Latest / Wits & Weights | Strength & Fat Loss Over 40 / 2 Biggest Causes of Belly Fat, Sugar Cravings, and Constant Hunger | Ep 426

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2 Biggest Causes of Belly Fat, Sugar Cravings, and Constant Hunger | Ep 426 · Wits & Weights | Strength & Fat Loss Over 40

• 0:01
  Philip Pape: One bad night of sleep can increase your calorie intake the next day by up to 500 calories.
• 0:06
  Philip Pape: Chronic stress drives fat specifically to your belly.
• 0:10
  Philip Pape: And both of these hijack the exact hunger hormones that control whether you feel satisfied or ravenous.
• 0:17
  Philip Pape: Today I'm gonna break down the two biggest hidden disruptors of appetite: sleep and stress.
• 0:23
  Philip Pape: You'll learn exactly why these shift all of your hunger hormones against you and practical fixes that can break the cycle.
• 0:41
  Philip Pape: Welcome to Wits and Weights, the show that helps you build a strong, healthy physique using evidence, engineering, and efficiency.
• 0:47
  Philip Pape: I'm your host, certified nutrition coach, Philip Pape, also the founder of the Fitness Lab app.
• 0:52
  Philip Pape: And on the last episode, we covered the hunger hormones themselves: Graylin, Leptin, GLP1, all those other supporting players that control whether you feel full, you feel satisfied, or you're still hangry.
• 1:05
  Philip Pape: But here's what I didn't tell you that you can understand these hormones perfectly, but still hold back or sabotage your fat loss if two specific lifestyle factors are working against you.
• 1:18
  Philip Pape: And those, of course, are sleep and stress.
• 1:20
  Philip Pape: And stick with me here.
• 1:21
  Philip Pape: I know these aren't sexy, but I really want to dive in here and help you improve these because they are a big struggle for a lot of us.
• 1:28
  Philip Pape: I'm not talking about them as vague wellness concepts.
• 1:31
  Philip Pape: I mean the direct, measurable disruptors of these hormones that we discussed, that you can improve everything else.
• 1:38
  Philip Pape: You can make hunger far less, which means fewer cravings, which means, you know, less belly fat storage and overconsumption, all of this stuff.
• 1:47
  Philip Pape: Because poor sleep has a lot of negative consequences to your hormones specifically, which starts that cascade.
• 1:54
  Philip Pape: They they tank your leptin, they spike your ghrelin, and they do this all very quickly.
• 1:58
  Philip Pape: They do this overnight when you're deprived of sleep.
• 2:01
  Philip Pape: Chronic stress, which we're gonna see, there's a lot of overlap between these, floods your system with a higher level of higher level of cortisol, which not only drives your cravings, but then tells your body, hey, we need to store fat around your midsection.
• 2:15
  Philip Pape: So this is episode four of my eight-part appetite series for January.
• 2:19
  Philip Pape: Obviously, you can listen to any of these in isolation, but if you've missed the first three, go check them out on the feed.
• 2:25
  Philip Pape: If the previous episode was about understanding hormones, today's is about understanding why those hormones might be working against you even when things like nutrition are dialed in.
• 2:38
  Philip Pape: Now, I'm also gonna give you a practical tip at the end that you can use tonight, literally tonight, to start shifting these hormones in your favor.
• 2:46
  Philip Pape: Very simple tip, and I want you to stick around for that.
• 2:49
  Philip Pape: But first, let's talk about why poor sleep might be the real reason you can't stick to your diet.
• 2:56
  Philip Pape: Hey, this is Philip, and today's episode is sponsored by Calocurb.
• 3:00
  Philip Pape: If you've ever been in a fat loss phase and felt like hunger was working against you, Callocurb's GLP1 activator is a game changer.
• 3:08
  Philip Pape: Calllocurb is a natural appetite support made from amerisate, a patented bitter hops extract that activates GLP1 and other gut signals to help you feel fuller, faster.
• 3:21
  Philip Pape: Clinical studies showed a 40% reduction in cravings and a 30% reduction in hunger within one hour.
• 3:28
  Philip Pape: If you want to try it, go to witsandweights.com slash calocurb for 10% off your first order.
• 3:35
  Philip Pape: The link is in the show notes.
• 3:36
  Philip Pape: That's witsandweights.com slash calocurb.
• 3:40
  Philip Pape: And I want to start with sleep because this is probably the most underrated factor in fat loss.
• 3:46
  Philip Pape: Here's what happens inside your body when you don't get enough sleep.
• 3:50
  Philip Pape: And I'm not even talking about chronic sleep deprivation.
• 3:53
  Philip Pape: Even one night of, say, four to five hours of sleep can start to shift your hunger hormones significantly.
• 3:59
  Philip Pape: Now, if you're getting one bad night of sleep and that's it, maybe it's not an issue.
• 4:04
  Philip Pape: If you get multiple single bad nights of sleep, even if they're not consecutive, it can definitely start to be an issue.
• 4:10
  Philip Pape: So let me break down this cascade.
• 4:12
  Philip Pape: First, we have leptin.
• 4:13
  Philip Pape: Remember, leptin is your satiety hormone, tells your brain you have enough energy stored that you're feeling satisfied.
• 4:19
  Philip Pape: When you're sleep deprived, your leptin levels decrease.
• 4:22
  Philip Pape: So even if you're not on a diet, remember, this is a lot of these studies are on people who aren't even dieting, that they're actually eating in a surplus in some cases, not on purpose always.
• 4:31
  Philip Pape: For example, the studies had looked at where where fat gets stored when you are sleep deprived.
• 4:35
  Philip Pape: You know, when you're sleep deprived, it goes more to your belly, for example.
• 4:38
  Philip Pape: So one of the things that happened is leptin goes down.
• 4:41
  Philip Pape: Your brain interprets this as an energy deficit, even if you're eating plenty of food.
• 4:45
  Philip Pape: So that's why I mention it, because there are things that cause your body to feel like they are under-resourced, and sleep deprivation is one of them.
• 4:52
  Philip Pape: It's like you're putting your body in a diet without being in a diet.
• 4:55
  Philip Pape: And who wants that, right?
• 4:57
  Philip Pape: And so it responds by making you hungrier.
• 4:59
  Philip Pape: And then, of course, we have ghrelin, which goes up.
• 5:01
  Philip Pape: That's your hunger hormone, the one that goes that goes up before meals and then triggers the growling stomach that makes you want to eat, right?
• 5:10
  Philip Pape: We talked in the last episode about a trick to sit with that between meals and create some intention and awareness.
• 5:16
  Philip Pape: So if you missed that, go listen to the last episode and it's near the end of the episode.
• 5:20
  Philip Pape: But sleep deprivation causes ghrelin to stay elevated for longer and spike higher than it should.
• 5:27
  Philip Pape: So it's not that you're just hungrier, but you're hungrier earlier and more intensely.
• 5:33
  Philip Pape: And some of you are like waking up starving, this could be part of it.
• 5:37
  Philip Pape: You didn't have enough sleep.
• 5:38
  Philip Pape: Of course, there's other issues if you're actually under-eating or you're not eating enough carbs or something like that.
• 5:43
  Philip Pape: But if you're, let's say you're eating enough calories and you're still really hungry early and more intensely, it could be because of a lack of sleep.
• 5:51
  Philip Pape: And then GLP1 decreases as well.
• 5:53
  Philip Pape: GLP1 is this satiety powerhouse, makes you feel makes your meals feel satisfying, right?
• 5:58
  Philip Pape: This is behind appetite, it's behind the weight loss medications.
• 6:01
  Philip Pape: And then when you're tired, when you don't have enough sleep, your body just produces less GLP1.
• 6:06
  Philip Pape: You have the same meal, same macro, same calories, but it doesn't fill you up the way that it should.
• 6:12
  Philip Pape: And then insulin sensitivity drops.
• 6:14
  Philip Pape: Okay, we we know insulin sensitivity is affected by all of these lifestyle factors, by your training, by your diet, by your sleep, by your activity.
• 6:22
  Philip Pape: So when you're sleep deprived, your blood sugar swings become more pronounced.
• 6:27
  Philip Pape: And so when you eat something, your blood sugar might spike higher than it otherwise would.
• 6:31
  Philip Pape: And then you have a bigger crash in your blood sugar, especially if your meals aren't balanced, if you're not walking, things like that, right?
• 6:37
  Philip Pape: They all exacerbate on top of themselves.
• 6:40
  Philip Pape: And when this happens, when you have that crash, that's when you feel that craving for some quick energy, right?
• 6:45
  Philip Pape: Sugar, carbs, anything to bring it back up.
• 6:48
  Philip Pape: And the when all of this is going on, when you lose sleep, when you're sleep deprived, your brain's reward centers become more hyperactive.
• 6:57
  Philip Pape: We see this in brain imaging studies, where after sleep restriction, these reward areas they light up more intensely when you see food.
• 7:06
  Philip Pape: So if the food is like a high calorie, high sugar food, for example, again, none of this stuff is good or bad.
• 7:12
  Philip Pape: We want to put this in context.
• 7:13
  Philip Pape: It's not a good or bad thing, it's evolution.
• 7:15
  Philip Pape: It's what your body is going to seek out when it feels deprived.
• 7:19
  Philip Pape: Because again, sleep deprivation is like being in a deficit and your body's trying to get more energy.
• 7:25
  Philip Pape: While that's happening, you're looking at this food, you're like, oh, I gotta eat that, you're drooling.
• 7:30
  Philip Pape: Your prefrontal cortex, the part that handles decision making and impulse control, we see reduced activity there.
• 7:37
  Philip Pape: So it's like your impulses are taking over.
• 7:39
  Philip Pape: And this is the uncontrollable nature, the emotionally driven nature of, I shouldn't say emotionally driven.
• 7:46
  Philip Pape: In this case, it's it's sleep deprivation, right?
• 7:48
  Philip Pape: It's hormones.
• 7:48
  Philip Pape: So you're hungrier, you're less satisfied by food, you're craving sugar, you're less able to say no.
• 7:55
  Philip Pape: And studies have quantified this.
• 7:57
  Philip Pape: There's one that found that young men restricted to four hours of sleep for just a few nights, saw an 18% increase in leptin and a 28% increase in grillia.
• 8:06
  Philip Pape: I think I mentioned the study last time.
• 8:08
  Philip Pape: They reported significantly increased hunger, especially for calorie-dense, carbohydrate-rich foods.
• 8:15
  Philip Pape: And that's because there's energy in those foods.
• 8:17
  Philip Pape: Another study showed women who slept only four hours ate 300 calories more the next day compared to when they slept nine hours.
• 8:24
  Philip Pape: And there's been many sleep studies that look at that show just ad libitum eating, that means eating without control, increases by hundreds of calories when you're sleep deprived.
• 8:34
  Philip Pape: Right?
• 8:34
  Philip Pape: So is it really about willpower and decision making?
• 8:36
  Philip Pape: Of course not.
• 8:37
  Philip Pape: It's your biology responding to sleep deprivation the way that it's designed to, just like when you deprive it of any other source of energy.
• 8:45
  Philip Pape: And I almost I really think we need to think of sleep itself as like uh it's just another form of energy, right?
• 8:52
  Philip Pape: Along with your food.
• 8:54
  Philip Pape: Now, if if sleep deprivation does this in the short term, imagine what happens when it's chronic.
• 9:00
  Philip Pape: And that brings us to how stress amplifies all of this.
• 9:04
  Philip Pape: Why cortisol might be the reason you're storing fat around your belly.
• 9:06
  Philip Pape: And before I even get into this, cortisol is not a bad guy, it's not a boogeyman, it's not the root cause.
• 9:12
  Philip Pape: It is just a symptom, right?
• 9:14
  Philip Pape: Your cortisol is responding to what you're doing.
• 9:16
  Philip Pape: So I do want to get that out of the way right now.
• 9:18
  Philip Pape: There's a lot of marketing and messaging around trying to control cortisol.
• 9:22
  Philip Pape: Well, that's just putting a band-aid on a symptom.
• 9:25
  Philip Pape: We need to do the things up front that will allow our cortisol to be regulated properly for us.
• 9:30
  Philip Pape: But cortisol gives us a signal of what's happening.
• 9:34
  Philip Pape: So let's talk about stress.
• 9:36
  Philip Pape: Okay, so cortisol is the hormone that connects stress to appetite and body composition.
• 9:42
  Philip Pape: They're all linked because cortisol is released by your adrenal glands when you have physical or psychological stress.
• 9:50
  Philip Pape: That includes the way you perceive stress.
• 9:54
  Philip Pape: Even if someone else would perceive the same stressor as no big deal, if you freak out, if you respond in a way that's much more triggering because of your history, emotional baggage, context, whatever, that also appears to your body like high stress.
• 10:10
  Philip Pape: And it follows your adrenal glands, the cortisol follows a circadian rhythm.
• 10:16
  Philip Pape: It peaks in the morning, tapers off throughout the day.
• 10:18
  Philip Pape: And that's normal, that's healthy, right?
• 10:20
  Philip Pape: This is going back to our evolutionary discussion in the last episode about day-night cycles.
• 10:25
  Philip Pape: The problem here is the chronic stress.
• 10:28
  Philip Pape: When cortisol stays elevated for extended periods, that's when it creates this cascade effect of effects that, for our purposes, are gonna make it much, much harder to lose fat.
• 10:38
  Philip Pape: In some cases, I don't want to say impossible, but honestly, that word comes into play because if all you're doing is cutting calories as much as possible and trying to move as much as possible and you're stressed out of your mind and not sleeping, and your metabolism therefore has tanked, none of that's gonna actually work to lose fat.
• 10:54
  Philip Pape: You're just making everything worse, right?
• 10:56
  Philip Pape: So, how does this work mechanistically?
• 10:59
  Philip Pape: Well, first, cortisol increases NPY in your brain.
• 11:03
  Philip Pape: NPY is neuropeptide Y.
• 11:05
  Philip Pape: We mentioned it on the last episode.
• 11:07
  Philip Pape: One of the most potent hunger-promoting signals in your hypothalamus.
• 11:12
  Philip Pape: Okay, when this is elevated, when NPY goes up, it's not that you know, you don't just want food, you want calorie-dense, comfort food, things like sugars, fats, salts.
• 11:24
  Philip Pape: And this is the biological basis of stress eating, right?
• 11:27
  Philip Pape: It's it's not a deep-seated weakness that you have.
• 11:31
  Philip Pape: It's your cortisol activating NPY makes high-calorie food feel incredibly rewarding.
• 11:36
  Philip Pape: Second, cortisol promotes visceral fat storage.
• 11:40
  Philip Pape: This is the belly fat piece.
• 11:42
  Philip Pape: And I'm sorry to kind of hook you on this in the title, but we a lot of us do care about this, and a lot of us are experiencing a significant amount of belly fat accumulation that we don't like.
• 11:52
  Philip Pape: And for many of us, it's vanity, but there's actually a health reason for it, right?
• 11:55
  Philip Pape: Cortisol tells your body how to distribute your fat.
• 11:59
  Philip Pape: And so if you have excess fat to store, it's gonna store it in the visceral fat around your organs.
• 12:04
  Philip Pape: That's your midsection, your belly fat.
• 12:06
  Philip Pape: This is the most metabolically dangerous type of fat.
• 12:09
  Philip Pape: And one reason that chronic stress correlates so strongly with abdominal obesity.
• 12:16
  Philip Pape: Third, cortisol increases insulin resistance.
• 12:19
  Philip Pape: Okay, higher cortisol means your cells respond less effectively to insulin, and then you have higher circulating insulin in your bloodstream, and that promotes fat storage, makes it harder to access stored fat for energy.
• 12:33
  Philip Pape: And it also contributes to the blood sugar sugar swings that we talked about with poor sleep.
• 12:39
  Philip Pape: And you can't always offset that just because you are lifting weights and you're walking, right?
• 12:43
  Philip Pape: There's or you know, moving around.
• 12:46
  Philip Pape: Fourth, cortisol can cause some leptin resistance.
• 12:49
  Philip Pape: People who have chronically elevated cortisol sometimes still have high leptin levels, which are supposed to tell you you're full, but then they still feel hungry.
• 12:57
  Philip Pape: And it's just because your brain's less responsive to that signal.
• 13:01
  Philip Pape: So even though your fat cells are saying, hey, we have enough energy, the message isn't getting through, right?
• 13:07
  Philip Pape: And here's the connection that ties all of this together chronic stress disrupts sleep, which then amplifies this hunger hormone cascade even more.
• 13:19
  Philip Pape: And this is why I see so many clients or members in Physique University who they hit this wall with fat loss early.
• 13:26
  Philip Pape: Maybe they come to us with having tried different diets or fat loss approaches, maybe working with coaches on like what you're doing all the things and the macros look good, but let's say they're highly stressed at work.
• 13:39
  Philip Pape: I mean, I definitely have a lot of clients who are just super busy go-getter hustlers, entrepreneurs, they work in the news industry, you know how stressful that is today, or they work in IT or you know, customer service or whatever.
• 13:51
  Philip Pape: Maybe they're executives, and they're just not getting that much sleep.
• 13:54
  Philip Pape: And of course, there's this messaging around, you know, the most busy, productive, successful people, you know, get by on five or six hours and then they're up and they're working.
• 14:02
  Philip Pape: Guys, this is a serious impact on our health, on our long-term health.
• 14:05
  Philip Pape: And I need to take this message myself because I often get six and a half, seven hours of sleep, or I probably should be getting eight.
• 14:11
  Philip Pape: And, but some of you are getting six, five, you know, four and a half hours of sleep.
• 14:15
  Philip Pape: Cortisol's elevated, leptin's not as sensitive as it should be, ghrelin is going up, and then you're like wondering why you can't stop thinking about food.
• 14:24
  Philip Pape: Of course, you probably shouldn't be in a fat loss phase if you don't have the sleep dialed in.
• 14:29
  Philip Pape: That goes back to the idea of being ready for fat loss and not adding too much stress to your body.
• 14:36
  Philip Pape: But I know a lot of you aren't gonna listen, so just understanding this is actually a first step, this awareness, right?
• 14:43
  Philip Pape: It's the hormonal environment that we're exacerbating.
• 14:46
  Philip Pape: Now, remember, I mentioned at the top of the episode I'd give you a practical tip you can use tonight.
• 14:50
  Philip Pape: We're still gonna get to that.
• 14:51
  Philip Pape: We're also gonna get to specific fixes for both sleep and stress.
• 14:57
  Philip Pape: But before we do, I want to tell you about today's sponsor, Callow Curb, because we've been talking about how poor sleep and stress dysregulate your hunger hormones.
• 15:06
  Philip Pape: They spike ghrelin, tank leptin, they make GLP1 less effective at helping you feel satisfied.
• 15:12
  Philip Pape: And I think this is where Callow Curb comes in, that's C-A-L-O-C-U-R-B, like curb your calories.
• 15:17
  Philip Pape: It's a 100% natural supplement featuring something called a marisate.
• 15:22
  Philip Pape: Now, this is made from hops extract, okay, bitter hops.
• 15:26
  Philip Pape: It activates your body's own GLP1 signaling to help you feel fuller faster.
• 15:30
  Philip Pape: Now, here's the cool thing.
• 15:31
  Philip Pape: This Friday, we've got Sarah Kennedy on.
• 15:33
  Philip Pape: She's the uh CEO.
• 15:35
  Philip Pape: And one interesting thing about Calicurb, it's actually owned by the government of New Zealand.
• 15:40
  Philip Pape: So there's a lot of the conflict of interest type stuff isn't there as you would normally see in a, you know, a profit-based enterprise.
• 15:48
  Philip Pape: And we really nerded out in that episode, you're gonna hear it next, about how when you consume calicurb, it's got a time-release formula, it works its way into your lower part of your intestine.
• 15:59
  Philip Pape: And that is where the bitter hops extract triggers bitter taste receptors that increase your GOP1 almost, I don't want to say almost as much as weight loss medications, but significantly more than placebo, to where the clinical randomized controlled studies show reduction in cravings by 40% and hunger by 30%.
• 16:21
  Philip Pape: And then that leads to consuming 18% fewer calories, and that's within an hour of taking it.
• 16:27
  Philip Pape: You have to wait about an hour so it gets through your system, but then you're good to go and it lasts about four to six hours.
• 16:32
  Philip Pape: There are no side effects, no stimulants, you don't need a prescription.
• 16:36
  Philip Pape: What I love about call curb is it works with your biology, it actually upregulates your hormones.
• 16:42
  Philip Pape: So it kind of offsets some of this stuff that's going on.
• 16:45
  Philip Pape: Even if you do have a little bit of stress and poor sleep, even though I don't, you know, I want you to work on those, but those are pushing your hunger hormones and the hormones in the wrong direction, calllocurb kind of pushes them back.
• 16:55
  Philip Pape: In fact, some people take the GLP1 meds at a lower dose along with call curb or use it to get off of GLP1s.
• 17:02
  Philip Pape: So for those of you who are just trying to control your appetite a little more effectively, I think this is a great tool.
• 17:08
  Philip Pape: I'm using it myself in an upcoming fat loss phase, recommending it to clients and also going to be using it during rapid fat loss.
• 17:14
  Philip Pape: So go to wits and weights.com slash calllocurb and use my code Wits and Weights for 10% off.
• 17:20
  Philip Pape: It actually should automatically apply if you go to that link in the show notes.
• 17:23
  Philip Pape: Witsandweights.com slash callocurb.
• 17:27
  Philip Pape: Okay, let's get a bit deeper into what is happening when you experience intense cravings.
• 17:34
  Philip Pape: We're gonna talk about cravings, emotional eating, food noise.
• 17:37
  Philip Pape: All right, these are the cravings that come out of nowhere.
• 17:40
  Philip Pape: They smack you in the face, they smack you in the brain, in your stomach, they feel impossible to resist.
• 17:47
  Philip Pape: And both sleep deprivation and chronic stress are potentially behind these without even having to go further.
• 17:55
  Philip Pape: This is where I want you to do some self-diagnosis.
• 17:58
  Philip Pape: Because sleep deprivation, chronic stress amplify hedonic hunger.
• 18:02
  Philip Pape: That is the drive to eat for pleasure and reward, not because you physically actually need energy.
• 18:09
  Philip Pape: It's it's the feeling of wanting food desperately, even when you're not actually hungry, almost uncontrollably.
• 18:15
  Philip Pape: Like I'm just gonna go let my body take me, and I'm gonna grab the ice cream or grab the chips or tortillas or whatever.
• 18:22
  Philip Pape: So here's the mechanism of how that works.
• 18:24
  Philip Pape: When you're tired or stressed, your brain's award system becomes hypersensitive to food cues, right?
• 18:32
  Philip Pape: If you see a commercial for pizza, and and I always tell my daughters, like, look at how they market food on visual ads, right?
• 18:40
  Philip Pape: Commercials and ads.
• 18:41
  Philip Pape: The food's always in motion, right?
• 18:43
  Philip Pape: The pizza is bubbling and melting over.
• 18:46
  Philip Pape: You know, the cookies are have the gooey chocolate being broken apart, the burger, it's like the piece of the burger falling one at a time as they layer it up.
• 18:54
  Philip Pape: And I'm sorry if you're listening to this and I'm triggering you right now, but I think it's a visceral way to think about how food is visceral.
• 19:03
  Philip Pape: And even the memory of a food you enjoyed makes these signals, it triggers these signals.
• 19:07
  Philip Pape: And then at the same time, the logical part of your brain, your prefrontal cortex, which normally helps you pause, take a breath, make rational decisions, it is now suppressed because of the sleep deprivation.
• 19:21
  Philip Pape: This is again, this is your body saying, we're gonna do everything we can to get you to eat.
• 19:25
  Philip Pape: So you have this double problem.
• 19:27
  Philip Pape: You have a higher reward drive and you have reduced self-control.
• 19:31
  Philip Pape: And for some people, it's a lot worse than others.
• 19:33
  Philip Pape: And for many of you, it's like almost programmed in from years and years of dieting, hence why the GLP1 meds have become so powerful for some people to reduce this.
• 19:43
  Philip Pape: So this is why you can't stop at just one cookie, right?
• 19:46
  Philip Pape: It's your brain literally operating in a state where high calorie food feels more rewarding and your ability to regulate intake is compromised.
• 19:57
  Philip Pape: And so this creates a conditioned loop over.
• 20:00
  Philip Pape: Over time.
• 20:01
  Philip Pape: Stress leads to eating.
• 20:03
  Philip Pape: It provides temporary relief, right?
• 20:06
  Philip Pape: It fills the void for you, the relief, then it reinforces the behavior because it's a reward.
• 20:12
  Philip Pape: But then often comes the shame or the guilt that creates more stress, which then drives more eating.
• 20:18
  Philip Pape: And that is the cycle of emotional eating.
• 20:21
  Philip Pape: And it's maintained by this hormonal environment that we've been discussing this whole time.
• 20:27
  Philip Pape: Now, the term food noise, I think is has become, I don't know if it was like one of the words of the year for 2025, but it's become really popular, especially with the rise of the GLP1 meds.
• 20:38
  Philip Pape: And it's a legitimate thing that refers to constant mental chatter about food.
• 20:43
  Philip Pape: You know, thinking about what you're going to eat next, planning meals, fantasizing about certain foods.
• 20:49
  Philip Pape: For people who are sleep deprived or chronically stressed or both, the food noise is amplified.
• 20:55
  Philip Pape: Your brains are literally spending more mental bandwidth on food because the hormonal signals are telling them to prioritize eating, which is why, just as an aside, some people do need GLP1 medications.
• 21:08
  Philip Pape: Absolutely, because it's just so massive of a signal.
• 21:12
  Philip Pape: No matter what they do, even if they try to sleep better and lift weights and everything, it's there and they need that.
• 21:17
  Philip Pape: Then there's solutions in between, like Calicurb that I just talked about.
• 21:20
  Philip Pape: I'm a huge fan of that tool, by the way.
• 21:22
  Philip Pape: There's actually a new study, a blind-controlled study, that I can't share the results of that I spoke with Sarah about, where the results are actually surprisingly good in terms of weight loss and maintaining weight loss.
• 21:37
  Philip Pape: So any tool you can use to reduce food noise that helps you get over that hump, I'm a fan of in the toolbox.
• 21:44
  Philip Pape: Okay.
• 21:45
  Philip Pape: The good news is, even despite those, or in addition to those tools, you can help quiet that noise by addressing root causes if they're related to sleep and stress.
• 21:55
  Philip Pape: That's why I think today's episode is so powerful.
• 21:57
  Philip Pape: So this is the actionable part, okay?
• 22:00
  Philip Pape: I'm gonna give you some specific strategies for both that can shift the hormonal environment.
• 22:04
  Philip Pape: All right.
• 22:05
  Philip Pape: And I want you to just start with the biggest low-hanging fruit based on what you know about yourself.
• 22:11
  Philip Pape: So for sleep, I'm gonna give you six tips.
• 22:13
  Philip Pape: I know there's gonna be a lot in here, okay?
• 22:16
  Philip Pape: But hopefully you can you can go back to the timestamp and re-listen to this if needed.
• 22:20
  Philip Pape: For sleep, first, pure quantity of sleep is a problem for many of you.
• 22:26
  Philip Pape: That seven to nine hours of sleep, I know you've heard this before, but if you're getting six and wondering why you have problems with snacking, emotional eating, everything, that that could be the simple answer.
• 22:35
  Philip Pape: And I say simple, easier said than done, right?
• 22:38
  Philip Pape: But an extra one or two hours, don't think of it as this luxury that you can't possibly have.
• 22:43
  Philip Pape: Think of it as like the solution to many of your ills.
• 22:47
  Philip Pape: Okay.
• 22:48
  Philip Pape: And it's an I'll say quote unquote easy solution compared to lots of other possibilities.
• 22:52
  Philip Pape: So that's the first one.
• 22:53
  Philip Pape: Second, I want you to have a consistent wake time.
• 22:56
  Philip Pape: So this hits on circadian rhythm and consistency that I've touched on in the episode series.
• 23:01
  Philip Pape: And the wake time is actually more important than the consistent bedtime, believe it or not, because your circadian rhythm anchors to when you wake up.
• 23:10
  Philip Pape: So pick a wake time that you can maintain all seven days of the week, including weekends.
• 23:15
  Philip Pape: I know that sounds weird, disruptive.
• 23:17
  Philip Pape: Some of you like to, you know, you get up at 5:30 on the weekdays and you like to sleep until eight on the weekends.
• 23:23
  Philip Pape: Just try it for me.
• 23:24
  Philip Pape: Try the same time.
• 23:25
  Philip Pape: So ideally, you combine this with number one, and you kind of shift and add a half hour, an hour to your wake time on the weekdays, and then maybe come back a little on the weekends and make them match within, say, 30 minutes.
• 23:36
  Philip Pape: And then your body will start naturally getting tired at the right time in the evening.
• 23:42
  Philip Pape: That's the goal here.
• 23:43
  Philip Pape: Third, I want you to create a wind down routine.
• 23:46
  Philip Pape: This can be a lot of different things, and we're gonna touch on something at the end of the episode that's just that can that can apply to anybody and that's super simple because I think with this gets kind of this gets confusing because people are like, what the heck do I do?
• 23:58
  Philip Pape: It seems like a big change.
• 24:00
  Philip Pape: But dimming the lights, you know, an hour before bed, not scrolling on your phone, it's not just about the blue light, it's also the stimulation, right?
• 24:09
  Philip Pape: Telling your brain it's time to downregulate, lower light exposure to trigger your melatonin, all of that.
• 24:15
  Philip Pape: Okay, so having some sort of wind-down routine with the lights and the stimulation.
• 24:20
  Philip Pape: Four, I want you to limit caffeine after 2 p.m.
• 24:23
  Philip Pape: Okay.
• 24:23
  Philip Pape: This is an easy one as well.
• 24:25
  Philip Pape: I know if you love coffee, it doesn't sound easy, but look, there's decaf coffee, there's brewed hot, what do you call it?
• 24:31
  Philip Pape: Brood chocolate.
• 24:32
  Philip Pape: There's like different ways you can still have that oral fixation in the hot beverage.
• 24:36
  Philip Pape: There's tea, of course, you know, all by British and New Zealand, Australian folks, Canadian who are into you know, afternoon tea, there's tea, but go with decaf, right?
• 24:46
  Philip Pape: Because caffeine has a big half-life.
• 24:48
  Philip Pape: It's like five or six hours.
• 24:49
  Philip Pape: So even if you drink as if you stop drinking at 3 p.m., that's still 50% active at 9 p.m.
• 24:56
  Philip Pape: And of course, if you're more sensitive to caffeine, you want to cut it off even earlier.
• 25:00
  Philip Pape: So if you don't drink as much caffeine, it's even more important you stop earlier before 2 p.m.
• 25:06
  Philip Pape: Number five is please watch the alcohol.
• 25:09
  Philip Pape: I would recommend you limit as much as possible, if not abstain from alcohol as much as possible, because there's really no plot positive to alcohol in any way, shape, or form.
• 25:18
  Philip Pape: But again, we're not about restriction and trying to eliminate everything here.
• 25:22
  Philip Pape: It's got to work for you and be sustainable.
• 25:25
  Philip Pape: Alcohol, a lot of people think it helps them fall asleep, but it actually fragments your sleep architecture.
• 25:32
  Philip Pape: Anybody who tracks your, you know, your deep in REM sleep, it reduces those.
• 25:36
  Philip Pape: And I mean, I've seen this.
• 25:38
  Philip Pape: I don't, I almost never drink.
• 25:39
  Philip Pape: I might have a drink once a month.
• 25:40
  Philip Pape: And when I do, if it's late enough, I go to sleep.
• 25:43
  Philip Pape: Everything's off according to my aura ring.
• 25:45
  Philip Pape: I get way less deep in REM sleep.
• 25:47
  Philip Pape: That's anecdotal, I get it, but the evidence also supports this.
• 25:51
  Philip Pape: And that's even just a couple simple drink drinks in the evening, like a couple beers or whatever.
• 25:56
  Philip Pape: So watch the alcohol if you care about good sleep.
• 25:59
  Philip Pape: And then number six, if hunger is keeping you up, think about a pre-meal bed that has some protein, like Greek yogurt or like a casein protein shake that will kind of even out the ghrelin spikes and then not disrupt your sleep due to hunger.
• 26:14
  Philip Pape: Okay.
• 26:15
  Philip Pape: I would say that's a little more of a hack because it could suggest other problems throughout the day.
• 26:20
  Philip Pape: And of course, if you're in a calorie deficit, that could be part of it, but this could be helpful.
• 26:24
  Philip Pape: So those are my six tips for sleep.
• 26:27
  Philip Pape: Now, for stress, I have five tips.
• 26:29
  Philip Pape: I know, again, I know it's a lot.
• 26:30
  Philip Pape: I I hope this is not too much, but maybe you can grab one of these and run with it.
• 26:35
  Philip Pape: For stress, first, I want you to incorporate daily low intensity activity.
• 26:40
  Philip Pape: Just walking is a game changer, especially outside in natural light with vitamin D.
• 26:46
  Philip Pape: This will modulate your cortisol.
• 26:49
  Philip Pape: And we're only talking 10, 15, 20 minutes, one time at least.
• 26:53
  Philip Pape: Now, I obviously encourage lots of walking and walking after meals and getting certain step counts, but this is really just about stress management.
• 27:01
  Philip Pape: Sunlight exposure in the morning also helps regulate your circadian rhythm.
• 27:05
  Philip Pape: In fact, I love training in the morning and I love sunlight exposure in the morning.
• 27:09
  Philip Pape: And a lot of those help with your sleep later on and your stress, of course.
• 27:13
  Philip Pape: Number two is try breath work.
• 27:16
  Philip Pape: Okay.
• 27:17
  Philip Pape: I'm not a meditator, but I do occasionally use breath work.
• 27:20
  Philip Pape: And now we have apps that can help you out with it, even just for five minutes, for two minutes, right?
• 27:26
  Philip Pape: Of deep breathing, a simple box breathing practice.
• 27:30
  Philip Pape: This is where you're gonna activate your vagal nerve, and that shifts your nervous system from sympathetic, fight or flight, to parasympathetic, which is rest and digest.
• 27:38
  Philip Pape: And for some, doing this just once a day, they report significant improvements in their overall ability to handle stress.
• 27:45
  Philip Pape: Number three, I want you to watch your training volume.
• 27:48
  Philip Pape: Okay.
• 27:49
  Philip Pape: A lot of you love to train.
• 27:51
  Philip Pape: I know, I do too, but evaluate your volume.
• 27:54
  Philip Pape: Okay.
• 27:54
  Philip Pape: Overtraining could be amplifying your cortisol.
• 27:57
  Philip Pape: Like if you're pushing really hard in the gym, but then you're dealing with high stress in life and poor sleep, and now you're aggressively dieting as well.
• 28:04
  Philip Pape: You're kind of stacking one stressor on top of another.
• 28:08
  Philip Pape: And training volume is kind of a big nebulous term because you know you need enough to hold on to your muscle, but you don't need nearly as much as you think.
• 28:15
  Philip Pape: And especially if you're doing this higher rep endurance style training for sure, scaling that back while addressing sleep and stress can accelerate the whole thing that you're trying to do here in a good way, right?
• 28:27
  Philip Pape: So look at volume.
• 28:28
  Philip Pape: Number four is if you're not already doing this, practicing flexible dieting rather than rigid dieting is going to help tremendously with the psychological stress around food.
• 28:42
  Philip Pape: Every time I talk to a client or physique university member or somebody who started using my app, and they're like, you know, I've always been low carb, but I understand from listening to you or talking to you, like it's okay to eat carbs, and carbs are good for you.
• 28:56
  Philip Pape: Carbs help with muscle, with recovery, with everything else.
• 28:58
  Philip Pape: So I'm gonna give it a shot.
• 29:00
  Philip Pape: And they start to change that mindset, and they realize that their calories can be flexible.
• 29:04
  Philip Pape: It doesn't have to be nail on exactly this many calories or this much protein.
• 29:09
  Philip Pape: It helps with cortisol and reducing those negative associations with eating.
• 29:13
  Philip Pape: Because now you're like, okay, I really can eat anything I want.
• 29:16
  Philip Pape: It's more of having structure and having ranges and allowing for variability, including foods I enjoy.
• 29:22
  Philip Pape: Then I don't have all that stress and decision-making fatigue, right?
• 29:26
  Philip Pape: So don't discount the power of that flexibility.
• 29:29
  Philip Pape: If you're listening and that's the thing for you, that you're still stuck in the carbs are bad or this is bad, that can be a big lever for you that really doesn't take.
• 29:38
  Philip Pape: I mean, if anything, it's it's a fun thing to start incorporating more foods, in my opinion.
• 29:42
  Philip Pape: And then number five for stress is to address the source of the stress.
• 29:47
  Philip Pape: Okay.
• 29:49
  Philip Pape: Again, some of you are gonna be able to do this, some not.
• 29:51
  Philip Pape: It depends on your situation.
• 29:52
  Philip Pape: But if there's a life stressor that you can actually change or mitigate a situation at work where, you know, a relationship issue where you have to have a conversation with your spouse or loved one or friend, a financial concern in your life where it's it's time to sit down and figure out what to do about that or get an advisor or whatever, consider whether working on that is the biggest choice for your fitness right now.
• 30:16
  Philip Pape: Isn't that interesting, right?
• 30:18
  Philip Pape: Because it's all connected.
• 30:19
  Philip Pape: If trying to get a different job or a different role at work or out of like an oppressive manager or whatever, is the thing that's gonna have benefits for your sleep and stress and appetite, and therefore your body composition, and therefore how you feel, and your confidence and your you know physical appearance and all that, sometimes the best diet intervention is actually reducing your stress or eliminating a source of stress in your life.
• 30:45
  Philip Pape: So we talked about a lot today.
• 30:47
  Philip Pape: I want to tie this all together with the bigger picture.
• 30:49
  Philip Pape: If you've been struggling with constant hunger, stubborn belly fat, sugar cravings, and you're doing the other things right, I do want you to look at sleep and stress.
• 30:58
  Philip Pape: They are not just minor factors.
• 31:00
  Philip Pape: I would put them at the top for many of you.
• 31:03
  Philip Pape: At the top, even above strength training, believe it or not.
• 31:05
  Philip Pape: They are primary regulators of the hormones that control your appetite, right?
• 31:11
  Philip Pape: So they affect your psychology and also physiology when it comes to fat loss.
• 31:17
  Philip Pape: But it's more than about fat loss.
• 31:19
  Philip Pape: I know we taught we we connect this to fat loss, but it's really everything.
• 31:21
  Philip Pape: It's your health, it's how you feel, it's the upward spiraling that you get once you start to fix these, where the other things get easier.
• 31:29
  Philip Pape: That's where the hormones are tied in.
• 31:31
  Philip Pape: And it's not that your hormones, like you need to get hormone labs and fix your hormones and get hormone therapy.
• 31:35
  Philip Pape: Maybe you do, but that's beside the point.
• 31:38
  Philip Pape: It's the hormones are symptoms telling you what's going on.
• 31:40
  Philip Pape: The good news is fixing these for lots of you listening is often the low-hanging fruit, right?
• 31:47
  Philip Pape: Many, many of the people I work with hit breakthroughs and it has nothing to do with macros or cardio or training.
• 31:53
  Philip Pape: It's they got one more hour to sleep every night.
• 31:56
  Philip Pape: Or they started box breathing.
• 31:58
  Philip Pape: Seriously.
• 31:59
  Philip Pape: Okay, your body responds to signals that you have some significant control over.
• 32:05
  Philip Pape: I want you to remember that.
• 32:06
  Philip Pape: Think like the stoic philosophers of ancient times, right?
• 32:10
  Philip Pape: The Marcus Aurelius and Epictetus, who, you know, ask the question, not what can't I control, but what can I, what can I change?
• 32:18
  Philip Pape: Okay, what can you do based on what we talked about today?
• 32:21
  Philip Pape: So you can quiet that, those cravings and that food noise and make some progress.
• 32:26
  Philip Pape: The encouraging thing is that they happen fast.
• 32:29
  Philip Pape: They happen fast.
• 32:30
  Philip Pape: Just sleep a couple good nights in a row.
• 32:32
  Philip Pape: And I believe you're gonna notice the difference in your biofeedback and your appetite and your cravings.
• 32:37
  Philip Pape: Right?
• 32:38
  Philip Pape: Implement some stress management practice we talked about today for a week or two and watch how it affects your relationship with food.
• 32:45
  Philip Pape: All right, so before we wrap up, I did promise you a specific tip that you can use tonight.
• 32:50
  Philip Pape: Something simple that addresses both sleep and stress simultaneously.
• 32:55
  Philip Pape: Stick around because I'm gonna give you that tip in just a second.
• 32:58
  Philip Pape: Hey, this is Philip.
• 32:59
  Philip Pape: And a quick reminder about today's sponsor, Calocurb.
• 33:02
  Philip Pape: If hunger has been the hardest part of your fat loss phase, even when everything else is dialed in, check out CaloCurb.
• 33:08
  Philip Pape: It's a natural GLP1 activating supplement with clinical data showing 40% fewer cravings and 30% less hunger within one hour, leading to 18% fewer calories, so you can stick to your fat loss plan.
• 33:22
  Philip Pape: Go to witsandweights.com slash callowcurb for 10% off your first order.
• 33:27
  Philip Pape: Link is in the show notes.
• 33:28
  Philip Pape: That's witsandweights.com slash calocurb.
• 33:31
  Philip Pape: All right, here is that tip I promised you.
• 33:34
  Philip Pape: It is called the 10 minute pre-sleep protocol.
• 33:37
  Philip Pape: Because we talked about having a wind-down routine, we talked about all this other stuff for sleep.
• 33:40
  Philip Pape: But here's a very tactical thing to do.
• 33:42
  Philip Pape: 10 minutes before you want to be in bed, that's it.
• 33:45
  Philip Pape: 10 minutes, do this.
• 33:46
  Philip Pape: Turn off all screens, dim the lights in your room as much as possible, sit or lie down somewhere comfortable, and that could be right in your bed, and do four rounds of box breathing.
• 33:57
  Philip Pape: Box breathing simple.
• 33:58
  Philip Pape: You breathe in for four seconds, you hold for four, you breathe out for four seconds, and you hold for four.
• 34:04
  Philip Pape: That's it.
• 34:04
  Philip Pape: Four in, hold for four, out for four, hold for four.
• 34:08
  Philip Pape: Then do four rounds.
• 34:10
  Philip Pape: This is gonna take three minutes.
• 34:13
  Philip Pape: Then just sit or lie there quietly for the rest of the time.
• 34:17
  Philip Pape: You could do some light stretching if you want, but for many of you, just sit there and lie down.
• 34:21
  Philip Pape: You're in the dim lights, which trigger your melatonin.
• 34:24
  Philip Pape: They are preparing your body.
• 34:26
  Philip Pape: The box breathing activates your parasympathetic nervous system.
• 34:29
  Philip Pape: That very acutely in the moment lowers your cortisol.
• 34:33
  Philip Pape: In the screen free time, it gets rid of the stimulation that keeps your brain in that alert mode, right?
• 34:39
  Philip Pape: So you're simultaneously improving the onset of sleep, reducing your stress, setting up your hormones for a better night.
• 34:46
  Philip Pape: Do this consistently for just one week.
• 34:50
  Philip Pape: Notice how your appetite and cravings shift the very next day.
• 34:56
  Philip Pape: That's it.
• 34:56
  Philip Pape: I hope that helped.
• 34:57
  Philip Pape: I want you to use it tonight.
• 34:59
  Philip Pape: Until next time, keep using your wits, lifting those weights.
• 35:02
  Philip Pape: And remember, the path to fat loss is not always about eating less or training more.
• 35:07
  Philip Pape: Sometimes it's about sleeping better and stressing you less.
• 35:11
  Philip Pape: This is Philip Pape, and we'll talk to you next time here on the Wits and Weights Podcast.