Latest / Wits & Weights | Strength & Fat Loss Over 40 / The 3+3 Model of Optimal Fat Loss | Ep 326

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The 3+3 Model of Optimal Fat Loss | Ep 326 · Wits & Weights | Strength & Fat Loss Over 40

• 0:01
  Philip Pape: Have you noticed how most people lose weight but they end up looking skinny, fat rather than lean and athletic?
• 0:06
  Philip Pape: Or maybe you've tried to lose weight yourself and felt weak, exhausted, constantly hungry.
• 0:11
  Philip Pape: You gain the weight back.
• 0:13
  Philip Pape: That's because there's a massive difference between just losing weight and losing fat while preserving muscle, and most people get this wrong.
• 0:20
  Philip Pape: Today I'm breaking down what I call the 3 plus 3 model.
• 0:24
  Philip Pape: This is a science-based framework to simplify fat loss so it's effective and sustainable.
• 0:29
  Philip Pape: You're going to learn three foundational elements you absolutely need for fat loss and then three enhancements or optimizers that can improve your results.
• 0:37
  Philip Pape: It is about working with your body's physiology to shed fat while maintaining your strength, energy and sanity.
• 0:58
  Philip Pape: Welcome to Wits and Weights, the show that helps you build a strong, healthy physique using evidence, engineering and efficiency.
• 1:01
  Philip Pape: I'm your host, philip Pape, certified nutrition coach, and today we're tackling a topic that confuses and frustrates a lot of people Fat loss, just fat loss in general, not weight loss, but specifically fat loss while preserving lean muscle tissue.
• 1:17
  Philip Pape: Because here's the problem Most fat loss approaches or I should say weight loss approaches focus on creating a calorie deficit without any regard for body composition, metabolic health or long-term sustainability.
• 1:33
  Philip Pape: Meaning, can you stick with this diet for a long time, and that's why so many people end up losing muscle along with fat, whether they're doing this naturally or with weight loss medications, and that tanks their metabolism.
• 1:45
  Philip Pape: It ultimately results in regaining everything that they lost, plus some extra, and having higher body fat in the end.
• 1:52
  Philip Pape: But it doesn't have to be this way.
• 1:54
  Philip Pape: By understanding the science and implementing a framework, you can optimize fat loss for the results you want with less suffering, and that is what we're covering today with the three plus three model of optimal fat loss a way to simplify three things you must do and three things you can do to optimize.
• 2:13
  Philip Pape: For the folks who are brand new to this, or even if you need a refresher and wanna do it the right way Before we get into it, if you wanna take a deeper dive into nutrition for yourself and set up your calories, your macros, your meal timing and all of that, I created a free guide that complements today's episode perfectly.
• 2:30
  Philip Pape: It's my Nutrition 101 for Body Composition Guide, again totally free, gives you a breakdown of how to set all this up, whether you want to lose fat or build muscle.
• 2:38
  Philip Pape: Download it using the link in the show notes or go to witsandweightscom.
• 2:42
  Philip Pape: Slash free to get a copy of that and many, many other guides, but the easiest way is to click the link in the show notes to get my nutrition one-on-one for body composition guide.
• 2:52
  Philip Pape: All right, let's break down the three plus three model of optimal fat loss.
• 2:57
  Philip Pape: And this is just a fancy name for a framework that I've refined through the years of coaching clients and studying the literature and making this podcast.
• 3:05
  Philip Pape: So I'm hoping this ends up being kind of a definitive episode for hey start here when it comes to fat loss.
• 3:11
  Philip Pape: So what makes this different is it isn't just a list of tips.
• 3:15
  Philip Pape: It isn't, you know, random workout recommendations.
• 3:18
  Philip Pape: It is a hierarchical framework that distinguishes between what's absolutely necessary versus what can enhance your results.
• 3:24
  Philip Pape: So, right off the bat, I'm trying to simplify it for you so that you don't get bogged down in all the confusion, all the information out there, and you can stick with what matters the most.
• 3:33
  Philip Pape: So I've got two categories.
• 3:35
  Philip Pape: First, we have the three non-negotiables, and these are the foundational elements that must be in place for optimal fat loss.
• 3:44
  Philip Pape: If you skip these, you are setting yourself up for failure, regardless of what else you do, and you will not lose fat.
• 3:50
  Philip Pape: You might lose weight, but you'll lose muscle too.
• 3:52
  Philip Pape: So that's the important distinction.
• 3:53
  Philip Pape: Second, we have the three optimizers.
• 3:56
  Philip Pape: These are strategies to enhance your results once you have the foundation.
• 4:00
  Philip Pape: Some people jump to these first.
• 4:01
  Philip Pape: Do not do that.
• 4:03
  Philip Pape: Wait till you have the three non-negotiables in place.
• 4:05
  Philip Pape: These aren't even required, these optimizers, but they can improve, sometimes significantly, the outcomes for most people.
• 4:12
  Philip Pape: So let's start with the non-negotiables.
• 4:14
  Philip Pape: The first one is maintaining a high protein intake throughout your fat loss phase.
• 4:21
  Philip Pape: Now, you thought I was going to mention resistance training, but honestly, if you can't get your nutrition dialed in early on, you're going to get frustrated when you start training due to some lack of energy or a feeling like you're not making progress building muscle.
• 4:35
  Philip Pape: So, even though I often go on podcasts and say everyone should be strength training, that's the thing people are missing, I think.
• 4:42
  Philip Pape: When you are setting yourself up right now for fat loss from step one, one of the most accessible and important steps is increasing your protein, and that means consuming between 0.7 and one gram of protein per pound of body weight.
• 4:56
  Philip Pape: You can go above that, for sure.
• 4:57
  Philip Pape: There's diminishing returns above the one gram per pound, but I would try to get within that 0.7 to one If you're very lean, or if you're deep into a deficit, or if you're training really, really hard, you might want a higher end of that range or even above that.
• 5:11
  Philip Pape: Or if you just love protein, you can eat more than that.
• 5:14
  Philip Pape: It's fine.
• 5:15
  Philip Pape: But getting that minimum of 0.7 is so crucial during fat loss.
• 5:19
  Philip Pape: And it's crucial for three reasons.
• 5:21
  Philip Pape: The first reason is that protein is anti-catabolic.
• 5:25
  Philip Pape: It is, of course, anabolic, meaning it helps build muscle, but it's also anti-catabolic.
• 5:30
  Philip Pape: It sends a signal to your body to hold onto the muscle tissue you have when you go into that calorie deficit.
• 5:37
  Philip Pape: This is why you often eat more protein in fat loss than when you're not in fat loss, and it sounds counterintuitive to people and it makes it a little bit more challenging to hit your fats and carbs.
• 5:48
  Philip Pape: But it's so important for your body to tell it hey, go ahead and burn through your fat stores, don't burn through the muscle, right?
• 5:57
  Philip Pape: Because we're trying to avoid that.
• 5:58
  Philip Pape: We're just trying to burn fat.
• 5:59
  Philip Pape: The second thing is protein is very satiating.
• 6:01
  Philip Pape: Research consistently shows high-protein diets reduce hunger.
• 6:04
  Philip Pape: They increase feelings of fullness.
• 6:06
  Philip Pape: Anybody who's doubled their protein knows this.
• 6:09
  Philip Pape: When you're eating fewer calories in fat loss which is where we're trying to go with this, managing hunger becomes one of the most critical things to stick with the diet, and protein is your best ally here.
• 6:20
  Philip Pape: Besides fiber, I mean protein is it?
• 6:23
  Philip Pape: Third, protein has the highest thermic effect of feeding of all the macronutrients.
• 6:28
  Philip Pape: What that means is your body will burn more calories simply because you're consuming more.
• 6:32
  Philip Pape: Protein burns about 20 to 30% of its calories just to be digested and processed, compared to only about 5 to 10% for carbs and close to 0% for fats, and this gives you a bit of a metabolic advantage and it adds up over time.
• 6:46
  Philip Pape: So, again, we want to get that protein up to a reasonable level before you hit fat loss, so that during fat loss it's much easier to hold on to muscle.
• 6:55
  Philip Pape: And you know I can't tell you how many times I've met people who thought they were eating quote unquote plenty of protein.
• 7:00
  Philip Pape: And then they track their intake, they use macro factor or really any way to track, and you see that you are probably dramatically overestimating how much you consume.
• 7:09
  Philip Pape: And if you think they're getting enough, just log food for a week and get back to me and let me know what you found.
• 7:14
  Philip Pape: Also, don't forget about distributing your protein throughout the day.
• 7:18
  Philip Pape: It's not, I'll say, required for fat loss, but it slightly optimizes your results.
• 7:26
  Philip Pape: But again, this is not required for most people.
• 7:28
  Philip Pape: They're going to want to have protein in every meal anyway, for the satiety, for the balance, for the blood sugar, for everything else.
• 7:33
  Philip Pape: So that's non-negotiable Number one is get that protein up to at least 0.7 grams per pound of your body weight.
• 7:41
  Philip Pape: Non-negotiable number two, of course, here it is Resistance training with progressive overload.
• 7:47
  Philip Pape: All right, this is the second non-negotiable.
• 7:50
  Philip Pape: And that means lifting weights three to five times.
• 7:55
  Philip Pape: I mean you could lift six times a week too, but at least three to four, but up to five times per week, with an emphasis, initially at least, on compound movements like squats, hinges, presses, pulls, tracking your performance and striving to maintain or increase your strength over time.
• 8:12
  Philip Pape: Now you're going to be doing this at first not in a calorie deficit, but then, when you are in a calorie deficit, you are still going to intend and train hard to do this, to increase your numbers, even if eventually they potentially stall out because of the lack of resources.
• 8:27
  Philip Pape: That's okay.
• 8:28
  Philip Pape: You're basically giving your body the signal to hold onto muscle, whereas if you were sedentary and not training, your body is going to say, well, fat protein or fat muscle doesn't matter, it's all energy I'm going to burn what I need to burn to lose the weight you're asking me to lose.
• 8:44
  Philip Pape: Muscle tissue is metabolically expensive for your body to maintain when you're in a calorie deficit.
• 8:49
  Philip Pape: Your body is trying to conserve energy right.
• 8:51
  Philip Pape: It downregulates everything down to the cellular level, including your hormones, and it will happily shed muscle if it doesn't perceive a need to keep it.
• 8:59
  Philip Pape: So for those of you thinking, ah yeah, I train, it's not consistent, whatever, I just want to lose weight, you're going to be in a world of hurt because you're going to just get skinny, fat, fluffy.
• 9:07
  Philip Pape: You're going to have more body fat.
• 9:08
  Philip Pape: That's not what we're trying to do.
• 9:09
  Philip Pape: Resistance training provides that signal that muscle's necessary and should be preserved.
• 9:13
  Philip Pape: But it is not enough to just go through the motions.
• 9:16
  Philip Pape: Please listen to me on this.
• 9:17
  Philip Pape: So many of you are not training properly or hard enough or consistently enough.
• 9:22
  Philip Pape: Progressive overload is the term we use.
• 9:35
  Philip Pape: Whether you like the term or not, whether it's a misnomer, what it means is the continuous challenge to increase weight, reps and or volume.
• 9:37
  Philip Pape: So something is going up that represents the increase in strength, and I say strength even though we're trying to build muscle.
• 9:40
  Philip Pape: Hold on to muscle whatever.
• 9:41
  Philip Pape: Ultimately, it's expressed through the ability to do more in the gym and that will keep the signal strong.
• 9:48
  Philip Pape: One of the mistakes I see people doing during a cut, during weight or fat loss, is reducing their training intensity.
• 9:55
  Philip Pape: They think, well, I have less energy, so I should lift lighter.
• 9:58
  Philip Pape: This is exactly wrong.
• 10:00
  Philip Pape: It's exactly wrong.
• 10:02
  Philip Pape: While you might need to reduce overall volume for your recovery, if your recovery is compromised, and that's okay maintaining the load, maintaining the intensity, the signal to your body, high enough percentage of your max is absolutely needed, because your goal isn't to burn calories during fat loss with your training, it's to preserve your muscle mass and strength.
• 10:22
  Philip Pape: That is the main goal.
• 10:23
  Philip Pape: We use the diet to manipulate the calories right, it's an input and output side of the equation and we don't want to become weaker and weaker and then we still have to eat less anyway.
• 10:34
  Philip Pape: Plus, we lose muscle right, and I've had clients who were surprised to find they could actually gain strength while losing fat.
• 10:40
  Philip Pape: And if you're newer, that's not unusual to gain strength, to gain muscle while you're losing fat, especially if you keep the deficit reasonable just by maintaining that training intensity and ensuring adequate protein intake right, your body is very adaptable when you give it the right signals.
• 10:56
  Philip Pape: That's what we're doing.
• 10:57
  Philip Pape: We're telling it to adapt in the way we want, not the way just on a whim.
• 11:01
  Philip Pape: All right.
• 11:02
  Philip Pape: So the third non-negotiable is recovery.
• 11:06
  Philip Pape: Now, this is a big topic because it includes, I'll say, all the other things that I work with clients on Sleep, stress management, hormonal health, and I find that these are even more individualized only because everybody's lives are so different that, compared to, say, training and food, these have a lot more variability.
• 11:27
  Philip Pape: Compared to, say, training and food, these have a lot more variability and that's why it's important to personalize this.
• 11:31
  Philip Pape: So what we mean by recovery is getting enough high-quality sleep, managing stress to a level that doesn't overwhelm you, that doesn't wreck your sleep Actually, they go hand in hand or wreck your cortisol, make it harder to lose fat because your metabolism is lower than it could have been.
• 11:49
  Philip Pape: It's avoiding overreaching and overtraining by monitoring feedback like, um, I should say, soreness, right, your energy, how does it feel when you go into the gym and come out of the gym, recovery days, et cetera.
• 12:02
  Philip Pape: Right, and of course it should be obvious why this is important.
• 12:06
  Philip Pape: But just to jump into the science of it, we start with sleep right.
• 12:09
  Philip Pape: Poor sleep is going to dramatically increase your hunger hormone, ghrelin.
• 12:14
  Philip Pape: It's going to decrease your satiety hormone, leptin.
• 12:17
  Philip Pape: So this is a perfect double whammy for cravings, for overeating.
• 12:22
  Philip Pape: You're going to seek out high energy foods with lots of fat, sugars, carbs and not the beneficial kind for you, generally very calorie dense foods usually, and then it's going to be harder to stick to your diet.
• 12:33
  Philip Pape: Or you're going to be sticking to it with lots of willpower and then feeling very, very hungry.
• 12:39
  Philip Pape: Either way is not great.
• 12:41
  Philip Pape: So that's sleep right and the hours of sleep.
• 12:44
  Philip Pape: There's a lot of research on that.
• 12:46
  Philip Pape: It varies significantly by person.
• 12:48
  Philip Pape: Usually you hear seven to nine.
• 12:49
  Philip Pape: Some people can do okay as low as six and a half.
• 12:52
  Philip Pape: Some people need that eight or nine hours of sleep.
• 12:54
  Philip Pape: But then the quality is important and that's a whole other topic.
• 12:57
  Philip Pape: Stress is the other thing.
• 12:58
  Philip Pape: Chronic stress and your perceived stress is going to elevate your cortisol.
• 13:02
  Philip Pape: Cortisol is great signal for your body to try to hold onto fat, especially around your midsection, and so where's your body going to get the energy from Breaking down muscle tissue?
• 13:12
  Philip Pape: So even if you are doing the other things, if stress is really high and you're trying to lose fat, you can still potentially lose muscle because of that stress.
• 13:25
  Philip Pape: And then hormonal adaptation is a real thing.
• 13:26
  Philip Pape: That happens during fat loss, and it gets, I'll say, more exacerbated the longer you go or the more aggressively you diet, because your body's really smart.
• 13:33
  Philip Pape: It's going to adjust your hormone levels to fight back against what it perceives as starvation.
• 13:38
  Philip Pape: You know the effect of what you're doing to it.
• 13:41
  Philip Pape: You're depriving it of resources to maintain where it was, and so something's going to have to give.
• 13:46
  Philip Pape: So your body says you know what?
• 13:50
  Philip Pape: Let's save some energy here, let's save some energy there.
• 13:51
  Philip Pape: Downregulate your thyroid, downregulate your reproductive hormones things that aren't as important, let's say.
• 13:54
  Philip Pape: And there you go.
• 13:55
  Philip Pape: So proper recovery helps protect against these to the greatest extent you can, knowing that some of this is inevitable.
• 14:02
  Philip Pape: No matter what, even in a perfect situation, you're still going to have metabolic adaptation from hormones.
• 14:07
  Philip Pape: The key here is, though, we're trying to mitigate those.
• 14:10
  Philip Pape: So in all of these I would say, if you had to pick one, it would be sleep.
• 14:18
  Philip Pape: It's probably the most underrated factor in the entire fat loss equation, even training and protein, because I've had clients who've made more progress just by improving sleep quality than any other dietary invention or modifying their training.
• 14:27
  Philip Pape: Now, they're usually already training consistently and they're eating reasonably well, but the reason here is that the sleep directly affects your hormone regulation, which directly affects your hunger, your energy for your training and then your recovery, and it all viciously or beneficially cycles together.
• 14:44
  Philip Pape: So those are the three non-negotiables protein, training and recovery.
• 14:47
  Philip Pape: Those are the three non-negotiables protein, training and recovery.
• 14:48
  Philip Pape: Those are the foundation for fat loss.
• 14:50
  Philip Pape: Honestly, you could end the podcast right here, if you've never done this before, and focus on those.
• 14:55
  Philip Pape: Pick one, start with it, roll in the rest, keep going.
• 14:58
  Philip Pape: That is how I help clients in the first couple months of our journey together, before we actually go into a diet.
• 15:05
  Philip Pape: Okay, now, once you then are in your fat loss phase, or preparing for it, and you've done this before, or you've got the foundational habits dialed in and you want to optimize further, I'm going to give you three extra things to consider.
• 15:19
  Philip Pape: Okay, optimizer number one is strategic refeeds or diet breaks.
• 15:25
  Philip Pape: Now, a refeed is just usually a one or two day period where you eat up to your maintenance by increasing your carbohydrates.
• 15:33
  Philip Pape: A diet break is just a longer period of doing that, usually one to two weeks or even longer.
• 15:39
  Philip Pape: I mean, it could be indefinite and then you're just at maintenance.
• 15:41
  Philip Pape: And these strategies while, yes, they do mitigate some of the hormonal adaptation to your leptin, your thyroid hormones, your reproductive hormones, those are just temporary.
• 15:53
  Philip Pape: More importantly, they reduce your perceived mental fatigue, which helps you improve adherence right, be able to adhere to the diet, and they can help you restore some of your training intensity during that refeed.
• 16:07
  Philip Pape: We also see that research like well, there was the Matador study and there's also a study that Bill Campbell did that I talked about recently on the show called I think it was called the Weekend Diet.
• 16:18
  Philip Pape: Look for that in the podcast feed, very recent.
• 16:20
  Philip Pape: It suggests that again, not the Matador, but that particular study suggests that your lean mass preservation may actually increase if you use two-day refeeds every week, the catch being you're going to eat even fewer calories on the other five days to stay in the same deficit or you can go to slower weight of loss.
• 16:42
  Philip Pape: So anyway, just to simplify this whole optimizer, think about whether you would prefer to have the same calories every day and that would help you be consistent and adhere, or if you want to have a little bit lower calories on the weekdays and come all the way up to maintenance on the weekends Great strategy.
• 16:58
  Philip Pape: You want to learn all about it?
• 16:59
  Philip Pape: Go check out my recent podcast, the Weekend Diet.
• 17:02
  Philip Pape: This can be really helpful for leaner clients who are pushing into lower body fat.
• 17:06
  Philip Pape: This can be helpful for high-stress periods when adherence is a little more challenging.
• 17:10
  Philip Pape: These are not cheat days.
• 17:11
  Philip Pape: This is a controlled, structured approach that can be really important.
• 17:15
  Philip Pape: Now that's refeeds.
• 17:16
  Philip Pape: Diet breaks is the longer breaks you might need.
• 17:19
  Philip Pape: Like someone posted in the Facebook group hey, I've been dieting for 15 months.
• 17:23
  Philip Pape: I've had these great results.
• 17:24
  Philip Pape: Should I take a break?
• 17:25
  Philip Pape: And my immediate response is just a yes, not even a well, it depends.
• 17:29
  Philip Pape: It's kind of she's reaching out with a little bit of a cry for help, saying how she feels fatigued.
• 17:34
  Philip Pape: I'm like okay, that's your sign.
• 17:42
  Philip Pape: Let's just take a break.
• 17:42
  Philip Pape: There's no reason to be miserable and suffer and push it for longer than you need to just to get to a number, when the more sustainable way to do that is to take a break right now.
• 17:47
  Philip Pape: So that's optimizer number one is refeeds or diet breaks.
• 17:50
  Philip Pape: Optimizer number two is creatine monohydrate.
• 17:55
  Philip Pape: Now, creatine is a supplement and I was hesitant whether this would be in here, because to me, supplementation is just the very tippity top 1% after you've done everything else, and very individualized.
• 18:07
  Philip Pape: But creatine specifically is helpful to just about everybody for training and almost everybody might benefit long-term from cognitive health as well, according to the latest research.
• 18:20
  Philip Pape: And it's very easy to do.
• 18:21
  Philip Pape: Most people have no symptoms or almost everybody is symptom-free.
• 18:26
  Philip Pape: There's a very tiny percentage of people who are actually allergic to it and then there's some people that just don't respond like 10 to 20% of people don't respond.
• 18:33
  Philip Pape: But it's worth attempting, it's worth trying.
• 18:35
  Philip Pape: And this is taking five grams a day of creatine monohydrate starting trying.
• 18:42
  Philip Pape: And this is taking five grams a day of creatine monohydrate starting basically now and just continuing to take it for the rest of your life.
• 18:45
  Philip Pape: Creatine is supposed to support strength and power output and that could be even more helpful when you're in a calorie deficit so you can maintain your intensity.
• 18:52
  Philip Pape: It increases muscle cell hydration, right.
• 18:55
  Philip Pape: That's why your muscles fill up a bit at first and you gain a couple pounds on the scale of fluid weight, which is totally normal.
• 19:00
  Philip Pape: But that muscle cell hydration can actually reduce muscle breakdown, catabolism, and might help preserve fat-free mass and improve your recovery during fat loss.
• 19:11
  Philip Pape: And that's why I wanted to throw it in here, because creatine does all these things, it may give you an advantage during fat loss and then, finally, it may give you some advantage during fat loss and then, finally, it may give you some improved mental clarity during the cut, usually on higher doses though that's the caveat usually up in the 15 or even 20 gram range.
• 19:29
  Philip Pape: It is safe.
• 19:30
  Philip Pape: It is inexpensive.
• 19:31
  Philip Pape: It's one of the most well-researched supplements out there.
• 19:33
  Philip Pape: If you're not taking it already, it is definitely worth considering, but do so long before you start your fat loss phase so that you can experience the bump in weight early.
• 19:41
  Philip Pape: Let things normalize, get through any minor bloating or issues with hydration early on, because you should drink a lot of water with your creatine and kind of.
• 19:50
  Philip Pape: Let it normalize and now you're in a good place to know where you truly stand with your maintenance calories to go into the fat loss phase.
• 19:58
  Philip Pape: And, by the way, just another shout out to the guide that I have, because this episode is not about, uh, setting up your fat loss phase.
• 20:05
  Philip Pape: This is more about the foundational habits you need for fat loss, the actual numbers like how do you determine your calories, macros, all that.
• 20:13
  Philip Pape: I call that the easy stuff, even though some people, people, reach out every day saying I have no idea what to eat for my fats and carbs.
• 20:20
  Philip Pape: I'm like well, it's because you need to track and become aware and then know what your goal is.
• 20:24
  Philip Pape: And there's a way to get that.
• 20:25
  Philip Pape: So download my guide attached to this episode, the Nutrition 101.
• 20:30
  Philip Pape: That will walk you through those.
• 20:32
  Philip Pape: Today is the non-negotiables and the optimizers.
• 20:34
  Philip Pape: Okay, optimizer number three fiber and micronutrient density.
• 20:40
  Philip Pape: And I left this for last so that you remember it in your head as this podcast will wrap up afterward.
• 20:46
  Philip Pape: It's the most fresh thing in your mind of the optimizers.
• 20:48
  Philip Pape: So this third optimizer is getting enough fiber intake and micronutrient density in your diet.
• 20:56
  Philip Pape: Okay, and I'm sorry, carnivore and low carb folks, you are not optimizing for fat loss or for long-term health, longevity or performance on a extremely low carb diet generally and I say generally because the vast majority of people will improve, not in those restrictive diets.
• 21:16
  Philip Pape: A tiny percentage of people might thrive on those diets because they have all sorts of intolerances or inflammation from eating those foods.
• 21:23
  Philip Pape: But I'm saying in general that if you are fearful of consuming fiber or vegetables or plants, don't be.
• 21:33
  Philip Pape: Don't be fearful for any of the claims you hear on social media.
• 21:35
  Philip Pape: Don't avoid them just for that reason, avoid them, because it would make sense for you.
• 21:39
  Philip Pape: If that makes sense, all right.
• 21:41
  Philip Pape: So what does this look like?
• 21:42
  Philip Pape: I would say females consuming at least 25 grams of fiber, males consuming 30 to 35 grams of fiber a day, keeping in mind that that gets more challenging when you're in fat loss because the calories are lower, but it also becomes even more effective and helpful in doing so.
• 22:00
  Philip Pape: Now let's talk about how and then why.
• 22:02
  Philip Pape: So the how is just filling your plate with colorful, high-volume foods, all sorts of vegetables, berries, even legumes, even whole grains.
• 22:12
  Philip Pape: Yes, grains are fine if you can tolerate them.
• 22:15
  Philip Pape: You know, being aware of the calories and the calorie density for your goal, fiber.
• 22:21
  Philip Pape: So the why?
• 22:22
  Philip Pape: Fiber promotes satiety, keeps you full, but it also supports smooth digestion.
• 22:27
  Philip Pape: It reduces issues like bloating that can make a deficit feel worse than it is.
• 22:33
  Philip Pape: Micronutrients found in all sorts of variety of foods, especially plant-based foods and, by the way, I'm a big meat eater.
• 22:40
  Philip Pape: I love my protein and animal-based products.
• 22:42
  Philip Pape: I'm not vegan or vegetarian, but I love my plants as well, because the diversity is where it's at Magnesium, b vitamins, iron, potassium all the things that support thyroid function, your metabolism, your energy.
• 22:54
  Philip Pape: Yes, you can supplement, of course.
• 22:56
  Philip Pape: I mean vegans and vegetarians often have to supplement with things like B12.
• 23:00
  Philip Pape: People on carnivore often have to supplement.
• 23:02
  Philip Pape: In my opinion, everyone should supplement with magnesium, most likely because we're deficient no matter what you eat, given today's food environment.
• 23:08
  Philip Pape: So if you can focus on nutrient-dense foods, it can reduce.
• 23:13
  Philip Pape: It can help with other things like food noise and decision fatigue, making your adherence easier.
• 23:18
  Philip Pape: It can actually help with emotional eating and guilt and shame over foods.
• 23:23
  Philip Pape: Believe it or not?
• 23:24
  Philip Pape: Yes, it can, because what you're doing you're adding in things that make your body just feel so good and your digestion smooth and you feel full and satisfied on these whole foods.
• 23:36
  Philip Pape: And this is in addition to the protein we already talked about.
• 23:39
  Philip Pape: And, of course, fats are in there as well, naturally, as you're eating whole foods.
• 23:43
  Philip Pape: And when I talk to clients, they often report feeling initially hungrier after they go from a junk food type diet to a I shouldn't even use the word junk food.
• 23:56
  Philip Pape: See, there's a label that we try not to use, but a food predominant with ultra-processed foods as opposed to whole foods, and then they switch to more whole foods, and that transition is important because you've got to give it a little time.
• 24:09
  Philip Pape: What's actually happening is they're becoming more aware of their true hunger signals, because processed foods can mask your natural satiety cues the way they're designed and when you return to whole foods it's going to bring back your body's natural regulatory mechanisms.
• 24:23
  Philip Pape: So do it before you go into fat loss.
• 24:25
  Philip Pape: Again, a lot of this is prep work for fat loss.
• 24:28
  Philip Pape: That's the irony of this whole thing is it is to make fat loss easier so that when you go into that deficit, all the things are dialed in to make it sustainable.
• 24:36
  Philip Pape: So how do we integrate all these components of the three plus three model?
• 24:39
  Philip Pape: Remember the hierarchy.
• 24:41
  Philip Pape: First, ensure you have the three non-negotiables in place High protein intake, resistance training with progressive overload, proper recovery.
• 24:49
  Philip Pape: These must be consistent, and I'm going to say consistent every day.
• 24:54
  Philip Pape: Obviously, you're not going to train every day and you're not always going to hit your protein.
• 24:57
  Philip Pape: You're going to have some days that are less than others, but you want to do something every day for these.
• 25:03
  Philip Pape: And again, training.
• 25:04
  Philip Pape: You might only train three days a week, so the days you're not training, you're gonna focus on recovery in terms of getting enough sleep or walking enough, et cetera.
• 25:12
  Philip Pape: But they've gotta be consistent.
• 25:14
  Philip Pape: Then you're gonna layer in the optimizers as needed for your individual circumstances, your preferences, your biofeedback.
• 25:21
  Philip Pape: Not everyone needs all three.
• 25:23
  Philip Pape: I do have clients that don't take creatine.
• 25:25
  Philip Pape: They're just fine, but they're nice tools to have in your arsenal.
• 25:29
  Philip Pape: And there's a few insights I want you to take away from this model that probably challenge the conventional wisdom.
• 25:34
  Philip Pape: You've heard the first one.
• 25:36
  Philip Pape: If you've listened to this podcast for any length of time, you've heard this.
• 25:46
  Philip Pape: But if you're new to it, it's important.
• 25:46
  Philip Pape: Weight loss is not the same as fat loss period.
• 25:47
  Philip Pape: You can lose weight and lose muscle, which is not the goal at all.
• 25:49
  Philip Pape: This is what happens when people go on Ozempic and they don't have any guidance with regard to training and protein and they just lose a ton and ton of muscle up to 30, 40% of the weight lost as lean mass or muscle.
• 26:00
  Philip Pape: And so this model, this three plus three, is just a simple way in your head to say hey look, my goal is to protect against this scenario.
• 26:07
  Philip Pape: I'm trying to lose fat, I'm not trying to lose weight, I want to look better, I want to feel better, I want a better body composition.
• 26:13
  Philip Pape: Second is you don't have to do traditional cardio to lose fat unless you enjoy it or you need it to create the well no, I shouldn't say it unless you enjoy it.
• 26:22
  Philip Pape: That's all I'm going to say.
• 26:23
  Philip Pape: Resistance training provides the extra, the stimulus you need for body composition.
• 26:27
  Philip Pape: Walking provides the overall movement.
• 26:30
  Philip Pape: Right, we didn't even really talk about that in detail, but getting your steps, walking, moving, is the priority when it comes to quote unquote cardio.
• 26:38
  Philip Pape: And then only after that would I consider something like sprinting once or twice a week, if needed, if needed.
• 26:44
  Philip Pape: The third thing here in terms of challenging conventional wisdom is that muscle retention is a skill, like many of the things we talk about.
• 26:54
  Philip Pape: It's a skill, it's a process of personal improvement that's going to be developed over time.
• 27:00
  Philip Pape: Your fat loss phase does not have to feel like a collapse in your performance and health.
• 27:05
  Philip Pape: It doesn't have to feel like a switch.
• 27:06
  Philip Pape: When most people go on a diet, they think of it as this period of suffering.
• 27:10
  Philip Pape: I'm going on a diet, I'm saying no, I can't do this, I'm not going to eat quote unquote bad foods.
• 27:16
  Philip Pape: It's all these labels, morality behind it, judgment, guilt, fear, shame.
• 27:21
  Philip Pape: But in reality, if you do it right, this can be an enjoyable process that doesn't feel like suffering at all, can be quite reasonably done, and you have to be patient, of course, but it's a strategically engineered period in a year or in a two-year period or whatever, where you're prioritizing fat loss.
• 27:42
  Philip Pape: Okay, the cool thing about fat loss itself, when you do it right, is it improves your body's future capacity to build muscle and maintain leanness.
• 27:49
  Philip Pape: This is what I have seen and what I believe the evidence shows.
• 27:52
  Philip Pape: When done properly, a well-executed fat loss phase, it yeah, it changes how you look, for sure, but it also rewires your metabolic machinery, for lack of a better phrase.
• 28:04
  Philip Pape: There's research into muscle memory, for example.
• 28:07
  Philip Pape: That shows that the neurological, the epigenetic adaptations from maintaining muscle during a deficit actually makes subsequent muscle building more efficient.
• 28:18
  Philip Pape: You ever heard about that?
• 28:19
  Philip Pape: It's pretty cool.
• 28:19
  Philip Pape: Your body essentially becomes better at preserving and building muscle because you challenged it with fat loss the right way, and that's why I often see clients achieve their best muscle building results in the phase immediately following a properly executed fat loss phase.
• 28:35
  Philip Pape: And if you have some excess weight to lose, I'm totally cool if you want to go with fat loss first, after you've prepped a few months for it, and then build muscle afterward, as opposed to because you know me, I talk about how everybody needs to spend time, at least once in a muscle building phase, but it might be best done after your fat loss phase, depending on where you're starting from.
• 28:55
  Philip Pape: So we have things like improved insulin sensitivity, enhanced nutrient partitioning, optimized hormones.
• 29:02
  Philip Pape: All of it will actually help in your muscle building phase coming up.
• 29:05
  Philip Pape: So let's recap Three non-negotiables high protein resistance, training with progressive overload, proper recovery.
• 29:11
  Philip Pape: Three optimizers are refeeds or diet breaks, creatine and fiber slash, micronutrient density, and the overall picture here is we don't want to suffer.
• 29:21
  Philip Pape: We don't want to suffer through bland, boring meals.
• 29:23
  Philip Pape: We don't want to punish ourselves with cardio.
• 29:25
  Philip Pape: We don't want to just cut out all these foods so that all we're thinking about are the foods we cut out.
• 29:30
  Philip Pape: This is a physiological process that you can engineer to be efficient when you understand the requirements, and then you leverage what we know, the science that we know, and personalize it to you, and today's model provides you that approach to do that.
• 29:44
  Philip Pape: All right, if you found this valuable, if you wanna take your nutrition knowledge further, put this into practice and set up your fat loss phase, download my free Nutrition 101 for Body Composition guide.
• 29:54
  Philip Pape: It expands on many of the principles we discussed today.
• 29:57
  Philip Pape: It gives you the step-by-step practical approach to do it, and it also, I think, talks about fat loss and muscle building.
• 30:05
  Philip Pape: Although if you're specifically focused on muscle building, go to witsandweightscom, slash free and get my muscle building blueprint.
• 30:12
  Philip Pape: But if you're going to do fat loss, next, download the guide in the show notes for nutrition.
• 30:18
  Philip Pape: All right, until next time, keep using your wits lifting those weights, and remember fat loss doesn't have to be a mystery or a misery when you approach it with intelligence and strategy.
• 30:29
  Philip Pape: I'll talk to you next time here on the Wits and Weights Podcast.