Latest / Wits & Weights | Strength & Fat Loss Over 40 / 5 Body Recomp Mistakes (Why You're Not Losing Fat or Building Muscle) | Ep 395

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5 Body Recomp Mistakes (Why You're Not Losing Fat or Building Muscle) | Ep 395 · Wits & Weights | Strength & Fat Loss Over 40

• 0:01
  Philip Pape: Do you ever feel like your body isn't listening despite consistent training, watching your protein, doing what the evidence says to do, and yet body recomposition, building muscle, losing fat is somehow not happening.
• 0:13
  Philip Pape: What's probably breaking down is that signal between your actions and your physiology.
• 0:18
  Philip Pape: It's not because you don't have the effort.
• 0:21
  Philip Pape: It is probably because your body is receiving the wrong message, which then leads to the wrong outcome and frustration.
• 0:28
  Philip Pape: Today I'm walking you through the five biggest body recomp mistakes that I see keeping intelligent, hardworking lifters stuck at the same body fat and muscle mounts in the specific fixes that align your training, nutrition, and recovery.
• 0:42
  Philip Pape: Welcome to Wits and Weights, the show that helps you build a strong, healthy physique using evidence, engineering, and efficiency.
• 1:00
  Philip Pape: I'm your host, Philip Pape, and today we are again talking about body recomposition, building muscle, and losing fat, and the frustration when you're not able to achieve it.
• 1:10
  Philip Pape: Especially if you are putting in effort, especially if that effort is consistent.
• 1:15
  Philip Pape: Solid training, on-point nutrition, and yet things aren't changing.
• 1:19
  Philip Pape: Now, if you're not doing those things, that to me is the easy part.
• 1:22
  Philip Pape: That's the low-hanging fruit.
• 1:23
  Philip Pape: Even consistency, which I talk about a lot as one of the most critical variables, is still not going to buy you the result if you're not consistent in the right things.
• 1:32
  Philip Pape: And maybe you're doing one thing, like you're able to lose a little bit of fat, but you feel like you haven't gained any muscle definition, or you've gained a little muscle, but you can't seem to drop that fat.
• 1:41
  Philip Pape: This is kind of the body composition problem that is really common as we get older, especially over 40 lifters over 40 who are smart like you, you listen to podcasts, you understand the evidence, you know what protein synthesis is, you might even be tracking your lifts and your nutrition, and somehow your body's not quite responding.
• 1:58
  Philip Pape: Now, I'm not talking about corner cases or specific medical or healthcare issues related to, for example, hormones or something going on in your blood work.
• 2:07
  Philip Pape: I'm not talking that today.
• 2:08
  Philip Pape: Today I'm talking about really the big mistakes that people are making that will uh quickly get you over a hump to start making progress.
• 2:15
  Philip Pape: And so it's not about working harder, it's not about your effort, it's not dedication.
• 2:19
  Philip Pape: And again, it's not just consistency.
• 2:21
  Philip Pape: It's there are misalignments in your approach that compound over time.
• 2:26
  Philip Pape: You feel like you're doing all this stuff, your body just let's say it adapts to maintain where it is instead of to transform.
• 2:33
  Philip Pape: And that is really tough for a lot of us.
• 2:36
  Philip Pape: So I'm gonna break down five common body recomp mistakes that create this situation.
• 2:40
  Philip Pape: These are not just beginner errors, these are mistakes that very informed, intelligent people make, and I'm gonna give you the fixes that will make them work.
• 2:48
  Philip Pape: So let's get into it.
• 2:48
  Philip Pape: Mistake number one is you are eating like you are dieting instead of recomping.
• 2:54
  Philip Pape: Now, this is a there's some nuance here, okay?
• 2:56
  Philip Pape: This is actually the number one mistake I see.
• 2:59
  Philip Pape: People hear body recomposition and they think, okay, I need to train harder.
• 3:05
  Philip Pape: That's the muscle side.
• 3:06
  Philip Pape: I need to eat less and I need to diet to lose fat and kind of do them together.
• 3:11
  Philip Pape: And they often drop into basically a fat loss phase, which is usually some sort of calorie deficit, often an aggressive deficit, thinking, okay, that's how I can do both at the same time.
• 3:21
  Philip Pape: And there's a lot of people that talk about body recomp from the dieting perspective.
• 3:26
  Philip Pape: But I think the problem is that even a moderately aggressive calorie deficit is gonna highly suppress your muscle protein synthesis beyond the beginner stage.
• 3:36
  Philip Pape: Again, we're not talking about the beginners.
• 3:38
  Philip Pape: When you first start, your body's very responsive.
• 3:40
  Philip Pape: You gain those few pounds of muscle, and maybe you could lose some fat, right?
• 3:43
  Philip Pape: And that's great.
• 3:44
  Philip Pape: But we're talking about people who have hit a wall.
• 3:46
  Philip Pape: And when any deficit at all, especially if it's reasonable, you know, reasonably high, I should say, is going to impair your recovery, which reduces your performance in the gym.
• 3:55
  Philip Pape: And yes, you might start losing weight on the scale and dropping some body fat and at best holding on to muscle, but you're probably not building a muscle.
• 4:03
  Philip Pape: And I talk all the time about the importance of a muscle-first approach.
• 4:07
  Philip Pape: And this really defeats the purpose of recomp.
• 4:09
  Philip Pape: Now you might say, oh, what if I want to lean out first and then build muscle?
• 4:13
  Philip Pape: You can definitely do that.
• 4:15
  Philip Pape: You can definitely do that.
• 4:16
  Philip Pape: Okay.
• 4:17
  Philip Pape: And for somebody who's carrying extra weight, maybe they're not happy with the layer of fat they have in their body.
• 4:22
  Philip Pape: I'm not against that approach.
• 4:23
  Philip Pape: You know, setting things up for about a month or two, then going into a fat loss phase first and then going to building.
• 4:29
  Philip Pape: I'm not against that.
• 4:30
  Philip Pape: What I'm against here is constantly trying to bias your approach toward that dieting side, thinking that, okay, the muscle's gonna slowly build because I'm training hard, right?
• 4:41
  Philip Pape: I'm training in the gym, like Philip says.
• 4:42
  Philip Pape: And, but I really need to lose that fat.
• 4:45
  Philip Pape: And you kind of get stuck in a rut between the two directions.
• 4:49
  Philip Pape: If you were to do a very aggressive fat loss phase and just like focus and get it done, and then do a very, you know, moderate to aggressive muscle building phase, I wouldn't be judging, I'm not judging.
• 5:00
  Philip Pape: This wouldn't be an issue because it probably would work for you.
• 5:03
  Philip Pape: Okay.
• 5:03
  Philip Pape: But a lot of you are just not spending the time building muscle.
• 5:07
  Philip Pape: You are always eating like you're dieting, even when, even when you're not quite in a deficit, if that makes any sense.
• 5:14
  Philip Pape: All right.
• 5:15
  Philip Pape: We we look at the research, right?
• 5:16
  Philip Pape: When we talk about muscle gain, we know that we need a neutral or slightly positive energy balance.
• 5:21
  Philip Pape: Even in successful recomp studies, the participants are always eating at or near maintenance with high protein intake, progressive resistance training.
• 5:28
  Philip Pape: You're not in a deep deficit, right?
• 5:30
  Philip Pape: I this is kind of what I'm trying to get across.
• 5:33
  Philip Pape: It's an input-output problem.
• 5:35
  Philip Pape: Your body needs enough energy to fuel the training, the recovery, the energy-intensive process of building new muscle.
• 5:41
  Philip Pape: And if you don't do that, you're gonna stall.
• 5:43
  Philip Pape: So even if you're like, hey, but I want to lose fat as well, if you are in a deficit, you're pretty much only gonna lose fat.
• 5:51
  Philip Pape: You're not gonna build much muscle.
• 5:52
  Philip Pape: You might build a little tiny bit, but it's just gonna be negligible.
• 5:54
  Philip Pape: It's not gonna be what you are going for.
• 5:56
  Philip Pape: When people say, hey, I don't see definition in my muscles yet, and I've been doing this for a year or two, on that time scale, you're not going to see it unless you give it that time to build muscle.
• 6:05
  Philip Pape: And so I think the sweet spot for a lot of people is your maintenance calories or very close to it.
• 6:10
  Philip Pape: I personally like aggressive maintenance, which is going a little bit above that, making sure there's that high protein signal, plenty of carbs to fuel energy and recovery, right?
• 6:19
  Philip Pape: We know the protein piece is critical.
• 6:21
  Philip Pape: Somewhere between 0.7 and one grams per pound is kind of optimal.
• 6:25
  Philip Pape: But if you want to push that a little bit more and see how you respond, not against that for some people in terms of experimentation, right?
• 6:30
  Philip Pape: And so if you don't have muscle to begin with, why are you just trying to preserve the muscle you have rather than trying to add new muscle?
• 6:38
  Philip Pape: So the fix here, I think, is yes, you should be tracking your food in some capacity so you understand what your maintenance calories are, whether you use macrofactor or whether you just do it, you know, over time, keeping your weight fairly stable and eating at the what it takes to do that.
• 6:53
  Philip Pape: You you've got to kind of know where that level is so you're not accidentally dieting or gaining too much weight.
• 6:58
  Philip Pape: And then you want to keep the calories pretty much there.
• 7:01
  Philip Pape: It's consistency is a lot easier to get to when you're trying to maintain at that level or a little bit higher and really feel fueled.
• 7:08
  Philip Pape: But you're also gonna look at your biofeedback, you know, your weight trend, your measurements, your performance in the gym.
• 7:13
  Philip Pape: If you're not gaining strength, something has to be adjusted.
• 7:19
  Philip Pape: And if you're eating like you're in a fat loss phase, thinking you're gonna recomp, you're not recomping.
• 7:23
  Philip Pape: You're gonna be in an aggressive deficit, have low energy, both actual energy coming in and probably the biofeedback of energy.
• 7:30
  Philip Pape: And that's just kind of an inefficient way to be quote unquote dieting.
• 7:33
  Philip Pape: So again, if you're trying to recomp, if you're actually trying to recomp, try to get at least a maintenance, if not an aggressive maintenance.
• 7:40
  Philip Pape: We covered all this in the 90-day body recomp workshop in physique university.
• 7:44
  Philip Pape: And you could always jump in if you're a member listening, you can go find that replay from I think it was August, September, August?
• 7:50
  Philip Pape: No, I think it was August.
• 7:51
  Philip Pape: And if you're not in, you could always join and go grab that.
• 7:54
  Philip Pape: And it has the whole process for doing this, including the aggressive maintenance.
• 7:57
  Philip Pape: But I think that's the first and biggest mistake and probably the easiest one for a lot of you to fix.
• 8:02
  Philip Pape: I get there's fear around gaining weight.
• 8:04
  Philip Pape: That's a whole different situation.
• 8:05
  Philip Pape: But if you're not in a meaningful surplus, you're not gonna gain much weight at all.
• 8:09
  Philip Pape: And if anything, you're gonna just accidentally lose some fat along for the ride when you're not focusing on eating like you are dieting.
• 8:15
  Philip Pape: All right, mistake number two is that when you exercise, when you train, when you move, you're always thinking about burning calories and you're not thinking about muscle.
• 8:24
  Philip Pape: So notice the pattern here, okay?
• 8:27
  Philip Pape: You know, you're listening to wits and weights.
• 8:30
  Philip Pape: You know strength training is important.
• 8:31
  Philip Pape: If you don't, I'm telling you right now, it is probably the number one thing you can do if you're not doing it.
• 8:35
  Philip Pape: Everybody should be lifting weights, in my opinion, pretty much to the day you die.
• 8:39
  Philip Pape: And you've got to lift.
• 8:41
  Philip Pape: You've got to lift.
• 8:42
  Philip Pape: But the mindset has to go along for the ride.
• 8:45
  Philip Pape: And that means a mindset of training to improve and progress and get stronger and build muscle, not going to the gym and exercising, not going to the gym just to burn calories.
• 8:56
  Philip Pape: Even when you are doing cardio, believe it or not, you shouldn't be thinking in terms of burning calories so much as supporting your muscle building and your recovery and your fitness and your mobility and all the things except that.
• 9:08
  Philip Pape: And I know it's hard to do because we're so fixated on the old paradigm of, you know, eat less, move more, you exercise to lose weight, and you do it to burn calories.
• 9:18
  Philip Pape: When in reality, that usually has the opposite effect.
• 9:21
  Philip Pape: And so when you're doing the YouTube style workouts, circuit training, you're doing around, you know, as many reps as possible, no rest periods, all of that, thinking it's going to somehow help your fat loss or burning more calories, it usually backfires, it usually stalls out your muscle building, and it usually sends the wrong signal to your body that you are an endurance machine rather than a muscle, you know, strength machine.
• 9:41
  Philip Pape: And your calories actually come down, you know, in terms of your expenditure, metabolism, right?
• 9:46
  Philip Pape: And then it gets frustrating because you don't see the results you want, you don't see the muscle definition.
• 9:50
  Philip Pape: And a lot of you out there I know are not training the right way.
• 9:53
  Philip Pape: I work with new clients all the time who've been going to the gym.
• 9:56
  Philip Pape: Maybe they have a trainer.
• 9:57
  Philip Pape: A lot of these trainers are good, many of them not so good.
• 10:00
  Philip Pape: And I'll give them a program.
• 10:02
  Philip Pape: And unless I'm very careful about prescribing exactly what to do, I will see some mistakes, like, and and some of you know who you are, so I'm not gonna call out names, where they'll see five exercises with three sets each, and they'll do all five exercises for one set and they'll rotate around and do it two more times, kind of like a circuit.
• 10:20
  Philip Pape: And I have to, I have to remind remind myself that this is where a lot of people come from.
• 10:24
  Philip Pape: And I have to kind of reteach the idea that no, you do one exercise, you go through all the sets, and you have sufficient rest period because the goal here is to train really hard to get in the volume and also that muscular tension to grow.
• 10:35
  Philip Pape: And then you go to the next one and the next one.
• 10:36
  Philip Pape: Sure, there's place for supersets and all that.
• 10:38
  Philip Pape: We're not gonna get into this on this episode, but the point of training is to build that strength and build that muscle, not to burn calories because that's not gonna optimize muscle growth thinking that way.
• 10:50
  Philip Pape: Muscle growth requires mechanical tension, progressive overload.
• 10:53
  Philip Pape: You have to lift heavy enough weights through a full range of motion, enough rest between sets to recover and maintain performance.
• 10:59
  Philip Pape: And when you're lifting heavy like that, when you have rest periods like that, you're gonna find that training feels a little bit slower and more mindful.
• 11:06
  Philip Pape: It almost feels less hard from a work capacity and a cardio or heart rate perspective, but it should feel more hard from a pure strength effort perspective.
• 11:18
  Philip Pape: And many people find that that is a really fun, amazing change.
• 11:23
  Philip Pape: I hear it all the time from clients like, whoa, I really like doing sets of five or eight instead of 12 or 15.
• 11:30
  Philip Pape: You know, I really like that because it's hard in a different way.
• 11:33
  Philip Pape: It's hard in a more satisfying, thrilling kind of way that I'm getting strong and I'm really pushing these heavy weights.
• 11:39
  Philip Pape: And I have to be mindful and focus on my form and that tension and that neutrality, my back and the skill of the thing, which becomes its own sense of personal growth and satisfaction while also serving the purpose of building your muscles and your strength, right?
• 11:57
  Philip Pape: And your body's gonna respond to the quality and type of stress that you apply, not to the quantity of energy that you burn during a workout.
• 12:06
  Philip Pape: And by the way, interestingly, when you are doing really heavy lifts, oftentimes you burn just as many calories anyway.
• 12:13
  Philip Pape: You don't really realize it.
• 12:14
  Philip Pape: Your heart rate gets jacked up.
• 12:16
  Philip Pape: I don't want to say that lifting is cardio, although I want to do an episode that's kind of on that theme, but it accounts for much of that heart health and cardio and calorie burn, even though that is not the point.
• 12:27
  Philip Pape: So, going back to you think of strength training or even bodybuilding, where you're gonna have two, three, four minutes of rest between heavy compound lifts, that is because you're focused on the intensity.
• 12:40
  Philip Pape: By intensity, I mean the weight on the bar and getting that mechanical tension with as many muscle fibers as possible.
• 12:47
  Philip Pape: And that requires you to be as well rested and training hard as possible.
• 12:52
  Philip Pape: So if you train for muscles instead of calories, if you structure your training, not your exercise, you're not your workouts, even though I use the word workouts a lot, you're training around that constant improvement, plenty of rest, plenty of performance, plenty of effort, right?
• 13:06
  Philip Pape: Good form, you're gonna be good.
• 13:10
  Philip Pape: You're gonna be good.
• 13:10
  Philip Pape: If you need to increase your expenditure, that usually happens outside the gym.
• 13:15
  Philip Pape: Walking more, getting more sleep, less stress, not eating like you're dieting all the time.
• 13:20
  Philip Pape: Go back to mistake number one.
• 13:22
  Philip Pape: And honestly, when you train properly for muscle growth, your body composition is then going to improve faster anyway, because you're gonna see much more of that muscle definition.
• 13:32
  Philip Pape: Muscle itself is more metabolically expensive.
• 13:34
  Philip Pape: Your expenditure might even go up just from that.
• 13:37
  Philip Pape: Not a lot from that, but my point is the fact that you're training in that way is gonna cascade everything else.
• 13:42
  Philip Pape: Okay, let's go to mistake number three, and that is that you are ignoring recovery and sleep.
• 13:48
  Philip Pape: I can talk about this enough, but he but it's potentially could be the number one mistake for some of you, at least the most underrated of the five.
• 13:56
  Philip Pape: And that is because the training that you do in the gym is a tiny slice of your week.
• 14:02
  Philip Pape: What you do outside the gym is what really supports the adaptations, the muscle growth.
• 14:07
  Philip Pape: You know, we know that nutrition supports all this as well, obviously.
• 14:11
  Philip Pape: But recovery and rest is actually gonna jack up your insulin sensitivity, your nutrient partitioning, your fat loss, it's gonna reduce your belly fat, it's gonna help with your recovery and blood flow, it's gonna reduce your soreness, and the list goes on.
• 14:27
  Philip Pape: We know that your hormones get wacky when you are restricted with your sleep.
• 14:32
  Philip Pape: Getting less than six hours every night, if you are a less than six hour sleeper, I want you to put this at the top of your list.
• 14:39
  Philip Pape: How can you get more and better quality sleep?
• 14:41
  Philip Pape: Or else you are hampering your testosterone, your cortisol, your reproductive hormones, your hunger hormones, you're gonna impact muscle synthesis, blunt your glyc, you know, how you restore glycogen.
• 14:51
  Philip Pape: It sabotages every adaptation you're trying to create with your training, thus making it so much less efficient that I'm not gonna say what's the point.
• 14:59
  Philip Pape: I'm just gonna say why would you do that?
• 15:01
  Philip Pape: Chronic stress does the same thing.
• 15:02
  Philip Pape: When your cortisol is always jacked up, you're in this catabolic state.
• 15:07
  Philip Pape: Your body wants to break down tissue to grab more energy that it's lacking because you're not getting enough uh rest in that parasympathetic state, right?
• 15:16
  Philip Pape: So your recovery capacity then plummets, your performance then suffers.
• 15:19
  Philip Pape: It's kind of a vicious cycle.
• 15:21
  Philip Pape: Recovery itself is a multiplier and it goes both ways.
• 15:24
  Philip Pape: You can't out train a system that's under-recovered.
• 15:28
  Philip Pape: I'm actually doing an episode Wednesday all about the, what is it called?
• 15:32
  Philip Pape: It's all about the priorities in your hypertrophy or in your training.
• 15:35
  Philip Pape: I forget the title that I'm giving it.
• 15:37
  Philip Pape: This is a terrible sales pitch.
• 15:39
  Philip Pape: But it's about what should you prioritize in what order when it comes to your strength training.
• 15:44
  Philip Pape: And not even on that list because it's overriding everything and almost makes the list less relevant, is your recovery.
• 15:52
  Philip Pape: In other words, it's not on the list because it's part of everything.
• 15:54
  Philip Pape: It's like the foundation of everything, right?
• 15:57
  Philip Pape: Your parasympathetic nervous system, this is the rest and digest system, is what drives tissue repair and hormonal balance, homeostasis.
• 16:04
  Philip Pape: It's the foundation of body composition or recomposition.
• 16:07
  Philip Pape: But if you're in this high stress, jacked up fight or flight state, constantly training, constantly exercising, constantly stressed, you're never going to activate that system long enough to really help those adaptations.
• 16:17
  Philip Pape: You're gonna blunt lots of things.
• 16:18
  Philip Pape: So if you are listening to this and you're like, oh my God, that could be the reason I'm not seeing my muscles start to pop and get defined.
• 16:24
  Philip Pape: Even if I lost a little body fat, for some reason my training seems to be going to waste a little bit.
• 16:28
  Philip Pape: Maybe it's because you're underrecovered.
• 16:30
  Philip Pape: I mean, it doesn't take a lot of under-recovery for this to be a big problem.
• 16:34
  Philip Pape: The fix, of course, is to prioritize your sleep.
• 16:37
  Philip Pape: That's the big one for everyone.
• 16:39
  Philip Pape: Seven to nine hours, non-negotiable, and doing all the things with your environment, with your pre-sleep ritual, with the things we talk about over and over again.
• 16:46
  Philip Pape: And I hope you you keep listening to this podcast and it'll kind of sink in over time how important this is.
• 16:50
  Philip Pape: Because hearing it just once, you're like, okay, sleep fine.
• 16:53
  Philip Pape: I'm not gonna do anything about that.
• 16:54
  Philip Pape: What's the next, what's the next uh secret, Philip?
• 16:56
  Philip Pape: Okay, no, this is the big secret because it has everything to do with your training performance and your hunger hormones, your belly fat.
• 17:02
  Philip Pape: Hey, look, if you got too much belly fat and you want to drop that belly fat, improve your sleep.
• 17:06
  Philip Pape: All right.
• 17:07
  Philip Pape: The second thing is some of you are never taking rest days.
• 17:10
  Philip Pape: You've got to take at least one, if not two, if not three, full rest days per week.
• 17:14
  Philip Pape: And I mean a real rest day, not this quote unquote active recovery day that is so popular where you're still doing a light workout or you're going for a run or doing some intense cardio.
• 17:25
  Philip Pape: Okay.
• 17:25
  Philip Pape: If you've got things dialed in, if things are optimized, having sprinting or some form of cardio on those days is cool.
• 17:31
  Philip Pape: But a lot of you just overdoing it and you're in the gym seven days a week.
• 17:35
  Philip Pape: And I would strip it all the way back to three full body days if you've never done that before, and just see what it does for your recovery and your results.
• 17:43
  Philip Pape: You might find, here's the thing.
• 17:44
  Philip Pape: Imagine this: you go to three days and you do that for let's say eight weeks, eight weeks.
• 17:49
  Philip Pape: That's like two months.
• 17:50
  Philip Pape: See what happens to your strength and your muscle.
• 17:52
  Philip Pape: If it improves, what that tells you is that you can get a result on this like minimum set of time in the gym and maximum set of rest.
• 18:03
  Philip Pape: And that's a great starting point to build from.
• 18:05
  Philip Pape: Because then, okay, if you want to add another day in, you kind of know what you're comparing to.
• 18:09
  Philip Pape: And if it gives you a little more, great, but it's not probably gonna give you as much as just the fact that you have all that recovery.
• 18:14
  Philip Pape: And then maybe you go to five days max, but that's it.
• 18:17
  Philip Pape: That's it.
• 18:17
  Philip Pape: Have those full rest days built into there.
• 18:19
  Philip Pape: Your body needs that break to consolidate those adaptations.
• 18:22
  Philip Pape: And then the third thing here in this thing about recovery is the use of auto-regulation.
• 18:28
  Philip Pape: What is that?
• 18:29
  Philip Pape: Auto regulation sounds like one of those fancy engineering words.
• 18:32
  Philip Pape: It's actually a commonly used training term where you adjust your training to your performance capability that day.
• 18:40
  Philip Pape: Now, I have to be very clear, it's not just a willy-nilly how I feel, like, oh, I'm kind of tired today or I don't feel too strong today, so I'm just gonna go half-acid on my workout.
• 18:50
  Philip Pape: It's more like if you if the weights feel are start feeling really heavy and you're dragging and and you've done the things, and maybe you haven't done the things, maybe you had a bunch of alcohol last night, maybe you didn't sleep in, maybe you're hungover, maybe you ate too much last night, whatever.
• 19:05
  Philip Pape: Okay, you warm up as if you're gonna train at your programmed level.
• 19:12
  Philip Pape: And then if the objective signal is telling you that you don't quite have the capacity that day, auto-regulation is saying, okay, how do I regulate automatically to that situation, but still train hard?
• 19:27
  Philip Pape: And what that might look like, it might look like a little reset in your lifts, in your weights.
• 19:32
  Philip Pape: It might, but it might simply be you get a you get a rep less, right?
• 19:38
  Philip Pape: Or you drop the weights on sets two and three to get the reps, like things like that where you're still training really hard, keeping that intensity high, and there's just some little give in the load or volume or some variable, as opposed to taking it all off or completely dialing back and not really getting much out of your session.
• 19:57
  Philip Pape: That makes sense.
• 19:58
  Philip Pape: So, like if you are in a fat loss phase, auto-reg, there are auto-regulated ways to train that allow you to train your hardest knowing that you have limited resources.
• 20:07
  Philip Pape: If you fix mistake number one that I talked about today, like not always being in a dieting mode and you're actually eating enough and fueling yourself enough, you shouldn't have to auto-regulate in the same way you would in fat loss.
• 20:17
  Philip Pape: However, some days you are just not gonna have the energy, you're gonna be stressed out of your mind, maybe you didn't have enough sleep.
• 20:23
  Philip Pape: So you've basically given yourself a downgrade because you didn't do the other things, right?
• 20:29
  Philip Pape: You didn't do the recovery.
• 20:30
  Philip Pape: And that's okay, it happens.
• 20:31
  Philip Pape: I'm not saying you have to be perfect, I'm saying that happens.
• 20:33
  Philip Pape: And then it's almost like you're temporarily in a fat loss phase.
• 20:36
  Philip Pape: And the question is, what are you gonna do about it?
• 20:37
  Philip Pape: Now, some people may decide, you know what, since I'm working out three days a week, I've got four rest days, I can shift, I can shift out one day.
• 20:44
  Philip Pape: You may need to do that.
• 20:45
  Philip Pape: That may actually be the beneficial choice to make.
• 20:47
  Philip Pape: But auto-regulation can be very, very helpful as a way to incorporate proper recovery or adjust to your recovery capacity, right?
• 20:57
  Philip Pape: And since we're talking about recovery, I did want to take a quick break to talk about something that has been really awesome for my own recovery.
• 21:05
  Philip Pape: I just talked about how critical sleep is for body recomposition.
• 21:09
  Philip Pape: You know, all of that adaptation, the muscle growth, the fat loss happens during recovery.
• 21:14
  Philip Pape: And we talked about quantity of sleep, but we also need to talk about the quality of your sleep.
• 21:19
  Philip Pape: And I just want to talk right now about one thing that I started using, oh, about three months ago.
• 21:26
  Philip Pape: My kids love it because they they're like, uh looks like mommy put on the uh, the cozy earth sheets.
• 21:31
  Philip Pape: They're they're they're very special set of sheets compared to the other ones I have.
• 21:36
  Philip Pape: They're made from viscos from bamboo.
• 21:39
  Philip Pape: And it's kind of weird because they cool you down, right?
• 21:43
  Philip Pape: They take the heat out.
• 21:44
  Philip Pape: And it's winter now.
• 21:45
  Philip Pape: And I thought, okay, does that mean they're gonna be freezing cold?
• 21:48
  Philip Pape: No, it's like that sense of relaxing, cool, but having the comforter on top of it still keeps you overall warm, if that makes any sense.
• 21:57
  Philip Pape: And I think the difference between those and other sheets is extremely, I'll say, I'll say palpable, right?
• 22:04
  Philip Pape: They they're they're very breathable, they're like silky, but not in that sweaty, like actual silk.
• 22:09
  Philip Pape: They're actually like very glide, they glide and they're soft.
• 22:14
  Philip Pape: And what I like them because I get really hot at night and they help me stay cool through the night, which means deeper sleep, better recovery.
• 22:20
  Philip Pape: And man, my HRV, my stats on my aura ring all seem to improve when we have those sheets on the bed.
• 22:26
  Philip Pape: So I'm telling my wife I need to get a few more sets.
• 22:28
  Philip Pape: Right.
• 22:29
  Philip Pape: And if you're again, if you're looking at those things that can help you rest well and really make the most of the sleep where you optimize the use of your protein, you know, you reduce the hunger, help with your belly fat, and all that.
• 22:42
  Philip Pape: I would think about these types of things.
• 22:44
  Philip Pape: So I'm a big fan of cozy earth sheets.
• 22:46
  Philip Pape: If you go to wits and weights.com slash cozy earth, you can use my code wits and weights at check out and get 20% off.
• 22:52
  Philip Pape: They have sheets.
• 22:53
  Philip Pape: They also have a lot of other products you can check out, but the sheets are absolutely my favorite, all different colors.
• 22:58
  Philip Pape: Go to witsandweights.com slash cozy earth.
• 23:01
  Philip Pape: Use my code wits and weights for 20% off.
• 23:04
  Philip Pape: By the way, when you go to that site, it's gonna show you the code as well, in case you forget it.
• 23:07
  Philip Pape: So just use the link in the show notes or go to witsandweights.com slash cozy earth for those oh so comfortable, oh so cooling, bamboo derived sheets from Cozy Earth.
• 23:18
  Philip Pape: All right.
• 23:19
  Philip Pape: Mistake number four is that you're not measuring the right things, the my right metrics.
• 23:26
  Philip Pape: And this is where the people listening, you you, the listener, you know, you're probably listening to wits and weights because you like data efficiency, maybe that engineering mindset that I try to bring to this process.
• 23:37
  Philip Pape: And you probably tracking certain things.
• 23:40
  Philip Pape: But what I find talking to people on calls and new clients that come into physics university, for example, is they're not necessarily tracking the right things or the things that they're tracking, they're not using them the right way.
• 23:50
  Philip Pape: Let's talk about scale weight, for example.
• 23:52
  Philip Pape: A lot of misconceptions.
• 23:54
  Philip Pape: A lot of you are only tracking scale weight sporadically, or like once a week or once a month.
• 23:59
  Philip Pape: And the problem with those is you can get a high point or a low point, and it doesn't actually tell you what's going on with body fat because those high and low points can be multiple pounds in either direction or kilograms based on water fluctuation.
• 24:12
  Philip Pape: And so I'm a huge fan of weighing yourself every day because then you can take a smoothed average over time to tell you what's actually happening with the deep down storage of fat, which is hard to measure in the short term.
• 24:25
  Philip Pape: It takes about three weeks to measure a change there.
• 24:28
  Philip Pape: That's why I think the process is more important than the data sometimes, but they kind of go hand in hand.
• 24:33
  Philip Pape: And body recomp in particular, where you're trying to lose muscle and gain fat, or you're trying to gain muscle and lose fat at the same time, your scale weight might stay the same.
• 24:43
  Philip Pape: And that's not gonna tell you much, is it?
• 24:45
  Philip Pape: So, you know, yeah, that's one thing, at least to know that you're not gaining or losing too much.
• 24:50
  Philip Pape: But then you need the other stuff, your, you know, circumference measurements.
• 24:55
  Philip Pape: I mean, honestly, if you just had to pick one, I would go with your waist at the navel, at the navel.
• 24:59
  Philip Pape: That alone, if that's dropping, you're losing fat.
• 25:02
  Philip Pape: And so if your weight's the same, the waist is dropping.
• 25:04
  Philip Pape: That's a great leading indicator of body composition change, especially if then you have indications of muscle growth, like your biceps are going up, your chest is going up, right?
• 25:15
  Philip Pape: I usually use about six or eight different data points when I work with clients.
• 25:19
  Philip Pape: Um, we have this thing called the biofeedback or physique and biofeedback tracker in physique university.
• 25:23
  Philip Pape: It's basically a spreadsheet where if you put these measurements in, it'll measure your body fat, your lean mass, your fat-free mass index, and it'll also show you what's happening from one data point to the next to kind of understand, okay, over this body recomp phase, I've had roughly this muscle to fat ratio of change.
• 25:41
  Philip Pape: And I think that's really important because it gives you a nice boost of motivation when you say, look, my scale weight hasn't changed.
• 25:47
  Philip Pape: It's hard to see the change in the mirror because you don't notice change unless you go and look at a before and after photo over a decent amount of time.
• 25:54
  Philip Pape: And so something like circumference measurements give you a fairly rapid indicator.
• 26:00
  Philip Pape: And by rapid, I mean over several weeks, not you know, day to day, obviously.
• 26:03
  Philip Pape: I mentioned photos.
• 26:04
  Philip Pape: I think progress photos can be moderately helpful.
• 26:07
  Philip Pape: Ironically, I think they're more helpful when someone else is looking at them, yet that's what we are most probably embarrassed to do.
• 26:14
  Philip Pape: If you're a private client of mine, you know, that's part of the process.
• 26:19
  Philip Pape: And I get you would feel probably safest in that environment being one-to-one.
• 26:22
  Philip Pape: If you're more in a bigger setting or a group setting, it's not necessarily something you want to do.
• 26:28
  Philip Pape: But I wouldn't discourage it in if if you wear appropriate clothing and want to say, hey, here's where I was eight weeks ago, here's where I am now.
• 26:36
  Philip Pape: Here's what I'm noticing about myself.
• 26:37
  Philip Pape: Hey guys, what do you notice?
• 26:39
  Philip Pape: And and, you know, assuming this is in a safe place where people give you constructive positive feedback, which I tell you, any group that I run is going to be like that, or you're out.
• 26:48
  Philip Pape: So if, you know, anybody listening who's in physique university, go ahead and post your photos in whatever channel makes sense and let us know, you know, objectively what we are looking for.
• 26:59
  Philip Pape: Are we are we looking to get a bigger back?
• 27:01
  Philip Pape: Are we looking to get, you know, more defined shoulders?
• 27:04
  Philip Pape: Are you looking to just drop body fat and start showing your six pack?
• 27:07
  Philip Pape: Right, those kinds of things can be indicators of what is going on.
• 27:10
  Philip Pape: And sometimes only other people can see them.
• 27:12
  Philip Pape: Uh, the next thing is really your performance.
• 27:14
  Philip Pape: And performance is usually your lifting progress.
• 27:16
  Philip Pape: Are you adding weight, adding reps and weight, you know, because here's the other thing people say, look, I don't see it too much in my in the mirror.
• 27:25
  Philip Pape: My waist hasn't changed that much, but my numbers have get gone up and up and up and up.
• 27:32
  Philip Pape: And a lot of times when that happens, you've got a little bit of a layer of fat that's been there the whole time.
• 27:39
  Philip Pape: And now your muscles underneath have been building and getting bigger, and you still don't quite see the definition you want.
• 27:45
  Philip Pape: That's the point at which, well, I know my fat-free mass index has gone up.
• 27:49
  Philip Pape: I know I built some more muscle.
• 27:50
  Philip Pape: Well, maybe now if I do a fat loss phase, I can reveal some of that and I can be kind of put a put a bow on this whole process to reveal what I've got, right?
• 27:59
  Philip Pape: So sometimes that's what it takes is a combination of these metrics, comprehensive tracking system with some key things that make a lot of sense.
• 28:06
  Philip Pape: That's it.
• 28:07
  Philip Pape: That's really what this mistake is that a lot of you are not measuring the right things.
• 28:10
  Philip Pape: You're measuring scale weight sporadically, you're not tracking your lifts, you're focused too much on, say, the mirror and feeling, you know, mirror or or maybe comparing yourself to other people or whatever.
• 28:21
  Philip Pape: Things that are not objective that really tell you what's going on.
• 28:23
  Philip Pape: All right.
• 28:24
  Philip Pape: Mistake number five is you're expecting rapid results.
• 28:30
  Philip Pape: Yep.
• 28:31
  Philip Pape: I said it.
• 28:32
  Philip Pape: This is the one that's about mindset more than anything.
• 28:36
  Philip Pape: It's not about tactics, but it's extremely important because you're expecting a quick result.
• 28:42
  Philip Pape: I'm not talking about one week, I get it, but whatever you're expecting, it's probably too quick in general.
• 28:48
  Philip Pape: In fact, I'd like you when you're listening to this to ask yourself if what you're expecting is realistic.
• 28:54
  Philip Pape: Because when you decide you want to recomp, you want to build muscle and lose fat, you're over 40, whatever, and you set up your training, you dial in the nutrition, you start executing the plan, and then three weeks goes by, four weeks goes by, and it it feels like nothing has changed.
• 29:11
  Philip Pape: And this definitely ties into some of the other fix mistakes we've already talked about, doesn't it?
• 29:16
  Philip Pape: Because body recomposition by definition is inherently slow.
• 29:21
  Philip Pape: I shouldn't say by definition, that doesn't, that's meaningless.
• 29:24
  Philip Pape: But the here's here's the thing the bottleneck is the muscle.
• 29:29
  Philip Pape: It takes long, a long time to build muscle, no matter what, even if you are intentionally in a surplus trying to build muscle.
• 29:35
  Philip Pape: So if you now slow that down by staying closer to maintenance to try to get recomp out of it, you're slowing that process down even further.
• 29:42
  Philip Pape: And because you're not an aggressive deficit, you're not necessarily losing fat.
• 29:45
  Philip Pape: And even if you were, you don't have the muscle yet, right?
• 29:47
  Philip Pape: It's kind of a catch 22.
• 29:48
  Philip Pape: So by saying that, hey, I don't want to gain fat by going into a surplus, or hey, I don't really want to do an aggressive diet because I know muscle is important, you're then putting Yourself into a new quandary, aren't you?
• 30:01
  Philip Pape: Right.
• 30:02
  Philip Pape: And I'm sorry because I encourage this for some of you, because you don't want those extremes.
• 30:07
  Philip Pape: So you're left with this thing in the middle.
• 30:09
  Philip Pape: And by definition, you're not going to have as fast results in either direction, but you're going to have steady results that are sustainable in a process and a lifestyle that you might really, really enjoy and be able to stick to.
• 30:20
  Philip Pape: And that's why you would do it.
• 30:22
  Philip Pape: But if you think the process isn't working, and as a result, you cycle back to some extreme, extreme diet, extreme cutter bulk, let's say, and not done the right way because you're rushing into it, that creates a bigger problem.
• 30:36
  Philip Pape: Let's look at numbers.
• 30:37
  Philip Pape: I like numbers, okay?
• 30:38
  Philip Pape: For trained lifters, people who have been lifting for a while, muscle growth rates average about a quarter to a half percent of body weight a month, upper end.
• 30:48
  Philip Pape: Okay.
• 30:49
  Philip Pape: So if you weigh, let's say 180 pounds, you're looking at a pound, what am I trying to say?
• 30:54
  Philip Pape: A half a pound to a pound of muscle in a month if you're doing everything right.
• 30:58
  Philip Pape: And then and then fat that comes along for the ride, because if you're obviously eating more of a surplus than that, the rest of it's gonna be fat.
• 31:05
  Philip Pape: That's why it's kind of hard to find that sweet spot sometimes.
• 31:07
  Philip Pape: Fat loss is a lot faster, right?
• 31:10
  Philip Pape: It's more like it could be a half to a percent of body weight per week, right?
• 31:14
  Philip Pape: So it's like four times as fast.
• 31:16
  Philip Pape: Now, when you're trying to do both at once, you're trying to gain muscle and lose fat simultaneously, the process is even slower because the two goals pull your body in opposite directions.
• 31:25
  Philip Pape: Your body kind of wants to stay in the middle and you're fighting against its natural tendency by trying to push both things and doing them kind of, I don't want to say mediocre, but you're making a trade-off.
• 31:36
  Philip Pape: So if you were to extrapolate body recomp without doing a cut or a bulk, I would give yourself six to 12 months of consistent execution to see a meaningful change that first time.
• 31:48
  Philip Pape: Now, if you have a lot of fat to lose, or if you've never built muscle, you might be better off with a more aggressive fat loss or muscle building phase.
• 31:57
  Philip Pape: And I know it's not what you want to hear, right?
• 31:59
  Philip Pape: We live in a world of instant gratification.
• 32:01
  Philip Pape: We want to see results now.
• 32:02
  Philip Pape: We've got tools and drugs and things that make results faster as well.
• 32:06
  Philip Pape: But your physiology doesn't care, does it?
• 32:08
  Philip Pape: It just operates on what it's gonna do.
• 32:11
  Philip Pape: And everyone's is different.
• 32:12
  Philip Pape: We've talked about the difference between consistency and intensity.
• 32:15
  Philip Pape: Intensity or speed, chasing that, you chase speed, it's gonna create instability.
• 32:22
  Philip Pape: Think about it.
• 32:23
  Philip Pape: Chasing speed creates instability because it's gonna create a lot of change and volatility and ups and downs that you will probably have a gut reaction to, and you'll try to go the other way, and it's gonna just create this big oscillating effect that's gonna get you even more nowhere.
• 32:39
  Philip Pape: Whereas body recomp is trying to get somewhere by towing the line in the middle and optimizing these variables.
• 32:47
  Philip Pape: So realistic expectations from the start are really important.
• 32:50
  Philip Pape: Committing to six to 12 months of steady execution, you don't have to be perfect, right?
• 32:56
  Philip Pape: Just consistent.
• 32:57
  Philip Pape: Again, that goes back to the consistency piece.
• 32:59
  Philip Pape: And then focusing on measuring the right things rather than the outcome, measuring the process metrics, the protein, the training, the sleep, all the things we talked about today, tying it all together, reassess.
• 33:10
  Philip Pape: I would say monthly at minimum, but quarterly is probably where you're gonna get the best bang for your buck with body recomp.
• 33:17
  Philip Pape: So, for example, those in our program in physique university, we do weekly check-ins that are more about the process and the wins.
• 33:24
  Philip Pape: And then we want to look at two, three, four-month phases at a time to see true progress and then make big adjustments at that point if it's still not going where you want to go.
• 33:36
  Philip Pape: But by that point, it should if you're doing these things.
• 33:38
  Philip Pape: And then you could say, look, am I leaner and stronger than I was three months ago?
• 33:42
  Philip Pape: If you could answer that question even a little bit, then you've done something right.
• 33:45
  Philip Pape: It may not be to the degree you wanted, and in many cases, it's beyond what you expected, right?
• 33:50
  Philip Pape: There's often a surprise in this in this situation because you're actually focusing on the process in the short term.
• 33:55
  Philip Pape: And then three months down, you actually look at the big picture.
• 33:59
  Philip Pape: You step back and say, before and after what happened, and you're kind of shocked.
• 34:02
  Philip Pape: And then you'll see the progress.
• 34:03
  Philip Pape: But if you're always zooming in, if you're looking at the day-to-day fluctuations, not the process, right?
• 34:08
  Philip Pape: But if you're looking at the actual day-to-day outcomes, you're gonna drive yourself crazy.
• 34:11
  Philip Pape: You're gonna quit before the process has time to work.
• 34:13
  Philip Pape: This process is applied physiology.
• 34:16
  Philip Pape: If it had a degree name in a college, it'd be called a bachelor's in applied physiology.
• 34:21
  Philip Pape: Okay.
• 34:22
  Philip Pape: And it works, but it works slowly.
• 34:23
  Philip Pape: You have to be patient, you have to trust the process and give your body time.
• 34:26
  Philip Pape: I'm sorry, that is not gonna sell programs.
• 34:28
  Philip Pape: I know it's not, but it's the truth.
• 34:30
  Philip Pape: All right, so we covered the five, I don't know if they're the five biggest, but they're five of the biggest body recomp mistakes I see.
• 34:37
  Philip Pape: When you feed your body enough to grow, when you train for muscle, when you prioritize recovery, when you track the right things, and when you give it time, the system always works.
• 34:45
  Philip Pape: And the neat thing about this is they are not isolated mistakes or variables or fixes.
• 34:51
  Philip Pape: They're interconnected.
• 34:52
  Philip Pape: Because if you, let's say if you don't eat enough, your recovery is also going to suffer, suffer, which means your performance is also going to drop, which means you can't build muscle.
• 35:02
  Philip Pape: And then if you're not really tracking these things, you're not even gonna see that that's happening.
• 35:06
  Philip Pape: Right?
• 35:06
  Philip Pape: So it's all tied together.
• 35:08
  Philip Pape: And that's how we can identify your weak points.
• 35:09
  Philip Pape: That's how we can fix them and stop making this feel like a mystery and start making it feel inevitable.
• 35:14
  Philip Pape: Like, hey, I have confidence, I know this works, it's inevitable.
• 35:18
  Philip Pape: Now, last thing I want to mention, if you want help implementing anything we talk about on this show, we do a lot of really cool things inside Physique University.
• 35:25
  Philip Pape: And the next cool thing we're doing just in a few weeks, starting November 18th, is a six-week strong finish challenge.
• 35:31
  Philip Pape: And rather than all the other challenges out there that are designed to like try to lose fat or dial in all your habits during the holidays, which as we know is pretty close to impossible for many of us.
• 35:42
  Philip Pape: This is designed to teach you how to maintain what you have with three options.
• 35:49
  Philip Pape: The optimal option, the one that, yeah, you can go for it and maybe you'll get there.
• 35:53
  Philip Pape: The minimum option, which is, hey, here's the minimum thing that is still going to give you most of the results, or option three is the bailout option.
• 36:02
  Philip Pape: Now, I know you don't hear a lot of coaches talk about this, but you know, I was brainstorming with my assistant coach, Carol, and others, you know, some clients, and we're like, look, what if you can't even do the minimum?
• 36:15
  Philip Pape: Like, what if just you know what hits the fan, it's the holidays, everything's a mess, my schedule's all over the place, my kids got all these activities, and I literally just can't even do the minimum.
• 36:25
  Philip Pape: What do I do?
• 36:26
  Philip Pape: That's where the bailout strategy comes in.
• 36:27
  Philip Pape: That is like, what is the not even minimum?
• 36:30
  Philip Pape: What do you call it?
• 36:31
  Philip Pape: It's like the backup to the backup plan that still gets you a win.
• 36:35
  Philip Pape: And I think psychologically it can be very powerful.
• 36:37
  Philip Pape: And that's what we're gonna be teaching in this challenge.
• 36:39
  Philip Pape: I know it's very different.
• 36:40
  Philip Pape: It's called the six-week strong finish challenge.
• 36:42
  Philip Pape: Starts November 18th, which means it takes you through the end of the year.
• 36:45
  Philip Pape: What's cool about the challenge is everybody's gonna be able to get tons of wins and really feel proud about themselves going into the end of the year that you maintained instead of backsliding like everyone else is doing.
• 36:55
  Philip Pape: And then you're in a really good position mentally and physically, you don't feel depleted going into the new year.
• 37:01
  Philip Pape: And I'm all about New Year's resolutions if you want to do them.
• 37:04
  Philip Pape: I'm sure we're gonna have some sort of challenge or group cohort or something in the new year to help people who really want to get off on the right foot.
• 37:11
  Philip Pape: But let's finish the year strong.
• 37:13
  Philip Pape: So, anyway, if you join physique university right now, you can get a head start because you'll get a custom nutrition plan.
• 37:18
  Philip Pape: If you use my code in the show notes, it's a free plan.
• 37:21
  Philip Pape: And you'll get access to the course library.
• 37:23
  Philip Pape: You can kind of get things rolling with our onboarding and get your nutrition plan set up and start figuring out the habits you need to dial in with our help.
• 37:30
  Philip Pape: And then in a few weeks, the challenge begins and you'll kind of be in a good state to just execute on that and be fairly low stress through the holidays rather than trying to run one of those all-out fat loss challenges at just the wrong time of year.
• 37:45
  Philip Pape: So if you want to get in on that, go to witsandweights.com slash physique or use the link in the show notes.
• 37:50
  Philip Pape: Use the code FREEPLAN, get the free custom nutrition plan that I will build for you personally.
• 37:55
  Philip Pape: Get ready for the strong finished challenge.
• 37:57
  Philip Pape: I'll see you there, witsandweights.com slash physique.
• 37:59
  Philip Pape: Until next time, keep using your wits, lifting those weights.
• 38:02
  Philip Pape: And remember that body recomp isn't about doing more, it's about aligning the right inputs so your body can adapt.
• 38:09
  Philip Pape: I'll talk to you next time here on the Wits and Weights podcast.