Latest / Wits & Weights | Strength & Fat Loss Over 40 / 5 Signs You're Building Muscle (Even When the Mirror Says Otherwise) | Ep 435

Transcript

5 Signs You're Building Muscle (Even When the Mirror Says Otherwise) | Ep 435 · Wits & Weights | Strength & Fat Loss Over 40

• 0:01
  Philip Pape: You might be training hard and eating right, but when you look in the mirror or step on the scale, it feels like nothing's happening, or worse, like you're going backward.
• 0:10
  Philip Pape: If you've ever thought, I'm doing everything right, so why don't I look like it?
• 0:14
  Philip Pape: This episode is for you.
• 0:15
  Philip Pape: Today I'm breaking down five signs that you're actually building muscle that have nothing to do with how you look.
• 0:21
  Philip Pape: These are the markers that experienced coaches track, that research supports, and that most people are ignoring while they obsess over the scale or over the mirror.
• 0:32
  Philip Pape: By the end, you'll know exactly what to pay attention to and what to stop letting mess with your head.
• 0:38
  Philip Pape: She is in a coaching program, she's doing all the right things, and her coach had her take a deload week, which is a planned reduction in training volume, which is which is to let your body recover.
• 1:18
  Philip Pape: And she wrote me this quote, I'm used to being rewarded for consistency and effort and pressure, so my nervous system is like scanning for threats because I'm not getting immediate feedback.
• 1:28
  Philip Pape: I look softer, my veins are almost gone, and I feel like something's wrong, even though I know intellectually that this is supposed to happen, end quote.
• 1:36
  Philip Pape: And actually, she sent me a lot more details behind that.
• 1:38
  Philip Pape: And the message really stuck with me because this is a microcosm of a bigger challenge that I hear from a lot of people, right?
• 1:46
  Philip Pape: She isn't alone.
• 1:47
  Philip Pape: I hear versions of this all the time, whether you're in a building phase or a fat loss phase, but oftentimes it's you're trying to build muscle and you're watching the scale climb up, you might be panicking, people doing body recomp, wondering if anything's happening, people in maintenance after a diet who feel like they're losing their progress.
• 2:03
  Philip Pape: And I think the common thread here is that you're relying on feedback that's either delayed, it's like lagging indicators, or it's misleading, or it's the wrong feedback for the phase that you're in.
• 2:16
  Philip Pape: So today I'm gonna give you five reliable signs that you are building muscle and making progress that do not depend on the mirror or the scale doing what you want.
• 2:26
  Philip Pape: And I'm gonna answer Aaron's specific question a little bit later as well about what to actually expect during a D-load, because I don't think many people talk about that either.
• 2:34
  Philip Pape: Then stick around to the end because I'm gonna share three of the most common ways that people blow up their own progress by misreading short-term feedback.
• 2:44
  Philip Pape: And you've probably done at least one of them for, so stick around for that.
• 2:47
  Philip Pape: Now, before we get into the five signs, I want to explain why the two metrics that everyone is obsessing over, the mirror and the scale, are rather terrible indicators, especially of short-term progress.
• 3:02
  Philip Pape: How you look on any given day depends on a bunch of factors that have nothing to do with actual muscle or fat changes.
• 3:11
  Philip Pape: We've got to think short-term versus long term.
• 3:13
  Philip Pape: So, short-term, what is happening way overrides the long term, and this is where it throws us off mentally.
• 3:21
  Philip Pape: So you've got your glycogen levels.
• 3:23
  Philip Pape: This is the carbs stored in your muscles.
• 3:25
  Philip Pape: Those are gonna fluctuate a lot based on your training, your carb intake, your hydration status.
• 3:31
  Philip Pape: When glycogen is high, you're gonna look fuller and tighter.
• 3:35
  Philip Pape: And when it's low, you tend to look flatter and softer.
• 3:38
  Philip Pape: And this is one of the reasons why if I take someone through a fat loss phase for a specific event, I actually want them to refill with their glycogen a few weeks before so they look fuller and tighter.
• 3:49
  Philip Pape: And neither of these reflects actual change in fat loss or fat gain either way.
• 3:54
  Philip Pape: So that's glycogen.
• 3:55
  Philip Pape: Then we have our hydration and water.
• 3:57
  Philip Pape: Water distribution shifts all the time.
• 4:00
  Philip Pape: After you train hard, like a heavy leg day, you're gonna hold water from the inflammation.
• 4:04
  Philip Pape: If you're in a D-load or you're in a rest period or vacation, sometimes that inflammation drops away, and now you look less, look less lean, even though you might be recovering and growing.
• 4:16
  Philip Pape: So it really messes with your mind, and the body can change how hydrated or dehydrated it is as like an adaptive response to a lot of things like alcohol and fluid intake and stuff like that.
• 4:26
  Philip Pape: Then there's your nervous system, which affects how you look as well, believe it or not, right?
• 4:31
  Philip Pape: When you're in a stressed, ramped up state from even if it's from a good thing, like a heavy training session, you carry yourself differently physically in response to that.
• 4:41
  Philip Pape: Your blood flow is a little different, your muscle tone might look a little different.
• 4:45
  Philip Pape: And then when you recover, that changes, you might look softer.
• 4:48
  Philip Pape: So all of that affects how you look on a short-term basis.
• 4:52
  Philip Pape: And then the scale is even worse for short-term tracking, guys.
• 4:55
  Philip Pape: It measures the gravity pulling you down to earth.
• 4:59
  Philip Pape: That's it.
• 4:59
  Philip Pape: How much mass you have, that's your muscle, your fat, your water, your glycogen, organs and skeleton, food in your gut, everything in your body.
• 5:07
  Philip Pape: And so day-to-day swings of between, say, two to four or even five pounds are extremely normal and also meaningless.
• 5:14
  Philip Pape: Even though I encourage people to weigh every day, actually using that daily point is meaningless.
• 5:19
  Philip Pape: So if you're judging your progress by how you look this morning versus last week, you're just trying to read the tea leaves.
• 5:27
  Philip Pape: It's it's it's meaningless, guys.
• 5:30
  Philip Pape: These metrics matter only over at least weeks, but more likely months when we're talking about building muscle and body recomposition, not days or just a few weeks.
• 5:39
  Philip Pape: So, what should you track instead?
• 5:42
  Philip Pape: That is what the rest of this episode is about.
• 5:45
  Philip Pape: Let's go over the five signs that you're building muscle.
• 5:49
  Philip Pape: So if you know these signs, then you know what to track.
• 5:52
  Philip Pape: So, sign number one is that your strength is going up.
• 5:54
  Philip Pape: It's as simple as that.
• 5:55
  Philip Pape: This is the most reliable indicator that muscle growth is happening.
• 5:59
  Philip Pape: Muscle is strength, strength is muscle.
• 6:02
  Philip Pape: If you're getting stronger over time, adding weight to the bar, getting more reps at the same weight, progressing on your lifts overall, your muscles are adapting to give you that extra strength, and therefore your muscles are getting bigger.
• 6:14
  Philip Pape: Strength and muscle size, they're not perfectly correlated.
• 6:18
  Philip Pape: It's not a one-to-one, but they're closely linked.
• 6:21
  Philip Pape: You can't keep getting stronger forever without building muscle tissue.
• 6:25
  Philip Pape: And then, and the muscle has to grow to support the increased force production.
• 6:30
  Philip Pape: So tracking your key lifts, and these could be as simple as the big three or big four, like the powerlifting moves, deadlift, squat, press, overhead, or and or it could be a whole bunch of other lifts that are part of your programming.
• 6:43
  Philip Pape: And you want to track them over your cycle, or not, you know, over your uh training cycle.
• 6:48
  Philip Pape: Maybe that's four weeks, maybe that's six, eight, twelve, whatever.
• 6:51
  Philip Pape: Are you progressing, even if it's slow, right?
• 6:54
  Philip Pape: The more advanced you are, the more slowly it might progress, but that is the signal in the noise, not what you see or the weight on the scale.
• 7:01
  Philip Pape: So sign number one is that if you're not doing that, that's a big game changer.
• 7:04
  Philip Pape: Sign number two is that your recovery is getting better.
• 7:08
  Philip Pape: And it kind of trips people up because it feels counterintuitive.
• 7:13
  Philip Pape: As your body adapts to training, you often recover faster being between sessions.
• 7:18
  Philip Pape: This is where when I start working with people and they express that they don't have much soreness and they're surprised about that, I have to have that conversation that, you know, because we're progressing using the same lifts, your body adapts, you're not gonna have soreness.
• 7:32
  Philip Pape: It's not like those YouTube workouts or the F-45 or the Pilates, whatever, where you're just doing random stuff and a lot of eccentric work, and it's really not producing any gain in muscle and you feel beat up.
• 7:44
  Philip Pape: But if you are actually adapting to your training, you're gonna feel more recovered in some ways and less beat up day to day and bounce back quicker, which is incredible, which is an incredible extra side benefit.
• 7:55
  Philip Pape: A lot of you start to realize.
• 7:57
  Philip Pape: Now, a lot of people think this means their training isn't working because they're not as sore.
• 8:02
  Philip Pape: And that's backward.
• 8:03
  Philip Pape: It means your body's getting better at handling the stress and repairing the tissue, which is which is literally what adaptation is.
• 8:10
  Philip Pape: All right.
• 8:10
  Philip Pape: Pay attention to how you feel about 24 to 48 hours after you train.
• 8:16
  Philip Pape: If you're recovering better than you were two months ago, that's a really good sign that you are adapting and getting stronger.
• 8:24
  Philip Pape: Interesting, right?
• 8:25
  Philip Pape: And you're getting more athletic, you're getting, you're just getting better and stronger.
• 8:28
  Philip Pape: Sign number three is that your performance is improving.
• 8:32
  Philip Pape: So this is beyond just strength, just those numbers.
• 8:34
  Philip Pape: I want you to look at your overall training quality.
• 8:37
  Philip Pape: Can you do more total work in a session?
• 8:39
  Philip Pape: That's your work capacity.
• 8:40
  Philip Pape: Is your endurance within the sets getting better?
• 8:43
  Philip Pape: And mind you, this could occur without having extra cardio.
• 8:46
  Philip Pape: This is why I love lifting weights.
• 8:47
  Philip Pape: It checks so many boxes.
• 8:49
  Philip Pape: Are you hitting the higher end of your rep ranges more consistently?
• 8:53
  Philip Pape: Are you more efficient, which means now you can express even more strength and grow even more?
• 8:57
  Philip Pape: These performance markers reflect your body's increased capacity overall, not just muscle, but your energy system, your neural efficiency, and of course, more muscle tissue supporting the work.
• 9:12
  Philip Pape: So if your training's getting better, your body's adapting.
• 9:15
  Philip Pape: Sign number four is that your clothes fit differently.
• 9:19
  Philip Pape: Now that's the key word, differently, not just that your pants are looser, because again, it depends on what phase you're in.
• 9:26
  Philip Pape: You might be gaining weight and your waist might be going up on purpose because you're gaining some fat with the muscle.
• 9:31
  Philip Pape: We're not talking about this.
• 9:32
  Philip Pape: This is about where body recomp kind of shows up before the mirror tells you that it's there.
• 9:38
  Philip Pape: And you might notice that like your shirt's a little bit tighter in the shoulders or chest and your arms in a good way.
• 9:45
  Philip Pape: Your pants fit a little looser in the waist, but maybe tighter in the thighs.
• 9:48
  Philip Pape: And maybe they're not looser in the waist, maybe they're the same, but it you've got to understand how to put all the data together.
• 9:54
  Philip Pape: And this happens because you're gaining muscle and you're either losing fat at the same time if your waist is going down, or you're not really gaining that much fat, but the muscular areas of your body are outpacing the fat gain areas of your body, if that makes sense.
• 10:09
  Philip Pape: And again, this can be very difficult psychologically because if your waist is going up, that's not necessarily a bad thing at all.
• 10:15
  Philip Pape: It definitely can happen.
• 10:16
  Philip Pape: But if you're doing like a lean gain or aggressive maintenance or body recomp, generally you wouldn't expect much change on your waist, but you would expect bigger circumference in other areas, maybe your neck, your biceps, your chest, your, what am I trying to say, your thigh, your hip thighs, not necessarily your hips, but your thighs.
• 10:34
  Philip Pape: So if your clothes are fitting in this slightly different way, again, trust those before you would necessarily look at the scale or even the mirror, because the mirror could be a very cruel mistress because of the subjective interpretation.
• 10:49
  Philip Pape: Sign number five is that your biofeedback is solid.
• 10:54
  Philip Pape: All right.
• 10:54
  Philip Pape: And this is another one people, a lot of people I meet who haven't listened to this podcast or are very much into you know evidence-based fitness, aren't aware that, hey, all these physiological expressions of your body give you really good information.
• 11:07
  Philip Pape: How's your sleep?
• 11:08
  Philip Pape: How's your energy level?
• 11:09
  Philip Pape: How's your mood, your libido, your digestion, your hunger?
• 11:13
  Philip Pape: Right.
• 11:13
  Philip Pape: There's like a good list of between six and eight measures that are helpful for most people.
• 11:18
  Philip Pape: For some of you, you may have other things that that are helpful as well, but but that's those are the big ones.
• 11:25
  Philip Pape: When your body's adapting well to training and nutrition, these also tend to be stable or improving, right?
• 11:32
  Philip Pape: You tend to sleep a little better, a little more energy for your workouts.
• 11:35
  Philip Pape: You're not constantly starving or battling cravings either, because you're managing your hunger sick hunger signals better, probably because you're also fueling better.
• 11:42
  Philip Pape: And conversely, if you have poor biofeedback, right?
• 11:45
  Philip Pape: Your energy is constantly low, your sleep is inconsistent or bad or just disruptive, you're always hungry or you have just erratic hunger, brain fog, all of this kind of stuff, then there's something off with your recovery, maybe your nutrition, your calories, protein, carbs, maybe your training load, your volume, your approach, how much cardio you're doing, et cetera.
• 12:08
  Philip Pape: So good biofeedback means your system is handling the stress and adapting.
• 12:12
  Philip Pape: And notice not all of these are direct measures of hypertrophy, but they're corollary measures of a body that is thriving, growing, building, getting more functional, and performing better.
• 12:25
  Philip Pape: All right, so quick reminder at the end of this episode, I'm gonna share the three most common mistakes people make when they misread their short-term feedback.
• 12:33
  Philip Pape: And these tend to stop people from making progress.
• 12:36
  Philip Pape: And we're gonna help you not do that.
• 12:37
  Philip Pape: Now, we've been talking about biofeedback.
• 12:40
  Philip Pape: All right, these are the markers that tell your you your body is adapting well.
• 12:44
  Philip Pape: And I would put sleep by far at the top of that list.
• 12:48
  Philip Pape: And what helps recovery happen even faster is if you can have a really cozy, indulgent, helpful, calm environment for sleep.
• 12:59
  Philip Pape: Not just more hours, but better quality sleep, deeper REM sleep, deeper deep sleep.
• 13:04
  Philip Pape: And I want to talk about today's sponsor because this is super aligned.
• 13:07
  Philip Pape: Cozy Earth came to me a while back.
• 13:09
  Philip Pape: I wanted to sponsor the show.
• 13:10
  Philip Pape: I said, I need to start using your products for a while, and I did, and I love these guys.
• 13:15
  Philip Pape: The quality is extremely high.
• 13:17
  Philip Pape: You get what you pay for, but you also get the recovery.
• 13:21
  Philip Pape: I have talked before about their bamboo derived sheet set, but now I want to tell you about their pajamas that I've been wearing for a while.
• 13:28
  Philip Pape: I'm not a pajama person, and usually because they're too hot and they're they're not comfortable.
• 13:33
  Philip Pape: These, like their sheets, are extremely lightweight.
• 13:36
  Philip Pape: They regulate temperature because of the material.
• 13:38
  Philip Pape: And I've joked before that I wear box, I wear briefs that are made from a similar material, and and I can't, I would wear everything bamboo-derived if I could, probably.
• 13:46
  Philip Pape: And now I fall asleep faster.
• 13:48
  Philip Pape: I just am super comfortable when I get under the sheets because I normally run hot and they just don't trap heat.
• 13:53
  Philip Pape: So that combined with the sheets is great, but even just the pajamas are awesome.
• 13:57
  Philip Pape: And then another product I've been using because we love throws in blankets in our house, and my wife basically took this for her own.
• 14:03
  Philip Pape: It's called the classic cuddle blanket, and it lives on our couch.
• 14:06
  Philip Pape: Now, this is a super heavy blanket in a good way.
• 14:09
  Philip Pape: It's it's I you could almost call it a weighted blanket, but it's got like a very plush, soft feel.
• 14:14
  Philip Pape: My kids fight over it because they say it's like as soft as their hamsters or softer than that.
• 14:20
  Philip Pape: And we kind of fight over it because it's really, really warm.
• 14:23
  Philip Pape: Even when we have the fire going or the heat on, it keeps you warm.
• 14:27
  Philip Pape: So those are the kind of things I really like.
• 14:29
  Philip Pape: I love Cozy Earth.
• 14:30
  Philip Pape: They have a ton of products, they're all super high quality.
• 14:32
  Philip Pape: If you like to support the podcast, this is a great way to do it, right?
• 14:35
  Philip Pape: We don't bring in much income from the podcast itself.
• 14:38
  Philip Pape: So it really helps us make more of these episodes.
• 14:40
  Philip Pape: Go to wins and weights.com slash cozy earth and you'll get 20% off.
• 14:44
  Philip Pape: Now, if you don't see the 20% off, use our code Wits and Weights, but it should auto-apply.
• 14:48
  Philip Pape: Go to wins and weights.com slash cozy earth because it's it's just another tool in the toolbox and they back up their products.
• 14:56
  Philip Pape: They have a hundred night sleep trial.
• 14:59
  Philip Pape: And I've talked to people who have gotten nicks and scratches on their own fault, and they'll still return and give you a replacement.
• 15:07
  Philip Pape: Uh, they have a 10-year warranty.
• 15:08
  Philip Pape: So if you don't love it, you can send it back and I think you will.
• 15:11
  Philip Pape: I love it.
• 15:12
  Philip Pape: I I need to get more sheets and I need to get more pajamas so I have enough to rotate through.
• 15:16
  Philip Pape: Go to witzawaits.com slash cozy earth, support the podcast, check out Cozy Earth's amazing products to help with your sleep and comfort.
• 15:24
  Philip Pape: Witzawaits.com slash cozy earth.
• 15:27
  Philip Pape: All right, let me walk you through some specific situations where the mirror and the scale can be misleading.
• 15:35
  Philip Pape: And then they you can recognize when they happen to you.
• 15:38
  Philip Pape: All right, scenario number one is during a deload or rest week.
• 15:43
  Philip Pape: Now, this is what listener Erin H, who wrote the original question that spurred this episode, this is what she was experiencing that during a deload, you're reducing your training volume.
• 15:54
  Philip Pape: You're doing this on purpose to try to recover and get rid of some of the fatigue.
• 15:58
  Philip Pape: And so a lot of things will happen.
• 16:00
  Philip Pape: This is like a transitionary period, just like when you start on a diet or get out of a diet, or you start a new training program, you're effectively turning a big switch down on your training.
• 16:09
  Philip Pape: And so the turnover, turnover in your like glycogen will slow down, inflammation should go down.
• 16:16
  Philip Pape: Your nervous system, nervous system, your CNS, should be far less stimulated.
• 16:21
  Philip Pape: In fact, I I spoke to all-time world record holder in the 181 women's raw squat, Steph Mager, here on the podcast.
• 16:28
  Philip Pape: And she said for her D-Load, she doesn't even use a barbell that week in to deliberately force her from being able to stimulate your nervous system too much.
• 16:38
  Philip Pape: She switches to dumbbells, it's still pretty heavy, but she reduces the overall volume.
• 16:41
  Philip Pape: So during a D-load, you might look a little flatter, softer, less pumped because you don't have that constant stimulus coming in, especially if you've got a hypertrophy program going on.
• 16:51
  Philip Pape: And this doesn't mean you're regressing.
• 16:53
  Philip Pape: It's just you're recovering, you know, your muscles aren't shrinking away.
• 16:56
  Philip Pape: You're not gonna lose your gains.
• 16:58
  Philip Pape: We want this, we want to do this.
• 16:59
  Philip Pape: You're still gonna train that week, right?
• 17:00
  Philip Pape: You're not just taking it off altogether.
• 17:02
  Philip Pape: And even if you were, that's not gonna set you back.
• 17:05
  Philip Pape: You're getting a better chance to repair and grow and reduce some of that fatigue, that nervous system stress.
• 17:10
  Philip Pape: And so there could be visual changes that you don't like during a delo.
• 17:13
  Philip Pape: And guess what?
• 17:14
  Philip Pape: They're gonna reverse within a session or two once you resume normal training.
• 17:18
  Philip Pape: So, since Aaron asked a very specific question that nobody ever talks about on these podcasts, I want to address it today.
• 17:25
  Philip Pape: And that is what should you expect during a deload week?
• 17:28
  Philip Pape: What metrics matter?
• 17:29
  Philip Pape: What feedback's normal?
• 17:30
  Philip Pape: How do you know it's working?
• 17:31
  Philip Pape: Just gonna take like a couple minutes to answer this real quick and then we get back to the main topic.
• 17:35
  Philip Pape: But here's your answer, Aaron.
• 17:36
  Philip Pape: Okay.
• 17:37
  Philip Pape: What you'll probably see is that the scale weight might go up a little bit because of water distribution, or it might go down from reduced inflammation, could go either way, right?
• 17:46
  Philip Pape: Because you've disrupted your training patterns.
• 17:48
  Philip Pape: I'm not gonna read into that because I never read into a few days or a week or even two weeks anyway.
• 17:52
  Philip Pape: I always say think about a three-week average when you think of scale weight.
• 17:56
  Philip Pape: Visually, you might look a little softer, flatter, less pumped.
• 17:59
  Philip Pape: Your veins might not be there if you normally look vascular, right?
• 18:02
  Philip Pape: Some people don't have that, you know, that look anyway, but depends.
• 18:05
  Philip Pape: And this is all the glycogen and water shifts we talked about.
• 18:08
  Philip Pape: And then probably some reduced muscles tone, you don't have the same pump, your nervous system's calmed down.
• 18:13
  Philip Pape: And this is temporary, it's gonna reverse within one or two sessions.
• 18:16
  Philip Pape: So I would forget the mirror.
• 18:17
  Philip Pape: I would pay attention to your recovery markers during that week as the most important thing that you care about.
• 18:22
  Philip Pape: That's all that matters.
• 18:23
  Philip Pape: Is your sleep getting better?
• 18:25
  Philip Pape: Are those nagging aches in your joints, like your low back or shoulders or knees or wherever that is, starting to go away?
• 18:32
  Philip Pape: Are they fading away?
• 18:33
  Philip Pape: That to me is really important, especially for those of us over 40, achy joints.
• 18:37
  Philip Pape: You want to listen to that.
• 18:39
  Philip Pape: Is your digestion a little better?
• 18:40
  Philip Pape: Do you feel less mentally fried?
• 18:42
  Philip Pape: Because that's also very important.
• 18:44
  Philip Pape: And then I guess here's the big one because by the end of the deload, you should start feeling a genuine desire, like psyched up to train hard again.
• 18:52
  Philip Pape: Like, okay, I missed training, I gotta get back to it next week, right?
• 18:55
  Philip Pape: Real eagerness to do it, that pull toward the gym.
• 18:58
  Philip Pape: And that tells you that's a really good message to tell you you're recovered.
• 19:02
  Philip Pape: And don't forget the food side of this.
• 19:04
  Philip Pape: During a deload is not the time to go into a deficit if you weren't to begin with.
• 19:08
  Philip Pape: I mean, if you're already dieting and you just want to continue diet, great.
• 19:11
  Philip Pape: But I would say a delo, if anything, you want to increase calories.
• 19:14
  Philip Pape: And even if you're dieting, this might be a great week to take a maintenance break because you're trying to help the recovery, and that's only going to accelerate it.
• 19:21
  Philip Pape: So a successful deload, I would say doesn't always feel productive in the moment.
• 19:26
  Philip Pape: It kind of feels lazy to some of us, right?
• 19:29
  Philip Pape: Like so, like you and me, Aaron, who wire to think that like our effort means we're making progress and you don't want to rest on your laurels.
• 19:37
  Philip Pape: So you're not going to get the same feedback.
• 19:39
  Philip Pape: You know, the pump isn't there, the mirror may not look like you want.
• 19:42
  Philip Pape: But if you feel better by the end of the week than you did at the start, you're sleeping well, aches are gone, you're looking forward to training more than you were before, those are good signs.
• 19:50
  Philip Pape: And then when you come back to normal training, you'll know the D load work.
• 19:54
  Philip Pape: That's the other thing.
• 19:55
  Philip Pape: You have to have that feedback of okay, the weights might feel a little lighter, uh, you're Pumps are going to come back immediately if you care about that.
• 20:02
  Philip Pape: Your motivation should be a little higher.
• 20:03
  Philip Pape: So there's all of these aspects that we get from a D-Lo, whether they're programmed in or done a little bit more auto-regulated fashion.
• 20:11
  Philip Pape: That's a whole other episode.
• 20:12
  Philip Pape: Like, how do we do Doads?
• 20:13
  Philip Pape: All right.
• 20:13
  Philip Pape: So sometimes, Aaron and everyone listening, you do have to change what you measure based on the phase, even if it's a week-long special phase like this.
• 20:22
  Philip Pape: Same thing goes for when you travel, same thing goes for if you take a diet break or a refeed or anything else, just has to change.
• 20:28
  Philip Pape: I'm on my refeed weekend in the middle of a fat loss phase.
• 20:31
  Philip Pape: So during the weekend, I'm tracking things a little different than I do during the week.
• 20:34
  Philip Pape: I know my weight is gonna pop a little bit and then it's gonna drop back down, but I kind of ignore it for a few days, knowing that happens.
• 20:40
  Philip Pape: I take it, I measure it, but I ignore I ignore it mentally more than I would otherwise.
• 20:46
  Philip Pape: So that's that's the first scenario is the is a D load of rest week.
• 20:51
  Philip Pape: The second scenario for when feedback gets a little bit confusing is early in a building phase.
• 20:58
  Philip Pape: So when you go into a building phase, you're gonna eat more than you were before, probably in a small surplus.
• 21:04
  Philip Pape: And I know there's more info now about how big of a surplus do you have to be.
• 21:07
  Philip Pape: Maybe you don't have to be in that much of a surplus.
• 21:09
  Philip Pape: Doesn't matter.
• 21:09
  Philip Pape: You're eating more, you're eating enough to build muscle.
• 21:12
  Philip Pape: The scale is probably gonna go up a little bit.
• 21:14
  Philip Pape: And you might look a little softer in the midsection, and then you might panic.
• 21:18
  Philip Pape: Okay.
• 21:19
  Philip Pape: And you might stop.
• 21:19
  Philip Pape: And this is this is a lot of my clients and those of you in physique university or using my app.
• 21:24
  Philip Pape: It's like you have to commit to it and understand what's happening.
• 21:27
  Philip Pape: What is actually happening is you're holding on to more glycogen and water from the increased food and training.
• 21:32
  Philip Pape: That's it.
• 21:32
  Philip Pape: You're gonna gain some weight just from that.
• 21:35
  Philip Pape: You might even gain a little bloating initially because your body's not used to the extra fluid, has to adapt before it releases some of it.
• 21:41
  Philip Pape: And there might be a tiny bit of fat gain as you go along during the building phase because most of what you're trying to gain is muscle.
• 21:47
  Philip Pape: But to gain that muscle, you're in a little bit of a surplus, and therefore you might gain a little bit of fat.
• 21:52
  Philip Pape: Now we do it in a very efficient way these days.
• 21:54
  Philip Pape: I often don't push people too hard on the amount of a surplus.
• 21:58
  Philip Pape: More with men than women tends to be the case.
• 22:00
  Philip Pape: And if you're open to adding gaining a little more fat, but you might gain even more muscle, you've got to see what works for you in that regard.
• 22:08
  Philip Pape: I've been through very, very aggressive phases and very, very lean phases.
• 22:11
  Philip Pape: And now I know what works well for me.
• 22:13
  Philip Pape: For me, it is somewhere in the middle.
• 22:15
  Philip Pape: For some people, it might be on either end.
• 22:16
  Philip Pape: All right.
• 22:17
  Philip Pape: So early on, your muscles are gonna fill out with fuel.
• 22:19
  Philip Pape: It's kind of like when you start taking creatine, people are like, oh my God, I gain weight on creatine and I feel bloated and this and that.
• 22:25
  Philip Pape: Well, it's usually a good sign your muscles are filling up with more fuel.
• 22:28
  Philip Pape: That's what allows you to perform better.
• 22:30
  Philip Pape: And then your body adapts to the fluid change and will look better once it adapts.
• 22:35
  Philip Pape: And so I would I say, I say wait eight to 12 weeks, like like two to three months into a building phase before you really judge anything.
• 22:42
  Philip Pape: Because the building side is slower than the fat loss side.
• 22:45
  Philip Pape: So everything's just kind of stretched out.
• 22:47
  Philip Pape: It's a process, guys, but it's a process that's so worth it.
• 22:50
  Philip Pape: So that's scenario two is the early building phase.
• 22:52
  Philip Pape: Scenario three, where the feedback gets a little weird, is body recomp.
• 22:57
  Philip Pape: In fact, all of it.
• 22:58
  Philip Pape: Now, I recently had a whole episode devoted to body recomp.
• 23:01
  Philip Pape: I've had several of those.
• 23:03
  Philip Pape: And a lot of people want to do it, but a lot of people don't want to accept how the measurement gets a little wonky and precise and difficult.
• 23:12
  Philip Pape: Okay, you're eating around maintenance, maybe a little higher, maybe lower.
• 23:16
  Philip Pape: You're still training, you're doing all the things, but a lot thing a lot is not going to change.
• 23:21
  Philip Pape: The scale is probably not going to change that much.
• 23:24
  Philip Pape: Even what you see in the mirror, it's going to take time to change.
• 23:27
  Philip Pape: And that's the hard part about body recomp.
• 23:30
  Philip Pape: As much as everyone thinks it's a holy grail, it's slow and it's hard to see week to week.
• 23:35
  Philip Pape: And yeah, you might be losing fat, gaining muscle at the same rate, and your weight stays sable.
• 23:39
  Philip Pape: So that kind of throws you off.
• 23:41
  Philip Pape: So the signs show up, and guess what?
• 23:43
  Philip Pape: The five signs we talked about earlier: strength progression, how your clothes fit, those kinds of things.
• 23:48
  Philip Pape: Now you can take things like photos and compare them.
• 23:51
  Philip Pape: You don't want to look at your mirror every day or any day, really, and try to compare that because you just, it's not possible for our human brain to comprehend from you know three weeks ago in the mirror to today in the mirror.
• 24:02
  Philip Pape: Our brains just don't work well with that kind of memory.
• 24:04
  Philip Pape: Photos, though, are a more objective way to do that, especially if you're if you get to share that with a coach or even in our community, if you were to share the photos in appropriate clothing, and we can help you identify before and after.
• 24:17
  Philip Pape: And then scenario four where it gets confusing is post-diet maintenance.
• 24:22
  Philip Pape: So after a fat loss phase and you bump your calories back up to maintenance, a lot of things can like look worse, quote unquote, qualitatively in the short term because you're going to gain several pounds of fluid, glycogen, water.
• 24:37
  Philip Pape: You're losing the inflammation-driven hardness that dieting creates.
• 24:41
  Philip Pape: Dieting creates this kind of hardness, if you will, that some people like, I have to, I have to say, but it also is counter to performance and building muscle and everything.
• 24:50
  Philip Pape: So all these changes are transitionary.
• 24:52
  Philip Pape: A lot of them stabilize or the body adapts and return to a normal state instead of a depleted one.
• 24:58
  Philip Pape: And then we'll start, you know, kind of looking quote unquote normal again.
• 25:01
  Philip Pape: So these are the things you have to deal with.
• 25:02
  Philip Pape: In all these scenarios, the five signs I gave you earlier, five signs you're actually building muscle, still apply.
• 25:08
  Philip Pape: And so I want you to check those as you go.
• 25:11
  Philip Pape: So I want to leave you with something that I think matters here about visible progress and transformation, because we think that if we're working hard, we should see it, that the mirror and the scale should tell it.
• 25:22
  Philip Pape: And the whole fitness, wellness, dieting, weight loss industry is built on quote unquote transformations that are visual, before and after photos, right?
• 25:31
  Philip Pape: Before and after photos.
• 25:32
  Philip Pape: And even I have to use that sometimes in my marketing materials because it's the only thing people see to kind of get them in the door before you're like, no, it's not really about that.
• 25:42
  Philip Pape: But those of us who are experienced doing this, or those of you listening who are experienced, coaches, things like that, visible progress is at best a lagging indicator.
• 25:51
  Philip Pape: It shows up after the real work has been done.
• 25:54
  Philip Pape: And even then, it may not be what you expect because we all have different body types, different goals, different genetics, et cetera.
• 26:01
  Philip Pape: The gain in strength, recovery, performance markers, these are the leading indicators, right?
• 26:06
  Philip Pape: Leading versus lagging.
• 26:07
  Philip Pape: They tell you progress is happening before you can see it.
• 26:09
  Philip Pape: It's like tracking your bank account as you go is your financial leading indicator versus the bank statement at the end of the month is the lagging indicator, right?
• 26:18
  Philip Pape: The person who can trust the leading indicator without needing constant validation of the visual progress is the person who stays consistent long enough to get the visual progress and results they want.
• 26:31
  Philip Pape: Ah, that's that's the gold right there.
• 26:35
  Philip Pape: So when you're a little bit frustrated with what you see in the mirror, ask yourself Am I getting stronger?
• 26:41
  Philip Pape: Am I recovering better?
• 26:42
  Philip Pape: Is my performance improving?
• 26:44
  Philip Pape: Do my clothes fit better differently?
• 26:46
  Philip Pape: Is my biofeedback solid?
• 26:47
  Philip Pape: If the answer to most of them is yes, you're probably building muscle, the mirror is gonna catch up with you.
• 26:52
  Philip Pape: All right.
• 26:52
  Philip Pape: Remember, I promise you those three common mistakes people make when they misread short-term feedback that's coming up in a second.
• 27:00
  Philip Pape: Quick message though, if you want help tracking these metrics and knowing what to actually pay attention to, check out my Fitness Lab app.
• 27:08
  Philip Pape: It tracks your biofeedback and your training data and your recovery markers.
• 27:12
  Philip Pape: If you have iPhone, it now connects to Apple Health.
• 27:14
  Philip Pape: And then it gives you a simple set of daily tasks, including an educational briefing based on what is happening.
• 27:21
  Philip Pape: So the briefing you get is based on you.
• 27:23
  Philip Pape: If you had trouble sleep, it'll say, Hey, I just saw from your sleep data you only got five and a half hours of sleep.
• 27:28
  Philip Pape: Let's talk about it.
• 27:29
  Philip Pape: I'm gonna help you out in a very low stress way.
• 27:32
  Philip Pape: All right, so whether you use the data integration or not, it works that way.
• 27:36
  Philip Pape: It adapts to you.
• 27:37
  Philip Pape: You can chat with it.
• 27:38
  Philip Pape: It's like having a coach in your pocket.
• 27:39
  Philip Pape: And as always, podcast listeners get an exclusive 20% off using the link in my show notes.
• 27:46
  Philip Pape: You've got to go to that link.
• 27:47
  Philip Pape: You'll take a free quiz, learn what it's all about, get a custom plan before you even buy the app to see if it's right for you.
• 27:53
  Philip Pape: Again, that's Fitness Lab.
• 27:55
  Philip Pape: Go to the link in the show notes.
• 27:57
  Philip Pape: All right, here are the three mistakes I promised.
• 28:00
  Philip Pape: These are the things people do when they misread short-term feedback, and then it holds you back even more.
• 28:05
  Philip Pape: Mistake number one is cutting calories because you look soft.
• 28:10
  Philip Pape: If you're in a building phase or you're in a delo, which is usually like a week, you look, you know, you might look less lean than last week.
• 28:18
  Philip Pape: And so you drop your food, you drop your calories.
• 28:21
  Philip Pape: And this could be a gut reaction because you feel like you're getting fat in a building phase, or it could be because what you talked about about a deload.
• 28:28
  Philip Pape: Oh, I'm deloading and I'm not working out, so I'm not burning as many calories, so I need to drop my food.
• 28:32
  Philip Pape: Well, you're just killed, you killed your recovery right there, and you killed your muscle building potential for no reason, just because water flu is fluctuating in your body.
• 28:40
  Philip Pape: That's it.
• 28:40
  Philip Pape: Don't do it.
• 28:41
  Philip Pape: Don't just cut calories reactively, ever, ever, ever, ever.
• 28:45
  Philip Pape: Mistake number two is adding cardio to try to fix whatever issue you think is there.
• 28:51
  Philip Pape: Okay.
• 28:51
  Philip Pape: And I say it that way because if you've listened to this whole episode, you know there may not be an issue.
• 28:56
  Philip Pape: If the scale went up three pounds and then you throw in extra cardio to burn off that, then you're in a very dysfunctional, unhealthy mental state of mind.
• 29:04
  Philip Pape: I am telling you that right now.
• 29:06
  Philip Pape: Because that weight of three pounds is absolutely 100% glycogen and water, not fat, because the only way to gain three pounds of fat is to overconsume by well over 10,000 calories in one day.
• 29:16
  Philip Pape: And I know you're not doing that.
• 29:18
  Philip Pape: So you just added more stress and fatigue to your body by adding cardio just for that purpose.
• 29:24
  Philip Pape: And if you're doing it just like as a one-time thing, it's it's just gonna be kind of useless unless you're doing it because you like it and it's part of your training and you're doing it in a non-stressful way, but we're not talking about that.
• 29:34
  Philip Pape: We're talking about the reactive, I need to do cardio to burn off calories.
• 29:38
  Philip Pape: Mistake number three is program hopping.
• 29:41
  Philip Pape: Okay, program hopping is one of the most common things I see.
• 29:45
  Philip Pape: And people will do a program for two weeks, they don't see the changes they want, they think it doesn't work, and they change, right?
• 29:50
  Philip Pape: For whatever reason, they make an excuse.
• 29:52
  Philip Pape: I'm bored, I wanted to do something different, whatever.
• 29:54
  Philip Pape: But you never gave it enough time to produce results.
• 29:57
  Philip Pape: All right, building muscle takes months, not weeks.
• 30:00
  Philip Pape: I usually recommend people follow a program for at least six weeks minimum, but ideally eight, 10, 12, and you can have deloads in there, or you can just run the same program several times, or you can run the same program and swap out some of the exercises.
• 30:13
  Philip Pape: So, all three of these mistakes cutting calories, adding cardio, program hopping, really they come from the same place.
• 30:19
  Philip Pape: And that is that you're giving too much trust to the short-term visual feedback as if it means anything, and that could be the scale as well, instead of the leading indicators that matter that we already talked about.
• 30:33
  Philip Pape: All right, that's it for today.
• 30:34
  Philip Pape: The core message is very simple.
• 30:36
  Philip Pape: The mirror, the scale are generally terrible short-term progress indicators, and they lag as well.
• 30:41
  Philip Pape: They lag behind what you're really working on and focused on.
• 30:44
  Philip Pape: So if you want to know whether you're building muscle, look at strength, recovery, performance, close, and biofeedback, and those will help you a lot more than the mirror or the scale.
• 30:54
  Philip Pape: Thanks to Aaron H for the message.
• 30:56
  Philip Pape: Shout out to Aaron for your message on Instagram.
• 30:59
  Philip Pape: You guys can reach me on Instagram at Wits and Weights if you have a question, or you can go to witsandweights.com slash question.
• 31:04
  Philip Pape: Easy way to do that.
• 31:05
  Philip Pape: Until next time, keep using your wits, lifting those weights, and remember progress is happening even when you can't see it.
• 31:11
  Philip Pape: I'll talk to you next time here on the Wits and Weights podcast.