Latest / Wits & Weights | Strength & Fat Loss Over 40 / Ep 90: Q&A - Calorie Tracking, Protein Shakes, Weigh-Ins, Muscle Over 40, EAAs, and More

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Ep 90: Q&A - Calorie Tracking, Protein Shakes, Weigh-Ins, Muscle Over 40, EAAs, and More · Wits & Weights | Strength & Fat Loss Over 40

• 0:00
  Philip Pape: I would say if you're a beginner, you can train three days a week, full body, go all out and see how you feel.
• 0:05
  Philip Pape: And you should be able to recover just fine. Even if you're 40 or 50, or 60. Welcome to the Wits & Weights podcast.
• 0:14
  Philip Pape: I'm your host, Philip pape, and this twice a week podcast is dedicated to helping you achieve physical self mastery by getting stronger, optimizing your nutrition and upgrading your body composition. We'll uncover science backed strategies for movement, metabolism, muscle and mindset with a skeptical eye on the fitness industry. So you can look and feel your absolute best. Let's dive right in. Wits& Weights community Welcome to another solo episode of the Wits& Weights podcast. I hope you enjoyed our last episode 89 with Dr. Ryan Peebles where we talked about lower back pain, how to reverse it through movement, and how to recover from low back pain injuries, prevent them and improve your back health. Today for episode 90 We are doing a q&a, we're going to answer 11 questions on everything from calorie tracking to how often should you weigh yourself to building muscle over 40. And lots more nutrition related questions. So let's just get into that first question. I work out six days a week and eat healthy. But I've never tracked my calories or even know how much I weigh. Should I keep track of this if my goal is just to be healthy overall and be lean. So this is an interesting question. Because it's not just about health, it's also being lean. Now this person is working out six days a week. I don't know if that's too much too little. You know, oftentimes, I see people overdoing it with their workouts. And we oftentimes dial it back.
• 1:43
  Philip Pape: Especially if you're a newer or intermediate lifter, we're looking at three or four days a week of lifting. And then the other day is for recovery, or some light work and definitely lots of walking. And this person is wondering if they should track to be healthy and lean.
• 1:55
  Philip Pape: Now, although caloric balance and weight are components of health, they're not the only ones, right? We have all the other aspects of what we're trying to do here, including what you eat, to manage things like hunger and whatnot, your training routine, you know, are you lifting heavy, and what your ultimate goal is, right. But if you want to optimize your body composition, I think it's going to be important to track and weigh yourself regularly. And the reason is, they are objective measures, they are data points that will give you more information more quickly, to assess your progress to adjust your intake and optimize your results. Think of it as a simple feedback loop. If you don't have the data coming in, in terms of the feedback, you have no idea what to change going forward. Now, if you're not tracking calories, you still have some data coming in. But if you're not tracking your weight, that data is basically how you look in the mirror how you feel, and things like that. And that may be enough for you. But if you want to get lean, and you want to do it effectively and quickly. And what I always like to tell people is when you get lean, we're talking about a fat loss phase. These are no fun.
• 3:01
  Philip Pape: They're not a walk in the park.
• 3:05
  Philip Pape: And I'd rather you get them done as quickly and effectively as possible. Not a crash diet, but efficiently within the range that allows you to support and preserve your lean muscle. But as quickly as you can. If you track if you're not tracking your calories, you don't know how much energy you're consuming. You just don't you also don't know how much you're expending. Because you need to know how much you're eating plus how much your weight is changing over time to know how much you're expending. And this changes every day. And so how do you keep track of how much you need to eat to eat more or less next Monday, what about the following week more or less?
• 3:40
  Philip Pape: Again, if you're just kind of going by the seat of your pants, and how you look, it's gonna take a long time to get that right. So you might under eat one week, you might overeat one week, all of these things do affect your health, they affect your performance, and they affect your body composition. It just think about performance. If you one week are under eating and you don't realize it, you may all of a sudden not be able to lift as much in the gym, that's going to affect your ability to build muscle or preserve muscle, right? So they're all intertwine, you may not get enough nutrients to sort your recovery, your hormones or immune system, it is could lead to fatigue to injury to illness, muscle loss, even some metabolic adaptation when you didn't mean to. If you're over eating, you may gain unwanted body fat, which is just going to slow down you're getting lean obviously.
• 4:21
  Philip Pape: And of course, just gaining extra fat that you don't want is not great for things like chronic disease and inflammation and insulin resistance and all those which then makes it harder for you to achieve a lean physique. So by tracking your calories, you know that you're eating enough to fuel your performance and support your health. And you're not eating too much that you gain excess fat and then you can tweak you can adjust your calories. Okay, I need to I need to be in a certain deficit to lose fat or I need to be a certain surplus to gain muscle. Also, and here's I think the most important thing, tracking your calories especially if you've never done it will teach you so much About your eating habits, the caloric content of your food, the macro breakdown nutrients, right, the macronutrient breakdown, or the micronutrient breakdown, which all helps you feed back to make better food choices and improve your nutrition quality. That's the irony of this whole thing is, so many diets are about eating this not that are clean foods versus these foods, whole foods versus processed foods.
• 5:21
  Philip Pape: But as soon as you start tracking, and you see what you eat, you start making those adjustments pretty quickly to serve your goals. And that actually leads to a sustainable approach to higher food quality.
• 5:34
  Philip Pape: The other thing is weighing yourself if you don't weigh yourself regularly, you have no idea how your weight is changing over time, okay. And this also makes it difficult to evaluate progress and see if you're moving toward your goal. Pretty obvious, if you're trying to lose fat and you don't weigh yourself, you may not know that you're gaining weight, or that you're hitting a plateau. And by the time you do, you've wasted several weeks, if not months of time. And then you don't make the changes that you need to to your your diet, your training, and so on to break through the plateau. And then the opposite case for trying to gain muscle.
• 6:04
  Philip Pape: So if you weigh yourself regularly, you can monitor the trend over time, okay, and I like to use macro factor as a food logging app and also as a weight logging app. And by taking both the food and the weight, you know how your body you know how much you're expending every day, you only calories you're burning every day, and then you know exactly what you need to eat. Okay, you can also correlate this with other things, photos, measurements, right? How you feel how you look, your biofeedback, and all of these give you the big picture. So I would weigh and track your calories, or I would track your calories and weigh yourself regularly. If you're trying to be lean and healthy. They give you valuable feedback. And they keep you accountable and motivated because they show you the results of your hard work, right? They're in cold, hard numbers. And again, they're not the only factors, right, you have stress, you have your hydration, you have things like your digestion, lifestyle, sleep, and so on. So that's my somewhat long answer that first question. Okay, get into the second question. How many protein shakes do you recommend a day, if you aren't that big of a meat eater, I have to supplement constantly. So this person isn't saying that they are vegan or vegetarian. But that would be kind of the extreme of this question.
• 7:18
  Philip Pape: They're just saying they don't eat that much meat. So if we think about how much protein we need, the recommendation is generally, if you want to optimize, if you're worried about body composition, and building muscle is point eight to 1.2 grams per pound. So if you're 180 pounds, you need somewhere around 140 to 180, or more grams of protein. So even if we're on the lower of that around 140. And you have, let's say, three meals and one or two snacks, each of those meals is going to be around 40 grams of protein and the snacks are each going to be around 20 or 30. So I would say it's almost inevitable that at least one of those snacks needs to be a protein shake. So it's not only you're asking me, how many do you recommend a day, at least one if not two, it's perfectly fine. I mean, whey protein, pea and rice protein, they're just minimally processed derivatives of food. That's the argument I like to make in terms of supporting them, because I'd rather you have them rather than not get enough protein. And you can get very high quality ingredients that are minimally processed with very few additives. From good companies, for example, first form, which you can use the link in my show notes for first form, they have a vegan shake, it's I think it's called Vegan. It's pea and rice blend. And then of course, they have a bunch of whey shakes that are perfectly fine. They have a faster and slower digesting shakes.
• 8:40
  Philip Pape: We always want to balance this with real food. So if you're not a big meat eater, first, I would say what kind of meat do you eat? And can you just scale that up and eat more of it or varieties of that and cook it in different ways? Second thing?
• 8:52
  Philip Pape: Are you not a big meat eater, because you're kind of picky or out of habit? Like would you be willing to eat other forms of meat just to try them out, or mix them in with the meat that you like, or mix them into a chili or a casserole or something like that? If you're looking for the biggest bang for your buck, it's going to be seafood. So we have things like shrimp and white fish, which are basically pure protein. So maybe you don't need a lot of beef.
• 9:13
  Philip Pape: But would you would you eat like shrimp cocktail, right? Just frozen shrimp, thaw them out, eat them as a snack, ton of protein, right? There's also dairy is a huge source of protein, cottage cheese, Greek yogurt, legumes, and then all the plant based sources of protein. So there's really you could get all your protein from food, but the less of the denser proteins you eat, and the more proteins you eat that have other things like carbs, which is the case of plant foods, the harder it's going to be to balance the calories and the protein and then you often need to supplement it with something like a whey whey casein or pea rice Blend If you're avoiding if you're like vegan and avoiding all animal products, so that'd be my recommendation. If you're going to have one or two shakes, you know, go All out and get all the grams of protein you need based on the math. So if you're shooting for 30, or 40 grams in a meal or snack, go ahead and have one and a half, two scoops of protein don't just have one scoop, go ahead and just scale it up to what you need. Okay, next question. How often should you weigh yourself? So earlier, I talked about how important it is to weigh yourself from a data gathering standpoint. Believe it or not, the evidence suggests that regular self weighing helps with weight maintenance and weight loss, and is not associated at all with any sort of disorders unless you had a propensity for that to begin with. And then it gets into that thorny territory that I'm not going to go down right now. But I will say all my clients weigh every day, I weigh every day, and plenty of other people do without any issues. And I think I've said this before, but when you weigh yourself every day, it becomes a fairly meaningless, tiny individual data point. And you start to learn that your body fluctuates significantly day to day, and that those fluctuations have nothing to do with fat, fat gain or fat loss.
• 11:01
  Philip Pape: I was just checking in a client today. And he gained two pounds on the scale overnight. And we know that he had pasta late at night and some a lot of sodium in a sauce. And so that extra salt and those extra carbs definitely gained cause fluid retention overnight. And I said, Look, if you gained to gain two pounds of fat, you would have to consume an extra 7000 calories.
• 11:25
  Philip Pape: Not going to happen, right. And in his case, he tracks his food and he pretty much his lock on the yo Rocksteady day to day anyway. So we know that didn't happen. So the day to day weigh ins allow you to see those fluctuations get comfortable with them, and start to be like yeah, I'm confident that that has nothing to do with my, my lean tissue, my body fat. So I'm going to click Keep collecting those. And then over a two to three week period, you start to see how that pattern shifts in one direction or another. And that's telling you how your body mass is actually changing. And again, we use macro factor because it has a trend wait based on those daily points. You don't have to weigh every day, you can do it every few days or a couple or once or twice a week. But the more the better and the more precise, which means faster adjustments, which means you get to your goal more quickly with less frustration along the way. Okay. At the end of the day, this is about consistency, and focusing on the trend. So related to this as another question, is there a specific time to weigh yourself?
• 12:25
  Philip Pape: Very simply, yes, the most consistent way is in the morning. Preferably, if you can do it, okay for most people, at the same time each day, preferably in the morning, after you use the bathroom before you eat or drink. And just wear the same thing every day. Usually for men, it might be boxers, for women, it's whatever your undergarments, just the same thing every day. This also goes for body measurements. By the way, if you're gonna measure your waist, circumference and chest and hips and all those things, do them also around the same time you would weigh yourself. Okay, next question, do certain foods affect hormones? So I was thinking about how to answer this question. Because on one hand, I don't like to use these questions as an excuse to try to explain away why you're not gaining, gaining or losing weight while you're hitting a plateau. And you're and try to hack every little detail of your food and sort of get obsessive very much like a diet would be where you're like, well, these are good hormone foods. And these are bad hormone foods, right? We don't want to get it to that level. Because at the end of the day, the overall dietary pattern that serves your goals, high enough protein, sufficient fats and carbs for energy and recovery, the right amount of energy balance and calories for whether you need to gain or lose weight, and then a good blend of micronutrients for your health. It's really all you need. And the hormones should kind of work themselves out, so to speak. Having said that, I wanted to bring up a few specific foods that have been shown to be helpful for your hormones. And I'm doing this because I know these foods are the kinds of things people just should be eating more of. And you guessed it, for the most part, we are talking about vegetables, lean meats, and high fiber carbs. So cruciferous vegetables, broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage, brussel sprouts, evidence shows that they help your liver metabolize estrogen and balance your hormones. Now, these claims I'm making are associated with specific studies. I'm not going to link them all in the notes but I do have them in my in my personal notes. And again, I don't want you to kind of overweight these relationships say well, okay, you know, I, my doctor said I need to, you know, I have a problem in balancing my estrogen so I'm gonna eat more broccoli, and that's going to solve it. I'm not trying to make these types of connections. At the end of the day, my my message here is that eating mostly Whole Foods at 90% Whole Foods and a variety of them. And if you're picky trying to be adventurous and incorporate more foods is probably going to be our best bet overall for meeting new goals and helping you with things like your your fat, fat loss, your body composition, your health. So cruciferous vegetables, salmon and albacore tuna, we're talking high omega three fatty acids. We know omega three fatty acids are a good thing to have. It's why some people recommend supplementing with fish oil. Not all some of the jury's still out on this today. But we know that there's some linkage with reduced inflammation and improved insulin sensitivity from having these extra omega three fatty acids. Again, some of the research is overblown. The ratio of omega three to six researchers has maybe been overblown as well. But salmon and tuna are very high in protein is protein too, so you might as well enjoy them. Keep in mind salmon is a fattier fish. Tuna is a little bit leaner and other white fish are leaner as well. So depends on what you're trying to consume here. Avocados, wonderful fat, they also have fiber, they also have magnesium, and potassium.
• 15:50
  Philip Pape: All of these things are great for your hormones, enjoy avocados, fruits and vegetables, you can't really have enough of them. We're talking antioxidants, vitamins, minerals, fiber, all of these things are, are just well known to be good for your blood sugar, your insulin, your hormones, like cortisol and other hormones. And then anything with fibers is going to be helpful.
• 16:13
  Philip Pape: When you talk about carbohydrates, oats, quinoa, beans, lentils, right they slow down absorption a bit, which somebody will argue then when you have them as part of your meals overall, you lower the what am I trying to say the the index, the glycemic index, or at least you can help regulate blood sugar a little bit better.
• 16:32
  Philip Pape: Again, I would say just if you're active, if your strength training and you're eating unhealthy dietary pattern, it's going to kind of work itself out. But these are little extra things to be aware of. Now, as far as foods that disrupt your hormonal balance, oh man, you can find probably one influence or per food out there. To bring this up, I'm just going to mention three things, soy pesticides and alcohol, that's I don't want to go down any other rabbit holes. Soy is a is a dietary source of phyto estrogens, which is a plant compound that can mimic estrogen in your body. And I used to think that they were just totally off limits because of a man and I don't want to all of a sudden start producing a whole bunch of estrogen. But it really does come down to dosage like many things, overdoing it on the dose dosing can lead to toxic levels of anything, right, anything. And so I think generally the evidence is that a moderate consumption of soy is perfectly fine. We see it from population studies, observational studies, cultures that consume a lot of soy, you know, some of the where you might want to watch out as the soy, soybean oil just because there's so much of it and everything. But even that we talked about seed oils and whatnot, again, may not be terrible. And if the if it's a source of replacing saturated fats with poly or unsaturated fats that could be beneficial, really depends on you and individual factors. So I just wanted to throw that out there almost to say that, like, don't freak out about soy. But you may have heard it as a potential hormone disruptor. So look into the research and make your own decision on that. Pesticides, we know that those have been an issue worldwide for many decades, and there have been all sorts of regulations such as Roundup, when it comes to oats.
• 18:14
  Philip Pape: My family, for example, buys organic oats because there was a study that that analyzed many, many oat brands and found that the vast majority of them had rather high levels of Roundup, just visibly upper, you know, observable right there on the oat and I'm like, Hey, I don't want to take a chance, I'm just gonna buy the organic. But again, you have to make your choices on these individual things and how much of them you eat. When it talks organic versus not, you have your budget to consider you have you know, the food environment, how much of the stuff you're eating and how you're preparing it. The other thing is alcohol there there is research that certain amount of alcohol can affect your hormones, the production of metabolism, the signaling of your hormones, we know that there's nothing net positive about alcohol, from a nutritional standpoint. So so the less is generally better.
• 19:03
  Philip Pape: But we also know it's part of life, and we enjoy it. It's part of social gatherings. I drink alcohol a few times a week, generally, I enjoy it. And there you go. That's life. So these are general guidelines. Everyone reacts differently to different foods, your hormones are influenced by so many other things, stress, sleep, exercise, genetics, whatever. And, you know, I would recommend go get tested if that's what you need.
• 19:27
  Philip Pape: Talk to your medical professional. If you have special circumstances. This is not medical advice. And I hope that answers your question.
• 19:32
  Philip Pape: Okay, the next question. Should people be concerned about sodium intake when dieting? So if you go back, I don't have the episode number with me but I interviewed. I interviewed Dustin Lambert. He's another coach. Great guy, and he's in our group as well. And we talked about this a little bit and he surprised me a bit because, you know, his philosophy is that there's been a counter back Last against the sodium, the high sodium crowd, meaning the recommendations generally is to keep sodium less than a certain amount per day. And I think it's 2300 milligrams per the general guidelines, because it's associated with high blood pressure in people who are sensitive to sodium especially.
• 20:16
  Philip Pape: And there was this backlash like, Well, no, that's just because you know, people will have poor diets and processed foods, they get way too much sodium. But if you're on keto, or low carb or whole food diet, you don't get enough sodium. So you need to start assaulting everything. And his argument was, well, that we're pushing too far the other direction that you can still over consume sodium. And so I would agree that there is there has to be a balance. And at the end of the day, I would suggest tracking your sodium using your food logging app, seeing what the consumption level is, compare it to the recommendations, if it's significantly more, okay, then I still wouldn't say you're necessarily over salting. But think about your how you're eating, and whether there's something that contributes a lot to that. Sodium, that could be a simple change, and also cross reference against your blood pressure, if that's what you're doing it for. Like if your blood pressure is perfectly fine. And you've been consuming, I don't know, 4000 milligrams of salt a day for years and years and years. Is there an issue? I don't know if we're talking other things besides blood pressure, maybe. But from a blood pressure perspective, maybe you're just not as sensitive to sodium. So sodium is an essential mineral, it is a great, you know, electrolyte to prevent dehydration, but most people get enough sodium. And the question is, are you getting too much? Do the things that I suggested track it, compare it cross reference against your blood pressure.
• 21:34
  Unknown: Before my coaching session with Philip, I was really struggling with staying consistent with my nutrition, Phillip really showed me the importance of being consistent day to day, he also helped me see that it's not a bad thing to take a rest day, he really helps me get in that more positive headspace Have a rest day being something really good for me.
• 21:54
  Unknown: I've been doing this for a month now. And I'm finally starting to see some progress and my numbers. And I'm really excited about that. And I just appreciate so much the help that Philip has given me. He's always willing to answer questions to offer resources that are totally free and very, very helpful. So I just want to say how much I appreciate that. Thanks, Phillip.
• 22:19
  Philip Pape: Question, do thyroids play a part in these types of processes? And by these types? I think the person asking the question is talking about metabolic processes metabolism, especially body weight, body mass, which most people are concerned about. And of course, thyroid disorders can interfere with weight management because it is so crucial to your metabolism. And I don't want to get too much into the disorder side of things I want to talk about just the general generally what I see with most people talk let's think about what the hormone does. Its I like to call it the metabolism hormone or not just me Others call it that it's you know, how you consume your how you take the food that you consume, and transform it into energy. The thyroid hormones affect how your cells use energy, how your body burns fat, how it regulates blood sugar, how you maintain your body temperature, many, many functions, okay, all these hormones are pretty complex. And before we even get into today, pay play a part in metabolism, everything else, just metabolic adaptation. When you are dieting, when you're in a deficit, and you don't have enough calories coming in for your hormones, in general, every all of these hormones are affected in some way. And so yes, it's going to affect your metabolism down, you know, negatively in a downward direction for everybody, no matter whether you have a disorder or not. Okay, and there's not much you can do about it other than eat more food again. And the only way you can eat more food is either reduce your deficit or move a little bit more right have a higher energy flux walk more, not necessarily lots of cardio, right? high intensity cardio, but just walking more, and then that usually raises your expenditure. So you can eat more, and then that helps a little bit with the metabolic adaptation. So, what is what is the thyroid hormone come from?
• 24:06
  Philip Pape: It comes from your thyroid gland, which is the front of your neck produces thyroxin T four and try, try idle, idle firing, I think is how you say T three, T four is mostly inactive. T three is the active form that affects your metabolism. And your your thyroid gland converts T four into T three with the help of an enzyme called D, D IODE. And A's. So here's So again, I'm not a doctor, folks, I'm not a hormone specialist, per se, I have studied these quite a bit and help clients with when they have sort of what appears to be hormone dysregulation. In some cases it actually is an end up being on replacement therapy, because I do deal with primarily clients who are I'll say in their mid 30s all the way up to their 60s and a lot of female clients as well. And you do see this through Peri menopause and post menopause. So I'm not saying you don't need supplementation that's between you and your medical professional. But the anyway, so that's that's why I know a little bit about these things.
• 25:07
  Philip Pape: There's this sort of feedback loop system involving your hypothalamus in your brain, your pituitary gland, and multiple other hormones. So there's this cascade all of these hormones interact with each other in different ways. Now, the hypothalamus is the brain part of your brain that controls things like thyroid releasing hormone, it stimulates your pituitary gland to produce thyroid stimulating hormone, TSH, and then that is where we get the T four and T three, and on and on. Okay, so sometimes the thyroid gland can produce too much or too little. And these cause problems as well. So we talked about hyperthyroidism, when there's too much thyroid hormone, and then that speeds up your metabolism and causes like causes causes weight loss causes anxiety, tremors, palpitations and other things. Then there's hypothyroidism when your plant produces too little. And that's what a lot of people are concerned about, because it slows down your metabolism can cause weight gain, fatigue, depression, and so on. And I've definitely seen this happen where a client will just have these almost inexplicable weight loss plateaus no matter how much of a deficit we take them into, because that deficit is further exacerbating this hypothyroidism, which further slows down the metabolism. It's like you can't keep up with it.
• 26:20
  Philip Pape: And then when they start taking some T three, synthetic T three or whatever it all of a sudden goes away. Again, you have to talk with your medical professional about this situation applies to you. I'm just explaining how important thyroid is to your metabolism.
• 26:31
  Philip Pape: Beyond those, there are definitely other things like nodules and cancer and other things I'm not going to get into. So if you suspect you have a problem, consult with a doctor. But at the end of the day, if you don't have the basics down, like proper nutrition, strength training, let me tell you, strength training, if you're not training, and you start lifting, you might be surprised what an amazing effect this has on all of your hormones to the point where a lot of these will express themselves as hype, both thyroidism or actually just related to fueling yourself for nutrition and working on your fitness and body composition.
• 27:10
  Philip Pape: Okay. All right, next one. These are a lot of questions. In this episode, I realize thoughts on building muscle over 40. Okay, I could do an entire episode multiple episodes about this. It comes up all the time people say well, I'm over 40. What do I do?
• 27:25
  Philip Pape: In my opinion, building muscle over 40 is not much different from building muscle at any other age. Now I am 42. And I started properly lifting when I was almost 40. So it's not like I've been lifting since I was 20. And just saying yeah, everybody gets the same. What's the same of the principles?
• 27:44
  Philip Pape: Progressive overload, right?
• 27:48
  Philip Pape: Adequate volume for you, because everybody has very different volume response, men, women, different age, different size, very different. The intensity and frequency, the need for recovery, proper nutrition, and of course, individualization. So those are the principles. And if I have a 45 year old versus a 25 year old, the same principles apply. But because they are principles, the actual prescription changes for you. So the main differences I see are that older lifters have reduced recovery capacity, it's just a fact. It's just the fact it's just harder to recover. An increased injury risk, right?
• 28:32
  Philip Pape: Hormonal changes that come with the older age, especially in women, it's, you know, exacerbated for women, slower muscle growth, or muscle protein synthesis as we get older. And keep in mind, some of this has to do with the fact that we've lost muscle mass through age, especially if we've not been training, right. So it's kind of like a multivariable situation here. So what are some of the modifications for people over 41 modification is you may have to have a slightly lower frequency for certain muscle groups or certain movements. You may, right, you may not. In fact, I've been in a situation where if I increase the frequency but have shorter sessions, I'm actually able to recover better, and get more stimulus that way.
• 29:12
  Philip Pape: So you never know, this is where I'm saying like, just because you're over 40 doesn't mean it's the end of the game. And if anything, it's never too late to start. If you're 65 and you haven't started training, it's not too late to start. If you're at it's not too late to start, it's only going to be beneficial for you. Another modification would be volume, right? And by volume, I mean sets per week. So trying to play with the number of sets, right? If four sets is just hammering you into the ground, but three sets allows you to recover sleep feel great the next workout, then that might be your sweet spot. Okay, you just don't want to over train and get over fatigued. But don't use that as an excuse not to train hard enough. I would say if you're a beginner, you can train three days a week, full body go all out and see how you feel and you should be able to recover just fine, even if you're 40 or 50 or 60 The other thing is, you know, at that at this age, life tends to get in the way, so not in the way. But I mean, you have this ideal plan to like live four days a week, and you're gonna go nonstop, you're gonna build X amount of pounds of muscle or nine months, well, what's gonna happen, you might get injured, you know, you might have family things that come up stuff at work, you know, death in the family, you might have to go on a trip, business trip, you might have your vacations, on and on and on. So many things get in the way. And these are essentially forced D loads to the point where you may not even need to ever plan in a D load, you just make them line up with these parts of your life. So acknowledging that and coming up with and following a program that gives you that flexibility is a good approach, because then you won't feel frustrated that you all of a sudden took a bunch of steps back, right? Yeah, it took a week off. Okay, now get back on and continue. Similar to this is using programming that allows for autoregulation. Now this is a more advanced concept that I really wouldn't worry about until you get about six to nine months in, meaning your first six to nine months, I would focus on just increasing the weight on your bar, your dumbbells or whatever, just getting stronger, and using the same sets and reps and just getting stronger. But then as you get more advanced, you get a feel for what pushing hard is and you can use rep based programming, or maximum based or percentage based programming, where what you squatted last, you know, two weeks ago, it may be a different maximum this week, but still feel just as hard. And it allows for you to kind of undulate with your personal recovery ability and your volume. The other thing is, you know, we talk about warmup, and mobility and stuff like that, I don't think you need anything fancy. But just make sure that if it's cold, you'd take a few minutes to warm up, put some basic movement, maybe on a bike, right? And that you're always focused on your technique. Anybody at any age can get injured, and anybody at any age should be focused on their technique anyway. But just because of you haven't been training and you're older, your your connective tissue is less flexible or less limber than when you were younger, you may have gone through injuries, you may have had surgeries, and so on. I'm just trying to stress that it's perhaps even that much more important that you really dial in your form and technique as you go along. And one of the best ways to do this is to get a qualified coach. Or the second best is to be part of a group where you can do things like form checks on your form, rather than just doing it in a vacuum and assuming you're doing it right. Okay. And then the last thing, of course, always is going to be proper nutrition, proper hydration and electrolytes, sleep and stress management to support your muscle growth and your recovery.
• 32:42
  Philip Pape: So building muscle over 40 is 100% possible, just follow the basic principles of training and nutrition and make adjustments based on your individual needs.
• 32:53
  Philip Pape: All right, I have a few more questions here. The next one is what is your opinion on EA supplementation? So what is EA EA stands for essential amino acids. And these are the critical amino acids for muscle protein synthesis. And I would say that you can get enough of these from a well balanced healthy dietary pattern. Even though you do if you're training, you need a lot of protein. Okay. You do not I do not recommend EAA supplementation for most people, I think they're unnecessary. I think they're overpriced. I think you can get all the essential amino acids you need from eating protein. And even like whey and, and vegan protein supplementation, where you get not just the yeas, but the rest of the protein, amino acids, and everything that comes along with it, that you know the calories that are in protein. So, EA supplements they're marketed as superior to whole protein sources because they claim to have faster absorption rates and higher bioavailability. But I would say most of those are based on flawed studies that compare them to low quality protein sources or unrealistic doses of EAs as well as they'll take participants who have extremely low protein consumption to begin with and give me a raise and say, Oh look, there's a benefit, but there would have been as much or more benefit if they had just consumed whole protein. So maybe they're useful for people who have trouble eating enough protein from food like vegans and vegetarians, but even for them I'd recommend like a pea rice protein blend I talked about before. Simple Rules, right point eight to 1.2 grams of protein per pound of body weight per day, spread across three to five meals from high quality sources like meat, eggs, dairy, fish, whey, or plant sources. Stick stick to the simple stuff. I wouldn't waste my money on EAA supplements. I don't take them myself. I used to and I don't anymore. Next question. What's a good resting heart rate? Okay, so wearable devices are pretty good at calculating your resting heart rate. So what I recommend doing is tracking that number over time and seeing what happens under two different scenarios.
• 35:07
  Philip Pape: So let me ask you to let me ask you a question answer your question. First. The normal resting heart rate for adults is between 60 and 160, and 100 beats per minute. And the lower end of that spectrum is more common for people with better cardiovascular fitness. And athletes might have an even lower one than that. So I'll give you an example I was I just had rotator cuff surgery, my resting heart rate while sitting there waiting for the surgery was 4546 beats per minute. And they said, Oh, are you an athlete? I said, Well, I really thank you very much for that.
• 35:37
  Philip Pape: And I always I always love when people say that, because I never used to consider myself an athlete, I used to be overweight, my resting heart rate used to be closer to the mid 60s. And it wasn't until after my after I started lifting. And then walking a lot that I saw my resting heart rate come way down. It wasn't from cardio, it wasn't from running, it wasn't any of that. It was simply from getting to a reasonable weight, you know, body mass, for moving and training. And that's it. So anyway, so what I recommend doing is tracking your number because it's really about the relative change. And the first scenario I would do is track it before and after a significant change in weight, like a fat loss phase, or muscle building phase, wherever you are now, just whatever the opposite of that is, and see how it changes.
• 36:22
  Philip Pape: I personally have found something like a five to 10 Beat per minute change, which goes down when I lose weight and goes up when I gain weight down when I lose weight, or when I gain weight, very clear correlation.
• 36:35
  Philip Pape: The second thing you can try is before and after you change your training or your movement. So if you right now, you're pretty sedentary and you're gonna start strength training, or let's say you train but you only get like three or 4000 steps a day, and you're gonna go up to like eight or 10,000 subsidy. That's also great before and after, to compare. And just make sure you note when you're doing these things and compare them your resting heart rate, and you should definitely see an improvement. So a good resting heart rate is going to be around 60 or potentially lower. But again, it's relative to you, your history, all these other factors. And if you can improve it, that's that's the best.
• 37:11
  Philip Pape: Okay, and then there's one more question. One final question is what's the best way to add electrolytes to your water if you don't like flavored water.
• 37:22
  Philip Pape: electrolytes, of course allow us to absorb our water and stay hydrated. And there's multiple ways to do this. The one I always recommend it's super easy as adding a pinch of, of sea salt or Himalayan salt to your water, salt, of course it does contain sodium, and then add lemon juice to that because Lemon. Lemon juice contains citric acid which helps enhance the absorption of electrolytes and also has vitamin C, which can't go wrong with so salt lemon juice. Another way to do it is to just buy off the shelf liquid electrolyte supplements, right? elements or Dr. Berg's I think it's called I mean, there's a whole bunch just looking at ingredients that contain usually multiple electrolytes, sodium, potassium, magnesium chloride, the oftentimes don't have sugar calories, some have artificial sweeteners. So it's really up to you what you want there. And you can, you know, pop those in your water after a workout, for example. And then one other thing that I haven't tried myself that adding some coconut water or watermelon juice as well, because those are natural sources of electrolyte and they would add some nice flavor to your, to your water, as well.
• 38:23
  Philip Pape: Okay, so that was a lot of questions. I you know, it's like 11 questions for today. Speaking of questions, I wanted to mention something that we just started recently in the Wits & Weights Facebook community, which by the way, is totally free to join. We have something called Ask Philip, where you can post a specific question about your health and fitness journey.
• 38:45
  Philip Pape: And I'll answer it live on Fridays with the video replay immediately available in the group. So I want to be clear, this is more than just a general q&a, like today's episode, the Ask Phillip thread gives you the chance to get very specific about your goals and where you're stuck. Right? Like, hey, you know, here, here are my macros. Here's how I train. Here's how many steps I get blah, blah, blah, and I'm stuck at a weight plateau weight loss plateau. What do I do? Or I've never tracked before, I'm not sure if it's right for me.
• 39:19
  Philip Pape: Here's my scenario here. Here's my goal, what do I do? Right?
• 39:21
  Philip Pape: And then I will give you a very specific answer to help you move forward based on your situation.
• 39:28
  Philip Pape: So if you're not already in our free Facebook community, click the link in my show notes or search for Wits & Weights on Facebook. Again, just click the link in my show notes to join our free community. All right, on our next episode 91. I will be reviewing the latest research around protein intake and body composition. And I'm going to break down exactly what matters why it matters. The simple steps you can take to ensure you're getting enough protein both for the minimum effective dose but also to opt Amazing results, including some surprising findings from the research. So make sure to follow or subscribe to the podcast Wits & Weights in your podcast app right now go ahead click the subscribe click the Follow so you get notified of every new episode. And as always, stay strong. And I'll talk to you next time here on the Wits. & Weights podcast.
• 40:24
  Philip Pape: Thank you for tuning in to another episode of Wits & Weights. If you found value in today's episode, and know someone else who's looking to level up their Wits & Weights.
• 40:34
  Philip Pape: Please take a moment to share this episode with them. And make sure to hit the Follow button in your podcast platform right now to catch the next episode. Until then, stay strong