Latest / Wits & Weights | Strength & Fat Loss Over 40 / "I'm in a Calorie Deficit and Can't Lose Weight" Is NEVER True (What's Really Happening) | Ep 416

Transcript

"I'm in a Calorie Deficit and Can't Lose Weight" Is NEVER True (What's Really Happening) | Ep 416 · Wits & Weights | Strength & Fat Loss Over 40

• 0:02
  Philip Pape: You cannot be in a true calorie deficit and still fail to lose body fat over time.
• 0:07
  Philip Pape: It's physiologically impossible.
• 0:09
  Philip Pape: So if you're convinced you're eating less than you're burning and nothing's happening, one of three things is going on.
• 0:15
  Philip Pape: Either you're not actually in the deficit you think you are, you are losing fat but the scale's hiding it, or your deficit disappeared because your body adapted.
• 0:25
  Philip Pape: Today we're identifying exactly which bucket you're in, why it matters, and the specific fix for your situation.
• 0:32
  Philip Pape: Welcome to Wits and Weights, the show that helps you build a strong, healthy physique using evidence, engineering, and efficiency.
• 0:48
  Philip Pape: I'm your host, certified nutrition coach Philip Pape, and today we're tackling one of those very frustrating statements that I hear often.
• 0:56
  Philip Pape: Quote, I am in a calorie deficit, but I'm not losing weight.
• 1:00
  Philip Pape: This phrase gets thrown around all the time on social media, and it creates confusion because on the surface, it seems to defy basic physics.
• 1:09
  Philip Pape: But what is actually true is that you cannot maintain a genuine calorie deficit and not lose fat.
• 1:17
  Philip Pape: It's impossible.
• 1:18
  Philip Pape: And the problem isn't that thermodynamics suddenly stops working.
• 1:23
  Philip Pape: It's that somewhere in the chain from what you think you're eating to what your body is doing, there is a disconnect.
• 1:30
  Philip Pape: When someone tells me they're in a deficit but not losing weight, I approach it like a detective.
• 1:35
  Philip Pape: I want to debug the system for you.
• 1:37
  Philip Pape: I want to trace the inputs.
• 1:38
  Philip Pape: I want to look at the outputs.
• 1:39
  Philip Pape: I want to find where the data doesn't match reality because that's going to give you the power you need to push through and to break through that issue.
• 1:47
  Philip Pape: And then the fix becomes obvious.
• 1:50
  Philip Pape: So today we're going to systematically work through each scenario so you can identify yours and then exactly what to do about it.
• 1:56
  Philip Pape: And I want you to stick around to the end because I'm going to show you a simple weekly calorie strategy that will let you enjoy your weekends and make fat loss so much easier.
• 2:06
  Philip Pape: So again, I'll share that at the end of the episode.
• 2:08
  Philip Pape: All right, when someone says that I'm in a calorie deficit and not losing weight, they're making a claim about energy balance.
• 2:15
  Philip Pape: And I love how people on social media they make assumptions or they immediately go to the gaslighting, like, well, you're not tracking your food and you're not actually eating the calories you think you're eating.
• 2:25
  Philip Pape: And I'm gonna give you more credit than that.
• 2:26
  Philip Pape: I'm gonna give you credit as an intelligent person who has thought through this at least to some extent.
• 2:31
  Philip Pape: Maybe you've listened to this show, maybe you haven't, but you know that there's more nuance to any of these things.
• 2:37
  Philip Pape: And after working with hundreds of people stuck at this kind of plateau, I found that every single case seems to fall into one of three buckets.
• 2:45
  Philip Pape: Just three buckets.
• 2:47
  Philip Pape: Okay, I'm gonna simplify this for you today.
• 2:49
  Philip Pape: And they are mutually exclusive.
• 2:50
  Philip Pape: So you're probably in one of them, not multiple.
• 2:53
  Philip Pape: And even if there is some overlap, focusing on the biggest one for you right now is probably gonna help you get unstuck.
• 2:59
  Philip Pape: So bucket one, and we're gonna go into these in detail, but just at a high level, bucket one is that the claimed deficit doesn't actually exist, right?
• 3:07
  Philip Pape: The numbers you think you real aren't think are real are not matching reality.
• 3:11
  Philip Pape: And it's not about, again, saying that it's your fault.
• 3:14
  Philip Pape: It's more of an accuracy issue that we're gonna get into.
• 3:17
  Philip Pape: Bucket two is that the deficit is real and fat loss is happening, but you may not think it's happening.
• 3:23
  Philip Pape: It may be masked by other things.
• 3:24
  Philip Pape: And then bucket three is that you were in a deficit, but the deficit has disappeared because you've adapted and your expenditure has reduced to match your intake.
• 3:34
  Philip Pape: And that's it.
• 3:34
  Philip Pape: Those are the three buckets.
• 3:36
  Philip Pape: But obviously, there's a lot of detail under the surface.
• 3:38
  Philip Pape: So everyone who says I'm in a deficit but not losing weight is probably in one of these.
• 3:42
  Philip Pape: No one person is maintaining a true deficit long term without losing fat.
• 3:48
  Philip Pape: That's impossible.
• 3:48
  Philip Pape: And that's empowering as well.
• 3:51
  Philip Pape: So that's a good thing to know.
• 3:53
  Philip Pape: And you know what?
• 3:54
  Philip Pape: Let's just before I continue, the extreme of this would be if you just stopped eating altogether, where you're absolutely in a deficit and you starve yourself, you would eventually die.
• 4:03
  Philip Pape: Now, I hate to I hate to use an extreme like that, but it's it's evidence, I guess, uh that that thermodynamics exists between where you are now and where the extreme is, and we're trying to find that middle ground that actually works for you.
• 4:16
  Philip Pape: So let's work through each of the three buckets, and we're gonna start with the most common one where probably 70 to 80% of people land.
• 4:23
  Philip Pape: And this is basically that you think you're in a deficit and you're just not in a deficit.
• 4:29
  Philip Pape: And it's not about your willpower, you're not trying hard enough.
• 4:34
  Philip Pape: It's really measurement precision, and it's also a lot of human psychology around food tracking.
• 4:41
  Philip Pape: The average person is going to underestimate their calorie intake a lot, 20 to 40%.
• 4:46
  Philip Pape: And I a long time ago, I learned that even nutrition experts, nutritionists, dietitians, people who've tracked for a long time, if they were to just estimate on their own, they would still be off by 20%, even with lots and lots of training.
• 4:59
  Philip Pape: And that's well documented in the research.
• 5:01
  Philip Pape: It's not that you're intentionally lying to yourself, it's just the cumulative effect of tracking errors that add up and just the human's brain's inability to estimate this stuff.
• 5:12
  Philip Pape: So even if you are logging calories, but you're not, say, weighing your food, or you know, if you're estimating, or you are using, let's say, cups and teaspoons and tablespoons instead of grams, you are logging what you think you're eating, but your intake is higher.
• 5:31
  Philip Pape: And there's a lot of ways that this happens.
• 5:32
  Philip Pape: Even when you're tracking with something like macrofactor, chronometer, whatever, you know, if you don't weigh the peanut butter, but instead you use a spoon and you call it a tablespoon, but it ends up being two tablespoons, right?
• 5:43
  Philip Pape: Or if you put oil in the pan to hook up some vegetables and you eyeball it, or here's a mistake I see people make the spray oil will say zero calories because it falls under the threshold for rounding errors.
• 5:55
  Philip Pape: But if you use enough of it, you actually have 20, 30, 40 calories.
• 5:59
  Philip Pape: Or you graze or you eat handfuls of this or that throughout the day, handful of almonds here, a bite of your kid's plate over here, or you forgot the third glass of wine.
• 6:09
  Philip Pape: You get what I'm saying, right?
• 6:11
  Philip Pape: And this is not, again, this is not that we're doing it intentionally.
• 6:13
  Philip Pape: This is something we all do, and it's easy to get wrapped up in it.
• 6:16
  Philip Pape: And then there's an error that accumulates.
• 6:18
  Philip Pape: And if it's like a 50 calorie day error, that's not a big deal.
• 6:22
  Philip Pape: But if it's five or six hundred calories, which I have seen a lot with folks, here's another example.
• 6:28
  Philip Pape: You do log, you do weigh, but the entry that you select in your food app is not the right entry.
• 6:33
  Philip Pape: You selected, let's say, a turkey burrito instead of a chorizo burrito.
• 6:38
  Philip Pape: And maybe that's too far off, but something close to that where there's a lot more fat in what you're actually eating than what you actually than what you logged.
• 6:45
  Philip Pape: Or you do a raw versus cooked version or what have you.
• 6:48
  Philip Pape: And I see this all the time.
• 6:49
  Philip Pape: And then what happens is you cut is you copy and paste and you just keep propounding the error over time.
• 6:55
  Philip Pape: And so you might be off by a few thousand calories for the week, right?
• 6:59
  Philip Pape: And a fat, a fat's worth of energy, a pound of fat's worth of energy is 3,500 calories.
• 7:04
  Philip Pape: So if you're off by, you know, half of that for the week, that's a half pound that you're off, where if you thought you were at maintenance, you're actually gaining a half pound.
• 7:12
  Philip Pape: Or if you thought you were in a half pound deficit, you're just maintaining.
• 7:15
  Philip Pape: So it can easily happen to any of us, to the best of us.
• 7:18
  Philip Pape: Okay.
• 7:19
  Philip Pape: And if you add in the fact that most people also overestimate how much how many calories are burning.
• 7:26
  Philip Pape: And if they're not using something like Macrofactor, they're just thinking they're they're using estimators or calculators, or they think they burn more than they are.
• 7:36
  Philip Pape: And maybe you eat back some of those calories, even, which is an awful thing to do.
• 7:40
  Philip Pape: I would never recommend that.
• 7:41
  Philip Pape: But a lot of people are in that mindset of like, oh, I just burned 500 calories according to the treadmill machine in the gym.
• 7:46
  Philip Pape: And so I can eat that 500 calories, but you're actually compensating for a lot of that activity and not burning nearly as much as it says.
• 7:54
  Philip Pape: At the end of the day, what matters is your total calories for the day, right?
• 7:57
  Philip Pape: Not all these little activity things that you have going on.
• 7:59
  Philip Pape: And then the airs, the air adds up on that side as well.
• 8:02
  Philip Pape: And I know some apps, I think like MyFitnessPanel and others, actually allow you to eat back your activity, which is, again, a terrible, terrible precedent because they shouldn't be linked.
• 8:10
  Philip Pape: The two things shouldn't have anything to do with each other.
• 8:13
  Philip Pape: I do get questions all the time, like, does my app use activity to calculate your calories?
• 8:18
  Philip Pape: No, because you don't want it to.
• 8:19
  Philip Pape: All you want to do is say, hey, am I gaining weight or am I losing weight over time?
• 8:23
  Philip Pape: Or fat, I should say, but scale weight is the easiest way to tell.
• 8:27
  Philip Pape: Am I gaining or losing over time?
• 8:29
  Philip Pape: If so, I'm either in a surplus or deficit, and now we could adjust how much we eat accordingly.
• 8:33
  Philip Pape: So, how do you know if you're in bucket one?
• 8:35
  Philip Pape: Well, you're gonna have to audit your tracking and think about the things I've just mentioned today.
• 8:40
  Philip Pape: Are you weighing and measuring everything?
• 8:41
  Philip Pape: I would do that.
• 8:42
  Philip Pape: Weigh and measure everything with grams on a scale.
• 8:45
  Philip Pape: Don't use ounces, don't use tablespoons, don't use cups, just use a food scale, log everything, including if it's a spray oil, condiments, every bite that goes in your mouth.
• 8:57
  Philip Pape: And what's what's nice about this is sometimes it will get you into an awareness mode where, well, let's say you have kids and you tend to graze and you're thinking, I need to log this, you're gonna start either not eating those extra things because you really realize you don't need them, or you'll put them in a little bowl and you'll log them and then you'll start controlling your portions as well.
• 9:13
  Philip Pape: Same thing, you know, if you have alcohol, if you have just random snacks.
• 9:17
  Philip Pape: So that's the first thing is to really audit and start weighing and measuring everything if you're not already doing that.
• 9:22
  Philip Pape: I'm also as part of that audit as you weigh and measure and then log it, is double check the entries in your food app to make sure it passes the sniff test.
• 9:32
  Philip Pape: You know, reach out, use AI, use my app, go to our our Facebook group and just ask the question like, does this make sense?
• 9:39
  Philip Pape: So that's the first thing is really just auditing all of that for at least seven days, if not two weeks.
• 9:44
  Philip Pape: The second thing is don't use exercise calories from wearables at all as part of this whole calculation.
• 9:49
  Philip Pape: Okay, first of all, the error is tremendously large, up to 80 or 90%.
• 9:53
  Philip Pape: So it's not even trustworthy data, but also it's not something you eat back anyway, and it shouldn't be part of that connection.
• 10:00
  Philip Pape: The third thing is I want you to be tracking your weight every day and looking at the average over time.
• 10:06
  Philip Pape: I like a 20-day moving average, which takes three weeks to get to, but even after a week or two, if you are truly not actually dropping body fat or dropping even scale weight over time, okay, not the day-to-day.
• 10:20
  Philip Pape: It's gonna go up and down a lot, but over time, then you aren't in a deficit.
• 10:25
  Philip Pape: That's just the fact of it.
• 10:26
  Philip Pape: That's more like your maintenance.
• 10:27
  Philip Pape: Okay.
• 10:28
  Philip Pape: So the fix for bucket one is straightforward.
• 10:30
  Philip Pape: Tighten your tracking precision, stop guessing things, guessing, double check, you know, what you're logging, be honest about what you put in your mouth and track everything.
• 10:38
  Philip Pape: Because if you if you don't track certain things, that's the problem right there.
• 10:41
  Philip Pape: And a lot of you do that, I know, uh, including your weekends, including your alcohol, all this stuff.
• 10:46
  Philip Pape: And just double check it all.
• 10:48
  Philip Pape: And if you find out that, hey, I've been tracking 1800 calories a day on average, and now I double checked everything, and it's guess what?
• 10:55
  Philip Pape: It's still 1800 a day on average, then that's not your issue.
• 10:58
  Philip Pape: The issue isn't the calories itself, but what but what that lets you do is confirm, oh, I'm tracking 1800 calories and I'm not losing or gaining weight.
• 11:06
  Philip Pape: So I actually am burning 1800 calories then, right?
• 11:09
  Philip Pape: And now you know to go in a deficit, you would just have to eat less than that.
• 11:13
  Philip Pape: All right, bucket two, so that's bucket one.
• 11:15
  Philip Pape: Bucket two, let's say that you are tracking accurately and all that's good.
• 11:20
  Philip Pape: You've done the audit, your numbers are tight, and you now know that to be in a deficit, you have to eat, you know, 300 calories less than that maintenance value.
• 11:28
  Philip Pape: And or let's say 500 calories if you want to lose a pound a week, but the scale isn't moving.
• 11:33
  Philip Pape: All right, this is bucket two, where you are in a deficit and fat loss may be happening, but it's being massed.
• 11:41
  Philip Pape: Now, when I say the scale isn't moving, I'm talking short term, okay, because over a three or longer week period, it will be dropping by a pound a week on average if you're in a 500-calorie deficit, going back to bucket one, or just the general principle of this episode.
• 11:58
  Philip Pape: What I'm talking about here is in the short term, we get a lot of issues that are happening with water retention.
• 12:05
  Philip Pape: Water retention can mask as many as two to four pounds of fat loss.
• 12:08
  Philip Pape: If you're a woman, hormonal fluctuations during your cycle can swing a water weight by five pounds or more.
• 12:12
  Philip Pape: If you started a new training program or you increased your volume, your muscles are holding water and glycogen for recovery.
• 12:17
  Philip Pape: If you had a high sodium meal, if you're stressed and your cortisol's up, if you didn't sleep well, if you're dehydrated, all of these drive water retention that hides fat loss on the scale.
• 12:28
  Philip Pape: So over two weeks, let's say you might have legitimately lost two pounds of fat, but then you're holding three pounds of extra water and the scale shows a one-pound gain, you think nothing's working, but it is, and it just isn't showing up yet.
• 12:40
  Philip Pape: So this is more of a time factor.
• 12:43
  Philip Pape: Okay.
• 12:43
  Philip Pape: Now, that's that's just if you were purely losing fat.
• 12:47
  Philip Pape: Now, body comp recomposition is the other major factor as part of this bucket because you know, if you're lifting weights, you're eating enough protein, especially if you're newer to training or you're really doing this right for the first time with progressive overload, you can simultaneously lose fat and gain muscle.
• 13:02
  Philip Pape: And again, the scale's not gonna move.
• 13:03
  Philip Pape: So, what's weird here is that you may start to eat less to try to induce, you know, you're you're like, here's my maintenance, I'm gonna eat less to lose fat.
• 13:12
  Philip Pape: But then you also start training at the same time, and now you start to build muscle.
• 13:15
  Philip Pape: The muscle offsets the fat loss, the scale doesn't move.
• 13:18
  Philip Pape: That's super frustrating because you're looking at the scale, you're like, okay, this Phillips line, like energy balance doesn't work.
• 13:25
  Philip Pape: But what what you have to do here now is look at other things.
• 13:29
  Philip Pape: How do you your clothes fit?
• 13:30
  Philip Pape: Is your waist going down?
• 13:32
  Philip Pape: Is your strength going up?
• 13:33
  Philip Pape: Are you able to infer your body fat percentage from these to see that it's actually dropping even while the scale stays the same?
• 13:39
  Philip Pape: And I have this challenge with a lot of clients who come to me and they want to lose weight, they want to lose that 20 pounds.
• 13:44
  Philip Pape: And at the end of four or six months working together, they've lost, let's say, 14 pounds, but it looks like, but they've actually gained like five or six pounds of muscle.
• 13:53
  Philip Pape: And so they've actually dropped 20 pounds of fat, but they've gained five or six pounds of muscle.
• 13:57
  Philip Pape: So their net loss is only 14.
• 14:00
  Philip Pape: But they're thrilled because they look great, they feel great, they're stronger.
• 14:03
  Philip Pape: That's the whole point of not being fixated on the scale because you're gonna miss all of those wonderful wins.
• 14:09
  Philip Pape: Now, how do you know if you're in this bucket?
• 14:11
  Philip Pape: Well, first you've got to be tracking things beyond the scale.
• 14:14
  Philip Pape: You've got to take your body circumference measurements, take your photos, track your strength.
• 14:18
  Philip Pape: If all of these are improving, but the scale is flat, then you're probably in a recomp phase and we're not as worried about the calorie deficit, at least right now.
• 14:30
  Philip Pape: Now, this is usually not gonna happen to such an extreme that you just directly offset fat and muscle.
• 14:36
  Philip Pape: If you're in a big enough deficit, you should still have a gradual trend down, but it might appear like you're not burning as many calories because your scale is being offset, and then eventually you should break through that over time as your body adapts to that and you no longer have such massive muscle gains and the scale will start dropping.
• 14:53
  Philip Pape: Now, also you want to look at this over time.
• 14:56
  Philip Pape: You want to look at your trend over four or six weeks, not day to day, and not even over, say, two weeks.
• 15:01
  Philip Pape: We really have to go past that.
• 15:03
  Philip Pape: And this all assumes that you've done your audit from bucket one, and now you're focused on, okay, over time, is this actually working?
• 15:10
  Philip Pape: Because the water fluctuations are gonna smooth out, and the trend will show fat loss if you're in fat loss.
• 15:16
  Philip Pape: And it might come in weird bursts.
• 15:18
  Philip Pape: You might have a drop of like three pounds one week and then it flatlines for two weeks and then drops again.
• 15:23
  Philip Pape: The third thing here is your biofeedback because the biofeedback can change the whole equation of how many calories you're burning and how your body utilizes your nutrients.
• 15:32
  Philip Pape: Are you recovering well?
• 15:33
  Philip Pape: Is your energy stable?
• 15:34
  Philip Pape: Are you sleeping okay?
• 15:36
  Philip Pape: If yes, you're probably in a legitimate deficit.
• 15:39
  Philip Pape: You just need the patience for the scale to catch up.
• 15:41
  Philip Pape: But if not, any one of those things could have just slowed you down, which is actually gonna be related more to bucket three, we're gonna get to in a second.
• 15:47
  Philip Pape: So the fix for bucket two is guess what?
• 15:50
  Philip Pape: It's patience and it's better metrics, like more metrics.
• 15:54
  Philip Pape: Something that, for example, Fitness Lab can help you with.
• 15:56
  Philip Pape: That's my app.
• 15:57
  Philip Pape: I'm always gonna plug it because I've designed it with all these things in mind.
• 16:00
  Philip Pape: And I think it could be really helpful for you if you're looking to do that.
• 16:02
  Philip Pape: There's a weekly check-in where you calculate and enter these things.
• 16:06
  Philip Pape: And then it helps you figure out, okay, this is what's really happening.
• 16:08
  Philip Pape: Like, hey, your scale might be flat for the last couple of weeks, but guess what?
• 16:11
  Philip Pape: Your waste has gone down an inch.
• 16:12
  Philip Pape: That's awesome.
• 16:13
  Philip Pape: Like that's what you want.
• 16:14
  Philip Pape: So stop obsessing over the daily scale weight, even though you want to track it and you want to track the trend of the weight, and then trust the process, keep doing what you're doing, keep lifting, getting your protein, and give it like four to six weeks, and the scale will reflect what's happening underneath.
• 16:29
  Philip Pape: All right, just a quick reminder.
• 16:30
  Philip Pape: I want you to stick around to the end because I've got a really practical tip on how to build weekend flexibility into your deficit, which I know is one of the biggest challenges for many of you.
• 16:41
  Philip Pape: That way you don't have to white knuckle it.
• 16:43
  Philip Pape: It's one of the most powerful tools that I've found people are using to make their fat loss phase so much easier so they can stick with it.
• 16:50
  Philip Pape: All right, bucket three.
• 16:52
  Philip Pape: This is this is where things get interesting from a physiological perspective, right?
• 16:57
  Philip Pape: What's happening in your body?
• 16:58
  Philip Pape: Let's say you were in a real deficit, you were losing fat, the scale was moving, but now you hit a plateau.
• 17:04
  Philip Pape: It's stalled for several weeks, and nothing is budging despite all the other things we talked about being solid, right?
• 17:10
  Philip Pape: You're adhering to everything, you're tracking everything, and you know, lifts are going up, all of that.
• 17:16
  Philip Pape: Well, this is probably adaptation going on, metabolic adaptation, which we've talked about on the show quite a few times, and it often gets misconstrued, but it's a completely normal thing.
• 17:25
  Philip Pape: Your body doesn't want to lose fat, it wants to hold on to fat because it's a nice reserve of energy.
• 17:32
  Philip Pape: It's stored energy, and your body's directive in existence is to survive, right?
• 17:38
  Philip Pape: You're a you're a living being who wants to survive.
• 17:41
  Philip Pape: So when you reduce food intake, when you increase energy demand with your training, with your walking, with everything else, your body essentially fights back by compensating, by reducing your energy expenditure.
• 17:52
  Philip Pape: It sucks, right?
• 17:53
  Philip Pape: Because it's like just when you're trying to take advantage of energy balance, your body is gonna make it harder.
• 17:59
  Philip Pape: Well, it does this through a combination of mechanisms.
• 18:02
  Philip Pape: One is the fact that you're just losing weight.
• 18:05
  Philip Pape: When you lose weight, your basal metabolic rate, your BMR, right, that's like your resting or your baseline metabolism that represents roughly two-thirds of your metabolism every day.
• 18:14
  Philip Pape: It's just gonna be lower because you need fewer calories just to exist.
• 18:18
  Philip Pape: It's it's it's one of those like harsh realities of if you lose 20 pounds and now you're gonna be lighter for the rest of your life, you're just gonna burn slightly few calories from that.
• 18:26
  Philip Pape: Beyond that, however, your non-exercise activity thermogenesis, your neat, also drops unconsciously.
• 18:33
  Philip Pape: You fidget less, you might make unconscious choices, like taking the elevator instead of the stairs because you feel a little more tired.
• 18:40
  Philip Pape: Maybe you sit more, maybe you move less throughout the day without realizing it.
• 18:44
  Philip Pape: And a lot of people argue this and like, well, but I increased my step count, right?
• 18:47
  Philip Pape: I increase my step count.
• 18:49
  Philip Pape: The step count is a pretty good proxy, but it doesn't necessarily capture everything.
• 18:53
  Philip Pape: It's pretty good, though.
• 18:54
  Philip Pape: I mean, it is pretty good.
• 18:55
  Philip Pape: So I definitely agree with that strategy, but there's so many other ways internally, even within your body, where you're just doing less.
• 19:02
  Philip Pape: You're that's so that's the second one.
• 19:04
  Philip Pape: Now, your body also becomes more efficient at exercise, at training, right?
• 19:10
  Philip Pape: And this happens in general.
• 19:12
  Philip Pape: This happens in general, but just keep in mind that as you're getting into a routine, if you're also coinciding that with fat loss, you may start burning a fewer calories because you've adapted to the moving movement pattern.
• 19:23
  Philip Pape: Now, this is not an excuse to hop around and to constantly change the way you move.
• 19:27
  Philip Pape: It is an interesting phenomenon though, because there are things like if you're doing a little extra cardio, I I've talked before, I think Brian Borstein introduced this concept of you know rotating through some different modalities of cardio to make your body a little bit less efficient so it burns a few more calories.
• 19:43
  Philip Pape: I don't know how big of an impact that has, but it's an interesting thought.
• 19:45
  Philip Pape: And then there's the fact, and this is the big one prolonged dieting, especially aggressive dieting, can suppress your thyroid function.
• 19:53
  Philip Pape: It reduces your sex hormones, it increases your cortisol, it of course affects your hunger hormones as well.
• 19:58
  Philip Pape: But all of those, the Thyroid, the reproductive hormones, and your cortisol, this is going to reduce your metabolic rate.
• 20:04
  Philip Pape: And this could be the biggest factor for a lot of people, especially if it's a very aggressive diet.
• 20:09
  Philip Pape: And the result is that the deficit you had four weeks ago when you started doesn't exist anymore because your calorie intake is the same, but your expenditure has dropped to match it.
• 20:21
  Philip Pape: And now you're at a new maintenance level and you haven't changed your diet or training.
• 20:25
  Philip Pape: And it's awful.
• 20:26
  Philip Pape: I know people don't like it.
• 20:27
  Philip Pape: It's one of those things you have to deal with and understand.
• 20:30
  Philip Pape: But when you understand it, then you can make a choice, a fork in the road, let's say.
• 20:34
  Philip Pape: So how do you know if you're in this bucket?
• 20:36
  Philip Pape: Well, the first way you know is you have a history of fat loss.
• 20:40
  Philip Pape: You know, the last few weeks, let's say, I don't mean like years ago, the last few weeks you've been losing fat, but then it's stalled for a few weeks and you haven't really changed anything.
• 20:48
  Philip Pape: Like biofeedback's good, everything's the same, right?
• 20:51
  Philip Pape: That's a good way to know.
• 20:52
  Philip Pape: Secondly, your biofeedback is off.
• 20:55
  Philip Pape: So this is where your biofeedback is the effect of the diet, not the cause.
• 21:00
  Philip Pape: In other words, your diet itself is now making you a little more tired, giving you lower energy, maybe interfering with your sleep a bit.
• 21:07
  Philip Pape: It's causing you to lose some absolute strength in the gym.
• 21:10
  Philip Pape: Maybe you're feeling more cold.
• 21:11
  Philip Pape: I find this when I'm dieting, I'm cold, right?
• 21:14
  Philip Pape: I don't, I'm hot when I'm eating in a surplus and I'm colder when I'm not.
• 21:18
  Philip Pape: And and so that's a really good sign of adaptation.
• 21:22
  Philip Pape: And third, your activity levels have dropped without you noticing, and your step count might be down if you're not intentionally trying to keep it up.
• 21:30
  Philip Pape: The fix for so those are three things, right?
• 21:33
  Philip Pape: That you can tell.
• 21:34
  Philip Pape: Really, hunger is is probably one of the biggest ones for for many.
• 21:38
  Philip Pape: The fix for this is to get back to the deficit you need to be at.
• 21:44
  Philip Pape: But the problem is, how do you do that?
• 21:46
  Philip Pape: Do you do it by eating even less?
• 21:48
  Philip Pape: Well, maybe, maybe, if you're not already in an aggressive deficit, if you're, let's say, 300 calorie deficit and you increase it to 500 or 600, or you're already at five or six and you go to seven.
• 21:58
  Philip Pape: As long as you're not going past the 1% body weight per week, you might be okay eating less, depending on where the total calories are.
• 22:05
  Philip Pape: And that depends on your metabolism.
• 22:07
  Philip Pape: Because if you're down at like 800 calories, that could be a problem in general for anyone.
• 22:11
  Philip Pape: But if you're still up at like 1800, it may not be a big deal.
• 22:14
  Philip Pape: However, for a lot of people, eating less is gonna dig you deeper into adaptation and make it go faster.
• 22:20
  Philip Pape: So I would say you have two primary options here besides that.
• 22:24
  Philip Pape: The first one is just take a diet break, raise your calories back up to maintenance for one to two weeks, let your metabolism recover, your hormones normalize somewhat.
• 22:32
  Philip Pape: Again, it's not maybe not all the way.
• 22:34
  Philip Pape: Your neat might come back up, you're just gonna feel better, and then you go back into a deficit.
• 22:39
  Philip Pape: Okay.
• 22:40
  Philip Pape: Now, people are like, people, people think this is magic.
• 22:43
  Philip Pape: It's not magic.
• 22:43
  Philip Pape: It's not like you're gonna raise your whole metabolism, but psychologically you're gonna help yourself out.
• 22:49
  Philip Pape: And then there will be some physiological recovery that probably allows you to, you know, push a little bit further into your deficit when you get back to it.
• 22:56
  Philip Pape: Option two is to increase your activity.
• 22:58
  Philip Pape: And I always hesitate on this one because there's some of you out there where you're already doing a lot and you're trying to do a lot of cardio and running and hiking and just tons and tons of activity, especially in fat loss.
• 23:11
  Philip Pape: And that could be a problem and make it harder and actually make you compensate, make you more stress.
• 23:16
  Philip Pape: I'm talking about adding some more steps.
• 23:18
  Philip Pape: Let's say two to three thousand steps a day.
• 23:20
  Philip Pape: So if you're getting eight, go to 10.
• 23:21
  Philip Pape: If you're getting 10, go to 12.
• 23:23
  Philip Pape: That can be really helpful.
• 23:24
  Philip Pape: That can burn an extra 50, 100, 150 calories a day, which could be just enough to take the edge off and help you get back into that deficit.
• 23:32
  Philip Pape: So walking more, moving more, getting off your chair more, this is gonna increase your expenditure without adding stress.
• 23:38
  Philip Pape: Now, you can also optimize recovery.
• 23:40
  Philip Pape: If your biofeedback is low because it's just on you, right?
• 23:44
  Philip Pape: Remember, I mentioned that biofeedback could be an effect, but it could also be a cause.
• 23:48
  Philip Pape: If it's the cause, like you're just not sleeping enough, or you don't have a good sleep ritual, or are not managing or reacting to stress very well, these are the kind of things that can restore some of that energy, right?
• 24:01
  Philip Pape: And hormonal balance and your improve your metabolic rate.
• 24:04
  Philip Pape: So the key here for bucket three is it's not permanent damage.
• 24:09
  Philip Pape: It's not a broken metabolism.
• 24:11
  Philip Pape: It is a normal adaptive response that can be recovered by removing the stressor, which is chronic dieting and restoring homeostasis equilibrium.
• 24:20
  Philip Pape: And if you don't want to remove it because you want to keep losing fat, that is a trade-off you make.
• 24:25
  Philip Pape: And then you have to take into account the various factors we just discussed.
• 24:28
  Philip Pape: Now, if you're trying to figure out which bucket you're in and you want some coaching in your pocket that adapts to your real life and all these things, check out my lab, my app called Fitness Lab.
• 24:39
  Philip Pape: It's an AI-powered coaching app.
• 24:41
  Philip Pape: It's trained on all my content.
• 24:43
  Philip Pape: Almost it's trained on my personality, honestly.
• 24:46
  Philip Pape: And it helps you navigate fat loss without guessing on a daily basis.
• 24:49
  Philip Pape: So whatever's happening in your life, you can talk to it and say, this is what's happening, and it's gonna adjust.
• 24:53
  Philip Pape: I just had surgery and I told the app, hey, I'm having surgery.
• 24:56
  Philip Pape: And every day after surgery, it's focused on recovery and like taking things in just the right measure to get back to it.
• 25:04
  Philip Pape: So right now through January 2nd, you can get 20% off at wits and weights.com slash app.
• 25:09
  Philip Pape: You just go straight to that link and the discount's gonna be there.
• 25:11
  Philip Pape: It's a holiday new year promotion, wits and weights.com slash app.
• 25:15
  Philip Pape: And with Fitness Lab, you get personalized guidance on everything, on your nutrition, your training, your recovery, mindset, sleep, stress, movement.
• 25:23
  Philip Pape: You can tell it what you need and it will create new activities for what you need.
• 25:27
  Philip Pape: It is incredible, all in one place, like having a coach in your pocket for far less, who actually understands your schedule, your lifestyle, your goals, totally on demand.
• 25:37
  Philip Pape: Go to witsandweights.com slash app.
• 25:39
  Philip Pape: All right, before I let you go, I promised you that simple weekly calorie strategy to give you weekend freedom without killing your deficit, without killing your deficit.
• 25:48
  Philip Pape: And I want to show you how this works.
• 25:50
  Philip Pape: Instead of trying to hit the exact same calorie target every single day, think in terms of weekly averages.
• 25:58
  Philip Pape: So let's say your daily deficit target, okay, your target is 2,000 calories.
• 26:03
  Philip Pape: I don't care what the deficit is, but that's your target.
• 26:06
  Philip Pape: And so that's 14,000 calories for the week.
• 26:08
  Philip Pape: Now, the strategy I recommend starting with is called a weekend diet.
• 26:12
  Philip Pape: You simply eat slightly lower Monday through Friday.
• 26:15
  Philip Pape: So maybe you're eating 1,850 calories instead of 2,000.
• 26:19
  Philip Pape: That's 150 calories per day for five days that you're effectively banking up for the weekends.
• 26:25
  Philip Pape: And that gives you 750 calories for the weekend.
• 26:28
  Philip Pape: And then you split that across Saturday and Sunday, and now you've got an extra 375 calories each day to enjoy your meals out.
• 26:37
  Philip Pape: You know, if you enjoy drinking, whatever makes your weekend feel normal to you while staying in your deficit.
• 26:42
  Philip Pape: An alternative for this is to go all the way to maintenance calories on the weekend and then see how many calories are left and distribute those across five days.
• 26:52
  Philip Pape: This is a little bit more extreme strategy, but it actually might feel less extreme because you are totally refueling on the weekend.
• 26:59
  Philip Pape: So either of those strategies can work.
• 27:00
  Philip Pape: You'll still be at your target for the week, which in this example was, for example, 14,000 calories.
• 27:06
  Philip Pape: There's a little math to be done, but it's not that big a deal.
• 27:08
  Philip Pape: You figure out what you want on the weekends, you give the rest of the weekdays.
• 27:11
  Philip Pape: And I actually covered the weekend diet strategy in episode 324, where you can learn all about this.
• 27:17
  Philip Pape: Because I don't think flexibility has to mean that you have a cheap meal or you sabotage yourself or you make it unfettered access to food.
• 27:26
  Philip Pape: You actually plan it in.
• 27:28
  Philip Pape: And again, if you want personalized guidance on implementing strategies like this, along with training, recovery, everything else, check out Fitness Lab at wits and weights.com slash app.
• 27:37
  Philip Pape: Until next time, keep using your wits, lifting those weights.
• 27:40
  Philip Pape: And remember, your body isn't lying to you, but your assumptions might be.
• 27:44
  Philip Pape: So figure out which of the three buckets you're in, and you'll be successful.
• 27:48
  Philip Pape: This is Philip Payne, and you're listening to Wits and Weights.
• 27:51
  Philip Pape: I'll talk to you next time.