Latest / Wits & Weights | Strength & Fat Loss Over 40 / Do Weight Loss Challenges Work? (What to Do Instead)

Transcript

Do Weight Loss Challenges Work? (What to Do Instead) · Wits & Weights | Strength & Fat Loss Over 40

• 0:00
  Philip Pape: If you've done a weight loss challenge, lost weight, and then gained it back once it was over, this episode is for you.
• 0:05
  Philip Pape: Today I'm evaluating weight loss challenges.
• 0:08
  Philip Pape: Do they work and what happens after they end?
• 0:11
  Philip Pape: You'll learn why you can win a weight loss challenge, but still come out worse in the end, plus the three things that I would track instead for fat loss over 40.
• 0:20
  Philip Pape: Welcome to Wits & 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.
• 0:33
  Philip Pape: I'm your host, Philip Pape.
• 0:34
  Philip Pape: I'm a certified nutrition coach, and this episode is for men and women.
• 0:38
  Philip Pape: And it is October, as this is coming out.
• 0:41
  Philip Pape: A lot of you are getting invited to challenges right now, or you're thinking about how do I end the year successfully through the holidays before we get to the whole New Year's craze.
• 0:51
  Philip Pape: I personally just came back from a family vacation.
• 0:54
  Philip Pape: We went to Europe for 12 days.
• 0:55
  Philip Pape: It was amazing to celebrate our 20th anniversary.
• 0:58
  Philip Pape: I didn't track, I enjoyed my food, lots and lots of bread in France, let me tell you.
• 1:03
  Philip Pape: And, you know, I'm also thinking the same thing.
• 1:06
  Philip Pape: Like, how do I end the year successfully, especially with, you know, a plan, protocol, people to support me, all the right things that we need to succeed.
• 1:15
  Philip Pape: So maybe your gym is running a challenge, maybe your work has one, maybe you have a friend that's putting together something where everybody puts their money in.
• 1:22
  Philip Pape: You know, it's it's college football season, so you've got pools for that.
• 1:25
  Philip Pape: Maybe you've got pools for weight loss.
• 1:27
  Philip Pape: I don't know.
• 1:28
  Philip Pape: The idea here is that having a deadline to shoot for and having some sort of incentive, and maybe it is an external incentive like a prize, money, what have you, will give you the push you need to finally do what you've been putting off.
• 1:40
  Philip Pape: And for some of you, that might be to lose the weight, but of course, we're going to unpack that statement today.
• 1:46
  Philip Pape: If you are on the older side, if you're over 40, like me, and you lift weights, you've probably done a few of these challenges.
• 1:52
  Philip Pape: Maybe on social media, there's free challenges, paid, whatever.
• 1:56
  Philip Pape: Way back on, or way back, not too far back, on episode 499, I mentioned that a lot of you like challenges because they give you a burst of motivation, uh, but then they end.
• 2:06
  Philip Pape: So today I want to look at what happens when they end, what they measure, which is almost always weight loss, but I've been in plenty of challenges that measure a bunch of different things.
• 2:15
  Philip Pape: But I do think weight loss is the wrong thing to measure.
• 2:18
  Philip Pape: Anybody who's been following the show knows that already, but I'm gonna explain why, because I want you to come out of this healthier, fitter, stronger feeling and looking better than you started.
• 2:27
  Philip Pape: Because at the end of the day, that's what we want from any change or any improvement.
• 2:31
  Philip Pape: Why suffer through a quote unquote challenge, lose weight on the scale, then you gain it back, or even if you don't gain it back, it didn't really give you what you wanted.
• 2:39
  Philip Pape: Now, full disclosure, Coach Carol and I are running a challenge starting October 12th.
• 2:44
  Philip Pape: And I'm gonna talk about it in this episode because I have a financial interest in, you know, challenges as well and coaching.
• 2:51
  Philip Pape: And I always like to be up front about our ethics on this show.
• 2:54
  Philip Pape: In fact, we actually now have an ad ethics policy on our website for sponsors as well.
• 2:58
  Philip Pape: So keep that in mind as you listen.
• 3:00
  Philip Pape: I'm gonna tell you where the research supports how we set our very different challenge up.
• 3:05
  Philip Pape: I'll say it's different, but it's it's very simple too.
• 3:08
  Philip Pape: Uh, where it doesn't, because there are definitely gaps where pretty much any challenge doesn't always do what you think it does.
• 3:15
  Philip Pape: And you got you want to know all that.
• 3:16
  Philip Pape: Then stick around to the end because I always have a little something for you.
• 3:19
  Philip Pape: Today, it's one thing that you can do before your next fat loss phase that in one study nearly tripled the number of people who kept all their weight off six months later.
• 3:31
  Philip Pape: And it takes one text message.
• 3:33
  Philip Pape: Okay.
• 3:34
  Philip Pape: So here's our roadmap for today's episode.
• 3:37
  Philip Pape: First, I want to look at what the scale is measuring when a challenge uses weight loss as the score, why that's the wrong measure for body composition.
• 3:44
  Philip Pape: It's a good refresher for those of you who follow the show and maybe a new concept for those of you who who are new.
• 3:50
  Philip Pape: Then I'm gonna look at what the cash incentive studies, as well as a big or some big workplace wellness studies found happens after the end of a challenge.
• 4:00
  Philip Pape: After they, you know, they have a lot of people in these challenges, they give some sort of incentive, prizes, points, et cetera.
• 4:05
  Philip Pape: What happens afterward?
• 4:06
  Philip Pape: That of course includes the biggest loser follow-up, which I'm always gonna be careful with, but I think it's important to mention.
• 4:11
  Philip Pape: And then we'll cover what I would measure instead.
• 4:14
  Philip Pape: If your goal is to lose fat without losing muscle, and that is really the whole game that we're going for, and probably why you're listening to this show in general.
• 4:23
  Philip Pape: All right, so let's start with what the scale is measuring when we think of body weight.
• 4:28
  Philip Pape: When a challenge is ranking you on pounds lost or percent of body weight loss, and trust me, this is the vast majority of challenges I still see today, whether it's in a physical gym or online, it is measuring, I'll say, all of your mass at the same time, right?
• 4:43
  Philip Pape: Fat, but also water, glycogen in your muscles and liver, the food in your gut, your muscle, some bone mass, right?
• 4:50
  Philip Pape: The your scale weight can't separate those things out.
• 4:54
  Philip Pape: It's just your total weight, your gravity to the earth.
• 4:57
  Philip Pape: So when you reward weight loss, you are definitely creating the wrong incentive.
• 5:03
  Philip Pape: Because if you want to win a six or eight-week weight loss challenge, you could definitely gain the system, right?
• 5:08
  Philip Pape: The fastest way is cut your calories way down, do a lot of cardio, probably drop a bunch of water and glycogen in the first couple of weeks, definitely if the carbs come down, and then not worry too much about lifting weights because that's not going to affect your weight loss that much.
• 5:20
  Philip Pape: And the person, you know, you get these real overachievers who are super involved in the challenge, but they're also, I don't want to say they're gaming it on purpose.
• 5:30
  Philip Pape: They're following what the challenge is having you do, and that is to lose weight as fast as possible, usually, or who loses the most weight or whatever.
• 5:38
  Philip Pape: And then they win the challenge the challenge.
• 5:40
  Philip Pape: But that's not what you're trying to get out of this, I hope.
• 5:43
  Philip Pape: I mean, unless you're doing it specifically for the prize and you just want to game a contest to get a prize, that's a different story.
• 5:49
  Philip Pape: I think that you want to be leaner and stronger and you want to keep that result for the long haul, don't you?
• 5:56
  Philip Pape: Now you might be thinking, okay, Philip, I lost 15 pounds in my last challenge and I felt great.
• 6:01
  Philip Pape: Okay, I believe you.
• 6:02
  Philip Pape: The question is, was that all body fat?
• 6:04
  Philip Pape: Right.
• 6:05
  Philip Pape: And we have a good study on this.
• 6:06
  Philip Pape: Dennis Villarreal and colleagues published a trial in the New England Journal of Medicine in 2017.
• 6:12
  Philip Pape: They took 160 adults over 65 with obesity, men and women, and they put everyone on the same diet.
• 6:19
  Philip Pape: Then they split them into three groups: aerobic exercise, aka cardio, resistance training, or both.
• 6:26
  Philip Pape: Everybody lost about the same amount of weight.
• 6:29
  Philip Pape: It was about 9% of their body weight over six months.
• 6:32
  Philip Pape: So that's that's great, right?
• 6:34
  Philip Pape: And if it was a weight loss challenge, they'd all be tied, but that's beside the point.
• 6:38
  Philip Pape: The aerobic or cardio group lost about 5% of their lean mass.
• 6:43
  Philip Pape: The resistance training group lost about 2%.
• 6:46
  Philip Pape: Hip bone density went down 3% in the aerobic group and only half a percent in the resistance group.
• 6:53
  Philip Pape: So think about that.
• 6:54
  Philip Pape: They lost the same weight, but the lifting group kept more than twice as much muscle and most of their hip bone mass.
• 7:00
  Philip Pape: And guess what?
• 7:02
  Philip Pape: The group that did both cardio and lifting improved their physical function the most.
• 7:07
  Philip Pape: And very little of that, if not none of that, shows up on the scale, obviously by definition, because they all lost the same amount of weight, but very different results.
• 7:17
  Philip Pape: Then there's a study in post-menopausal women.
• 7:20
  Philip Pape: I don't think I've talked about this one before, called the Tempo Diet Trial.
• 7:23
  Philip Pape: There were 100 women between 45 and 65.
• 7:26
  Philip Pape: One group did a severe diet, it was like a 65 to 75% calorie deficit.
• 7:32
  Philip Pape: The other group did a moderate one, about 25 to 35%.
• 7:35
  Philip Pape: Now, if you were scoring this along weight loss as the metric, of course, the more aggressive, severe deficit group is going to win.
• 7:44
  Philip Pape: Just energy balance, calories in, calories out works every time.
• 7:47
  Philip Pape: They lost about twice as much weight at 12 months.
• 7:50
  Philip Pape: And to be fair, three years later, 42% of them had kept off at least 10% of their weight compared to 16% in the moderate group.
• 8:00
  Philip Pape: So that's a point for faster dieting, which we've talked about this before, fast versus slow.
• 8:05
  Philip Pape: And, you know, when should you use one or the other?
• 8:08
  Philip Pape: You know, they all can work in different ways.
• 8:11
  Philip Pape: But the severe dieting group also lost about two and a half times as much bone density at 12 months.
• 8:16
  Philip Pape: And then at three years, it was still double the loss.
• 8:19
  Philip Pape: So the group that would have won the weight loss challenge was also the group that had worse results for their health and their body composition.
• 8:28
  Philip Pape: They lost the most bone.
• 8:29
  Philip Pape: And for a woman after menopause, that is a bad trade-off, in my opinion.
• 8:33
  Philip Pape: Okay.
• 8:33
  Philip Pape: So that's the first part of the problem, right?
• 8:35
  Philip Pape: Weight loss is a big jumbled metric that accounts for fat, water, muscle, bone, as if they're the same thing.
• 8:42
  Philip Pape: And just trying to lose weight is probably not the best way to go in general.
• 8:46
  Philip Pape: And I could just end the podcast right there and say, like, that's a great lesson to learn.
• 8:50
  Philip Pape: But we're gonna continue because I want you to know what to track to be successful.
• 8:55
  Philip Pape: And since I told you I have a stake in this, I'm gonna tell you about our challenge coming up.
• 8:59
  Philip Pape: It's called the Dialed In fall challenge.
• 9:02
  Philip Pape: And it is not, no surprise, it is not a weight loss challenge.
• 9:05
  Philip Pape: You are not ranked against anyone else on pounds lost, but stick with me because weight still is part of the data set, okay?
• 9:12
  Philip Pape: It's 12 weeks.
• 9:13
  Philip Pape: You get direct coaching, Dialed In coaching inside our Eat More Lift Heavy program.
• 9:18
  Philip Pape: Dialed-in means that Coach Carroll's your own coach inside the program.
• 9:22
  Philip Pape: She's gonna build a custom nutrition blueprint for you, review your data every week, checks your form.
• 9:27
  Philip Pape: This is a human being, it's not AI, it's not a course, even though there's lots of education and information behind it.
• 9:34
  Philip Pape: It starts Monday, October 12th, and it goes through Thanksgiving and Christmas into the early new year.
• 9:40
  Philip Pape: And we did that on purpose because this is when most people take a break, they gain a bunch of weight, maybe not as much as some people claim, but gain a bunch of weight, don't feel great, and plan to start over in January with New Year's resolutions, and the cycle begins anew.
• 9:54
  Philip Pape: So here's how it works: you pick three goals.
• 9:56
  Philip Pape: That's it.
• 9:57
  Philip Pape: One is that at least one is an outcome goal, like your waist measurement or your strength on the lift, or yes, even your trend weight, not your scale weight, but your average of weight over time measured against yourself.
• 10:10
  Philip Pape: And the others can be habits like hitting your protein or getting your workouts in.
• 10:14
  Philip Pape: And your coach, Carol, she's gonna look at these and approve your targets with you to make sure they make sense.
• 10:19
  Philip Pape: And you are scored against yourself.
• 10:20
  Philip Pape: You're trying to beat yourself.
• 10:22
  Philip Pape: The scores are capped.
• 10:23
  Philip Pape: So losing more weight faster isn't gonna get you extra points.
• 10:26
  Philip Pape: We're not trying to incentivize extremity here.
• 10:29
  Philip Pape: We're trying to incentivize improvement.
• 10:31
  Philip Pape: And then the prize is you get three months of free coaching plus a private two-on-one call with uh Carol and me, which is a nice little incentive, but hopefully the bigger incentive is the result you get from being challenged and having the support and accountability through what for many is the toughest time of the year.
• 10:49
  Philip Pape: I want to tell you about Pauline real quick.
• 10:51
  Philip Pape: She's one of our Eat More Lift Heavy members.
• 10:53
  Philip Pape: When she started in March, she didn't think that she could stick with anything, especially for six months.
• 11:00
  Philip Pape: Okay, that's that's how long our normal program is.
• 11:02
  Philip Pape: I know I'm talking about a 12-week challenge, but just hear me out.
• 11:05
  Philip Pape: So by week 25, that's almost the last week of the six months, her physical changes were smaller than she wanted.
• 11:12
  Philip Pape: She said stress and sleep got in the way.
• 11:14
  Philip Pape: Her life had changed, things came up, right?
• 11:17
  Philip Pape: Which is reality.
• 11:18
  Philip Pape: So, on a weight loss perspective, she wouldn't quote unquote win.
• 11:23
  Philip Pape: But she tracked every single day.
• 11:25
  Philip Pape: She never missed.
• 11:26
  Philip Pape: She trained three times a week, she never missed a workout, and she is now lifting heavier than she ever thought she could.
• 11:32
  Philip Pape: She's stronger, has more muscle mass, feels better, eating more food.
• 11:36
  Philip Pape: And about the scale, the scale weight, which used to drive her crazy.
• 11:39
  Philip Pape: Like many of you, raise your hand.
• 11:40
  Philip Pape: The scale drives you crazy.
• 11:42
  Philip Pape: She wrote, Oh, yeah, this is what that number is there.
• 11:45
  Philip Pape: No biggie, let's keep going.
• 11:47
  Philip Pape: I said that very awkwardly as I was reading the quote.
• 11:50
  Philip Pape: This is why that number is there.
• 11:51
  Philip Pape: No biggie, let's keep going.
• 11:53
  Philip Pape: That is the type of person I want to see doing this type of challenge because those are the habits that last long after the challenge is over that will ultimately give you the outcome you want in the long term.
• 12:05
  Philip Pape: All right, so this Dialed In challenge, we limit the amount of people joining.
• 12:08
  Philip Pape: So I want you to go to witsandweights.com/ challenge for the details and sign up before it starts Monday, October 12th.
• 12:16
  Philip Pape: Everyone who's in by then will be in the challenge.
• 12:19
  Philip Pape: You'll be able to come up with specific goals, track against them, be in the running for the prize, but most importantly, have that level of oversight, accountability, and support you need to get through the holiday successfully and come out the other side.
• 12:30
  Philip Pape: So go to witsandweights.com/ challenge.
• 12:34
  Philip Pape: Okay, so that's the first problem, the metric.
• 12:36
  Philip Pape: The second problem is what happens after the challenge is over.
• 12:40
  Philip Pape: And I want to be fair here because challenges and challenges and incentives, they do work quite well when they exist.
• 12:49
  Philip Pape: Like while the challenge is active.
• 12:52
  Philip Pape: This is why humans are really good with like setting goals and having seasons and New Year's results.
• 12:57
  Philip Pape: I'm not saying we're good with New Year's resolutions, but we we at least use these different points in our life to set goals for ourselves and challenge us to do something.
• 13:05
  Philip Pape: Maybe it's a competition.
• 13:07
  Philip Pape: A challenge is kind of like a competition, right?
• 13:09
  Philip Pape: So we like these things as human beings because behaviorally they get us to do things, they get us to take action.
• 13:14
  Philip Pape: Now, the best known study I want to talk about is from Kevin Volp and colleagues at Penn, published in JAMA in 2008.
• 13:22
  Philip Pape: They took 57 adults with obesity, almost all men, veterans in Philadelphia.
• 13:27
  Philip Pape: One group got a lottery, and one group got a deposit contract.
• 13:32
  Philip Pape: And that's where you put your own money in and then you get it back if you hit your target.
• 13:36
  Philip Pape: Kind of sounds like a lot of those gym challenges that Hormosy made famous, right?
• 13:40
  Philip Pape: Where you would pay money and then you get it back if you win.
• 13:42
  Philip Pape: But really, it was kind of scammy because a lot of people didn't make it through, so they just kept your money.
• 13:47
  Philip Pape: Okay, so I don't I don't like that, but that's that's how this is structured in a research setting.
• 13:52
  Philip Pape: So after 16 weeks, the lottery group lost about 13 pounds and the deposit group lost about 14, compared to only four pounds in the control group.
• 14:01
  Philip Pape: So kind of a big difference between the the two experimental groups and the control group.
• 14:07
  Philip Pape: But then they checked again at seven months, which is three months after the incentives stopped, the monetary incentives.
• 14:15
  Philip Pape: The lottery group was down about nine pounds from the start, the deposit group about six, and the control group about four.
• 14:22
  Philip Pape: And the difference between them was no longer statistically significant.
• 14:26
  Philip Pape: Then what's cool is the same group ran a follow-up study led by Leslie John in 2011, where they did deposit contracts for 32 weeks.
• 14:35
  Philip Pape: The incentive group lost 8.7 pounds, the control group lost one.
• 14:39
  Philip Pape: 36 weeks after it ended, the incentive group was still down 1.2 pounds, and the control group was down a quarter of a pound.
• 14:46
  Philip Pape: So the advantage there was gone after time passed.
• 14:50
  Philip Pape: So my point with all of this stuff, I hope I didn't bore you, is that challenges, incentives, they work in the moment, but they don't often last, right?
• 15:00
  Philip Pape: They don't often last past that point.
• 15:02
  Philip Pape: And this is why a lot of people revert to previous weight gain, for example.
• 15:06
  Philip Pape: There's also meta-analysis from just this year, 2026, in obesity reviews.
• 15:11
  Philip Pape: This is where they pull a bunch of studies together.
• 15:13
  Philip Pape: So this was 29 studies with more than 5,700 people.
• 15:16
  Philip Pape: And there was a small effect of the weight loss while the incentives were running.
• 15:21
  Philip Pape: And then when they stopped, the effect was zero.
• 15:24
  Philip Pape: Fewer of the studies measured what happened afterwards.
• 15:27
  Philip Pape: So I wouldn't put as much stock into that finding, but it matches the individual studies.
• 15:31
  Philip Pape: Anyway, we also have workplace wellness programs.
• 15:34
  Philip Pape: Now I've done some consulting for different companies in terms of wellness, even like mindfulness, even though that's not my bag, I guess, or my expertise.
• 15:42
  Philip Pape: But there's a lot of these programs where there's different challenges and they have point systems, you could exchange them for gift cards, all that fun stuff.
• 15:49
  Philip Pape: There was, there's, they've studied these, right?
• 15:51
  Philip Pape: So the Illinois Workplace Wellness Study randomized over 4,800 university employees.
• 15:56
  Philip Pape: There's a BJ's wholesale club study that included 33,000 employees at 160 work sites, and neither one found meaningful changes in clinical health measures after 18 months or more.
• 16:09
  Philip Pape: The Illinois researchers found that people who signed up were already healthier and spending less on healthcare before the program started.
• 16:16
  Philip Pape: So they effectively attracted the people who needed them least, right?
• 16:20
  Philip Pape: Just so you're aware of that.
• 16:22
  Philip Pape: And now the biggest loser I have to mention, this study gets misused all the time.
• 16:25
  Philip Pape: Kevin Hall's group at the NIH, they followed 14 former contestants for six years.
• 16:30
  Philip Pape: They lost 128 pounds on average during the show, which lasted for 30 weeks.
• 16:35
  Philip Pape: And then six years later, they regained on average 90 of those 128 pounds.
• 16:40
  Philip Pape: Where people misuse this is the metabolism part.
• 16:43
  Philip Pape: Yes, their resting metabolism was lower than predicted, but how much it had slowed down at the end of the show did not predict who regained weight.
• 16:52
  Philip Pape: The people who kept the most weight off had the most slowing of their metabolism six years later.
• 16:59
  Philip Pape: Interesting, right?
• 17:00
  Philip Pape: Other research from Katia Martins and colleagues found that metabolic adaptation of about 54 calories a day happened after weight loss and it wasn't detectable a year or two later.
• 17:12
  Philip Pape: So this is why I don't buy the metabolic damage idea, which I've talked about on many recent episodes.
• 17:19
  Philip Pape: The biggest loser just shows that an extreme contest can be followed afterward by a lot of regain.
• 17:26
  Philip Pape: That's it.
• 17:27
  Philip Pape: It doesn't really tell us much about metabolism like some people claim.
• 17:31
  Philip Pape: Now, there is a study that goes in the other direction.
• 17:33
  Philip Pape: Okay, it's from the UK called Game of Stones.
• 17:36
  Philip Pape: I love that name.
• 17:37
  Philip Pape: It was published this year.
• 17:38
  Philip Pape: It had 585 men with obesity, average age of 51.
• 17:42
  Philip Pape: They got text messages plus a financial incentive set up as money that they could lose.
• 17:49
  Philip Pape: Their targets were 5 and 10% of their starting weight over 12 months.
• 17:54
  Philip Pape: Now the incentive group lost almost 5%, or I should say 4.8% of their body weight.
• 18:00
  Philip Pape: The control group only lost 1.3%.
• 18:02
  Philip Pape: And the researchers saw that there was a meaningful level of maintenance out to two years later.
• 18:10
  Philip Pape: But they only had data on like two-thirds of the men by then.
• 18:13
  Philip Pape: So in some cases, this this says incentives may last past the point that they end, like in terms of uh maintaining the weight loss.
• 18:21
  Philip Pape: But the ones that seem to last tend to run longer and they use targets based on your own starting point, and they include actual support of some kind.
• 18:30
  Philip Pape: So we'll get to that in a minute.
• 18:32
  Philip Pape: Now you've probably heard people say that paying people to lose weight kills their motivation.
• 18:37
  Philip Pape: And there's a theory of psychology behind that.
• 18:40
  Philip Pape: But in the weight loss studies that tested this directly, the incentives did not reduce people's own motivation.
• 18:48
  Philip Pape: I think that the simpler explanation is the reward went away and you had nothing in its place.
• 18:54
  Philip Pape: So now you have this vacuum, and of course, you're going to revert to old behavior in many cases.
• 18:59
  Philip Pape: All right.
• 19:00
  Philip Pape: So what do you do instead?
• 19:01
  Philip Pape: I think a challenge can be a great structure.
• 19:03
  Philip Pape: You just have to change what you're measuring.
• 19:05
  Philip Pape: Stop using weight loss as the be-all end-all.
• 19:08
  Philip Pape: Measure the things that tell you whether your body composition is changing compared to where you started.
• 19:14
  Philip Pape: I actually asked this question in our Facebook group and people gave responses.
• 19:17
  Philip Pape: I said, if if you had to track something other than weight loss, what would it be?
• 19:21
  Philip Pape: And I had some good answers.
• 19:22
  Philip Pape: It was like body fat percentage and lifts and things like that, all thinking the right thing, right?
• 19:26
  Philip Pape: And even then, you you have to evaluate like if I want to track body fat percentage, is that really what I want to track?
• 19:33
  Philip Pape: Or do I want to track a proxy or a direct measurement that affects body fat, like my waist measurement, for example?
• 19:39
  Philip Pape: So I want you guys to think through like what's the most direct, easily measurable thing.
• 19:44
  Philip Pape: So first, you're gonna compare yourself to your own starting point.
• 19:47
  Philip Pape: Almost every incentive study that resulted in long-term maintenance of their results used targets based on each person's own baseline, like 5% of your starting weight, 10%, a pound a week, whatever, as opposed to competing against others or absolute numbers, if that makes sense.
• 20:04
  Philip Pape: Okay, now there is not a study that directly compares that approach to ranking people against each other.
• 20:09
  Philip Pape: So this is more of a consistent pattern from what we have seen, not you know, total proof, which is very hard to get in science, especially nutrition science.
• 20:17
  Philip Pape: Second, you should have more than one goal and make at least one of them an outcome.
• 20:22
  Philip Pape: Now, why is this important?
• 20:23
  Philip Pape: Okay, there's a 2023 study called Firework that looked at 668 lower income adults, 80% of them were women, average age of 48.
• 20:32
  Philip Pape: One group got paid for losing weight, one got paid for hitting behavior goals, and one group just got the resources.
• 20:40
  Philip Pape: Six months later, 49% of the weight group lost at least 5% of the body weight compared to 39% of the behavior group and only 22% of the resource group.
• 20:52
  Philip Pape: And then at 12 months, the two paid groups were at about the same, around 41%.
• 20:56
  Philip Pape: The 2026 meta-analysis found that incentives worked better when they targeted more than one thing, and worse when they only targeted habits.
• 21:07
  Philip Pape: So I would have habits in there, but not only habits.
• 21:11
  Philip Pape: You want to have at least one outcome.
• 21:13
  Philip Pape: So we're talking outcome-based goals and habit-based goals.
• 21:17
  Philip Pape: At least one of each, I recommend a total of three.
• 21:20
  Philip Pape: That is actually how our challenge is set up because it's simple.
• 21:23
  Philip Pape: Three is a nice round number, gives you a little flexibility.
• 21:25
  Philip Pape: And also, if you don't do as well on one, you can kind of make up for it on the others and still get that psychological win.
• 21:31
  Philip Pape: For body composition, the outcomes that I would use are your waist measurement, your strength on a main lift.
• 21:38
  Philip Pape: It could be multiple lifts, but I would pick one you're really focused on, like your squat, deadlift, whatever.
• 21:43
  Philip Pape: And your trend weight, which is your moving average over time, which is much more representative of body fat than an individual number.
• 21:50
  Philip Pape: And I don't mean like just take it once a week and average it.
• 21:53
  Philip Pape: I mean do it daily.
• 21:54
  Philip Pape: Here's why the scale isn't enough on its own.
• 21:57
  Philip Pape: Okay.
• 21:58
  Philip Pape: The SWAN study, the famous Swan.
• 21:59
  Philip Pape: Study we've talked about that followed more than 1200 women through the menopause transition and used exascans.
• 22:04
  Philip Pape: Their fat gain doubled.
• 22:06
  Philip Pape: Lean mass started to go down, but body weight didn't really change because or any faster than it was changing, because the fat gain and the muscle loss canceled each other out on the scale.
• 22:17
  Philip Pape: Now I talked about menopause weight gain in episode 501.
• 22:20
  Philip Pape: Check it out.
• 22:21
  Philip Pape: I won't go through it all here.
• 22:22
  Philip Pape: If you want to check that out, it's episode 501.
• 22:24
  Philip Pape: And and guys, men, gentlemen, it works the other way for you too, right?
• 22:28
  Philip Pape: If you're if you're lifting and eating enough protein, you can lose fat and gain muscle while the scale stays the same.
• 22:34
  Philip Pape: So measuring only weight is gonna sell you short when it comes to this.
• 22:38
  Philip Pape: And you also got to think about like when you do a challenge, you may not even be trying to lose fat per se, anyway.
• 22:46
  Philip Pape: Like if your goal is body recomp, you may not even want to have your scale weight or trend weight as a goal because it's not gonna change on purpose, right?
• 22:56
  Philip Pape: So using your waist, your strength, your trend weight together for outcomes, if you were to do this on your own and have multiple measures, that's my recommendation as like a coach.
• 23:06
  Philip Pape: Okay.
• 23:07
  Philip Pape: No study has tested all these combinations.
• 23:09
  Philip Pape: We have very poor research on like the overall coaching experience and tracking and measuring lots of things together.
• 23:15
  Philip Pape: But look, if your waist is going down and your lifts are going up, you're losing fat and keeping muscle.
• 23:20
  Philip Pape: It's that simple, even if the scale isn't moving much.
• 23:23
  Philip Pape: Now, if the scale's dropping fast and your lifts are dropping, that to me is also a red flag, anyway.
• 23:30
  Philip Pape: Like just because you're losing weight fast, but you're getting weaker and losing muscle, that's not good either.
• 23:34
  Philip Pape: So that's that's the second thing is the, you know, having more than one goal, making at least one of them an outcome.
• 23:41
  Philip Pape: Other ones can be habits, like we mentioned before.
• 23:43
  Philip Pape: I'm not even going to get into the details on that here, but you know what I mean.
• 23:46
  Philip Pape: It could be steps, it could be uh protein.
• 23:48
  Philip Pape: There's lots of habits.
• 23:49
  Philip Pape: The third thing is to cap the score.
• 23:52
  Philip Pape: Now, this is interesting.
• 23:53
  Philip Pape: If you get, you know, if you're giving yourself more points for doing something faster, you're back to the original problem where going more extreme, it doesn't mean more of a good thing.
• 24:03
  Philip Pape: Does that make sense?
• 24:04
  Philip Pape: Like it's got to be realistic within the time frame.
• 24:08
  Philip Pape: And so you set your goals based on that.
• 24:10
  Philip Pape: And that's why, like in our challenge, we have a coach looking at it with you and saying, This makes sense or this doesn't make sense.
• 24:15
  Philip Pape: Here's what makes more sense.
• 24:16
  Philip Pape: Because we don't want you losing the challenge just because you have unrealistic expectations either.
• 24:20
  Philip Pape: Fourth, this is the last point I'm making in this section, is have someone who knows what they're doing look at, approve, sanity check your targets.
• 24:29
  Philip Pape: Kind of what I just mentioned that we do in our challenge with a coach.
• 24:32
  Philip Pape: We we know that the 2026 meta-analysis I talked about, incentives paired with active support, where someone is working with you, perform better than incentives paired with passive things, like a handout, like education or something.
• 24:45
  Philip Pape: That's that's the closest evidence I have.
• 24:47
  Philip Pape: It's indirect evidence, but I think it makes intuitive anecdotal sense as well that having support versus not having support is going to make you more successful.
• 24:55
  Philip Pape: I mean, just seems logical.
• 24:57
  Philip Pape: Now, with all four of these, you keep lifting weights.
• 25:00
  Philip Pape: You keep lifting weights because we know adding resistance training helps you preserve your lean mass, helps you get the result you want, helps you get the body composition you want.
• 25:07
  Philip Pape: If you take one thing from this episode, keep lifting, even if you go into a deficit.
• 25:11
  Philip Pape: And if you're one of the folks that reach out to me that's new to my list or the show, and you just have this thing, this allergy to lifting weights, and I've seen it in some, I've I've seen it like very direct, like, well, I'm not gonna do that.
• 25:22
  Philip Pape: So what else can I do?
• 25:23
  Philip Pape: And it's like, I'm sorry, you have to be lifting weights.
• 25:26
  Philip Pape: If you want better health, better function, better aging, longevity, lower insulin sensitivity, easier fat loss, the list goes on and on.
• 25:35
  Philip Pape: All right.
• 25:35
  Philip Pape: The last thing to do is to plan out what happens after the challenge before you start the challenge.
• 25:40
  Philip Pape: These studies all show that the results tend to fade when the incentives go away.
• 25:44
  Philip Pape: So if you can decide on day one what you're gonna continue afterwards so you don't have a big gap, okay, that is gonna help you a lot.
• 25:52
  Philip Pape: For some people, that's continuing on with the coaching that you signed up for.
• 25:56
  Philip Pape: Like if you join our challenge, you're welcome to continue.
• 25:58
  Philip Pape: And whoever wins the challenge will get their next three months free anyway.
• 26:01
  Philip Pape: But all right, before we wrap up, I told you I'd share one thing that nearly tripled how many people kept their weight off, involving a text message.
• 26:09
  Philip Pape: I'm gonna get that to us to a second, but just a last reminder about the challenge, because this is really important, guys.
• 26:15
  Philip Pape: If you want this kind of support and accountability and a challenge set up the exact way I described in this episode with three goals, a starting point, cap scorers, someone to look at it, make sure it's the right challenge to give you guidance along the way.
• 26:27
  Philip Pape: And most importantly, each week help you make the adjustments needed to be successful with your training, your nutrition, your sleep, your stress, all of it through the holidays, through Thanksgiving, through Christmas, go to witsandweights.com/ challenge.
• 26:40
  Philip Pape: It starts Monday, October 12th, goes for 12 weeks.
• 26:43
  Philip Pape: The prize for the winner is three months of free coaching plus a private two-on-one call with me and Carol.
• 26:48
  Philip Pape: But you win anyway by getting the result because of the support.
• 26:52
  Philip Pape: So go to witsandweights.com/ challenge.
• 26:55
  Philip Pape: All right, before your next fat loss phase, here's the tip I have for you.
• 26:59
  Philip Pape: Decide who you're gonna do it with.
• 27:02
  Philip Pape: Okay, now this is a very open statement.
• 27:04
  Philip Pape: Do I mean having one accountability partner who's a family member?
• 27:08
  Philip Pape: No.
• 27:08
  Philip Pape: This is a very open statement.
• 27:09
  Philip Pape: All right, there was a study by Wing and Jeffrey with 166 people in a four-month weight loss program.
• 27:16
  Philip Pape: Some of them joined alone, others joined with three friends or family members and got social support strategies on top.
• 27:23
  Philip Pape: Of the people who joined alone, 24% kept all their weight off for the next six months.
• 27:27
  Philip Pape: In the group that joined with friends and got support, 66% kept all of it.
• 27:32
  Philip Pape: So before you start your next challenge or goal or whatever, text one person and ask them if they want to do it with you and check in with each other with each other once a week.
• 27:42
  Philip Pape: It's a it's a classic accountability partner strategy.
• 27:45
  Philip Pape: Family counts.
• 27:47
  Philip Pape: And of course, if you're in our challenge, you're going to have that by default.
• 27:50
  Philip Pape: You're gonna have a group that starts the same week and you're gonna have a coach.
• 27:54
  Philip Pape: You're gonna have the community support and you're gonna have the coaching support, which means you will be successful if you put in the work.
• 27:59
  Philip Pape: Um, if you can bring a friend along, even better.
• 28:02
  Philip Pape: All right, until next time, keep using your wits, lifting those weights.
• 28:05
  Philip Pape: And remember, weight loss is just one number.
• 28:07
  Philip Pape: It often doesn't tell you what you're truly achieving.
• 28:11
  Philip Pape: Things like your waist, your strength, your habits tell you a lot more about what's happening to your body.
• 28:15
  Philip Pape: I'm Philip Pape, and I'll talk to you next time here on the Wits & Weights Podcast.