Latest / Wits & Weights | Strength & Fat Loss Over 40 / Stop Eating LESS to Lose Fat After 40 (Do This Instead) | Ep 454

Transcript

Stop Eating LESS to Lose Fat After 40 (Do This Instead) | Ep 454 · Wits & Weights | Strength & Fat Loss Over 40

• 0:00
  Philip Pape: If you've been eating 1200, 1500, maybe even 1800 calories for months or even years, and you're working out and the scale won't budge, this episode is going to explain exactly what's happening inside your body and why eating less is probably the thing keeping you stuck.
• 0:16
  Philip Pape: Today I'm going to show you the metabolic trap that catches almost everyone over 40 who's been dieting for years, why the calorie deficit that worked when you were 30 stops working at 45, and a three-part approach to fix this without gaining a bunch of weight in the process.
• 0:32
  Philip Pape: Welcome to Wits and Weights, the show that puts a popular piece of fitness device under the microscope, finds the hidden reason it doesn't work, and gives you the deceptively simple fix that does.
• 0:46
  Philip Pape: I'm your host, certified nutrition coach Philip Pape.
• 0:49
  Philip Pape: And if you listened to Tuesday's episode, you heard me walk through the full 26-week structure of Eat More Lift Heavy and what a coached body composition process looks like.
• 1:01
  Philip Pape: But today I want to talk about the problem that that program was built to solve because it's the single most common pattern that I see in men and women over 40 who come to me frustrated, stuck, convinced that something is wrong with their body, they just don't know what.
• 1:18
  Philip Pape: And it's usually this they're eating too little.
• 1:22
  Philip Pape: They're not eating too much, they're eating too little.
• 1:25
  Philip Pape: But what does that mean?
• 1:27
  Philip Pape: The advice you keep getting is to eat less, move more.
• 1:30
  Philip Pape: So stick around because we're gonna go over exactly what this means and what to do about it.
• 1:34
  Philip Pape: And then at the very end of this episode, I'm going to share one number that predicts whether your next diet will actually work, or you're just gonna repeat the same yo-yo cycle.
• 1:45
  Philip Pape: And it's a number that most people never look at.
• 1:48
  Philip Pape: You'll learn in 30 seconds whether your body's ready to lose fat or whether you need to do something else first.
• 1:53
  Philip Pape: So stay around for that.
• 1:54
  Philip Pape: Here is what we're covering today.
• 1:56
  Philip Pape: First, why eat less, move more, just is bad advice, especially the older we get.
• 2:02
  Philip Pape: And what is different about this stage of life in our 40s, 50s, and beyond that affects that advice.
• 2:09
  Philip Pape: Second, the three metabolic adaptations that your body makes when you chronically under-at, and why they create this vicious cycle that gets harder to escape the longer you stay in it.
• 2:19
  Philip Pape: And third, a three-part fix that can reverse the cycle without requiring you to just eat whatever you want, like they say on social media, or to abandon your goals either.
• 2:30
  Philip Pape: So let's start with the typical advice, the conventional wisdom.
• 2:34
  Philip Pape: I always like to break apart the advice.
• 2:36
  Philip Pape: That's the mission of this show.
• 2:37
  Philip Pape: You know it, I know it.
• 2:39
  Philip Pape: It's called eat less, move more.
• 2:40
  Philip Pape: It's very, very common.
• 2:41
  Philip Pape: It is a pithy response and a comment to just about any YouTube video or Instagram post where someone's talking about a struggle and they're like, you just need to eat less, move more, bro.
• 2:50
  Philip Pape: It's all you need to do.
• 2:51
  Philip Pape: Create a calorie deficit.
• 2:53
  Philip Pape: The bigger the deficit, the faster results.
• 2:55
  Philip Pape: And if you're not losing weight, you're not in a deficit, so eat even less.
• 2:57
  Philip Pape: Boom.
• 2:58
  Philip Pape: Easy, right?
• 2:59
  Philip Pape: And here's the thing like the advice related to energy balance and calories in, calories out, I will say over and over, is technically and scientifically correct.
• 3:10
  Philip Pape: You do need a calorie deficit to lose weight and thus lose fat.
• 3:15
  Philip Pape: That is thermodynamics.
• 3:16
  Philip Pape: And so I would never argue with physics.
• 3:18
  Philip Pape: I'm a man of science.
• 3:20
  Philip Pape: The problem is the assumption underneath this, the premise, and that is that your body is a static system.
• 3:29
  Philip Pape: That's the premise that is false.
• 3:31
  Philip Pape: That if you eat 500 fewer calories today, that you're gonna burn 500 more calories and that that math is gonna hold indefinitely for the next few weeks, months, and beyond.
• 3:43
  Philip Pape: But it doesn't because your body is an adaptive system.
• 3:47
  Philip Pape: It responds to the inputs you give it and it changes that equation.
• 3:50
  Philip Pape: In other words, calories in, calories out is technically correct, and the way we apply it to our body is very well misunderstood.
• 3:58
  Philip Pape: And if you're gonna understand it, you can then take advantage of that correct equation for you.
• 4:04
  Philip Pape: Now, for a lot of people who are younger in their 20s and their 30s, a simple deficit approach often works.
• 4:10
  Philip Pape: You cut calories, you lose weight, you go back to eating normally done.
• 4:13
  Philip Pape: And that's because there's a lot less fighting against that at this age.
• 4:17
  Philip Pape: We're gonna talk about that.
• 4:18
  Philip Pape: You tend to recover much more quickly.
• 4:20
  Philip Pape: But once you get older, once you get into your 40s, raise your hand if you've realized this or recognize this, especially if you are a woman going through peri and postmenopause, a man on lower testosterone, people with high stress lives, et cetera, you notice something doesn't quite work the same.
• 4:35
  Philip Pape: And it's not because, again, thermodynamics, physics stops working, but because the compensatory mechanisms get more aggressive.
• 4:45
  Philip Pape: They were always there to some extent, even in your 20s, but they're way more aggressive.
• 4:49
  Philip Pape: Your hormones shift a lot more.
• 4:52
  Philip Pape: For women, estrogen plays a role in storage of fat, where you store fat, how you partition nutrients, how sensitive you are to insulin.
• 4:59
  Philip Pape: Cortisol is higher because life is just more and more stressful.
• 5:03
  Philip Pape: It's like a compounding stress over time.
• 5:05
  Philip Pape: Kids, parents, finances, job, house, all of it, right?
• 5:10
  Philip Pape: All of it.
• 5:11
  Philip Pape: Your sleep quality is often dropping at this time of life as well for a lot of the same reasons.
• 5:16
  Philip Pape: And guess what sleep affects?
• 5:18
  Philip Pape: It affects appetite, it affects recovery, how your body handles glucose, even and carbs, all of those things, cravings, the list goes on.
• 5:24
  Philip Pape: So when, for example, a 47-year-old woman who's been dieting on and off for 15 years cuts to 1200 calories yet again, and now her body doesn't respond the same way it did at 32, it responds more aggressively, it holds on harder.
• 5:37
  Philip Pape: And she still gets the same advice.
• 5:40
  Philip Pape: Eat even less, do more cardio, try harder.
• 5:42
  Philip Pape: Like, let's go to 1100 calories, let's go to a thousand.
• 5:45
  Philip Pape: I've seen people come from other coaches when they're like, yeah, she had me on 800 calories because the needle wasn't moving.
• 5:49
  Philip Pape: I'm like, are you kidding me?
• 5:51
  Philip Pape: Are you kidding?
• 5:51
  Philip Pape: Is that is that the only solution we have out there, coaches?
• 5:54
  Philip Pape: Come on.
• 5:54
  Philip Pape: So I hear this all the time, and I get really pissed and frustrated on behalf of everyone who gets this advice.
• 6:01
  Philip Pape: Because having worked with hundreds of clients myself in our coaching programs, you know, 49% of them report that protein is their number one struggle.
• 6:09
  Philip Pape: And you're like, what does this have to do with everything you just said?
• 6:11
  Philip Pape: It's because you are eating so little food and probably even so little protein, even if the calories are like okay, right, that hitting adequate protein with low calories is nearly impossible without a very, very specific intentional plan.
• 6:26
  Philip Pape: So you're shortchanging your protein massively, and that alone can be a big lever behind why things aren't working, let alone all the other problems we're gonna talk about in this episode from under-eating in general.
• 6:37
  Philip Pape: So if you are living on a calorie target and a prayer, living on a prayer, right?
• 6:42
  Philip Pape: It's not gonna work for you.
• 6:45
  Philip Pape: So the conventional wisdom is not wrong about the physics, about the mechanism of calories in, calories out.
• 6:50
  Philip Pape: It is wrong about the application of that, that theory or that fact, I should say.
• 6:55
  Philip Pape: You know, it treats your body like a static system when it's actually a very dynamic system.
• 7:00
  Philip Pape: All right, so what is actually happening when you chronically undereat?
• 7:03
  Philip Pape: Because this will now take us to that next level of understanding the dynamic system.
• 7:07
  Philip Pape: And by chronically, I mean months to more likely many years of eating below what your body needs to maintain its current weight while also supporting muscle hormones and daily function.
• 7:20
  Philip Pape: Listen to what I just said that most important sentence of the whole podcast.
• 7:24
  Philip Pape: You are eating below what your body needs to maintain weight and support muscle hormones and function.
• 7:29
  Philip Pape: So what's probably happening is you're maintaining weight, but you're not supporting your muscle hormones and function.
• 7:35
  Philip Pape: That's the key.
• 7:36
  Philip Pape: It's not just about scale weight.
• 7:37
  Philip Pape: You might be eating 1200 calories and maintaining your weight, but you are under supporting lots of things inside your body that are independent of scale weight, right?
• 7:47
  Philip Pape: I'm not talking about a mini-cut or a well a well-planned fat loss phase that someone goes through.
• 7:52
  Philip Pape: Those are fine.
• 7:52
  Philip Pape: I'm talking about the perpetual 1200 calorie existence that millions of people live in, millions of women especially live in.
• 7:58
  Philip Pape: So your body is making three adaptations, three adaptations through the compensatory mechanisms I mentioned before.
• 8:04
  Philip Pape: And they stack on top of each other.
• 8:06
  Philip Pape: So these can be additive, all right?
• 8:08
  Philip Pape: Adaptation number one is metabolic adaptation or the suppression of your metabolic rate, also called adaptive thermogenesis.
• 8:17
  Philip Pape: Okay, the phrase doesn't matter.
• 8:19
  Philip Pape: The point is that your metabolism, your daily energy expenditure drops, not because you weigh less, that's actually totally expected.
• 8:26
  Philip Pape: Like if you lost 20 pounds of weight, yeah, you're gonna burn a few calories, it's fine.
• 8:29
  Philip Pape: But beyond that, there's an additional adaptation that occurs, this adaptive thermogenesis.
• 8:34
  Philip Pape: We mentioned the biggest loser study many times because it's such an extreme but really illustrative example of this, where six years after the show, where these contestants lost a ton of weight very quickly, their metabolisms were still burning fewer, 500 fewer calories per day than predicted for their body size.
• 8:55
  Philip Pape: Now that's an extreme case, right?
• 8:56
  Philip Pape: That's extreme dieting, extreme exercise, extreme weight loss.
• 8:59
  Philip Pape: But it's the same mechanism for anyone in a chronic deficit.
• 9:02
  Philip Pape: Your metabolic rate declines.
• 9:04
  Philip Pape: Your basal metabolic rate declines, right?
• 9:07
  Philip Pape: That's your BMR, but also your neat, your non-exercise activity thermogenesis drops because you tend to move less unconsciously, you fidget less, you take fewer steps, you sit more, you tend to feel more tired.
• 9:18
  Philip Pape: And then because you're eating less, the thermic effect of food drops, you're burning fewer calories just from eating less and eating less protein.
• 9:25
  Philip Pape: And all of these are components of your metabolism dropping, right?
• 9:30
  Philip Pape: Compressing, dropping.
• 9:32
  Philip Pape: And it doesn't just happen while you're dieting.
• 9:35
  Philip Pape: If you have been in a deficit for a long time, and then you go back to eating normally, let's put quotes around that, because you're still probably not eating normally, your metabolism, it's not going to instantly bounce back.
• 9:46
  Philip Pape: It's going to take time.
• 9:48
  Philip Pape: It takes the right conditions.
• 9:49
  Philip Pape: You have to have adequate food, adequate protein, resistance training.
• 9:52
  Philip Pape: And for many of you, even if you came kind of out of a diet, let's say, you never quite came out of it to recover all those functions.
• 10:00
  Philip Pape: Like I said before, you might be maintaining your weight, but you're under-supporting everything else in your body.
• 10:06
  Philip Pape: So that's the first adaptation.
• 10:07
  Philip Pape: The second one is muscle loss.
• 10:10
  Philip Pape: When you're in a calorie deficit, especially a large one, and you're not doing resistance training, or you're not eating enough protein to support that training, your body is going to pull its energy not just from fat, but also from muscle.
• 10:23
  Philip Pape: I hate to say it burns muscle because that's the word burn is very unscientific in this case, but if that helps you visualize it, feel free.
• 10:30
  Philip Pape: So you're not just burning fat, you're burning muscle.
• 10:33
  Philip Pape: Um, I mentioned the 2010 sleep and adiposity study before that looked at sleep-deprived dieters, and they lost 60% of their weight as lean mass instead of fat.
• 10:43
  Philip Pape: And now we have studies, people on GLP1s, and we see it's something like 30 or 40% of lean mass is lost instead of fat.
• 10:49
  Philip Pape: And again, that's without resistance training and eating enough protein.
• 10:53
  Philip Pape: When you do resistance training and eating enough protein, you can hold on to the vast majority, if not all, of your lean mass.
• 10:58
  Philip Pape: And for newer lifters, you might even gain some lean mass.
• 11:01
  Philip Pape: So that's a very, very important aspect that's independent of calories in, calories out.
• 11:06
  Philip Pape: And this matters extremely because muscle is the most metabolically active tissue in your body.
• 11:10
  Philip Pape: It's that metabolic engine where when you lose muscle, that's gonna further lower your metabolic rate, which means the deficit you started with gets smaller and smaller without you trying, which means you have to eat less if you want to get the deficit back.
• 11:23
  Philip Pape: And then that causes more muscle loss.
• 11:25
  Philip Pape: Okay, so you see what the vicious cycle is, it feeds itself.
• 11:28
  Philip Pape: And so for women over 40 specifically, thinking of peri and post-menopause, this is happening.
• 11:35
  Philip Pape: This is this is a big part of what's happening, ladies, when you look at why you have weight loss resistance and have to feel like you have to eat less and less.
• 11:42
  Philip Pape: There's muscle loss compounded with the natural age-related tendency to lose muscle called sarcopenia, right?
• 11:49
  Philip Pape: So not just the muscle loss from dieting, but just the muscle loss from not lifting weights due to age and the loss of function as well.
• 11:57
  Philip Pape: So if you're not actively building and protecting muscle through resistance, training, and adequate protein, you are definitely losing it.
• 12:04
  Philip Pape: And every pound of muscle you lose then makes the next diet harder.
• 12:07
  Philip Pape: So that's the second type of adaptation from chronic under-eating.
• 12:11
  Philip Pape: The third one is hormones.
• 12:14
  Philip Pape: Let's talk hormones, because they are a thing, even though they sometimes get overblown in social media.
• 12:18
  Philip Pape: But just to be straight about it, chronic energy restriction suppresses hormones.
• 12:25
  Philip Pape: One of those hormones is thyroid hormone, especially T3.
• 12:28
  Philip Pape: That's the active form that relates your metabolism.
• 12:31
  Philip Pape: It's the metabolic regulator.
• 12:33
  Philip Pape: So if you have lower T3, lower metabolism, that means you have to eat less.
• 12:38
  Philip Pape: It also suppresses your reproductive hormones.
• 12:40
  Philip Pape: Your body decides, hey, reproduction is not a priority when food is scarce.
• 12:44
  Philip Pape: I mentioned earlier, if you're under-eating, even if you're maintaining your weight, you might not be supporting your hormones.
• 12:49
  Philip Pape: You might even be amenorrhea and not have a period, like if it's very extreme or, you know, low energy, very low energy.
• 12:56
  Philip Pape: So dieting not only does it affect thyroid, it affects your reproductive hormones, estrogen, progesterone, and testosterone.
• 13:02
  Philip Pape: And of course, that affects men as well.
• 13:04
  Philip Pape: And that makes your body composition worse as well.
• 13:06
  Philip Pape: Okay, all of these things affect fat storage, like visceral fat storage.
• 13:11
  Philip Pape: Your stressors, your stress goes up, which is represented by cortisol, because under eating, guess what, is a physiological stressor.
• 13:19
  Philip Pape: And then that promotes more fat storage, especially in the midsection.
• 13:22
  Philip Pape: And that impairs recovery from training.
• 13:24
  Philip Pape: So ironically, you're trying to lose weight or fat by undereating, but it's causing you to hold fat and causing you to hold fat in the places you don't want.
• 13:33
  Philip Pape: So you have a woman eating 1200 calories, exercising five days a week, probably not doing lifting properly or with progressive overload, if at all, maybe instead doing, I don't know, Peloton, spin classes, group classes, those things, which are fine.
• 13:48
  Philip Pape: They're social, they're all that, but they, you know, Pilates, I know I get flack for saying Pilates isn't strength training, but from a progressive overload perspective over time, especially for heavier loads for things like bone density, it's not going to do the job.
• 14:00
  Philip Pape: It's just, it just can't.
• 14:02
  Philip Pape: By definition, physically, it can't.
• 14:03
  Philip Pape: Okay, it's no judgment on you for liking Pilates.
• 14:06
  Philip Pape: It's the physical manifestation of the movement patterns and the load that you can't get relative to resistance training.
• 14:13
  Philip Pape: Anyway, that's a side tangent.
• 14:14
  Philip Pape: But going back to this woman who's 1200 calories, probably not sleeping very well, probably running on like a lot of cortisol, right?
• 14:21
  Philip Pape: A high stress situation, probably losing muscle, probably have suppressed thyroid function, probably trying to take a bunch of supplements to make up for it, and it's not doing it.
• 14:29
  Philip Pape: The number on the scale doesn't move.
• 14:31
  Philip Pape: And everyone around you, including your freaking doctor, is telling you to eat less or try harder.
• 14:36
  Philip Pape: You need, you need to do more diet, and you have to focus on your diet and exercise.
• 14:39
  Philip Pape: And that's the extent of their advice.
• 14:41
  Philip Pape: Am I right?
• 14:41
  Philip Pape: Am I right?
• 14:42
  Philip Pape: Come on.
• 14:43
  Philip Pape: Okay.
• 14:43
  Philip Pape: So that's the under-eating trap.
• 14:45
  Philip Pape: That is the under-eating trap, meaning the thing you think is the solution is the thing causing the problem.
• 14:50
  Philip Pape: And the longer you stay in it, the deeper the hole gets.
• 14:53
  Philip Pape: So if you're hearing this, if you're like, hey, I recognize myself in what Philip is saying, that is me.
• 14:58
  Philip Pape: That is me.
• 14:59
  Philip Pape: I've been stuck in this cycle of eating less and getting nowhere.
• 15:02
  Philip Pape: All right, listen up.
• 15:03
  Philip Pape: I want to tell you about eat more lift heavy.
• 15:06
  Philip Pape: This is my brand new 26-week experience coaching program.
• 15:10
  Philip Pape: I built it with Coach Carol.
• 15:12
  Philip Pape: So you've got two coaches.
• 15:13
  Philip Pape: By the way, she's a women's and hormone expert, especially in thyroid.
• 15:17
  Philip Pape: The entire first phase of the 26 weeks is about breaking this cycle.
• 15:22
  Philip Pape: We do not start you with a diet.
• 15:24
  Philip Pape: We do not.
• 15:25
  Philip Pape: And by the way, in this program, you can eat whatever you want, but it's going to be with intention.
• 15:29
  Philip Pape: We actually start building a measurement system.
• 15:32
  Philip Pape: We establish your baseline.
• 15:33
  Philip Pape: We get you eating enough and breaking through the psychological fears of eating enough to support your training and your hormones and to feel great and to look great eventually.
• 15:42
  Philip Pape: And I say eventually because obviously physical change will take time, and to live that identity you want to live as someone who fuels yourself.
• 15:49
  Philip Pape: You get a training program on day one, or I should say week one, if you submit our intake.
• 15:54
  Philip Pape: There are monthly live coaching calls.
• 15:55
  Philip Pape: If you prefer a live interaction, there is one focus per week in the program.
• 16:01
  Philip Pape: So you never get overwhelmed.
• 16:02
  Philip Pape: You're never going to fall behind because it's at your own pace.
• 16:06
  Philip Pape: It unlocks whenever you join.
• 16:08
  Philip Pape: It's not that you're joining a group of people.
• 16:10
  Philip Pape: It's whenever you join.
• 16:11
  Philip Pape: But it does open up this Monday, March 30th.
• 16:13
  Philip Pape: And we have founders pricing only through this week, March 29th.
• 16:18
  Philip Pape: It's a big discount from what it will be when it goes public on Monday.
• 16:21
  Philip Pape: So if you want to grab a spot there, you won't get charged until the 29th.
• 16:25
  Philip Pape: Go to eatmoreliftheavy.com.
• 16:27
  Philip Pape: That's eatmoreliftheavy.com.
• 16:28
  Philip Pape: All the details are there.
• 16:30
  Philip Pape: The pricing is there, fully transparent.
• 16:31
  Philip Pape: EatmoreLiftheavy.com.
• 16:33
  Philip Pape: Link is in the show notes.
• 16:35
  Philip Pape: All right.
• 16:35
  Philip Pape: So now we know why this is a trap, why it's a contradiction almost.
• 16:41
  Philip Pape: Now, what do you do about it?
• 16:42
  Philip Pape: Okay.
• 16:43
  Philip Pape: What do you do about it?
• 16:44
  Philip Pape: I want to be clear.
• 16:45
  Philip Pape: The fix is for everything I everything I share on the show, the fix is usually straightforward, but it's not fast and sometimes it's not easy.
• 16:54
  Philip Pape: And if you're not ready to do a little bit of effort and work, you're not going to get your goals and you're not going to improve.
• 16:58
  Philip Pape: And I'm sorry if that hurts you, you know, in your heart or your mind, but it's the truth.
• 17:03
  Philip Pape: And you know it's the truth.
• 17:04
  Philip Pape: You know, anything in life in this world that that involves improving yourself and breaking it through your comfort zone requires a little bit of effort.
• 17:12
  Philip Pape: So, and it's not always fast.
• 17:14
  Philip Pape: In fact, it's usually slower to do it right.
• 17:16
  Philip Pape: If you've been chronically under-eating for years, you're not going to fix everything in two weeks.
• 17:20
  Philip Pape: Nor would you expect to or want to.
• 17:22
  Philip Pape: It's been years.
• 17:23
  Philip Pape: What's another few months to do it the right way?
• 17:26
  Philip Pape: The direction of change, however, starts immediately, as in right now, based on what you decide to do from this episode.
• 17:34
  Philip Pape: And that matters a ton.
• 17:36
  Philip Pape: That matters.
• 17:37
  Philip Pape: Men and women listening, dear listener, change can start right now.
• 17:42
  Philip Pape: The direction of change is an action and of itself that will change your life.
• 17:46
  Philip Pape: All right.
• 17:46
  Philip Pape: What's the first thing you're gonna do?
• 17:48
  Philip Pape: The first thing is to restore your calorie intake to maintenance.
• 17:52
  Philip Pape: We're not getting you to a surplus.
• 17:55
  Philip Pape: We're not doing cheat meals or eating whatever you want.
• 17:57
  Philip Pape: We're getting you to your true maintenance.
• 17:59
  Philip Pape: But this means you have to figure out what your total expenditure is right now in your current adapted state and eat at least that amount consistently, and then start to eat more than that to help you recover.
• 18:12
  Philip Pape: So I'll mention it again: a tool like MacroFactor is incredibly useful here because it uses your weight trend and food intake over time to calculate your actual maintenance calories, and then it'll follow it as your calories increase.
• 18:26
  Philip Pape: So this is not reverse dieting, this is recovery dieting.
• 18:29
  Philip Pape: We're jumping right to where we think your maintenance is now, and then we're pushing that up to get you to your final recovered maintenance.
• 18:37
  Philip Pape: So go download MacroFactor from the App Store if you don't already use it.
• 18:40
  Philip Pape: Use my code WITS and Waits, all one word, all spelled out, wits and weights, to get a two-week free trial.
• 18:45
  Philip Pape: You're gonna, it's gonna change your life.
• 18:47
  Philip Pape: Some I've had I've had hundreds of people email me and say, look, I just started using Macro Factor months ago, and that's all I need.
• 18:53
  Philip Pape: I don't even want your coaching programs.
• 18:54
  Philip Pape: Like that has solved it for me.
• 18:56
  Philip Pape: And I'm happy to say that on a show like this because it supports the podcast and it helps people.
• 19:01
  Philip Pape: And if you want to do it, do it, please.
• 19:03
  Philip Pape: Macrofactor, use my code WITS and Ways.
• 19:05
  Philip Pape: Okay.
• 19:05
  Philip Pape: So by doing that, you can find what your maintenance is.
• 19:07
  Philip Pape: Now, for most women that I work with who have been chronically dieting, maintenance is higher than they think.
• 19:14
  Philip Pape: It's higher than they think.
• 19:16
  Philip Pape: It's not dramatically higher, like 500 calories or a thousand calories higher.
• 19:20
  Philip Pape: Well, it could be 500 calories.
• 19:22
  Philip Pape: So I take that back.
• 19:22
  Philip Pape: It depends on how you define dramatic, but it could be enough that the jump from like 1200 to 1600 is what they need.
• 19:30
  Philip Pape: And that feels significant.
• 19:32
  Philip Pape: I mean, 400 calories is like a whole extra small meal, or maybe not even a small meal, maybe a decent meal that's full of, you know, fiber and vegetables and lean food, lean meats and such.
• 19:43
  Philip Pape: You can get a lot from 400 calories, right?
• 19:45
  Philip Pape: And so when you do that though, here's the fear.
• 19:48
  Philip Pape: When you do that, the scale not only might, it probably will go up a few pounds initially because of the water and glycogen from eating the extra food, the extra gut content, the extra fluid, and the extra carbs, probably extra carbs, right?
• 20:01
  Philip Pape: And that has nothing to do with body fat.
• 20:02
  Philip Pape: Your muscles are refilling their carbohydrate stores, your liver is refilling the glycogen, you're retaining more water, and your digestive system has more stuff moving through it.
• 20:12
  Philip Pape: So this is normal and it's temporary.
• 20:14
  Philip Pape: And by temporary, I mean the weight bump occurs and then it stops.
• 20:19
  Philip Pape: And here's the thing: just to take a quick side tangent, when you get used to cutting and bulking, you see that both sides of the equation have like a few pounds of buffer because of water.
• 20:30
  Philip Pape: Meaning when you go on a diet, you're gonna lose quickly a few pounds.
• 20:33
  Philip Pape: That's just water.
• 20:34
  Philip Pape: When you come out of the diet, you're gonna gain quickly a few pounds.
• 20:36
  Philip Pape: That's just water.
• 20:37
  Philip Pape: So you kind of notice that there's this little buffer of weight, and you have to push through that mentally to realize that has nothing to do with body fat.
• 20:43
  Philip Pape: And so I don't want you to get stuck on like a fixed number that this is your ideal weight or this is what I weighed when I was 25, so that's what I should weigh now.
• 20:50
  Philip Pape: Don't think that way.
• 20:51
  Philip Pape: So I'm not gonna pretend that this is easy up here psychologically, okay?
• 20:57
  Philip Pape: After years of restricting, eating more is gonna feel wrong.
• 21:00
  Philip Pape: It's gonna go against every instinct you've ever built.
• 21:04
  Philip Pape: And that is a real, real fear, and I respect it.
• 21:08
  Philip Pape: I do.
• 21:09
  Philip Pape: But let's look at the data.
• 21:10
  Philip Pape: Let's look at the data.
• 21:12
  Philip Pape: Clients who spend eight to 12 weeks of maintenance before attempting a fat loss phase tend to lose more fat, retain more muscle, and have dramatically better adherence when they eventually cut, meaning they can keep their results.
• 21:26
  Philip Pape: Okay?
• 21:27
  Philip Pape: That's clients who spend eight to 12 weeks of maintenance because they're dieting from a position of metabolic strength as well as physiological and psychological confidence instead of a depleted, stressed out, underfed state that is just gonna backfire.
• 21:44
  Philip Pape: So that's part one is simply restoring your calorie intake to maintenance.
• 21:49
  Philip Pape: And it could take four, six, eight, even twelve weeks to get there.
• 21:53
  Philip Pape: The longer you've been dieting in the past, the longer it's gonna take.
• 21:56
  Philip Pape: And that just is what it is.
• 21:57
  Philip Pape: Accept it and go after it.
• 21:58
  Philip Pape: Part two.
• 21:59
  Philip Pape: Is prioritizing protein at every meal.
• 22:02
  Philip Pape: And I know every single fitness person, every single health and fitness podcast talks about protein all the time now.
• 22:06
  Philip Pape: I don't want to just like talk your ear off about it.
• 22:09
  Philip Pape: But a few of the reasons this is so important is it's going to burn more calories just by eating more protein as a percentage of your diet.
• 22:17
  Philip Pape: So I've seen women keep the calories the same, double their protein.
• 22:23
  Philip Pape: So they reduce their fats and carbs a little bit, they double their protein, and they increase how many calories they burn by a hundred calories, let's say, just by doing that.
• 22:31
  Philip Pape: And it is often the difference between being able to do a calorie deficit and not, like mentally.
• 22:37
  Philip Pape: So more protein literally increases your metabolic rate.
• 22:40
  Philip Pape: And of course, it protects and builds muscle.
• 22:42
  Philip Pape: That's that's really the most important reason we eat protein because of the importance of building and holding on to that muscle.
• 22:48
  Philip Pape: Okay.
• 22:49
  Philip Pape: The target for protein is 0.71 grams a pound per per pound of body weight.
• 22:54
  Philip Pape: Now, in Eat More Lift Heavy, in week four, I believe it is, we unlock a tool called the Protein Day Builder.
• 23:00
  Philip Pape: I'm very proud of this tool.
• 23:02
  Philip Pape: It is a very well-designed tool where you put in your target protein, how many times you want to eat per day, all of your preferences.
• 23:08
  Philip Pape: Like, I mean, even if you're vegan or omnivore or you're, you know, gluten-free, you don't want to use protein powders, you don't want to use protein bars, all those preferences.
• 23:18
  Philip Pape: And it will build you a protein-based plan for the day that has a lot of variety and a lot of ideas, and you can rebuild with a click of a button and like instantly, you can click a button and it'll keep rebuilding for you.
• 23:29
  Philip Pape: So I know that's the biggest struggle for a lot of you guys is like, okay, I know I have to get a gram of protein per pound or up to that, but I don't know how.
• 23:35
  Philip Pape: And you can go to AI and you could try tools like that for sure.
• 23:38
  Philip Pape: You can try to do it that way.
• 23:39
  Philip Pape: But we have a tool like that in our program.
• 23:41
  Philip Pape: Anyway, you know, stepping back a bit, I'm kind of jumping into the weeds.
• 23:45
  Philip Pape: You can't just fix the protein gap just by adding protein shakes.
• 23:49
  Philip Pape: I mean, you can numerically, but you really want protein sources, a variety of lean protein sources that also tend to have other forms of nutrition in them, that they taste good, that they're gonna make great meals, et cetera.
• 24:00
  Philip Pape: Everything from eggs to Greek yogurt to chicken, fish, lean beef, cottage, cheese, and yes, even whey protein and kind of a good variety where protein always anchors the meal, and then you fill in the fats and carbs around it.
• 24:10
  Philip Pape: I like to think protein, then fiber, then other carbs.
• 24:15
  Philip Pape: And fats kind of come in naturally with like oils and sauces and naturally in meats and stuff like that.
• 24:20
  Philip Pape: When you do this, something interesting happens that people don't talk enough about, and that is your hunger stabilizes.
• 24:27
  Philip Pape: Your hunger stabilizes.
• 24:28
  Philip Pape: Protein is the most satiating macro.
• 24:30
  Philip Pape: So you feel fuller on more, you feel fuller because you have more protein, but even when the calories are the same.
• 24:37
  Philip Pape: And it can help with things like your 3 p.m.
• 24:39
  Philip Pape: energy crash and radiating the pantry after dinner.
• 24:42
  Philip Pape: A lot of the cravings that you might have might go away simply because you upped your protein and your total calories with these first two parts.
• 24:49
  Philip Pape: All right.
• 24:50
  Philip Pape: So that's the first two parts.
• 24:51
  Philip Pape: And then part three is of course resistance training with progressive overload.
• 24:55
  Philip Pape: If I hear anyone, anyone tell me or think in their mind even that they don't need to do resistance training, that it's just another form of exercise, that, well, you should train based on what you like.
• 25:06
  Philip Pape: And you are 100% incorrect.
• 25:08
  Philip Pape: Resistance training is absolutely a non-negotiable requirement as a human being if you want to stay healthy and have a long, healthy life.
• 25:16
  Philip Pape: You have to do it.
• 25:17
  Philip Pape: You have to do it.
• 25:18
  Philip Pape: I'm sorry.
• 25:19
  Philip Pape: Okay.
• 25:20
  Philip Pape: I've seen too many women doing bodyweight circuits that they never increase in weight, light dumbbell classes, the pink dumbbells that never go up.
• 25:27
  Philip Pape: They do the machines that they never increase in weight.
• 25:29
  Philip Pape: They're doing cardio heavy programs, they're doing even Pilates.
• 25:33
  Philip Pape: Yes, I'm calling out Pilates again or spin or whatever else.
• 25:36
  Philip Pape: And they don't actually progressively overload.
• 25:38
  Philip Pape: And then they wonder why my body composition isn't changing.
• 25:41
  Philip Pape: Why I don't want to see muscle definition?
• 25:43
  Philip Pape: Or, hey, I went on a diet, I lost fat, I still don't see the muscle.
• 25:46
  Philip Pape: It's because you're not training properly.
• 25:48
  Philip Pape: Building muscle requires a specific stimulus.
• 25:51
  Philip Pape: You have to challenge the muscle with enough resistance that it adapts by growing.
• 25:56
  Philip Pape: That's what's happening.
• 25:57
  Philip Pape: You're giving your body a hormonal signal that it needs bigger muscles.
• 26:00
  Philip Pape: And bigger means tone or cut or whatever, whatever word you'd like to use.
• 26:05
  Philip Pape: It doesn't mean bulky, especially for women.
• 26:07
  Philip Pape: Women aren't gonna get bulky.
• 26:08
  Philip Pape: And this means lifting weights that are genuinely hard for anywhere from, let's say, three up to 20 reps per set.
• 26:16
  Philip Pape: The details about training we're not gonna get into today, but it's got to be enough frequency, enough volume over time, tracking your lifts and progressively adding weight or reps over time.
• 26:26
  Philip Pape: Even if you do this in a sloppy, imperfect way, as long as you can look at your log and say, wow, six weeks ago, I did this one exercise for 85 pounds and now I'm up to 115, that is proof that you're getting stronger and thus building muscle.
• 26:40
  Philip Pape: Okay.
• 26:41
  Philip Pape: Now it doesn't require a gym.
• 26:42
  Philip Pape: You can have a gym at home.
• 26:43
  Philip Pape: It doesn't require barbells, you can use dumbbells and machines, but it does require progressive challenge, not just the movement or quote unquote exercise itself.
• 26:52
  Philip Pape: So those are the three big things.
• 26:54
  Philip Pape: When you combine adequate calories, adequate protein, progressive resistance training, your body starts to rebuild.
• 26:58
  Philip Pape: And it might, I might sound like a broken record, like, okay, these are the basics, but I hope I got into a little bit level of detail today that helps you understand the why behind how this affects your metabolism and your ability to eat food and why we're probably under-eating, and that's really part of the problem here.
• 27:13
  Philip Pape: Okay.
• 27:13
  Philip Pape: It's not just eat whatever you want, eat a whole bunch more food, eat a whole bunch of pizza and donuts, sit around all day, and that's what Philip told me to do, and that's gonna help me.
• 27:21
  Philip Pape: No, that's absolutely not what I'm talking about.
• 27:24
  Philip Pape: But once you do that, well, now you're gonna support those things I just said earlier.
• 27:27
  Philip Pape: You weren't supporting, even if you were maintaining your weight.
• 27:30
  Philip Pape: And that is your hormonal function because you're no longer restricting.
• 27:33
  Philip Pape: You're building a body that requires more fuel because you have more muscle, because you're moving more, moving more in the right way.
• 27:40
  Philip Pape: And now eventually you could do a strategic fat loss phase and you have room to work with.
• 27:44
  Philip Pape: It's not because you've magically increased your metabolism, it's because you're probably finally supporting your metabolism.
• 27:49
  Philip Pape: And now you could eat, say, you know, 1800 calories and lose some fat instead of 1200.
• 27:54
  Philip Pape: That's the fix.
• 27:55
  Philip Pape: Eat enough, prioritize protein, lift progressively.
• 27:57
  Philip Pape: And it sounds deceptively simple because on paper it is.
• 28:01
  Philip Pape: The hard part is not the information.
• 28:03
  Philip Pape: I've said this before.
• 28:04
  Philip Pape: The hard part is trusting and taking action on the process when everything else you've been taught says to do the opposite.
• 28:13
  Philip Pape: Now, just to really quickly get ahead of the YouTube commenters, although they're probably not going to comment on this because it's audio only.
• 28:20
  Philip Pape: Three things I'm not saying, or four things I'm not saying.
• 28:23
  Philip Pape: The first one, I'm not saying calorie deficits don't work.
• 28:26
  Philip Pape: If you were listening carefully, you know that yes, you need a calorie deficit to lose fat, but the way most people do it is counterproductive because of the chronic restriction.
• 28:36
  Philip Pape: And there's a difference between a well-designed, time-limited fat loss phase from a metabolically healthy starting point and a perpetual 1200 calorie, I'll say grinding deficit misery that erodes your muscle, your metabolism, your hormones month after month.
• 28:51
  Philip Pape: I'm also not saying just eat more and magically lose weight.
• 28:54
  Philip Pape: Just eat more in general, right?
• 28:56
  Philip Pape: Eating at maintenance is a recovery strategy to restore your body's capacity.
• 29:02
  Philip Pape: So when you do diet, it actually works.
• 29:05
  Philip Pape: That's what we're talking about by eating more.
• 29:06
  Philip Pape: And part of the eating more is eating more protein, not just calories.
• 29:09
  Philip Pape: Right?
• 29:10
  Philip Pape: I'm also not saying hormones don't matter.
• 29:12
  Philip Pape: They absolutely do.
• 29:13
  Philip Pape: In fact, I mentioned that several times.
• 29:15
  Philip Pape: But the hormonal issues you're experiencing are probably amplified by chronic undereating, meaning it's bi-directional.
• 29:21
  Philip Pape: If your hormone panels, if you get lab work, don't look great, or you have symptoms from low hormones, it could simply be that these other things like chronic undereating are keeping those hormones low.
• 29:30
  Philip Pape: Not that the low hormones are causing the other issues, but it's all a cascade.
• 29:35
  Philip Pape: So if you can fix the energy availability and fix the protein and fix the training, a lot of those symptoms improve or go away.
• 29:41
  Philip Pape: And maybe not all of them.
• 29:42
  Philip Pape: Some women definitely benefit from HRT and other medical interventions, but the foundation has to be there.
• 29:47
  Philip Pape: And then the last thing I'm not saying is that it's easy or that the fear of eating more isn't real.
• 29:52
  Philip Pape: It's definitely real.
• 29:53
  Philip Pape: I hear it every day from clients and listeners.
• 29:57
  Philip Pape: Like, hey, I know I'm probably not eating enough, but I'm afraid of gaining weight.
• 30:00
  Philip Pape: I hear that language where they even know they need to eat more, but they're afraid of gaining weight.
• 30:05
  Philip Pape: And it comes from years of conditioning.
• 30:06
  Philip Pape: Let's just say it out loud.
• 30:08
  Philip Pape: Like, I've been conditioned that way from years and years, but the path forward is going to be through adequate fuel and muscle, not more restriction.
• 30:17
  Philip Pape: And the women who trust that and commit to it for six months are the ones who break that cycle.
• 30:22
  Philip Pape: All right, before we wrap up, I promised you the number one thing that predicts whether your next fat loss phase will work or just stall.
• 30:29
  Philip Pape: Again, it's quick, it's practical, it's coming up in just a second.
• 30:32
  Philip Pape: But if this is if this episode described you to a T, if you've been eating less and less with nothing to show for it, if you know you need to change your approach, but you're not sure how to do it without gaining weight, that is what Eat More Lift Heavy was built for specifically.
• 30:46
  Philip Pape: It is not an education program or a learning program.
• 30:50
  Philip Pape: It's actually an experience that walks you through each of these steps of the phases to teach you the skills so that you have the confidence to do this while also, of course, getting the result, changing your body composition, looking and feeling better than you ever have before.
• 31:04
  Philip Pape: The first phase is building your foundation, getting your tracking set up, establishing your baseline, making sure you're eating enough, doing this recovery phase we talked about today to support muscle and recovery before we make other changes.
• 31:17
  Philip Pape: You'll have human coaches, you'll have live calls, you'll have a training program assigned to you so you'll know what to train with exactly.
• 31:23
  Philip Pape: You won't be guessing or choosing on your own.
• 31:25
  Philip Pape: We're gonna help you.
• 31:27
  Philip Pape: And then you follow the 26-week program.
• 31:29
  Philip Pape: It gives you one thing to focus on each week instead of trying to overhaul everything at once.
• 31:34
  Philip Pape: So if you want to stop guessing, if you want to eat more and lift heavy to get the result, go to eatmore liftheavy.com.
• 31:41
  Philip Pape: Grab your spot before Monday, grab the founder's price right now.
• 31:44
  Philip Pape: You won't get charged until launch.
• 31:46
  Philip Pape: That's eatmore liftheavy.com.
• 31:48
  Philip Pape: All right, there's one number that predicts whether your next diet is going to work or you're gonna keep yo-yoing.
• 31:54
  Philip Pape: It is your expenditure trend over the last four to six weeks.
• 32:00
  Philip Pape: Your actual observed expenditure, how many calories you burn every day based on what you've been eating and what your weight has been doing.
• 32:08
  Philip Pape: Now, this is a classic thing that coaches for years, nutrition coaches for years, have helped their clients collect.
• 32:13
  Philip Pape: And as I mentioned before, if you use macrofactor, it does it for you.
• 32:16
  Philip Pape: Use my code wits and weights, all one word.
• 32:18
  Philip Pape: Okay.
• 32:18
  Philip Pape: And track your food and weight daily for four to six weeks.
• 32:21
  Philip Pape: And I say four to six because for some people, their metabolisms are more stable than for others.
• 32:26
  Philip Pape: For others, you're really you have a lot of volatility or a lot of recovery going on, so it'll take a little longer to stabilize.
• 32:32
  Philip Pape: Now, if you've looked at that trend and the excuse me, and that trend has been declining steadily week after week, and you've been dieting or maintaining, then your metabolism is adapting downward.
• 32:44
  Philip Pape: And you don't want to try to cut further or start another calorie deficit from that position, right?
• 32:49
  Philip Pape: It's like trying to squeeze water from a dry sponge, think of it that way.
• 32:52
  Philip Pape: If your expenditure has been stable or rising, then your body has a good enough capacity, it's pretty well recovered, and you're probably in a good place to handle a deficit.
• 33:00
  Philip Pape: And that's it.
• 33:01
  Philip Pape: That that's what I wanted to share today is you have to have real expenditure data.
• 33:05
  Philip Pape: And if it's going down, you probably still need to recover.
• 33:07
  Philip Pape: If it's stable or going up, you're probably good.
• 33:09
  Philip Pape: So before you start your next diet, do this.
• 33:12
  Philip Pape: Track your food and weight consistently for four to six weeks weeks it to current intake.
• 33:16
  Philip Pape: And we definitely help you do that and eat more lift heavy.
• 33:18
  Philip Pape: I've always taken that approach with clients.
• 33:20
  Philip Pape: A tool like Macrofactor will calculate your real expenditure from that data.
• 33:24
  Philip Pape: Don't change anything, just start tracking.
• 33:27
  Philip Pape: That's all I'm asking you to do.
• 33:28
  Philip Pape: Don't actually change the targets, just set it to maintain and start tracking until that number is stable and not decreasing.
• 33:34
  Philip Pape: If it's going up a little, that's fine, but as long as it's not decreasing.
• 33:37
  Philip Pape: If it's falling, you have to restore your metabolism first.
• 33:41
  Philip Pape: Get up to your true maintenance.
• 33:42
  Philip Pape: Build muscle.
• 33:43
  Philip Pape: Make sure you're training.
• 33:44
  Philip Pape: Let that number climb back up before you try to cut.
• 33:46
  Philip Pape: All right, that is it.
• 33:48
  Philip Pape: Until next time, keep using your wits, lifting those weights.
• 33:50
  Philip Pape: And remember, the path to losing fat after 40 starts with eating enough to build the body that burns that fat.
• 33:57
  Philip Pape: I'm Philip Pape, and I'll talk to you next time here on the Wits and Weights podcast.