Latest / Wits & Weights | Strength & Fat Loss Over 40 / How Strength Training (Not Cardio) Suppresses Appetite and Burns Fat | Ep 431

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How Strength Training (Not Cardio) Suppresses Appetite and Burns Fat | Ep 431 · Wits & Weights | Strength & Fat Loss Over 40

• 0:01
  Philip Pape: How does lifting weights connect with hunger?
• 0:04
  Philip Pape: Today I'm going to show you three mechanisms that make your strength training a powerful appetite control tool, not just a muscle building tool.
• 0:13
  Philip Pape: You'll learn why hard lifting sessions tend to suppress hunger hormones often for hours, how your training changes your food choices without the need for willpower, and a strategic little trick that uses your post-workout appetite window to eliminate overeating at your toughest meal.
• 0:32
  Philip Pape: Most people don't realize that their training is already doing half the work for them when it comes to hunger.
• 0:38
  Philip Pape: They just need to understand how to use it.
• 0:40
  Philip Pape: I'm your host, Philip Pate, and today we're gonna talk about lifting weights versus cardio versus hunger.
• 1:04
  Philip Pape: Most people think that cardio is a fat loss tool, and lifting is for building muscle.
• 1:10
  Philip Pape: Or even if they understand that diet controls fat loss, they think that cardio is a way to, you know, ramp up your metabolism, burn more calories.
• 1:17
  Philip Pape: And I get it, right?
• 1:19
  Philip Pape: You burn more calories during, say, a 45-minute run than a 45-minute lifting session, but it's not just about math.
• 1:26
  Philip Pape: And honestly, those differences aren't very meaningful because I think the math is incomplete.
• 1:31
  Philip Pape: Fat loss isn't just about calories burned during exercise.
• 1:35
  Philip Pape: In fact, it's not at all.
• 1:36
  Philip Pape: It's about what happens to your appetite, your meat, your food choices, your ability to stick to a deficit for weeks and sometimes months without losing your mind, because we have to stick to it, but also not losing your muscle.
• 1:51
  Philip Pape: And when you look at those variables, strength training comes out ahead by a wide margin.
• 1:56
  Philip Pape: And you're like, why am I talking about this?
• 1:58
  Philip Pape: This is weird.
• 1:59
  Philip Pape: This is episode seven of our eight-part appetite series for January, because appetite and hunger is a huge part of this.
• 2:06
  Philip Pape: And I wanted to cover the mechanism that brings this together in terms of how your training, how your workouts actually shape your hunger and your cravings and your body composition results, bring it all together.
• 2:18
  Philip Pape: We've been talking a lot about, you know, food and sleep and stress and hormones, but today it's really more about how training connects with that.
• 2:24
  Philip Pape: And then stick around to the end because I'm gonna give you a really cool uh trick, if you will, a hack, a tool, protocol related to pre-workout meal timing and post-exercise appetite suppression to reduce overeating.
• 2:40
  Philip Pape: A lot of you guys have a problem with overeating, and we can actually take advantage of our hunger signals related to training to offset that and potentially save you tens, if not hundreds, of calories without changing anything else.
• 2:54
  Philip Pape: Hey, this is Philip, and today's episode is sponsored by Calocurb.
• 2:58
  Philip Pape: If you've ever been in a fat loss phase and felt like hunger was working against you, CallowCurb's GLP1 activator is a game changer.
• 3:06
  Philip Pape: CallowCurb is a natural appetite support made from a marisate, a patented bitter hops extract that activates GLP1 and other gut signals to help you feel fuller, faster.
• 3:19
  Philip Pape: Clinical studies showed a 40% reduction in cravings and a 30% reduction in hunger within one hour.
• 3:26
  Philip Pape: If you want to try it, go to witsandweights.com slash calocurb for 10% off your first order.
• 3:33
  Philip Pape: The link is in the show notes.
• 3:34
  Philip Pape: That's witsandweights.com slash callocurb.
• 3:38
  Philip Pape: All right, let's start with why the cardio for burning calories or fat loss approach is a problem, why it backfires, even when it might look impressive on paper, and how that connects to hunger as well.
• 3:51
  Philip Pape: Because it's not just about compensation, it's also about hunger.
• 3:55
  Philip Pape: We're gonna address those topics.
• 3:56
  Philip Pape: So when researchers study exercise and fat loss, you know, they tend to see something that we've talked about more and more lately called energy compensation.
• 4:05
  Philip Pape: And in fact, the not extreme of this, but one of the best examples of this research is Herman Ponser's research on how our metabolisms are pretty steady from the age of 20 to 60, at least our BMR, and that doing more exercise doesn't necessarily burn as many calories as you think.
• 4:23
  Philip Pape: It doesn't mean you shouldn't do exercise or train or move.
• 4:26
  Philip Pape: It's a comp compensatory effect, and it depends on the type, the modality, and the quantity, right?
• 4:32
  Philip Pape: And this is the tendency that for your body to offset the calories that you burn through exercise by either eating more or moving less the rest of the day.
• 4:41
  Philip Pape: There are some compensatory mechanisms at the cellular level as well in terms of your metabolism, but a lot of this is other things like just you're compensating by eating and the types of food you eat and you're moving less, et cetera.
• 4:54
  Philip Pape: And so cardio tends to trigger more compensation than strength training.
• 4:59
  Philip Pape: That's the important takeaway today.
• 5:01
  Philip Pape: There's a systematic review on training or exercise and energy intake in adults with overweight and obesity that found that exercise can improve appetite regulation, but the degree of compensation varies dramatically based on the type of exercise, the duration, and individual factors.
• 5:19
  Philip Pape: So that's what I'm talking about.
• 5:20
  Philip Pape: Now, what does this mean practically?
• 5:23
  Philip Pape: Well, let's say you do a long cardio session, let's say you do 45 minutes or an hour of, you know, moderate intensity, right?
• 5:30
  Philip Pape: On the bike or treadmill, pretty common type of uh exercises.
• 5:34
  Philip Pape: And maybe you burn 400 calories and you may not have, to be honest.
• 5:39
  Philip Pape: You know, that's what the machine says.
• 5:41
  Philip Pape: Um, and now you're pretty tired, you're pretty wiped, you feel kind of depleted.
• 5:45
  Philip Pape: And what happens afterward is your body compensates in a couple ways.
• 5:48
  Philip Pape: First, the, you know, I earn this and I'm gonna earn it back type of eating.
• 5:53
  Philip Pape: Now, this is both conscious and subconscious, you know, because after cardio, you may feel justified in eating more at a psychological level, right?
• 6:02
  Philip Pape: But it's also real in that the body is craving these things, right?
• 6:08
  Philip Pape: So then you have a smoothie right after you go for that run, or you have a larger dinner, and you may not even notice it, right?
• 6:14
  Philip Pape: It depends on how how much control or structure you have over your meals to kind of offset that.
• 6:19
  Philip Pape: But this happens a lot more after cardio than after lifting, for sure.
• 6:22
  Philip Pape: Secondly, your neat tends to drop neat is non-exercise activity thermogenesis, all the movement you do outside the gym, right?
• 6:30
  Philip Pape: Walking, fidgeting, taking the stairs, standing while you work, chores, all that.
• 6:34
  Philip Pape: And after you have a cardio session that's a bit exhausting, especially if it's longer, people unconsciously move less the rest of the day.
• 6:43
  Philip Pape: They sit more, they skip taking the stairs, they're wiped out, they make little excuses or rationales in their brain continuously every time there's a decision point.
• 6:52
  Philip Pape: And again, a lot of it's unconscious.
• 6:53
  Philip Pape: So it's not like, you know, don't blame yourself for this.
• 6:56
  Philip Pape: A lot of this is unconscious.
• 6:57
  Philip Pape: So then if you truly did burn 400 calories during that exercise bout, you know, maybe you eat half of it back, 200.
• 7:04
  Philip Pape: Maybe, maybe you have another 100 or 150 of calories you don't burn later because you're not moving.
• 7:09
  Philip Pape: And so your net, you know, if you're in a if you're in a fat loss phase, your net deficit just got smaller, right?
• 7:15
  Philip Pape: Because your metabolism is essentially lower while while your intake is higher, right?
• 7:21
  Philip Pape: So again, even if you control for the intake intentionally, you might feel hungrier and you still might have a slightly lower metabolism than you thought, if that makes sense.
• 7:31
  Philip Pape: Now compare this to strength training, where the session itself might burn a fewer, a little bit fewer calories, let's say 200 to 300, it's still more than you might think.
• 7:42
  Philip Pape: But the compensation pattern's different because lifters often experience temporary appetite suppression after training.
• 7:50
  Philip Pape: And they're not as likely to feel depleted in that reward-seeking way.
• 7:56
  Philip Pape: And then because the fatigue is more localized, right?
• 7:59
  Philip Pape: Maybe your legs are tired from your squats, maybe your overall energy is still decent, but you're not totally wiped like you would from a cardio session, then your neat tends to stay more stable because you still, your body kind of feels like, you know what, I have there's still more things I can do.
• 8:14
  Philip Pape: I still have some energy, you know, I haven't gone for my walk yet, which is different than my lifting session.
• 8:18
  Philip Pape: So there's like, again, psychologically and physiologically, a little bit of a difference there.
• 8:22
  Philip Pape: And there's research to back this up.
• 8:24
  Philip Pape: A 2024 review specifically examined resistance training and appetite-related variables because researchers they noticed that the lifting produces different appetite outcomes than endurance work.
• 8:37
  Philip Pape: And I think the research world is starting to treat lifting and cardio as different, you know, tools for appetite, not just calorie burning, and also for body composition and trying to look at what causes what.
• 8:51
  Philip Pape: Now, I'm not trying to trash cardio at all.
• 8:54
  Philip Pape: Trust me, there's lots of forms of cardio from walking to sprinting that I'm a big fan of.
• 8:58
  Philip Pape: And cardio definitely can be a big tool.
• 9:00
  Philip Pape: It also is not going to reduce your metabolism just because you're doing cardio.
• 9:04
  Philip Pape: It's again the matter of the type and the quantity.
• 9:06
  Philip Pape: And I think the compensation piece is only part of the story.
• 9:10
  Philip Pape: So now, what is happening in your gut hormones after you lift?
• 9:14
  Philip Pape: Okay, now we're bringing back to some of the stuff you learned on the previous episodes in this series.
• 9:19
  Philip Pape: If you haven't heard those, go back in our January episodes and look for the different ones about your gut hormones.
• 9:25
  Philip Pape: So let's get into the mechanism.
• 9:27
  Philip Pape: So this is this is post-exercise appetite suppression.
• 9:30
  Philip Pape: So, what does strength training do that cardio doesn't?
• 9:35
  Philip Pape: A 2023 review on acute exercise and appetite control showed that moderate to vigorous exercise often produces transient, right?
• 9:45
  Philip Pape: That's temporary appetite suppression.
• 9:47
  Philip Pape: And these are the your gut hormones.
• 9:50
  Philip Pape: Acylated ghrelin, ghrelin goes down, that's your hunger hormone.
• 9:54
  Philip Pape: PYY and GLP1 goes up, those are your satiety signals that help you feel full.
• 9:58
  Philip Pape: And a 2024 update review confirmed that exercise-induced appetite suppression exists, and ghrelin is the consistent variable here in terms of the hormones.
• 10:08
  Philip Pape: Now, this is temporary.
• 10:10
  Philip Pape: It doesn't mean that you're going to eat less forever, right?
• 10:13
  Philip Pape: But the window helps us because we can use that strategically, right?
• 10:18
  Philip Pape: We're going to get into that.
• 10:19
  Philip Pape: We can use that window strategically.
• 10:20
  Philip Pape: So, what makes strength training potentially superior here?
• 10:24
  Philip Pape: Well, it comes down to intensity and metabolic byproducts.
• 10:29
  Philip Pape: So higher intensity work, and that means, you know, hard sets of strength training, higher loads, basically just lifting hard and heavy, and heavy doesn't have to be low rep, just getting close to failure and doing it the way you're supposed to do anyway, to build muscle, it produces these metabolites in your bloodstream.
• 10:46
  Philip Pape: You're accumulate lactate, hydrogen ions, other byproducts of working hard and fatiguing those muscles.
• 10:53
  Philip Pape: And then this creates a sympathetic nervous system activation, right?
• 10:56
  Philip Pape: Your CNS, your central nervous system gets activated, the fight or flight response, all of that.
• 11:01
  Philip Pape: And when you're in that state, your appetite gets suppressed.
• 11:05
  Philip Pape: Your body is focused on performing and recovering as opposed to digesting and eating.
• 11:11
  Philip Pape: Because you might have heard fight or flight versus rest and digest.
• 11:13
  Philip Pape: Well, you're not in the rest and digest.
• 11:15
  Philip Pape: So ironically, as much as we sometimes call this a bad thing, it's it's an acute, it's a hormetic response, a stress response from lifting weights that will suppress appetite.
• 11:25
  Philip Pape: And that's why post-lifting, lacking having no hunger or having a lack of hunger is very, very common.
• 11:32
  Philip Pape: Where you finish a hard session of, you know, lower body work, but upper body, I don't care.
• 11:37
  Philip Pape: A hard session.
• 11:38
  Philip Pape: And oftentimes the last thing you want is a big meal.
• 11:40
  Philip Pape: You might want like a protein shake, you might want some water, you might want a little bit of carbs or something right after, but it you don't have that like I have to devour everything in sight feeling that you do often get after a cardio session.
• 11:54
  Philip Pape: It's it's usually absent.
• 11:55
  Philip Pape: Again, this is these are generalities based on populations, based on studies, based on general observations all coming together.
• 12:01
  Philip Pape: It may not be you, but this is generally something we could take advantage of.
• 12:05
  Philip Pape: Another paper from 2024 made a really cool observation that acute exercise, okay.
• 12:11
  Philip Pape: I'm just using the words from the study, acute just means in the moment, a small amount of it, right?
• 12:16
  Philip Pape: Like an exercise session, can elevate um appetite perceptions, meaning you might perceive yourself as hungry in some ways and yet not translate into increased energy intake because your gut hormones are powerful enough to override the subjective feeling.
• 12:36
  Philip Pape: So that's an interesting one.
• 12:38
  Philip Pape: And then there's something a lot of people don't realize too, that strength training, because it supports having higher protein intake, right?
• 12:45
  Philip Pape: You're in other words, you tend to do both.
• 12:47
  Philip Pape: You train and then you also eat more protein.
• 12:49
  Philip Pape: And we know higher protein is one of the best satiety tools.
• 12:52
  Philip Pape: It keeps you really full.
• 12:53
  Philip Pape: When you lift, you naturally want to eat more protein because you want to recover, you want to support your muscle building.
• 12:59
  Philip Pape: It just all supports each other, you know?
• 13:02
  Philip Pape: And again, you could definitely eat more protein without lifting more if you do it intentionally, but these tend to be corollary things that happen, okay?
• 13:10
  Philip Pape: And and all of these make the hunger management and food priorities easier, like less friction, you know, with less friction.
• 13:18
  Philip Pape: All right.
• 13:18
  Philip Pape: Now remember, I promised you a specific timing trick at the end to use this knowledge, to use this post-workout appetite suppression.
• 13:25
  Philip Pape: We want to eliminate overeating, and we're gonna build with that, build toward that.
• 13:29
  Philip Pape: So definitely I want you to stick around.
• 13:31
  Philip Pape: Before we do, I want to tell you about today's sponsor, Calo Curb.
• 13:34
  Philip Pape: That's C-A-L-O-C-U-R-B.
• 13:36
  Philip Pape: We've been talking about how strength training naturally suppresses appetite by shifting your gut hormones, especially GOP1.
• 13:44
  Philip Pape: Well, Callow Curb works through the same pathway but a different mechanism.
• 13:49
  Philip Pape: It's a 100% natural supplement, and it has something called a marisate, which is a patented hops extract developed over a bunch of research by the New Zealand government, okay, not by a private company.
• 14:01
  Philip Pape: It's actually funded by New Zealand and it activates your body's natural gut brain axis.
• 14:08
  Philip Pape: So your satiety signals, so you feel faster or you feel full faster.
• 14:12
  Philip Pape: So if you take this at least an hour before you eat, and I've been taking it myself now that I'm in a fat loss phase, aside from occasionally a little hops burps, I'm sorry about that.
• 14:21
  Philip Pape: I know it's gross, it does cause you to eat less.
• 14:25
  Philip Pape: So if you're trying to, if you, you know, have a plate of dinner and you would normally eat the whole plate, you may end up eating two-thirds of it or half of it.
• 14:31
  Philip Pape: And the studies show that.
• 14:33
  Philip Pape: Clinical studies reduce show to reduce cravings by 40%, hunger by 30%, calorie intake by 18%.
• 14:39
  Philip Pape: You have to wait at least an hour after taking the capsule.
• 14:42
  Philip Pape: So put a reminder in your phone, take it like an hour or two before dinner or lunch.
• 14:46
  Philip Pape: And what I appreciate about appreciate about Calicurb, you know, it's not, it doesn't purport to do more than it does.
• 14:52
  Philip Pape: It's actually pretty simple ingredients.
• 14:54
  Philip Pape: It's a hops and it triggers a hormone that makes you a little bit more full.
• 14:58
  Philip Pape: That's it.
• 14:59
  Philip Pape: It's and it's your own hormone.
• 15:00
  Philip Pape: So it's upregulating your hormones, it's not replacing that with a synthetic, for example.
• 15:04
  Philip Pape: So it kind of falls in between, you know, using nothing or just food and the GLP1 medications.
• 15:10
  Philip Pape: It's kind of in between those.
• 15:12
  Philip Pape: It's a great tool that works alongside lifting weights, hitting your protein, managing your training nutrition, eating your fiber, and timing your meals.
• 15:19
  Philip Pape: And it can be an additional lever for those times when appetite is working against you, which is often, I'm raising my hand now, during a fat loss phase or mini-cut where your calories are cut down.
• 15:28
  Philip Pape: So, ladies, if you're down in that 140, 13, 1200, 1100 calorie range, men down at 18, 17, 16, 1500 range, that's when things get a little bit hairy.
• 15:36
  Philip Pape: And this could be an extra tool in the toolbox.
• 15:38
  Philip Pape: You don't need a prescription.
• 15:40
  Philip Pape: It's just a single little capsule.
• 15:42
  Philip Pape: You can go on and off, use it whenever you want.
• 15:44
  Philip Pape: If you want to try it, go to witsandweights.com slash callocurb.
• 15:48
  Philip Pape: The link should auto-apply my code Wits and Weights for 10% off.
• 15:51
  Philip Pape: That's witsandweights.com slash calocurb.
• 15:54
  Philip Pape: Link is also in the show notes.
• 15:55
  Philip Pape: And now I want to get back to the training appetite connection, right?
• 16:01
  Philip Pape: We've covered the hormonal and physiological side.
• 16:04
  Philip Pape: Now let's talk about the behavioral and psychological stuff because many people use food as reward, right?
• 16:12
  Philip Pape: After a hard day, after stressful meeting, after putting the kids to bed, after you know, dealing with a tough boss, whatever.
• 16:20
  Philip Pape: Food often is the thing that makes you feel better.
• 16:23
  Philip Pape: And that's emotional eating, stress eating, reward eating.
• 16:27
  Philip Pape: We've all been there.
• 16:28
  Philip Pape: You might be struggling with that right now.
• 16:30
  Philip Pape: Maybe it's something you've dealt with in the past and have sort of put tools in place to move past it.
• 16:35
  Philip Pape: And you know, we don't always 100% get away from it.
• 16:38
  Philip Pape: It's always going to be there in our heads.
• 16:39
  Philip Pape: We're human beings.
• 16:40
  Philip Pape: We have parts of our brain that crave energy in that way.
• 16:44
  Philip Pape: Strength training can become a reward instead.
• 16:48
  Philip Pape: So I love this.
• 16:48
  Philip Pape: I love pivoting so that we can swap one reward with another and satisfy that itch and satisfy that emotional need and that gap in a very positive way.
• 16:58
  Philip Pape: So think about what happens when you're following a solid training program and you're tracking your lifts, your PRs, your sets and reps, your exercises, your loads, and you're seeing progress over time.
• 17:10
  Philip Pape: You hit some new PRs on the big lifts, small lifts, whatever, and you notice changes in your body, maybe your arms felt your sleeves a little, you get a little tone or cut or built or whatever the word is.
• 17:20
  Philip Pape: You're feeling more competent, competent, uh competent and confident, but also capable now.
• 17:25
  Philip Pape: It builds, it builds lots of confidence in your skills.
• 17:28
  Philip Pape: And that feeling, that feeling becomes its own reward.
• 17:31
  Philip Pape: I've talked about on this show, you know, folks who come into physique university or clients of mine who all they want to do is lose weight initially, but there's something inside them that says, no, I really want to look better, feel better, show up for my kids, you know, show up for myself, really, and live a long, healthy life.
• 17:48
  Philip Pape: And we switch to focus from focusing on weight to focusing on lifting and performance and recovery and progress, and that becomes extremely rewarding.
• 17:57
  Philip Pape: It starts to compete with food for that reward space in your brain.
• 18:02
  Philip Pape: And that is a thing that exists called reward substitution.
• 18:06
  Philip Pape: So remember that phrase: reward substitution.
• 18:08
  Philip Pape: You're not fighting cravings, you're giving your brain a different source of satisfaction, right?
• 18:14
  Philip Pape: You're swapping it out.
• 18:15
  Philip Pape: So you don't have to, you know, you don't have to get through that friction uh with willpower, right?
• 18:20
  Philip Pape: You can swap it out and actually seek out the reward now.
• 18:24
  Philip Pape: And there's an identity piece here.
• 18:26
  Philip Pape: When you see yourself as a lifter, someone who trains, you know, three days a week, four days a week, whatever it is, someone who builds strength and muscle, your food choices will line up with that.
• 18:35
  Philip Pape: They're gonna start to line up with that.
• 18:37
  Philip Pape: Maybe not on day one, but you're gonna be constantly trying to solve that problem for yourself in a good positive way.
• 18:42
  Philip Pape: Like you want to solve it.
• 18:43
  Philip Pape: It's not that somebody's forcing you to do it or you're trying to diet or lose weight.
• 18:46
  Philip Pape: You know, you're not just trying to eat less either.
• 18:48
  Philip Pape: Oftentimes you have to eat more.
• 18:50
  Philip Pape: You're someone who's building a physique.
• 18:52
  Philip Pape: And that mindset often protects you from crash dieting because you know it'll hurt your training.
• 18:57
  Philip Pape: You know that it makes you value protein because you want to recover and it makes a calorie deficit, if you decide to do that, feel like it has a purpose.
• 19:06
  Philip Pape: And it can be, it can be short term or it can be a little longer.
• 19:08
  Philip Pape: But the point is it has a purpose.
• 19:10
  Philip Pape: It's not just punishing yourself or thinking I have to lose weight.
• 19:12
  Philip Pape: It's like, no, I want to reveal this muscle.
• 19:14
  Philip Pape: And that's the narrative I see with folks, you know, for example, who recently came into our program from the uh get lean in 45 days workshop, who said, you know, I want to reveal the muscle I've built.
• 19:24
  Philip Pape: And if you haven't done it yet, that's fine.
• 19:25
  Philip Pape: Build the muscle and then you can reveal it.
• 19:27
  Philip Pape: But compare that to the cardio for fat loss, eating less for fat loss, eat less, move more mindset, you know, running to burn off what you ate.
• 19:35
  Philip Pape: You feel like you're doing it because you have to.
• 19:37
  Philip Pape: And then food is an enemy, right?
• 19:39
  Philip Pape: Food is a bad, and you call yourself bad.
• 19:41
  Philip Pape: And I didn't do good, and you know, I made bad choices.
• 19:44
  Philip Pape: When I hear that language, I know you're in that mental state, and we can get you out of that.
• 19:48
  Philip Pape: When you're lifting, food becomes fuel.
• 19:51
  Philip Pape: Eating supports what you're trying to do.
• 19:53
  Philip Pape: It doesn't work against it, it supports it.
• 19:55
  Philip Pape: You know, you're seeking out the fuel, but you can still enjoy the food too.
• 19:59
  Philip Pape: And this is very psychological, I get it, but it's it's so important.
• 20:03
  Philip Pape: People who build their fat loss phase around strength training, which by definition you have to do, or else you're gonna lose muscle anyway.
• 20:10
  Philip Pape: They stick with it longer.
• 20:11
  Philip Pape: They stay more consistent, they don't spiral as hard when something goes off.
• 20:15
  Philip Pape: They're like, no, I'm gonna pick myself up and go the next day.
• 20:17
  Philip Pape: That relationship with food and exercise works together.
• 20:20
  Philip Pape: So I hope that's a place you want to be.
• 20:22
  Philip Pape: All right, that's so that's the that's the brain stuff.
• 20:25
  Philip Pape: I want to get a little more practical now.
• 20:27
  Philip Pape: How do you set up your training to get these benefits for your appetite?
• 20:31
  Philip Pape: Okay, it's because you might be thinking, okay, well, I already lift weights, so am I good?
• 20:35
  Philip Pape: Well, there's there's a a way to optimize it.
• 20:38
  Philip Pape: Let's put it that way.
• 20:39
  Philip Pape: So let's talk like a template here.
• 20:42
  Philip Pape: I I know some of you like systems and templates.
• 20:44
  Philip Pape: If you want appetite control plus fat loss while keeping muscle, we know that strength training is the foundation.
• 20:52
  Philip Pape: Walking is very important as well.
• 20:54
  Philip Pape: Other forms of cardio are optional and the dose matters.
• 20:57
  Philip Pape: So here's what like an appetite-friendly lifting week might look like.
• 21:01
  Philip Pape: I would say three to four days a week, probably not five or six, because that's where you could jump into the, you know, too much fatigue and too much volume, which can drive compensation.
• 21:13
  Philip Pape: The exception is if you are really intentional about keeping those sessions very short, if you are doing five or six days a week, in which case, for some of you, that might actually work better.
• 21:23
  Philip Pape: Mostly compound movements, okay?
• 21:25
  Philip Pape: So the big lifts, squats, deadlifts, presses, rows, pull-ups, they hit multiple muscle groups, create the metabolic stress, build the most, you know, muscle per hour invested, are probably gonna have the best impact on your appetite because it's kind of like low and slow, and you're not doing all of this volume and all these different exercises, you're very efficient with your time, et cetera.
• 21:45
  Philip Pape: Moderate volume.
• 21:46
  Philip Pape: So this is like 10 to 15 hard sets per muscle group per week for most people, which is honestly where you generally want to be anyway.
• 21:53
  Philip Pape: Now, if you go less than that, it's probably gonna help hunger even more, but it may not be enough volume for you.
• 21:58
  Philip Pape: If you're in a severe fat loss phase or severe deficit, I should say, you may find you need to do fewer sets, but keep the intensity high, right?
• 22:07
  Philip Pape: Keep the intensity high.
• 22:08
  Philip Pape: You want to get challenged, but you don't want to destroy yourself because recovery is important here.
• 22:11
  Philip Pape: If you're not, if you're not recovered enough, just think of this.
• 22:14
  Philip Pape: If you're not recovered enough, that also makes you hungry because your body is seeking those resources.
• 22:19
  Philip Pape: And then of course, you still want isolation work in there if you're working on hypertrophy, if you're trying to, you know, work on your physique.
• 22:25
  Philip Pape: But of course, if you're in fat loss, you're you're you're mainly maintaining your muscle mass, you're not really building it.
• 22:30
  Philip Pape: So it depends on if you're in a deficit or not.
• 22:32
  Philip Pape: And that would be, you know, whatever supports your joints and the aesthetics that you care about to support those compound lifts.
• 22:38
  Philip Pape: So all the variations, all the isolation work, all the cable work, machine work, stuff like that.
• 22:42
  Philip Pape: And, you know, that's basically it.
• 22:44
  Philip Pape: You know, we we we talked about sleep and stress on a recent episode.
• 22:47
  Philip Pape: You can go visit that because that's a whole other pillar that exists that affects appetite.
• 22:51
  Philip Pape: But today we're talking about the training side.
• 22:53
  Philip Pape: And I think if if you simplify it to just what I talked about, I think it becomes more sustainable.
• 22:58
  Philip Pape: You can focus on progress and it creates the hormones and also the behavioral environment that helps with appetite control.
• 23:05
  Philip Pape: And you can measure your biofeedback and say, is this working for me?
• 23:08
  Philip Pape: Now, if you want to include cardio, that's fine.
• 23:11
  Philip Pape: Here are some quick rules I have related to appetite and cardio.
• 23:15
  Philip Pape: I would say two to three sessions per week maximum.
• 23:18
  Philip Pape: Okay.
• 23:18
  Philip Pape: And keep the, keep it if you if you like zones, I would keep it, you know, upper zone one or lower zone two, that easy conversational pace at most to kind of build that extra little bit of cardiovascular fitness that you're going for potentially, and also maybe burn a few more calories, sure.
• 23:34
  Philip Pape: And 20 to 30 minutes maximum.
• 23:36
  Philip Pape: Don't make these like hours-long sessions.
• 23:38
  Philip Pape: So two to three days a week, maybe 20 to 30 minutes.
• 23:41
  Philip Pape: Avoid these long sessions because that will tend to trigger that compensation and the hunger.
• 23:47
  Philip Pape: And you know, sprinting is a whole different beast that I love.
• 23:50
  Philip Pape: You know, one or two sprints a week.
• 23:52
  Philip Pape: And we're talking my specific protocol, which we can make available to you, and we had a previous episode on that.
• 23:58
  Philip Pape: But sprinting can be great because it's really not going to make you hungry at all, most likely.
• 24:02
  Philip Pape: And fuel your cardio days appropriately.
• 24:05
  Philip Pape: So think of deliberate cardio sessions as a form of training where you have, you know, protein and carbs around your training, especially carbs.
• 24:14
  Philip Pape: Not training fasted if it makes you really hungry afterward.
• 24:18
  Philip Pape: Obviously, there's a compensation mechanism there as well, potentially.
• 24:22
  Philip Pape: And the point is, cardio is not bad.
• 24:24
  Philip Pape: It has benefits for cardiovascular health, for mental health, for recovery if you enjoy doing it, but it's obviously not the primary fat loss tool.
• 24:31
  Philip Pape: That is your deficit.
• 24:32
  Philip Pape: And then strength training is really important here for holding muscle and also it can help with appetite.
• 24:37
  Philip Pape: Okay, so if you're doing a lot of cardio and you're like, I'm always hungry and I'm not losing fat, that could be your answer.
• 24:43
  Philip Pape: I would get rid of most of that cardio, just do training and walking and see what happens.
• 24:47
  Philip Pape: So I want to clear up a few myths before we wrap up.
• 24:50
  Philip Pape: I have three myths that I come up with that I think are important and I hear all the time.
• 24:53
  Philip Pape: Myth number one is that cardio burns fat.
• 24:58
  Philip Pape: And we kind of address this.
• 24:59
  Philip Pape: A lot of you are like, yeah, I know that.
• 25:00
  Philip Pape: But the reality is the fat loss, the release of energy from your fat cells is purely become of because of a calorie deficit.
• 25:07
  Philip Pape: That's it.
• 25:08
  Philip Pape: It's not any specific exercise.
• 25:10
  Philip Pape: If cardio adds some calories to your metabolism, then it's part of the equation, but it still has to do with being in that deficit.
• 25:17
  Philip Pape: And the training, the strength training determines whether you lose fat or you lose some fat and muscle.
• 25:24
  Philip Pape: We don't want to lose muscle, right?
• 25:26
  Philip Pape: Training is what protects your muscle math, your metabolic rate, all of that.
• 25:29
  Philip Pape: And then cardio can contribute to the deficit, maybe by keeping your expenditure a little bit higher.
• 25:35
  Philip Pape: But if the trade-off is you're a lot hungrier, more fatigued, not as recovered, that could be like taking two steps forward and like one and a half steps back or even three steps back, depending on how much you're doing.
• 25:46
  Philip Pape: Myth number two is that, well, lifting doesn't burn many calories, so it's not really contributing to fat loss.
• 25:53
  Philip Pape: But the reality is it's not about how many calories you burn, it's all the downstream effects where muscle mass, you know, raises your resting metabolism long term.
• 26:03
  Philip Pape: Appetite suppression that we talked about in this episode will make your deficit easier, protecting your meat because now you might move more generally throughout the day with low grade movement because you're not compensating for it.
• 26:16
  Philip Pape: And then being able to adhere to this and stay consistent, right?
• 26:19
  Philip Pape: So we have to think the long game and think the whole equation here.
• 26:23
  Philip Pape: And then myth number three is that you know, appetite really comes down to how well you can handle hunger and how well you can push through it.
• 26:30
  Philip Pape: Appetite's way more complicated than that.
• 26:32
  Philip Pape: It's it's got a bunch of inputs, right?
• 26:34
  Philip Pape: Your hormones, brain, your brain-related genes, let's be honest, everybody's got different levels of appetite.
• 26:39
  Philip Pape: Your gut signals, your sleep, your stress, your training, your protein, the food volume is important, behavioral patterns.
• 26:46
  Philip Pape: So willpower is a tiny, tiny piece of that big pie.
• 26:50
  Philip Pape: And it's not the one that you want to have to rely on.
• 26:52
  Philip Pape: So why don't we focus on the other inputs?
• 26:54
  Philip Pape: How do we improve those, which are gonna far outpace the willpower piece, right?
• 27:00
  Philip Pape: So the if you're white knuckling through your diet, something has to change.
• 27:03
  Philip Pape: The system isn't set up to support you.
• 27:05
  Philip Pape: And it could be just a matter of food volume.
• 27:07
  Philip Pape: It could be a matter of the deficits too aggressive.
• 27:09
  Philip Pape: There's some answer there for you, okay?
• 27:11
  Philip Pape: All right, let's bring this home.
• 27:13
  Philip Pape: Fat loss isn't punishing yourself in a submission.
• 27:17
  Philip Pape: It's really revealing the muscle you have in a targeted way.
• 27:21
  Philip Pape: And strength training is one of the best tools in that toolbox versus anything else that I know of.
• 27:27
  Philip Pape: All right.
• 27:27
  Philip Pape: It's also massively helpful for appetite because of the way it shifts your hormones, because of insulin sensitivity, how it protects your meat, but also mentally, how it how you think about yourself.
• 27:38
  Philip Pape: You're doing hard things and you're building and you're working towards something in a positive way, and then your food supports that, right?
• 27:45
  Philip Pape: So this is episode seven of the eight.
• 27:47
  Philip Pape: When you combine this episode, the training, with the nutrition cuff stuff we covered previously, like protein, fiber, meal timing, energy density tools like Calicurb and others that might be helpful.
• 27:57
  Philip Pape: You end up with the system to have hunger work support you.
• 28:01
  Philip Pape: And we're just trying to chip away at that and use that engineering mindset to make the behavior you want the actual easier path of least resistance, if that makes sense.
• 28:11
  Philip Pape: All right, remember I promised you a specific timing trick that uses post-workout appetite suppression to eliminate overeating.
• 28:17
  Philip Pape: That's coming up right after this.
• 28:19
  Philip Pape: Hey, this is Philip.
• 28:20
  Philip Pape: And a quick reminder about today's sponsor, Calocurb.
• 28:23
  Philip Pape: If hunger has been the hardest part of your fat loss phase, even when everything else is dialed in, check out Callocurb.
• 28:29
  Philip Pape: It's a natural GLP1 activating supplement with clinical data showing 40% fewer cravings and 30% less hunger within one hour, leading to 18% fewer calories, so you can stick to your fat loss plan.
• 28:43
  Philip Pape: Go to witsandweights.com slash calocurb for 10% off your first order.
• 28:47
  Philip Pape: Link is in the show notes.
• 28:49
  Philip Pape: That's witsandweights.com slash callocurb.
• 28:52
  Philip Pape: All right, you made it to the end, and here is the bonus I promise.
• 28:55
  Philip Pape: We talked about how strength training creates a window of appetite suppression.
• 28:59
  Philip Pape: It's usually one to two hours after a heart session where your hunger hormones are blunted and your satiety signals are increased.
• 29:08
  Philip Pape: And here is how you can use that.
• 29:10
  Philip Pape: I want you to train before the meal you most often overeat at.
• 29:16
  Philip Pape: Okay?
• 29:16
  Philip Pape: Now I know this could be a change in your schedule.
• 29:18
  Philip Pape: If you train in the morning, but the meal you most often eat at is dinner.
• 29:22
  Philip Pape: And that is the case for a lot of people, where the portions get out of control, where stacking continues after the meal, where the day's stress catches up, food becomes that release valve.
• 29:30
  Philip Pape: Try scheduling your training late afternoon or early evening.
• 29:34
  Philip Pape: Now, this goes contrary to some advice that I give, probably the majority of the time, for many people to shift their training to the morning to try to help out with their stress and their appetite and their consistency.
• 29:47
  Philip Pape: So take it with a grain of salt because this is specific to out-of-control over consumption in the evening.
• 29:53
  Philip Pape: And it's an experiment.
• 29:54
  Philip Pape: All right.
• 29:55
  Philip Pape: It's an experiment to go ahead and train late afternoon or early evening, not too late, you know, lift hard, then come home, eat dinner during that one to two hour window afterward.
• 30:05
  Philip Pape: And you're, you might find that you naturally eat less, that the meal feels more satisfying with a smaller portion just because you're you got that blunted appetite, right?
• 30:13
  Philip Pape: You just I can't eat that much.
• 30:15
  Philip Pape: I'm not like ravenous like I would have been otherwise.
• 30:18
  Philip Pape: Now, if dinner isn't your problem, maybe it's late afternoon snacking, try mid-afternoon training session, finish around like, you know, 2 p.m., 3 p.m., whatever makes sense, to carry you, carry you through that danger zone, so to speak.
• 30:29
  Philip Pape: And just try a schedule change in your training.
• 30:33
  Philip Pape: Some of you may need to do the opposite.
• 30:34
  Philip Pape: Move it to the morning and then have a decent size post-workout.
• 30:39
  Philip Pape: But some of you need the opposite.
• 30:40
  Philip Pape: You need a nice big meal in the morning.
• 30:42
  Philip Pape: That'll set you up for better hunger signals throughout the day.
• 30:44
  Philip Pape: Then you train later in the afternoon.
• 30:46
  Philip Pape: At the end of the day, you have to find the thing that works for you.
• 30:48
  Philip Pape: But I wanted to mention this as an option.
• 30:50
  Philip Pape: All right, until next time, keep using your wits, lifting those weights.
• 30:54
  Philip Pape: And remember that that very lifting could be the key to helping with your appetite.
• 30:59
  Philip Pape: I'll talk to you next time here on the Wits and Weights podcast.