Latest / Wits & Weights | Strength & Fat Loss Over 40 / 3 Proven Strategies to Master Body Recomposition (Lose Fat and Gain Muscle) | Ep 262

Transcript

3 Proven Strategies to Master Body Recomposition (Lose Fat and Gain Muscle) | Ep 262 · Wits & Weights | Strength & Fat Loss Over 40

• 0:01
  Philip Pape: As I continue enjoying time with family this Christmas week, here is the second of our most downloaded episodes from 2024.
• 0:08
  Philip Pape: This one tackles a topic that's often misunderstood but could completely transform how you think of body composition, body re-composition or body re-comp.
• 0:19
  Philip Pape: Simultaneously building muscle while losing fat sounds almost too good to be true, and a lot of people do spin their wheels trying to get this done, but this episode resonated pretty hard with our community because it breaks down exactly how it's possible.
• 0:33
  Philip Pape: The strategies we cover here aren't just theory.
• 0:36
  Philip Pape: They are backed by science.
• 0:37
  Philip Pape: They are proven through countless client transformations, and as we revisit this episode, you'll discover why body recomp isn't just for beginners and how you can apply these principles regardless of your starting point.
• 0:49
  Philip Pape: So if you're tired of the constant cycle of bulking and cutting, this approach might be what you've been looking for.
• 0:55
  Philip Pape: I'm going to break down the science behind body recomposition, aka body recomp, which is building muscle and losing fat at the same time, discuss the different ways it can play out based on your starting point, and provide concrete strategies for optimizing everything required to get there your nutrition, your training, your health so that you can maximize your results for Body Recomp.
• 1:19
  Philip Pape: And by the end of this episode, you'll have a clear blueprint to put Body Recomposition into action.
• 1:25
  Philip Pape: Now, before we get into it, I did want to share some wins from the first few weeks of Wits and Weights Physique University that we just launched earlier this month, and I want you to spot the pattern here as I share some of these.
• 1:38
  Philip Pape: So here we go.
• 1:39
  Philip Pape: Quote I consistently logged my food every day this week.
• 1:42
  Philip Pape: I got all my workouts in.
• 1:44
  Philip Pape: I started journaling again first thing in the morning.
• 1:47
  Philip Pape: Every day.
• 1:48
  Philip Pape: I'm seeing good progress in my fat loss phase.
• 1:50
  Philip Pape: I learned cardio is not a bad thing and can be integrated into my strength training as long as it doesn't affect my lifts.
• 1:57
  Philip Pape: I settled in with my mindset to be in sync with my goals.
• 2:00
  Philip Pape: I worked on my sleep.
• 2:02
  Philip Pape: I'm starting to track more consistently, even the small bites.
• 2:06
  Philip Pape: I am most proud of the positive self-talk, knowing this is a lifelong journey, not a race.
• 2:11
  Philip Pape: I am most proud of how I was able to put into practice what I've learned about flexible dieting while traveling.
• 2:17
  Philip Pape: For the past two weekends I was able to enjoy food without feeling restricted".
• 2:23
  Philip Pape: Now that is just a sampling of wins from the Wits and Weights Physique University community over the first few weeks, and I ask you now to tell me, could you spot, or can you spot, what they all have in common?
• 2:35
  Philip Pape: Now, I know you can't actually answer me here, but, rhetorically, the common theme with all of these comments is they are all simple, practical wins, focused on consistency, on daily habits, on enjoying the process, and the process ultimately produces the progress right.
• 2:54
  Philip Pape: They are not about quick fixes.
• 2:56
  Philip Pape: They're not about losing 20 pounds in one week, saying no to particular foods or activities or punishing yourself to get a result.
• 3:03
  Philip Pape: They are simply positive affirmations from people who are expanding their comfort zone.
• 3:09
  Philip Pape: They're doing it in the right way.
• 3:10
  Philip Pape: They are starting to shift both their bodies and their minds, their perspectives, in the pursuit of better health, which, just so happens, will also get them a better physique and more confidence along the way.
• 3:22
  Philip Pape: Now all of these students in WWPU are then able to ask questions, get support, join live calls, watch courses to level up their knowledge and share their success with other curious, like-minded and very ambitious individuals who are seeking to become their best selves, even in their 30s, their 40s, their 50s and beyond.
• 3:42
  Philip Pape: And we are just scratching the surface of what students will be achieving in Wits and Weights Physique University.
• 3:49
  Philip Pape: So if you're curious what it's all about, just head over to witsandweightscom slash physique or click the link in my show notes.
• 3:56
  Philip Pape: That's witsandweightscom slash physique.
• 3:59
  Philip Pape: All right, one more thing related to today's topic on body recomp.
• 4:03
  Philip Pape: So my friend and fellow podcaster, jeff Hain you may already know him, he's the host of the Mind Muscle Connection.
• 4:09
  Philip Pape: Definitely follow his show if you don't already.
• 4:12
  Philip Pape: It's been in my feed for quite a long time.
• 4:13
  Philip Pape: That's Jeff Hain, h-o-e-h-n, and he and I recorded a co-hosted Q&A coming out on May 3rd for episode 169.
• 4:23
  Philip Pape: And Jeff is all about body recomp.
• 4:25
  Philip Pape: He has a free workshop, like that's his thing these days.
• 4:28
  Philip Pape: So I wanted to give him a shout out, given that that is the topic of today's episode on wits and weights, and he was on our show as a guest way back on episode 66.
• 4:37
  Philip Pape: And on that show we talked about sustaining your fat loss results at maintenance, which is somewhat related not entirely right, because that's after going through a fat loss phase, but I wanted to mention that and I'm going to include a link to that episode in the show notes, as well as some other episodes that I referenced today.
• 4:55
  Philip Pape: But I bring this up because if you want to be 100% sure that you don't miss our upcoming Q&A where we answer questions menopause, weight loss, resistance, bulking without getting fat, whether you should be dieting during periods of low sleep, and more.
• 5:10
  Philip Pape: There's six questions in total from our two communities together.
• 5:14
  Philip Pape: I want you to pause right now and click the follow button in your podcast app.
• 5:19
  Philip Pape: All right, you're going to get notified of the episode when it comes out and, as a side benefit, the more people that follow the show you know who actually click that button the more people who can find the show.
• 5:29
  Philip Pape: Because Apple and Spotify they tend to prioritize followers.
• 5:34
  Philip Pape: Right, they used to be called subscribers, now they're called followers.
• 5:36
  Philip Pape: Just make it confusing and they prioritize those over just individual episode downloads.
• 5:42
  Philip Pape: And also, as much as I love ratings and reviews and I really would love you to take time to go add a review in Apple right now, feel free to pause and go.
• 5:51
  Philip Pape: Do that.
• 5:52
  Philip Pape: As much as I love that and it's great for social proof, the best thing for the algorithm is to follow the show.
• 5:57
  Philip Pape: So again, pause the episode right now, go to the show page in your app and tap the follow button to support the show and get notified of future episodes.
• 6:05
  Philip Pape: All right, so let's get into today's topic the body recomposition blueprint.
• 6:10
  Philip Pape: Recomp to build muscle and lose fat at the same time.
• 6:14
  Philip Pape: Body recomposition right, what the cool kids call body recomp.
• 6:18
  Philip Pape: No, actually, body recomp is a pretty common casual term for this, and body recomposition tends to be the slightly more formal term, but it's the same thing, and today I want to lay out this blueprint for how to do it, how to successfully build muscle and lose fat at the same time, which is an approach that really can completely transform your physique.
• 6:39
  Philip Pape: In fact, it is the underpinning of everything we do, even when we talk about cuts and bulks, and I'll explain why.
• 6:45
  Philip Pape: When we get there, it's often misunderstood, because, you might have heard, it's impossible to gain muscle and lose fat simultaneously, or it's very hard to do it, or it can only be done by brand new lifters or people who are very obese right, and I might have mentioned things like that myself.
• 7:04
  Philip Pape: Honestly, I might have said things like, eh, really, it's only good for newer lifters.
• 7:11
  Philip Pape: But we have to think about context and we have to define body recomp and what we mean, and I think there's a broader term, a broader definition I'm going to use in today's episode that will give you some clarity and some options as well and some flexibility, which we love here.
• 7:21
  Philip Pape: And people will say, well, don't you have to focus on one goal at a time, either bulking up or cutting fat?
• 7:27
  Philip Pape: Well, it turns out that that's not necessarily the case, or it doesn't have to be as extreme as you think in either direction, and that's what we're going to talk about today.
• 7:37
  Philip Pape: So, with the right strategies, with the right mindset, with the right knowledge and options, you can definitely achieve body recomp and sculpt that leaner, more muscular physique using a slightly different approach than just going all out on cuts and bulks.
• 7:49
  Philip Pape: So, as always, definitions are important.
• 7:53
  Philip Pape: So let's define exactly what we mean by body recomposition.
• 7:58
  Philip Pape: Body recomposition I want to be clear.
• 8:01
  Philip Pape: So body composition just refers to the amount of fat and muscle you have.
• 8:05
  Philip Pape: Body recomposition refers to simultaneously decreasing your body fat percentage while increasing your lean muscle mass, thus improving your overall look, your overall leanness and your overall body composition.
• 8:20
  Philip Pape: Right, it's recomposition.
• 8:23
  Philip Pape: So you're not just focusing on one aspect like scale, weight or just on body fat.
• 8:27
  Philip Pape: It's really the whole thing, doing it at the same time.
• 8:29
  Philip Pape: But the same time is kind of a flexible term we're going to get to in a bit.
• 8:34
  Philip Pape: Now there's plenty of evidence that supports the viability of body recomp, even in trained individuals, not just newbies.
• 8:41
  Philip Pape: So trained individuals, um.
• 8:42
  Philip Pape: One that I like is a 2020 article by Chris Barakat et al.
• 8:47
  Philip Pape: Chris Barakat and you probably know Chris.
• 8:49
  Philip Pape: He's been on a ton of podcasts.
• 8:50
  Philip Pape: I really need to reach out and get him on this show.
• 8:52
  Philip Pape: If you're a listening man or if anybody else is listening, who, hey?
• 8:55
  Philip Pape: My friend Jeff Hayden, or anybody else my podcasters who know Chris and want to hook us up, feel free to give me an introduction, but either way, I'm going to reach out.
• 9:02
  Philip Pape: But he and his colleagues had an article titled Body Recomposition Can Trained Individuals Build Muscle and Lose Fat at the Same Time?
• 9:10
  Philip Pape: So pretty straightforward, and it concluded that quote.
• 9:14
  Philip Pape: Despite the common belief that building muscle and losing fat at the same time is only plausible in novice slash obese individuals, the literature provided supports that trained individuals can also experience body recomposition.
• 9:25
  Philip Pape: Individuals' training status, the exercise interventions and their baseline body composition can influence the magnitude of muscle gain and fat loss.
• 9:34
  Philip Pape: Resistance training coupled with dietary strategies has been shown to augment this phenomenon".
• 9:41
  Philip Pape: We also see this play out anecdotally all the time when I'm working with coaching clients, because I can't tell you how many clients I've worked with who stayed the same weight on the scale, and sometimes they maybe didn't want to stay the same weight early on at least, they wanted that quick win of fat loss.
• 9:58
  Philip Pape: But they ended up staying the same way.
• 10:00
  Philip Pape: It might have even looked like a little bit of a plateau, or they even gained a tiny bit of weight, but then their physique completely transformed.
• 10:06
  Philip Pape: Their waist size went down, their clothes fit better, they look better in the mirror, they felt stronger and they were standing taller and all of those things, because they gained muscle and dropped body fat simultaneously.
• 10:16
  Philip Pape: And so the scale just doesn't tell the full story when it comes to recomposition, and it also doesn't have to necessarily stay at maintenance like stay the exact same for you to achieve body recomp.
• 10:30
  Philip Pape: It can happen in different phases, which we'll get to.
• 10:33
  Philip Pape: So why is recomposition physiologically possible?
• 10:38
  Philip Pape: And I like to dig a little bit into the underlying mechanisms, underlying processes.
• 10:44
  Philip Pape: And when we do that it starts to make a little bit of sense.
• 10:46
  Philip Pape: Because to lose stored body fat, you normally need a calorie deficit, right?
• 10:54
  Philip Pape: You normally need to be dieting, eating less than you burn.
• 10:57
  Philip Pape: You expend more energy than you consume, right, but okay, that's for fat loss, that's, to lose stored body fat.
• 11:04
  Philip Pape: But to build muscle mass you don't necessarily need a net calorie surplus.
• 11:10
  Philip Pape: What you need is sufficient protein and a muscle building training stimulus.
• 11:17
  Philip Pape: Now, protein synthesis, muscle protein synthesis and fat lipolysis are separate metabolic processes.
• 11:22
  Philip Pape: They involve different tissues and as long as you achieve a net deficit to tap into fat stores while providing enough protein and training to build muscle, recomposition can occur, and this is why it can be confusing.
• 11:36
  Philip Pape: So the way I like to put it is imagine you're eating just enough food to maintain your weight and, at the same time, your training is very effective and you have plenty of protein.
• 11:48
  Philip Pape: And so your body, at this state where you're kind of like just maintaining your weight, you're training hard, you're having that protein, your body feels relaxed or safe enough, like it doesn't feel like it's threatened or in a deficit right, so it's safe enough to draw from the protein you're consuming and to build a little extra muscle.
• 12:09
  Philip Pape: But what it does then?
• 12:10
  Philip Pape: When it prioritizes that because you're telling it it's important with this training stimulus, it all of a sudden doesn't have that much energy left over for everything else.
• 12:18
  Philip Pape: Your body needs to stay at homeostasis.
• 12:21
  Philip Pape: So then your body says, oh, I need to release a bit of energy from fat cells to make up the difference.
• 12:26
  Philip Pape: And voila, you've added a bit of tissue over here, you've lost a little bit of fat over there and you've maintained your weight, but it's as if you're in a slight surplus.
• 12:36
  Philip Pape: It's as if you're in a slight surplus from the muscle building side of the process.
• 12:41
  Philip Pape: I mean, it's pretty cool.
• 12:42
  Philip Pape: It's like your body kind of thinks it has enough resources to build muscle and you're telling it it's important, so it's going to do that.
• 12:49
  Philip Pape: But then it realized it sacrificed some of the energy coming in over here, so it needs to release some fat.
• 12:54
  Philip Pape: Now there's one other phenomenon.
• 12:56
  Philip Pape: I didn't have it in my notes, but it came to mind.
• 12:57
  Philip Pape: When somebody has excessive weight to lose and you go into a fat loss phase, you can still build muscle then as well, like in a decently aggressive fat loss phase, because you have so much fat, so much extra fat stored, that the body's able to pull from that without even feeling like you're in a deficit, and thus also build muscle with that.
• 13:21
  Philip Pape: What appears to be a surplus, it's almost like a trick surplus because you have all that extra stored fat.
• 13:25
  Philip Pape: Anyway, those are some interesting mechanisms going on that tell us why it is possible to do this.
• 13:30
  Philip Pape: So what I want to do is talk about how recomp can play out for you based on your starting point, and I want to break it into three categories losing weight, maintenance and gaining weight because body recomp can occur in all three.
• 13:45
  Philip Pape: It can also occur over the long term, which is not in the scope of today's show, but I am going to mention it when we talk about gaining weight.
• 13:52
  Philip Pape: But losing weight, maintenance and gaining weight are three scenarios where body recomp can occur.
• 13:59
  Philip Pape: So right there, I'm hopefully shattering a belief or myth that you might have that recomp is equivalent to maintenance, because it's not equivalent.
• 14:07
  Philip Pape: You can definitely recomp at maintenance, and it's the most common way people do it or try to do it, but you could also recomp losing or gaining.
• 14:14
  Philip Pape: So we're just going to start with losing weight, then we're going to talk about maintenance and we're going to talk about gaining weight.
• 14:19
  Philip Pape: So the first category is what people think of as like the dream scenario of recomp, which is you can lose more body fat than you gain muscle, but you're still doing both.
• 14:32
  Philip Pape: In other words, your weight is actually going down and your measurements are going down as well, and you look leaner or more muscular, rather than skinny fat, because you're building muscle.
• 14:41
  Philip Pape: So you're losing fat, building muscle.
• 14:43
  Philip Pape: At the same time, you're actually losing more fat in terms of mass weight than you are gaining muscle, which means you also lose weight on the scale.
• 14:52
  Philip Pape: A lot of people really want this scenario, because you kind of get wins on all sides, right, you get lighter on the scale, you get leaner looking, you get more muscle.
• 15:02
  Philip Pape: It's all the best of everything.
• 15:04
  Philip Pape: Now, this tends to be common in individuals who are pretty new to proper training and nutrition, because they have a lot of room for a quick improvement on both fronts.
• 15:11
  Philip Pape: Right, they have a lot of room for the training side, because they've never given their body this amazing signal from their strength training.
• 15:18
  Philip Pape: At the same time, they are properly dieting, at the right rate of loss to induce a little bit of fat loss, but not so much that it threatens their body's resources to kind of clamp down and avoid building more muscle.
• 15:30
  Philip Pape: You know, let alone um, let alone lose muscle, right, that that would have to be more aggressive dieting.
• 15:36
  Philip Pape: So we're going to talk.
• 15:37
  Philip Pape: We're going to talk about the rates of loss in a later segment today, when we get into nutrition.
• 15:42
  Philip Pape: But that is the first scenario.
• 15:43
  Philip Pape: Is your net loss in weight while you're building a little muscle and losing fat?
• 15:48
  Philip Pape: Cool.
• 15:48
  Philip Pape: The second scenario is maintenance.
• 15:51
  Philip Pape: Okay, this is gaining muscle, losing some body fat, not much change in scale weight, all right, so this would be like okay.
• 16:00
  Philip Pape: So this is an interesting one because you might maintain your weight.
• 16:03
  Philip Pape: Or this could also refer to over the longterm you've gained and lost weight and you've come back to the same scale weight as you started.
• 16:10
  Philip Pape: But now, but in the process, you've added muscle and lost fat.
• 16:13
  Philip Pape: We're not really talking about that one, because that's kind of cheating when I say body recomp, because then everybody is doing body recomp over time.
• 16:19
  Philip Pape: If you're doing this the right way, right, if you're at some point building muscle and at some point losing fat and then it all kind of nets out, all right, that's not what I'm talking about.
• 16:26
  Philip Pape: I'm talking about just staying at maintenance, more or less maintaining your body weight within, say, plus or minus three pounds.
• 16:32
  Philip Pape: But you're slowly but surely adding a little muscle, losing a little fat.
• 16:36
  Philip Pape: The weight on the scale doesn't change, your waist size continues to go down, you keep getting stronger, and it's all happening without any change on the scale.
• 16:43
  Philip Pape: So again, for brand new lifters, this is totally possible.
• 16:46
  Philip Pape: In fact it's a very common and recommended approach that I use with clients.
• 16:50
  Philip Pape: It's just stay at maintenance for a while at the beginning, and you could even stay there for longer than a while if you find it's getting you great results, because now you're not even worried about having to gain or lose weight, which adds an extra stressor and an extra level of planning and tracking.
• 17:04
  Philip Pape: So the only other scenario where I would say that this happens is once you've gone through some cuts and bulks and you've improved your body comp in the past and you just want to maintain your physique, you know staying at maintenance, train really hard and not accidentally dieting.
• 17:19
  Philip Pape: For the most part you can still slowly recomp over time on top of it.
• 17:23
  Philip Pape: So even advanced or trained individuals might consider this approach to body recomp.
• 17:29
  Philip Pape: The third category is very, very, very slowly gaining weight, so modestly gaining, being in a surplus and gaining a little bit more muscle than you would at maintenance.
• 17:40
  Philip Pape: Right, because at some point, especially the more advanced you are as a trainee, it's very hard to build extra muscle tissue without getting yourself in a little bit of a surplus.
• 17:48
  Philip Pape: So this is most common in very well-trained individuals who want to keep getting leaner but they don't want to necessarily go through the bulk and cut cycles.
• 17:58
  Philip Pape: And you know, this is where you might be cocking your eyebrows and thinking well, that's not really body recomp, is it if you're gaining weight?
• 18:04
  Philip Pape: But again, technically it's not short-term body recomp that would happen in maintenance but it's potentially medium-term or kind of an efficient version of body recomp because you're spending some time slowly gaining muscle and then maybe a little bit of time doing a micro cut or a very slow conservative fat loss phase, like you could pick one or the other, and it doesn't feel too extreme in either direction.
• 18:26
  Philip Pape: So I would say that this is a bit different from the kind of more optimal or even aggressive muscle building phase that's then followed by a moderate to aggressive cut, which I like to live in that state because I feel it's the most time efficient to get from A to B in terms of body fat percentage and leanness and muscle and strength and everything.
• 18:46
  Philip Pape: It's the most efficient and I enjoy kind of eating a bunch of food for a long time of the year and then not taking too long to cut that off.
• 18:53
  Philip Pape: But some people might rather enjoy eating a moderate amount of food all throughout the year, and when you're losing fat, you're still eating a moderate amount of food because it's not much different.
• 19:02
  Philip Pape: So one might appeal to you and there's no wrong answer, there's no right or wrong answer.
• 19:07
  Philip Pape: They're going to result in slightly different timing, aggressiveness and results.
• 19:12
  Philip Pape: The result's going to be the same in the long term, but you might see different results in the short term.
• 19:17
  Philip Pape: All right.
• 19:17
  Philip Pape: So if you do things more slowly but still biased toward one direction, like the gain weight and the loose weight part, this will produce body recomp over time without the larger swings that come from these very focused bulk and cut cycles, and that might be an attractive reason to do it for a lot of you.
• 19:40
  Philip Pape: So first you want to figure out which category you want to go after, because you might have started listening to this episode thinking, okay, he's going to talk to me about maintenance.
• 19:44
  Philip Pape: How do I do that?
• 19:45
  Philip Pape: Oh, now I realize that there are options.
• 19:47
  Philip Pape: I might want to go in one direction or another.
• 19:48
  Philip Pape: If you're a newer trainee, you might want to try a little bit of fat loss while you're recomping.
• 19:53
  Philip Pape: Or if you're more advanced, you might want to try a little bit of the gain side.
• 19:58
  Philip Pape: Then we're going to segue into my favorite topic, which is using nutrition to optimize your body composition.
• 20:03
  Philip Pape: In that context, whatever you choose, it's going to depend on the three categories which category you choose.
• 20:09
  Philip Pape: So first we need to nail down calories.
• 20:12
  Philip Pape: Calories are your energy balance.
• 20:14
  Philip Pape: That tells you which direction you're going to go, and they're going to be pegged to your expenditure, your daily expenditure, also called your maintenance calories, and I've talked about this before.
• 20:25
  Philip Pape: But just to reiterate, especially if you knew or not familiar with this topic, the best way to determine your maintenance calories is not an online calculator and it is not your wearable device.
• 20:35
  Philip Pape: It is tracking your food over about two to three weeks, tracking your weight over two to three weeks and seeing how one affects the other.
• 20:42
  Philip Pape: If you eat 2,500 calories every single day and your weight doesn't change one ounce over the two weeks, then you know your expenditure is 2,500 calories.
• 20:51
  Philip Pape: Now the problem with this approach is it requires not only the tracking, which tracking is fine.
• 20:56
  Philip Pape: I'm perfectly cool with tracking.
• 20:58
  Philip Pape: I think tracking is a wonderful thing.
• 20:59
  Philip Pape: It's the more tedious, laborious calculations based on what you've tracked that can be tricky for some people, or downright overwhelming, scary or tedious.
• 21:09
  Philip Pape: So this is where a tool or an app that can do this for you is going to be your best friend from a practical standpoint.
• 21:16
  Philip Pape: The one that I use is called Macrofactor.
• 21:18
  Philip Pape: My clients use it, my students in Wits and Weights Physique University use it, and it can calculate your expenditure, your true metabolism, based on what you're eating and your weight, and then it can make adjustments weekly to your calories and to your macros based on your goal.
• 21:35
  Philip Pape: So it does everything for you, okay, and if you want a, if you want to, okay.
• 21:40
  Philip Pape: So here's what I'm going to throw in as a goodie for this episode.
• 21:43
  Philip Pape: I made a video in Wits and Weights Physique University under a course called Macrofactor Mastery, and it's how to download and do the initial setup and then set up your goal for maintenance or for recomp in Macrofactor.
• 21:56
  Philip Pape: It walks you through the whole process with screenshots and everything um on how to set up everything.
• 22:01
  Philip Pape: So I actually put that on YouTube.
• 22:03
  Philip Pape: It's unlisted, you can't get to it publicly, but I'm going to put the link in the show notes for free for you as a podcast listener, to go check it out.
• 22:11
  Philip Pape: Okay, totally free.
• 22:12
  Philip Pape: You don't have to opt in, you don't have to give me an email or anything.
• 22:13
  Philip Pape: It's a YouTube link.
• 22:14
  Philip Pape: It'll just take you right to the video.
• 22:16
  Philip Pape: Check that out in the show notes under episode resources, and I talk about it.
• 22:20
  Philip Pape: So why am I telling you all this?
• 22:22
  Philip Pape: Because to figure out what calories you need, you need to know your maintenance calories.
• 22:29
  Philip Pape: The only way to do that is to know your true metabolism, how your body responds to your activities and your food, and the best way to do that is track your weight and food over time.
• 22:38
  Philip Pape: All right, then you can adjust your goal to either gain, lose or maintain, and then, if you're gaining or losing, you want to pick a conservative rate.
• 22:46
  Philip Pape: If we're going for body recomp, right, we're not going for cuts and bulks all out.
• 22:50
  Philip Pape: We're going for recomp and then you'll have your surplus or your deficit relative to your maintenance calories, and then you can update that each week as your metabolism adapts.
• 22:59
  Philip Pape: Okay, so now I'm going to give you some actual numbers that make sense for most people that you can use.
• 23:04
  Philip Pape: So, obviously, if you're going to maintain, just eat around your maintenance and you're good.
• 23:08
  Philip Pape: So if you burn 2,500 calories, eat 2,500 calories a day, more or less, and you're good, you know if, if the next week your metabolism has gone up a bit because you know you've got all these resources, your body feels relaxed, you don't have as much stress, or maybe you've got extra few thousand steps a day of walking.
• 23:24
  Philip Pape: Whatever causes that increase, you're going to eat 2600 calories, let's say.
• 23:28
  Philip Pape: Either way, you're going to eat in a way that maintains your weight and I would prefer aiming a tiny bit above that, like up to 50 calories over on a daily basis, so you're going to hit your protein.
• 23:39
  Philip Pape: Then you're going to get in fats and carbs and so your calories come up to your maintenance and you're going to kind of overshoot that just a tiny bit every day.
• 23:46
  Philip Pape: And I like that approach because it avoids accidentally dieting and accidentally being under fueled.
• 23:54
  Philip Pape: Because my opinion is, if you're going to maintain your weight, you might as well do it in the most fueled, fed, resource abundant state, rather than slightly underfed constantly, where you get symptoms of dieting like hunger, and there's no reason for that.
• 24:10
  Philip Pape: I mean, the only reason you think there's a reason is you're afraid of gaining all this weight.
• 24:14
  Philip Pape: But if you're properly tracking, if you're using an app like Macrofactor, you're going to be very precise.
• 24:19
  Philip Pape: You'll know where you need to be and if your weight does start to drift one way or the other, you can always adjust the other way, and it's a slow process, all right.
• 24:27
  Philip Pape: So, yeah, you risk the tiniest, tiniest bit of weight gain doing this, but it's well worth the the being in that fed, energized state all the time, and that's at maintenance.
• 24:36
  Philip Pape: Okay.
• 24:37
  Philip Pape: Now, if you want to lose weight, I would aim for the low end of the evidence-based range to avoid muscle loss but to still make progress, and that is 0.25% of your body weight per week.
• 24:49
  Philip Pape: All right, so a quarter percent of your body weight per week.
• 24:52
  Philip Pape: So let's say you weigh 200 pounds, that's half a pound a week.
• 24:55
  Philip Pape: And if you do the math based on 3,500 calories a pound, that's a 250 calorie deficit, which is enough to move the needle, but it's not anywhere close to the regime of potentially losing muscle or getting into those real dieting biofeedback states of lots of hunger and potentially higher stress and lower sleep and so on.
• 25:17
  Philip Pape: Right, it's only 250 calorie deficit.
• 25:19
  Philip Pape: It's really not that much, all right.
• 25:21
  Philip Pape: And remember, we're trying to possibly add more muscle tissue even while losing weight.
• 25:27
  Philip Pape: So we can't keep it that.
• 25:28
  Philip Pape: We can't go that aggressive, but we don't want to go so slowly that we're really just at maintenance anyway, right.
• 25:33
  Philip Pape: So that's where I think the 0.25% body weight a week is reasonable.
• 25:37
  Philip Pape: And then, if you want to gain, I would also aim for.
• 25:40
  Philip Pape: The low end of what we have found is the evidence-based range of actually gaining muscle and not just being at maintenance, and that's pretty conservative.
• 25:49
  Philip Pape: It's 0.1% of your body weight per week.
• 25:52
  Philip Pape: So let's say you weigh 150 pounds, that's only 0.15 pounds per week.
• 25:57
  Philip Pape: That's like a 55-calorie surplus and that's barely above maintenance.
• 26:01
  Philip Pape: As I said earlier, even at maintenance I aim for up to about 50 calories over.
• 26:05
  Philip Pape: So when you're trying to deliberately build weight over time, you know 55 calories for 150 pound person, which for a 200 pound person, is going to be, like, you know, 75 calories, not that big of a difference.
• 26:18
  Philip Pape: It's enough to kind of push the needle and make sure that you're building that muscle, but then it's not so much that you can't also potentially lose fat at the same time.
• 26:26
  Philip Pape: Okay, Now, once you've got your calories set, you can then peg your macros accordingly and you're going to aim for 0.7 to one gram of protein per pound of your target body weight.
• 26:39
  Philip Pape: Now, your target body weight may not be that far from your current body weight.
• 26:42
  Philip Pape: So to simplify, you could just go with your current body weight and I would be closer to the one gram per pound, since we're going for recomp.
• 26:47
  Philip Pape: So to simplify all of what I just said protein around one gram a pound for what you weigh right now.
• 26:53
  Philip Pape: So if you weigh 180 pounds, aim for 180 grams of protein, right, because it is body recomp.
• 26:59
  Philip Pape: I want you to bias the protein a little higher than if we were just in one of the more extreme phases.
• 27:05
  Philip Pape: For fat, I would get in somewhere around 20 to 30% of your calories for general health, for hormone production, all of that, and then the rest goes toward carbs.
• 27:15
  Philip Pape: Now there's a lot of flexibility in fats and carbs.
• 27:17
  Philip Pape: I've mentioned this in the past on this show but carbs are really important, especially if you're a maintenance, you know, in either of these phases, because in all three of these potential phases you're not that far from maintenance.
• 27:27
  Philip Pape: So you should have a reasonable amount of calories to work with.
• 27:29
  Philip Pape: And carbs are always your friend when it comes to training performance, you know, fueling your workouts, partitioning nutrients toward muscle building instead of fat storage, and recovering from your workouts as well.
• 27:42
  Philip Pape: They just help you feel great, they give you energy and for many of us, practically, we love to eat food that contains carbs as well Fruits, starches, grains.
• 27:50
  Philip Pape: You know all of that.
• 27:51
  Philip Pape: So there you go.
• 27:52
  Philip Pape: That's the basic nutrition for those three categories of Recomp.
• 27:57
  Philip Pape: Now, peri-workout nutrition by peri we mean around your workout, so before, during, after, kind of within a couple hour window of that workout.
• 28:10
  Philip Pape: Peri-workout nutrition is super important.
• 28:11
  Philip Pape: But before we go there, I want to take a tangent on training, on your workouts, for a second, because this is the only time I'm going to discuss that today.
• 28:17
  Philip Pape: I'm always assuming that, if you're listening to this show, strength training is important and you understand the value of it.
• 28:23
  Philip Pape: But I do have to reiterate that all of the other stuff we talk about today is kind of irrelevant if you are not training right.
• 28:30
  Philip Pape: Most of today's discussion is about nutrition and lifestyle, but it assumes your strength training and doing it effectively to give your body plenty of stimulus for muscle growth.
• 28:40
  Philip Pape: That is just default.
• 28:42
  Philip Pape: That's assumed because for body recomp we're trying to build muscle and lose fat at the same time.
• 28:46
  Philip Pape: So the premise is you're doing something to build muscle right.
• 28:49
  Philip Pape: The doing both at the same time part is what's tricky, and that's why I'm covering most of these other topics today.
• 28:55
  Philip Pape: But if you want good timing good timing on this episode because if you want all the details behind effective training principles, I did recently cover them all in episode 162, which is titled bodybuilding for everyday lifters who want to build their dream physique, and I'm going to link that one in the show notes as well.
• 29:14
  Philip Pape: So if you want to get into details on all these principles, check that episode out.
• 29:19
  Philip Pape: It's actually one of my favorites personally that I made for the show, and it's a recent one as well, so I think you'll like that.
• 29:27
  Philip Pape: But in summary, what do we mean by effective training or training hard?
• 29:29
  Philip Pape: I think it means three things, okay, and I usually state these things in a similar kind of approach.
• 29:34
  Philip Pape: Whenever I talk about this.
• 29:35
  Philip Pape: It's generally these same things.
• 29:37
  Philip Pape: And we're talking principles here, not programming and all of that.
• 29:40
  Philip Pape: Number one and we're talking principles here, not programming and all of that.
• 29:42
  Philip Pape: Number one it means training close to failure, most of the time, within one, two, three reps of failure, depending on the movement.
• 29:48
  Philip Pape: That's the first one.
• 29:49
  Philip Pape: Number two it means progressing in load reps, sets, some combination of these things over time, what we call progressive overload.
• 29:57
  Philip Pape: And number three, it's training with sufficient intensity and execution, using movements that build strength and muscle right and this is really important the intensity and the execution, because if you're not doing it right, the other things aren't going to matter.
• 30:11
  Philip Pape: And beyond your initial training phase of, like your first few weeks, or maybe even first few months if you're on the weaker end, this is going to include free weights like barbells, like dumbbells, combined with machines and cable machines, things like that, as needed, you know, stuff that you would find in a gym.
• 30:28
  Philip Pape: So not only does proper training build muscle mass, of course, which is one very important half of the body recomp equation, it also has three other benefits for body recomp that I want to reiterate today.
• 30:41
  Philip Pape: All right, benefit number one muscle tissue is metabolically very active.
• 30:47
  Philip Pape: It's way more active than fat tissue, meaning it burns a ton of calories even at rest.
• 30:52
  Philip Pape: And this increased muscle mass thus boosts your basal metabolic rate, your metabolism, and so you burn more calories throughout the day, and that can aid in fat loss while you're maintaining or increasing muscle mass.
• 31:04
  Philip Pape: So it's not a huge impact I've talked about this before maybe six to nine calories per pound of muscle mass that you add to your body, but even like an extra 50 calories a day.
• 31:14
  Philip Pape: We're talking recomp can make all the difference.
• 31:17
  Philip Pape: Number two the second benefit of muscle mass and building muscle mass when you're engaging in training.
• 31:23
  Philip Pape: The strength training itself has a massive positive impact on your hormonal response because your hormones start to shift to facilitate the muscle growth and the fat metabolism.
• 31:33
  Philip Pape: All of it.
• 31:33
  Philip Pape: It increases testosterone, it increases growth hormone, and both of those are vital for muscle synthesis and for the breakdown of fat cells.
• 31:44
  Philip Pape: So you get this two for one.
• 31:46
  Philip Pape: Hormonal milieu is the French word they like to use of perfect storm toward building muscle and losing fat.
• 31:54
  Philip Pape: That gets accelerated just through the act of strength training.
• 31:58
  Philip Pape: And then benefit number three muscle mass is denser, so you can look lean and tone at a higher body weight, which tends to mean means you could even burn more calories and thus fat, without needing to lose as much weight.
• 32:11
  Philip Pape: So you can.
• 32:11
  Philip Pape: That's like another way to recomp, kind of in a in a backdoor approach, right, so you could just not have to lose as much weight, and so you can recomp in that way.
• 32:21
  Philip Pape: Now we've established, I think, why every single person listening to the show should be resistance training if your goal is to improve your body composition and get a fantastic physique period Bar none.
• 32:32
  Philip Pape: If you listen and you're a runner and you don't strength train at all and you reach out to me and say I need some help with my nutrition, I'm going to say what's your training look like?
• 32:39
  Philip Pape: And if you tell me here's when I run, I'm going to say, well, where's the strength training?
• 32:43
  Philip Pape: And you say I don't want to say, all right, come back to me, because you've got to be strength training If you care about your physique and your body composition, which all of this contributes as well to your health.
• 32:55
  Philip Pape: This is why I love this so much and I'm passionate about muscle mass and strength training, because it helps everything, it makes everything easier, even, yes, you're running.
• 33:02
  Philip Pape: So let's continue and talk briefly about workout nutrition after I went on that long tangent.
• 33:09
  Philip Pape: My recommendation here is that you simply want to bookend your training A little before, a little bit after.
• 33:16
  Philip Pape: You've got flexibility in the amount of time.
• 33:17
  Philip Pape: You don't have to eat or drink in the middle of your workout unless you're starting.
• 33:22
  Philip Pape: It fasted potentially, but for most part, you want to bookmark it with some easy digesting proteins and carbs.
• 33:27
  Philip Pape: This is going to fuel your workout.
• 33:29
  Philip Pape: It's going to kickstart your recovery after.
• 33:30
  Philip Pape: It's going to help with muscle protein synthesis.
• 33:32
  Philip Pape: So something like, you know, whey protein, quick carbs, like fruit I love bananas, you know rice cakes.
• 33:38
  Philip Pape: I know someone who loves you know rice crispy treats.
• 33:42
  Philip Pape: I'm not huge on using ultra processed foods for a lot of this stuff, but hey, it can work.
• 33:46
  Philip Pape: And then you know, and that's like your pre-workout, then your post-workout can have a little more variety, maybe even a little bit of fat in there.
• 33:53
  Philip Pape: The only reason we don't want much fat pre-workout is it simply slows your digestion, which means you would just have to eat more protein and carbs.
• 34:00
  Philip Pape: Or or you have more stomach you know digestive issues, having more food in your stomach.
• 34:05
  Philip Pape: So, yeah, a little bit of fat after in your post-workout like for me it's oatmeal with peanut butter, love it.
• 34:12
  Philip Pape: And I would aim to split your protein evenly across your meals and get anywhere from like a third to two thirds of your carbs in the peri-workout period, depending on how many carbs you're working with.
• 34:24
  Philip Pape: So if you're in fat loss and you have less to work with, it may be a smaller percentage because you or no.
• 34:29
  Philip Pape: It actually may be a bigger percentage because you have fewer calories, right, and you're trying to keep the amount of carbs around your workout roughly the same whether you're in fat loss or not.
• 34:38
  Philip Pape: So when you're in fat loss you're basically siphoning most of those carbs around your workout.
• 34:43
  Philip Pape: I've seen it to the point where, like, almost all your carbs are around your workout because the calories are fairly low.
• 34:48
  Philip Pape: But that's also why we don't want the fats to be too high and take away from the carbs, or even the protein to be much higher than it needs to be to give you room for your carbs.
• 34:57
  Philip Pape: So that was just my little thing on pre-work or peri-workout nutrition, as far as just a general principle, but also in the context of body recomp, to make sure everything is fueled properly for maximum results.
• 35:11
  Philip Pape: Now, it's not just about calories and macros.
• 35:13
  Philip Pape: We know there are a lot of other things here, nutritionally and otherwise.
• 35:16
  Philip Pape: On the nutrition side, I think micronutrition, I think hydration, electrolytes they all impact your performance and body composition.
• 35:23
  Philip Pape: And here we're just going to stick to basic principles, focusing on whole, nutrient-dense foods 80% of the time.
• 35:30
  Philip Pape: You can leave the other 10% to 20% for whatever you want for your indulgences, so that you don't over-restrict, you don't feel deprived.
• 35:36
  Philip Pape: Always be drinking plenty of water and liquids, don't fear sodium, potassium, all of that.
• 35:42
  Philip Pape: This is where I like fruits like bananas for your electrolytes, especially around your training, because that's when you need it to support the fluid balance and it helps with muscle contractions and avoiding cramping and things like that as well.
• 35:53
  Philip Pape: So that's all I'm going to say on micros and hydration, just the basics of mostly whole foods, a lot of variety of foods Don't put any foods off limits, and so on.
• 36:03
  Philip Pape: And then, beyond nutrition, optimizing your health and hormone status is also important for recomp, because you know, recomp is how do I want to put this?
• 36:14
  Philip Pape: Because the progress isn't as visible in the short-term, I'll say than with the other approaches, where the biofeedback signal tends to be more amplified.
• 36:22
  Philip Pape: So if your sex hormones are out of whack testosterone, estrogen, progesterone you're not going to be able to gain muscle or lose fat effectively.
• 36:41
  Philip Pape: And so biofeedback signals like low libido, poor recovery, like stubborn fat retention which I know that's kind of a subjective one, because we all gain and lose fat in different areas.
• 36:54
  Philip Pape: Some of us just happen to gain it in our stomach, where we don't want it, or gain it in our butt, where we do or don't want it.
• 37:00
  Philip Pape: And I say that do or don't want it, because butt fat can be helpful to some people, all right, and you could get blood work as well, like a before and after.
• 37:08
  Philip Pape: And so here, like, your lifestyle practices are all going to be dialed in.
• 37:11
  Philip Pape: If you're going for body recomp, besides the nutrition and the training, we've got stress management, we've got sufficient sleep, like.
• 37:18
  Philip Pape: All of these are going to support your hormones, especially sleep.
• 37:20
  Philip Pape: I mean I can't under rate the value or overestimate the value of sleep for your hormones.
• 37:26
  Philip Pape: And then one other little one is alcohol.
• 37:29
  Philip Pape: I mean the less alcohol, the better it's going to be for your hormones as well.
• 37:32
  Philip Pape: Ideally, no alcohol.
• 37:34
  Philip Pape: But again, practicality, lifestyle, I get it, you know.
• 37:40
  Philip Pape: Do what works for you and see how you respond.
• 37:43
  Philip Pape: Thyroid, specifically, I want to call out the more I learn about the thyroid, the more I think it deserves its own category, because if your thyroid is under functioning, your metabolic rate will be slower and it's going to be harder to eat enough food and be where you need to be to change your body composition.
• 38:02
  Philip Pape: And so I still think lifestyle for the most part is going to work for most people and most women, but you know, because men are affected by thyroid as well, thyroid conditions.
• 38:11
  Philip Pape: But if you want to get your labs done, proactively.
• 38:14
  Philip Pape: If you suspect an issue, get your T3 and T4 checked.
• 38:17
  Philip Pape: You know on the ratio, but continue to focus on all these strategies right Calories, carbs, not over restricting getting in your key micros For thyroid health.
• 38:27
  Philip Pape: That would be iodine, selenium, zinc, foods that contain those supplementation as needed so that your thyroid produces the hormones and keeps your metabolic rate where it needs to be.
• 38:38
  Philip Pape: All right.
• 38:39
  Philip Pape: So other aspects of biofeedback and general health would be your digestion, your circadian rhythm right, like having a consistent daily routine and schedule for your sleep, your waking and sleeping cycle.
• 38:51
  Philip Pape: But even your eating cycle, even your walking cycle, believe it or not, like, your body starts to get used to these rhythms and tends to go in a more relaxed state when things are consistent and thus keeping your metabolic rate higher and you can eat more food and recomp more easily.
• 39:05
  Philip Pape: Sleep and stress we already mentioned, because they can affect your ability to lose fat and gain muscle.
• 39:10
  Philip Pape: So you just gotta audit your lifestyle, see where you can upgrade your habits outside the gym.
• 39:15
  Philip Pape: Everything works together synergistically.
• 39:17
  Philip Pape: If you are, for example, in our program, right, if you're in Whitson Weights Physique University, you have a biofeedback tracker and we can easily see on a week-to-week basis what is going on relative to the other things and if you're struggling or if you hit a plateau or something's not going the direction you want, we can take all that data together.
• 39:35
  Philip Pape: We can take your calories and macros, your food intake, we can take your scale weight, we can take your body measurements and we can take your biofeedback and see where the patterns are, and you could do the same thing for yourself.
• 39:45
  Philip Pape: Finally, don't underestimate the importance of mindset.
• 39:47
  Philip Pape: I know I often put it last on the list, for whatever reason.
• 39:51
  Philip Pape: I think we just do this inherently, and yet mindset could be the first thing on the list for a lot of this and for a lot of you listening.
• 39:59
  Philip Pape: You know exactly what I mean, like you may.
• 40:01
  Philip Pape: You may know all the stuff I'm telling you today.
• 40:03
  Philip Pape: You may know exactly what numbers to use for yourself.
• 40:14
  Philip Pape: You may be doing many of these things and yet the mindset comes in in places like getting impatient or not being consistent or not trusting the process.
• 40:18
  Philip Pape: So the antidote to those is be patient, consistency, trusting the process.
• 40:22
  Philip Pape: You know you're training hard, you're eating in a slight deficit, let's say, if you're doing the lose weight version of this and maybe you're training hard, you're eating in a slight deficit, let's say, if you're doing the lose weight version of this, and maybe you're not seeing a huge drop in scale weight right away because you shouldn't, you shouldn't, and yet in your mind you might be thinking, oh, I'm trying to get this body recomp and also the scale's not budging as much as I'd like.
• 40:40
  Philip Pape: And it's easy to get discouraged if you're only focused on the day-to-day or only on specific metrics.
• 40:46
  Philip Pape: We need to collect all this stuff but at the same time, not get hung up on any one number, on any short horizon, time horizon.
• 40:54
  Philip Pape: Keep your eyes on that bigger picture.
• 40:56
  Philip Pape: But while you're doing that, I do want you to celebrate small victories along the way.
• 41:01
  Philip Pape: We just don't want to overemphasize victories that aren't really victories, like, oh, my weight dropped a pound yesterday.
• 41:05
  Philip Pape: I don't think that's really a victory.
• 41:07
  Philip Pape: I don't because I would never want to overreact to weight dropping or gaining in one day, ever.
• 41:12
  Philip Pape: I want to look at it over two or three weeks right Now, over two, over, let's say, three weeks.
• 41:18
  Philip Pape: You can say, hey, the combination of things that I'm tracking shows me that I built a little muscle and I lost a little fat.
• 41:24
  Philip Pape: Here's why, you know, my waist size went down by half an inch, my biceps went up by half an inch and my scale weight went down by, you know, two pounds over the three-week trend.
• 41:33
  Philip Pape: Hey, you know, I'm pretty happy with all of that.
• 41:35
  Philip Pape: That's pretty good.
• 41:36
  Philip Pape: I'm headed in the right direction.
• 41:37
  Philip Pape: That's cool, you know, like we can definitely are doing.
• 41:45
  Philip Pape: To me, those are the victories worth celebrating.
• 41:47
  Philip Pape: I did this thing that I committed to doing and because I did that thing, I know it's gonna later on produce a result and I know that it will be worth it when I unveil that strong, lean, muscular physique that I've built through the process, the process.
• 42:01
  Philip Pape: So go back to the quotes that I said earlier from our community and their wins, and you saw that all of those wins were from this healthy and positive mindset of the process.
• 42:12
  Philip Pape: Like I did this every day, I was consistent.
• 42:15
  Philip Pape: I didn't have to deprive myself.
• 42:18
  Philip Pape: It wasn't.
• 42:19
  Philip Pape: I lost X weight on the scale, right, we can still celebrate those results when they come, but if we focus on the day-to-day and the process, you're almost not going to care when the result happens, because it will have been happening the whole time and you'll have been enjoying the process.
• 42:36
  Philip Pape: So that's kind of the mindset piece of recomp, because it can be harder to see the result happening.
• 42:43
  Philip Pape: Now that's also in somewhat you can argue for some people.
• 42:46
  Philip Pape: That's why you like to do more aggressive bulks and cuts, because you can see some of the result based numbers changing faster.
• 42:54
  Philip Pape: And for some of us we want those wins too, and that's okay.
• 42:57
  Philip Pape: There's no right or wrong.
• 42:58
  Philip Pape: There really isn't All right.
• 43:00
  Philip Pape: I see it too, because right now I'm rehabbing my shoulder again.
• 43:03
  Philip Pape: Occasionally it gets a little wonky, since I've had rotator cuff surgery.
• 43:07
  Philip Pape: It rehabbing my shoulder again.
• 43:07
  Philip Pape: Occasionally it gets a little wonky.
• 43:08
  Philip Pape: Since I've had rotator cuff surgery, it happens.
• 43:09
  Philip Pape: I've been assured that this is totally normal and yet I'm the type of guy that wants to push.
• 43:12
  Philip Pape: I want to grow, I want to keep going, I want to improve, and it can be a little bit frustrating when I know I have to come out of my fat loss phase.
• 43:18
  Philip Pape: I have to tone down my intensity, tone down my volume, work, work out fewer days a week, but I know that doing all those things will produce a result.
• 43:27
  Philip Pape: So what do I take pleasure in?
• 43:28
  Philip Pape: I take pleasure in the fact that my shoulder has more range of motion each day and is feeling less pain.
• 43:33
  Philip Pape: And I know that that is a result-based thing, but it's also process.
• 43:38
  Philip Pape: It's showing me that every day that I put into doing these things, I'm getting what I want out of it and even though I'm kind of at maintenance let's call it I am getting a ton of wins every day as a result.
• 43:49
  Philip Pape: That will set me up for going back into a more aggressive phase at some point from a healthier standpoint.
• 43:55
  Philip Pape: So that's my little personal story there.
• 43:59
  Philip Pape: Some final thoughts on body recomp.
• 44:01
  Philip Pape: Body recomp is absolutely possible.
• 44:03
  Philip Pape: It can be a highly effective approach for a lot of people to completely transform your physique.
• 44:09
  Philip Pape: It really can.
• 44:10
  Philip Pape: And for and or but.
• 44:13
  Philip Pape: For many individuals, using more aggressive buts, bulks, buts, more aggressive buts, more aggressive, bulks and cuts will be the most time efficient way to achieve long-term body recomp.
• 44:23
  Philip Pape: But many of you might prefer this more casual approach that doesn't get to extreme in either direction.
• 44:29
  Philip Pape: And guess what?
• 44:30
  Philip Pape: These choices are part of the flexibility and the sustainability in everything we do and talk about on this show and with our coaching approach and in our community and in Wits and Weights Physique University.
• 44:43
  Philip Pape: This is the fun part about it.
• 44:45
  Philip Pape: It's not sexy.
• 44:46
  Philip Pape: It doesn't sell a 30-pound fat loss in three weeks, but it sells you a lifetime of joy because you can have such a flexible, individualized for you approach that just is totally in sync with your life and I know so many of you want that.
• 45:06
  Philip Pape: And I strive on this show to show you how to do it practically and take actual steps and it's not just lip service.
• 45:13
  Philip Pape: Right, and whichever way you want to go right Losing fat, building muscle, you know, quickly or simultaneously over the longterm.
• 45:20
  Philip Pape: Either way, doing all these practices the right way is how you will achieve that lean, strong, athletic look you want.
• 45:27
  Philip Pape: So the exact way it plays out is going to depend on your starting point Whether you have a lot of fat to lose, you're already lean, you want to focus on muscle gain, you're very well trained or you're just looking to etch in those final details in your physique and that symmetry.
• 45:40
  Philip Pape: Whatever, the key principles are still the same Train hard with sufficient intensity, execution, volume, progression right.
• 45:49
  Philip Pape: Eat enough protein and carbs to support your muscle growth while still achieving a modest you know fat loss either a deficit or in less of a surplus, or at maintenance.
• 45:59
  Philip Pape: Optimize your peri-workout nutrition, your hydration, focus on nutritious whole foods and pay attention to your health, your hormones and your biofeedback, not just your body composition, because it all plays together synergistically and this is where having an experienced coach or community to guide you through the process can make a huge difference.
• 46:21
  Philip Pape: But regardless, I strive on the show to give you these blueprints to help you get started doing it on your own.
• 46:27
  Philip Pape: You just have to be patient, consistent, keep showing up, keep putting in the work, and then your physique will transform before your eyes when you look back and you'll say, wow, look, how far I've come, and that's it.
• 46:39
  Philip Pape: That is what we do for body recomp.
• 46:42
  Philip Pape: I hope this has been not only informative, but maybe a little bit eye-opening, given that there are so many ways, there's so much flexibility in achieving recomp besides just maintenance.
• 46:51
  Philip Pape: Right, and now you're inspired.
• 46:53
  Philip Pape: Right, you've got some ideas, you're ready to put these into action and, as I mentioned before, if you're interested in using Macrofactor to set up your body recomp phase without worrying about calculating your maintenance calories or your calorie macro targets, I'm giving you all a free video on how to set everything up in the app, screenshots, and everything step by step.
• 47:14
  Philip Pape: This video is from the Macrofactor Mastery course in Wits and Weights Physique University, but I'm giving you this video itself, not the whole course.
• 47:22
  Philip Pape: I'm giving you this video absolutely free, no opt-in, no email.
• 47:25
  Philip Pape: Just click the link in my show notes for the free video on YouTube.
• 47:28
  Philip Pape: You'll find it under episode resources and go click it to get my free video on setting up macro factor for body recomp.
• 47:36
  Philip Pape: Stay strong and I'll talk to you next time here on the Wits and Weights podcast.