Latest / Wits & Weights | Strength & Fat Loss Over 40 / Avoid Holiday Weight Gain with a BAILOUT Strategy (Flex Framework) | Ep 404

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Avoid Holiday Weight Gain with a BAILOUT Strategy (Flex Framework) | Ep 404 · Wits & Weights | Strength & Fat Loss Over 40

• 0:00
  Philip Pape: It's that time of year.
• 0:02
  Philip Pape: Thanksgiving is this year in the US, and that means travel, family meals you didn't cook, late nights, early mornings with relative stain at your house.
• 0:09
  Philip Pape: If you have a rigid plan, it's probably gonna break.
• 0:13
  Philip Pape: You might skip a workout, you might avoid certain meals or foods, a bad day might become a bad weekend, a bad weekend becomes three weeks off, and then by January you're starting over yet again.
• 0:23
  Philip Pape: The problem isn't you, it's that your system might only have one gear, and it's built for perfect conditions.
• 0:30
  Philip Pape: Today I'm showing you how to upgrade your system so you can maintain strength and muscle through any holiday, even if everyone else is backsliding.
• 0:38
  Philip Pape: I'm your host, certified nutrition coach, Philip Pape, and today we're gonna talk about something that's probably on your mind as Thanksgiving approaches in just a few days here in the US.
• 1:05
  Philip Pape: And honestly, this applies to anyone going through any holiday or time like this.
• 1:09
  Philip Pape: How do you keep your progress going when your routine gets completely disrupted?
• 1:15
  Philip Pape: This is a general principle of any time of year, but it really comes up during the holidays because most of us approach this time of year with one of two strategies.
• 1:25
  Philip Pape: Either you try to maintain your exact routine and then inevitably fail when life doesn't cooperate, or you completely give up and you plan to start fresh in January.
• 1:36
  Philip Pape: Both approaches have the same result, right?
• 1:38
  Philip Pape: You lose your training progress, maybe you gain some fat that you didn't want, maybe you feel like you're back at square one or falling back, regressing when the new year rolls around.
• 1:48
  Philip Pape: Now you're kind of reset more than you'd like to be.
• 1:51
  Philip Pape: So what I'm sharing today is different.
• 1:53
  Philip Pape: Something I came up with over the last few weeks.
• 1:55
  Philip Pape: We talked about it in physique university recently, and it's called the flex framework.
• 2:00
  Philip Pape: Very simple, based on a simple principle that a system with multiple gears, right, just to put the engineering hat on, can survive tolerance or variability better than a system that has only one setting, right?
• 2:13
  Philip Pape: So we're talking about having flexibility in your system, but we're gonna be very uh concrete about it today and give you very specific ways to do this.
• 2:19
  Philip Pape: So you're gonna learn how to create three versions of what you're doing, of your plan: an optimal version, a minimum version, and what I'm calling a bailout version, so that you can adapt to whatever the holidays throw at you without losing your progress.
• 2:35
  Philip Pape: And of course, this applies beyond the holidays, as I mentioned.
• 2:37
  Philip Pape: Anytime life gets chaotic, that could be work travel, that could be family emergencies, you know, just those weeks where everything seems to be going wrong.
• 2:45
  Philip Pape: We know what those are, right?
• 2:46
  Philip Pape: But real quick, I just want to share a couple quotes from our clients in Physique University who always like to share their wins.
• 2:53
  Philip Pape: And it's super inspiring to those listening to the podcast.
• 2:55
  Philip Pape: You said you want to hear directly from people who are doing this.
• 2:58
  Philip Pape: So the first one says, My DEXA scan.
• 3:01
  Philip Pape: Looks like heavy barbell training is paying off.
• 3:03
  Philip Pape: Check out the spine increase.
• 3:06
  Philip Pape: That's awesome, right?
• 3:07
  Philip Pape: Because we've been talking about osteoporosis recently.
• 3:09
  Philip Pape: So love to hear that.
• 3:10
  Philip Pape: Another one, and this is I would file this under small but monumentous wins.
• 3:15
  Philip Pape: I completed week one of the strength template I selected.
• 3:19
  Philip Pape: That's a massive win to get through your first week of trained strength training sessions, excuse me, is phenomenal.
• 3:26
  Philip Pape: And then one more says, I was traveling for work this past week, but I was able to get a couple workouts in, lots of meetings and late nights.
• 3:32
  Philip Pape: Lifting seemed to have given me given me a bit of energy, embracing the new lifestyle.
• 3:37
  Philip Pape: And the last one I'm going to share today is actually from one of many of the users who downloaded Fitness Lab, which is now out for Black Friday.
• 3:43
  Philip Pape: It's 20% off for Black Friday.
• 3:45
  Philip Pape: Just came out, our new AI coaching app.
• 3:47
  Philip Pape: And this user says, I have it and I'm loving it so far, especially the AI feature.
• 3:52
  Philip Pape: It feels like you are coaching me.
• 3:54
  Philip Pape: Apple Health will be excellent once integrated, which this is Philip talking here, will be out within days, if not already, when you hear this podcast.
• 4:01
  Philip Pape: But honestly, I like what it's making me do by not having it.
• 4:04
  Philip Pape: I want to let you know this is exactly what I've been looking for.
• 4:08
  Philip Pape: Good stuff.
• 4:09
  Philip Pape: So the reason I share all these is because I'm super proud of what all of you are achieving every day, whether it's through the podcast, through Physique University, or now through the Fitness Lab app.
• 4:18
  Philip Pape: You could check out all those resources in the podcast show notes.
• 4:21
  Philip Pape: But now let's get into the topic.
• 4:23
  Philip Pape: And the first thing I want to talk about is why having a plan that's a little bit too rigid or even very rigid, of course, why it collapses under pressure.
• 4:33
  Philip Pape: And this is a lot more of a head thing, a psychology thing than anything else.
• 4:39
  Philip Pape: And if we put it in context of this week, at least here in the US, where you've got Thanksgiving in just three days, if you're listening to this when it comes out on Monday, and then it's only a few weeks until Christmas and New Year's, and you're already stressed out about how you're gonna handle all of that stuff, family dinners, travel, the gyms are probably gonna be packed, you might have hosting duties, you're wondering about things like, you know, how do I deal with alcohol and stuff like that?
• 5:03
  Philip Pape: And saying, hey, should I just accept that things are gonna be perfect and therefore I'm gonna backslide and then plan to get serious again in January?
• 5:12
  Philip Pape: Well, I'm here to tell you that that those aren't the only options.
• 5:15
  Philip Pape: Okay.
• 5:15
  Philip Pape: No, things are not gonna be perfect.
• 5:17
  Philip Pape: They never will.
• 5:17
  Philip Pape: So that we just throw off the table.
• 5:19
  Philip Pape: That's a fact.
• 5:20
  Philip Pape: But the fact that you'll black backslide isn't a given.
• 5:23
  Philip Pape: But I get it because the traditional approach to fitness in this industry can come across as very rigid.
• 5:29
  Philip Pape: It's like, here are the seven pillars you have to follow.
• 5:32
  Philip Pape: You've got to do your training for three, four, five days a week.
• 5:36
  Philip Pape: You've got to have, you know, the these calories and macros.
• 5:39
  Philip Pape: You've got to hit your energy balance and your sleep is being locked in.
• 5:43
  Philip Pape: Got to keep your stress low, by the way.
• 5:45
  Philip Pape: Make sure you get your steps in.
• 5:47
  Philip Pape: All of that, all of that is fine, but it it really only works when the conditions are perfect.
• 5:53
  Philip Pape: In other words, hitting a 10 out of 10 on all of those things.
• 5:55
  Philip Pape: You know, when you're at home, when you're prepping your own food, when you've got your normal gym every day, when you control your environment, etc.
• 6:02
  Philip Pape: But the holidays are maximum variability with minimum control, right?
• 6:08
  Philip Pape: The travel schedules change.
• 6:10
  Philip Pape: Family members have their own plans for meal times and what to serve at the meals.
• 6:14
  Philip Pape: And, you know, you don't want to offend your relatives because they're gonna make all this great food that that's part of a tradition.
• 6:19
  Philip Pape: The gym, maybe you're visiting and you try to go to a gym and now it's different and it doesn't have the equipment you need.
• 6:24
  Philip Pape: And you normally try to get to bed at 9 or 10 p.m.
• 6:27
  Philip Pape: Now it becomes midnight because everyone's still talking in the kitchen, right?
• 6:30
  Philip Pape: So this is life, guys.
• 6:32
  Philip Pape: And so your rigid plan is of course not gonna have an answer for this.
• 6:36
  Philip Pape: So it breaks, and then when it breaks, you feel like you failed, and then you quit, and that's the all or nothing trap, right?
• 6:41
  Philip Pape: We it's it's worth it's worth revisiting that because we all fall into that, even if it's it's small in a small scope.
• 6:47
  Philip Pape: You know, I do as well.
• 6:48
  Philip Pape: I fall into sometimes this thought of like, okay, here's my routine.
• 6:51
  Philip Pape: I'm gonna lock it in, and then something happens, I'm like, ah, I get frustrated because I'm not, I can't quite hit that routine like I wanted.
• 6:57
  Philip Pape: And by the way, I'm gonna have rotator cuff surgery coming up.
• 7:00
  Philip Pape: So I could easily fall into that trap of, oh no, this guy's falling.
• 7:03
  Philip Pape: I'm not gonna be able to train, I'm not gonna be able to this, not gonna be able to that.
• 7:06
  Philip Pape: And I have to just and say, okay, that's the reality.
• 7:08
  Philip Pape: What do I do?
• 7:09
  Philip Pape: Like a good stoic, what do I do?
• 7:12
  Philip Pape: And it's why January, when we talk about the holidays, why January is the busiest month at every gym.
• 7:18
  Philip Pape: Because everyone's starting over, New Year's resolutions, after completely abandoning abandoning their routine for six weeks, if they even had one.
• 7:25
  Philip Pape: And so the real problem here of why things break is because they're one-dimensional.
• 7:30
  Philip Pape: They have one gear, they work under certain conditions, not necessarily perfect conditions, but let's say close to them, right?
• 7:36
  Philip Pape: Nor quote unquote normal conditions.
• 7:39
  Philip Pape: And so, what you need is a system with multiple gears that can adapt to imperfect and far imperfect conditions while keeping you move forward.
• 7:47
  Philip Pape: Now, this does this might be like common sense, like, oh, okay, Philip's talking about flexibility, great.
• 7:51
  Philip Pape: But I want to be very, I want to give you gears here.
• 7:54
  Philip Pape: I want to give you three gears that are very specific steps that you can step down to if needed and think ahead for yourself what that looks like.
• 8:03
  Philip Pape: Okay, and this is something that I'm introducing called the Flex Framework.
• 8:07
  Philip Pape: Now, we talked about this in a workshop, or I should say, our monthly coaching call in Physique University.
• 8:12
  Philip Pape: We just talked about it.
• 8:13
  Philip Pape: And on that call, we went through, I'll say a lot more detail than I'm gonna cover today, although you're gonna get a good amount of it today.
• 8:19
  Philip Pape: And we did a lot of QA and there's a guide and all this other stuff.
• 8:23
  Philip Pape: And the community is working with it to get accountability along the way as we head into Thanksgiving.
• 8:29
  Philip Pape: So if you want to get in for all of that, as well as the community support and the ability to say, hey, what do you guys think of my flex framework?
• 8:36
  Philip Pape: Is it gonna work?
• 8:36
  Philip Pape: How do I execute it?
• 8:38
  Philip Pape: Join physiqueuniversity, physique.wits and weights.com.
• 8:41
  Philip Pape: You could also go to wits and weights.com slash physique.
• 8:43
  Philip Pape: Sorry to confuse you.
• 8:44
  Philip Pape: The link is in the show notes.
• 8:45
  Philip Pape: So go to witsandwaits.com slash physique.
• 8:48
  Philip Pape: There's a special code in the show notes to get a free nutrition plan when you join using that code.
• 8:52
  Philip Pape: And then you can get a head start on this flex framework.
• 8:55
  Philip Pape: But it is built on a principle from I'll say reliability engineering.
• 9:00
  Philip Pape: And that's the principle of redundancy.
• 9:02
  Philip Pape: Right?
• 9:02
  Philip Pape: When we design a system like the ones that keep airplanes in the sky or nuclear power plants running safely, they're super complex, just like life is complex, just like your body is complex, and they don't rely on a single component or gear.
• 9:14
  Philip Pape: They're multiple levels of redundancy.
• 9:16
  Philip Pape: So if things fail and multiple things fail, and sometimes multiple things fail at the same time, which seems unlikely, but it can happen in certain cases.
• 9:23
  Philip Pape: Can things keep functioning or gracefully step down or gracefully shut down or whatever?
• 9:28
  Philip Pape: And so your fitness system, your life system for your nutrition and training need the same approach.
• 9:34
  Philip Pape: And I like to think of this in threes, three versions of all the important elements: an optimal version, a minimum version, and a bailout.
• 9:44
  Philip Pape: So let me define each of these.
• 9:45
  Philip Pape: Optimal is what you do when conditions are perfect for you.
• 9:49
  Philip Pape: Nothing's ever perfect, but basically your normal week to week to week, the kind of boring life, hopefully, you have.
• 9:56
  Philip Pape: Well, boring in the way that I'm defining it here, where it's predictable, somewhat predictable.
• 10:01
  Philip Pape: That's where you have full access to your routine, plenty of time, energy, and resources available that you need, you know, within your given constraints.
• 10:09
  Philip Pape: That's like your best case scenario, and which you're probably doing before you get to the holidays for the most part, if you haven't been traveling or something.
• 10:16
  Philip Pape: That's optimal.
• 10:17
  Philip Pape: Okay, not not optimal is not perfect for anybody.
• 10:20
  Philip Pape: Optimal is good enough, close to perfect for you.
• 10:24
  Philip Pape: Then minimum is your non-negotiable floor.
• 10:27
  Philip Pape: Now, I talk about minimums in the past of like, okay, this is the bottom, but stay tuned because it's not going to be the bottom bottom.
• 10:33
  Philip Pape: This is what you cannot skip without starting to lose progress in one of those areas, right?
• 10:40
  Philip Pape: So this is the consistency piece.
• 10:41
  Philip Pape: This is that, you know, the idea that maintaining what you've built actually does take far less effort than building it in the first place.
• 10:47
  Philip Pape: We know this for volume when it comes to training.
• 10:50
  Philip Pape: About an eighth to a quarter volume is necessary to maintain what you have.
• 10:54
  Philip Pape: So your minimum maintains you've built and typically takes a lot less of your optimal effort, let's say 20 to 30%.
• 11:00
  Philip Pape: So this is when we say no zero days, or being consistent, or making sure you have micro wins that you can do every day that are the minimum, but they'll still compound and give you progress as opposed to skipping it altogether.
• 11:12
  Philip Pape: And then bailout, this is the new thing I'm in, I'm talking about today.
• 11:16
  Philip Pape: This is your emergency protocol, is your lifeboat.
• 11:21
  Philip Pape: What you do when everything goes wrong, right?
• 11:23
  Philip Pape: You're sick when your schedule implodes, when you have zero control over your environment.
• 11:27
  Philip Pape: You know, in my case, like I have surgery coming up.
• 11:31
  Philip Pape: There's bailout protocols I'm going to be putting in place for things.
• 11:34
  Philip Pape: Although when you can plan far enough ahead, you still could have a minimum, if that makes sense.
• 11:38
  Philip Pape: But your bailout's what prevents total collapse more in your head than anything else.
• 11:44
  Philip Pape: Let's be honest, more in your head than anything else.
• 11:47
  Philip Pape: Meaning it's better than nothing, but it's not even your minimum, and it takes even less effort.
• 11:54
  Philip Pape: So I'm adding an extra gear here to give yourself permission from a psychological standpoint to still do something that gets you a win that keeps you going so that the next time you can strive for the minimum or the optimal.
• 12:09
  Philip Pape: Does that make sense?
• 12:10
  Philip Pape: It's kind of like a bridge win.
• 12:13
  Philip Pape: And the power of this framework is the mindset shift, the psychology.
• 12:16
  Philip Pape: Instead of thinking, I can't do my full workout, so I won't do anything.
• 12:20
  Philip Pape: It's, well, I can't do my full workout.
• 12:22
  Philip Pape: What's my minimum?
• 12:23
  Philip Pape: Okay, I can do three out of my five exercises.
• 12:25
  Philip Pape: Well, can I not even do that?
• 12:27
  Philip Pape: What is my bailout?
• 12:29
  Philip Pape: My bailout might be one exercise.
• 12:31
  Philip Pape: It might be not even going to the gym, but doing something at home, like running up the stair and down the stairs for 10 minutes.
• 12:38
  Philip Pape: Something that psychologically gives you that, dare I say it, checkbox on the streak that you you've now bridged to the next day or the next point where you do your normal habit.
• 12:50
  Philip Pape: So in this case, you're not lowering your standards.
• 12:54
  Philip Pape: You're actually building one more gear of standard that gives you an anti-fragile system that survives the most obliterated imperfect conditions that come across.
• 13:05
  Philip Pape: That makes sense.
• 13:06
  Philip Pape: All right.
• 13:06
  Philip Pape: So having that in place, now what do we do?
• 13:10
  Philip Pape: All right, let's apply the flex flamework framework to the big areas that we care about here, like nutrition and training.
• 13:17
  Philip Pape: So with training, let's say use the holidays as the example, but this can work for any routine work that gets disrupted.
• 13:24
  Philip Pape: Optimal, even during the holidays, it's just your normal workout.
• 13:27
  Philip Pape: You have maybe still have access to your gym, maybe you're still at home, you know, and you're you're just you've got some different schedules and stuff going on, and you can still work in your normal full training sessions.
• 13:38
  Philip Pape: You might have to shift the days around, but you're still getting all the volume and the frequency and the intensity in, right?
• 13:44
  Philip Pape: Maybe it's at home, maybe you're visiting somewhere with a good gym and you can do it as well and still hit some optimal days.
• 13:49
  Philip Pape: Remember, optimal doesn't mean every day has to be optimal.
• 13:52
  Philip Pape: It's just on a given day, are you doing the optimal thing?
• 13:55
  Philip Pape: And you don't have to be doing everything optimal.
• 13:57
  Philip Pape: Remember, you're doing, you have different pillars that you're hitting, training, nutrition, steps, whatever.
• 14:02
  Philip Pape: Each one of those can be at their a different level.
• 14:05
  Philip Pape: All right.
• 14:05
  Philip Pape: So just give yourself, it's like flexibility within flexibility.
• 14:08
  Philip Pape: So just because it's the holidays doesn't mean you can't keep on with your optimal routine, right?
• 14:12
  Philip Pape: And then minimum training is gonna focus on something like let me just do the main lifts, the big lifts, the compound movements.
• 14:19
  Philip Pape: I've been doing this more lately because of all this medical stuff I've been dealing with, having appointments and extra meetings and having to drive places.
• 14:26
  Philip Pape: It's cut into my time, but I've said, you know, I'm still gonna train, but instead of doing all five movements, I'm gonna do three or even two.
• 14:34
  Philip Pape: And I'm gonna go really, really hard on them.
• 14:35
  Philip Pape: I did that this morning.
• 14:37
  Philip Pape: I did weighted pull-ups, neutral grip, I did T-bar rows, and I did a superset of lengthened partial lat raises and bicep curls on a cable machine.
• 14:48
  Philip Pape: Now, though that last one, obviously it's not main lifts, but it does support my goals to support my shoulder health and also keep my biceps a little pumped.
• 14:58
  Philip Pape: Okay.
• 14:59
  Philip Pape: I just it's something I enjoy.
• 15:00
  Philip Pape: So I decided what that was for me, my main lift.
• 15:03
  Philip Pape: But the, but the but the main lifts today, which didn't include massive lifts like the squat or deadlift today, particularly for me, I still focused on the main ones.
• 15:11
  Philip Pape: And there were a couple other small things that I didn't do, right?
• 15:13
  Philip Pape: I think I don't know if it was like high rep shrugs or something that I cut out.
• 15:18
  Philip Pape: All right, so you're cutting out the accessories, maybe you abbreviate the warm-up necessary as needed, but to still do it safely, and then hit your main lifts and get out, right?
• 15:27
  Philip Pape: So main lifts could be all the variants of the main movement pattern, squat bench, deadlift, rowing, whatever your core movements are depending on your program.
• 15:35
  Philip Pape: And you could even cut a set.
• 15:37
  Philip Pape: You could even get just the main lifts, and instead of doing, say, three sets, you do two, and maybe do a top set back off set, right?
• 15:44
  Philip Pape: Because at the very minimum, you're maintaining what you have, and surprisingly, you might find that you needed the extra little rest, and it might give you a little boost in performance.
• 15:52
  Philip Pape: You never know.
• 15:53
  Philip Pape: So I don't see this as a bad strategy at all.
• 15:55
  Philip Pape: This is pretty good.
• 15:56
  Philip Pape: That's a minimum.
• 15:57
  Philip Pape: Now, bailout.
• 15:58
  Philip Pape: Let's talk about bailout.
• 15:59
  Philip Pape: So to me, bailout is movement based, not performance-based.
• 16:04
  Philip Pape: Might sound sacrilegious, but that's why it's a bailout.
• 16:07
  Philip Pape: This is not about hitting new numbers on your list.
• 16:11
  Philip Pape: This is not even about progressive overload.
• 16:13
  Philip Pape: If your bailout strategy is, damn, I can't even get to the gym.
• 16:17
  Philip Pape: I can't even get to any of this stuff right now.
• 16:20
  Philip Pape: I don't have a home gym.
• 16:21
  Philip Pape: I just need to move my body and get some sort of stimulus on my muscles.
• 16:25
  Philip Pape: This is beyond beyond walking.
• 16:27
  Philip Pape: And this could be body weight stuff.
• 16:28
  Philip Pape: I mentioned running up and down the stairs, you know, for your legs.
• 16:31
  Philip Pape: This could be a brisk walk with weight on your back, like a rucksack or weight vests or something like this.
• 16:38
  Philip Pape: It could be just push-ups, you know what I mean?
• 16:40
  Philip Pape: All you're doing is just bridging the gap with some bare minimum.
• 16:44
  Philip Pape: And psychologically, more than anything, it gives you that boost that, like, I did it.
• 16:48
  Philip Pape: And that means next time I'm gonna keep making progress when I go back to my minimum or my optimal.
• 16:53
  Philip Pape: All right.
• 16:54
  Philip Pape: That's all we're talking about.
• 16:56
  Philip Pape: Now, notice what's happening psychologically.
• 16:58
  Philip Pape: You have options.
• 16:59
  Philip Pape: On a perfect day, you hit optimal, on a chaotic day, you fall back to minimum.
• 17:03
  Philip Pape: Usually it ends there.
• 17:04
  Philip Pape: But now on a disaster day, you can at least do your bailout.
• 17:08
  Philip Pape: You're not stuck in the all or nothing trap at any of those levels.
• 17:12
  Philip Pape: And that's how you maintain your routine through the holidays at some level.
• 17:18
  Philip Pape: You may not try to make gains or PRs, but at least maintain what you've built, feel good about yourself, keep going, keep yourself in the mode of I'm doing this thing on a regular basis.
• 17:30
  Philip Pape: And throughout all of this, recovery is gonna be super important, right?
• 17:34
  Philip Pape: It a lot of it does come down to stimulus versus recovery.
• 17:36
  Philip Pape: And if you're stressed because of the holidays, recovery is gonna be impeded as well.
• 17:41
  Philip Pape: Now, for me, you guys know I love to talk about sleep a lot because it's something I am personally working on.
• 17:46
  Philip Pape: And it's probably the biggest pillar of recovery.
• 17:49
  Philip Pape: And when you're traveling, when you're staying in different beds, when you're dealing with family stress, irregular schedules, I would say quality sleep becomes even more important and often harder to get.
• 18:01
  Philip Pape: And so, shout out to the sponsor of this episode, Cozy Earth.
• 18:05
  Philip Pape: They have incredible bedding that I own personally, that I use.
• 18:08
  Philip Pape: It is my favorite bedding of all.
• 18:10
  Philip Pape: I'm glad I found them because it regulates temperature.
• 18:13
  Philip Pape: You sleep cooler, you sleep more comfortably even when you're not in your own bed.
• 18:18
  Philip Pape: If you could take your sheets with you.
• 18:19
  Philip Pape: That's my tip for you right now.
• 18:21
  Philip Pape: Okay.
• 18:21
  Philip Pape: If you could take your sheets with you, you know how everybody has like their favorite pillow, it's kind of like that.
• 18:26
  Philip Pape: If you could have your own sheets with you, which then you know they're clean as well, and you're not dealing with any of that stuff, and you could take them with you.
• 18:31
  Philip Pape: I've been using the Cozy Earth sheets now for quite a few months, and the difference in sleep quality is definitely noticeable, both qualitatively and in my numbers, in my HRV scores, uh, my sleep quality scores, it just feels like something I want to, you know, drift away in.
• 18:47
  Philip Pape: It just feels so good.
• 18:48
  Philip Pape: I mean, sometimes I just want to get in the sheets just to like read a book.
• 18:51
  Philip Pape: And so when you're dealing with holiday stress schedule changes, having something like that to anchor you when it comes to an important pillar like sleep, and that could be bedding.
• 19:00
  Philip Pape: It could also be their pajamas and other things, other products that they have made with the bamboo-derived material that regulates the temperature.
• 19:08
  Philip Pape: It's just one less thing that works against you and to worry about.
• 19:10
  Philip Pape: So go to witsandweights.com slash cozy earth.
• 19:13
  Philip Pape: Use my code Wits and Waits for 20% off.
• 19:16
  Philip Pape: They have an incredible warranty and money-back guarantee.
• 19:19
  Philip Pape: So you could try it.
• 19:20
  Philip Pape: If you don't like it, return it.
• 19:21
  Philip Pape: If you want to get better sleep during the holidays and beyond, this would be, in fact, this is a great birth Christmas gift, guys.
• 19:28
  Philip Pape: Cozy earth.
• 19:29
  Philip Pape: Sheets.
• 19:29
  Philip Pape: If you're struggling to figure out a really nice, luxurious Christmas gift for your significant other, for a friend, for somebody who's in this space who cares about sleep, go to wits of weights.com slash cozy earth, 20% off.
• 19:42
  Philip Pape: And trust me, the sleep is going to vastly improve.
• 19:46
  Philip Pape: And that means better recovery, better training, more energy to enjoy the holidays and help your metabolism and all this other stuff.
• 19:53
  Philip Pape: Wits of weights.com slash cozy earth.
• 19:56
  Philip Pape: Check them out.
• 19:57
  Philip Pape: All right, so that's training.
• 19:58
  Philip Pape: Now let's talk about nutrition, because this is where most people really derail during the holidays.
• 20:03
  Philip Pape: And I don't even like the word derail because I've said before I don't believe there is a rail if you have a flexible framework.
• 20:08
  Philip Pape: Okay.
• 20:09
  Philip Pape: But we're gonna assume that the rail is your general direction that you're trying to go.
• 20:13
  Philip Pape: Maybe it's fat loss, maybe it's muscle building, maybe it's just maintenance.
• 20:16
  Philip Pape: And for many of you who know me, I definitely recommend against fat loss during the holidays, unless you're using it as a test.
• 20:23
  Philip Pape: You're using it to kind of push your comfort zone further during the hardest time of year so that you can handle any time of year.
• 20:30
  Philip Pape: That's all that's up to you.
• 20:32
  Philip Pape: But whatever it is, the situation changes quite a bit this time of year because you often go to family dinners or you visit family and you didn't cook the food, or there's a potluck, right?
• 20:41
  Philip Pape: Or you bring one thing and they cook everything else.
• 20:43
  Philip Pape: Or you're just cooking other things because it's the holidays, right?
• 20:46
  Philip Pape: The pecan pie.
• 20:47
  Philip Pape: I know people who have like 10 pies, okay?
• 20:50
  Philip Pape: This is like an American tradition to have all these pies: apple pie, pumpkin pie, blueberry pie, cherry pie, you name it.
• 20:56
  Philip Pape: And you're probably at restaurants a little more, you're getting out, you're going on parties, you're visiting friends, you might be traveling.
• 21:03
  Philip Pape: Like the usual meal prep routine sometimes goes completely out the window.
• 21:07
  Philip Pape: So optimal, minimum bailout.
• 21:10
  Philip Pape: Let's look at them.
• 21:10
  Philip Pape: Optimal nutrition during the holidays is just your normal plan.
• 21:15
  Philip Pape: You're hitting your macros and calories, you're hitting your hunger signals, you're, you know, using the same meal timing, good food quality for what you like to eat, you're cooking most of your meals or at least controlling what goes on your plate in the same way that you always have been.
• 21:28
  Philip Pape: It's just your routine.
• 21:29
  Philip Pape: This is very realistic on the days when you're at home, when you're cooking for yourself or your immediate family, when you have control over things, right?
• 21:36
  Philip Pape: That's optimum.
• 21:37
  Philip Pape: And by the way, if you're not even at optimum yet, don't beat yourself up.
• 21:40
  Philip Pape: So the one of the missions of this podcast is to help you find that.
• 21:44
  Philip Pape: And that doesn't mean perfect.
• 21:46
  Philip Pape: It just means at a good place to make progress and to be sustainable.
• 21:50
  Philip Pape: All right.
• 21:50
  Philip Pape: Minimum, I will say minimum nutrition is about simplifying the tracking and the choice, the decision framework so you don't have as much cognitive stress.
• 22:04
  Philip Pape: So I would the way I would simplify this is protein.
• 22:07
  Philip Pape: Like your only non-negotiable is protein.
• 22:09
  Philip Pape: Hit your protein target.
• 22:10
  Philip Pape: And it doesn't even have to be in calculating the grams per se.
• 22:14
  Philip Pape: If you have any experience at all tracking protein, you know that having like five servings throughout the day, you know, or having protein, a decent amount of protein at every meal or snack is going to get you where you need to be.
• 22:27
  Philip Pape: And again, this assumes you've done this before.
• 22:30
  Philip Pape: If you've never done it before, I still recommend trying to track the grams just to see where you stand.
• 22:34
  Philip Pape: Have a rough awareness of calories so you're not massively overshooting, right?
• 22:39
  Philip Pape: But but what that means is you should kind of feel good about yourself, like you're roughly in maintenance world, right?
• 22:46
  Philip Pape: You're not getting stuffed all the time.
• 22:49
  Philip Pape: Obviously, you're probably not on the other side of always feeling hungry during the holidays.
• 22:53
  Philip Pape: Although, although I could be wrong, some of you were you're really stressed and you're shopping and you're doing all the things and you forget to eat.
• 22:58
  Philip Pape: That's its own challenge.
• 22:59
  Philip Pape: I get it.
• 23:00
  Philip Pape: You know, the food timing here maybe doesn't matter as much because things are a little bit less predictable.
• 23:05
  Philip Pape: Your carbs and fats can always flex depending on the situation.
• 23:09
  Philip Pape: So the rule's simple: just prioritize protein all the time at every time you eat, and don't worry about the rest.
• 23:14
  Philip Pape: And that's a good minimum.
• 23:15
  Philip Pape: You may decide something else is your minimum.
• 23:18
  Philip Pape: Like, I'm always gonna have fruits and vegetables, you know, fiber.
• 23:21
  Philip Pape: It could be something else, but I would go with protein for most people.
• 23:24
  Philip Pape: So at Thanksgiving dinner, that's easy.
• 23:26
  Philip Pape: Turkey baby.
• 23:28
  Philip Pape: All right.
• 23:28
  Philip Pape: Like I actually find Thanksgiving kind of interesting because I feel like a lot of Thanksgiving dinners are actually pretty decent food options compared to maybe other parties and holidays, if you know what I mean.
• 23:40
  Philip Pape: Like it tends to be a lot of home-cooked food for a lot of families.
• 23:42
  Philip Pape: Now, that's if you celebrate it, that's if you cook it yourself.
• 23:45
  Philip Pape: You know, some people go out to Chinese food for Thanksgiving, whatever, or don't celebrate it, let's say, or different country.
• 23:51
  Philip Pape: But, you know, you want to enjoy the meal.
• 23:54
  Philip Pape: You want to enjoy the experience and the family time.
• 23:56
  Philip Pape: You don't want to stress whether mashed potatoes have the butter, the green beans are cooked in oil, all those little details, really.
• 24:01
  Philip Pape: Just get enough protein, which usually comes from Turkey.
• 24:03
  Philip Pape: And I love dark meat personally, but you might like the breast meat.
• 24:07
  Philip Pape: And then all the other things, the sides, you know, have a little bit of everything that you enjoy.
• 24:11
  Philip Pape: There's nothing wrong with that.
• 24:12
  Philip Pape: If you're at a restaurant, always order protein forward meals, right?
• 24:15
  Philip Pape: Steak, vegetables, chicken and rice, fish and potatoes, simple stuff like that.
• 24:18
  Philip Pape: So that would be the minimum.
• 24:20
  Philip Pape: The bailout is even simpler.
• 24:23
  Philip Pape: It's like one anchor meal a day to keep your brain connected to the fact that there's this idea of nutritious, performance-enhancing, supportive foods that you'd like to eat.
• 24:37
  Philip Pape: And you're gonna have that one experience every day that's yours and everything else is chaos, and you accept it.
• 24:43
  Philip Pape: Maybe you're traveling all day, maybe you're dealing with a family crisis, maybe you're completely overwhelmed.
• 24:48
  Philip Pape: Don't skip eating.
• 24:50
  Philip Pape: Just make sure you make sure you get at least one great hit of protein in a fairly well-balanced meal.
• 24:57
  Philip Pape: And if you can't even do that, your minute your bailout might be a protein shake.
• 25:01
  Philip Pape: Okay.
• 25:01
  Philip Pape: Some jerky in a protein bar.
• 25:03
  Philip Pape: The other day I was in a hurry and I had forgotten to bring my prepped food.
• 25:09
  Philip Pape: I stopped at a gas station and they had the barbells brand protein bar.
• 25:12
  Philip Pape: I'm like, you know what?
• 25:13
  Philip Pape: This is a good bailout compared to the alternatives.
• 25:16
  Philip Pape: I'm gonna try it out.
• 25:16
  Philip Pape: And by the way, it's pretty delicious, like cookies and cream.
• 25:18
  Philip Pape: Now, I don't eat that stuff all the time, but it's pretty cool.
• 25:21
  Philip Pape: And I couldn't pass up the fact that it said barbells, right?
• 25:23
  Philip Pape: And I'm aware of that brand.
• 25:24
  Philip Pape: I just was surprised they had it in the gas station.
• 25:26
  Philip Pape: And then you get back to your minimum tomorrow or your optimal, whatever makes sense.
• 25:30
  Philip Pape: So the psychological shift here is the same as with training.
• 25:33
  Philip Pape: You have multiple gears.
• 25:35
  Philip Pape: On days you have control, or I should say on days you have some control, but not all, you hit the minimum.
• 25:40
  Philip Pape: And days where you have lots of control, you push toward optimal.
• 25:42
  Philip Pape: And then on those disaster catastrophe days, you got your bailout and you don't feel guilty about it because at least you're not a zero.
• 25:49
  Philip Pape: Don't be a zero, be a hero.
• 25:51
  Philip Pape: All right.
• 25:52
  Philip Pape: And here's the thing about protein specifically: we know how important it is.
• 25:56
  Philip Pape: It's also very satiating and it helps you not overeat.
• 25:59
  Philip Pape: So even on the bailout days, that strategy is really important.
• 26:02
  Philip Pape: And again, if it's not protein, maybe it's fiber.
• 26:04
  Philip Pape: Both things can help with the hunger signals.
• 26:06
  Philip Pape: I went out to dinner with a friend of mine the other night, and we went to this place where they used to have this big barbecue plate, and I was so disappointed they didn't have anymore.
• 26:15
  Philip Pape: They had a new owner.
• 26:16
  Philip Pape: The barbecue plate was like six different types of meat and all these great sides, but they still have the same chefs, the same cooks, and the cooks do everything from scratch, even like blue cheese dressing, things like that.
• 26:26
  Philip Pape: Which, when when something is made with love like that, with pretty fresh ingredients, you notice a difference, you enjoy it, and all that.
• 26:33
  Philip Pape: Anyway, we we each ordered a salad along with some wings and some other things, and these were the biggest salads I've ever freaking seen.
• 26:42
  Philip Pape: They were massive.
• 26:43
  Philip Pape: They were probably the equivalent of like six garden salads.
• 26:47
  Philip Pape: Now it was mostly just raw vegetables.
• 26:49
  Philip Pape: It was like iceberg and romaine lettuce, some carrots, some cucumbers, maybe peppers, maybe tomatoes, right?
• 26:55
  Philip Pape: Just just like that.
• 26:56
  Philip Pape: And then, of course, dressing on the side.
• 26:58
  Philip Pape: I'll tell you what though, halfway through that salad, I really didn't want to eat much more of anything else.
• 27:03
  Philip Pape: And I know I hardly had any calories.
• 27:04
  Philip Pape: And the ironic thing was at the end of the day, I said, you know what, I had planned to eat like almost 2,000 calories because of the barbecue dish.
• 27:11
  Philip Pape: And I probably ate like 900 or 1,000 because of the salad.
• 27:16
  Philip Pape: So it's just, it's just an interesting idea of how you can almost like trick your body, let's say.
• 27:21
  Philip Pape: You're tricking it with eating good food.
• 27:23
  Philip Pape: I get it, but fiber can be helpful, protein can be helpful.
• 27:27
  Philip Pape: Okay, enough rambling.
• 27:28
  Philip Pape: Let's talk about the it's just setting this up very simply.
• 27:32
  Philip Pape: It's more about reframing than anything.
• 27:34
  Philip Pape: So the old way that you would think is I can't do my full workout, so I'm not gonna do it.
• 27:39
  Philip Pape: And maybe you'd say in your head, maybe I'll do it tomorrow.
• 27:41
  Philip Pape: Maybe I'll shift out, maybe I could skip this one.
• 27:43
  Philip Pape: You get all these maybes in your head, and then of course you end up going for the worst choice because you don't have a plan.
• 27:48
  Philip Pape: The new way, the new way to think about it is I can't do the optimal.
• 27:51
  Philip Pape: That was my plan.
• 27:52
  Philip Pape: What is my minimum?
• 27:53
  Philip Pape: And then let your brain figure it out.
• 27:55
  Philip Pape: Nope, can't do that either.
• 27:56
  Philip Pape: Can I at least do my bailout?
• 27:57
  Philip Pape: And that way you have a second gear and a third gear.
• 28:00
  Philip Pape: Or I should say, uh, if you go like in a car, you're going down to second gear and first gear.
• 28:04
  Philip Pape: Okay.
• 28:05
  Philip Pape: In this case, first gear is the bailout, you get it.
• 28:07
  Philip Pape: Okay.
• 28:08
  Philip Pape: Now you might be thinking, oh, but if I just do a bailout, like what's the point?
• 28:12
  Philip Pape: Am I still aren't I still losing progress?
• 28:14
  Philip Pape: Two things.
• 28:14
  Philip Pape: First, the the minimum is designed to maintain progress, and the bailout is designed to be better than zero.
• 28:23
  Philip Pape: And the idea is not to backslide.
• 28:26
  Philip Pape: So psychologically, it keeps pushing you forward and keeping the routine in place.
• 28:32
  Philip Pape: The goal is not to come off your habit.
• 28:34
  Philip Pape: That's that's the goal.
• 28:36
  Philip Pape: So, how do you set this up?
• 28:37
  Philip Pape: It's very simple.
• 28:38
  Philip Pape: You're gonna write down your optimal for the different buckets.
• 28:40
  Philip Pape: And I just talked about training and nutrition.
• 28:42
  Philip Pape: We talked about a few other buckets on the workshop in physique university, and you could add your own buckets as you need, right?
• 28:48
  Philip Pape: Sleep, stress, recovery, whatever.
• 28:51
  Philip Pape: And then identify your minimum.
• 28:53
  Philip Pape: What's the least you can do without losing progress?
• 28:55
  Philip Pape: So for training, we already talked, we already talked about that stuff.
• 28:58
  Philip Pape: And then define your bailout, which I would say, what can you do in less than 10 minutes when everything else is just chaos?
• 29:04
  Philip Pape: What can you do in less than 10 minutes?
• 29:06
  Philip Pape: Have that in your backup plan.
• 29:07
  Philip Pape: Write it down, put it in a notes app, send yourself an email, put it on post-note, whatever makes sense.
• 29:11
  Philip Pape: Write them down.
• 29:12
  Philip Pape: Please, write them down.
• 29:14
  Philip Pape: Don't just let this fly by you in your ears as you're multitasking right now, listening to this podcast.
• 29:19
  Philip Pape: Or, Jonathan, you know who I'm talking to.
• 29:21
  Philip Pape: You just got your home gym, buddy.
• 29:23
  Philip Pape: You reported how the home gym now gives you extra time and you control the environment.
• 29:28
  Philip Pape: Now you can listen to a podcast while you live.
• 29:29
  Philip Pape: Love it.
• 29:30
  Philip Pape: Anyway, shout out to you, Jonathan.
• 29:32
  Philip Pape: When chaos hits, you have to know your options.
• 29:34
  Philip Pape: So this is still having a plan.
• 29:36
  Philip Pape: This is still a plan.
• 29:37
  Philip Pape: That's the cool thing about it.
• 29:37
  Philip Pape: It's kind of like you're tricking yourself into doing something that's a plan anyway, that doesn't even feel like a plan because it's a bailout.
• 29:43
  Philip Pape: Right.
• 29:43
  Philip Pape: So, like for nutrition, what does that look like in Thanksgiving?
• 29:46
  Philip Pape: Load up on your turkey, take reasonable portions of sides.
• 29:49
  Philip Pape: You're not tracking macros, you're just prioritizing protein.
• 29:52
  Philip Pape: You get full.
• 29:53
  Philip Pape: That's the minimum.
• 29:54
  Philip Pape: There you go.
• 29:55
  Philip Pape: It works.
• 29:55
  Philip Pape: All right.
• 29:56
  Philip Pape: So if you're thinking, okay, this makes sense.
• 29:57
  Philip Pape: I really want help implementing it and coming up for.
• 29:59
  Philip Pape: Myself, what all this looks like for all the different pieces.
• 30:02
  Philip Pape: That's what we did inside physique university, and we continue to do with our students.
• 30:06
  Philip Pape: We taught the Flex framework in our last coaching call, and we're actually going to connect that to a challenge at the end of the year.
• 30:13
  Philip Pape: It's going to start December 10th and go right to the end of the year.
• 30:17
  Philip Pape: It's a three-week strong finish challenge.
• 30:19
  Philip Pape: Now you're probably listening to this episode a little before around Thanksgiving, which is a couple weeks before the challenge starts.
• 30:25
  Philip Pape: Totally up to you if you want to come on in and get caught up on the flex framework ahead of time, because we did give everyone a six-week roadmap.
• 30:32
  Philip Pape: And the second half of that roadmap is the challenge.
• 30:34
  Philip Pape: So the challenge is going to run through the hardest three weeks of the year.
• 30:37
  Philip Pape: And that's designed to help you practice pivoting and maintaining that floor, that bailout floor through this maximum chaos.
• 30:46
  Philip Pape: And we did create some training programs for travel that you can use, some training templates, I should say, body weight, as well as if you have access to some basic hotel equipment.
• 30:56
  Philip Pape: We will be posting daily check-ins to keep you accountable.
• 30:59
  Philip Pape: And we have a ton of resources.
• 31:01
  Philip Pape: A lot of them Coach Carol put together.
• 31:02
  Philip Pape: We have decision trees for your training.
• 31:05
  Philip Pape: Carol put together what to do at a gas station, at an airport, a hotel, a visual meal guide.
• 31:11
  Philip Pape: What else?
• 31:12
  Philip Pape: There's a lot of stuff in there.
• 31:14
  Philip Pape: So when it's that time of year, you could literally go to the reference during the challenge and say, what do I do for this?
• 31:23
  Philip Pape: So you can join now.
• 31:25
  Philip Pape: I would encourage it and get caught up on the flex framework and start doing our onboarding and then meeting the community, meeting me and Coach Carroll, and really starting to build momentum now before it gets too crazy.
• 31:36
  Philip Pape: Or, you know, I get it, not everybody wants to do that.
• 31:38
  Philip Pape: You want to just do the challenge?
• 31:40
  Philip Pape: The challenge, we're going to talk about it some more as we get closer.
• 31:42
  Philip Pape: But it starts December 10th.
• 31:44
  Philip Pape: We're going to kick off on December 8th.
• 31:45
  Philip Pape: So that's a Monday.
• 31:46
  Philip Pape: Monday, December 8th, we're going to kick off.
• 31:48
  Philip Pape: Anybody who joins Physique University or joins through the challenge link, which is live.wits and weights.com.
• 31:55
  Philip Pape: Live.wits and weights.com.
• 31:56
  Philip Pape: You can join anytime now until then.
• 31:58
  Philip Pape: You will immediately get access to physique university, become a member, and be part of the challenge and get all those resources.
• 32:04
  Philip Pape: And for those of you who join at live.witsandwaits.com, I always throw in a free custom nutrition plan when you join as well, which accelerates the process even further for you.
• 32:12
  Philip Pape: So again, the challenge kickoff is December 8th.
• 32:15
  Philip Pape: It starts a couple days after that.
• 32:16
  Philip Pape: If you want to finish the year strong, instead of starting over in January and use and learn this flex framework, go to live.wits and weights.com right now.
• 32:25
  Philip Pape: Link is also in the show notes.
• 32:27
  Philip Pape: So whether you join us or not, take today's episode and start setting up your framework right now.
• 32:31
  Philip Pape: Define your optimal, your minimum, and your bailout at a minimum for nutrition and training.
• 32:36
  Philip Pape: But also think of the other buckets that you care about.
• 32:38
  Philip Pape: Write them down, test them if you have to before you need them.
• 32:41
  Philip Pape: And then when Thanksgiving hits in a couple days, you're ready for that.
• 32:44
  Philip Pape: When Christmas chaos comes in a few weeks, you're ready for that.
• 32:46
  Philip Pape: If you join physique university, you'll be in a challenge.
• 32:49
  Philip Pape: You'll get super accountability and support there.
• 32:51
  Philip Pape: And then by January, while everyone else is starting over, you're going to be at least where you left off, if not better.
• 32:58
  Philip Pape: And if you didn't make gains, that is fine.
• 33:00
  Philip Pape: It's still far beyond where most people are because you didn't lose ground either.
• 33:03
  Philip Pape: Maintained your strength, your muscle, your momentum.
• 33:05
  Philip Pape: That's how you build lasting progress.
• 33:07
  Philip Pape: That's how you make this sustainable over the long term, over the 12-month period.
• 33:11
  Philip Pape: Because if the holidays are generally the worst time for you and you're maintaining now, that's a huge win, isn't it?
• 33:16
  Philip Pape: Because now the rest of the year, you're going to make a ton of gains and then keep them year after year after year.
• 33:21
  Philip Pape: All right, that's it for today.
• 33:22
  Philip Pape: Go set up your flex framework, define those three levels.
• 33:25
  Philip Pape: Have your strongest holiday season yet.
• 33:27
  Philip Pape: Enjoy your holidays if you're celebrating Thanksgiving.
• 33:30
  Philip Pape: I know we will.
• 33:30
  Philip Pape: We're going to be enjoying all of the delicious food and the family and being grateful.
• 33:35
  Philip Pape: I am grateful to you.
• 33:36
  Philip Pape: I'm grateful for this platform to be able to share and have these conversations.
• 33:40
  Philip Pape: Until next time, keep using your wits, lifting those weights.
• 33:44
  Philip Pape: And remember, the best systems do have multiple years.
• 33:47
  Philip Pape: I'm Philip Pape, and this is Wits and Weights.
• 33:49
  Philip Pape: Talk to you next time.