Latest / Wits & Weights | Strength & Fat Loss Over 40 / 3 Ways Thanksgiving WON'T Ruin Your Fat Loss (No Matter What You Do) | Ep 405

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3 Ways Thanksgiving WON'T Ruin Your Fat Loss (No Matter What You Do) | Ep 405 · Wits & Weights | Strength & Fat Loss Over 40

• 0:01
  Philip Pape: Alright, Thanksgiving is tomorrow here in the US.
• 0:04
  Philip Pape: You might have seconds on your turkey, that third slice of pie, and you get stuffed and you convince you've just undone months of fat loss progress.
• 0:12
  Philip Pape: But look, you haven't.
• 0:13
  Philip Pape: I'm gonna show you exactly why one day or even one week of holiday eating cannot actually derail your progress.
• 0:20
  Philip Pape: You'll learn why your body's built-in safeguards protect you from rapid fat gain, how strategic refeeds can support your goals, and why the mental reset matters more than the calories.
• 0:31
  Philip Pape: If you're worried about Thanksgiving ruining your physique, you need to hear this.
• 0:36
  Philip Pape: I'm your host, certified nutrition coach, Philip Pape.
• 0:56
  Philip Pape: And if you're listening to this when this comes out, Thanksgiving in the US is tomorrow, Thursday.
• 1:00
  Philip Pape: If you're listening to Afterward, everything I tell you today still applies to any holiday or even week of holiday-like activity that could be travel or vacation or anything like that.
• 1:11
  Philip Pape: And I see the same anxiety always popping up when it comes to the holidays.
• 1:16
  Philip Pape: Now, Monday's episode, we talked about developing your flex framework.
• 1:20
  Philip Pape: Today is going to be a completely different concept we're talking about.
• 1:23
  Philip Pape: And that is the mindset around the holidays and how this can help you if you if you're aware of it.
• 1:30
  Philip Pape: Because I, again, I see the anxiety on social media, I see it in my inbox, I see it on our groups and in our programs.
• 1:37
  Philip Pape: People asking, how do I stay on track?
• 1:38
  Philip Pape: Should I make up calories?
• 1:40
  Philip Pape: Should I fast the day before Thanksgiving?
• 1:42
  Philip Pape: How do I calculate macros for this and that?
• 1:44
  Philip Pape: And they're kind of trying to apply the full-on, what we talked about, optimal approach to these holidays that doesn't necessarily work.
• 1:51
  Philip Pape: But I think you're asking the wrong questions because Thanksgiving isn't a fat loss problem, nor is it part of your fat loss plan.
• 1:59
  Philip Pape: It's a mindset problem, like any holiday, any time off, anything that gets off of your goals or plans on purpose or otherwise.
• 2:08
  Philip Pape: And today I want to walk you through three specific reasons why one day or one week of holiday eating cannot physiologically, not just mentally, but physiologically it can't ruin your progress.
• 2:21
  Philip Pape: And this is gonna help you psychologically.
• 2:24
  Philip Pape: Stay with me, okay?
• 2:25
  Philip Pape: We're gonna cover the math.
• 2:27
  Philip Pape: I know how much all of you love math, but seriously, I think I think math is the universal language of the universe.
• 2:32
  Philip Pape: And it's important to understand it, but you don't have to do the math.
• 2:34
  Philip Pape: We're just gonna cover it basically, and you'll see a tick, some techniques that I use with clients that really helps connect the logic with the emotional side of the brain and really help push through some of these issues and reframe them.
• 2:45
  Philip Pape: So the logic and the math behind why a single calorie, high calorie day isn't gonna equal fat gain, which this also correlates to fluctuations on the butt on the scale, by the way.
• 2:55
  Philip Pape: How your body responds to overfeeding.
• 2:57
  Philip Pape: So, yeah, let's say you do eat a ton of calories on Thanksgiving, what happens, and why the psychological piece is probably the most important part of all this, anyway.
• 3:05
  Philip Pape: All right, so let's start with some math because numbers tell a different story and help us take a step back, especially when there's a lot of anxiety.
• 3:15
  Philip Pape: And I see it all the time.
• 3:17
  Philip Pape: So to gain one pound of fat, you need 3,500 calories above your maintenance calories.
• 3:24
  Philip Pape: So if your maintenance calories are 2,200 and you ate 5,000 calories in one day, like Thanksgiving, that is 2,800 extra calories, which guess what is not even a full pound of fat.
• 3:38
  Philip Pape: Now, most of you are probably gonna eat, this is just an average, 3,500 to 4,000 calories all throughout Thanksgiving.
• 3:43
  Philip Pape: If you include alcohol, yes, alcohol, I know people are gonna drink.
• 3:47
  Philip Pape: If you include all the pies and desserts, calorie-dense foods, all the snacking, the appetizers, going from one place to another, eating all day.
• 3:54
  Philip Pape: You've got the parade.
• 3:54
  Philip Pape: I've got to eat my breakfast, then we watch the Macy's Day parade, then we have lunch, then maybe later on we have our dinner.
• 3:59
  Philip Pape: You get it.
• 4:00
  Philip Pape: So even those of you who are like lighter eaters might be able to pound down, you know, 3,000 calories or more.
• 4:05
  Philip Pape: For those bigger folks who eat a lot, could eat a lot anyway, 35 to 4,000 the average.
• 4:10
  Philip Pape: And some of you, yeah, might hit five, six, or I do know a few of you that are gonna hit seven or eight.
• 4:15
  Philip Pape: That's extremely that's an outlier though.
• 4:17
  Philip Pape: But even at 5,000 calories, if you are right now in a fat loss phase and you're eating 1,800 calories, you're still only 2,800 above maintenance for one single day out of 365 days.
• 4:32
  Philip Pape: And the scale might, in fact, it probably will jump three to five pounds Friday morning.
• 4:38
  Philip Pape: Maybe it's less if you're smaller, but let's just say it does.
• 4:40
  Philip Pape: Let's prepare for that.
• 4:41
  Philip Pape: But it's not fat.
• 4:43
  Philip Pape: It's glycogen, it's water, it's food volume.
• 4:45
  Philip Pape: Every gram of glycogen holds three grams, three to four grams of water.
• 4:49
  Philip Pape: We need a carb-heavy meal, which Thanksgiving generally is, with all those desserts, all that sodium as well.
• 4:55
  Philip Pape: You're gonna store water and you're gonna store a heck of a lot of it.
• 4:58
  Philip Pape: That's it.
• 4:58
  Philip Pape: That's it.
• 4:59
  Philip Pape: Especially when you combine it with the math, I just reiterated a couple times about the 3,500 calories for a pound of fat.
• 5:04
  Philip Pape: And remember, when you're in a calorie deficit, you're generally eating below your maintenance.
• 5:09
  Philip Pape: If you eat a whole bunch of food one day, it's not like you're eating all those calories above maintenance.
• 5:14
  Philip Pape: You're just eating some amount of calories of maintenance and making up the difference for your deficit as well.
• 5:19
  Philip Pape: You know what I mean?
• 5:20
  Philip Pape: So over the next two or three days after Friday, assuming you return to your normal eating, the water weight disappears.
• 5:28
  Philip Pape: And if you're tracking your weight every day, which I generally recommend for people, at least early in this process, part of the learning phase, you'll see that.
• 5:34
  Philip Pape: You'll see it go way up, then you'll see it go down and back down.
• 5:37
  Philip Pape: And that's kind of cool to see because then it validates that it's not fat.
• 5:41
  Philip Pape: I at least I hope it does.
• 5:42
  Philip Pape: For those of you who are skipping weighing in on weekends just because of the fear of seeing the scale go up, you're missing out on an opportunity to learn about it.
• 5:50
  Philip Pape: We also know there's studies that say tracking seven or weighing yourself seven versus five days tends to have better outcomes for weight management.
• 5:58
  Philip Pape: So just think about that.
• 5:59
  Philip Pape: All right.
• 6:00
  Philip Pape: So that's the simple math on the 3,500 calories and the overeating piece, just to put that in perspective.
• 6:05
  Philip Pape: Now, what let's talk about what happens when you overeat on a single day, besides the calories, right?
• 6:11
  Philip Pape: Because your body's not just a calorie calculator, it's a very adaptive system.
• 6:15
  Philip Pape: So when you dramatically increase calories and you just binge the heck out of food in one day, especially from carbohydrates, I'm gonna shock you now, but several things are gonna work in your favor.
• 6:25
  Philip Pape: Okay.
• 6:26
  Philip Pape: So this is this is called non-delusional positive reframing.
• 6:30
  Philip Pape: This is reality, guys.
• 6:31
  Philip Pape: Okay, first, your metabolic rate is gonna go up, probably a little bit, through adaptive thermogenesis because you're burning more calories, digesting and absorbing food.
• 6:41
  Philip Pape: You probably have more energy.
• 6:43
  Philip Pape: I'm not gonna say that your meat goes up because you may be sitting around all day, but we do know that following a large refeed, sometimes your expenditure can go up a few hundred calories, according to some studies.
• 6:53
  Philip Pape: Because you have more energy, you start to move around a lot, you kind of make up for make up for the slothiness on Thanksgiving.
• 6:59
  Philip Pape: So that's just kind of an interesting little side tangent.
• 7:02
  Philip Pape: Second, if you're in a fat loss phase, and this is the more important benefit, really, a strategic refeed can probably benefit you psychologically, if nothing else, but sometimes there's a little physiological boost as well.
• 7:14
  Philip Pape: I don't want to overstate it.
• 7:16
  Philip Pape: Like we used to think that, oh my God, you're gonna jack up your leptin and you know, all this stuff gets recovered well beyond where it was before.
• 7:23
  Philip Pape: Not like that.
• 7:24
  Philip Pape: But when you've been in a deficit for several weeks and your leptin's low and your metabolic rate is lower, and you're hungrier, your performance is suffering, and then you have a re feed, like a high calorie, high carb day, aka Thanksgiving, it's gonna temporarily boost some of that stuff up, right?
• 7:39
  Philip Pape: It's gonna temporarily bring your leptin up, tell your body, hey, we're not starving today.
• 7:43
  Philip Pape: And that can also improve some things like your metabolic rate, reduce your hunger, improve your training performance.
• 7:49
  Philip Pape: It's not on the net gonna vastly improve those things.
• 7:53
  Philip Pape: We know that, according to the evidence, but it will give you a temporary boost.
• 7:56
  Philip Pape: And mentally, it's super helpful.
• 7:59
  Philip Pape: And I've talked about in the past having a weekend diet where kind of the opposite of what that sounds like, where on the weekend you stop dieting and you go to a full refeed.
• 8:08
  Philip Pape: That some evidence shows potential increase in muscle mass retention when you do that.
• 8:14
  Philip Pape: So there's little benefits to this.
• 8:15
  Philip Pape: So, in other words, think about the positive of having a refeed and using the holidays for that.
• 8:20
  Philip Pape: It's the same reason I tell people on that go on vacation during fat loss.
• 8:24
  Philip Pape: Use the vacation as a maintenance refeed, as kind of a D load from your diet.
• 8:28
  Philip Pape: Okay.
• 8:29
  Philip Pape: So in that case, Thanksgiving could be this thing planned in that you supports your fat loss, especially if you've been in a long deficit.
• 8:35
  Philip Pape: Look forward to it.
• 8:36
  Philip Pape: The third thing here is the I'm gonna call it metabolic flexibility.
• 8:42
  Philip Pape: I'm still not super comfortable with that term.
• 8:43
  Philip Pape: The idea that you have divided energy systems.
• 8:45
  Philip Pape: So when you eat a huge amount of carbs, your body's gonna shift to burning more carbs, right?
• 8:49
  Philip Pape: And less fat short term.
• 8:50
  Philip Pape: Just like when you eat more fat, like on keto or something, it burns more fat, but you have more fat.
• 8:54
  Philip Pape: So at the end of the day, energy balance is really what matters, right?
• 8:58
  Philip Pape: Fat storage and fat release on your body comes down to energy balance.
• 9:03
  Philip Pape: But, you know, when you have all these carbs coming in, of course, you're going to have an immediate source of energy, you're gonna refill your glycogen.
• 9:10
  Philip Pape: Some people find like a really great training session the next day after Thanksgiving.
• 9:15
  Philip Pape: And again, that just ties into this whole thing of Thanksgiving being like a carb up opportunity, potentially, and you can do a reframe.
• 9:23
  Philip Pape: So, from that perspective, just enjoy it.
• 9:26
  Philip Pape: Let your body have the refeed and then return to normal Friday, right?
• 9:29
  Philip Pape: The worst thing you can do is try to make up for it by slashing calories Friday or even pre-slashing calories.
• 9:35
  Philip Pape: Some people like starve themselves earlier on Thanksgiving.
• 9:37
  Philip Pape: Don't do that.
• 9:38
  Philip Pape: Cause then you're just gonna, you're gonna make up for it anyway, and you're not gonna feel as great because you're probably gonna shovel in more calories because you feel like you can handle them, and then you just feel terrible, right?
• 9:46
  Philip Pape: Digestively, right?
• 9:47
  Philip Pape: Or you're trying to do some extra punishing workout or fasting or like go for extra walks or runs that you don't feel like doing just to force it.
• 9:55
  Philip Pape: Don't do any of those behaviors.
• 9:57
  Philip Pape: These cause problems.
• 9:58
  Philip Pape: These cause problems.
• 9:59
  Philip Pape: The Thanksgiving meal doesn't cause the problem.
• 10:01
  Philip Pape: So just enjoy it.
• 10:02
  Philip Pape: Try not try not to take stress off your plate if you're listening to this the day before or even the day of Thanksgiving.
• 10:08
  Philip Pape: Now, if you're the type of person that likes to bounce these types of questions off of others and figure out like, how do I structure Thanksgiving in reality?
• 10:17
  Philip Pape: Because I can't just, I can't tell you specifically this is what you need to do.
• 10:21
  Philip Pape: This is, I was thinking about this.
• 10:23
  Philip Pape: This is one of many of these cool scenarios come that I've seen come up lately where Fitness Lab, that's my new app that came out, where people are saying, Hey, I I went into that to the coach tab and asked it about my Thanksgiving plans.
• 10:35
  Philip Pape: And it was so cool because it asked me about my specific situation and helped me, you know, move my training sessions around the right way, or think about how to plan for the food, or even come up with like really good recipes for Thanksgiving that align with my goals.
• 10:49
  Philip Pape: Right.
• 10:50
  Philip Pape: And that's the adaptable piece of it.
• 10:51
  Philip Pape: So I did want to give a little plug because Fitness Lab is out now, and and this is the last time you're gonna hear an episode before the Black Friday discount ends on Black Friday, November 28th.
• 11:01
  Philip Pape: That's 20% off.
• 11:02
  Philip Pape: So if you're looking for that, we're not gonna have another, I don't know when we'll have another discount.
• 11:06
  Philip Pape: You shouldn't like count on those.
• 11:07
  Philip Pape: That's the whole point.
• 11:09
  Philip Pape: So go to fit, go to wits and weights.com slash app.
• 11:12
  Philip Pape: Um, if you haven't heard about Fitness Lab, it's my new AI coaching app.
• 11:15
  Philip Pape: It's designed to adapt with everything you're doing.
• 11:18
  Philip Pape: It accounts for your biofeedback.
• 11:20
  Philip Pape: Hey, how's your hunger?
• 11:21
  Philip Pape: How's your stress?
• 11:22
  Philip Pape: How's your sleep?
• 11:23
  Philip Pape: What's your schedule look like?
• 11:24
  Philip Pape: When do you train?
• 11:25
  Philip Pape: What equipment do you have?
• 11:26
  Philip Pape: You know, how's your hormone situation?
• 11:28
  Philip Pape: Like it learns all of that.
• 11:29
  Philip Pape: And the more that you talk to it every day and feed it information, the more it learns and says, hey, let's try this, let's try this.
• 11:35
  Philip Pape: And then when Thursday hits, you know, you could maybe upload a picture of the meal and say, hey, take a look at this and analyze it, or don't even use the app on that day because it is a holiday, right?
• 11:46
  Philip Pape: But the whole point is Fitness Lab adjusts to you.
• 11:48
  Philip Pape: It takes all of these different data points, not just metrics data like most apps, but a lot of qualitative data, which I think is where it fills in a gap of apps that doesn't apps that don't exist today.
• 11:58
  Philip Pape: It fills in that gap.
• 11:59
  Philip Pape: So again, right now through Black Friday, Fitness Lab's 20% off.
• 12:02
  Philip Pape: Go to wins of weights.com slash app.
• 12:05
  Philip Pape: If you've been listening to the podcast, you're like, I really need help implementing my fat loss plan or my holiday plan or like my flex framework or anything else, but I can't hire a coach.
• 12:14
  Philip Pape: This might be what you want, what you need.
• 12:16
  Philip Pape: And it goes beyond workouts and nutrition.
• 12:19
  Philip Pape: Like there's plenty of apps for that.
• 12:20
  Philip Pape: It does the intelligent coaching, the interpretation.
• 12:24
  Philip Pape: It meets you where you are.
• 12:25
  Philip Pape: It can handle all your corner cases, all your different situations in life and builds momentum even during chaotic weeks.
• 12:31
  Philip Pape: So go to witzaways.com/slash app, 20% off through Black Friday.
• 12:35
  Philip Pape: All right, let's talk about the more realistic scenario about holidays and elephant in the room, Thanksgiving and Christmas and everything else, although they are just one meal.
• 12:46
  Philip Pape: Oftentimes I say they're just one meal.
• 12:48
  Philip Pape: For many of you, it's not just one meal because we have something called leftovers.
• 12:52
  Philip Pape: Now, I don't like to waste food.
• 12:54
  Philip Pape: I also like to make a lot of food at once because it's more efficient.
• 12:57
  Philip Pape: So we have a lot of freaking leftovers.
• 12:59
  Philip Pape: Okay.
• 12:59
  Philip Pape: So Thanksgiving may become a four-day weekend where you have leftovers Friday, right?
• 13:04
  Philip Pape: You have the turkey sandwiches.
• 13:06
  Philip Pape: You might also have social events and meals out because you have Black Friday and you have it it kind of feels like a time off.
• 13:12
  Philip Pape: You know, a lot of you get a four-day weekend or whatever, and you just kind of let go that weekend, which is cool, right?
• 13:18
  Philip Pape: And so what happens if Thursday leads to Friday to Saturday to Sunday and you're over calories every single day?
• 13:25
  Philip Pape: Have you ruined your progress?
• 13:27
  Philip Pape: Still no.
• 13:28
  Philip Pape: Still no.
• 13:30
  Philip Pape: Let's walk through why.
• 13:31
  Philip Pape: All right.
• 13:32
  Philip Pape: Fat loss happens over time, week to week, month to month.
• 13:36
  Philip Pape: It's not day to day.
• 13:37
  Philip Pape: Obviously, you're burning and storing fat every day in small amounts, but anything meaningful is not gonna happen until it accumulates over time.
• 13:46
  Philip Pape: If you're in a 500 calorie a day deficit, that's 3,500 calories a week.
• 13:50
  Philip Pape: That's a pound of fat loss, right?
• 13:52
  Philip Pape: And that takes some effort for people to do it that way, just like it would take effort to do it the other way.
• 13:57
  Philip Pape: And it takes time.
• 13:58
  Philip Pape: Okay.
• 13:58
  Philip Pape: Now, sometimes it's not intentional, like over consuming, but it's still gonna take time.
• 14:04
  Philip Pape: So if you have four days at or above maintenance and you're in a fat loss phase, what are you doing?
• 14:08
  Philip Pape: Well, you're just reducing your deficit, but you're not erasing the deficit for the week unless you're dramatically over every single day, which is possible, right?
• 14:18
  Philip Pape: Depends on how, if your deficit is very conservative, you could definitely blow through it.
• 14:22
  Philip Pape: But it's almost like you've, I hate to put it this way, it's like you're you've banked some deficit anyway because you've been in a deficit.
• 14:29
  Philip Pape: Okay, so let's say you're eating 1800 and your maintenance is 2300.
• 14:33
  Philip Pape: That's a 500 calorie day deficit.
• 14:35
  Philip Pape: That's 3,500 calories a week.
• 14:36
  Philip Pape: That's a pound a week.
• 14:37
  Philip Pape: And then Thanksgiving, you eat 4,000.
• 14:39
  Philip Pape: Friday, you eat 2,800.
• 14:41
  Philip Pape: Saturday, you're back to 2,000.
• 14:42
  Philip Pape: Sunday, you're still at 2,200.
• 14:44
  Philip Pape: So you're still overconsuming, but you know, not as much as Thanksgiving.
• 14:47
  Philip Pape: And now you've added 2,000 calories over four days.
• 14:51
  Philip Pape: Well, guess what?
• 14:52
  Philip Pape: Over seven-day period, now you are still in a deficit of 1,500 calories instead of 3,500 calories.
• 14:58
  Philip Pape: So you've lost just a little bit less fat that week.
• 15:01
  Philip Pape: Big deal.
• 15:03
  Philip Pape: You haven't even gained fat.
• 15:05
  Philip Pape: You've actually just slowed progress a little bit temporarily, and then the next week you're right back to your normal deficit, losing fat again.
• 15:10
  Philip Pape: Right.
• 15:11
  Philip Pape: That's why I tell clients and I talk on the show, think in weekly and monthly trends and averages over time, not daily, you know, daily numbers and even not sometimes weekly, depending on what we're talking about, what metric we're talking about.
• 15:25
  Philip Pape: Okay.
• 15:26
  Philip Pape: Well, one week is not gonna define your progress.
• 15:28
  Philip Pape: And even so, one week you might be surprised that you were still in a deficit.
• 15:32
  Philip Pape: And then the average over the next four to six weeks is ultimately what's gonna smooth out reality, what's doing.
• 15:36
  Philip Pape: Now, obviously, if you four or five days a week you're overconsuming massively, that's gonna catch up, but that's not what we're talking about.
• 15:43
  Philip Pape: So, for many of you who've been dieting for a while, a week at or near maintenance actually might be beneficial.
• 15:48
  Philip Pape: We kind of alluded to this already: a psychological break.
• 15:51
  Philip Pape: Your body recovers from a chronic deficit, you come back the next week refreshed, your performance improves, you're back on track, you're ready to go, right?
• 15:58
  Philip Pape: Helps with the adherence as well.
• 16:00
  Philip Pape: The alternative is trying to stay very strict in your deficit during Thanksgiving week, being miserable, feeling deprived, potentially binging because you restricted, and then feeling like you failed when you could have just enjoyed the food in the first place without any of that stuff.
• 16:16
  Philip Pape: That's you know, all that stuff is far worse than just accepting this week as a little different and being okay with it, right?
• 16:21
  Philip Pape: Your body cares about that long-term average energy balance.
• 16:25
  Philip Pape: We're going back to logic and math and numbers.
• 16:27
  Philip Pape: So one week of eating more surrounded by months of a consistent deficit, it's a blip.
• 16:32
  Philip Pape: And that's we're talking about fat loss and a deficit.
• 16:34
  Philip Pape: If you're, if you're listening, you're like, look, I already decided not to even try fat loss during the holidays, then you're probably even better than fine because it's going to be closer to what you've been eating anyway, just a tiny bit over.
• 16:45
  Philip Pape: All right.
• 16:46
  Philip Pape: So now the last piece here is the psychological side, always worth talking about.
• 16:50
  Philip Pape: Because the biggest threat to progress isn't Thanksgiving.
• 16:53
  Philip Pape: It's the all or nothing thinking that we tried to address on the last episode by coming up with a flex framework.
• 16:58
  Philip Pape: So go check that out if you missed it already.
• 17:01
  Philip Pape: And that's the framing where you say, well, I already blew it Thursday, so I might as well keep eating poorly all week and I'll start fresh on Monday, or maybe I'll start fresh January 1st.
• 17:10
  Philip Pape: And this causes problems, long-term problems.
• 17:12
  Philip Pape: It's the relationship with food.
• 17:15
  Philip Pape: And your relationship with food is ultimately what matters with your food.
• 17:18
  Philip Pape: It's not the macros that matter.
• 17:20
  Philip Pape: The macros are a lagging indicator, are a metric.
• 17:24
  Philip Pape: If you view Thanksgiving as a dangerous event to survive or control, you're setting up stress, anxiety, and behaviors that work against you.
• 17:32
  Philip Pape: But if you view Thanksgiving as a single meal to enjoy fully without guilt, and then you move on, that is psychological flexibility.
• 17:42
  Philip Pape: And that is a skill that will predict long-term success.
• 17:46
  Philip Pape: Okay.
• 17:46
  Philip Pape: I've worked with hundreds of clients.
• 17:48
  Philip Pape: I've talked to thousands of you through the podcast.
• 17:50
  Philip Pape: And those who maintain results, not even for years, but even for months, believe it or not, are not the ones who adhere perfectly, who have perfect compliance.
• 18:00
  Philip Pape: That might be surprising to you.
• 18:02
  Philip Pape: It's not.
• 18:03
  Philip Pape: It's the ones who learn to handle the imperfect weeks where the adherence dropped and sometimes dropped significantly what was still there, and they didn't spiral out because of that buffer.
• 18:16
  Philip Pape: They ate Thanksgiving dinner, they enjoyed it, they woke up Friday, went right back to normal.
• 18:19
  Philip Pape: And even normal might still be a little bit over for a few days, but then, you know, gradually back to your routine.
• 18:25
  Philip Pape: No compensatory behaviors, we call them.
• 18:27
  Philip Pape: You're not compensating, you're not making up, no weeklong binge, just back to normal.
• 18:32
  Philip Pape: Right.
• 18:32
  Philip Pape: And that's the skill we're building.
• 18:34
  Philip Pape: So tomorrow, if you're listening to this Thursday on Wednesday or whenever Thanksgiving is to you, is an opportunity to practice that skill.
• 18:42
  Philip Pape: So if you're worried about spiraling, here's what I want you to do.
• 18:45
  Philip Pape: Okay, I'm gonna give you three tips.
• 18:47
  Philip Pape: First, plan Friday.
• 18:50
  Philip Pape: Don't plan for Thanksgiving.
• 18:51
  Philip Pape: Plan for the day after Thanksgiving.
• 18:53
  Philip Pape: What are you gonna eat and train?
• 18:55
  Philip Pape: What does your structure look like?
• 18:56
  Philip Pape: Write it down, have a plan for Friday.
• 18:59
  Philip Pape: Because Friday should be more or less a normal day.
• 19:01
  Philip Pape: Maybe you're gonna go out to dinner or whatever.
• 19:03
  Philip Pape: Most people aren't because you're kind of like a little hungover, a little stuff from Thanksgiving, even if it's a food hangover, if you know what I mean.
• 19:09
  Philip Pape: That's the first tip.
• 19:10
  Philip Pape: Plan for Friday.
• 19:11
  Philip Pape: The second tip is I want you to practice self-compassion.
• 19:14
  Philip Pape: Now, this is this is a little more complicated.
• 19:16
  Philip Pape: This requires a little work.
• 19:18
  Philip Pape: If you eat more than you intended, if you feel uncomfortable or you feel guilty, you know what?
• 19:24
  Philip Pape: That's fine.
• 19:25
  Philip Pape: Because you know what I'm gonna say next.
• 19:27
  Philip Pape: You're human, you're a human being.
• 19:30
  Philip Pape: That the response is what's important.
• 19:33
  Philip Pape: And so we don't want to respond by punishing ourselves.
• 19:37
  Philip Pape: I want you to acknowledge what happened and then choose your next action with intention.
• 19:44
  Philip Pape: That's it.
• 19:44
  Philip Pape: And this goes for any day for the rest of your life.
• 19:48
  Philip Pape: Where you did something that you didn't intend to do, you acknowledge it and then say, okay, that happened.
• 19:54
  Philip Pape: Now this is what I'm going to do next.
• 19:56
  Philip Pape: That is what's in your control.
• 19:58
  Philip Pape: So Friday morning, I eat my normal breakfast.
• 20:02
  Philip Pape: Maybe I go to the gym and I move on.
• 20:04
  Philip Pape: The third tip I have is to disconnect your self-worth from your adherence.
• 20:10
  Philip Pape: You are not a good person because you stayed on your diet.
• 20:12
  Philip Pape: I don't want to hear that language.
• 20:14
  Philip Pape: And if I hear that language, it's okay.
• 20:16
  Philip Pape: I understand there's an education, a teachable moment there.
• 20:19
  Philip Pape: But I'm saying analyze yourself right now.
• 20:22
  Philip Pape: Do you use that language?
• 20:23
  Philip Pape: Oh, I was good this week or I was bad this week.
• 20:26
  Philip Pape: I hear it all the time.
• 20:27
  Philip Pape: Ladies and gentlemen, I hear it all the time.
• 20:30
  Philip Pape: I was good because nope, nope, doesn't have a place here at all.
• 20:35
  Philip Pape: You're not bad because you had three slices of pie when you intended to have one or none.
• 20:39
  Philip Pape: Your value has nothing to do with your macros.
• 20:43
  Philip Pape: Nothing at all.
• 20:44
  Philip Pape: Right?
• 20:44
  Philip Pape: What are we doing?
• 20:45
  Philip Pape: We're building a healthy, strong identity, person, physique, health, all of that wrapped in one of our human mind and body that we can maintain for decades, for decades, until the day we die.
• 20:57
  Philip Pape: And that requires a relationship with food where holidays are part of life because they exist and they are.
• 21:03
  Philip Pape: They're not threats to your identity.
• 21:04
  Philip Pape: So I hope that hits.
• 21:06
  Philip Pape: I hope that hits with you and that's helpful.
• 21:08
  Philip Pape: So I'm not going to give you the here are your 10 tips to do for Thanksgiving, blah, blah, blah.
• 21:13
  Philip Pape: Everyone's different.
• 21:14
  Philip Pape: You do it how you want to do.
• 21:15
  Philip Pape: I would say enjoy, you know, Thanksgiving, whatever that means to you.
• 21:19
  Philip Pape: And then try to get back to your normal, normal on Friday.
• 21:22
  Philip Pape: But even if it's not the normal, normal and it's a suboptimal or a minimal or even a bailout, go check out our flex flame work from last episode if you don't know what I'm talking about.
• 21:30
  Philip Pape: Then you're still gonna have momentum, right?
• 21:33
  Philip Pape: And then remember the scale is probably gonna go up Friday and Saturday.
• 21:35
  Philip Pape: It's okay.
• 21:36
  Philip Pape: If you weigh yourself, it's kind of cool and experiment to see how it does that and then how it comes back from the water weight dropping.
• 21:42
  Philip Pape: If you have leftovers, awesome.
• 21:43
  Philip Pape: Work them into your normal meals.
• 21:45
  Philip Pape: You've got food now you can plan around.
• 21:46
  Philip Pape: Leftover turkey is the best.
• 21:48
  Philip Pape: It's protein.
• 21:48
  Philip Pape: You can fit that in your macros, right?
• 21:50
  Philip Pape: Right?
• 21:51
  Philip Pape: Leftover pie, it could be a little trickier, but just portion it into small slices.
• 21:55
  Philip Pape: All right, get a little plate so it looks nice and big.
• 21:58
  Philip Pape: Have some Friday night if you want, have some Saturday night if you want.
• 22:00
  Philip Pape: You're gonna get tired of it probably.
• 22:02
  Philip Pape: Log it, move on.
• 22:03
  Philip Pape: It's fine.
• 22:04
  Philip Pape: Plan for it, right?
• 22:05
  Philip Pape: One meal, a few days of different meals is not gonna, is not drama.
• 22:10
  Philip Pape: It doesn't require drama.
• 22:11
  Philip Pape: Guys, don't be dramatic.
• 22:13
  Philip Pape: Just return to normal.
• 22:15
  Philip Pape: So holidays are never the problem.
• 22:17
  Philip Pape: The problem is this rigid, unsustainable approach that everybody is selling and in the industry talking about how dangerous the holidays are, that you have to survive the holidays.
• 22:26
  Philip Pape: But to me, survival sounds like not very fun.
• 22:30
  Philip Pape: I don't want you to survive.
• 22:32
  Philip Pape: I want you to just be.
• 22:33
  Philip Pape: I want you to be, be happy with yourself, trust the process, trust your body, trust that one meal can't undo months of consistency that you've put in place.
• 22:41
  Philip Pape: And that's what I wanted to cover today.
• 22:43
  Philip Pape: Okay, three reasons why Thanksgiving will not, no matter what you do, ruin your fat loss.
• 22:47
  Philip Pape: Number one, the math doesn't support it, right?
• 22:50
  Philip Pape: Because it just, you would have to just eat gobs and thousands of gobs of calories to even tick, move the needle a tick.
• 22:57
  Philip Pape: Second, your body is very metabolically flexible.
• 23:00
  Philip Pape: It might appreciate an overfeeding.
• 23:02
  Philip Pape: That is the epitome of a holiday meal.
• 23:06
  Philip Pape: And then third, the psychology and the skill of enjoying a meal and moving on is a really important thing to learn.
• 23:12
  Philip Pape: And it's definitely way more important than trying to ever be perfect or perfect adherence because that is what predicts long-term success.
• 23:18
  Philip Pape: So eat the meal, be with your family, enjoy yourself.
• 23:20
  Philip Pape: Then Friday, go back to whatever it is you were doing before.
• 23:24
  Philip Pape: And of course, be grateful for whatever you're grateful for, the people around you, the food on the table, the fact that you have a body capable of incredible things.
• 23:33
  Philip Pape: You've worked hard this year.
• 23:35
  Philip Pape: I don't care how much progress you've actually made, you're listening to this podcast, you are trying to learn, you are trying to practice skills and grow.
• 23:43
  Philip Pape: You're building strength.
• 23:45
  Philip Pape: Maybe you've lost fat, maybe not.
• 23:47
  Philip Pape: That's not the end goal here.
• 23:48
  Philip Pape: It's the process of showing up consistently.
• 23:52
  Philip Pape: Happy Thanksgiving, everyone.
• 23:54
  Philip Pape: I'll talk to you next time.