don't consume enough calories to support your activity levels, your body becomes catabolic.
• 21:59
  Philip Pape: Catabolic is the state of breaking down muscle tissue for energy.
• 22:04
  Philip Pape: Protein is anabolic, right the process of building tissue, and carbs are anti-catabolic.
• 22:13
  Philip Pape: Let me say that again.
• 22:14
  Philip Pape: Carbs are anti-catabolic.
• 22:16
  Philip Pape: They prevent breakdown.
• 22:18
  Philip Pape: They don't necessarily contribute toward building muscle, but they prevent the breakdown of muscle.
• 22:23
  Philip Pape: So that is why I think carbs are almost as important as protein.
• 22:27
  Philip Pape: This catabolic state, it holds you back in a few ways.
• 22:31
  Philip Pape: It holds back your performance and recovery.
• 22:33
  Philip Pape: It means when you go to the gym you feel drained, you feel like you can't get another rep.
• 22:38
  Philip Pape: Worse than that, it may cause you to have bad form and get injured.
• 22:41
  Philip Pape: Right, but it also leads to hormonal imbalances.
• 22:44
  Philip Pape: It could also lead to metabolic adaptation and it makes it harder to lose fat in the long run.
• 22:49
  Philip Pape: Now, metabolic adaptation I've talked about it before.
• 22:51
  Philip Pape: It exists, you cannot do anything about it.
• 22:54
  Philip Pape: It exists, it's fine.
• 22:55
  Philip Pape: But you don't want to be causing that adaptation, unless absolutely necessary, because you are on a deliberate fat loss phase and a lot of you listening to this are in a metabolically adapted state perpetually, for months and years, without really getting the benefit of being in that state, and the benefit would be fat loss and doing it as quickly as you can and getting out, knowing that one of the trades for that is well, you're gonna have to eat a lot less and even less than that because of adaptation, but it's quick.
• 23:23
  Philip Pape: Quick meaning a month, three months, even six months could be quick if you have a lot of weight to lose, but it's not years.
• 23:31
  Philip Pape: We wanna get back to the maintenance and back to muscle building.
• 23:33
  Philip Pape: So, instead of pushing yourself to extremes with excessive cardio and calorie restriction, I want you to focus on fueling your body, to take a positive approach If it feels like it's a negative, like you are having to do this, or I have to cut or I have to say no, question it.
• 23:52
  Philip Pape: We want to fuel our body.
• 23:54
  Philip Pape: We want to have a balanced, flexible diet incorporating a mix of protein, carbs, fats and a mix of low and high intensity activities.
• 24:01
  Philip Pape: Right, that's kind of what an athlete does.
• 24:04
  Philip Pape: They balance all these things to train, perform and feel your best and then, ultimately, you're going to look your best as an outward expression of that fitness.
• 24:12
  Philip Pape: So, metabolic health, energy, sustainable fat loss they're all tied to these concepts.
• 24:18
  Philip Pape: All right.
• 24:19
  Philip Pape: Then we get to the next section of the assessment, which focuses on some of the less sexy things, yet they could be the most important for you Hydration, sleep and stress management.
• 24:29
  Philip Pape: Okay, so question nine is about hydration, and we know that being adequately hydrated regulates body functions and that supports metabolism.
• 24:39
  Philip Pape: Just think about if you were depriving all of your cells of a little bit of water and they all felt a little bit dehydrated.
• 24:48
  Philip Pape: Just imagine they're turning into like little raisins.
• 24:50
  Philip Pape: Okay, this is not a real thing, but just as a metaphor.
• 24:54
  Philip Pape: How well would those cells perform?
• 24:57
  Philip Pape: Right?
• 24:58
  Philip Pape: They would probably say, hey, I need to stop doing certain things until I can get more water, just like we as humans.
• 25:04
  Philip Pape: At the macro level, if you're in the middle of the desert and you're dehydrated you don't have any water you're going to start to slow down.
• 25:10
  Philip Pape: You're going to crawl, you're going to find shade and you're going to just hunker down.
• 25:12
  Philip Pape: Imagine to slow down.
• 25:19
  Philip Pape: You're going to crawl, you're going to find shade and you're going to just hunker down.
• 25:21
  Philip Pape: Imagine your cells doing that.
• 25:22
  Philip Pape: And now that is your metabolism.
• 25:22
  Philip Pape: Those cells are the things that are converting your energy and using it, and the more you go into that dehydration mode, even mild dehydration.
• 25:27
  Philip Pape: You are going to slow down your metabolic rate.
• 25:28
  Philip Pape: So people don't think about that.
• 25:30
  Philip Pape: But hydration is not just, yeah, get your water and get hydrated, like this ambiguous concept.
• 25:36
  Philip Pape: It's because all of your cells need that water and if they don't have them, they are going to start shutting down, and I don't mean that in a dramatic way, but they're just going to be more efficient.
• 25:44
  Philip Pape: The mitochondria becomes more efficient.
• 25:46
  Philip Pape: This has been shown in evidence They've studied this in petri dishes that these things they just produce.
• 25:52
  Philip Pape: They exchange less energy.
• 25:55
  Philip Pape: Okay, so aim to drink plenty of water and electrolytes throughout the day, especially during and after exercise, after training.
• 26:02
  Philip Pape: The more I learned about this, the more I realized the benefits of not as much during I mean during is important, but especially after and the electrolytes I don't like to make it too complicated Like the supplements are.
• 26:14
  Philip Pape: Most of them are not that great or even worth the money, even though I've recommended them in the past and occasionally take some myself.
• 26:20
  Philip Pape: A lot of them, like elements, have mainly salt.
• 26:24
  Philip Pape: Some, though, have more of the other things, like potassium.
• 26:27
  Philip Pape: I'll tell you what, though a banana has a lot of electrolytes, like just look at the nutrients, look at the minerals in a banana.
• 26:35
  Philip Pape: Go log it in Macrofactor and take a look and you'll see why I love a banana as a pre-workout now or a post-workout.
• 26:42
  Philip Pape: Okay, so enough about hydration.
• 26:45
  Philip Pape: Questions 10 and 11 address the other two big ones here sleep quality and quantity.
• 26:50
  Philip Pape: Right, and I have them separate because they're two different dimensions, but both are essential for particularly hormonal balance, which then again leads to metabolic function.
• 27:02
  Philip Pape: Everything's tied to your metabolism.
• 27:04
  Philip Pape: When you don't get enough restful sleep restful, okay, deep sleep, rem sleep you don't get up more than at most once a day, once a night, and usually that's just because you have to go to the bathroom, like.
• 27:16
  Philip Pape: For me, it's actually kind of annoying If I go to bed at 10 and my alarm set for six like clockwork, my body will wake me up at like 545 to use the bathroom right, and I'm like no, I had 15 more minutes, but then I might as well just get up.
• 27:29
  Philip Pape: So I'm talking about more like closer to insomnia.
• 27:33
  Philip Pape: Or you get up multiple times a night and you're not really sure why, and all of that is disruptive to your circadian rhythm, to your hormones.
• 27:41
  Philip Pape: They lead to increased appetite and cravings as well.
• 27:43
  Philip Pape: We know that sleep deprivation makes you hungrier, but it's compounded by lowering your metabolic rate as well.
• 27:53
  Philip Pape: It's compounded by lowering your metabolic rate as well.
• 27:58
  Philip Pape: So it's like two things happening at the same time in the wrong direction.
• 27:59
  Philip Pape: One is you burn fewer calories and the other your body's telling you to eat more calories.
• 28:02
  Philip Pape: Now, poor sleep also elevates cortisol levels.
• 28:06
  Philip Pape: Right, and this goes back to circadian rhythm, like if you're waking up in the middle of the night and then if you're, on top of that, exposed to blue light in the middle of the night.
• 28:13
  Philip Pape: All of these things can elevate your cortisol and when you get up in the morning and you haven't had enough sleep, you're just your stress level's higher.
• 28:32
  Philip Pape: So stress and sleep to mention yeah, I've said this before, but it causes greater fat storage in the visceral fat around your organs, which is belly fat.
• 28:39
  Philip Pape: So if you don't want as much belly fat, two big things for that are going to be alcohol and sleep.
• 28:43
  Philip Pape: Seriously, just those two things.
• 28:45
  Philip Pape: Right, there are massive for the belly fat.
• 28:47
  Philip Pape: So what's the rule of thumb here?
• 28:50
  Philip Pape: Try to get seven to nine hours quality sleep each night.
• 28:53
  Philip Pape: Quality sleep meaning no blue light before bed.
• 28:57
  Philip Pape: You know, no screens before bed for at least 30 to 60 minutes have some sort of calming ritual, make it cool, make it dark, use a sleep mask.
• 29:05
  Philip Pape: If you have to use a cooling mattress Like there's so many hacks, I'm not going to go through the whole list, but identify the one for you that might be the lowest low-hanging fruit.
• 29:16
  Philip Pape: Stress is the other critical factor here, big time.
• 29:19
  Philip Pape: Okay, and these are addressed.
• 29:20
  Philip Pape: I have three separate questions related to stress Question 12, 13, and 14.
• 29:24
  Philip Pape: We know that chronic stress, life stress elevates your cortisol over time and this just wreaks havoc on your metabolism.
• 29:33
  Philip Pape: It promotes more fat storage.
• 29:34
  Philip Pape: It impairs immune function.
• 29:36
  Philip Pape: So all you ladies, but also men, out there who have had weight loss resistance, you've had trouble losing fat.
• 29:44
  Philip Pape: You feel like you're on super low calories and you've already tried bringing up the calories above maintenance and training and all the other things.
• 29:52
  Philip Pape: Stress and sleep are probably the things that are still holding you back.
• 29:56
  Philip Pape: Honestly and you may not even notice it because you are used to it You're used to so much stress in your life being a caregiver, a spouse and by caregiver I mean could be your children, could be your elderly parents or older parents.
• 30:11
  Philip Pape: It's work, it's obligations, it's finances, it's all the things.
• 30:17
  Philip Pape: And again, sleep and stress go hand in hand.
• 30:20
  Philip Pape: So this is where finding even 30 minutes a day to yourself for relaxation, for mindfulness, meditation, deep breathing heck.
• 30:32
  Philip Pape: Even just a nap.
• 30:33
  Philip Pape: If you have a one hour block and you got six and a half hours of sleep last night, maybe the best way to reduce your stress is to sleep more.
• 30:41
  Philip Pape: It's just get a 30 minute nap.
• 30:43
  Philip Pape: Set the, put your sleep mask on your headset in or your earplugs in, set an alarm for 45 minutes, probably take you 10 minutes to get to sleep and then you get a half hour nap.
• 30:53
  Philip Pape: All right, all of this will lower your stress levels and support your wellbeing, and this is translated into your metabolic rate.
• 31:01
  Philip Pape: It means you could eat more food.
• 31:02
  Philip Pape: If I could just say this whole list is do this and you could eat more.
• 31:06
  Philip Pape: Do I have you?
• 31:08
  Philip Pape: Do I have you there?
• 31:08
  Philip Pape: Tell yourself that with this entire list, any of these things improve, you could eat more food.
• 31:13
  Philip Pape: If any of these things improve, you could eat more food.
• 31:15
  Philip Pape: So the eat less, move more often overlooks the importance of these as well.
• 31:21
  Philip Pape: Because when you're chronically underfed and you're overexercised, how can you prioritize these?
• 31:26
  Philip Pape: You're just kind of dragging.
• 31:27
  Philip Pape: How do you even prioritize these things?
• 31:29
  Philip Pape: Right, and so neglecting hydration, sleep, stress can definitely sabotage your fat loss efforts and have other health consequences that we touched on All right.
• 31:39
  Philip Pape: So I think those lifestyle factors are just as important as nutrition and training.
• 31:44
  Philip Pape: I mean, they're all.
• 31:44
  Philip Pape: Important is what we have to say, and it's going to come down to what's most important for you right now, the lowest hanging fruit.
• 31:51
  Philip Pape: That's why I encourage you to go to witsandweightscom.
• 31:53
  Philip Pape: Click the button at the top right free assessment.
• 31:55
  Philip Pape: Take the assessment.
• 31:56
  Philip Pape: What you'll get is by email.
• 31:58
  Philip Pape: You'll get a rating of your metabolic assessment and you'll get an understanding of why, and then you can go from there Decide what you want to do about it.
• 32:07
  Philip Pape: Okay, so the next section is about nutrition or food quality, as well as alcohol.
• 32:12
  Philip Pape: So now we get into more of the food stuff.
• 32:14
  Philip Pape: Questions 15 and 16 focus on the importance of consuming whole unprocessed foods.
• 32:21
  Philip Pape: Now, the importance of it means the majority of your food, like 80 to 90%, is whole unprocessed foods.
• 32:29
  Philip Pape: It doesn't mean you're 100% clean, quote unquote, or you are cutting everything out that's processed.
• 32:35
  Philip Pape: It doesn't mean that at all.
• 32:38
  Philip Pape: In fact, most people in the standard American diet consume something like 70% of their food from processed sources, ultra processed sources.
• 32:46
  Philip Pape: This could be everything from fast food to packaged foods, to like cured meats and the list goes on to like cured meats, and the list goes on.
• 32:56
  Philip Pape: And unfortunately they're the population that we get a lot of our data from, that where we correlate with, say, for example, red meat.
• 33:00
  Philip Pape: When you see studies that you know there's this persistent myth that red meat is quote-unquote bad for you.
• 33:05
  Philip Pape: And yet when you tease it apart from the standard population who eats a lot of processed red meats, you realize no, actually, if it's part of a healthy dietary pattern, it's perfectly fine.
• 33:16
  Philip Pape: If anything, red meat is highly nutritious.
• 33:18
  Philip Pape: So we get into these dichotomies in our brain and we start cutting out foods or food groups and that can be actually detrimental.
• 33:26
  Philip Pape: Also, from a practical perspective, any living and enjoying life perspective.
• 33:30
  Philip Pape: To be so ascetic, monk-like about this and requiring the sheer discipline and willpower to do that, is definitely a massive problem, because it doesn't align with just living and enjoying your life and feeling like food is fuel.
• 33:48
  Philip Pape: Instead, you're feeling like you're punishing yourself in some way, anyway.
• 33:52
  Philip Pape: So when I say the importance of consuming a whole and unprocessed foods, it's like 80%, which doesn't take a lot of effort Once you think about it and if you're tracking your food, just, you go to the grocery store, you buy some things around the edge of the store animal products, plant products, and starches and grains even and you start to mix them together in some meals and you enjoy yourself, and then, hey, I want ice cream for dessert.
• 34:15
  Philip Pape: I'm going to have ice cream for dessert.
• 34:16
  Philip Pape: That's my.
• 34:16
  Philip Pape: You know, processed food allotment or whatever, and by allotment it's a pretty big allotment, 10 to 20%.
• 34:22
  Philip Pape: So I wanted to get that out of the way.
• 34:25
  Philip Pape: But going back to the importance of whole foods, these are foods that are just minimally processed or not processed.
• 34:33
  Philip Pape: So we're talking, you know, meat, vegetables, fruit, seeds, nuts, grains, all of that.
• 34:36
  Philip Pape: Now some people might argue that grains are processed, and so this gets into the whole subjective argument of what do we mean by processing?
• 34:44
  Philip Pape: There's levels of processing and people would say, well, protein powder, that's processed, yeah, no-transcript, mill it into flour, and then you bake bread, that is all processing, but you haven't really altered, you haven't altered it chemically.
• 35:30
  Philip Pape: And then people are like, well, yeah, but they enrich it and this and they bleach it and this.
• 35:34
  Philip Pape: Okay, I get it.
• 35:35
  Philip Pape: So I'm never going to win the argument 100%, but I think you know what I mean.
• 35:39
  Philip Pape: A piece of bread is probably less processed than a Dorito.
• 35:46
  Philip Pape: Okay, that's what that's where I'm getting at.
• 35:48
  Philip Pape: Right, dorito comes from corn that has to get mixed with other ingredients and it's a bunch of macros thrown together from different sources.
• 35:54
  Philip Pape: Okay, all right, I can go on and on and on.
• 35:58
  Philip Pape: I better shut up about this.
• 36:00
  Philip Pape: Whole foods why do we like them?
• 36:01
  Philip Pape: They are rich in nutrients, they're rich in fiber and they're rich in other compounds, other compounds that are not on the food label, folks.
• 36:07
  Philip Pape: Okay, if you look up nutrition facts for an apple, there's a whole bunch of stuff in an apple that's not on the nutrition label.
• 36:13
  Philip Pape: Don't forget that.
• 36:14
  Philip Pape: I was talking to my wife the other day about it, because we were saying how it's so great to have a variety of these fruits and vegetables in your diet, even though many of them look the same nutritionally from a macros perspective and even a micros perspective.
• 36:28
  Philip Pape: But then they have specific compounds that complement each other, and it's nice to have that variety, because you just never know what's going to be great for you.
• 36:37
  Philip Pape: You know, have the blueberries, have the apples, have the bananas, have the kiwi, like have it all in there and then, of course, the fiber and the nutrients are really important as well.
• 36:46
  Philip Pape: So we want to aim to have at least 80% of our diet consist of whole, unprocessed foods.
• 36:51
  Philip Pape: So that's fruits, vegetables, whole grains, lean proteins, healthy fats.
• 36:54
  Philip Pape: But I am going to throw in dairy and grains in there, folks, I'm sorry.
• 36:58
  Philip Pape: You know anti-gluten folks and anti-dairy folks.
• 37:01
  Philip Pape: If you can tolerate those things, have them in your diet.
• 37:04
  Philip Pape: That's my position.
• 37:06
  Philip Pape: Now, if you notice issues with digestion, with gut health, with your skin, with anything, and you can pinpoint it to a specific food, then great, that's information for you that you can act upon.
• 37:18
  Philip Pape: I'll be honest, I probably have some mild intolerances to things that I eat, and I may not even be aware of it because I haven't done the elimination diet to get that down in detail.
• 37:26
  Philip Pape: But it also hasn't prevented me from enjoying my life.
• 37:29
  Philip Pape: Now I also have an autoimmune condition.
• 37:31
  Philip Pape: So could somebody argue that if I cut out a whole bunch of foods, that would go away?
• 37:34
  Philip Pape: Maybe, do I want to make that trade off?
• 37:37
  Philip Pape: Probably not.
• 37:38
  Philip Pape: So you got to decide for you what makes sense.
• 37:41
  Philip Pape: All right, now, ultra processed foods if you have too much of them, they are definitely going to disrupt your metabolism, disrupt your hormone balance for a number of reasons.
• 37:51
  Philip Pape: The main reason with ultra processed foods is just because they're so, uh, calorie dense and devoid of nutrients that you're just you're consuming a bunch of macros, so a source of energy, but not getting any other benefit out of it, and they tend to not fill you up.
• 38:06
  Philip Pape: So you over consume.
• 38:08
  Philip Pape: Even if you're tracking and you don't over consume, you're going to be then hungry.
• 38:12
  Philip Pape: You're either going to over consume or you're going to be hungry.
• 38:14
  Philip Pape: Right, it's one or the other.
• 38:15
  Philip Pape: The reason we over consume is because we're hungry.
• 38:17
  Philip Pape: So the more whole foods and nutrient dense foods, the less hunger becomes an issue.
• 38:22
  Philip Pape: And then alcohol is the other thing I want to talk about, because that definitely there is no positive to alcohol.
• 38:28
  Philip Pape: Okay, I'm not saying that to shame you.
• 38:31
  Philip Pape: I still drink alcohol, even having talked to experts over through the podcast about you know how?
• 38:36
  Philip Pape: Again, there's no positive to alcohol.
• 38:38
  Philip Pape: Why do we do it?
• 38:39
  Philip Pape: And there's a lot of social stigma.
• 38:41
  Philip Pape: There's, um, there's a lot.
• 38:44
  Philip Pape: I have clients who I've had these conversations with and and they're like I just can't do it.
• 38:49
  Philip Pape: I have to have a drink with my friends and get that buzz and that's part of the enjoyment and I'm like okay, that's your choice, do it, I'm not going to judge you for it at all.
• 38:58
  Philip Pape: Can you still meet your goals with drinking alcohol?
• 39:01
  Philip Pape: Yes, and all I want you to do is evaluate how it makes you feel and achieve those goals and experiment with the alternative.
• 39:08
  Philip Pape: Experiment with not having alcohol in your diet for a few weeks, just from a health perspective, with not having alcohol in your diet for a few weeks, just from a health perspective, even if it's just for fat loss.
• 39:19
  Philip Pape: Just try it out.
• 39:20
  Philip Pape: That's all I'm saying.
• 39:21
  Philip Pape: Obviously, alcohol has a bunch of what some people call empty calories, which is kind of a misnomer, because there's both carbs and alcohol.
• 39:25
  Philip Pape: The alcohol gets metabolized, it does create energy, but guess what?
• 39:28
  Philip Pape: That energy just gets stored as fat, which can of course be offset if you're just in a negative energy state, if you're in a calorie deficit.
• 39:35
  Philip Pape: So it's not like you can't lose weight while drinking alcohol.
• 39:38
  Philip Pape: It just doesn't help that much.
• 39:40
  Philip Pape: And then it also causes other hormonal disruptions that do affect fat burning and fat storage, your sleep, your hormones.
• 39:49
  Philip Pape: That is the part of it that is, I think, more serious.
• 39:52
  Philip Pape: If you want to make fat loss as easy as possible and have the healthiest life possible.
• 39:57
  Philip Pape: A few drinks a week, though you can probably get away with it.
• 40:00
  Philip Pape: Okay, one or two drinks on occasion.
• 40:02
  Philip Pape: Make it a very small part of your diet, make it something you really, really, really enjoy, so it's worth it, and then just live with your decision.
• 40:10
  Philip Pape: That's all it takes.
• 40:11
  Philip Pape: But if you've never tried it, I would experiment with different types and levels of alcohol, including none at all.
• 40:18
  Philip Pape: Okay, and I think those were covered by questions 17 and 18.
• 40:22
  Philip Pape: So the other thing I want to address about eat less, move more is, if you think of the eat less part, it's focused on quantity rather than quality.
• 40:32
  Philip Pape: It's focused on quantity rather than quality and so tied again to the whole foods versus processed foods.
• 40:39
  Philip Pape: If the worst of the worst is now, you cut your calories and you're doing it mostly with processed foods because you're going by points in Weight Watchers, for example.
• 40:48
  Philip Pape: Right, you think of Weight Watchers.
• 40:49
  Philip Pape: It's a point system and effectively, the points are a proxy for calories.
• 40:52
  Philip Pape: Well, calories aren't enough.
• 40:54
  Philip Pape: Like if I were telling you to track one thing, I would actually have you track protein, not calories, to get enough protein.
• 41:01
  Philip Pape: And so Weight Watchers tells you to track calories.
• 41:03
  Philip Pape: And so what do you do?
• 41:04
  Philip Pape: You just pick foods based on calories and that's a pure quantity decision.
• 41:09
  Philip Pape: And now you're cutting, you're eating processed foods because Weight Watchers says it's so many points and I can fit those in right and you are now hungry.
• 41:19
  Philip Pape: You don't get the nutrients, you don't get the fiber, your quality goes down, it disrupts your appetite, it causes you to have more cravings, your metabolism adapts even more, and the list goes on and on.
• 41:29
  Philip Pape: So this is why, before you even go to a fat loss phase, upping your protein, making sure at the 80% whole foods level you're tracking, are great foundations for then increasing, reducing the quantity later on, knowing that the quality is taken care of.
• 41:45
  Philip Pape: So instead of fixating on eating less, please, please, please, focus on improving quality and eating more.
• 41:51
  Philip Pape: First, get to that point.
• 41:54
  Philip Pape: Limit your ultra-processed items and alcohol, if you'd like.
• 41:58
  Philip Pape: Like.
• 41:58
  Philip Pape: When I say limit, again, I'm not talking about cutting out, just saying the balance shifts as you add more of the protein in the whole foods.
• 42:06
  Philip Pape: When you add those in, it tends to crowd the other things out, and now you will have the nutrients you need to function optimally.
• 42:12
  Philip Pape: And a lot of people underestimate the value of micronutrients in body composition and fat loss.
• 42:18
  Philip Pape: Excuse me, fat loss, but trust me, it's going to make you feel so much better to have those nutrient gaps filled in.
• 42:24
  Philip Pape: Okay, then we get to the final section of the assessment, which is the role of hormones in regulating metabolism, metabolism, body composition.
• 42:34
  Philip Pape: So I've mentioned hormones a lot today, more as a an effect than a cause.
• 42:40
  Philip Pape: So our hormones respond to what our body is doing and what we feed it and how we move.
• 42:45
  Philip Pape: But the hormones themselves also play a very critical role in our metabolic health.
• 42:52
  Philip Pape: Hormones like insulin, of course which, by the way, insulin resistance and sensitivity are big topics these days, and I'm a firm believer that the best lifestyle decisions you can make for insulin are going to be adding muscle mass, which increases your insulin sensitivity, because muscle is a sink for glucose.
• 43:12
  Philip Pape: And movement movement like walking, walking after meals, regulating your blood sugar.
• 43:18
  Philip Pape: That way, if you do that, you can eat as many carbs as you want.
• 43:22
  Philip Pape: Honestly, you can eat carbs.
• 43:24
  Philip Pape: Carbs aren't an issue at that point.
• 43:26
  Philip Pape: So insulin is one.
• 43:33
  Philip Pape: Thyroid lots of discussion these days about thyroid.
• 43:34
  Philip Pape: I have an expert coming on the show specifically to talk about thyroid and your health, and now I know my audience.
• 43:38
  Philip Pape: A lot of you listeners want to know a lot about the supplementation, which will be a tiny piece of that, but mostly it's going to be about lifestyle, which is, I think, what we have the most control over.
• 43:48
  Philip Pape: And who wants to be on a bunch of meds, right?
• 43:49
  Philip Pape: So we're going to talk about thyroid.
• 43:51
  Philip Pape: Other hormones that affect your metabolism are, of course, cortisol, the stress hormone and your reproductive hormones, and all of these need to be in some sort of balance, and oftentimes that balance is driven by the stress you place on your body Stressors like under eating, like overtraining, right.
• 44:10
  Philip Pape: And then those hormones not only do they affect your weight management and inability to lose fat, they cause fatigue, they cause mood swings and who knows what else.
• 44:22
  Philip Pape: There's many other symptoms, right?
• 44:24
  Philip Pape: So muscle mass nutrition, sleep, stress, et cetera.
• 44:28
  Philip Pape: All of these contribute to your hormone balance.
• 44:30
  Philip Pape: And the hormones themselves, right.
• 44:32
  Philip Pape: Of course, if you have a hormone imbalance because of a medical condition that needs to be looked at I'm not a medical provider, I don't dispense medical advice, but if you've got everything else dialed in and you know for a fact that you're just, your lifestyle is on point, there may be a medical situation under there that needs to be addressed as well.
• 44:51
  Philip Pape: The point with this whole thing is.
• 44:52
  Philip Pape: We want to address the factors that cause our metabolism to go up or down in a comprehensive way, because that is going to directly correlate with hormone function and your ability to regulate your metabolism and live a fun, fit life where you get to eat a bunch of food, train, feel great and be the fittest person on the block for decades to come.
• 45:14
  Philip Pape: It's what we all want, all right.
• 45:16
  Philip Pape: So eat less, move more.
• 45:18
  Philip Pape: I hope you have gotten the message that it's oversimplified and it's also totally ineffective.
• 45:24
  Philip Pape: It is terrible advice.
• 45:25
  Philip Pape: Right, building and maintaining muscle mass, fueling your body properly, staying active, managing stress, prioritizing sleep, focusing on nutrition quality these actually make the big difference in optimizing your metabolism and your hormones.
• 45:40
  Philip Pape: So the metabolism audit, or the metabolism assessment that I've referenced throughout the episode it's going to help you identify areas for improvement and create a personalized plan for you, which, I think, is where the rubber meets the road.
• 45:52
  Philip Pape: It's taking this information on this podcast and applying it to you directly, and so I want you to go to witsandweightscom, click the button at the top for the free metabolism audit and you're going to answer the 20 questions.
• 46:03
  Philip Pape: This is going to help you gauge your metabolic health.
• 46:05
  Philip Pape: This will help you identify specific strategies for you.
• 46:09
  Philip Pape: The cool thing is, if you want to do it while listening to this podcast, you can then think about your answer.
• 46:14
  Philip Pape: Still, be honest with yourself about where you are.
• 46:16
  Philip Pape: You know, be brutally honest.
• 46:18
  Philip Pape: That's the only way to get help.
• 46:19
  Philip Pape: But now you can put it in the context of what I was sharing today.
• 46:23
  Philip Pape: Okay, I think that covers it again.
• 46:27
  Philip Pape: Go check out the metabolism audit by going to which weightscom, clicking free metabolism audit at the top right or click the link in the show notes, and, as always, stay strong and I'll talk to you next time here on the wits and weights podcast.
• 46:41
  Philip Pape: And that does it for today's bonus replay.
• 46:45
  Philip Pape: I wish everyone a happy holiday.
• 46:46
  Philip Pape: And, hey, if you're looking for more content to listen, to check out my new podcast.
• 46:50
  Philip Pape: It's called Nutrition Science Daily.
• 46:53
  Philip Pape: Click the link in the show notes, check it out and I'll see you next time.