Latest / Wits & Weights | Strength & Fat Loss Over 40 / The #1 Reason Carbs Help You Build Muscle (Not Hurt Fat Loss) | Ep 249

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The #1 Reason Carbs Help You Build Muscle (Not Hurt Fat Loss) | Ep 249 · Wits & Weights | Strength & Fat Loss Over 40

• 0:01
  Philip Pape: If you've been told that protein is all you need to protect your hard-earned muscle mass, or that carbs just provide energy and performance and you can cut them out without consequences, I think you're missing a crucial piece of the larger muscle-building puzzle.
• 0:15
  Philip Pape: Today, I'm revealing the number one reason to eat more carbs, and it's not what most people think.
• 0:21
  Philip Pape: Using an engineering concept called material elasticity, I'll show you how carbs can do this one amazing thing.
• 0:28
  Philip Pape: That is perhaps its biggest superpower.
• 0:30
  Philip Pape: If you care about building muscle and fat loss, welcome to Wits and Weights, the podcast that blends evidence and engineering to help you build smart, efficient systems to achieve your dream physique.
• 0:53
  Philip Pape: I'm your host, philip Pape, and today we're exploring why carbs those beautiful carbs might be the most underrated nutrients for muscle preservation, and how understanding their anti-catabolic effects we're going to define that term in a second could transform your approach to building muscle and losing fat.
• 1:13
  Philip Pape: Before we get into that, I have just released my new and improved muscle building nutrition blueprint totally free.
• 1:20
  Philip Pape: It's a guide that I created maybe a year or two ago after one of my muscle building phases, and I've since upgraded it and updated it based on the latest bulking recommendations according to the scientific literature.
• 1:33
  Philip Pape: It shows you exactly how to use carbs strategically to bulk at the optimal rate and maximize your gains, which will go perfectly well with this episode.
• 1:43
  Philip Pape: So to download your free copy, just go to witsandweightscom slash free, or click the link in the show notes.
• 1:49
  Philip Pape: Again, that's my muscle building nutrition blueprint.
• 1:52
  Philip Pape: It lays everything out from start to finish, with examples of setting up your muscle building phase.
• 1:59
  Philip Pape: Go to witsandweightscom slash free, or click the link in my show notes.
• 2:02
  Philip Pape: So let's start with the topic today, which is how material elasticity helps us understand muscle breakdown.
• 2:11
  Philip Pape: But, more importantly, it's why you should not be afraid of carbs and a reason that is underrated or even not well known for why you probably want to eat more carbs.
• 2:22
  Philip Pape: And when I say carbs, I'm talking about carbohydrates, I'm talking about a macro that covers a vast amount of food sources, and there is a powerful effect that carbs have that people don't talk about.
• 2:36
  Philip Pape: They do talk about its source of insulin response and glucose for the muscles.
• 2:45
  Philip Pape: They talk about it for performance and recovery.
• 2:47
  Philip Pape: They talk about it for having a more variety of foods and fiber-containing foods with nutrients and plants and all that fun stuff.
• 2:57
  Philip Pape: But there's one thing that gets talked about not as much and we're going to get into that and then, finally, I'm going to take that information and give you some strategies so you can apply that to your nutrition plan.
• 3:06
  Philip Pape: So let's talk about the engineering concept and why that's important to what we're talking about today.
• 3:13
  Philip Pape: There's something called elasticity.
• 3:14
  Philip Pape: Elasticity you might have heard it in the context of your brain development, for example.
• 3:19
  Philip Pape: You might have heard it in terms of materials like a rubber band.
• 3:22
  Philip Pape: Have heard it in terms of materials like a rubber band.
• 3:26
  Philip Pape: Elasticity refers to a material's ability to withstand stress without getting deformed, right, without get permanently altered.
• 3:31
  Philip Pape: So think about a metal spring.
• 3:33
  Philip Pape: It can compress under force, but then it returns to its original shape, as long as you don't quote, pass its elastic limit.
• 3:40
  Philip Pape: And as a child, I really loved my pogo stick yes, I am that level nerd and that ability to come back to its original shape is the thing that allowed you to spring up into the air.
• 3:52
  Philip Pape: So our muscles face similar stresses during training, during strength training, but also when you're dieting, because of all the shuttling of resources and your body trying to stay in homeostasis.
• 4:04
  Philip Pape: Your muscles need to maintain their structure despite the constant breakdown and rebuilding of tissue.
• 4:11
  Philip Pape: Right, that's what's happening in our body.
• 4:13
  Philip Pape: We're always breaking stuff down.
• 4:14
  Philip Pape: We're breaking muscle mass down, for example, and we're rebuilding it.
• 4:17
  Philip Pape: And this is where most people, I'll say, not necessarily get it wrong, but they kind of oversimplify and they miss part of the picture.
• 4:25
  Philip Pape: They focus solely on protein for building muscle, forgetting about the breakdown side of the equation.
• 4:31
  Philip Pape: Preventing breakdown it's great to ramp up your ability to add new tissue, but if the other side of the equation is outpacing that, or at least keeping up with it in terms of breaking down tissue, you're going to have a real problem, right?
• 4:45
  Philip Pape: Because at best you might be able to preserve muscle, um, and at worst you might lose muscle.
• 4:51
  Philip Pape: So here's where carbohydrates become so so crucial and why I am, uh, totally in love.
• 4:56
  Philip Pape: I have a love fest with carbs to the point where that is my um, happiest source of YouTube trolls when this stuff goes YouTube and many of you are listening on audio.
• 5:05
  Philip Pape: But go there and just type in carbs to my YouTube channel and find one of the episodes about carbs and just look at the comments.
• 5:12
  Philip Pape: Okay, people have a very emotional attachment to carbs.
• 5:15
  Philip Pape: If you are listening to me right now, I'm going to be giving you tons of permission to just eat the heck out of your carbs to the level that you need, to the level that supports you and to the level that you want, and not worry about demonizing them anymore.
• 5:28
  Philip Pape: Carbs don't cause you to get fat or any of the other myths that have been perpetuated.
• 5:32
  Philip Pape: Carbs are incredible.
• 5:33
  Philip Pape: They're supportive.
• 5:34
  Philip Pape: There's nothing negative about them.
• 5:36
  Philip Pape: What's negative is over-consuming food, right, just over-consuming to the point of excess, and it has nothing to do with carbs.
• 5:42
  Philip Pape: What's negative is being sedentary.
• 5:44
  Philip Pape: What's negative is not training.
• 5:46
  Philip Pape: So that was my side rant.
• 5:48
  Philip Pape: But when you eat carbs, they trigger insulin release.
• 5:52
  Philip Pape: Oh no insulin.
• 5:53
  Philip Pape: Oh yes insulin.
• 5:54
  Philip Pape: We love that because insulin is a powerful anti-catabolic hormone.
• 6:00
  Philip Pape: What does that mean?
• 6:01
  Philip Pape: Anti-catabolic means anti-breakdown.
• 6:04
  Philip Pape: Okay, trigger insulin.
• 6:10
  Philip Pape: Insulin is an anti-catabolic hormone.
• 6:13
  Philip Pape: We love insulin if we are training, if we're active and we're trying to build muscle.
• 6:17
  Philip Pape: Just like a well-engineered material needs the support to maintain its elastic properties, your muscles need adequate carbs to prevent breakdown and retain their properties.
• 6:28
  Philip Pape: You've built them up.
• 6:29
  Philip Pape: You've gone to the gym, you've taken so much time to give them the TLC right.
• 6:33
  Philip Pape: You're doing those heavy squats that you may not be the biggest fan of, but you know how effective and powerful they are and helpful.
• 6:40
  Philip Pape: And you've gone through all that work.
• 6:41
  Philip Pape: So why do you want to give it up by not supporting, by allowing them to get broken down right?
• 6:47
  Philip Pape: So let me break down the three main ways that carbs protect your muscles.
• 6:51
  Philip Pape: First, insulin blocks protein breakdown pathways.
• 7:00
  Philip Pape: When insulin is elevated from eating carbs, it literally shuts down the mechanisms that would otherwise break down muscle tissue, so important.
• 7:09
  Philip Pape: This is why we need to flip the frame on insulin as not a bad thing, but a very good thing that we take advantage of.
• 7:17
  Philip Pape: Second, carbs spare protein.
• 7:20
  Philip Pape: When you don't have adequate carbs, your body converts amino acids into glucose through gluconeogenesis, literally breaking down muscle tissue for energy.
• 7:27
  Philip Pape: Now, I don't want to overstate this or make this a fear monger type of thing.
• 7:30
  Philip Pape: Like well, so does that mean I have to have like 400 grams of carbs or else my protein starts getting broken down?
• 7:35
  Philip Pape: No, quite the opposite.
• 7:37
  Philip Pape: It's when carbs are just abysmally low that this can be a problem, and usually it's more of a problem in a dieting phase when just overall energy is low.
• 7:45
  Philip Pape: When you are eating in a surplus, there's a lot more wiggle room Like you can have.
• 7:50
  Philip Pape: You can jack up your protein and have moderate carbs.
• 7:52
  Philip Pape: You can jack up your carbs with moderate protein.
• 7:54
  Philip Pape: There is a lot of wiggle room.
• 7:55
  Philip Pape: So I'm not saying you have to like stuff yourself with carbs, but I'm saying when the carbs go very low, that's when the issues start to happen.
• 8:04
  Philip Pape: Third is that carbs replenish glycogen, which has its own anti-catabolic effects, because full glycogen stores send a signal that reduce your cortisol and other catabolic hormones.
• 8:15
  Philip Pape: Again, it's your body saying, hey, I'm in a good state here, I've got enough energy, even though you're slamming the heck out of these muscles through your lifting, I'm good because you gave me all those carbs.
• 8:26
  Philip Pape: So that is why low-carb diets, keto diets, often lead to faster muscle loss in a calorie deficit and much lower muscle gain in a calorie surplus.
• 8:39
  Philip Pape: Part of it is because you're removing your body's primary defense against muscle breakdown by keeping those carbs so low.
• 8:47
  Philip Pape: It's a matter of degrees.
• 8:49
  Philip Pape: Could you build muscle or prevent muscle breakdown on low carbs?
• 8:53
  Philip Pape: Yes, is it harder?
• 8:54
  Philip Pape: Yes, and that's kind of the thing I'm saying.
• 8:57
  Philip Pape: Why make it harder, unless you have to for some reason or you want to, but if someone's telling you you need to?
• 9:04
  Philip Pape: That's the problem that I have in the industry with when we talk about spreading misinformation.
• 9:09
  Philip Pape: So how do we apply this right?
• 9:13
  Philip Pape: I want to give you four practical strategies, super simple.
• 9:15
  Philip Pape: First, prioritize carbs around your training.
• 9:18
  Philip Pape: This is one of the best things you can do.
• 9:19
  Philip Pape: It creates an immediate anti-catabolic environment when your muscles need it most, so as much as half of your carbs might be around your training.
• 9:28
  Philip Pape: The lower calories you're on, the more crucial.
• 9:31
  Philip Pape: This is to do to the point where, if you're on a very severe deficit, almost all your carbs might be around your training.
• 9:38
  Philip Pape: Okay, so just keep that in mind.
• 9:40
  Philip Pape: When you're in a surplus, you know you probably have a lot of carbs coming in anyway.
• 9:44
  Philip Pape: If you're in a balanced diet, so you still want carbs around your workout, but it's going to be a smaller percentage, okay.
• 9:49
  Philip Pape: Second, maintain baseline carbs, even on rest days.
• 9:54
  Philip Pape: I'm not a big fan of calorie cycling, so the way I like to frame it is if you think it's super helpful to jack up your carbs on training days, you're now taking away from your rest days when the recovery occurs, when the muscle breakdown would occur.
• 10:11
  Philip Pape: So think about that.
• 10:12
  Philip Pape: It's not just that you need your carbs during the training session, you also need them for the anti-catabolic environment outside your training session, and so I like to distribute carbs fairly evenly day to day Now, on non-training days, when you eat those carbs, is less important.
• 10:28
  Philip Pape: That's the main difference, all right.
• 10:30
  Philip Pape: Third, you can increase your carbs during fat loss.
• 10:34
  Philip Pape: Now, this might sound counterintuitive because the calories are low, the protein is high and don't carbs, by definition, come down.
• 10:41
  Philip Pape: Yes, but I have found with many clients who really like their protein and have become quite consistent, their protein actually ends up being maybe even higher than they need and it sacrifices carbs, or their fats are higher and it sacrifices carbs.
• 10:55
  Philip Pape: And what we do is we tweak it.
• 10:56
  Philip Pape: We say, all right, let's drop protein by 20 grams and increase your carbs by 20 grams, and let's shuttle those carbs right before your workout.
• 11:04
  Philip Pape: And boom, all of a sudden, more energy in their workout.
• 11:07
  Philip Pape: They feel better, they don't get shaky, they don't get um, you know, they don't feel winded or wiped after the workout.
• 11:13
  Philip Pape: And it just changes the whole equation from feeling kind of miserable and like am I doing the right thing?
• 11:18
  Philip Pape: To hey, I can get through this, no problem, like I've got the energy to go.
• 11:20
  Philip Pape: To hey, I can get through this, no problem, like I've got the energy to go.
• 11:23
  Philip Pape: So think about whether your carbs are actually too low, even though you are trying to anchor your protein, there could be a little trade-off that you can make, and it might be with the fats, right, like maybe your fat is too high and you can bring that down and give it to carbs, all right.
• 11:37
  Philip Pape: Fourth strategy Don't fall for the protein only advice, like there are some people that all they talk about is protein, or protein and fiber, and I've done that sometimes just because people don't get enough.
• 11:48
  Philip Pape: And, of course, protein is crucial to build muscle, but carbs play an equally important role in preventing the breakdown and that's the message I want you to take home today.
• 11:57
  Philip Pape: All right, so here's something fascinating, right To tie all this together.
• 12:01
  Philip Pape: That ties it back to our concept from engineering.
• 12:05
  Philip Pape: When we design materials to withstand stress, we don't just think about the strength, but on the resilience of the material, the plasticity right of the material, the elasticity, its ability to resist being deformed, because if it's too hard it's just going to break, but if it has a little bit of give in it, right, it won't.
• 12:24
  Philip Pape: So in a similar way, building muscle is not just making this scaffolding out of protein and just focusing on one side of the equation.
• 12:32
  Philip Pape: It's creating the overall environment that prevents the breakdown and resilience and elasticity by focusing on the carb side as well, the anti-catabolic side, and I see this all the time with clients who will get into a fat loss phase and will start to see a little bit of lean mass loss, which is, it's, very unlikely the way we have it set up.
• 12:53
  Philip Pape: But if you're losing strength rapidly and it's faster than you expect, it could be because the carbs are too low, right.
• 13:02
  Philip Pape: And you're like why is that?
• 13:03
  Philip Pape: Well, increase the carb intake, keep the calories the same, right.
• 13:06
  Philip Pape: So you're gonna make a trade-off and support yourself in the gym.
• 13:10
  Philip Pape: What happens?
• 13:10
  Philip Pape: Well, now you can lift a few more reps, or you can have that extra reserve to really hit the maximal strength on your lifts.
• 13:17
  Philip Pape: And now you're not gonna lose the strength as quickly, if at all, for a while at least, right.
• 13:22
  Philip Pape: And that could accelerate the fat loss, because now you're supporting your metabolism and you're supporting your muscle.
• 13:30
  Philip Pape: You're giving yourself the maximum training stimulus.
• 13:32
  Philip Pape: Isn't that cool Like that?
• 13:34
  Philip Pape: That's the interesting part about it is that increasing carbs during fat loss could improve your fat loss, all right.
• 13:41
  Philip Pape: So, as we wrap up, let's recap again why carbs are your muscle's best friend, all right.
• 13:46
  Philip Pape: Number one they trigger insulin, which is anti-catabolic.
• 13:49
  Philip Pape: Number two, they prevent protein breakdown that would otherwise occur through gluconeogenesis.
• 13:56
  Philip Pape: Three, they maintain glycogen stores that protect your muscle.
• 14:00
  Philip Pape: And then, fourth, they create an optimal environment, both in fat loss and muscle building, to preserve and build muscle.
• 14:07
  Philip Pape: So the next time anyone out there a fitfluencer, someone you follow on YouTube wherever says, cut carbs and you'll get better results, remember that you might be sacrificing a very, very powerful tool for actually preserving or building that muscle.
• 14:20
  Philip Pape: All right, so if you want to put all this into action and get some exact numbers and rates for you, download my new and improved muscle building nutrition blueprint.
• 14:30
  Philip Pape: Go to witsandweightscom, click the link in the show notes and I'll show you exactly how to implement all of the nutrition strategies to build muscle.
• 14:37
  Philip Pape: Stay lean, do it at the right rate, not gain too much fat and uh, and be totally strong.
• 14:42
  Philip Pape: Jacked lean, tone whatever word you're going for.
• 14:43
  Philip Pape: All right, until next time, keep using your wits lifting those weights and remember understanding the science behind carbs can unlock your results.
• 14:54
  Philip Pape: This is Philip Pape and you've been listening, as always, to wits and weights, and I'll talk to you next time.