Latest / Wits & Weights | Strength & Fat Loss Over 40 / Do You Know Your FFMI? (The Muscle Metric That Ignores Body Fat) | Ep 366

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Do You Know Your FFMI? (The Muscle Metric That Ignores Body Fat) | Ep 366 · Wits & Weights | Strength & Fat Loss Over 40

• 0:01
  Philip Pape: you've been training for two years.
• 0:02
  Philip Pape: Some days you feel jacked, other days you feel small.
• 0:05
  Philip Pape: You're stronger than ever, but you can't tell if you're actually building muscle or just getting better at lifting.
• 0:11
  Philip Pape: What if I told you there is a number that cuts through all the noise, a metric that shows your actual muscle development, regardless of whether you're carrying extra fat or feeling bloated or lean.
• 0:22
  Philip Pape: It's called fat-free mass index and most lifters haven't heard of it, but once you understand your FFMI, it changes how you think about progress, goal setting and whether you should be cutting or bulking.
• 0:34
  Philip Pape: Today we're exploring the muscle metric that might be more important than anything else you're currently tracking.
• 0:51
  Philip Pape: Welcome to wits and weights, the show that helps you build a strong, healthy physique using evidence, engineering and efficiency.
• 0:57
  Philip Pape: I'm your host, philip pape, and today we're going to talk about a number that could reframe how you view your physique progress.
• 1:05
  Philip Pape: Picture this you're looking in the mirror after a training session, after a workout, your pump's gone, the lighting's bad.
• 1:11
  Philip Pape: You're questioning whether all these months of consistent training have actually built any muscle.
• 1:17
  Philip Pape: Or maybe you're carrying around some extra body fat and you're wondering if there's muscle underneath that is worth revealing.
• 1:25
  Philip Pape: This is a mental game when it comes to physique versus body fat versus muscle in the context of our training and it happens to all of us because we're often tracking the wrong things or failing to track things that will better validate what we're trying to measure.
• 1:41
  Philip Pape: Scale weight fluctuates daily.
• 1:43
  Philip Pape: Body fat measurements are inconsistent and only part of the equation.
• 1:48
  Philip Pape: Progress photos are also highly subjective and they depend on lighting and angles.
• 1:52
  Philip Pape: But there is a metric that cuts through a lot of this and can show you something more fundamental how much muscle you've actually built relative to your frame.
• 2:04
  Philip Pape: Now, before we get into this metric, this FFMI metric, I want to share a message from Matt in Physique University.
• 2:10
  Philip Pape: He says Philip Pape's amazing.
• 2:12
  Philip Pape: You've got questions about health.
• 2:14
  Philip Pape: He's got answers.
• 2:15
  Philip Pape: It's not diet and exercise, but also the mental side of losing weight.
• 2:19
  Philip Pape: I've recently been dealing with more stress than normal and we figured out a way.
• 2:23
  Philip Pape: The membership is a no brainer for anyone on the fence.
• 2:26
  Philip Pape: He will help you in any way he can.
• 2:28
  Philip Pape: Thanks for everything, philip.
• 2:30
  Philip Pape: So I'm sharing more of these testimonials directly from folks in Physique University, so you get a sense of what we have in there, right, because it's not just about information and education like on the podcast, it is.
• 2:41
  Philip Pape: How do we implement that?
• 2:42
  Philip Pape: How do we personalize it?
• 2:44
  Philip Pape: What specific ideas can we come up with to help you look like you, lift and deal with stress and increase your metabolism and find a flexible way to eat so you no longer feel restricted, and all of those things?
• 2:56
  Philip Pape: So if you want access to the tools in there that also help you calculate and track your FFMI that we're going to talk about today, alongside other key metrics that matter for building muscle For example, our muscle gain efficiency tracker, or our body, our physique and biofeedback tracker all of that stuff and how to implement it, like Matt mentioned, head to witsandweightscom.
• 3:19
  Philip Pape: Slash physique to join Physique University.
• 3:22
  Philip Pape: We will help you.
• 3:23
  Philip Pape: Take all of these tools, put them together to understand.
• 3:26
  Philip Pape: This is what's actually happening and this is what I need to do now.
• 3:29
  Philip Pape: All right, so let's talk about FFMI and why it is such a game changer, why I'm focusing on this more now, why I added it to our Physique Tracker in Physique University.
• 3:41
  Philip Pape: It stands for Fat-free mass index.
• 3:42
  Philip Pape: It is your lean body mass.
• 3:45
  Philip Pape: It is everything that is not fat divided by your height squared.
• 3:49
  Philip Pape: So it's a simple formula.
• 3:50
  Philip Pape: There are adjusted versions of that for gender and for extreme heights and all of that, but very simple.
• 3:57
  Philip Pape: It is a way to normalize your muscularity for your height.
• 4:03
  Philip Pape: So if you think of your muscles, your bones, your organs, your water, all of that structural stuff that makes up your body is your lean mass, and so it looks at that because it's not your fat mass, so it's independent of how much body fat you have and normalizes it for your height, and that's what makes this powerful.
• 4:21
  Philip Pape: Ffmi is completely independent of your body fat percentage, and we're going to talk about why that's helpful and why that's important.
• 4:30
  Philip Pape: Because whether you're 10% body fat, super lean, or you're 25 or 30 or 40% body fat, you have a little extra body fat maybe to lose.
• 4:38
  Philip Pape: Your FFMI is going to stay the same as long as your muscle mass stays the same, so it gets rid of the variable of body fat for this analysis, which is helpful, for in a lot of ways, this means it can show you something that most other metrics cannot your actual muscular development, separated from everything else.
• 4:57
  Philip Pape: That is the power behind it.
• 4:59
  Philip Pape: Now, why this changes everything about progress and how you view and track it, as well as your goals.
• 5:06
  Philip Pape: I'm going to give you a couple scenarios.
• 5:07
  Philip Pape: Right, that happen all the time.
• 5:09
  Philip Pape: I see this with our students.
• 5:10
  Philip Pape: Scenario one let's say you're a guy who's been lifting for a year.
• 5:15
  Philip Pape: You're sitting at 20% body fat.
• 5:17
  Philip Pape: You're feeling a little bit soft.
• 5:18
  Philip Pape: That's maybe a little bit more than you want.
• 5:20
  Philip Pape: Maybe you're 25% body fat.
• 5:22
  Philip Pape: You're wondering if you should cut or keep bulking.
• 5:25
  Philip Pape: And some of you are wondering like, well, why wouldn't you just cut at that point?
• 5:29
  Philip Pape: Well, a lot of you guys care about your strength, you care about building muscle, you understand the value of eating enough and sleeping enough and training hard and getting PRs, and you don't want to sacrifice that just for the sake of leanness.
• 5:40
  Philip Pape: So you go ahead and you calculate your FFmi and it's 19.5.
• 5:44
  Philip Pape: Well, that tells you that underneath the layer of fat you've built a recreational level of muscle mass.
• 5:51
  Philip Pape: Right, there's a bit of muscle there, maybe more than somebody who is skinny, fat or hasn't trained at all, and you just need to reveal it.
• 5:58
  Philip Pape: So that's one scenario.
• 6:00
  Philip Pape: Scenario two maybe you're lean, maybe you're 12% body fat and again, I'm using males here for the body fat.
• 6:05
  Philip Pape: You can add about eight to 10% of that for females.
• 6:09
  Philip Pape: So you're lean, 12% body fat.
• 6:11
  Philip Pape: People say, hey, you look good but you feel kind of small.
• 6:14
  Philip Pape: You're FFMI, you calculate it and it's 17.
• 6:17
  Philip Pape: Okay, now that's kind of skinny or skinny fat, right, it depends.
• 6:22
  Philip Pape: And again, we don't care about the fat for this calculation, but that's may what it presents itself as.
• 6:31
  Philip Pape: And now you understand, okay, that's why I kind of feel kind of small and not very muscular, despite being lean, despite being in a low body fat.
• 6:34
  Philip Pape: You just haven't built much muscle yet, right?
• 6:36
  Philip Pape: Those are two common scenarios.
• 6:38
  Philip Pape: I guess a third one that just comes to mind, and I've seen this as well, as guys who've been lifting or men who've been lift, women, I'm sorry who've been lifting for, let's say, three to five years or longer, and they're carrying a lot of extra weight on their frame because they really never have gone through a fat loss phase.
• 6:53
  Philip Pape: But the FFMI can tell them hey, I actually do have a lot of muscle under there and I just have to reveal it.
• 7:00
  Philip Pape: So it's kind of similar to the first scenario.
• 7:01
  Philip Pape: And then, if so, if you're like skinny fat, right, cutting anymore is not going to change anything, you're just going to get skinnier, fatter, or just, you know, skinnier, without any definition.
• 7:14
  Philip Pape: Same training experience, different scenarios here, different next steps.
• 7:18
  Philip Pape: When you think about FFMI, independent of fat, so what it means is is as follows.
• 7:26
  Philip Pape: I'm actually going to go through the different FFMI levels and what they mean.
• 7:30
  Philip Pape: And, by the way, one of the inspirations for this episode was a recent Jeff Nippard YouTube video about, natty or not, how FFMI is often used as a cutoff, like if you're over 25, you're on drugs, if not, you're not, and there's some truth to that.
• 7:44
  Philip Pape: But that's kind of where it came from.
• 7:45
  Philip Pape: For practical, everyday purposes, my audience you guys listening and our students in physique you, you know, don't care about that distinction.
• 7:53
  Philip Pape: They care more about how.
• 7:54
  Philip Pape: What do I need to do next?
• 7:56
  Philip Pape: What do I need to focus on?
• 7:57
  Philip Pape: How muscular am I?
• 7:58
  Philip Pape: Is this important?
• 7:58
  Philip Pape: So there are different tables that we have for comparing men to men and women to women, but I'm just going to go with the male side of things.
• 8:08
  Philip Pape: And then for women, it tends to be less because women carry more body fat and less muscle, and it is what it is right, but we do have comparison tables for both.
• 8:16
  Philip Pape: So if you're around 17, 18 FFMI, this is the low end.
• 8:20
  Philip Pape: This is the beginner territory.
• 8:21
  Philip Pape: This might be the lean guy who looks okay in clothes but then feels small, or the higher body fat guy who's just starting to build a base.
• 8:29
  Philip Pape: So a lot of us in our forties, fifties, who are just we're kind of sedentary most of our life and hadn't lifted or are detrained and have some extra body fat, still don't have much muscle right now.
• 8:38
  Philip Pape: So that's 17 or 18 FFMI.
• 8:40
  Philip Pape: Then we get up to 19 to 20.
• 8:42
  Philip Pape: You're a recreational lifter at that point and, by the way, the FFMI is a kind of narrow range.
• 8:51
  Philip Pape: I mean we're talking 17 to like 24.
• 8:52
  Philip Pape: For the vast majority of people that's a small range of numbers.
• 8:54
  Philip Pape: I almost wish when they came up with this they were able to, you know, scale it up so it has more resolution.
• 8:59
  Philip Pape: But it is what it is.
• 9:00
  Philip Pape: So back to what we're talking about 19 or 20, recreational lifter.
• 9:04
  Philip Pape: You have some noticeable muscle mass.
• 9:06
  Philip Pape: If you're lean, people probably can tell hey, you're kind of fit, you lift.
• 9:10
  Philip Pape: You know, maybe at the earlier stages not big and jack, but you lift.
• 9:14
  Philip Pape: If you're carrying some fat on top of that, then there's something underneath that could be worth revealing, depending on how much fat you have to lose and how defined you want to look and all that.
• 9:24
  Philip Pape: Then we move up a little bit more 21 to 22.
• 9:26
  Philip Pape: This is where you get into what I'll call a serious lifter.
• 9:29
  Philip Pape: Somebody who has dedicated themselves for a bit maybe a year or more, maybe two years, doing it the right way, has developed some muscle.
• 9:36
  Philip Pape: That is obvious, regardless of body fat levels.
• 9:38
  Philip Pape: And I say that because obviously, if you have too much body fat it's going to be hard to tell, but even then, guys who have a lot of muscle can carry a lot of body fat and you can still tell they're muscular.
• 9:47
  Philip Pape: You know they're not going to have six pack, but if they're wearing a shirt you can see the big traps, big shoulders, the back, the taper and all that stuff.
• 9:54
  Philip Pape: Okay.
• 9:55
  Philip Pape: And then we get to 23 to 24 and I've been lifting now for officially, seriously, for about four years, four to five years, and I'm around 23.
• 10:06
  Philip Pape: And honestly that I have a long way to go, but this is somebody who is getting along with their development as a natural lifter.
• 10:14
  Philip Pape: It represents several years of consistent training and honestly, the difference between 20, 22, 23, 24 can be really big.
• 10:21
  Philip Pape: So if you're, if you're 22 or 23, that you've, you've worked hard to build muscle and that's a lot of you out there.
• 10:29
  Philip Pape: Be proud of that.
• 10:30
  Philip Pape: To get to 24 is quite advanced and quite muscular, and then again 25 is kind of the peak.
• 10:37
  Philip Pape: So 23 to 24 is years of consistent training.
• 10:40
  Philip Pape: Maybe some solid genetics Again, I don't buy into that too much being a deal breaker for people.
• 10:46
  Philip Pape: And then we get to 25 and up and this is the natural ceiling based on decades of research on drug-free bodybuilders versus steroids.
• 10:53
  Philip Pape: Most of us listening don't have to worry about that.
• 10:55
  Philip Pape: If you're enhanced, great, you might then crack that ceiling, but it's not something we have to worry about.
• 11:00
  Philip Pape: So hopefully this sets a good frame for where you want to be or where you are right now.
• 11:05
  Philip Pape: And then for women, just shift these down about three to four points.
• 11:09
  Philip Pape: What I just said.
• 11:10
  Philip Pape: That's really all you have to do.
• 11:10
  Philip Pape: So FFMI becomes very powerful for decisions.
• 11:15
  Philip Pape: Most people get caught up in kind of endlessly cutting and bulking, not knowing when they should do both.
• 11:22
  Philip Pape: It's one of the most common questions I get when should I cut, when should I bulk?
• 11:24
  Philip Pape: I've done episodes about that and even then there's not like a universal principle.
• 11:29
  Philip Pape: But if I were to get as universal as I could, I think FFMI is a great metric for that.
• 11:35
  Philip Pape: Now, because FFMI is independent of fat.
• 11:38
  Philip Pape: If you have 40% body fat, even though you're super muscular, I'm probably going to say you need to lose some fat for health reasons, right, but those are kind of I'll call it the outliers or on the edge.
• 11:48
  Philip Pape: Usually, a lot of guys I work with, or even women who have a lot of weight to lose, it's not that they're carrying like this massive amount of muscle underneath with some exceptions, right, I do have clients that are like look, I have built muscle, I am muscular.
• 12:00
  Philip Pape: I just don't know how to deal or dial in my nutrition.
• 12:03
  Philip Pape: Okay, that makes sense.
• 12:04
  Philip Pape: So if your FFMI is really low let's say 17 or 18 for a guy to me, no matter what, your priority should be to build muscle.
• 12:12
  Philip Pape: Now, again, if you carry a lot of extra weight because we're trying to separate the two variables you can still build a lot of muscle while being in a slight deficit.
• 12:21
  Philip Pape: Perhaps we just went over all of this when we talked about body recomp on a recent episode, as well as in the workshop we had, which you can still grab that replay.
• 12:30
  Philip Pape: You can grab the plan.
• 12:31
  Philip Pape: You can grab the nutrition plan, all the guidance on how to set up your next 12 weeks to body recomp that is available at livewitsandweightscom link in the show notes.
• 12:40
  Philip Pape: But if you are on the low end of this scale, build muscle please.
• 12:46
  Philip Pape: Unless you're very, very high body fat, I want you to build muscle and what that means is at least body recomp, but ideally in a surplus.
• 12:53
  Philip Pape: You need more muscle mass before you worry about getting leaner to reveal the muscle Again, unless we're talking health reasons and then you're kind of doing both at the same time.
• 13:01
  Philip Pape: If we move up the scale and your FFMI is pretty solid, let's say in the 21 to 22 range, then it's going to depend more on the body fat at that point, and cutting at that point to reveal what you have makes complete sense if you're not as lean as you want to be because you've done the hard work of building the muscle.
• 13:19
  Philip Pape: Hey, this is Philip, and before we continue I want to talk about cookware.
• 13:23
  Philip Pape: We all love to make our own food.
• 13:25
  Philip Pape: I love nonstick pans.
• 13:26
  Philip Pape: The problem is I've avoided them for years because when they get scratched, when they get heated, they can release microplastics, pfas, small particles that can accumulate over time in the body and some studies have shown them to be linked to health issues.
• 13:40
  Philip Pape: If you're optimizing your nutrition and making lots of food for you and your family at home.
• 13:44
  Philip Pape: It doesn't make sense to compromise that with questionable cookware.
• 13:48
  Philip Pape: So that's why I was interested when Chef's Foundry, who is sponsoring this episode, showed me their ceramic cookware.
• 13:55
  Philip Pape: It's called the P600 and uses Swiss-engineered ceramic coating which has no Teflon, no PFAS, no plastic components, it is nonstick, it works on all stovetops, it goes straight into the oven.
• 14:08
  Philip Pape: All the things you need if you're trying to cook a lot of your meals at home.
• 14:11
  Philip Pape: Right now you can get the p600 at 50 off by going to witsandweightscom slash chef's foundry.
• 14:18
  Philip Pape: You'll also get a bunch of accessories with that.
• 14:20
  Philip Pape: There's a whole page that explains what you'll get for that discounted 50 off.
• 14:24
  Philip Pape: Go to witsandweightscom slash chef's foundry or click the link in the show notes.
• 14:29
  Philip Pape: All right, let's get back to the show Now.
• 14:32
  Philip Pape: Building muscle takes time and it takes longer than you think.
• 14:36
  Philip Pape: It takes years, especially as you advance.
• 14:38
  Philip Pape: I will say the first year is a huge step change for people who do it right.
• 14:43
  Philip Pape: So you can definitely get a kind of a quick win in that first year or two, um, and then couple it with a fat loss phase to to reveal that.
• 14:51
  Philip Pape: But then you're going to probably spend, you know, three to five years of consistent training to go from an 18 to like a 22 FFMI, which makes sense, cause, again, I'm, I'm around there 22, 23, and I've been lifting for four or five years.
• 15:04
  Philip Pape: If you've been lifting for like 10 years and you've done it consistently and you have decent genetics, you're probably pushing 23, 24 at this point.
• 15:12
  Philip Pape: Right, and a lot of people are surprised by that because most people are not competitors.
• 15:15
  Philip Pape: Most people are not posing and oiling up and, and you know, trying to be a bodybuilder on stage or get like 8% lean.
• 15:22
  Philip Pape: But I have clients who are not competitors and when they do take the time to really lean out which, again, is an extreme thing it's not the best thing for your health.
• 15:32
  Philip Pape: I'm just going to say that it's not the best.
• 15:34
  Philip Pape: But getting super shredded, you end up looking like somebody who maybe can go on stage at least in an amateur competition, right?
• 15:41
  Philip Pape: So it's, it's achievable is my point and my show Whits and Weights.
• 15:47
  Philip Pape: The show is not about.
• 15:48
  Philip Pape: It's not about physique for its own sake.
• 15:50
  Philip Pape: The reason I care about all this is for the muscle side of things.
• 15:53
  Philip Pape: But a lot of people have vanity goals.
• 15:55
  Philip Pape: They have physique goals as well and they both align physique and health, as long as you are not pushing an extreme or doing it for very long.
• 16:04
  Philip Pape: So back to FFMI three to five years of consistent training to get to that 21, 22 range and compare that to how fast you can lose fat.
• 16:15
  Philip Pape: You know, if you want to drop 8% of body fat, it takes about three to four months for most people.
• 16:19
  Philip Pape: Yeah, you can drop five to 8% body fat in three to four months.
• 16:23
  Philip Pape: I can help you do it.
• 16:24
  Philip Pape: We do it all the time and I know a lot of you are like, yeah, but that's really what I want.
• 16:27
  Philip Pape: But the time and I know a lot of you are like, yeah, but that's really what I want.
• 16:32
  Philip Pape: But no, that's not what you want.
• 16:32
  Philip Pape: You want to look and feel better, you want to be stronger, you want to be fitter, you want to have better health.
• 16:34
  Philip Pape: That comes through building muscle and then losing fat is kind of the easy part and it actually gets easier when you build muscle.
• 16:38
  Philip Pape: But fat-free mass index, depending on the number you are today, is going to help you understand the timeline you're operating on.
• 16:45
  Philip Pape: So you have realistic expectations and we just did a survey of like 130 intakes in our what do you call it?
• 16:54
  Philip Pape: In our Physique University.
• 16:56
  Philip Pape: We did a survey of the intake assessments and found that the vast majority of people who join our program are looking to build muscle and lose fat and they understand the value of building muscle for all the things that are important as we get older.
• 17:10
  Philip Pape: That's why I care about this.
• 17:12
  Philip Pape: Okay, now let's get a little nerdy here and look at the science and history behind these numbers, which I think are fascinating, and then stick around for the end when we're going to talk.
• 17:20
  Philip Pape: We're going to tie this all together on really how to use them in terms of tracking and making progress and setting goals.
• 17:26
  Philip Pape: So the landmark research on this comes from Khoury and colleagues back in 1995.
• 17:32
  Philip Pape: They measured FFMI in natural bodybuilders versus steroid users.
• 17:37
  Philip Pape: They found a clear cutoff that natural guys rarely, very, very rarely, exceed 25 FFMI, whereas enhanced athletes easily surpassed it.
• 17:47
  Philip Pape: Now you could be enhanced and not above FMI if you're not genetically gifted, if you're not working consistently.
• 17:54
  Philip Pape: I mean, a guy who's sedentary and takes drugs isn't gonna be a high FFMI, but if you are natural, you're definitely not gonna get above 25, 99.999% of the time is the point.
• 18:04
  Philip Pape: And what's fascinating is this research coincided with this transition period in bodybuilding.
• 18:09
  Philip Pape: If you look at classic bodybuilders from the pre-steroid era guys like Steve Reeves and there's an asterisk on him Some people think, oh well, yeah, he had access to the earliest steroids before even the Soviets knew about it.
• 18:22
  Philip Pape: I don't think so, but anyway, steve Reeves, john Grimmick, reg Park their FFMIs typically fell right around that 25 mark and then in the 1960s, steroids became widespread.
• 18:35
  Philip Pape: Suddenly, we saw physiques that were off the charts of what we think of as an enhanced bodybuilder today, and the research at that time was a foundation for the natty or not movement.
• 18:46
  Philip Pape: Okay, people then started to use FFMI calculations to analyze modern physiques and to call out impossible claims.
• 18:54
  Philip Pape: And even though I kind of my premise of this episode is you haven't heard of this or you're not using this metric, I do think that that's a true statement.
• 19:02
  Philip Pape: With most people, they really don't know what this is.
• 19:03
  Philip Pape: It's just social media and fitness influencers that are trying to talk about Natty or not.
• 19:09
  Philip Pape: And okay, this guy has a 27 FFMI, he has to be on steroids, whatever.
• 19:14
  Philip Pape: So when we talk about that limit of 25 for natural it's, it's based on a lot of data and, again, that Jeff Knippard video is really good at showing the clustering around that and we know from competitive natural bodybuilders versus the genetic elite who are natural, who've optimized everything and this is like the ceiling right.
• 19:34
  Philip Pape: So I think it's helpful.
• 19:36
  Philip Pape: That little tangent was helpful to talk about where this came from.
• 19:40
  Philip Pape: Now let's get back to us.
• 19:42
  Philip Pape: Why do we care?
• 19:45
  Philip Pape: I think once you know your fat-free mass index, your training focus can become clearer, because if you have a low FFMI, your job is to build muscle.
• 19:53
  Philip Pape: Strength and muscle I should say they go hand in hand and this might mean you have to go into a bulking phase or maybe stop undercutting your nutrition, stop underfueling.
• 20:03
  Philip Pape: It could be as simple as that that you're just under eating Women ladies this is often the issue Under eating food, under eating carbs, but men face this issue too.
• 20:12
  Philip Pape: It could mean that you need to go into a bulking phase and prioritize that hard training and building your base, building your peak, and not worrying about getting a little bit of fat in the process, because that's going to come off fairly easily and the muscle has to be a priority and has to come first.
• 20:28
  Philip Pape: Now, if you have a more solid FFMI you know somewhere over 20, but then you have higher body fat, well, that's a very enviable position to be.
• 20:37
  Philip Pape: We have a guy in our group I just thought about who was confused on this number because his FFMI was reasonably high but he carries extra body fat.
• 20:47
  Philip Pape: He's like how can I be like an athlete?
• 20:48
  Philip Pape: I'm like the athlete's underneath it.
• 20:50
  Philip Pape: That's what it is.
• 20:51
  Philip Pape: You've built muscle, which is cool.
• 20:53
  Philip Pape: Like other people have a longer path because they haven't even built the muscle yet, and you're in the enviable position of having that muscle to reveal, and so a proper cut will transform your physique because there's actually something substantial underneath.
• 21:08
  Philip Pape: Now, if you have a high FFMI because you've been training well, now you're playing a different game because your gains are going to be slower.
• 21:14
  Philip Pape: You're closer to your genetic potential and it's more important to maintain what you have than try to aggressively push for more muscle.
• 21:21
  Philip Pape: And you're more in the body recomp slash fat loss regime or you're really gonna have to dial it in with the surplus when you are trying to continue to build on top of that high level of muscle you already have.
• 21:34
  Philip Pape: Now, if we think about this in the context of our goals and the fitness industry, we've been conditioned to focus on body fat first, on body fat percentage, and I talk about it a lot.
• 21:45
  Philip Pape: I talk about leanness.
• 21:46
  Philip Pape: I talk about body composition, yes, but we put it first to an extreme where it's all about getting lean all the time and forgetting that leanness involves muscle as well.
• 21:59
  Philip Pape: That body composition is two-sided, it's not just the leanness.
• 22:03
  Philip Pape: So if you have like, let's say, 20 or 30 pounds to lose which is kind of a subjective statement, but you know what I mean A lot of times we do a fat loss phase first because of the psychological win.
• 22:14
  Philip Pape: It's like Dave Ramsey and his snowball effect.
• 22:16
  Philip Pape: Anybody who ever followed him when it comes to debt in his you know the way he explains it is the logical thing to do would be to pay off your highest interest rate debt, but the psychological thing to do as a human might be to pay off your smallest debt.
• 22:30
  Philip Pape: So you get rid of it, then your next one, then your next one.
• 22:32
  Philip Pape: So I think of like people having a little extra weight being a little fluffy and they haven't really lifted.
• 22:36
  Philip Pape: I get them lifting, but then we might do a fat loss phase fairly early just to get that psychological win, to get that leanness, even though there's not much muscle there.
• 22:48
  Philip Pape: If anything, it could also help prove to yourself that you need to build muscle because, hey, I didn't quite get the physique I wanted yet, even though I've lost some of that fat and I get the value of building muscle.
• 22:57
  Philip Pape: So that's my point of all this.
• 23:00
  Philip Pape: And I think the FFMI is another really solid metric to show us why the building muscle side is important.
• 23:06
  Philip Pape: Because if you're a 150 pound guy at 15% body fat but you have an abysmally low FFMI of 16, cutting to 10% body fat's not going to create the physique you want.
• 23:16
  Philip Pape: It's not going to do it.
• 23:17
  Philip Pape: It's just going to make you look smaller, scrawnier, skinnier, weaker.
• 23:20
  Philip Pape: That's it.
• 23:30
  Philip Pape: You're going to be a smaller version of the same thing.
• 23:31
  Philip Pape: Right, it's strength and muscle over skinniness.
• 23:33
  Philip Pape: Because even if you want the physique we think of as, I guess, skinny, skinny, muscular, whatever you still have to have the muscle.
• 23:36
  Philip Pape: That's really the point.
• 23:37
  Philip Pape: You still have to have that, right?
• 23:38
  Philip Pape: This is also especially relevant for women who've been told to do all the cardio and to move and eat 1200 calories or a thousand or 800 or whatever.
• 23:44
  Philip Pape: I'm going to do an episode very soon, I think next week, about those low calorie levels.
• 23:48
  Philip Pape: Are they safe or not?
• 23:50
  Philip Pape: What's the narrative around it?
• 23:52
  Philip Pape: What should you be thinking of in the context of calorie intake, but I do think a lot of women are under eating and do so to try to get lean, but then they have a very low muscularity right, it's like 14, which is the equivalent of like a 16 or 17 for a man, and then you're not going to have that shape or the tone or the definition that you're looking for.
• 24:11
  Philip Pape: You're just not.
• 24:12
  Philip Pape: You've got to build the muscle.
• 24:14
  Philip Pape: So the real power of FFMI comes from tracking it over time and watching it change, just like a lot of the other things we talk about During a proper muscle building phase.
• 24:32
  Philip Pape: You should see FFMI gradually increasing.
• 24:33
  Philip Pape: In our 90-day body recomp workshop I walked through the tracker and I gave an example of a very conservative body recomp phase over three months.
• 24:40
  Philip Pape: Okay, by body recomp again, I mean building muscle, losing fat at the same time Very conservative.
• 24:44
  Philip Pape: Lost a tiny bit in the waist, you know, gained a little bit in the neck.
• 24:48
  Philip Pape: This was for a male, but for women same thing could apply.
• 24:50
  Philip Pape: You can use the hips as well and when you look at the numbers you notice that by just fueling yourself appropriately and not dieting, and you lose a tiny bit of fat and you gain a little bit of muscle, your FFMI starts to climb up, and that's a really good validation that even a short period of training effectively and fueling yourself pays off.
• 25:12
  Philip Pape: It will pay off.
• 25:14
  Philip Pape: So if you're afraid of gaining too much fat and you don't want to go bulk and go into a surplus, that's okay.
• 25:20
  Philip Pape: You can body recomp.
• 25:21
  Philip Pape: If you're afraid of restricting and trying to diet to lose fat, you don't have to do that either.
• 25:25
  Philip Pape: You can body recomp.
• 25:26
  Philip Pape: That's my point.
• 25:27
  Philip Pape: So you know.
• 25:29
  Philip Pape: If you're in a cut, by the way, your FFMI should hold steady while your body fat drops.
• 25:34
  Philip Pape: That is important to understand as well, because that tells us we're holding on to our lean mass, right, because it's just a function of lean mass, normalized by your height.
• 25:43
  Philip Pape: So both of those should hold steady.
• 25:45
  Philip Pape: They go hand in hand.
• 25:46
  Philip Pape: Now, if your FFMI is dropping during a cut, then you are losing muscle, right?
• 25:52
  Philip Pape: If it's increasing during a bulk, you're gaining.
• 25:55
  Philip Pape: No, if it's not increasing during a bulk, then you're gaining mostly fat and not muscle.
• 25:59
  Philip Pape: So again, it's just another way to objectively tell whether your training and nutrition are working, and it is a nice simple number to normalize against.
• 26:08
  Philip Pape: Now let's talk about the mental side.
• 26:10
  Philip Pape: Let's talk about psychology.
• 26:11
  Philip Pape: There's something very liberating about this number, about FFMI the more I've thought about this, because it separates your muscle development from your body composition and that means you can actually feel good about your progress.
• 26:23
  Philip Pape: You have a win there, even when you're not at your leanest.
• 26:26
  Philip Pape: Because people always ask how do I focus on other stuff when I'm gaining this extra fat?
• 26:32
  Philip Pape: And one of the things I'll say is hey, have a couple sets of clothes one for when you're bulking, one for when you're leaning and wear your bigger clothes.
• 26:38
  Philip Pape: That's one way to feel better.
• 26:39
  Philip Pape: Great.
• 26:39
  Philip Pape: Also, focus on the process of building strength.
• 26:42
  Philip Pape: Also, focus on your measurements.
• 26:44
  Philip Pape: But a lot of those are a little bit kind of buried in the weeds.
• 26:48
  Philip Pape: If you have this one number FFMI you can and you just ignore everything else.
• 26:52
  Philip Pape: It's kind of liberating in that you know are you building muscle or not, because that's the goal.
• 26:57
  Philip Pape: That is the goal right.
• 26:58
  Philip Pape: So you know, regardless of how much body fat you have.
• 27:03
  Philip Pape: Now the power lifter sitting at 22 FMI and 25 or 30% body fat, he's built impressive muscle mass.
• 27:10
  Philip Pape: He's not fat, he's very strong with a layer of fat over the muscle.
• 27:15
  Philip Pape: I think that's a very different mindset.
• 27:17
  Philip Pape: There are guys that carry a lot of extra fat, but they have a lot of muscle under there.
• 27:20
  Philip Pape: They're in a much healthier state than the average person who doesn't have that muscle.
• 27:24
  Philip Pape: The skinny, fat guy who thinks he's in decent shape because he's not fat well, his 16 FFMI just shows that he is lacking one of the most important pieces of tissue on his body and has to build muscle.
• 27:37
  Philip Pape: He doesn't have to lose weight anymore.
• 27:38
  Philip Pape: He really doesn't.
• 27:40
  Philip Pape: So I think what really makes FFMI really transformative is how it changes the relationship with physique development.
• 27:46
  Philip Pape: Most people are trapped in this reactive thinking you know, I feel fat, so I need to cut, or I feel small, so I need to bulk.
• 27:54
  Philip Pape: But then they're making these decisions based on feelings, based on the mirror, not based on data.
• 27:59
  Philip Pape: And you know how much I love data, know how much I love data.
• 28:06
  Philip Pape: Ffmi gives you objective clarity and tells you whether your feelings match reality or whether you're focused on the wrong variable.
• 28:09
  Philip Pape: And it reveals that building an impressive physique is primarily about one thing accumulating muscle mass.
• 28:17
  Philip Pape: Over time, it really is Everything else.
• 28:20
  Philip Pape: Getting lean, looking bigger, feeling confident becomes much easier when you have substantial muscle mass to work with.
• 28:27
  Philip Pape: I'm going to keep hammering that home time and again.
• 28:29
  Philip Pape: And this changes how you approach training as well, because instead of hopping around and switching between programs and switching between cutting and bulking cycles based on how you feel that week, you develop a longer term perspective.
• 28:43
  Philip Pape: You understand that building muscle is the foundation.
• 28:46
  Philip Pape: Everything else is just revealing or optimizing what you've built.
• 28:52
  Philip Pape: And so here's the thing If you're listening to this podcast, have you been spending years spinning your wheels because you're trying to optimize body composition without enough muscle mass to optimize?
• 29:03
  Philip Pape: Or even just you've been trying to lose weight?
• 29:04
  Philip Pape: And now you realize it's about much more than that.
• 29:07
  Philip Pape: Well, ffmi is a really good number to tell you which side of that equation needs your attention, all right.
• 29:12
  Philip Pape: So FFMI fat-free mass index at the end of the day, it's just going to tell you reality and then you can act on it.
• 29:19
  Philip Pape: You know whether you discover you have more muscle than you thought hiding under some fat.
• 29:40
  Philip Pape: No-transcript.
• 29:44
  Philip Pape: And it's not about body fat percentage in and of itself.
• 29:49
  Philip Pape: Right, because body fat percentage is tricky.
• 29:51
  Philip Pape: It can be the same at different body weights because you have more or less muscle, and so the more muscle you have, the less you're concerned about body fat percentage, if that makes sense.
• 30:01
  Philip Pape: Right, because you can be lean at a higher scale weight.
• 30:03
  Philip Pape: We want to build that muscle mass first and then optimize how you present that muscle.
• 30:08
  Philip Pape: That's the way I would put it.
• 30:10
  Philip Pape: Okay, so start tracking your FFMI.
• 30:12
  Philip Pape: You can take the formula that I mentioned today, you can look it up or join us in Physique U.
• 30:17
  Philip Pape: We have a way to track that automatically, based on your measurements, where it automatically gives you your lean mass, your fat mass, your muscle to fat ratio, your fat-free mass index, the comparison tables, all of that stuff, so you know what's happening over time, even if you're doing something very precise like body recomp.
• 30:34
  Philip Pape: So if you wanna do that, join us in Physique U.
• 30:36
  Philip Pape: If you wanna go straight to get the replay and the bonuses from the body recomp workshop, there's a special link for that.
• 30:43
  Philip Pape: It's livewitsandweightscom and, by the way, you get another bonus in there, which is a free custom nutrition plan.
• 30:49
  Philip Pape: So you'll have everything you need.
• 30:52
  Philip Pape: I gave it all away in that workshop.
• 30:53
  Philip Pape: Go to livewitsandweightscom or click the link in the show notes and you're gonna get access to all of those tools, made clear on how to use them All made clear on how to use them All.
• 31:01
  Philip Pape: Right, until next time.
• 31:02
  Philip Pape: Keep using your wits lifting those weights, and remember that building an impressive physique starts with understanding what you're working with.
• 31:10
  Philip Pape: This is Philip Pape, and you've been listening to Wits and Weights.
• 31:13
  Philip Pape: Talk to you next time.