Latest / Wits & Weights | Strength & Fat Loss Over 40 / Why Building Muscle Beats Weight Loss for Body Recomposition After 40 | Ep 418

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Why Building Muscle Beats Weight Loss for Body Recomposition After 40 | Ep 418 · Wits & Weights | Strength & Fat Loss Over 40

• 0:01
  Philip Pape: When you focus on losing weight, you get smaller.
• 0:04
  Philip Pape: When you focus on building muscle, you get better.
• 0:06
  Philip Pape: Most people chase the scale.
• 0:09
  Philip Pape: They cut calories, they add cardio, and they try to watch that number drop.
• 0:13
  Philip Pape: But then six months later, they're frustrated because they still don't look like they lived.
• 0:18
  Philip Pape: And their metabolism is worse than when they started.
• 0:21
  Philip Pape: Building muscle completely changes the math.
• 0:24
  Philip Pape: It improves how you partition nutrients, how much you can eat, how easily you lose fat, and how good you look at any weight.
• 0:31
  Philip Pape: Today I'm breaking down why muscle is the primary driver of body recomp.
• 0:36
  Philip Pape: Not despite weight, but regardless of it.
• 0:39
  Philip Pape: You'll learn what actually changes your body composition, why weight loss can backfire, and the exact path to follow if you want to transform how you look and feel.
• 0:49
  Philip Pape: Yet, many of you, most people, obsess over that number, that scale number, like it's the only thing that matters.
• 1:33
  Philip Pape: I'm gonna show you today why building muscle is far more valuable than losing weight for body recomp, for health, for longevity, for metabolism, not because muscle magically melts fat, it doesn't, but because muscle changes every equation in your favor to make all the other stuff so much easier.
• 1:53
  Philip Pape: So if you've been frustrated that all this hard work in the gym, in the kitchen isn't showing in your physique, this episode will help you reframe all of it and stick around to the end, where I'm gonna share one daily habit that accelerates muscle growth without any additional training.
• 2:10
  Philip Pape: And it has nothing to do with supplements or meal timing or any of that.
• 2:15
  Philip Pape: And it even surprised me when I first discovered it.
• 2:18
  Philip Pape: All right, let's start with the obvious problem.
• 2:20
  Philip Pape: The scale measures total body mass.
• 2:23
  Philip Pape: That's it.
• 2:24
  Philip Pape: It is the pull of Earth's gravity on your body.
• 2:27
  Philip Pape: It doesn't distinguish what's inside your fat, your muscle, your water, your glycogen, your bone, all of that.
• 2:33
  Philip Pape: When you lose 10 pounds, the scale said you lost 10 pounds.
• 2:37
  Philip Pape: But if five of those pounds were muscle, you just made your body composition far worse, not better.
• 2:45
  Philip Pape: Now, most traditional weight loss advice ignores this in the interest of admittedly selling a program or selling quick results or selling what the industry has sold for many years, and that thin is somehow better.
• 2:58
  Philip Pape: And the typical advice is simplified in its finest is eat less, move more, create a calorie deficit, just be consistent, all the platitudes we hear all the time.
• 3:08
  Philip Pape: Now, none of that tells you what you're actually losing.
• 3:11
  Philip Pape: Okay.
• 3:12
  Philip Pape: Yeah, you're losing weight on the scale, but in chasing weight loss alone and getting smaller, you won't necessarily get leaner.
• 3:20
  Philip Pape: You won't necessarily get stronger.
• 3:22
  Philip Pape: You're definitely not necessarily getting healthier.
• 3:25
  Philip Pape: Now, the little caveat to that is if you have a lot of weight to lose and the excess body fat or body weight in general is putting you in a state of poor health, almost any form of weight loss is going to be a net positive from where you're at.
• 3:38
  Philip Pape: But it's still even better to focus on doing that while building muscle.
• 3:43
  Philip Pape: Research shows that up to 30 to 60%.
• 3:46
  Philip Pape: It's a big range.
• 3:48
  Philip Pape: You know, I you can cherry pick studies to find all these numbers, but even as little as 25 or 30% of your weight loss on a typical diet is lean mass, muscle.
• 4:00
  Philip Pape: That's not great.
• 4:01
  Philip Pape: Like that's not what we're trying to do.
• 4:03
  Philip Pape: Especially we see this in older populations, you know, women and men over 40, anyone under-eating protein, anyone for sure who is skipping resistance training.
• 4:11
  Philip Pape: In fact, that is the biggest reason this happens.
• 4:13
  Philip Pape: And we see this a lot today on the GLP1 medications when it comes to the whole muscle loss argument.
• 4:19
  Philip Pape: They don't cause the muscle loss, but they cause rapid dieting in people who are not resistance training, which leads to muscle loss.
• 4:25
  Philip Pape: And when you lose muscle, why do I care about this?
• 4:28
  Philip Pape: Why do I talk about this on the show so much?
• 4:30
  Philip Pape: Why are there arguments between muscle and fat?
• 4:32
  Philip Pape: I don't think they're mutually exclusive or muscle and weight loss.
• 4:36
  Philip Pape: I think they both can happen and help each other.
• 4:38
  Philip Pape: But what happens when you lose muscle?
• 4:40
  Philip Pape: It's not good.
• 4:42
  Philip Pape: First, you know, your metabolism is going to be lower.
• 4:44
  Philip Pape: You're going to have poor metabolic health, not just from the calorie deficit, but because you are losing this very expensive, we call it metabolically active tissue.
• 4:53
  Philip Pape: Muscle requires a lot of energy to maintain.
• 4:56
  Philip Pape: If our body had its druthers, it wouldn't try to keep muscle because it costs so much and you're trying to survive.
• 5:03
  Philip Pape: You're trying to store energy.
• 5:04
  Philip Pape: You're trying to store fat.
• 5:05
  Philip Pape: Your body would much rather you sit on the couch and just store fat and live for another day in terms of uh not starving, but it's definitely not the same as living a good life and thriving.
• 5:15
  Philip Pape: So less muscle simply means a lower daily energy expenditure, you're burning fewer calories, and of course, you know down the line how this can make other things harder.
• 5:24
  Philip Pape: The second thing that happens when you lose muscle is of course your strength drops.
• 5:28
  Philip Pape: Now, this sounds, I guess, contradictory in the sense that building muscle requires building strength.
• 5:33
  Philip Pape: Building strength builds muscle.
• 5:35
  Philip Pape: So obviously, when you lose muscle, you lose strength.
• 5:38
  Philip Pape: And conversely, if you drop strength because you're not training, you're gonna lose muscle.
• 5:42
  Philip Pape: Anyway, the point is this affects everything in your life.
• 5:45
  Philip Pape: It affects not only how you train, but even if you don't care about training, which we should have a talk, it's how you move through your life.
• 5:52
  Philip Pape: You become weaker, you become less capable, you become more fragile.
• 5:56
  Philip Pape: And you know what?
• 5:56
  Philip Pape: Other people now, you have to depend now on other people.
• 5:59
  Philip Pape: Do you want that?
• 6:00
  Philip Pape: Especially as we get older.
• 6:01
  Philip Pape: I'm not talking about 25-year-olds.
• 6:03
  Philip Pape: Okay, if you're a little bit less strong or more strong at 25, it's probably not gonna make as big a difference.
• 6:07
  Philip Pape: But when you're 60, 70, 80, that becomes a massive quality of life concern, a health span concern.
• 6:15
  Philip Pape: And that's so, so critical today when we look at what happens with a decline into age, with age-related disease, with, you know, assisted living and frailty and all of that stuff, right?
• 6:28
  Philip Pape: You just become weaker and more fragile, which is definitely not what you want.
• 6:31
  Philip Pape: And then the third thing that happens when you lose muscle is your insulin sensitivity worsens.
• 6:36
  Philip Pape: And I wanted to point this out specifically because muscle is where your body stores glucose.
• 6:42
  Philip Pape: Muscle loves carbs.
• 6:44
  Philip Pape: This is why we talk about the value of eating carbs on this show versus the narrative out there of about low carb and losing weight and all that.
• 6:52
  Philip Pape: Muscles love carbs.
• 6:53
  Philip Pape: When you lose muscle, you lose that carbohydrate storage capacity.
• 6:57
  Philip Pape: And then what happens?
• 6:57
  Philip Pape: Well, that means more of that glucose from the carb stays in your bloodstream or gets stored as fat, which is why we have to distinguish hey, are you sedentary and not lifting?
• 7:06
  Philip Pape: In which case, eating a lot of carbs is not going to help you, or are you lifting weights?
• 7:11
  Philip Pape: Uh, in which case it's fantastic, and it improves your insulin sensitivity, which improves your metabolic health as well, inflammation, all of that.
• 7:19
  Philip Pape: So the question is not, how do I lose weight?
• 7:22
  Philip Pape: The correct question is, how do I change my body composition?
• 7:27
  Philip Pape: All right, that's really what we're trying to do.
• 7:29
  Philip Pape: Now, there are deeper reasons we're doing this.
• 7:31
  Philip Pape: We're not addressing here.
• 7:32
  Philip Pape: That goes to mindset and identity, and maybe I'll touch on it here and there.
• 7:36
  Philip Pape: But at the end of it, you know, when we think mechanistically, are we trying to lose weight?
• 7:40
  Philip Pape: No, we're trying to improve our body composition because of the other things we just mentioned, especially metabolic health and longevity, which a lot of people are get surprised about when we talk about muscle because they're thinking bodybuilding and strength and lifting.
• 7:54
  Philip Pape: They're not thinking the wonderful health results that that gets you, plus the food side, right?
• 7:59
  Philip Pape: What it allows you to eat in terms of flexibility and enjoyment in life, personally.
• 8:04
  Philip Pape: So, weight loss, here's the thing.
• 8:07
  Philip Pape: So they're not mutually exclusive.
• 8:09
  Philip Pape: Weight loss can improve your body composition, but it can also destroy it depending on if you are also losing muscle.
• 8:15
  Philip Pape: Muscle gain always improves your body composition, just period.
• 8:20
  Philip Pape: So that's the first, I guess, insight may or may not be surprising you, but it's it's interesting to think about that way in that weight loss is neutral at best, because even if you are training, you're lifting weights, you're eating protein and holding on to your muscle while you lose weight so that it's fat loss, that's beneficial.
• 8:41
  Philip Pape: That is beneficial.
• 8:42
  Philip Pape: I'm not gonna say it's not, but it's I'll say neutrally beneficial because it's the best you can do in either direction until you add more muscle.
• 8:49
  Philip Pape: Whereas gaining muscle is a net positive by definition.
• 8:53
  Philip Pape: In other words, it shifts the whole equation up.
• 8:56
  Philip Pape: So let's get into some of the details related to the power of muscle here.
• 9:00
  Philip Pape: Most people think muscle boosts metabolism.
• 9:03
  Philip Pape: I hear it all the time.
• 9:03
  Philip Pape: I know coaches talk about it on social media.
• 9:05
  Philip Pape: They're like, yeah, you build more muscle and you burn more calories.
• 9:08
  Philip Pape: Now that's technically true that muscle tissue burns a little bit more at rest than fat.
• 9:15
  Philip Pape: It burns about six to nine calories per pound per day compared to like two for fat.
• 9:20
  Philip Pape: So usually I tell people, okay, assume an extra five calories per pound of muscle, upwards of maybe 10 at the most, but let's say five.
• 9:28
  Philip Pape: So if you add 10 pounds of muscle, you're burning an extra 50 to 100 calories a day.
• 9:32
  Philip Pape: It's not nothing, but it's not the sole reason we do this at all.
• 9:36
  Philip Pape: It's also not the real story, however, because I did an entire episode of this in the past that you do technically burn a lot more calories when you build more muscle beyond just the resting calorie burn from the tissue.
• 9:49
  Philip Pape: The real metabolic benefit is what muscle does as a cascade into your entire metabolic system.
• 9:57
  Philip Pape: This is what makes it really powerful, why I love it so much.
• 10:00
  Philip Pape: First, muscle increases your carbohydrate storage capacity.
• 10:03
  Philip Pape: We've already mentioned this.
• 10:04
  Philip Pape: Every pound of muscle you add gives you more glycogen storage, which means less glucose floating around in your blood or getting shuttled into fat cells.
• 10:14
  Philip Pape: Second, muscle improves insulin sensitivity.
• 10:16
  Philip Pape: Also, something that I've mentioned.
• 10:18
  Philip Pape: When your muscles are active, when they're growing, they pull that glucose out of your bloodstream more efficiently.
• 10:24
  Philip Pape: That lowers your blood sugar, that reduces your insulin spikes.
• 10:28
  Philip Pape: Now, I don't have any problem with blood sugar spikes.
• 10:30
  Philip Pape: Those are natural when you eat carbs, for example, but it levels everything out more.
• 10:35
  Philip Pape: And then along with a good balanced diet with plenty of fiber and protein, it just makes fat loss easier.
• 10:40
  Philip Pape: It reduces energy, crashes, it makes you not have to worry at all about your blood sugars.
• 10:44
  Philip Pape: You shouldn't have to use a continuous glucose monitor at all.
• 10:47
  Philip Pape: Okay.
• 10:47
  Philip Pape: None of my clients do.
• 10:48
  Philip Pape: I don't.
• 10:49
  Philip Pape: You don't need to if you're lifting weights, if you're living a healthy lifestyle.
• 10:52
  Philip Pape: And I'm not talking about the diabetic population, totally different situation.
• 10:56
  Philip Pape: Third, and this is an interesting one, okay?
• 10:59
  Philip Pape: The act of building and having muscle increases your nutrient partitioning.
• 11:04
  Philip Pape: Now, this is just a fancy phrase.
• 11:06
  Philip Pape: We like to throw around these phrases of saying that your body preferentially sends those nutrients that you consume toward muscle growth instead of fat storage.
• 11:16
  Philip Pape: And the more muscle you have, it feeds into this process.
• 11:19
  Philip Pape: The more likely the calories you eat are used to build and repair tissue rather than get stored as fat.
• 11:26
  Philip Pape: And again, stick around to the end because I have an extra tip that is going to accelerate this process massively in a surprising way that you might not realize.
• 11:37
  Philip Pape: Just stick around.
• 11:38
  Philip Pape: It's pretty exciting.
• 11:39
  Philip Pape: All right.
• 11:40
  Philip Pape: Fourth, muscle allows for higher training volume.
• 11:43
  Philip Pape: So again, this is an upward spiral.
• 11:46
  Philip Pape: The more muscle you have, the stronger you have, the more weight you can lift, and the harder you can push in the gym and the more volume and can lift.
• 11:52
  Philip Pape: And it feeds on itself because obviously you need more volume and you need more stimulus to build the muscle, but you also can do more with the muscle.
• 12:01
  Philip Pape: It also means you recover better, you tolerate more work.
• 12:04
  Philip Pape: We call that work capacity.
• 12:05
  Philip Pape: It's kind of like a form of cardiovascular health from your lifting and your muscle.
• 12:10
  Philip Pape: You know, people who have more muscle tend to be just more athletic in general, even if they're not endurance athletes, and they can go longer sessions in the gym.
• 12:19
  Philip Pape: And that means more calories burned as well through training over time.
• 12:22
  Philip Pape: So it all feeds on itself.
• 12:24
  Philip Pape: All right.
• 12:24
  Philip Pape: The fifth thing here about muscle as a powerhouse is it supports your daily movement.
• 12:30
  Philip Pape: When you're stronger, you tend to move more.
• 12:32
  Philip Pape: You tend to want to move more, you have more energy.
• 12:34
  Philip Pape: You take the stairs and see the elevator.
• 12:36
  Philip Pape: Sometimes you even want to show off, right?
• 12:37
  Philip Pape: You're strong.
• 12:38
  Philip Pape: So you're going to help carry the groceries or you're going to lift the water bottles.
• 12:41
  Philip Pape: You know, I've had 65-year-old female clients who tell me stories about, you know, men in their lives who she offered to carry the big thing of water bottles for them.
• 12:50
  Philip Pape: Oh, don't do that.
• 12:51
  Philip Pape: It's too heavy.
• 12:51
  Philip Pape: She's like, What are you talking about?
• 12:52
  Philip Pape: I can lift more than you.
• 12:53
  Philip Pape: Okay.
• 12:54
  Philip Pape: You know, you carry all your grocery bags in one trip, you know, with all the fingers.
• 12:58
  Philip Pape: You know what I'm saying?
• 12:59
  Philip Pape: Like two bags per finger kind of deal.
• 13:01
  Philip Pape: You can play with your kids or grandkids without getting exhausted.
• 13:03
  Philip Pape: Like these are lifestyle things.
• 13:05
  Philip Pape: These are functional things.
• 13:06
  Philip Pape: Okay.
• 13:07
  Philip Pape: Having more muscle and training, it increases your knee in general.
• 13:11
  Philip Pape: In fact, just the training sessions alone are like a form of steps you're getting that other people aren't getting.
• 13:16
  Philip Pape: And that burns more calories every day as well.
• 13:18
  Philip Pape: Okay.
• 13:19
  Philip Pape: So if you add it all together, muscle doesn't just burn a few extra calories of rest.
• 13:24
  Philip Pape: It transforms how your metabolism functions, really, your whole identity.
• 13:28
  Philip Pape: It makes you more athletic.
• 13:30
  Philip Pape: And this is why people with more muscle can eat more food, they can stay leaner, they have better health markers, even at the same body weight as someone with less muscle.
• 13:40
  Philip Pape: And that's really important.
• 13:41
  Philip Pape: I've had clients who have a lot of muscle and they're technically overweight, and they might actually have a decent amount of body fat that they really need to lose for other reasons.
• 13:49
  Philip Pape: And they might even be kind of sedentary other than their lifting sessions.
• 13:52
  Philip Pape: But because they have all that muscle, all their blood markers are better than another person at that same weight just because of the muscle.
• 13:59
  Philip Pape: And that's why I think it has a net positive and shifts the whole equation up.
• 14:03
  Philip Pape: And then body fat is just this extra thing that you may or may not need to shift to put you into the best health of all.
• 14:11
  Philip Pape: All right.
• 14:12
  Philip Pape: So now let's talk about what happens when you chase weight loss without prioritizing muscle.
• 14:18
  Philip Pape: Now, hopefully, if you're listening to this podcast, you understand the value of resistance training.
• 14:22
  Philip Pape: Although I have seen people come into our Facebook group recently or like, I'm having issues with XYZ.
• 14:28
  Philip Pape: I'm trying to eat more nutrients, I'm trying to eat more fiber.
• 14:31
  Philip Pape: What do I do?
• 14:31
  Philip Pape: I'm like, are you lifting weights?
• 14:33
  Philip Pape: Are you resistance training?
• 14:34
  Philip Pape: No, no, I'm not.
• 14:35
  Philip Pape: Like, okay, let's put that in there and you're gonna see everything else shift for the better.
• 14:41
  Philip Pape: If you don't do it, if you don't resistance training, and sometimes I say lift weights and resistance training as interchangeably, as interchangeable, I really mean resistance training, putting mechanical tension or resistance on your skeletal and muscular system.
• 14:56
  Philip Pape: But for many people to do that beyond a few weeks and months means getting some sort of weights or machines involved to get the loads needed to keep progressing.
• 15:05
  Philip Pape: Even if you're 80 years old, you're still gonna have to get some light dumbbells or something at some point to start progressing.
• 15:11
  Philip Pape: If you don't, what happens?
• 15:13
  Philip Pape: Well, you're gonna end up smaller, softer, weaker, hungrier, metabolically compromised, you're gonna have less energy, you're gonna have fewer food choices, and you're going to have a lower quality of life.
• 15:23
  Philip Pape: How can I paint the picture any clearer?
• 15:25
  Philip Pape: Like the issues we have today with obesity, which come from overconsumption of food, are only compounded by the lack of muscle.
• 15:34
  Philip Pape: And when someone starts to prioritize muscle, it accelerates the process of losing that fat and getting better metabolic health, as I've mentioned multiple times on this episode.
• 15:44
  Philip Pape: But even just the idea of losing a bunch of weight on GLP ones and not lifting weights, or just going on an aggressive diet and doing, you know, carnivore or a vegan diet or keto or whatever, low carb, and then you drop a bunch of weight, you drop 20, 30, 40 pounds, but you're not lifting weights, you're gonna fall into this skinny fat trap.
• 16:03
  Philip Pape: You may not like the term skinny fat, but you know what I mean.
• 16:06
  Philip Pape: You lose weight, the scale drops, everyone congratulates you.
• 16:10
  Philip Pape: Maybe that's what you're looking for.
• 16:11
  Philip Pape: Maybe you congratulate yourself and you're proud of yourself, and that's great.
• 16:14
  Philip Pape: It's good to be proud of an accomplishment that you worked at.
• 16:16
  Philip Pape: But when you look in the mirror, you don't see what you want.
• 16:19
  Philip Pape: You don't see muscle definition, you see loose skin, you see a soft, flabby midsection, you see flat shoulders, you see weak arms, you feel terrible, you're tired all the time.
• 16:28
  Philip Pape: If this is triggering you, then good.
• 16:31
  Philip Pape: Because I want to be there with you in the idea that, you know, we need to kick ourselves in the pan sometimes and take advantage of that self-love we have for ourselves to think about the long term and our metabolic health and our function for the rest of our life.
• 16:48
  Philip Pape: And so these are symptoms that you're not doing that, right?
• 16:50
  Philip Pape: Maybe you're cold, you're irritable, your workouts suck, you can't recover, you're constantly hungry, and you're stuck and feel like you're gonna make it worse because if you eat more, you're gonna gain fat right away because you know your metabolism's kind of suppressed and you don't have muscle and you're not lifting.
• 17:06
  Philip Pape: If you keep dieting, though, you're gonna keep losing muscle and feel worse, and you're gonna have to diet on much lower calories.
• 17:11
  Philip Pape: All right.
• 17:12
  Philip Pape: This is the cycle that I think most people experience with traditional weight loss.
• 17:15
  Philip Pape: Tell me if I'm not correct.
• 17:16
  Philip Pape: Like I would love somebody to reach out to me and say, no, you know what, I lost a bunch of weight and I didn't lift weights and it improved everything and I'm better for it.
• 17:24
  Philip Pape: Okay.
• 17:24
  Philip Pape: And again, I think there are corner cases where people had a lot of weight to lose, and losing the weight improved their health dramatically.
• 17:30
  Philip Pape: I'm not talking to those people.
• 17:31
  Philip Pape: I'm talking about once you've dealt with that and you're kind of in the area most of us float in where, yeah, I have 20 or 30 pounds to lose, maybe 40 pounds to lose.
• 17:39
  Philip Pape: That's where the muscle part of the equation is going to make a huge difference in and of itself.
• 17:44
  Philip Pape: Okay.
• 17:45
  Philip Pape: Now, why does this cycle happen with us?
• 17:47
  Philip Pape: Why does this happen in the world to so many people?
• 17:49
  Philip Pape: I think it's because weight loss encourages the exact behaviors that make fat loss harder later.
• 17:56
  Philip Pape: And that is low calories, sometimes low protein because you're not thinking about protein.
• 18:02
  Philip Pape: You're just trying to drop food out of your diet, no resistance training, lots of cardio.
• 18:07
  Philip Pape: Okay, that's going to make fat loss harder later for sure.
• 18:10
  Philip Pape: If that's a surprise to you, we can get into why.
• 18:12
  Philip Pape: You create a big energy deficit and your body adapts by lowering your metabolism.
• 18:17
  Philip Pape: It increases your hunger hormones, and it's going to start breaking down your muscle for energy.
• 18:22
  Philip Pape: It's got a couple of places to grab energy, your fat cells and your muscle.
• 18:26
  Philip Pape: Well, if you're not training, it doesn't need your muscle.
• 18:28
  Philip Pape: Beautiful, expensive tissue.
• 18:30
  Philip Pape: It can just, when I say break down, it's not like it like destroys your muscle.
• 18:34
  Philip Pape: It's just your muscle starts to get smaller and not rebuild.
• 18:38
  Philip Pape: And instead, that energy gets reserved for your body because you're in a deficit, right?
• 18:42
  Philip Pape: You lose weight, but you also lose that tissue that makes fat loss possible and sustainable.
• 18:48
  Philip Pape: You're not just losing fat, you're losing muscle.
• 18:50
  Philip Pape: The research on this is clear.
• 18:51
  Philip Pape: I've mentioned before the biggest loser study is an example of the extreme where contestants lost hundreds of pounds through extreme calorie restriction, through tons and tons of exercise.
• 19:01
  Philip Pape: It looked like torture.
• 19:03
  Philip Pape: But because they also lost so much lean mass, their metabolisms tanked hundreds and hundreds of calories.
• 19:10
  Philip Pape: And then years later, most had regained the weight, but their metabolisms were still suppressed because they lost a ton of muscle.
• 19:17
  Philip Pape: All right.
• 19:17
  Philip Pape: And because they had done it for so long.
• 19:19
  Philip Pape: There was another study that found people who diet without resistance training lose significant muscle mass, even in moderate deficits.
• 19:27
  Philip Pape: I often talk about 500 calories as a reasonable deficit below which you're not going to lose muscle, but that assumes your resistance training.
• 19:36
  Philip Pape: If you're not resistance training, you're still going to lose some muscle mass.
• 19:40
  Philip Pape: And then when you regain the weight, guess what happens?
• 19:42
  Philip Pape: You it becomes comes back mostly as fat or pretty much entirely as fat.
• 19:47
  Philip Pape: So if you lost 20 pounds and 10 of those are muscle, and you gained the 20 pounds back, all 20 pounds are fat.
• 19:53
  Philip Pape: You've just now lost 10 pounds of muscle.
• 19:55
  Philip Pape: And your body composition ends up worse than before you started.
• 19:58
  Philip Pape: This is why I don't.
• 19:59
  Philip Pape: Recommend aggressive weight loss, or there's a protocol I have for rapid fat loss, very specific terms, unless you're doing everything possible to preserve muscle.
• 20:12
  Philip Pape: High protein intake, you know, and it's high by the standards of average society, but it's not high by reasonable standards for what's necessary based on the evidence.
• 20:23
  Philip Pape: But high protein intake, progressive overload with your resistance training, right?
• 20:28
  Philip Pape: Training with good intensity so that you actually build muscle, plenty of recovery, keeping your deficit moderate.
• 20:35
  Philip Pape: If you're going to lose weight, lose it the right way.
• 20:37
  Philip Pape: Do it that way, right?
• 20:38
  Philip Pape: So you're then it's fat loss.
• 20:40
  Philip Pape: Otherwise, you're setting yourself up for failure.
• 20:42
  Philip Pape: Now, before we continue, I want to share something that has been getting incredible feedback from listeners and viewers.
• 20:48
  Philip Pape: If you're realizing that tracking your training, monitoring your biofeedback, staying consistent is a hard thing to do, right?
• 20:57
  Philip Pape: Because life is so crazy and life is so busy.
• 20:59
  Philip Pape: I built my Fitness Lab app for exactly that type of person because that is me.
• 21:05
  Philip Pape: Okay.
• 21:06
  Philip Pape: I use it myself.
• 21:06
  Philip Pape: Fitness Lab is an AI-powered coaching app trained on all my content, all my philosophy.
• 21:13
  Philip Pape: It gives you personalized, evidence-based guidance on your workouts, your nutrition patterns, your recovery, all through what I call conversational coaching.
• 21:22
  Philip Pape: It feels like you are texting your trainer or your nutrition coach.
• 21:25
  Philip Pape: It is not a workout logger generator.
• 21:28
  Philip Pape: It's not a meal planner.
• 21:29
  Philip Pape: It's not a generic food logger.
• 21:31
  Philip Pape: It is much more intelligent than that.
• 21:33
  Philip Pape: It's kind of like that intelligence layer in between what you log and what you do that will adapt to what's happening.
• 21:39
  Philip Pape: It learns your habits, it looks at your biofeedback, it helps you stay on track, which is great.
• 21:44
  Philip Pape: Now, right now through January 2nd, you can get 20% off with our holiday and new year promotion.
• 21:49
  Philip Pape: Go to witsoweights.com slash app and you can learn about the app before you buy it.
• 21:54
  Philip Pape: So I would check that out.
• 21:55
  Philip Pape: Wits and weights.com slash app.
• 21:57
  Philip Pape: Right now, as we end the year, this is the perfect time to set up your system for 2026 to hit the new year strong.
• 22:04
  Philip Pape: Go to Witsaweights.com slash app.
• 22:06
  Philip Pape: All right, let's get back to why building muscle beats weight loss for body recomp, because that's what we care about, right?
• 22:13
  Philip Pape: Not just weight loss.
• 22:14
  Philip Pape: So one of the biggest myths in fitness is that you can't build muscle and lose fat at the same time.
• 22:20
  Philip Pape: We call that body recomposition.
• 22:22
  Philip Pape: Or that building muscle makes you bulky, especially for the women.
• 22:25
  Philip Pape: Oh, well, I don't want to look like that.
• 22:29
  Philip Pape: I don't want to build muscle and look like that.
• 22:31
  Philip Pape: You're not going to.
• 22:31
  Philip Pape: I'm going to say that right now.
• 22:33
  Philip Pape: Or that focusing on muscle means you have to accept higher body fat.
• 22:37
  Philip Pape: Like you have to do these big surpluses.
• 22:39
  Philip Pape: But that's not true either.
• 22:41
  Philip Pape: All right.
• 22:41
  Philip Pape: So these are all myths that I like to burst on a regular basis or bust, whatever the word is.
• 22:46
  Philip Pape: Because building muscle makes fat loss exponentially easier.
• 22:51
  Philip Pape: Okay.
• 22:52
  Philip Pape: It doesn't make fat loss harder, it makes it easier.
• 22:55
  Philip Pape: And it's going to lead to the ability to do both more easily, the ability to get stronger and leaner, not bulky, and the ability to do it without necessarily going into a big surplus.
• 23:06
  Philip Pape: All right.
• 23:06
  Philip Pape: Here's why.
• 23:07
  Philip Pape: First, muscle increases your training capacity.
• 23:11
  Philip Pape: I alluded to this already, but when you're stronger, you can lift heavier weights, you can do more volume, you could push harder in your training sessions and your workouts.
• 23:19
  Philip Pape: That means more calories burn during training, and higher post-exercise energy expenditure, which is a phenomenon that a lot of you may be familiar with from some of the research on high-intensity interval training.
• 23:31
  Philip Pape: Well, you get the same thing when you're training hard with weights, which is awesome.
• 23:36
  Philip Pape: Okay.
• 23:37
  Philip Pape: But yeah, you can get it from sprinting and hit as well.
• 23:40
  Philip Pape: Second is that muscle improves recovery.
• 23:44
  Philip Pape: Okay, cool, right?
• 23:45
  Philip Pape: Like the training of the muscle is a stimulus that can create fatigue and you need to recover from it.
• 23:50
  Philip Pape: But as you build more muscle, you have more recoverability.
• 23:53
  Philip Pape: You have better nutrient delivery, faster tissue repair, greater resilience to training stress, in fact, to stress in general and mental stress, believe it or not.
• 24:03
  Philip Pape: You have uh a better uh mindset when it comes to attacking problems in life.
• 24:09
  Philip Pape: You know how to deal with hardship a little better, and this actually improves your sanity just a bit too, right?
• 24:14
  Philip Pape: And offset some of the other stress in our life.
• 24:17
  Philip Pape: And so you can train more frequently without over-training, the more the better you get at it.
• 24:22
  Philip Pape: Third is that muscle preserves your metabolism during fat loss, which is should be obvious, but a lot of people just don't realize this.
• 24:28
  Philip Pape: Or I shouldn't say it should be obvious.
• 24:30
  Philip Pape: Obviously, you're trying to preserve muscle during fat loss, but people don't realize that when you diet and don't have the muscle, your metabolic rate is probably dropping a little faster, not just from the calorie deficit, but because you're losing lean mass.
• 24:43
  Philip Pape: Whereas when you hold on to the muscle or you've built more muscle, you tend to have a higher metabolic rate during the fat loss phase relative to what it would have been, not to other people, but to your own baseline.
• 24:55
  Philip Pape: And I've seen this in my own life over the last five years.
• 24:57
  Philip Pape: Every time I've gone through a bulking cycle and built more muscle, it's been a little bit easier to do a dieting phase.
• 25:03
  Philip Pape: Is this universal?
• 25:05
  Philip Pape: I don't know that that's necessarily true, but on average, that is true.
• 25:08
  Philip Pape: The fourth thing here is that muscle makes it easier to stay consistent.
• 25:12
  Philip Pape: Why is that?
• 25:13
  Philip Pape: Well, when you're strong, when your training is progressing, you feel great, you have energy, you want to keep going, you're getting PRs.
• 25:20
  Philip Pape: These are mentally intrinsically rewarding.
• 25:23
  Philip Pape: Intrinsic motivation is so far more powerful than anything else, than willpower, discipline, whatever.
• 25:28
  Philip Pape: The word discipline maybe is the outcome of having this kind of motivation, but it's definitely different than willpower.
• 25:34
  Philip Pape: You don't need it.
• 25:35
  Philip Pape: You just need to get progress from your actions, and that will motivate you.
• 25:40
  Philip Pape: Fifth, muscle allows you to eat more food.
• 25:43
  Philip Pape: Come on, we love this.
• 25:44
  Philip Pape: I should have led with this one, guys.
• 25:45
  Philip Pape: You know, because of the metabolic benefits we discussed earlier, better insulin sensitivity, higher nutrient partitioning, greater training capacity.
• 25:52
  Philip Pape: You can maintain or lose fat generally on higher calories when you have more muscle, you eat more carbs, you just eat more food in general and more of the types of food you want to eat.
• 26:01
  Philip Pape: You know, very flexible diet.
• 26:02
  Philip Pape: So if I gave you a concrete example with numbers, you have two people and they both weigh 150 pounds.
• 26:09
  Philip Pape: Person A has 100 pounds of lean mass, and person B has 120 pounds of lean mass.
• 26:17
  Philip Pape: So person B has gained 20 more pounds of muscle through their training.
• 26:20
  Philip Pape: Person B, the person with more lean mass, can eat probably three to 500 calories more per day and maintain the same body fat percentage as person A because they have more muscle driving their metabolism.
• 26:32
  Philip Pape: And the fact that they have more lean mass at the same weight also means they have less fat mass, right?
• 26:37
  Philip Pape: So when both people decide to lose fat, person B can create a deficit on higher calories and can eat more.
• 26:43
  Philip Pape: Person A might have to drop further to see the same rate of fat loss.
• 26:47
  Philip Pape: And you tell me who's gonna be more successful long term.
• 26:50
  Philip Pape: So it just makes it easier, which is also why I have I have episodes coming up, or at least one episode coming up as we get to the new year about why I think building muscle first might be the way to go for a lot of you.
• 27:00
  Philip Pape: So stay tuned for that.
• 27:02
  Philip Pape: Make sure you're following the podcast to get that episode.
• 27:04
  Philip Pape: But who's gonna be more successful?
• 27:05
  Philip Pape: Who's gonna feel better during the process of fat loss itself?
• 27:08
  Philip Pape: And then who's gonna maintain the results after the diet ends?
• 27:12
  Philip Pape: I don't even have to say who it is, right?
• 27:15
  Philip Pape: So if you do want easier fat loss, for many of you, it is gonna be to build muscle first.
• 27:19
  Philip Pape: And uh remember, I've got a surprising daily habit for you at the end of this episode that is going to speed up muscle growth without any extra training.
• 27:28
  Philip Pape: All right, let's keep going.
• 27:29
  Philip Pape: I'm packing a lot into this episode.
• 27:31
  Philip Pape: I want to talk about body recomp specifically.
• 27:34
  Philip Pape: Body recomp is the process of simultaneously gaining muscle and losing fat.
• 27:40
  Philip Pape: It is what some would call the holy grail of physique development because you are improving body composition without changing scale weight.
• 27:48
  Philip Pape: And why that's a holy grail is because people say, okay, I don't need to diet, which nobody likes dieting, and I don't need to gain a bunch of weight that comes along with some fat.
• 27:56
  Philip Pape: I don't want to do that either.
• 27:58
  Philip Pape: I want the sweet spot in the middle.
• 28:00
  Philip Pape: Most people I think are doing it wrong though, okay?
• 28:02
  Philip Pape: They usually focus on losing fat and hope that the muscle follows when they're thinking body recomp.
• 28:10
  Philip Pape: They still have in the back of their mind, like, okay, but I want to lose fat as part of this process.
• 28:13
  Philip Pape: And I think that's backward.
• 28:14
  Philip Pape: I think effective recomp starts with biasing toward muscle building.
• 28:20
  Philip Pape: And, you know, as you're developing that muscle, the fat loss becomes a natural byproduct of all the things we just talked about: the training capacity, better metabolism, nutrient partitioning, muscle protein synthesis, all of that.
• 28:34
  Philip Pape: And the research does support this, where even trained lifters, even trained lifters, yes, can gain muscle at maintenance calories if they're eating enough protein and following progressive overload.
• 28:45
  Philip Pape: And we know this because there are some very jacked, very strong people out there who are big proponents of not having to go into big surpluses.
• 28:53
  Philip Pape: Okay.
• 28:53
  Philip Pape: There is a certain level of surplus that will speed up the process.
• 28:57
  Philip Pape: But if you're looking for a fairly quick process without the extra fat gain, body recomp is totally possible, but it has to be biased toward building muscle, which means biased toward maintenance or slightly above maintenance rather than a slight deficit.
• 29:12
  Philip Pape: Some people will argue with me.
• 29:13
  Philip Pape: Some people say, look, if your goal is really to lose fat and body body recomp is the side effect, then you focus on fat loss.
• 29:20
  Philip Pape: True, true.
• 29:20
  Philip Pape: But if your goal is body recomp itself, including the muscle gain and you want to ensure muscle gain, I think you need those resources coming in.
• 29:28
  Philip Pape: You don't need a big surplus.
• 29:30
  Philip Pape: You, especially if you're beginners, uh a beginner or you're detrained, you're gonna respond really well to that stimulus from the training.
• 29:37
  Philip Pape: And then if you are more of an advanced trainee, it's just a matter of making sure you've got enough of that fuel coming in, you know, at least maintenance or very slight surplus, which is what I call aggressive maintenance.
• 29:49
  Philip Pape: Some people call it lean gaining, but I'm talking about very slight, like 50 to 100 calories at most, maximum, over your current maintenance, where you're not trying to bulk, you're not trying to cut, you're optimizing for, we'll say the highest quality muscle gain with the lowest possible fat gain within that time span so that you don't need to cut off the fat.
• 30:10
  Philip Pape: If you want faster muscle gain, yeah, ramp up that surplus a bit more, get a little fat for the ride, and then cut it off later.
• 30:17
  Philip Pape: But not everybody wants to do that.
• 30:18
  Philip Pape: So the key variables with all of this, kind of to tie it in a bow, are going to be that high protein intake, 0.7 to 1 grams per pound of body weight, progressive resistance training, right?
• 30:29
  Philip Pape: Focused on the big compound movements and progressing in weight reps and/or sets over time, adequate recovery, sleep stress management, deloads if you need them, listening to your body and your fatigue, calorie intake that is at or slightly above maintenance, enough to fuel training and recovery, but not so much that you are gonna have excess fat gain.
• 30:52
  Philip Pape: And that is gonna be the sweet spot for body composition, even when the scale doesn't move.
• 30:57
  Philip Pape: And maybe the scale drifts up slightly, but it's gonna be so slow it shouldn't matter.
• 31:00
  Philip Pape: And it's probably coming because you're gaining muscle.
• 31:03
  Philip Pape: What you should see is that you lose inches around your waist, your clothes fit better.
• 31:07
  Philip Pape: You see muscle definition, you feel stronger, you feel more capable.
• 31:10
  Philip Pape: And then six months later, because this doesn't happen overnight, six months is not that long, guys, with the years and years you've been spinning your wheels.
• 31:18
  Philip Pape: When someone asks you if you lost weight, you can say, Hey, you know what?
• 31:21
  Philip Pape: I didn't.
• 31:21
  Philip Pape: I built muscle and I got leaner, right?
• 31:24
  Philip Pape: That's that's kind of a cool thing to be able to say.
• 31:26
  Philip Pape: Like, I don't want to.
• 31:27
  Philip Pape: People might see it as you lost weight because you look better.
• 31:30
  Philip Pape: And that's what people are expecting, but that's not really what happened, right?
• 31:34
  Philip Pape: You actually built muscle, you got leaner.
• 31:36
  Philip Pape: Um, and that's what body recomp is.
• 31:38
  Philip Pape: So, what should you actually do if you want to prioritize muscle for body recomp?
• 31:44
  Philip Pape: Number one, we mentioned protein.
• 31:47
  Philip Pape: I would achieve this by prioritizing protein in every meal.
• 31:51
  Philip Pape: If you can have protein in every meal, that's gonna be a great start because many of you aren't even doing that.
• 31:55
  Philip Pape: And if you're eating three, four, maybe five times a day, probably three or four, then it's gonna be a great start to getting the muscle or getting the protein that you need.
• 32:03
  Philip Pape: The second thing is related to your training program.
• 32:05
  Philip Pape: I'm gonna suggest that three days a week is plenty for a beginner.
• 32:08
  Philip Pape: For those of you who are a little bit more advanced, four days is usually plenty as well.
• 32:12
  Philip Pape: A lot of you like to train five days, that's fine.
• 32:14
  Philip Pape: But getting your squats, your deads, your presses, maybe some form uh uh, you know, some back movements in there for sure, forms of rows, pull-ups.
• 32:22
  Philip Pape: I don't care if you use barbells.
• 32:24
  Philip Pape: Machines are fine too.
• 32:25
  Philip Pape: You know, I love barbells, of course, because of the progressive objective nature of them, but machines can be very effective as well.
• 32:31
  Philip Pape: As long as you're tracking and aiming to add weight or reps every week.
• 32:34
  Philip Pape: And again, my app, Fitness Lab, can help you do that.
• 32:37
  Philip Pape: It can write you a program or it can help assess your current program.
• 32:40
  Philip Pape: Step three is about the eating side of it.
• 32:43
  Philip Pape: You know, if you're new to training or you're carrying extra body fat, you can eat it maintenance and still build muscle while losing fat, as I mentioned.
• 32:50
  Philip Pape: Um, tracking your food, weighing and measuring your food, identifying how many calories you're actually eating and comparing that to your weight is gonna give you a good idea.
• 32:57
  Philip Pape: Are you roughly where you need to be?
• 32:59
  Philip Pape: Or are you actually losing weight?
• 33:00
  Philip Pape: You don't want to be, because that means you're not resourced enough to build the muscle, and we need to bring those calories up, you know, or do you want to make it where you go into a very slight surplus and really um ramp up that muscle growth without the fat gain?
• 33:13
  Philip Pape: And then, of course, recovery.
• 33:15
  Philip Pape: I mean, we we we can't emphasize enough the power of sleep, of having sufficient sleep, of managing your stress, of managing your fatigue.
• 33:25
  Philip Pape: If your low back is constantly fatigued from your lifting, you've got to look at something.
• 33:29
  Philip Pape: It could be your form, it could be your recovery, it could be your food.
• 33:32
  Philip Pape: We don't want to add to that fatigue.
• 33:33
  Philip Pape: We want to manage it well.
• 33:35
  Philip Pape: And of course, you're gonna track all the right things when it comes to body comp, not just your scale weight.
• 33:40
  Philip Pape: So measurements, photos, strength progression, how your clothes fit, and biofeedback as well.
• 33:46
  Philip Pape: And ultimately, you just want to be patient and strategic about this.
• 33:50
  Philip Pape: Okay.
• 33:50
  Philip Pape: Building muscle takes time.
• 33:52
  Philip Pape: I usually suggest something like six to nine months of building, where if you're gaining a half to a pound of muscle per month, you're probably doing great.
• 34:00
  Philip Pape: I know a lot of you are like, I'm gonna gain 10 pounds in the next six months.
• 34:03
  Philip Pape: As a beginner, maybe over a year, you know, six to 12 pounds of muscle is totally reasonable.
• 34:08
  Philip Pape: You know, men and women, obviously, men can probably gain more absolute uh quantities of muscle because of their weight, but men and women can gain muscle at the same rate, percentage-wise.
• 34:19
  Philip Pape: Just keep that in mind.
• 34:20
  Philip Pape: So if you're a large larger woman, I don't mean large, like big or heavy, I just mean scale weight-wise, you know, let's say you're 160-pound woman versus 120-pound woman, um, you're gonna gain the same rate of muscle as 160-pound man.
• 34:33
  Philip Pape: That's my point.
• 34:33
  Philip Pape: Okay.
• 34:34
  Philip Pape: And that's gonna completely transform your physique.
• 34:37
  Philip Pape: And then, you know, being strategic about all of this and planning it out is gonna really serve you well.
• 34:42
  Philip Pape: Listening to this podcast, you'll get a lot of tips on how to do that.
• 34:45
  Philip Pape: All right.
• 34:46
  Philip Pape: So we talked a lot about physique and performance, but let's just take a quick pit stop here to talk about health and longevity, because muscle mass is one of the strongest predictors of long-term health outcomes.
• 35:00
  Philip Pape: Sarcopenia, which is the loss of muscle mass and muscle function with age, is a stronger predictor of mortality than obesity.
• 35:11
  Philip Pape: People with higher muscle mass have lower risk of cardiovascular disease, have better glucose metabolism and insulin sensitivity, they have stronger bones and lower risk of osteoporosis, greater functional independence as we get older, what we talked about before, lower risk of falls, fractures, frailty, one of the leading causes of death, not proximal causes, but it, or what's the word I'm looking for?
• 35:36
  Philip Pape: It leads to the chain of hospitalization and polypharmacy that ultimately leads in death for many.
• 35:43
  Philip Pape: It's sad to say, but it's true.
• 35:45
  Philip Pape: And of course, having more muscle is better recovery as well from illness and injury.
• 35:49
  Philip Pape: You know, people who are stronger tend to get through sickness faster.
• 35:52
  Philip Pape: You know, they can recover faster from injuries, recover faster from surgeries.
• 35:55
  Philip Pape: So muscle is like that metabolic retirement plan.
• 35:58
  Philip Pape: I think I've used this analogy before.
• 36:00
  Philip Pape: You know, it's it's like those deposits in the bank that compound over time.
• 36:03
  Philip Pape: So it's never too late to start.
• 36:05
  Philip Pape: Start right now.
• 36:06
  Philip Pape: You're not just going to improve how you look.
• 36:07
  Philip Pape: I know a lot of you want to chase that, but really you're setting yourself up for decades of better health, more independence, better quality of life.
• 36:15
  Philip Pape: Especially important for those of us who are already over 40.
• 36:17
  Philip Pape: I'm I'm 45.
• 36:18
  Philip Pape: I started doing this properly, properly as in lifting weights, eating in a flexible way to support my health and training when I was 40, like around turning.
• 36:29
  Philip Pape: I was 39 going on 40.
• 36:30
  Philip Pape: So if you're over 40, and if you build your muscle now in your 40s, your 50s, your 60s, wherever you are, you're gonna create that massive buffer against age-related decline that everyone else experiences.
• 36:41
  Philip Pape: You're gonna be in the elite small percentage of people who others will not have to, or who you who will not have to depend on others when you get when you're 70 years old.
• 36:51
  Philip Pape: You know, maybe when you're 95 or 100, you have to depend on some people for a few things, but you're gonna be among the small percentage with who turn it around, who start to build the muscle back, who avoid the muscle loss, who is going to make the fat loss easier if that's what you want.
• 37:06
  Philip Pape: And you're gonna be far off than your peers at that age.
• 37:10
  Philip Pape: And that's where we want to be.
• 37:11
  Philip Pape: That's why I'm so passionate about this topic.
• 37:13
  Philip Pape: I see it with parents and grandparents.
• 37:15
  Philip Pape: I see it with others who are in the older population, the decline happening with those over here versus those who get into lifting weights and resistance training, even when they're already 70 and they've never done it before, and all of a sudden things start to turn around.
• 37:27
  Philip Pape: It's it's a beautiful thing to see because muscle's not just about aesthetics, is it?
• 37:31
  Philip Pape: Right?
• 37:31
  Philip Pape: It's living that strong, capable, independent life for as long as possible.
• 37:36
  Philip Pape: So here's what we've covered today the scale doesn't measure what matters.
• 37:40
  Philip Pape: Muscle drives your metabolism.
• 37:42
  Philip Pape: Weight loss without muscle is going to backfire, and building muscle makes fat loss exponentially easier.
• 37:47
  Philip Pape: If you take nothing else from this episode, remember this stop chasing weight loss and start building muscle.
• 37:54
  Philip Pape: That is a foundation everything else builds from.
• 37:56
  Philip Pape: Now, before we wrap up, here's the strategy I promised earlier the daily habit that accelerates muscle growth without adding anything else to your training.
• 38:06
  Philip Pape: Before I do, let me tell you about something that can help you implement everything we just discussed.
• 38:11
  Philip Pape: If you're ready to build muscle the right way, if you want personalized coaching that adapts to your schedule, your preferences, and your goals, but without the price of hiring a coach, check out Fitness Lab.
• 38:21
  Philip Pape: It's my AI-powered coaching app.
• 38:23
  Philip Pape: It gives you workout guidance.
• 38:25
  Philip Pape: It can actually write your program for you and adjust based on your biofeedback, insight on your nutrition, feedback on your meals, recovery strategies, movement, sleep, all of it, all through a conversational interface that is really smart, that learns from you and it gets smarter over time.
• 38:42
  Philip Pape: Right now, through January 2nd, you're getting 20% off of their holiday new year promotion.
• 38:46
  Philip Pape: Go to witsandweights.com slash app to learn more, take the two-minute quiz, see if it's right for you before you even buy.
• 38:52
  Philip Pape: Go to wits and weights.com slash app.
• 38:55
  Philip Pape: All right.
• 38:55
  Philip Pape: Here is that muscle building accelerator I promised.
• 38:58
  Philip Pape: Wanna know one of the fastest ways to speed up muscle growth?
• 39:03
  Philip Pape: Add 30 minutes of walking per day.
• 39:06
  Philip Pape: Walking doesn't build muscle directly, obviously, but it enhances recovery, which is where muscle growth happens.
• 39:14
  Philip Pape: Daily walking increases blood flow to your muscles, it clears metabolic waste products, it reduces your cortisol levels, it improves sleep quality.
• 39:23
  Philip Pape: All of these factors amplify your body's response to training.
• 39:27
  Philip Pape: Studies show that people who walk eight to 10,000 steps a day build muscle faster than those who don't, even with identical training programs.
• 39:36
  Philip Pape: The best part is that walking does not interfere with recovery the way that some higher intense forms of cardio do.
• 39:44
  Philip Pape: It is low impact, it's low stress, and it actually speeds up the repair process.
• 39:50
  Philip Pape: So my recommendation is to add a 30 minute walk after lunch or dinner.
• 39:55
  Philip Pape: It will aid you in your digestion, it's going to lower your cortisol, it's going to improve your blood.
• 39:59
  Philip Pape: Sugars, it's gonna improve your sleep onset if done after dinner, and it will set you up for better recovery overnight.
• 40:05
  Philip Pape: So I started walking a lot more back in 2021 after I had back surgery, and I noticed how much it helped with my strength training and my recovery and my overall movement.
• 40:15
  Philip Pape: It also made fat loss easier and eating easier because it improved, increased my expenditure without changing anything else.
• 40:21
  Philip Pape: It helped my joints feel better, it helped my sleep, and of course, it improved body composition.
• 40:26
  Philip Pape: So if you're training really hard but not recovering as well as you'd like, and your steps aren't up there, or you're not taking those daily walks, add the daily walk.
• 40:34
  Philip Pape: If you're already walking a lot, the other hack I have for you is to stand up and walk around for two minutes every 30 minutes during the day.
• 40:41
  Philip Pape: These are the simplest interventions that actually work without adding anything more to your training.
• 40:48
  Philip Pape: All right, until next time.
• 40:49
  Philip Pape: Keep using your wits, lifting those weights.
• 40:51
  Philip Pape: And remember the scale doesn't measure transformation, but muscle does.
• 40:55
  Philip Pape: This is Philip Pape, and I'll talk to you next time.
• 40:58
  Philip Pape: Beer on Wits and Weights.