Latest / Wits & Weights | Strength & Fat Loss Over 40 / Why Streaks and Badges Don’t Help You Lose Fat (And What Does) | Ep 449

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Why Streaks and Badges Don’t Help You Lose Fat (And What Does) | Ep 449 · Wits & Weights | Strength & Fat Loss Over 40

• 0:00
  Philip Pape: How many times have you hit your macros for two or three weeks, missed a day, and felt like all progress was gone?
• 0:06
  Philip Pape: The way most people structure hitting their nutrition targets is designed after gamification, which actually doesn't work as well as you think.
• 0:16
  Philip Pape: Today I'm showing you a different approach, borrowed from video games and RPGs, but not quite the same as gamification, where progress is much more permanent and you never have to start over.
• 0:27
  Philip Pape: Welcome to Wits and Weights, the show that puts a popular piece of fitness advice under the microscope, finds the hidden reason it doesn't work, and gives you the deceptively simple fix that does.
• 0:42
  Philip Pape: I'm your host, certified nutrition coach, Philip Pape.
• 0:45
  Philip Pape: And if you've ever tried to build a consistent nutrition habit and found yourself doing really well for a few weeks and then falling off, and then starting over from scratch and then falling off, today is going to explain why that keeps happening.
• 1:00
  Philip Pape: And we always come back to this, but it's not because you simply lack discipline.
• 1:04
  Philip Pape: The problem is systemic, it is structural.
• 1:08
  Philip Pape: It's the system that you are using to set and progress against those targets.
• 1:14
  Philip Pape: Now I'm gonna warn you today, I'm gonna get a little nerdy and talk about some video games.
• 1:17
  Philip Pape: And if you've ever played RPGs like Diablo or Path of Exile or even old school Final Fantasy or Zelda, you already understand the mechanic that I'm going to describe.
• 1:28
  Philip Pape: If you have it, don't worry.
• 1:30
  Philip Pape: The concept is simple.
• 1:31
  Philip Pape: The psychology behind it applies to everyone.
• 1:33
  Philip Pape: You don't have to know video games.
• 1:35
  Philip Pape: That's just my thing.
• 1:36
  Philip Pape: All right, and then stick around to the very end because I'm gonna give you a three-question test to find out whether your current macro targets are in that sweet spot where progress can actually happen, or whether they're in a zone that's more or less guaranteed to make you frustrated and quit.
• 1:53
  Philip Pape: And it takes about 30 seconds.
• 1:55
  Philip Pape: All right, today you're gonna learn about three things.
• 1:58
  Philip Pape: First, why the type of gamification most people use actively undermines the motivation truly needed for long-term adherence, right?
• 2:09
  Philip Pape: Sustainability.
• 2:10
  Philip Pape: Second, the specific psychological mechanism that makes RPG style leveling so effective.
• 2:17
  Philip Pape: So getting leveling up.
• 2:18
  Philip Pape: Okay, when we talk about RPGs and video games in this context, I'm just talking about making progress and leveling up.
• 2:24
  Philip Pape: And then we're gonna look at why it maps directly to your nutrition behavior.
• 2:27
  Philip Pape: And then third, I'm gonna give you a method that you can apply this week to your own macro targets to turn this more abstract goal of, say, hit my protein into a concrete progressive system where you're always building and never starting over.
• 2:42
  Philip Pape: So let's get into it and talk about the what is the popular advice and what's wrong with it.
• 2:48
  Philip Pape: We've heard of gamification.
• 2:50
  Philip Pape: I love the concept of gamifying your nutrition, of making it fun, you know, close the rings, right?
• 2:56
  Philip Pape: On your uh on your watch, hit the streak, earn the badge, get the check marks.
• 3:01
  Philip Pape: And you see this in apps, you hear this from coaches, from influencers, you see it in challenges.
• 3:06
  Philip Pape: Plenty of tools are built around it.
• 3:07
  Philip Pape: You see in communities, you know, my own community has a leaderboard.
• 3:10
  Philip Pape: I don't even use it only because I know it actually doesn't work, part of what we're talking about today.
• 3:14
  Philip Pape: It sounds like it should work, right?
• 3:16
  Philip Pape: Who doesn't want to make a healthy behavior feel like a game?
• 3:22
  Philip Pape: Especially something people don't often like to do.
• 3:24
  Philip Pape: And there is a grain of truth there because games are motivating, right?
• 3:28
  Philip Pape: We've all experienced just chilling on the couch, getting lost in a game for hours.
• 3:33
  Philip Pape: Well, maybe not all of us, but I have many times.
• 3:35
  Philip Pape: And you're voluntarily doing, I'll call them hard things, right?
• 3:40
  Philip Pape: They're not hard in the IRL, right, real life context, but games tend to challenge you and get harder as you go through them, right?
• 3:47
  Philip Pape: Whether it's a shooter or an RPG or a simulation, whatever.
• 3:50
  Philip Pape: And so there's this feedback loop and it feels really good and it hits the dopamine center.
• 3:55
  Philip Pape: And so the impulse is to borrow that type of energy and say, how do we apply that to other things like nutrition?
• 4:01
  Philip Pape: And it makes sense on the surface.
• 4:03
  Philip Pape: But the problem with these systems is they borrow the wrong parts of the games.
• 4:08
  Philip Pape: What they borrow are extrinsic motivators, things like points, badges, leaderboards, streaks.
• 4:16
  Philip Pape: And these are these surface elements, the shiny objects.
• 4:20
  Philip Pape: And when you look at behavioral research about them, it's not great.
• 4:24
  Philip Pape: These things actually don't work too well.
• 4:26
  Philip Pape: So I'll give you a couple examples.
• 4:28
  Philip Pape: A little over 10 years ago, Hannes and Fox 2015 ran a study at Indiana University, which by the way is one of my alma maters.
• 4:36
  Philip Pape: I got my MBA there, um, and I know they won the national championship this year in football, which disappointed me because I'm actually a Miami Hurricanes fan.
• 4:42
  Philip Pape: But it, you know, kind of cool that this study is from there.
• 4:45
  Philip Pape: They took a college course and they added gamification.
• 4:49
  Philip Pape: So they added leaderboards, badges, and points for participation.
• 4:53
  Philip Pape: The control group got the same course, but none of that stuff.
• 4:58
  Philip Pape: The gamified group had all that, and guess what?
• 5:02
  Philip Pape: They ended up less motivated, more anxious.
• 5:05
  Philip Pape: They scored lower on the exams, they reported lower satisfaction.
• 5:09
  Philip Pape: So there were more gamification elements, but worse outcomes.
• 5:13
  Philip Pape: Now, why is that?
• 5:14
  Philip Pape: This is the cool thing.
• 5:15
  Philip Pape: This is where it gets important.
• 5:17
  Philip Pape: So there's something called self-determination theory, and it's a great framework where humans have three core psychological needs when it comes to sustained motivation.
• 5:29
  Philip Pape: Three, those three things are autonomy, competence, and relatedness.
• 5:33
  Philip Pape: Autonomy, competence, and relatedness.
• 5:35
  Philip Pape: Extrinsic rewards like streaks and badges, they tend to erode your autonomy or your agency.
• 5:42
  Philip Pape: And the behavior then shifts from, hey, I'm doing this because I want to get better to I'm doing this to keep my streak alive.
• 5:47
  Philip Pape: And then when the streak breaks, you've lost the only thing that was motivating you.
• 5:51
  Philip Pape: Kind of makes sense, right?
• 5:52
  Philip Pape: There was a meta-analysis by Kim and Castelli that looked at gamification across health and fitness contexts.
• 6:00
  Philip Pape: And they found a pattern where short-term engagement tends to go up, but long-term adherence doesn't.
• 6:06
  Philip Pape: And the average dropout rate for gamified health apps is around 75% within the first 90 days.
• 6:13
  Philip Pape: So we've got this popular approach, gamify your nutrition, that produces this, you know, dopamine-fueled honeymoon phase followed by a crash.
• 6:23
  Philip Pape: And if it sounds familiar to you, if you've had that experience of, hey, I'm really into tracking for the first three or four weeks, and then I have a bad day or something comes up and it destroys the whole thing, it's because the system isn't designed optimally.
• 6:36
  Philip Pape: And this streak-based thinking specifically creates a psychological trap.
• 6:42
  Philip Pape: Researchers call it the what the hell effect.
• 6:44
  Philip Pape: And that's just putting it nicely because I don't swear on this show.
• 6:47
  Philip Pape: So that's as bad as it gets.
• 6:48
  Philip Pape: Pollavy and Herman documented this across decades of dieting research that when someone is trying to maintain a perfect record, a single slip-up, it doesn't just feel like a slip-up, it feels like total, utter failure.
• 7:02
  Philip Pape: Like, hey, I already broke the streak.
• 7:04
  Philip Pape: What the hell?
• 7:04
  Philip Pape: Might as well eat whatever I want today, right?
• 7:06
  Philip Pape: That's the all or nothing thinking, the all or nothing frame baked into that streak model.
• 7:11
  Philip Pape: And it creates a binary that causes this whole collapse.
• 7:14
  Philip Pape: Because like, oh my God, I just missed my streak.
• 7:16
  Philip Pape: It's all over.
• 7:17
  Philip Pape: And I've actually felt that myself when it comes to step, step counting.
• 7:21
  Philip Pape: I actually lowered my step count target in the app I in the app I was using because I kind of felt that phenomenon as well.
• 7:28
  Philip Pape: It's like, oh my gosh, I just broke a streak.
• 7:30
  Philip Pape: It just, it just kind of disappointed me, right?
• 7:32
  Philip Pape: So here's where we are.
• 7:33
  Philip Pape: Gamification is popular.
• 7:35
  Philip Pape: The the type that people are using, though, with these extrinsic reward systems, undermines intrinsic motivation over time and it sets you up for all or nothing thinking.
• 7:44
  Philip Pape: And then that derails a longer-term process like fat loss, muscle building, all the things that we are trying to do.
• 7:51
  Philip Pape: Okay, so if badges and streaks take from the wrong parts of games, what are the right parts?
• 7:57
  Philip Pape: Think about how a role-playing game works.
• 7:59
  Philip Pape: And I'll explain it if you've never heard it before.
• 8:01
  Philip Pape: Most people do.
• 8:02
  Philip Pape: You start with a character, and the character has a set of skills, and each skill has a level.
• 8:09
  Philip Pape: Okay, forget classes, forget, you know, all the sub-elements of RPGs.
• 8:14
  Philip Pape: We're gonna keep it simple.
• 8:15
  Philip Pape: So you might have strength, for example, and it's at a level three, intelligence at a level five.
• 8:20
  Philip Pape: Maybe you can distribute your skill points at the beginning, but you have a finite amount of skills, and that's where you start.
• 8:26
  Philip Pape: And you usually start as this lowly character with, you know, a wooden sword or something, right?
• 8:30
  Philip Pape: Or a club or something like that with barely any clothes, if at all.
• 8:34
  Philip Pape: And then when you earn experience by, say, killing mobsters or mobsters, monsters, mobs of monsters.
• 8:41
  Philip Pape: I guess killing mobsters in some games, right?
• 8:43
  Philip Pape: Then you get skill points.
• 8:45
  Philip Pape: You get experience points.
• 8:46
  Philip Pape: And then you can invest those points every time you level up into the skills that you want to develop.
• 8:51
  Philip Pape: Simple as that, right?
• 8:52
  Philip Pape: Now, two things are happening in that model that actually apply to behavior change in real life.
• 8:59
  Philip Pape: First is that the bar is always rising, right?
• 9:03
  Philip Pape: The bar is always rising, but it rises incrementally.
• 9:06
  Philip Pape: Going from level three to four is a meaningful improvement and it's also achievable.
• 9:11
  Philip Pape: You don't just jump from level three to level 15.
• 9:15
  Philip Pape: The game doesn't let you do it unless you're hacking it or using a mod, and your brain doesn't expect that to happen either, even in real life, right?
• 9:23
  Philip Pape: You don't expect to go from a complete beginner to completely advanced, for example.
• 9:27
  Philip Pape: Each level, therefore, is the small win that unlocks the next level.
• 9:32
  Philip Pape: And this maps directly to some pretty old research now.
• 9:35
  Philip Pape: Back in 1981, Albert Bandura studied proximal versus distal goals.
• 9:42
  Philip Pape: So that's just short-term versus long-term goals.
• 9:44
  Philip Pape: And he gave students the same math curriculum.
• 9:46
  Philip Pape: One group got a single end of semester target.
• 9:50
  Philip Pape: The other group got weekly targets that built toward that same endpoint.
• 9:56
  Philip Pape: And the weekly target group outp outperformed on all the measures speed, accuracy, confidence.
• 10:02
  Philip Pape: So the destination is the same, but the path structure to get there was different.
• 10:07
  Philip Pape: And the incremental path won.
• 10:10
  Philip Pape: Teresa Amobile did research on what's called the progress principle, and it reinforces this, but but from a little bit of a different angle.
• 10:18
  Philip Pape: Her team analyzed over 12,000 diary entries from professionals and found that the single strongest predictor of sustained motivation was the feeling of making progress on meaningful work.
• 10:30
  Philip Pape: Okay, not the rewards, not the recognition, but actually the progress itself.
• 10:35
  Philip Pape: Small, visible, regular progress.
• 10:38
  Philip Pape: So that's kind of the first concept of the short-term, step-by-step, you know, micro goals and progress.
• 10:46
  Philip Pape: The second thing, and this is the part a lot of people miss, like when you're comparing it to a gamification of an RPG, you don't ever lose your levels, right?
• 10:55
  Philip Pape: You never go backward.
• 10:56
  Philip Pape: You might have a bad session, you might get killed and die and lose some gold, or you know, in a in a souls-like game, for those of you into that, which are super frustrating to me and I don't have the time, in a souls-like game, you might lose a ton of your progress from the last point, but you don't go past before that point.
• 11:13
  Philip Pape: Your skill points remain.
• 11:15
  Philip Pape: The things you've invested in so far are permanent because you've achieved that level.
• 11:20
  Philip Pape: Now, if you compare that to a streak, a streak is more binary.
• 11:23
  Philip Pape: You're either maintaining it or you've lost it, right?
• 11:25
  Philip Pape: When you when the streak breaks, you're back to zero psychologically, even if nothing about your body or your behavior has changed.
• 11:35
  Philip Pape: Whereas a skill level, it's more cumulative.
• 11:38
  Philip Pape: Progress is always banked.
• 11:40
  Philip Pape: All right, so now this brings me to the research about flow and flow states, which I absolutely love because there's an overlap with positive psychology.
• 11:48
  Philip Pape: So when we look at flow, it is that state of complete absorption where your effort feels almost automatic.
• 11:56
  Philip Pape: And it occurs when the challenge of what you're doing is slightly beyond your current ability to do it, just slightly.
• 12:03
  Philip Pape: Okay, I've used other frameworks like put, like expanding your comfort zone.
• 12:07
  Philip Pape: So that's flow.
• 12:08
  Philip Pape: It's like the challenge, it's challenging and it's slightly beyond your current ability.
• 12:12
  Philip Pape: If it's if something's too easy, you're gonna get bored.
• 12:14
  Philip Pape: If something's too hard, you get anxious because you you're you get frustrated, right?
• 12:17
  Philip Pape: Maybe that's why I don't like Souls like Souls like games.
• 12:21
  Philip Pape: But other RPGs that have a leveling system, it naturally keeps you in that flow because each new level is one increment above where you proved you could perform.
• 12:30
  Philip Pape: And there's debates about whether video games can even be something considered a flow state.
• 12:35
  Philip Pape: That's a separate argument.
• 12:36
  Philip Pape: All right, then there's the third piece of psychology here that's worth calling out, and that is goal setting theory, where goals have to be specific and difficult, but within reach to optimize your performance.
• 12:49
  Philip Pape: So a vague goal, like I need to eat better or hit my macros, it doesn't produce the same behavior.
• 12:55
  Philip Pape: When somebody responds to me to an email and they're like, hey, I like what I heard, you know, I've been trying to watch my food and alcohol.
• 13:01
  Philip Pape: And that's the way they frame it.
• 13:02
  Philip Pape: I'm trying to watch my food and alcohol.
• 13:04
  Philip Pape: And my brain immediately goes to, okay, how are you watching?
• 13:06
  Philip Pape: You know, you is this a specific, you know, way of tracking, blah, blah, blah, because I know that person is not going to succeed long term with that as their goal.
• 13:14
  Philip Pape: Whereas increase my protein from, you know, 80 to 90 grams this week is a lot more specific, something you can track objectively, something that's achievable, and you could look back and say that you won that.
• 13:27
  Philip Pape: And the RPG model forces that kind of specificity, right?
• 13:31
  Philip Pape: Because think about in a video game, you can't invest a skill point in everything.
• 13:35
  Philip Pape: I mean, you might get five points and distribute one to each, but you can't invest as many as you want in everything.
• 13:41
  Philip Pape: You have to pick a skill and increase it by one increment, hold on to it, and move to the next, you know, incrementally.
• 13:46
  Philip Pape: So the model looks like this: instead of tracking streaks or closing your rings on your Apple Watch, you define your nutrition targets as like skills on a character sheet, where say protein is a skill, calories are a skill, steps are a skill.
• 14:01
  Philip Pape: It's up to you to decide what those are.
• 14:03
  Philip Pape: And of course, we we help our clients and members come up with those, the things that you want to track.
• 14:09
  Philip Pape: And then each week you evaluate which skills are ready for a level up.
• 14:14
  Philip Pape: You add just the one increment, and then you hold on to it because you've built that skill.
• 14:19
  Philip Pape: Now, there's some timing involved, like how long it takes to do some of these in the real world.
• 14:24
  Philip Pape: There are different models.
• 14:25
  Philip Pape: I like the roughly 45-day model.
• 14:28
  Philip Pape: Like once you've held a skill for 45 days, then it's locked in.
• 14:31
  Philip Pape: So it's not like in a game where you can just blow through it in a few hours, but it's a very important thing.
• 14:36
  Philip Pape: And then you add the next point and the next skill.
• 14:38
  Philip Pape: Now, if you're hearing this and you're thinking, all right, this makes sense.
• 14:41
  Philip Pape: How do I actually build this kind of progressive system for myself?
• 14:45
  Philip Pape: How do I know where to start?
• 14:47
  Philip Pape: How fast to progress, when to hold steady.
• 14:49
  Philip Pape: That is exactly what Eat More Lift Heavy is built around.
• 14:54
  Philip Pape: That's right.
• 14:54
  Philip Pape: Eat more lift heavy.
• 14:56
  Philip Pape: It's a 26-week coaching program.
• 14:58
  Philip Pape: So 26 weeks is six months, but notice 26 weeks, it's it's individual weeks that each help you build these skills.
• 15:06
  Philip Pape: And it involves both training and nutrition progressing together over three phases in the 26 weeks.
• 15:14
  Philip Pape: Phase one is stop guessing, where the first eight weeks we establish your baseline.
• 15:20
  Philip Pape: We figure out where you actually are, not where you think you should be, and we build that skill floor.
• 15:25
  Philip Pape: Phase two, the eat more lift heavy phase, weeks nine through 18, that's where the bar starts to rise and you really start to see massive progress.
• 15:35
  Philip Pape: And then phase three, trust yourself, is the final weeks 19 through 26 where you internalize the system so it's intrinsically motivated, so you can run it without us or without the need for this education or push or accountability if you want.
• 15:51
  Philip Pape: And the whole structure mirrors what we've been talking about today: this graduated progression, never going backward.
• 15:58
  Philip Pape: Each week has one focus and one action item, of course, with a lot of resources behind it, tools, resources, modules.
• 16:06
  Philip Pape: And it is a coached process.
• 16:08
  Philip Pape: It's not a content library.
• 16:10
  Philip Pape: It's it's not a bunch of different courses.
• 16:12
  Philip Pape: It's one focus that takes you through the 26 weeks.
• 16:15
  Philip Pape: And it works for everyone because of how customized it is.
• 16:18
  Philip Pape: So if you are over 40, if you lift, you track, but you're not seeing the results you expect, go to wits and weights.com slash eatmore and get on the wait list.
• 16:27
  Philip Pape: The program launches March 30, and the wait list is going to get early access and founders pricing.
• 16:34
  Philip Pape: This is great pricing that will never be the same again.
• 16:38
  Philip Pape: And you're not gonna find a discount like it in the future.
• 16:41
  Philip Pape: So witsandweights.com slash eat more to get on the eat more heavy lift heavy wait lists.
• 16:47
  Philip Pape: All right, let's keep going as I fumble my words here.
• 16:50
  Philip Pape: And I want to get specific about how you apply this gamification framework in the right way.
• 16:56
  Philip Pape: I want to walk you through the mechanics and then you can start doing it this week.
• 16:59
  Philip Pape: Again, if you want support doing it with over a six-month period and really lock it in, go to witsandweights.com slash eat more.
• 17:05
  Philip Pape: But here's what you got to do.
• 17:06
  Philip Pape: Step one.
• 17:07
  Philip Pape: All right, step one is to define your skills.
• 17:10
  Philip Pape: So for most people tracking macros, your skills are let's say protein, calories, and either fats and carbs, or maybe a combination of those or whatever.
• 17:22
  Philip Pape: In other words, some people don't care about the fats, but they do care about the carbs, some people vice versa, and some people like both.
• 17:28
  Philip Pape: The easiest thing is just do all the macros.
• 17:30
  Philip Pape: And then you can add maybe a fourth skill of daily steps or training sessions per week.
• 17:35
  Philip Pape: So I would keep the whole list to like three or four to start.
• 17:39
  Philip Pape: Otherwise, you're gonna spread your skill points to thin.
• 17:42
  Philip Pape: Okay.
• 17:42
  Philip Pape: Step two is to find your level one, your level one.
• 17:45
  Philip Pape: Remember, we're going from level zero to one here.
• 17:47
  Philip Pape: Okay.
• 17:48
  Philip Pape: You started the game and you're trying to get to level one.
• 17:50
  Philip Pape: Now, some games start at level one, I get it, but this is we're gonna start really low.
• 17:54
  Philip Pape: This is not your goal number.
• 17:55
  Philip Pape: Okay, I don't care.
• 17:56
  Philip Pape: We're not talking about weight loss or anything like that, months down the road.
• 17:59
  Philip Pape: This is where you are right now, consistently without stress, that you can get to for the next level.
• 18:06
  Philip Pape: All right.
• 18:07
  Philip Pape: So if your ultimate protein target is 140 grams because you weigh 140 pounds and you've heard me say one gram per pound in that vicinity, but you're actually averaging like 60 grams of protein right now, then going from 60 to 140 is not your level one.
• 18:22
  Philip Pape: Your level one might be 75 or 90, right?
• 18:26
  Philip Pape: It's a small jump.
• 18:27
  Philip Pape: All right, and I want to pause right here because this is where most people push back, they resist, they feel like Seti, 90 grams of protein, it's not even 100.
• 18:34
  Philip Pape: Aren't I going back, or it's not not ambitious enough, and I'm not hitting the target, right?
• 18:38
  Philip Pape: But that is the streak mentality that we're trying to avoid.
• 18:42
  Philip Pape: You are not lowering your standards here, right?
• 18:44
  Philip Pape: You're establishing a floor that you've proven you can hold, which is your zero, that's where you are now.
• 18:51
  Philip Pape: And then every level above that is progress.
• 18:54
  Philip Pape: Every level above that is something you earn and make progress that can stick.
• 18:58
  Philip Pape: And again, going back to the RPG analogy, if you have a new character and you know, the game said, we're gonna give you a starting strength of starting strength, that's funny, starting skill where your strength is let's say eight instead of one, you know, you wouldn't be upset about it.
• 19:14
  Philip Pape: You'd say, or let's say it's eight instead of 20.
• 19:18
  Philip Pape: You'd say, okay, cool, that's where I'm starting.
• 19:20
  Philip Pape: I'm gonna build from there, right?
• 19:21
  Philip Pape: I kind of butchered that analogy, but you know what I mean.
• 19:23
  Philip Pape: All right, step three is to define your increments.
• 19:27
  Philip Pape: So this is the cool part where you where you do it like a game, and you say, okay, I can increment either by day or by week, whatever makes sense.
• 19:36
  Philip Pape: So, like for protein, a reasonable increment might be 10 grams per day.
• 19:41
  Philip Pape: Like, I'm going to increase my target by 10 grams per day.
• 19:44
  Philip Pape: Now, you might be using an app like Macro Factor and it has a target of 140, and you're currently hitting 80.
• 19:49
  Philip Pape: You can still, like mentally or in a separate place, document, hey, I'm gonna try to hit 90, then 100, then 110, then 120, whatever makes sense.
• 19:58
  Philip Pape: Okay, what I you could stick with the same target all week and then go up the next week, whatever makes sense.
• 20:02
  Philip Pape: So for step count, it might be 500 steps per day increase, right?
• 20:06
  Philip Pape: Just a short walk or a few extra steps around the house, whatever.
• 20:10
  Philip Pape: They should be small enough that the effort required to hold a new level feels barely noticeable and not overwhelming, just beyond your current ability.
• 20:21
  Philip Pape: Remember the flow state research we talked about.
• 20:23
  Philip Pape: So that's step three is to define those increments.
• 20:26
  Philip Pape: Step four is to level up when you're ready.
• 20:29
  Philip Pape: And here's the rule I have: when you've held a level for five out of seven days for at least a week, and you haven't felt like it was a really hard thing to do, like you white knuckled it, you're ready for the next skill point.
• 20:42
  Philip Pape: Now notice I said five out of seven, not seven out of seven.
• 20:45
  Philip Pape: We're not gonna build a streak.
• 20:46
  Philip Pape: We're building a pattern, an average, a slight increase in our ability.
• 20:51
  Philip Pape: Okay, a pattern out of five out of five out of seven is a skill.
• 20:55
  Philip Pape: A streak of seven out of seven, but then you break it on day eight because you can't sustain it.
• 21:00
  Philip Pape: That that's the trap we talked about before.
• 21:01
  Philip Pape: All right, so level up when you're ready.
• 21:03
  Philip Pape: Five out of seven days for a week.
• 21:05
  Philip Pape: You can come with some come up with something similar if it's a longer time horizon.
• 21:10
  Philip Pape: That's what, like 80% consistency.
• 21:12
  Philip Pape: All right, step five, and by the way, we have six steps in here.
• 21:15
  Philip Pape: Step five is to pick which skill gets the point.
• 21:19
  Philip Pape: Ah, okay.
• 21:20
  Philip Pape: You don't level up everything at once.
• 21:22
  Philip Pape: In a given week, only one of your skills is going to get that increment.
• 21:27
  Philip Pape: All right.
• 21:28
  Philip Pape: This is where the where research on what's called endowed progress comes in, where people who feel like they've already started a task are about 34% more likely to complete it.
• 21:43
  Philip Pape: And when you've already banked, say, three levels on your protein and then you're holding steady there, then that momentum is gonna carry over when you decide to invest a point in something else instead.
• 21:53
  Philip Pape: So, in other words, you're you're building up each of the anchors, you're building up protein over here, maybe a couple times, and then you hold, then you Build up calories over here and then you hold, maybe you build up steps over here, then you hold, you get it.
• 22:03
  Philip Pape: So we're doing one at a time and we're building it up incrementally.
• 22:06
  Philip Pape: You can go back and forth, but only do one at a time.
• 22:09
  Philip Pape: And then the final step is step six to keep the old levels.
• 22:14
  Philip Pape: So if life gets crazy, if travel interrupts your routine, if you have a bad week, you're not going to reset to level one.
• 22:23
  Philip Pape: You're going to hold the last level that you proved to yourself that you could sustain.
• 22:28
  Philip Pape: Now, could you drop back to level one back one level temporarily?
• 22:33
  Philip Pape: Sure.
• 22:34
  Philip Pape: But the overall architecture of your progress is there.
• 22:39
  Philip Pape: You've built the skills, you have the resilience, you know what that is.
• 22:42
  Philip Pape: A bad week doesn't delete them.
• 22:43
  Philip Pape: So sometimes you are going to drop, but you're going to come right back to it because that is your new baseline.
• 22:48
  Philip Pape: So do you notice the difference?
• 22:50
  Philip Pape: What separates this from a streak-based system where every day is like green or red?
• 22:56
  Philip Pape: There is no red day in this system.
• 22:59
  Philip Pape: There's I'm holding my level or I'm working back to my level, and you're still playing the game.
• 23:04
  Philip Pape: That's what that is.
• 23:05
  Philip Pape: All right.
• 23:05
  Philip Pape: There's one more thing I want to address because I do see this all the time with, for example, our clients and our members, just talking to listeners as well.
• 23:13
  Philip Pape: Sometimes the reason that you don't hit your target is not about motivation, it's logistical.
• 23:21
  Philip Pape: It's just logistical and about the environment or setup or something like that or the system.
• 23:28
  Philip Pape: And those two problems need different solutions.
• 23:31
  Philip Pape: A logistical problem is something like, hey, I can't figure out how to get 140 grams of protein across the three meals that I have and stay within my calories.
• 23:42
  Philip Pape: I just don't know what to eat to make it work.
• 23:44
  Philip Pape: Like I'm either going over on one or the other, or I'm coming under on protein or going over on calories.
• 23:49
  Philip Pape: That person doesn't have a problem with their mindset.
• 23:52
  Philip Pape: Like it's not the psychology.
• 23:53
  Philip Pape: They just need someone to sit with them and show them the math, the numbers.
• 23:57
  Philip Pape: Like, guys, sometimes it's that simple.
• 23:59
  Philip Pape: Now I'm an engineer talking here, and sometimes very cold and calculated about these things, but sometimes that's what you need.
• 24:05
  Philip Pape: Sometimes I need to give you some tough love and say, look, it's just numbers.
• 24:10
  Philip Pape: Let's just figure it out.
• 24:10
  Philip Pape: And that it kind of takes the stress out in some ways.
• 24:13
  Philip Pape: Because then there's the trade-offs you can make and you don't get emotional about it.
• 24:17
  Philip Pape: And that's where things like example meals and protein-dense food options and how to distribute your food and how many times that you eat and all that, those strategies can solve the math of it.
• 24:30
  Philip Pape: And you can solve it almost instantly.
• 24:32
  Philip Pape: Like if I if I get my hands on that problem, I'm going to solve it in about five minutes for you.
• 24:36
  Philip Pape: Right.
• 24:37
  Philip Pape: And I have tools for this as well.
• 24:38
  Philip Pape: And by the way, another plug for Eat More Lift Heavy.
• 24:41
  Philip Pape: In Eat More Lift Heavy, we're going to have like, I want to say about 10 really powerful automated tools that I've worked to code up that will help solve a lot of these problems, like how to get all your protein.
• 24:55
  Philip Pape: And they're tools that you can access over and over and over again whenever you need them.
• 24:59
  Philip Pape: And you're going to have human coaches too, but I think it's really powerful to have something you can go to right away.
• 25:04
  Philip Pape: That's not AI, by the way.
• 25:05
  Philip Pape: That's a pre-coded tool just for that problem.
• 25:09
  Philip Pape: So that's the math side of it.
• 25:11
  Philip Pape: That's like a logistical problem.
• 25:12
  Philip Pape: Whereas like a cognitive problem sounds sounds different.
• 25:16
  Philip Pape: It sounds like, hey, I know I should be hitting my 140 grams and I was doing it for two weeks, but now I can't seem to make myself do it and I feel like I'm failing.
• 25:23
  Philip Pape: And that I see a lot too, right?
• 25:25
  Philip Pape: It's somebody who had gotten to the point, but now they're not.
• 25:29
  Philip Pape: And they may need to drop the target, not because they're not capable of it, but because, let's say 140 was level 12, and they were actually at level three, and they skipped levels four through 11.
• 25:42
  Philip Pape: And so the gap between where they are and where they're trying to be is too large for that flow state.
• 25:48
  Philip Pape: And so instead, they're in the anxiety zone.
• 25:51
  Philip Pape: And what does anxiety do?
• 25:52
  Philip Pape: It produces avoidance.
• 25:53
  Philip Pape: You avoid things, you give up, you get despondent, all of that.
• 25:57
  Philip Pape: So this RPG model handles both of these in a different way.
• 26:01
  Philip Pape: So for the logistics problem, you stay at your current level and you just fix the plan.
• 26:06
  Philip Pape: So you stay at your current level, right?
• 26:09
  Philip Pape: But you fix the plan.
• 26:10
  Philip Pape: It's just math, it's just strategies.
• 26:13
  Philip Pape: For the cognitive problem, you're gonna drop to where you can hit five out of seven days without stress.
• 26:19
  Philip Pape: And you're gonna call that your current level and you're gonna build from there.
• 26:22
  Philip Pape: All right.
• 26:22
  Philip Pape: And look, by definition, you're probably not gonna go down a bunch of levels from your current capability.
• 26:28
  Philip Pape: It's probably that you tried to jump up too many levels and you're just trying to find your true level right now.
• 26:33
  Philip Pape: And I know it's hard to hear.
• 26:35
  Philip Pape: I know it's hard to hear.
• 26:36
  Philip Pape: Nobody wants to drop their targets and feel like they're admitting it's not working and they're a failure and all this.
• 26:41
  Philip Pape: But if we reframe it, it's reallocating a skill point.
• 26:45
  Philip Pape: It's a strategy in and of itself.
• 26:47
  Philip Pape: It's saying, hey, this build, this character build I have, this character class, this build isn't working for my playstyle, right?
• 26:55
  Philip Pape: I can't be a rogue or an a sorceress right now.
• 26:59
  Philip Pape: I have to be a barbarian.
• 27:01
  Philip Pape: I got to go with the brute force at a lower level.
• 27:04
  Philip Pape: Let me adjust my character.
• 27:05
  Philip Pape: Or you still have the character, but your build is changing.
• 27:09
  Philip Pape: And the game is still going and you're just optimizing your character.
• 27:12
  Philip Pape: All right, before we wrap up, remember I promised you a three-question test to find out if your macro targets are in the flow zone.
• 27:20
  Philip Pape: I'm gonna share it in a second, just after this.
• 27:22
  Philip Pape: But just another reminder: if the system I described today sounds like, yes, that's exactly what I've been missing.
• 27:28
  Philip Pape: Oh my God, Philip, you're talking, speaking my language of what's been going on in my head, and I have been able to explain it.
• 27:33
  Philip Pape: Eat more lift heavy is the coached and tool-based and automated altogether version of this.
• 27:41
  Philip Pape: Okay, it's my engineering brain put into a really excellently designed program for 26 weeks, training and nutrition progressing together.
• 27:51
  Philip Pape: You're not gonna find this in the industry at this price point.
• 27:54
  Philip Pape: It gives you a launch, we it, not it, I, I and Coach Carroll will give you a launch plan in your first week built specifically for where you're starting, not where you wish you were, but where you're starting, how you should train, how you should track your food.
• 28:09
  Philip Pape: Go to wits and weights.com slash eatmore and get on the wait list.
• 28:13
  Philip Pape: And then you'll get early access.
• 28:14
  Philip Pape: You'll also get founders pricing.
• 28:16
  Philip Pape: There's no risk in doing that.
• 28:18
  Philip Pape: It's free to get on the list.
• 28:19
  Philip Pape: So go to wits and weights.com slash eat more.
• 28:22
  Philip Pape: All right, here's that test that I promised you.
• 28:25
  Philip Pape: And it's three questions, and I want you to answer it honestly.
• 28:28
  Philip Pape: I know I'm giving you a lot of these, so hopefully this one hits if you need it.
• 28:33
  Philip Pape: Question one over the past seven days, did you hit your protein target at least five out of seven days?
• 28:39
  Philip Pape: If the answer is no, then your protein target is above your current level.
• 28:44
  Philip Pape: That's it.
• 28:44
  Philip Pape: I don't care what the excuse is, what the reason is, forget it all and just acknowledge and admit right now your protein target is too high.
• 28:52
  Philip Pape: Not, oh no, no, no, it's fine.
• 28:54
  Philip Pape: I just did this, this, this, and that's why I didn't hit it.
• 28:56
  Philip Pape: No, no, no.
• 28:57
  Philip Pape: No.
• 28:57
  Philip Pape: Your protein target is too high.
• 29:00
  Philip Pape: Drop it to wherever you were consistently hitting it before and call that your floor to build the levels from there.
• 29:08
  Philip Pape: That's question one.
• 29:09
  Philip Pape: Question two, when you think about tomorrow's meals, are you confident that you can hit your targets?
• 29:15
  Philip Pape: Or do you feel a tightness in your chest right now?
• 29:19
  Philip Pape: A little bit of anxiety and heat in your head.
• 29:23
  Philip Pape: Okay, confidence means you're in the flow zone.
• 29:26
  Philip Pape: Like, yes, of course I'm confident.
• 29:27
  Philip Pape: I've been doing it.
• 29:28
  Philip Pape: I'm confident, I've got my meals ready to go.
• 29:31
  Philip Pape: I know what I'm gonna eat.
• 29:32
  Philip Pape: I hit up the grocery store.
• 29:33
  Philip Pape: Maybe I did my meal planning, all that good stuff.
• 29:34
  Philip Pape: Maybe I've pre-logged, whatever it is for you, whatever your system is, if you're confident.
• 29:39
  Philip Pape: But if you're very tight, if you've got butterflies in your stomach, if you're nervous or anxious, it means that that challenge of hitting your targets tomorrow is far, it's too far above your skill level, and you have to back it down one increment.
• 29:51
  Philip Pape: That's it.
• 29:52
  Philip Pape: Again, the levels.
• 29:54
  Philip Pape: Question three.
• 29:55
  Philip Pape: If you missed your target yesterday, did you feel like the whole day was blown?
• 30:00
  Philip Pape: Or did you think, okay, I'm gonna get closer tomorrow?
• 30:03
  Philip Pape: I'm just gonna start again tomorrow.
• 30:04
  Philip Pape: I'm gonna get closer.
• 30:06
  Philip Pape: If you felt like the day was blown, you're still thinking in streaks in all or nothing land, as opposed to levels.
• 30:14
  Philip Pape: And that's okay.
• 30:15
  Philip Pape: That's you've acknowledged it, right?
• 30:16
  Philip Pape: That's step one.
• 30:17
  Philip Pape: And now we want to reframe that hey, yesterday was a four out of five day.
• 30:23
  Philip Pape: Your level is still your level.
• 30:25
  Philip Pape: Today is a new attempt at your same level.
• 30:28
  Philip Pape: You're not restarting, you're not starting from zero, you're just attempting again to the same level, and you have fallback plans that we've talked about in this episode.
• 30:35
  Philip Pape: If it continues to be a challenge.
• 30:37
  Philip Pape: Now, if you answered, yeah, confident, and I use levels to all three of those questions, then your targets are in the flow zone, right?
• 30:45
  Philip Pape: You hit you you hit your protein targets most of the time, you're confident about tomorrow's meals, and even if you missed your target yesterday, if it was one of those two out of seven, you reframe it and like, okay, today I'm gonna do it again.
• 30:57
  Philip Pape: We're all good.
• 30:58
  Philip Pape: And then you build from there.
• 30:59
  Philip Pape: If not, you know what you need to adjust.
• 31:01
  Philip Pape: All right.
• 31:02
  Philip Pape: I hope that was helpful.
• 31:03
  Philip Pape: I hope it helped you reframe and think about levels in skill building, kind of the way I do.
• 31:08
  Philip Pape: I hope you take with it something valuable.
• 31:10
  Philip Pape: And until next time, keep using your wits, lifting those weights.
• 31:14
  Philip Pape: And remember, you don't build your best character starting at level 50.
• 31:17
  Philip Pape: You earn it one skill point at a time.
• 31:20
  Philip Pape: I'm Philip Pape, and I'll talk to you next time here on the Wits and Weights podcast.