Latest / Wits & Weights | Strength & Fat Loss Over 40 / The Proven Formula for Body Recomp and Physique Transformation (Iterative Design) | Ep 213

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The Proven Formula for Body Recomp and Physique Transformation (Iterative Design) | Ep 213 · Wits & Weights | Strength & Fat Loss Over 40

• 0:01
  Philip Pape: I want you to ask yourself a very honest question Is what I'm doing working?
• 0:05
  Philip Pape: Is my training, my nutrition, all the things actually giving me the physique that I want, whether that's lean and muscular or big and strong, whatever it is?
• 0:14
  Philip Pape: Because, if you're like most people, you have this typical trajectory.
• 0:17
  Philip Pape: It starts with initial excitement and motivation, followed by hitting one roadblock after another, not quite getting what you want, eventually giving up and then hopping to the next thing.
• 0:26
  Philip Pape: So today we wanna talk about a method that engineers use to create products that can be applied to your body transformation.
• 0:33
  Philip Pape: To avoid these roadblocks along the way and get through them.
• 0:36
  Philip Pape: The idea is to take a data-driven, systemic approach that evolves with you, so that you know exactly what to do and you have the clarity and confidence to get whatever result you're going for.
• 0:59
  Philip Pape: Welcome to Wits and Weights, the podcast that blends evidence and engineering to help you build smart, efficient systems to achieve your dream physique.
• 1:06
  Philip Pape: I'm your host, philip Pape, and today we are talking about the bread and butter of engineering design.
• 1:12
  Philip Pape: It's called iterative design and it can apply directly to your physique transformation.
• 1:17
  Philip Pape: It is why I came up with the term physique engineering and exactly what most people are missing in terms of the process that they use.
• 1:25
  Philip Pape: A lot of people just jump into a diet or jump into a training program.
• 1:31
  Philip Pape: They follow a template, they try to execute something that is not necessarily right for them and, whether it is or isn't, they then fail to gather the data about whether it's working.
• 1:42
  Philip Pape: They get frustrated because of a lack of results or because the results are taking too long to achieve, they give up and then they go to the next thing.
• 1:50
  Philip Pape: That will result in the exact same failed outcome.
• 1:53
  Philip Pape: And today I wanna give you this more results-driven, practical method that will prevent the stagnation, prevent you from spinning those wheels like you have been, and instead give you consistency, measurable progress, and we're going to take this over a two-year period.
• 2:10
  Philip Pape: We're going to assume you're just starting with this.
• 2:12
  Philip Pape: I'm going to give you an example and I'm going to walk you through the six phases of what we call iterative design, and it's a very simple concept.
• 2:21
  Philip Pape: It's just the idea that to create a complex system or complex product, like engineers do, we have to have a plan, we have to execute, we have to gather data and we have to test it, and then we repeat.
• 2:34
  Philip Pape: But I'm going to break it down for you again with an example so that we can understand how you can apply it.
• 2:40
  Philip Pape: You can apply it Now before I do just understand that there are a million different ways to apply this.
• 2:47
  Philip Pape: That is the point.
• 2:48
  Philip Pape: This is a principle-based method, not a specific template or program, because everyone is different.
• 2:53
  Philip Pape: Everyone has different hormones, you're at a different age, you have different training response, there are different foods that you like, you have a different schedule.
• 3:02
  Philip Pape: I can go on and on about the ways that we are unique, even though we're human and biology still applies.
• 3:07
  Philip Pape: So the principles will still work.
• 3:09
  Philip Pape: And so if you want to take this data and apply it directly to you, the easiest, fastest way to do that is to schedule a 15 minute rapid nutrition assessment with me, totally free call.
• 3:19
  Philip Pape: It is not a sales pitch.
• 3:20
  Philip Pape: We're just going to jump on a call and say, hey, what is the thing that's stopping you from results right now and what are three steps you can take immediately to start getting results over the next 90 days?
• 3:33
  Philip Pape: So let's talk about the framework today iterative design.
• 3:37
  Philip Pape: Iterative as in to iterate, to repeat over and over until you achieve close to perfection, or at least you continue to optimize.
• 3:44
  Philip Pape: It's just a methodology for designing, testing, evaluating and refining a system through multiple iterations, and the core idea is that you start with some idea of where you want to go.
• 3:55
  Philip Pape: You then do it, you then see with whether what you did produce the outcome you wanted, and then you improve and you repeat and it sounds simple, right?
• 4:06
  Philip Pape: It's like, oh okay, that's all I have to do, but let's break it down and we'll see why most people don't necessarily do this.
• 4:11
  Philip Pape: And what is the slight difference?
• 4:14
  Philip Pape: We're not slight, a profound difference we're talking about today.
• 4:17
  Philip Pape: So let's just create a person John Doe, right?
• 4:21
  Philip Pape: The classic, anonymous individual who is 200 pounds and, yes, this is a male.
• 4:26
  Philip Pape: But again, this is just an example.
• 4:28
  Philip Pape: It can apply to any level of scale, weight, any level of body fat, any goal whatsoever, but we're focused on body composition on this podcast.
• 4:36
  Philip Pape: So assume he's 200 pounds, 25% body fat, so a bit overweight, a little bit of weight to lose, probably not as strong, yet probably wants to lean out a bit, and his goal is to reach 180 pounds, right?
• 4:49
  Philip Pape: So he wants to lose 20 pounds of fat to get to something around 12% body fat over two years.
• 4:55
  Philip Pape: Here's how we're going to apply iterative design.
• 4:58
  Philip Pape: Okay, the six phases.
• 4:59
  Philip Pape: Phase one is the design.
• 5:01
  Philip Pape: This is where you set a goal, you create a plan.
• 5:04
  Philip Pape: Just know that it's going to change as you go along.
• 5:08
  Philip Pape: But you've got to start somewhere and give yourself direction.
• 5:10
  Philip Pape: So for John, he sets up a six-month iteration at the beginning where he is going to lose fat, and so within that six months he figures okay to lose fat.
• 5:23
  Philip Pape: I first need to figure out what my maintenance calories are, so I'm going to track my food and then at some point I'm going to go in a calorie deficit.
• 5:30
  Philip Pape: Not sure exactly how much yet.
• 5:32
  Philip Pape: Maybe it's 500 calories.
• 5:34
  Philip Pape: So I can lose a pound a week.
• 5:35
  Philip Pape: But we'll see.
• 5:36
  Philip Pape: It depends on how I'm feeling, it depends on where my starting point is right, depends, depends, depends once we get there.
• 5:43
  Philip Pape: But we come out with a rough plan a calorie deficit, a certain duration, let's say 16 weeks.
• 5:48
  Philip Pape: For that first one, we're going to go for a 16 pound drop and I'm going to keep training with my current four day upper lower split right, very simple.
• 5:58
  Philip Pape: But there are a lot of details under that we're not going to go to on this podcast.
• 6:01
  Philip Pape: The point is you have a plan, a direction, a single goal, and you're not going to deviate from that.
• 6:06
  Philip Pape: You're going to make that work, but you are going to adjust as you go along so that you can adhere to it.
• 6:13
  Philip Pape: Phase two implement.
• 6:14
  Philip Pape: So don't spend too long in phase one designing the plan.
• 6:17
  Philip Pape: It's literally on a piece of paper, scratching it out in a half hour, right, and if you've done this many times before, it might take five minutes.
• 6:25
  Philip Pape: If you've never done it before, this is where please reach out to me so I can help you put this together, cause this is the piece that people often get stuck with is phase one, the design.
• 6:34
  Philip Pape: So phase two is implement.
• 6:36
  Philip Pape: You execute the plan.
• 6:37
  Philip Pape: John goes ahead and he does the thing.
• 6:40
  Philip Pape: He tracks his food, he tracks his steps, he tracks his biofeedback and his measurements, and he's focused on progressive overload in the gym.
• 6:48
  Philip Pape: He's tracking his food meticulously.
• 6:50
  Philip Pape: I say meticulously but I mean he's doing it daily.
• 6:52
  Philip Pape: He's not trying to hit the targets perfectly.
• 6:53
  Philip Pape: He's trying to be in the ballpark, trying to get enough sleep, and he's just doing the things.
• 6:57
  Philip Pape: He's not sure whether the things are going to get him the result he wants, yet he's not even sure whether he's in the right deficit, yet right.
• 7:05
  Philip Pape: He's just doing what he thinks he needs to do.
• 7:08
  Philip Pape: Then that brings us to phase three, which is testing.
• 7:11
  Philip Pape: Because you're tracking all the things, because you're tracking enough data body measurements, progress photos, strength progression, food energy levels, mood, appetite, all your biofeedback, anything.
• 7:24
  Philip Pape: You need to measure the outcome.
• 7:25
  Philip Pape: Because he's doing that, oh, scale weight as well, right, because he's doing that, he is going to be able to look back after two months, four months, six months and know whether the choices that he made and the behaviors that he took produced the outcomes he wanted.
• 7:40
  Philip Pape: Even if he's not perfect, even if he doesn't adhere all the time, he knows that that level of adherence, that level of imperfection, that level of consistency or lack thereof, is what led to the outcome.
• 7:52
  Philip Pape: And that is just data.
• 7:53
  Philip Pape: It is not failure, it is not anything other than information.
• 7:58
  Philip Pape: Step four is the evaluation phase.
• 8:00
  Philip Pape: Well, now you get to analyze the data.
• 8:02
  Philip Pape: Now, of course, you could wait till six months later and say, oh, did I lose the 16 pounds of fat?
• 8:07
  Philip Pape: Or?
• 8:08
  Philip Pape: What I would recommend is, as you go along every day, every week, every month, depends on the data you're talking about.
• 8:14
  Philip Pape: You continue to look at it.
• 8:15
  Philip Pape: You just look at the data and say where is this trending Right, from a scale weight perspective, for example, a good time period is roughly three weeks and if you're using an app like macro factor, that is the timeframe that it uses to say Hmm, are you actually trending downward or not?
• 8:30
  Philip Pape: And if you're not, do we need to adjust your calorie deficit?
• 8:33
  Philip Pape: And along the way, you would say okay, I am, I'm losing weight at the clip that I want.
• 8:38
  Philip Pape: I'm getting enough of my fiber, but I'm feeling fatigued.
• 8:42
  Philip Pape: What is going on?
• 8:43
  Philip Pape: Maybe I'm not getting enough sleep, maybe I'm missing some other nutrient in my diet.
• 8:48
  Philip Pape: Maybe I'm not hydrated enough.
• 8:49
  Philip Pape: Maybe I'm working out too frequently?
• 8:53
  Philip Pape: Right, you're able to take all the data and correlate it and identify the thing that potentially is causing friction or roadblocks along the way.
• 9:02
  Philip Pape: Right, and usually the more data you have, the easier it is to identify.
• 9:06
  Philip Pape: When I work with clients and they check in, they are providing me a ton of data.
• 9:10
  Philip Pape: Now, a lot of that data is automatically collected with wearables and stuff like that, uh, but some of it is manually entered, like their food log, and if, for example, they hit a plateau if you hit a weight loss plateau I can pretty quickly see what the issue might be.
• 9:27
  Philip Pape: It might just be something as simple as well.
• 9:29
  Philip Pape: You're not in the deficit we wanted to be in and therefore you're not losing as quickly.
• 9:32
  Philip Pape: But it could be something else.
• 9:34
  Philip Pape: It could be a reduction in activity, it could be higher stress.
• 9:36
  Philip Pape: There's so many little things.
• 9:38
  Philip Pape: But once you have all the data, you can correlate it.
• 9:40
  Philip Pape: And again, here's where, the more you do this, the more you learn about yourself.
• 9:43
  Philip Pape: And also this is where you could always reach out to someone like me or join our Facebook group and ask a question along the way.
• 9:51
  Philip Pape: Here's my data, here are my screenshots, here's my context.
• 9:55
  Philip Pape: I am stuck.
• 9:57
  Philip Pape: Help me out.
• 9:58
  Philip Pape: And guess what?
• 9:58
  Philip Pape: Because you have all that data, people are going to be able to jump in and say, oh, I see this, this and this, and they can start asking you questions How's your, you know, how's your sleep, how's your training, how's your this, how's your that?
• 10:11
  Philip Pape: Right, and they can then figure out with you together, like a, like a detective, what could be causing the inability to get the result you want, if it is not already obvious from the data.
• 10:22
  Philip Pape: So that's step four is evaluating the data.
• 10:25
  Philip Pape: Step five is now.
• 10:26
  Philip Pape: You just refine, right the plan.
• 10:29
  Philip Pape: You refine the plan based on the data, and so what that looks like is after four weeks.
• 10:35
  Philip Pape: If you hit a weight loss plateau, you might simply drop calories.
• 10:39
  Philip Pape: It might be as simple as that.
• 10:40
  Philip Pape: Or if your fatigue is climbing, maybe you have an extra recovery day.
• 10:43
  Philip Pape: So you make refinements as you go.
• 10:46
  Philip Pape: You don't just throw the whole thing out the baby with the bathwater, as they say and hop to a completely different program or a completely different plan, because you have the information and the clarity and the data.
• 10:57
  Philip Pape: Wtf, what is going on?
• 11:01
  Philip Pape: You know, okay, there's this one thing over here that could be the issue.
• 11:05
  Philip Pape: I'm going to focus on that.
• 11:09
  Philip Pape: I'm going to tweak that.
• 11:09
  Philip Pape: I'm going to collect data.
• 11:10
  Philip Pape: I'm going to go through this again.
• 11:10
  Philip Pape: Okay, that's fine.
• 11:11
  Philip Pape: Now I'm going to go to this thing over here and repeat.
• 11:12
  Philip Pape: And so that's.
• 11:13
  Philip Pape: The last phase is to repeat, to repeat everything you're doing in iterations and think of them as like micro iterations, macro iterations, long-term iterations, it doesn't matter.
• 11:25
  Philip Pape: Basically, all the things you're doing on a daily, weekly, monthly basis are iterating.
• 11:29
  Philip Pape: Now, over the big term, over the long term.
• 11:32
  Philip Pape: This two-year period for John, who wants to go from 200 to 180, his first six months might be a fat loss phase to lose 16 pounds, which gets him close to his goal weight, but not necessarily his body fat goal, because you can't just lose weight and you're done so.
• 11:46
  Philip Pape: Then he says, okay, the next nine months now I'm going to plan a muscle building phase.
• 11:50
  Philip Pape: Right Now he's going to pack on some weight back to his body, but a lot of it is going to be lean tissue, lean muscle mass.
• 11:55
  Philip Pape: And then he's like okay, now I'm 15 months in, I've got five months left in my two year plan.
• 12:02
  Philip Pape: The last five months I've given me one more, say mini cut, and then going back to maintenance, and now I've hit my 20 pounds loss and I'm at my body fat goal.
• 12:11
  Philip Pape: Now, whether going from 25 to 12 is reasonable or not, this was just an example and at the end of the day it doesn't really matter, because these are just numbers to drive behaviors.
• 12:20
  Philip Pape: The goal isn't necessarily hit the exact number all the time.
• 12:23
  Philip Pape: It's to make significant progress toward it, and that is kind of the way to think about.
• 12:27
  Philip Pape: This is personal growth, self-improvement, always iterating, growing, learning and becoming becoming that athlete that you were always meant to be, and that's it.
• 12:40
  Philip Pape: That's how I work with clients.
• 12:41
  Philip Pape: All the time it's we, you know, um.
• 12:42
  Philip Pape: One of my clients asked recently so what exactly do I get for the investment?
• 12:46
  Philip Pape: And I said you know, what you get for the investment is not just a result.
• 12:51
  Philip Pape: Yes, you will get a result, which a lot of people are just struggling to get.
• 12:53
  Philip Pape: The result at all Like if you're struggling to lose that last 10 pounds of fat and you work with me, we will lose the 10 pounds of fat.
• 13:00
  Philip Pape: So if that's what you're looking for and that's enough, that 10 pounds of fat so if that's what you're looking for and that's enough, that's worth the investment.
• 13:05
  Philip Pape: But beyond that, at least for me and my coaching practices, you will learn so much education, both uh, both in the sphere of nutrition and training, but more importantly, about you, about yourself and how to do this.
• 13:20
  Philip Pape: So you can fire me and do it yourself forever.
• 13:22
  Philip Pape: And I had lots of clients that went on to become nutrition coaches because they're like Holy crap, I just learned so much that I never knew before and that you know.
• 13:30
  Philip Pape: Basically, you would learn through a nutrition certification program or even a college level program, and now I can take that forward, not just for myself but to help others, and I love to see when that happens.
• 13:41
  Philip Pape: So my point with all of this is the goal isn't to hit a number, the goal isn't to lose weight.
• 13:46
  Philip Pape: The goal is to learn about yourself and have a process for getting to any goal whenever you want.
• 13:54
  Philip Pape: So iterative design is a methodology that's powerful.
• 13:58
  Philip Pape: It's simple, but it's powerful.
• 13:59
  Philip Pape: It's not necessarily easy to implement.
• 14:02
  Philip Pape: It takes effort, right, it takes effort, you have to be committed to it, um, but it allows for continual optimization and you'll never get to optimal.
• 14:11
  Philip Pape: Optimal is like some perfect, um, impossible point out there in infinity.
• 14:16
  Philip Pape: But you'll always get toward optimization for you, for your goal, instead of stubbornly sticking to one approach.
• 14:22
  Philip Pape: You consistently evaluate your progress, you make data-driven adjustments and then you turn potential plateaus into opportunities for improvement.
• 14:33
  Philip Pape: And that is the essence of sustained progress, sustainability over the long term.
• 14:38
  Philip Pape: And it makes this whole thing lots of fun, at least in my opinion.
• 14:41
  Philip Pape: And if you take anything away from this episode is the power of this approach lies in its adaptability, in how it evolves with you Over the two years of John's plan.
• 14:52
  Philip Pape: He didn't just blindly follow the plan from day one.
• 14:55
  Philip Pape: He continuously assessed, adjusted, improved his approach, and then everything that other people think of as a failure is actually just a data point, so it doesn't just transform your body, does it.
• 15:07
  Philip Pape: It reshapes your relationship with the ideas of fitness and nutrition and training Things that you relish, that you look forward to, that are part of your life, that are ingrained.
• 15:17
  Philip Pape: You become a scientist of your own physique.
• 15:20
  Philip Pape: You gain a deep understanding of how your body responds to different strategies.
• 15:24
  Philip Pape: And then you develop skills skills to adapt and overcome any obstacle in your journey.
• 15:31
  Philip Pape: So let's just recap, just in case I overwhelmed you a bit with all the phases here.
• 15:37
  Philip Pape: Number one iterative design is a principle based, powerful tool for long-term physique transformation long-term transformation of anything, but in this case we're talking about your physique.
• 15:49
  Philip Pape: Number two we.
• 15:50
  Philip Pape: There are six phases that provide a framework for continuous improvement in your training and nutrition over months, over years, over the rest of your life, and they are design, implement, test, evaluate, refine and repeat.
• 16:05
  Philip Pape: Number three this approach leads to sustainable results because you adapt to your body's changing needs, whatever it needs at any moment in time.
• 16:14
  Philip Pape: And then, finally, this mindset transforms how you view progress and setbacks not as failures but as opportunities.
• 16:24
  Philip Pape: If anything is worthy of careful engineering, of careful attention, it is your body.
• 16:29
  Philip Pape: It's a complex system.
• 16:30
  Philip Pape: Approach it with the same patience and persistence that you would if you were to get involved in a very intricate project, maybe something you've done for work in the past, or a hobby or something that you are meticulous craftsman at, or a craftswoman right?
• 16:46
  Philip Pape: Maybe you are a woodworker, maybe you build things.
• 16:49
  Philip Pape: Think about the amount of discipline and patience not discipline, but the patience and persistence.
• 16:54
  Philip Pape: It actually becomes something that is what you do and you get better and better at it, right?
• 16:59
  Philip Pape: You systematically engineer your way to something very impressive and it doesn't take that long when you do it that way.
• 17:07
  Philip Pape: So, again, if you're ready to apply this iterative design process to your own fitness journey, I'm offering free 15 minute rapid nutrition assessment calls.
• 17:15
  Philip Pape: During this call, we map out your design and we tailor it to you and we give you some steps to take to start implementing.
• 17:22
  Philip Pape: So, those first few phases of this process, I will give you the kick in the butt you need and get you going.
• 17:28
  Philip Pape: No sales pitch, none of that, it's just.
• 17:30
  Philip Pape: Here's the information, here are some resources.
• 17:32
  Philip Pape: Usually I send you a helpful video or guide or resource out of the call by email and then you're good to go and you feel free to ask me questions and have at it and do it all on your own, or some people end up coming back and saying, hey, help me implement this specific to me so that I can get that result much more efficiently and, in many cases, much more quickly than just trying to randomly go at it.
• 17:53
  Philip Pape: Sometimes the difference between spinning your wheels and making progress is just having that strategy in place.
• 17:59
  Philip Pape: And so let's connect, let's make sure you're on the right path for whatever your transformation is Maybe it's a fat loss phase, building muscle, body recomp, whatever it is.
• 18:07
  Philip Pape: Until next time, keep using your wits, lifting those weights, and remember that your dream physique is not built overnight.
• 18:14
  Philip Pape: It is engineered one iteration at a time.
• 18:18
  Philip Pape: This is Philip Pape, and you've been listening to Wits and Weights.
• 18:21
  Philip Pape: Talk to you next time.