Latest / Wits & Weights | Strength & Fat Loss Over 40 / The Body Recomp Advantage for Appetite and Fat Loss After 40 | Ep 432

Transcript

The Body Recomp Advantage for Appetite and Fat Loss After 40 | Ep 432 · Wits & Weights | Strength & Fat Loss Over 40

• 0:01
  Philip Pape: Here's a shocking thought.
• 0:02
  Philip Pape: What if you don't need to be in a calorie deficit to lose fat?
• 0:06
  Philip Pape: For most people over 40, the conventional approach, cutting calories, adding cardio, fighting through hunger, tends to create more problems than it solves.
• 0:15
  Philip Pape: Your appetite spikes, your training suffers, you end up regaining what you lost and going in a vicious cycle.
• 0:21
  Philip Pape: But body recomposition offers a different path.
• 0:24
  Philip Pape: And it's not just for your physique, it's also an appetite strategy.
• 0:29
  Philip Pape: So today I'm gonna show you the exact conditions that make body recomp work.
• 0:33
  Philip Pape: A hierarchy I call the recomp ladder that puts the levers in the right order, and three implementation plans based on where you are right now.
• 0:42
  Philip Pape: Welcome to Wits and Weights, the show that helps you build a strong, healthy physique using evidence, engineering, and efficiency.
• 0:59
  Philip Pape: I'm your host, Philip Pabe, and today is episode eight of our appetite series.
• 1:04
  Philip Pape: It's the finale.
• 1:05
  Philip Pape: If you missed any of these, these are episodes throughout January 2026 where we've covered hormones that drive hunger, how sleep and stress affects cravings, protein and fiber for fullness, how your body changes in terms of appetite after 40, and where strength training fits into helping manage hunger compared to cardio.
• 1:25
  Philip Pape: Today, I'm gonna show you how body recomposition, aka body reconf, pulls all those levers at once.
• 1:31
  Philip Pape: And I'm trying not to repeat what we've already covered.
• 1:33
  Philip Pape: Today I'm gonna give you more of a framework to make fat loss dramatically easier to stick with over time.
• 1:38
  Philip Pape: The core idea is that body reconf reduces your need for aggressive deficits.
• 1:46
  Philip Pape: Smaller or sometimes no deficit means less issues with hunger hormones, better training over the long term, you don't have as many cravings.
• 1:54
  Philip Pape: And so a lot of these things tend to just solve themselves when you're not constantly trying to diet.
• 1:59
  Philip Pape: Some of you have tried so many diets and you keep trying to diet and you keep trying to even lose fat the quote unquote right way, and it just is like hitting a wall.
• 2:08
  Philip Pape: Okay.
• 2:08
  Philip Pape: And I'm not saying nobody can, I'm not saying not everybody can do a fat loss phase.
• 2:13
  Philip Pape: We don't necessarily need to, and there's sometimes a better way.
• 2:16
  Philip Pape: Also, I've been giving you lots of really cool tricks at the end of these episodes lately, and I have another one for you today.
• 2:22
  Philip Pape: It is a two-metric check on your body reconp.
• 2:26
  Philip Pape: All right, so you forget about the scale, forget about things that don't make sense.
• 2:29
  Philip Pape: I'm gonna give you two numbers that tell you if it's working to keep it simple.
• 2:33
  Philip Pape: All right, let's get into it.
• 2:35
  Philip Pape: Hey, this is Philip, and today's episode is sponsored by CalloCurb.
• 2:39
  Philip Pape: If you've ever been in a fat loss phase and felt like hunger was working against you, Callocurb's GLP1 activator is a game changer.
• 2:47
  Philip Pape: CallowCurb is a natural appetite support made from amerisate, a patented bitter hops extract that activates GLP1 and other gut signals to help you feel fuller, faster.
• 3:00
  Philip Pape: Clinical studies showed a 40% reduction in cravings and a 30% reduction in hunger within one hour.
• 3:07
  Philip Pape: If you want to try it, go to witsandweights.com slash calocurb for 10% off your first order.
• 3:14
  Philip Pape: The link is in the show notes.
• 3:15
  Philip Pape: That's witsandweights.com slash calocurb.
• 3:19
  Philip Pape: Let me start by clearing up what recomp is.
• 3:22
  Philip Pape: We've done episodes on recomp before, but there's a lot of noise around this.
• 3:26
  Philip Pape: Body recomposition is simultaneously losing fat while maintaining or gaining muscle.
• 3:31
  Philip Pape: And that's it.
• 3:31
  Philip Pape: A 2024 editorial in a sports nutrition journal described it exactly this way and also talked about the scientific literature and how robust it is in examining this for decades, right?
• 3:44
  Philip Pape: It's a set of conditions where your body gets pushed to allocate nutrients toward muscle while drawing energy from stored fat.
• 3:51
  Philip Pape: So it's totally real, it's documented, it's a real thing.
• 3:55
  Philip Pape: Okay.
• 3:55
  Philip Pape: But we have to know what it is not.
• 3:58
  Philip Pape: It is not losing 20 pounds in six weeks.
• 4:01
  Philip Pape: It's not dramatic changes on the scale.
• 4:03
  Philip Pape: If you're doing recomp well, your weight might barely move or move slowly or even go up while your waist shrinks, your clothes fit differently, you get stronger, and you look visibly leaner in photos.
• 4:15
  Philip Pape: And this is what we're trying to get to with body recomp.
• 4:18
  Philip Pape: But it's also where a lot of people get frustrated because they might step on the scale and not see a change and then think nothing's happening, even when it is.
• 4:26
  Philip Pape: And sometimes the scale is changing, but it's not in the way we want, even if it's going down.
• 4:30
  Philip Pape: Does that make sense?
• 4:31
  Philip Pape: Right?
• 4:32
  Philip Pape: We're not just trying to measure the mass of your body, we're trying to measure how you're actually successfully reshaping your body.
• 4:40
  Philip Pape: So there are metrics that we track to do this, right?
• 4:43
  Philip Pape: Is your waist going down?
• 4:44
  Philip Pape: Is your strength going up?
• 4:46
  Philip Pape: Are your steps and activity staying reasonably consistent?
• 4:49
  Philip Pape: Are you hitting your protein targets?
• 4:51
  Philip Pape: Is your sleep and stress relatively stable?
• 4:53
  Philip Pape: And is your trend weight fairly stable?
• 4:56
  Philip Pape: It might be slowly declining, it might be slowly decreasing.
• 4:59
  Philip Pape: It depends on what direction you're pushing it.
• 5:01
  Philip Pape: And a little bit later, we're going to give you the three plans for which direction you want to go and still call it recomp.
• 5:07
  Philip Pape: So if you're checking the boxes of all those things I just mentioned, right?
• 5:12
  Philip Pape: You know, your waist is going down, your lifts are progressing, then you're probably recomping and the scale's noise that really isn't that important.
• 5:19
  Philip Pape: And here's why this matters for appetite, okay?
• 5:22
  Philip Pape: This is for today's episode on appetite and recomp.
• 5:25
  Philip Pape: Recomp lets you avoid aggressive deficits, and that tends to cause all the appetite problems in the first place that most people experience, okay?
• 5:34
  Philip Pape: Both in the deficit and even afterward when they're trying to recover.
• 5:38
  Philip Pape: Because when you try to lose fat with a large calorie deficit, and I'm large is relative, right?
• 5:44
  Philip Pape: So I don't necessarily mean a crashed diet, it could just be, you know, a percent of your body weight a week, which is pretty aggressive.
• 5:51
  Philip Pape: You adapt and you tend to get more hungry and you tend to move less, you compensate, your training tends to regress a bit or stall out a little bit, right?
• 5:59
  Philip Pape: You end up hungrier than you've ever been in some cases, depending on how aggressive it is.
• 6:04
  Philip Pape: We covered all this in the recent episodes, but body recomp is a nice, elegant sidestep for all of that cascade of issues because you're never really in a big deficit.
• 6:16
  Philip Pape: You might be at maintenance, you might be in a small deficit, you might even be in a small surplus, but you're nowhere near the truth the threshold that triggers the pushback.
• 6:24
  Philip Pape: And you might have heard of terms like lean gaining, maintaining, main gaining.
• 6:27
  Philip Pape: And we're kind of playing on those concepts.
• 6:29
  Philip Pape: We're not going to make any claims that those that this is going to just completely transform you in the fastest amount of time because it's not about that.
• 6:37
  Philip Pape: It's avoiding the other issues that throw people off and prevent you from adhering to this.
• 6:43
  Philip Pape: I would rather you rather you take the slower approach to get the result than the faster approach that you rebound from.
• 6:50
  Philip Pape: Obviously, think about the logic.
• 6:52
  Philip Pape: That means the slower approach is actually the fastest approach because it's the one that sticks, right?
• 6:58
  Philip Pape: So for today, I don't want you to think of recomp as a physique strategy, even though it is.
• 7:03
  Philip Pape: I want you to think of it as an appetite management strategy that keeps you out of diets and happens to improve your physique.
• 7:09
  Philip Pape: Okay.
• 7:10
  Philip Pape: Now, why am I emphasizing this for people over 40 specifically?
• 7:15
  Philip Pape: Because I know that sometimes I throw that into these episodes and I get some pushback like, well, doesn't this work at 25 and 30 and 35?
• 7:23
  Philip Pape: I'm I'm putting it in here because at this time of life, this is when I see the I guess spinning of wheels when it comes to all these diets.
• 7:33
  Philip Pape: And because it tends to get a little bit harder because of life issues and stress and stuff like that, it's not always the best solution for you.
• 7:40
  Philip Pape: So I'm going to give you three specific reasons, though, this is important.
• 7:43
  Philip Pape: Okay.
• 7:44
  Philip Pape: So even if you are under 40, if this affect is affecting you, this is highly relevant.
• 7:48
  Philip Pape: First, muscle becomes the limiting factor.
• 7:52
  Philip Pape: All right.
• 7:52
  Philip Pape: Because of the decline in muscle mass starting in your 30s and ramping up in your 40s and 50s, and you've had years of inconsistent or no strength training, probably multiple diet cycles that have cut mass even further, your lean mass even further.
• 8:08
  Philip Pape: You've lost even more muscle doing these diets, your body's just going to respond differently than when you were 25.
• 8:15
  Philip Pape: And so the fastest way for someone experiencing these things isn't necessarily to lose a bunch of weight.
• 8:22
  Philip Pape: It is to build the muscle while gently losing fat.
• 8:25
  Philip Pape: Okay, gently, gently, guys.
• 8:27
  Philip Pape: It's really to focus on that muscle side.
• 8:30
  Philip Pape: And of course, if you heard some of our recent episodes, I think I did another one that was called Build Muscle First Cut Later.
• 8:34
  Philip Pape: It's that concept, but we're not talking about going into a big surplus today.
• 8:38
  Philip Pape: We're talking about recomp.
• 8:39
  Philip Pape: Okay.
• 8:40
  Philip Pape: Here's another way to think about it.
• 8:42
  Philip Pape: All right, if you're carrying, say, 25% body fat, so this is would be for men.
• 8:46
  Philip Pape: For women, just add 10%.
• 8:48
  Philip Pape: And you diet down aggressively and you lose weight, but you and you end up with 22% body fat, but you've lost a little bit of muscle and your metabolism's a little lower, you're gonna look a little smaller, but not necessarily more defined, and you're not gonna have a better physique.
• 9:03
  Philip Pape: And you might even be less healthy depending on the loss of muscle.
• 9:08
  Philip Pape: If you recomp, let's say you add three to five pounds of muscle over an extended period of time and you lose five to eight pounds of fat, where you weigh almost the same, but you've completely changed how you look and how your metabolism functions.
• 9:21
  Philip Pape: For many, that is a really nice outcome to get, even though you have to be patient, it takes time.
• 9:26
  Philip Pape: The second reason this is relevant is, and we talked about this, I think, in episode 428.
• 9:32
  Philip Pape: After 40, your hunger and satiety signals are just not recovering as quickly from aggressive dieting.
• 9:39
  Philip Pape: And it's probably just a matter of the time you've spent in dieting, not your age, but just the time.
• 9:44
  Philip Pape: So we we talked about ghrelin and leptin sensitivity and how your body fights back and adapts and all that good stuff.
• 9:51
  Philip Pape: But recomp avoids that issue, right?
• 9:54
  Philip Pape: You're not creating the same conditions that trigger that response.
• 9:57
  Philip Pape: You're not going into metabolic adaptation, or even if you're doing a very, very slight deficit, your body hardly notices.
• 10:03
  Philip Pape: So you could still maintain your performance and you could still walk and maintain your movement.
• 10:07
  Philip Pape: You don't compensate, you're not exhausted, you're not running out of energy, you could still eat enough carbs and overall calories and enjoy life.
• 10:15
  Philip Pape: You avoid binge restrict because you're not binging, or you're not restricting, right?
• 10:20
  Philip Pape: So, and I can go on.
• 10:21
  Philip Pape: The third important reason here is recovery and joints.
• 10:27
  Philip Pape: Let's be honest, guys, those of us who are older, after 40, 50, 60, you probably, you know, you can't outcardio your appetite because that's going to create all sorts of recovery issues that we talked about, I think, on the last episode.
• 10:40
  Philip Pape: And if you don't have enough calories coming in, if you're always trying to diet, you're just not supporting the joints and the recovery, which may be, you may have more pain these days.
• 10:50
  Philip Pape: You may have a harder time recovering, you may have more connective tissue issues.
• 10:54
  Philip Pape: And I like older folks to be even spending less time in a diet, if that makes sense.
• 11:01
  Philip Pape: And that's another reason to do it.
• 11:02
  Philip Pape: All right.
• 11:03
  Philip Pape: So if you're in your 50s, men, ladies, and you're trying to lose fat, be honest with yourself on how you feel and how you perform when you're in a deficit.
• 11:13
  Philip Pape: And if you'd rather maybe not be in a deficit and take this other approach of slowly building muscle and slowly building fat, but then feeling great throughout the whole process.
• 11:22
  Philip Pape: And then life is great.
• 11:23
  Philip Pape: And that's what makes it really, really sustainable.
• 11:27
  Philip Pape: So coming up, I'm gonna give you what I call the recomp ladder.
• 11:32
  Philip Pape: It's a five-level hierarchy that puts the levers in the right order so you're not randomly adjusting things and hoping it works.
• 11:39
  Philip Pape: But before I introduce that, I want to make sure you know whether it's even right for you.
• 11:44
  Philip Pape: Hopefully, you already have an idea based on what I've talked about, but I'm gonna be very specific.
• 11:48
  Philip Pape: So, who does it work best for?
• 11:50
  Philip Pape: It's not for everyone in every situation, okay?
• 11:53
  Philip Pape: It's likely to work when at least one of the following is true.
• 11:57
  Philip Pape: Okay, I'm gonna give you six things.
• 11:58
  Philip Pape: If you can say yes to any of these, it's probably gonna work.
• 12:02
  Philip Pape: So you got a lot of options, ready?
• 12:04
  Philip Pape: Number one, you're a beginner, you're a noob to strength training, or you're highly detrained and coming back after a long layoff.
• 12:11
  Philip Pape: Great, beautiful time to recomp.
• 12:13
  Philip Pape: Number two, you're detrained from an injury or some other reason, which is kind of tied to number one, right?
• 12:20
  Philip Pape: So it may not even be that long of a time, but because it was an injury, you probably experienced some atrophy and some setbacks, and now you're trying to get back to it.
• 12:28
  Philip Pape: Number three, you're at a higher body fat percentage.
• 12:30
  Philip Pape: Okay, that's probably a decent time to recomp because your body has its own reserve that will experience as energy, even if you go in a little bit of a deficit, your body won't feel like it's in deficit.
• 12:42
  Philip Pape: Number four, your protein intake has been historically been poor, and now you're gonna jack it up to what it should be.
• 12:48
  Philip Pape: You might respond really well to a recomp.
• 12:50
  Philip Pape: Number five, your training quality has been inconsistent or suboptimal.
• 12:54
  Philip Pape: And therefore, why would you go into a deficit and lose more muscle?
• 12:57
  Philip Pape: Let's recomp.
• 12:58
  Philip Pape: And then number six, you're older and you have an inconsistent lifting history or concerns about your your joints or recovery, and the idea of dieting just does not sound palatable.
• 13:09
  Philip Pape: All of those are great reasons to recomp.
• 13:11
  Philip Pape: Okay.
• 13:12
  Philip Pape: Notice nobody's really excluded from this.
• 13:14
  Philip Pape: Anybody can be successful.
• 13:16
  Philip Pape: It's just to what degree?
• 13:18
  Philip Pape: So if one of those hit really hard, you're in the sweet spot and your body has room to build muscle, probably responsive, very, very responsively, even while in a slight deficit, definitely at maintenance, okay?
• 13:30
  Philip Pape: And absolutely at a slight surplus.
• 13:33
  Philip Pape: So even if you're not in the sweet spot, everyone listening can do probably one of my three, two, two of the three directions that I'm gonna give you in a bit, right?
• 13:43
  Philip Pape: Now, when does recomp get harder, but but still possible because it's always possible?
• 13:47
  Philip Pape: Well, when you're already pretty lean and you're already pretty advanced as a trainee and you've already built muscle.
• 13:53
  Philip Pape: This that's the first one.
• 13:54
  Philip Pape: The second one is that you have a small margin for error.
• 13:57
  Philip Pape: You know, what I mean by that is you have an all or nothing mindset and are not ready to track things in the right way to know that you're recomping and you you give in very easily to like scale issues and whatnot.
• 14:08
  Philip Pape: I'm not saying that recomp won't work.
• 14:10
  Philip Pape: I think in that case, you have to work on yourself and just being at maintenance and not worrying about recomp in the first place.
• 14:16
  Philip Pape: It's more getting the mindset right.
• 14:18
  Philip Pape: And then I would say the third thing is if your life stress is super high and recovery is compromised, recomp's gonna be harder just because your body's not gonna respond as well, even if you're in the right caloric degree or caloric situation, if you will.
• 14:31
  Philip Pape: So even if you're a slight surplus or a maintenance, the life stress, the lack of sleep could be offsetting that a bit to preventing you from getting everything you want out of it.
• 14:39
  Philip Pape: Right.
• 14:40
  Philip Pape: And even so, recomp still might work.
• 14:42
  Philip Pape: It's just gonna be slower.
• 14:43
  Philip Pape: You have to be a little more precise with your nutrition, your training.
• 14:47
  Philip Pape: But in that case, you might need to alternate between building phases and like mini cuts.
• 14:51
  Philip Pape: And this is where the big, this is where the confusion comes from because some people, like if I have a female client who's in her 50s and her metabolism is over-responsive, meaning it drops really fast.
• 15:04
  Philip Pape: Maybe it's a thyroid issue or hormone issue.
• 15:06
  Philip Pape: Sometimes it's just, you know, her own individual response.
• 15:08
  Philip Pape: A recomp may be kind of frustrating because it's gonna take a lot longer for her than someone else, maybe.
• 15:14
  Philip Pape: And so we might want to do bulks and cuts to get the visual and the physical transformation to occur, but that's with more support.
• 15:23
  Philip Pape: That's usually under a coaching situation.
• 15:25
  Philip Pape: I still think recomp can work for a lot of people.
• 15:27
  Philip Pape: And the key is to being honest about where you are.
• 15:29
  Philip Pape: Okay.
• 15:30
  Philip Pape: If you've been lifting consistently for a bunch of years and you're already super lean, you've probably done it a different way anyway.
• 15:37
  Philip Pape: And recomp is going to be kind of a grind to actually see anything come of it.
• 15:40
  Philip Pape: Maybe I would consider that more sustaining or maintaining your results.
• 15:44
  Philip Pape: But if you're coming back after a few years off, or if you've never really dialed things in the right way, you're definitely in prime recomp territory, and then we have everything in between.
• 15:53
  Philip Pape: All right, before we continue, I want to tell you about today's sponsor, CaloCurb, C-A-L-O-C-U-R B.
• 15:58
  Philip Pape: Please don't skip forward to the next section.
• 16:00
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• 16:05
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• 16:08
  Philip Pape: If you've been following this appetite series, or even if this is the first time you're hearing us, managing hunger is one of the biggest challenges in a fat loss phase.
• 16:16
  Philip Pape: We all talk about calorie deficits, we talk about training, but honestly, a lot of people have trouble just sticking to a low number of calories if they're not used to it.
• 16:25
  Philip Pape: And that's especially true when you're trying to do body recomp and trying to keep a small deficit, but still preserve your performance.
• 16:33
  Philip Pape: And that's one of the plans we're going to talk about in a second.
• 16:35
  Philip Pape: You're still in a deficit, you're still gonna have some hunger.
• 16:38
  Philip Pape: And the issue is that even a moderate deficit can trigger things like late-day cravings that then throw your consistency off, and all of a sudden you're no longer really in that deficit.
• 16:46
  Philip Pape: You start snacking at 8 p.m.
• 16:48
  Philip Pape: So, Callocurb, I like it as a tool.
• 16:50
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• 16:53
  Philip Pape: It triggers your own GLP1.
• 16:55
  Philip Pape: It's a supplement that has a marasate.
• 16:58
  Philip Pape: You can Google this, A-M-A-R-A-S-A-T-E, and it's a hops flour extract developed over 15 years of research by the New Zealand government, funded by them, not by a private company.
• 17:09
  Philip Pape: And it works by activating your body's natural GLP1, the gut brain access.
• 17:13
  Philip Pape: It helps you feel satisfied faster and stay in control.
• 17:17
  Philip Pape: Basically, you take these a little bit over an hour before you eat, and it triggers those signals so you start to feel full before you even eat.
• 17:24
  Philip Pape: And that's why the studies show it reduced cravings by 40%, hunger by 30% within an hour of taking a capsule.
• 17:31
  Philip Pape: That also leads to a reduction of 18% calorie consumptions.
• 17:36
  Philip Pape: Now, what I appreciate is that it is not a stimulant, okay?
• 17:41
  Philip Pape: It's not a pharmaceutical, it's just hops.
• 17:44
  Philip Pape: So you don't need a prescription.
• 17:46
  Philip Pape: It's a great tool to support the fundamentals we talk about on the show.
• 17:49
  Philip Pape: It's like a compliance lever for your recomp phase because we are trying to dial in and be so precise.
• 17:55
  Philip Pape: Try it out at witsandweights.com slash calocurb.
• 17:58
  Philip Pape: The link is in the show note.
• 17:59
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• 18:01
  Philip Pape: Go to witsandweights.com slash callocurb.
• 18:04
  Philip Pape: All right, let's talk about the recomp ladder framework.
• 18:09
  Philip Pape: And I want you to stay stay tuned till the end because I'm gonna share a two-metric recomp tracking system that is super, super low stress.
• 18:19
  Philip Pape: For some of you that don't like to track a lot of things, I'm gonna very, very much simplify for you.
• 18:24
  Philip Pape: All right, here is the recomp ladder.
• 18:26
  Philip Pape: It's a hierarchy of priorities that put your levers in the right order.
• 18:29
  Philip Pape: And I came up with a ladder because I think that was inspired by Jeff Nippard.
• 18:32
  Philip Pape: He has like something, the muscle ladder or something.
• 18:34
  Philip Pape: And I keep using pyramids, but I think ladder is the right metaphor.
• 18:38
  Philip Pape: Anyway, so level one is at the bottom.
• 18:42
  Philip Pape: This is the training stimulus.
• 18:44
  Philip Pape: Okay, you have to have the training stimulus or your body won't build a preserve muscle.
• 18:48
  Philip Pape: This is where you need progressive overload, adding weight, weight reps or sets over time.
• 18:54
  Philip Pape: You have to have enough volume, enough sets per week, but not so much you can't recover.
• 18:58
  Philip Pape: And of course, you have to be consistent with it.
• 18:59
  Philip Pape: Now, a lot of the details on all these levers are covered in other episodes.
• 19:04
  Philip Pape: It's also how we help people in uh physique university and with my app, Fitness Lab.
• 19:08
  Philip Pape: So if you prefer kind of going it on yourself with some help of a coach in your pocket, you could use the app.
• 19:13
  Philip Pape: If you'd rather join a group that helps you out with coaches in the group, including myself, Physique University, those links are in the show notes.
• 19:20
  Philip Pape: I'm not gonna pitch those beyond that.
• 19:22
  Philip Pape: I just want to mention that the details of each of these steps could each be their own episode.
• 19:28
  Philip Pape: And level number one on the ladder is definitely your strength training.
• 19:31
  Philip Pape: If you're not strength training, none of the other stuff matters.
• 19:33
  Philip Pape: I've got people who come into physique university and we do an intake and they say, I ask them how many days a week are they training?
• 19:40
  Philip Pape: And they say zero.
• 19:41
  Philip Pape: I actually start smiling then because I'm thinking, wow, this is the biggest opportunity you're not taking advantage of, and it's the easiest thing to give you the most growth.
• 19:49
  Philip Pape: It's the highest ROI.
• 19:50
  Philip Pape: I'm not saying it's easy, but as far as the return you get on your investment, if you're not strength training, all the other stuff doesn't matter.
• 19:58
  Philip Pape: It really doesn't.
• 19:59
  Philip Pape: Yeah, you can lose some weight, and maybe you'll lose some fat.
• 20:02
  Philip Pape: You might, you're gonna lose some muscle as well, but it just doesn't matter.
• 20:05
  Philip Pape: You're not gonna be able to change your physique.
• 20:07
  Philip Pape: It's not gonna help your appetite.
• 20:08
  Philip Pape: You're just gonna be worse off if you're not training.
• 20:10
  Philip Pape: So that's level one.
• 20:11
  Philip Pape: Level two is on the nutrition side, it's the protein and meal structure, right?
• 20:16
  Philip Pape: Protein becomes that next lever.
• 20:17
  Philip Pape: You have to have meals that are anchored in high protein, probably 30 to 50 grams of protein at big meals.
• 20:24
  Philip Pape: And then fiber and food volume supports satiety as well.
• 20:27
  Philip Pape: So that's that's my if I had to explain nutrition in one sentence is protein, fiber, and food volume.
• 20:34
  Philip Pape: It's not cutting carbs, it's not cutting out foods, or it's not even calories.
• 20:37
  Philip Pape: Calories tend to follow once you start to improve the quality and composition, excuse me, of your meals.
• 20:43
  Philip Pape: And we cover protein all the time on this podcast, but you want to be getting at least 0.7 to one gram per pound of body weight.
• 20:50
  Philip Pape: Okay.
• 20:50
  Philip Pape: So training first, then protein, then on the ladder we have the calories, which is your energy target.
• 20:57
  Philip Pape: Now, you might hear calories are at the bottom of the pyramid.
• 21:00
  Philip Pape: It depends on what we're talking about here.
• 21:02
  Philip Pape: So, in terms of recomp, I'm trying to give you priorities that are going to set yourself up for success.
• 21:07
  Philip Pape: So training, then protein, then energy, because you have some flexibility here.
• 21:13
  Philip Pape: All right.
• 21:14
  Philip Pape: In a fat loss phase, like a more aggressive fat loss phase, you really have to be in a very decent intentional deficit.
• 21:21
  Philip Pape: And in a muscle building phase, a very decent surplus.
• 21:23
  Philip Pape: For recomp though, you're gonna want to be around maintenance or a small deficit or a small surplus.
• 21:30
  Philip Pape: And we're gonna talk about that in a second.
• 21:31
  Philip Pape: I'm gonna give you the three different ways to do this.
• 21:33
  Philip Pape: The key thing to track, though, is are you actually building muscle and getting stronger while you're losing fat?
• 21:40
  Philip Pape: And you have to be able to measure that the right way, which, you know, spoiler alert, is not the scale.
• 21:45
  Philip Pape: Okay.
• 21:46
  Philip Pape: So that's level three on the ladder.
• 21:48
  Philip Pape: Level four out of five is movement, movement and steps, general activity.
• 21:53
  Philip Pape: This is appetite-friendly movement, like we talked about on, I believe, the last episode, that keeps your meat up, keeps your calories up without creating hunger and stress from more high-intensity metronomic cardio.
• 22:06
  Philip Pape: All right.
• 22:07
  Philip Pape: So this is the seven to 10,000 steps a day-ish.
• 22:09
  Philip Pape: Maybe a little bit more for some of you.
• 22:11
  Philip Pape: I wouldn't go less than 7,000.
• 22:13
  Philip Pape: That is that is a good minimum.
• 22:15
  Philip Pape: And again, one of the highest leverage changes you can make, again, once you've put in place the other three parts of the ladder.
• 22:22
  Philip Pape: And then level five of the ladder is I'll say optional appetite tools, right?
• 22:27
  Philip Pape: So this is where looking at how to optimize and tweak what you're eating to support your hunger signals, to make eating a little bit more automatic.
• 22:38
  Philip Pape: Because at recomp, yeah, of course you can track calories and macros.
• 22:41
  Philip Pape: I'm a huge fan of that.
• 22:42
  Philip Pape: But even if you don't, recomp should be the easiest kind of phase to eat, I'll say intuitively in, but intuitive with a big asterisk as in a skill you've developed because you've tracked before.
• 22:55
  Philip Pape: And this is where optional tools can come in.
• 22:58
  Philip Pape: Supplementation, up callow curb, like I mentioned before, could be helpful.
• 23:02
  Philip Pape: And it's something you don't even have to worry about until you've got the other things dialed in.
• 23:06
  Philip Pape: Levels one through four, right?
• 23:08
  Philip Pape: If you have levels one through four dialed in and now you're still struggling with some cravings or hunger, emotional eating, then there's different tools.
• 23:15
  Philip Pape: There's also mindset tools, psychological tools, you know.
• 23:19
  Philip Pape: So all of those kind of fit in this piece of the ladder, and that's why I put it at the top: supplementation, mindset, psychology, support, accountability, like all of that can go here to ramp things up further and optimize.
• 23:31
  Philip Pape: So that's the recomp ladder, training, then protein, and energy, the movement, then tools, right?
• 23:36
  Philip Pape: Now I want to give you those three plans I talked about so you can start applying body recomp.
• 23:42
  Philip Pape: All right.
• 23:42
  Philip Pape: Plan A is honestly my favorite.
• 23:44
  Philip Pape: I'm just gonna say it right out the gate.
• 23:47
  Philip Pape: Plan A is aggressive maintenance.
• 23:50
  Philip Pape: Okay, this is all about efficiency.
• 23:51
  Philip Pape: It's my preferred method.
• 23:52
  Philip Pape: I've talked about it before.
• 23:54
  Philip Pape: In fact, there was an episode that I think was called Build Muscle Without Bulking.
• 23:59
  Philip Pape: Oh, yeah, build muscle without bulking if you want lean gains.
• 24:02
  Philip Pape: And that was episode 384, where I believe uh I talked about this in detail.
• 24:06
  Philip Pape: But the philosophy is the efficiency of the approach rather than the throughput of the approach.
• 24:11
  Philip Pape: So instead of like throwing more fuel at, you know, your body, doing more, hoping for more on the other end, you're optimizing how your fuel gets used.
• 24:20
  Philip Pape: You're turning the nutrient delivery, your recovery, your mechanical stress to direct what are still somewhat limited resources.
• 24:28
  Philip Pape: I mean, you're you're above maintenance here, but you want to direct them toward muscle.
• 24:32
  Philip Pape: They're they're limited in the sense that you're not in a big surplus.
• 24:34
  Philip Pape: So here's why this works: your body can only synthesize so much muscle at any given time, right?
• 24:40
  Philip Pape: You can't just add more calories to it.
• 24:42
  Philip Pape: We've talked before about upper limits of building muscle.
• 24:45
  Philip Pape: You don't want to go into a dreamer bulk.
• 24:47
  Philip Pape: But and many of you are listening to this episode on recomp thinking, well, I'm not even gonna go close to that because we're talking recomp, aren't we?
• 24:53
  Philip Pape: Yes, yes.
• 24:54
  Philip Pape: But you have to understand the principle that your body needs a certain threshold to build muscle, and of course, it has a limit as well.
• 25:00
  Philip Pape: With aggressive maintenance, okay, you're keeping your protein high as usual, you're training as normal, and you are in a slight surplus.
• 25:09
  Philip Pape: So what you're trying to do is aim for maybe 50 to 100 calories.
• 25:13
  Philip Pape: It's probably similar to what the bros would call lean gain or main gain or something like that, to make sure that you stay ahead of the fact that your body's metabolism will probably start to ramp up and you don't want to fall back into the state, the stress state of a deficit, right?
• 25:29
  Philip Pape: Your body can still pull some energy from stored body fat because you're not in a deficit and you're feeding it enough to build muscle at the same time.
• 25:38
  Philip Pape: Pretty cool.
• 25:39
  Philip Pape: So that's that's kind of where we're trying to get.
• 25:42
  Philip Pape: And secretly, guys, you know what it ends up doing for a lot of you?
• 25:45
  Philip Pape: For a lot of you, it puts you into a surplus like you've never been in before.
• 25:49
  Philip Pape: And what I mean by that is not that it's huge.
• 25:51
  Philip Pape: You've never been in a surplus before, but it avoids some of the fear of going into a surplus because it's I call it aggressive maintenance.
• 25:59
  Philip Pape: So I'll be honest, I'm kind of tricking you into doing a surplus, but it's a very lean surplus.
• 26:05
  Philip Pape: And you get massively good results from it.
• 26:08
  Philip Pape: That's really my point.
• 26:09
  Philip Pape: Because your goal over about eight to 16 weeks is you're gonna see your waist go down, you're gonna see yourself get stronger, scale weight either stays relatively flat or goes up a tiny bit.
• 26:17
  Philip Pape: What happens when people go into aggressive maintenance is their body starts to burn more calories at the same time.
• 26:22
  Philip Pape: And in many cases, their weight does not go up, and it's a perfect place to be.
• 26:26
  Philip Pape: It's what a lot of more advanced folks on social media, when they say build muscle at maintenance, they actually mean true, true, true, fully recovered, energized maintenance.
• 26:35
  Philip Pape: And most people don't get there because they're afraid to push the calories.
• 26:38
  Philip Pape: So I think this works really, really well.
• 26:40
  Philip Pape: All right, that's all I'll say about aggressive maintenance.
• 26:42
  Philip Pape: Plan B is the other direction, small deficit recomp.
• 26:48
  Philip Pape: And this is, I guess, the more traditional recomp you hear about, which kind of appeals to people who want to have a little more meaningful fat loss versus the muscle gain, but they still want to gain muscle.
• 26:58
  Philip Pape: So you're kind of trying to have everything uh at the same time.
• 27:02
  Philip Pape: I think for some people it doesn't work as well because they don't build as much muscle.
• 27:05
  Philip Pape: But for those of you who are newer to training or detrained and very responsive to the muscle building side, it could still work quite well, right?
• 27:12
  Philip Pape: And and protein's still high, lifting intensity is still high, you're still moving, you don't feel super stressed because the deficit is small.
• 27:19
  Philip Pape: You know, maybe a 200-calorie deficit, right?
• 27:21
  Philip Pape: Something like that, or 150 or 100.
• 27:24
  Philip Pape: It's just a small deficit, enough to just chip away at the body weight loss and maybe even give you a little bit of that win on the scale that you're probably looking for psychologically, invisible progress, but without triggering all the hormonal and metabolic adaptation appetite issues that tend to derail more aggressive diets.
• 27:42
  Philip Pape: So, you know, it's questionable whether you can call that body recomp or just a mild deficit.
• 27:47
  Philip Pape: And then plan C is really this is kind of this is maybe a cop-out in terms of calling it recomp, but I really think it is.
• 27:57
  Philip Pape: And this is doing like eight to 12 weeks of a little bit of more of a push into a surplus and then a six-week more aggressive mini-cut to strip fat.
• 28:08
  Philip Pape: And this really is a slight combination of bulks and cuts, but in shorter phases that might be even more efficient for you and be more meaningful to give you those wins, right?
• 28:20
  Philip Pape: Because you are meaningfully pushing up the muscle and then meaningfully moving down the fat, but you're doing it over a short period.
• 28:26
  Philip Pape: So maximum, you know, 18 weeks, which is like four months, like the whole thing, the up and down.
• 28:32
  Philip Pape: Whereas normally I tell people to bulk for like six to nine months and then maybe cut for you know two months, something like that.
• 28:39
  Philip Pape: Right.
• 28:39
  Philip Pape: And then each building phase makes the next cut easier.
• 28:42
  Philip Pape: You're bulking and cutting.
• 28:43
  Philip Pape: So again, this is kind of a cop-out version of recomp.
• 28:45
  Philip Pape: I mean, technically, bulking and cutting in the long term is recomp, but I wanted to give you an option that's like somewhere in the middle that still uses bulks and cuts.
• 28:55
  Philip Pape: All right.
• 28:56
  Philip Pape: So there we go.
• 28:57
  Philip Pape: Flexibility, choice.
• 28:58
  Philip Pape: I know you guys love that.
• 28:59
  Philip Pape: And then I would be remiss if I didn't mention some of the myths that that hold people up when it comes to recomp that makes it not work, and then they come back and say, hey, reconp's not working for me.
• 29:08
  Philip Pape: Okay.
• 29:09
  Philip Pape: So five, five pitfalls that I see.
• 29:11
  Philip Pape: Number one, chasing the scale.
• 29:13
  Philip Pape: The scale's a tool, but really you've got to use the waist measurements, strength markers, and other measurements if they are helpful for body recomp, including the mirror and your clothes and photos and all that.
• 29:24
  Philip Pape: Pitfall number two is cutting too hard where you actually are getting into a deficit.
• 29:29
  Philip Pape: You're just so impatient to lose the fat that now you've gone past recomp into a deficit, and now you're going to cause issues with energy and training and hunger and all the things that happen in fat loss, which aren't necessarily a bad thing.
• 29:42
  Philip Pape: They're things you should expect.
• 29:43
  Philip Pape: They're the trade-off you make.
• 29:45
  Philip Pape: But if you're not willing to make that trade-off, that's why you did body recomp, this can be a pitfall.
• 29:50
  Philip Pape: Pitfall number three is not enough training intensity.
• 29:53
  Philip Pape: And for whatever reason, you know, sometimes people, if they're not in a bulk and they're not thinking like build muscle, they don't push as hard as they need to do.
• 30:00
  Philip Pape: And this is where having a coach or getting a form check or using my AMRAP trick that I gave you a few episodes ago, you're gonna have to go hunt for that if you don't know where it is, it can be very helpful.
• 30:12
  Philip Pape: Pitfall number four is inconsistency with their food, especially protein.
• 30:17
  Philip Pape: Okay.
• 30:17
  Philip Pape: If I see protein all over the place and you're constantly dropping low, that is gonna hold you up big time.
• 30:22
  Philip Pape: That could backfire, especially if you're trying to recomp.
• 30:25
  Philip Pape: You just may not get the result you're looking for.
• 30:27
  Philip Pape: And then pitfall number five is too much cardio.
• 30:31
  Philip Pape: This is always a pitfall.
• 30:32
  Philip Pape: For those of you doing too many, you know, group classes, F-45, Pilates, whatever.
• 30:37
  Philip Pape: Replace a lot of that with walking and see what happens to your body recomp, because that could be stressing you and compensating your body where you don't get what you want out of it.
• 30:46
  Philip Pape: All right.
• 30:47
  Philip Pape: So that was the ladder and the three plans and the pitfalls.
• 30:51
  Philip Pape: Now remember that two-metric recomp check that I promised.
• 30:54
  Philip Pape: Stay with me.
• 30:55
  Philip Pape: I'm going to show you how to use two things to know if you're recomping without stressing over anything else right after this.
• 31:02
  Philip Pape: Hey, this is Philip.
• 31:03
  Philip Pape: And a quick reminder about today's sponsor, CaloCurb.
• 31:06
  Philip Pape: If hunger has been the hardest part of your fat loss phase, even when everything else is dialed in, check out CalloCurb.
• 31:12
  Philip Pape: It's a natural GLP1 activating supplement with clinical data showing 40% fewer cravings and 30% less hunger within one hour, leading to 18% fewer calories, so you can stick to your fat loss plan.
• 31:25
  Philip Pape: Go to witsandweights.com slash calocurb for 10% off your first order.
• 31:30
  Philip Pape: Link is in the show notes.
• 31:31
  Philip Pape: That's witsandweights.com slash callocurb.
• 31:35
  Philip Pape: All right, here is that simple recomp check that I promised.
• 31:39
  Philip Pape: If you don't want to track a lot of things, and you don't want to track body fat, you don't want to use spreadsheets, you just need two numbers.
• 31:48
  Philip Pape: Two numbers, waist circumference and strength.
• 31:51
  Philip Pape: Now, this is not rocket science.
• 31:53
  Philip Pape: You've heard me mention this, but I wanted to simplify it to just two things.
• 31:56
  Philip Pape: And and not when I say strength, I don't mean everything.
• 31:58
  Philip Pape: Just bear with me.
• 32:00
  Philip Pape: Once a week, measure your waist at the navel, the belly button.
• 32:04
  Philip Pape: Okay.
• 32:04
  Philip Pape: Just relax, don't suck it in, do it at the same time of day.
• 32:07
  Philip Pape: I like in the morning, just like when you weigh yourself.
• 32:10
  Philip Pape: That's it.
• 32:10
  Philip Pape: Waist.
• 32:11
  Philip Pape: Easy, waist.
• 32:12
  Philip Pape: Everybody can do their waist.
• 32:13
  Philip Pape: Then you're gonna track one key lift that you care a lot about right now.
• 32:18
  Philip Pape: And that might be your squat, your deadlift, your bench, some variation of those.
• 32:23
  Philip Pape: Maybe it's an isolation movement, but I'd rather you focus on a strength-focused movement.
• 32:28
  Philip Pape: And are you adding reps or weight over time?
• 32:32
  Philip Pape: And that's it.
• 32:32
  Philip Pape: So between point A and point B, is your waist going down and is your strength going up?
• 32:37
  Philip Pape: If that is happening, you are recomping and keep doing what you're doing.
• 32:42
  Philip Pape: If your waist is stuck, you're probably not losing very much body fat.
• 32:47
  Philip Pape: If your strength is stuck, you're probably not building muscle.
• 32:50
  Philip Pape: It's that easy.
• 32:51
  Philip Pape: Your waist is where you store the most visceral fat, which is why it's like a decent approach now.
• 32:56
  Philip Pape: Some people make it more complicated and they do like three different points of their waist.
• 32:59
  Philip Pape: But again, I'm trying to simplify it for you.
• 33:01
  Philip Pape: All right.
• 33:01
  Philip Pape: So you don't have to calculate anything.
• 33:02
  Philip Pape: Don't, by the way, don't use an in-body or like smart scale for this.
• 33:06
  Philip Pape: Because even that adds complication and variability and error that you don't want.
• 33:11
  Philip Pape: Just use your waist and one lift.
• 33:13
  Philip Pape: And there you go.
• 33:14
  Philip Pape: You'll know if your body recopy, right?
• 33:16
  Philip Pape: The scale can't tell you this.
• 33:18
  Philip Pape: So if you come to me and you're like, I've gained two pounds, so what?
• 33:22
  Philip Pape: What if you gained two pounds of muscle?
• 33:25
  Philip Pape: Or what if you gained four pounds of muscle and lost two pounds of fat fat, two pounds of fat, so your net change is two pounds higher on the scale.
• 33:32
  Philip Pape: Guess what?
• 33:33
  Philip Pape: You're leaner.
• 33:34
  Philip Pape: You're leaner even though you're heavier.
• 33:35
  Philip Pape: So that's very important.
• 33:36
  Philip Pape: And you can start this right away.
• 33:38
  Philip Pape: Pick your measurement day, pick your key lift, track those two things for the next month if you're doing recomp.
• 33:43
  Philip Pape: And that's your low stress recomp check.
• 33:45
  Philip Pape: All right.
• 33:46
  Philip Pape: I really, really appreciate you listening to Wits and Weights.
• 33:49
  Philip Pape: I'm grateful for you sticking around with me for this appetite series.
• 33:53
  Philip Pape: A lot of more fun, cool, different episodes to come.
• 33:56
  Philip Pape: I'm not going to talk about appetite for a while.
• 33:59
  Philip Pape: So I think I've done that to death.
• 34:01
  Philip Pape: So until the next time, I want you to keep using your wits, lifting those weights, and remember you don't have to starve to get lean.
• 34:07
  Philip Pape: I'll talk to you next time here on the Wits and Weights Podcast.