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Why October Is the Best Time to Start (Before Holiday Weight Gain Sets In) · Wits & Weights | Strength & Fat Loss Over 40

• 0:00
  Philip Pape: Hey, this is Philip, and I've got a quick bonus episode for you on this Saturday, and it is short on purpose because this is the last call for the Dialed In Fall Challenge, which starts on Monday.
• 0:11
  Philip Pape: I don't want this to be just a pitch, so I'm going to give you some information from a holiday study that I think makes this moment right now, early October, the best time of year to start.
• 0:25
  Philip Pape: And then I want to tell you about Denise, one of our members, because her story is the best real life argument I have for how we set this challenge up so that you can be successful.
• 0:35
  Philip Pape: Now, if you caught episode 509 this week on Monday, I talked about weight loss challenges and what happens after they end.
• 0:44
  Philip Pape: The short version is the results tend to fade once the incentive or the prize goes away.
• 0:50
  Philip Pape: And then the last episode, 510, you heard Jenny tell her own story after dieting since seventh grade.
• 0:58
  Philip Pape: So if you missed either one, go back and listen to the two episodes this week because this one builds on both of those.
• 1:04
  Philip Pape: But let's just talk about timing, okay?
• 1:06
  Philip Pape: Thanksgiving is still about seven weeks away.
• 1:08
  Philip Pape: I know most of you aren't thinking about the holidays yet, which is exactly why I want to bring it up.
• 1:13
  Philip Pape: I'm all about being proactive.
• 1:15
  Philip Pape: Back in 2000, that's that's 26 years ago now.
• 1:18
  Philip Pape: Wow, a group at the NIH published a study in the New England Journal of Medicine where they weighed 195 adults every six to eight weeks, starting in the fall and going into the next year.
• 1:31
  Philip Pape: And to make sure that they wouldn't change their behavior, they didn't tell them that the study was about weight.
• 1:37
  Philip Pape: Isn't that interesting?
• 1:38
  Philip Pape: They measured blood pressure, they measured a bunch of other things to hide the fact that they were looking at weight, which is pretty clever.
• 1:45
  Philip Pape: Uh a little deception, you know, when it's for a good cause.
• 1:48
  Philip Pape: From early October to mid-November, their weight barely changed.
• 1:52
  Philip Pape: And it wasn't even a meaningful change statistically.
• 1:55
  Philip Pape: Then from mid-November into January, the average person gained less than a pound, about eight-tenths of a pound, which is, I'll say, way less than the five pounds that you often hear about on social media.
• 2:09
  Philip Pape: People say, yeah, everybody gains five pounds during the holidays, or sometimes 10 pounds, you know, it becomes a tall tale over the years.
• 2:15
  Philip Pape: Now, this sounds like good news, right?
• 2:18
  Philip Pape: It mostly is.
• 2:20
  Philip Pape: But then they followed up.
• 2:21
  Philip Pape: They weighed people again in the spring and they hadn't lost that extra almost pound of weight.
• 2:26
  Philip Pape: They weighed most of them the following September, and it still hadn't come off.
• 2:31
  Philip Pape: So the holiday gain did still make up a vast majority, about half of all the weight people gained over the entire year, just in a couple months.
• 2:40
  Philip Pape: And about one in seven people gained more than five pounds, mostly people who are already carrying more weight going in.
• 2:46
  Philip Pape: So there are outliers like that.
• 2:47
  Philip Pape: Now, this was a mixed group of adults between 19 and 82 years old.
• 2:51
  Philip Pape: It wasn't a study of people over 40 or women in menopause or anything like that.
• 2:55
  Philip Pape: So I wouldn't, you know, say it applies to a specific population.
• 2:58
  Philip Pape: But the pattern makes a lot of intuitive sense to me that the weeks you're in right now are the calm part of the year, at least in this data.
• 3:07
  Philip Pape: You know, we haven't hit Halloween yet, which my birthday is around that time too.
• 3:10
  Philip Pape: So it kind of all starts to stack in terms of the potential for eating events.
• 3:16
  Philip Pape: So therefore, right now makes it the best time to set up your habits, your data, your support, your structure, your system, all of that, so that when late November arrives, you're already six weeks in to building a good routine and it feels routine instead of like starting over, probably.
• 3:36
  Philip Pape: So think about what that means for you.
• 3:38
  Philip Pape: If let's say you're lifting weights and you get through Thanksgiving and Christmas at the same body weight, but your lifts have been progressing.
• 3:46
  Philip Pape: And let's say your waist is pretty steady or even comes down.
• 3:50
  Philip Pape: That's a huge win, right?
• 3:52
  Philip Pape: And it's probably a bigger win than it sounds because you don't have to then lose weight over the holidays and you don't have to gain weight that you then have to lose later.
• 4:00
  Philip Pape: And again, it's not just about weight, but this is just simplifying to what everybody talks about this time of year.
• 4:05
  Philip Pape: And honestly, for a lot of you, holding steady and getting stronger is a very smart goal for those six weeks.
• 4:11
  Philip Pape: Like you're not necessarily trying to go through a fat loss phase right when the holidays come.
• 4:16
  Philip Pape: So then when you get to January, you're actually ahead of everybody else.
• 4:20
  Philip Pape: You haven't lost anything and you've held at least held steady, if not gained.
• 4:25
  Philip Pape: Because the reason we all gain weight over the years is it creeps on year after year after year, and half of the weight each year is in the holidays.
• 4:32
  Philip Pape: So now this is also why our challenge doesn't rate you just on pounds lost, right?
• 4:36
  Philip Pape: There is an element of your trend weight that's part of this.
• 4:40
  Philip Pape: But I want to talk about Denise because Denise came into this year with a long history of believing, in her words, that she was unable to control her weight.
• 4:50
  Philip Pape: She kept trying to hit that lower calorie number.
• 4:54
  Philip Pape: We've all been there trying to cut, cut, cut to see, okay, if I'm not losing weight at this level, I need to cut further.
• 4:59
  Philip Pape: She never saw any consistent difference on the scale.
• 5:03
  Philip Pape: At the beginning of the year, she started a cut with us.
• 5:05
  Philip Pape: She learned to use food tracking, we use macrofactor.
• 5:09
  Philip Pape: She lost six or seven pounds and then she kept it off for six months.
• 5:12
  Philip Pape: That's a massive, massive difference in what she had done before in her life.
• 5:16
  Philip Pape: Now, she's in a position to start a conservative muscle building phase because she also has some strength goals.
• 5:24
  Philip Pape: And she's been barbell training for like five years, so she knows what she's doing in the gym.
• 5:28
  Philip Pape: Now, this is the part I love.
• 5:30
  Philip Pape: She's eating 500 calories more than the number she was trying to hit when she started.
• 5:35
  Philip Pape: Which, if you've been dieting for many, many years, it probably sounds impossible.
• 5:39
  Philip Pape: You're like, yeah, I don't believe you, Philip.
• 5:41
  Philip Pape: Now, I can't tell you exactly why the lower calorie number never worked for her, whether it was just too hard to be consistent with, so she didn't actually hit it, and she is eating more than she thought.
• 5:54
  Philip Pape: You know, metabolic adaptation, where she was just always a little bit underfed, but not enough to cause a deficiency.
• 6:00
  Philip Pape: Maybe there were binge episodes.
• 6:02
  Philip Pape: Like there's a lot of reasons that happened to all of us.
• 6:05
  Philip Pape: It doesn't really matter now because she has the data and she knows how to read it now and can see what it takes to be successful.
• 6:11
  Philip Pape: Um, she sent us three photos in our community, uh, Eat More Lift Heavy, one from when she started lifting and two from this year.
• 6:18
  Philip Pape: And her weight is almost the same in all three, but wow, can you see the change in her body composition, you know, those back muscles, the definition.
• 6:26
  Philip Pape: And she wrote in her own words, I can now truly say that my weight is the least interesting thing about me.
• 6:31
  Philip Pape: I love that.
• 6:32
  Philip Pape: I really love that.
• 6:33
  Philip Pape: I hope everyone listening can get to that point.
• 6:36
  Philip Pape: If you base Denise's progress purely on scale weight, it would look pretty boring.
• 6:41
  Philip Pape: It might even look like a loss or or not a win, because okay, she lost six or seven pounds and then it went flat.
• 6:48
  Philip Pape: But she kept it off.
• 6:49
  Philip Pape: She's eating more food, she's building muscle, she's got muscle definition.
• 6:53
  Philip Pape: That is exactly the kind of, you know, 12-month period that I want you to have over the next 12 months.
• 7:00
  Philip Pape: So here's the information one last time about our dialed-in fall challenge.
• 7:05
  Philip Pape: It is 12 weeks of dialed-in coaching inside our Eat More Lift Heavy program and community.
• 7:11
  Philip Pape: Very, very supportive place where you are going to get a personal coach.
• 7:15
  Philip Pape: So that's Carol.
• 7:16
  Philip Pape: Uh, I've talked about it quite a bit, and she will direct message you, build your nutrition plan, reviews your data, checks your form, all of that stuff within the broader community of Eat More Lift Heavy.
• 7:27
  Philip Pape: So you definitely have a lot of resources around that.
• 7:28
  Philip Pape: And I'm there as well.
• 7:29
  Philip Pape: There are live calls, there's community, there's all this other fun stuff, whether or not you choose to take advantage of this.
• 7:34
  Philip Pape: But you're gonna get starting Monday, October 12th, uh a clear plan, targets to hit, and support to get there.
• 7:41
  Philip Pape: And it goes through Thanksgiving and Christmas.
• 7:43
  Philip Pape: This is done on purpose so that you can get through this hardest time of the year successfully.
• 7:47
  Philip Pape: You're gonna pick three goals.
• 7:49
  Philip Pape: At least one of them is an outcome, like your waist measurement or your strength on a lift or your trend weight.
• 7:54
  Philip Pape: The others can be habits like hitting your protein or being consistent with your training.
• 7:59
  Philip Pape: So you have some flexibility there.
• 8:00
  Philip Pape: And then Carol's gonna sign off on those.
• 8:02
  Philip Pape: You're gonna get scored against where you started.
• 8:05
  Philip Pape: The scores are capped.
• 8:07
  Philip Pape: You can't like go to an extreme to get a higher score.
• 8:10
  Philip Pape: We do that on purpose, so you do it in a reasonable way.
• 8:12
  Philip Pape: And then the prize that the winner gets is three months of free coaching plus a private call, Carol and me.
• 8:17
  Philip Pape: I think the bigger prize, I know it sounds a little cheesy, is coming out of the holidays stronger and better for it instead of starting over in January with New Year's resolutions, and we know how that goes.
• 8:29
  Philip Pape: To check things out, go to witsandweights.com slash challenge.
• 8:32
  Philip Pape: Uh, spots are pretty limited again because it's a very personalized approach here to this.
• 8:36
  Philip Pape: So we are limiting spots, but there are some openings.
• 8:38
  Philip Pape: Go to wits and weights.com slash challenge.
• 8:41
  Philip Pape: Link is in the show notes.
• 8:43
  Philip Pape: And if the timing isn't right, if it's not aligned, if it's not in your budget, whatever, that is totally fine.
• 8:48
  Philip Pape: You can still do a version of this on your own if you stick to it, if you get commitment.
• 8:53
  Philip Pape: And like I spoke about on a recent episode, if you can get some sort of support, uh, it will enhance your ability to achieve your goals.
• 8:59
  Philip Pape: Pick three numbers, one outcome, two habits.
• 9:02
  Philip Pape: Text a friend, ask them to check in with you once a week at a minimum.
• 9:06
  Philip Pape: That's a great accountability approach.
• 9:08
  Philip Pape: That alone will probably put you ahead of most people this time of year.
• 9:12
  Philip Pape: And that's it for this bonus episode.
• 9:13
  Philip Pape: So if you want to check out the challenge, go to wits and weights.comslash challenge.
• 9:17
  Philip Pape: I'll talk to you next time here on the Wits and Weights Podcast.