How Performance Bloodwork Reveals What's Really Blocking Your Fat Loss (Constraint Theory) | Ep 378
Get your Performance Bloodwork Analysis - Use code VITALITY20 for 20% off and discover what's really constraining your progress at witsandweights.com/bloodwork
--
Stop guessing what's holding back your metabolism, fat loss, or muscle gains.
Learn how to use performance bloodwork analysis to identify your body's biggest constraint and fix it using the engineering principle of Constraint Theory.
Main Takeaways:
Your body is an engineering system limited by its weakest link
Performance bloodwork uses optimal ranges (not just "normal" disease-prevention ranges) to identify constraints
Pattern recognition reveals hidden issues that standard bloodwork misses (like being both inflamed and dehydrated)
Max impact interventions can improve 5-7 biomarkers at once instead of chasing individual symptoms
The most efficient improvement comes from using a feedback loop to identify your constraints
Episode Resources:
Performance Bloodwork Analysis - Code VITALITY20 for 20% off at witsandweights.com/bloodwork
Timestamps:
0:00 - The hidden constraint blocking your progress
2:08 - Introduction to Performance Bloodwork Analysis
2:55 - Your body as an engineering system (Constraint Theory)
7:25 - Performance vs. "normal" lab ranges
11:06 - Pattern recognition and hidden constraints missed by standard bloodwork
13:25 - How Performance Bloodwork Analysis works
16:53 - Max impact interventions and the engineering feedback loop
20:31 - Real-world application examples (fat loss, muscle growth, recovery)
29:06 - Why most people chase symptoms in circles
31:42 - Your body is a system to be optimized, not a mystery
Break Fat-Loss Plateaus by Fixing Your One Biggest Constraint
If you have been tracking, lifting, and staying “on plan” yet progress still feels like you are pushing a rope, you are probably not missing effort. You are missing the constraint that limits your entire system. Your body behaves like any engineered system with a throughput limit. Improve the bottleneck and everything else starts working better. Performance bloodwork is how we find that bottleneck quickly so you can stop guessing and start making measurable progress.
Your body is a system with a bottleneck
The Theory of Constraints says output is capped by the weakest link. In physique terms, that could be suboptimal thyroid function, chronically elevated inflammation, a micronutrient deficiency that blunts hormone production, or impaired glucose control that makes cuts feel like quicksand. You can dial training and macros perfectly, but if the constraint lives upstream in your physiology, results will stall until you resolve it.
Why performance bloodwork beats “normal” labs
Most doctor-ordered labs are designed to screen for disease. If you are not actively sick, you get a thumbs up. Normal is not the target. Optimal is. Performance analysis looks at patterns, ratios, and relationships across markers and compares them to performance ranges that align with energy, recovery, body composition, and training response.
Patterns over single markers
Albumin can look “normal” while dehydration and inflammation cancel each other out. Ferritin can be fine while transferrin saturation and CBC flags suggest poor iron availability. A TSH inside range can coexist with sluggish free T3 conversion. Patterns tell the real story.
Performance ranges that drive results
Vitamin D at 35 ng/mL is “normal,” yet many lifters feel and perform better with levels closer to 50 to 80. Testosterone inside population range can still be suboptimal for muscle retention if binding proteins and downstream ratios are off. Performance ranges translate to real-world outcomes like easier fat loss on more food and stronger training sessions.
From data to action with impact scoring
Once constraints show up in the pattern analysis, the next step is impact scoring. Not every change moves the needle equally. The goal is to choose one intervention that improves many markers at once. Strength training often ranks high, but if you are already lifting, your maximum-impact move might be sleep normalization, targeted micronutrients, or managing a hidden inflammatory load. Start with the highest-impact item, then retest and reassess.
Examples of constraints you can uncover and fix
Thyroid pattern trending low: Prioritize recovery, ensure adequate protein and iodine/selenium intake, adjust training volume to a recoverable dose, and recheck conversion markers rather than chasing more cardio.
Inflammatory pattern elevated: Address sleep quality and total stress load, shore up omega-3 intake, tighten up nutrient density, and consider elimination-and-reintroduction if food triggers are suspected.
Low vitamin D with soft androgen profile: Sensible sunlight where possible and an appropriate D3+K2 supplement, then recheck. Improving D often moves multiple systems at once.
Glucose control wobbly: Front-load protein, place carbs around training, walk daily, and lift consistently to improve insulin sensitivity.
Hydration versus inflammation “masking”: Use electrolytes, set a daily fluid target, and reassess markers that were likely offset.
Build the engineering loop
Test. Identify the immediate constraint. Apply a targeted intervention. Retest. Repeat. This is the same control-loop thinking we use in engineering: change one variable, confirm the effect, move to the next constraint. Over time the system gets cleaner, more resilient, and more predictable. Fat loss gets steadier on higher calories. Muscle gain responds better to the same training stimulus. You feel the difference before you even see it on the chart.
Who benefits most right now
You are stuck on the scale or in the gym despite consistent logging and lifting
Your recovery feels “okay,” yet energy and focus dip in the afternoon
Biofeedback suggests stress is winning even though sleep looks decent
You have done “all the basics” and want objective data to guide the next move
How my Performance Bloodwork Analysis works
I use a performance platform that runs thousands of calculations on your panel and compares patterns to performance ranges, not just disease screens. You get a personalized plan that prioritizes maximum-impact interventions across lifestyle, training, and nutrition, plus access to your dashboard so you can dig into the data yourself. We accept HSA and FSA, and you can upload recent labs to save time and money if you already have them.
What you get
A constraint map that explains what is limiting progress right now
A ranked action list so you start with the single highest-impact fix
Clear nutrition, recovery, and training adjustments you can implement this week
A retest cadence so you can verify that the constraint was removed
If you are ready to stop guessing and start optimizing, check out Performance Bloodwork Analysis at witsandweights.com/bloodwork and use code VITALITY20 for listeners. Identify the constraint, apply the fix, and watch the entire system improve.
Have you followed the podcast?
Get notified of new episodes. Listen on Apple, Spotify, or all other platforms.
Then hit “Follow” and you’re good to go!
Transcript
Philip Pape: 0:01
If you've hit a plateau in fat loss or gaining muscle, the problem isn't always training harder or eating less. It could be a hidden constraint in your physiology that no amount of willpower can overcome. Today, I'm showing you how to use performance blood work to identify and fix the one thing that's actually holding you back. You'll learn why your body is a system that has a weakest link, how to find that constraint using blood markers, and the exact process I use to prioritize interventions that move multiple systems at once. Most people chase symptoms while ignoring the root cause, but by the end of this episode, you'll know exactly where to focus your efforts for maximum impact. Welcome to Wits and Weights, the show that helps you build a strong, healthy physique using evidence, engineering and efficiency. I'm your host, certified nutrition coach, philip Pape, and today we're talking about something that could change how you approach your plateaus when you hit a wall with your fat loss, with your muscle gain, even with your health and fitness. Before we continue, though, I do wanna share some recent client testimonials from Inside Physique University. The first one is from Nadine. She says the program has helped me reframe how I look at weight loss. Instead of fighting the process and suffering through it. I am embracing it with less judgment each day, thank you. And then Michelle says I feel strong, seeing a lot of muscle, got PRs every lifting day. The biggest win is that I finally feel more in control. My AC1 is back in the normal low range. And then the last one I wanted to share is more about education. Catherine said I learned how much I love learning, is back in the normal low range. And then the last one I wanted to share is more about education. Catherine said I learned how much I love learning. It has become some time since I had the opportunity to take the time to learn something outside my profession as well as reinforce what I learned through my profession. As always, I thank the and I'm grateful for everyone who has submitted a question, a testimonial, a review, anything like that. That motivates me to continue creating this content for you.
Philip Pape: 2:08
All right, so we're gonna get into blood work analysis soon, but of course, before we do, I do wanna mention that I am offering a performance blood work analysis now, which is a service that uses advanced pattern recognition and performance ranges again, performance ranges, not sick care ranges, not disease ranges, but optimal ranges to identify your biggest constraints and create targeted intervention plans. If you want to learn more about how this could help you break through those plateaus, click the link in my show notes or go to witsandweightscom slash bloodwork. That's witsandweightscom slash bloodwork for performance bloodwork analysis. All right, let's talk about what your body does and why. I believe that we can look at it in terms of constraints, and let me start with a question that might change things for you.
Philip Pape: 2:55
What if your physiology works like a system? Okay, if that is the premise, and if you think like an engineer, we have something called the theory of constraints, where any system, whether it's a manufacturing line, a computer network and, of course, your body, which is a great analogy or metaphor for a system it's only going to perform to the level of its most limiting factor. That's like a bottleneck. That is your weakest link. Remember that. Show back man, it might be the 90s by now. You are the weakest link, goodbye. So that's going to determine your physical ceiling right now, and those weakest links can evolve over time, and it's not always the same thing. Think about it this way you could have perfect training, you could have your nutrition all dialed in, you could have optimal sleep, but if your thyroid function is physically compromised it's, you know, physiologically compromised then your metabolic rate is going to be much lower than it could be and your fat loss is going to stall. And you're going to wonder what the heck am I doing wrong, when it's not anything you're doing wrong. It's your thyroid. Now you could be eating enough protein, lifting consistently. But if you have chronic inflammation right, which is indicated by your inflammatory markers in your blood, if that is tanking and feeding back to your recovery, you're feeling sluggish, fatigued, tired. Your muscle growth is going to hit a massive wall because that affects muscle protein synthesis. Your body doesn't want to build muscle when it's being highly stressed and inflamed.
Philip Pape: 4:19
A lot of you out there are trying to optimize everything at once and this is one of the biggest problems I see when people listen to the podcast and they want to take action. I love action takers. The problem is you try to change everything. Not only does that create potential potential all in one. What am I trying to say? All or nothing thinking, or it's very hard to do that. It might also prevent you from identifying where you truly need to focus, if that makes sense. You're putting the cart before the horse. You're fixing 10 things when you might need to fix one and that'll give you 90% of the results. And then that's more efficient and less stressful on you and your body and your mind. So you might be adding more cardio and cutting calories, going to a calorie deficit right away, adding new supplements, creatine, switching programs around right, and people are like well, I know what to do. I listen to Winston Wade, so I'm going to do it all right now.
Philip Pape: 5:07
But if the real constraint is something like low vitamin D that's affecting your hormones, let's say, a lot of these surface level changes are going to hit walls rather quickly and you're not going to know why. And that is why I'm a big fan now of blood not now, but blood work has always been something on the periphery of what I've talked about and done with clients and I finally decided to take the plunge and say let's get this into the system itself of the tracking and measuring in the before and after, because blood work isn't, it's not just a useful tool, it's actually essential because it can tell you things that are your constraints, that have nothing to do with the lifestyle and behavior. Right, and this goes for hormones as well. You've heard me talk to hormone experts a lot of times on the show, like Karen Martell and others, and we say how, even if your lifestyle is fully in check, something could be off, genetically or physically, due to age, due to, you know, hormonal decline. Whatever that you have to address or else you're not going to get the full results. You're going to feel frustrated.
Philip Pape: 6:09
Now, most blood work that you get through a doctor or through even through a clinic is going to be the, you know, let's check to see if you're dying right now blood work and if it's in the, if you're not, if it's in the quote, unquote normal range, you're good. Right? We know there's controversies here with hormones, right? Testosterone oh, if your testosterone is between, you know, 250 and a thousand, you're good. When we know, in reality, you know, optimal testosterone is up in the, you know, at least four or five hundreds for most men, if not higher, depending on the individual.
Philip Pape: 6:37
And so we talk about sick ranges or disease ranges, or normal population ranges versus performance, or optimal ranges, or normal population ranges versus performance, or optimal ranges, and those are based on looking at your physiology, not as a bunch of separate data points and markers in your blood, but how everything works together at the system level. We're going to get into that a little more so you know what I mean. Because, again, going to your doctor and getting a lab for your physical is not going to tell you that, it's just going to tell you each marker and where it stands. Working with a functional doctor may get you a little closer to that, but even then, a lot of times they are missing out on a lot of the things that require machine learning and AI and lots of studies and lots of research to kind of pull together, and an individual in the functional space may not have all of that. And so this is where I'm going with the labs and the blood work.
Philip Pape: 7:25
Standard lab ranges were designed for one thing catching disease. If you're not actively dying, you're normal right. But normal doesn't mean optimal. So performance ranges identify where you need to be for peak function, for thriving, for doing your best, for not hitting those walls right. I mentioned vitamin D. It might be normal at 35 nanograms per milliliter, but for optimal hormone production and muscle protein synthesis you might want it higher, between, say, 50 to 80. Your thyroid right, that's a big one.
Philip Pape: 7:56
Today Everybody's concerned about their thyroid, and for good reason. Your thyroid markers might all fall within range individually, but when you look at it as a pattern or as ratios right and again, some functional doctors do this quite well when it comes to hormones you have to look at multiple biomarkers, how they connect together, and then you can spot suboptimal function before it becomes a clinical problem. And that's the key before it becomes a problem. So even if we are concerned about sickness and disease, why wait till you have all these symptoms and things are just feeling terrible in your 50s or 60s or 70s, when you could get way ahead of the issue? And that's where most people get stuck. Their blood work looks fine, the doctor says you're good, they're relying purely on the healthcare industry, but then they might have symptoms. They healthcare industry, but then they might have symptoms. They might feel terrible, or they simply might not be making progress. Like your metabolism is not as high as you think it should be, or it drops fast when you go into fat loss phase, or there's some other dysfunction. You know having to do with various symptoms.
Philip Pape: 8:57
So the performance approach is it uses what's called impact scoring. So instead of flagging high or low markers like you would in a normal blood test, it's going to identify the interventions that are going to move the needle, the most kind of like your low-hanging fruit on multiple systems simultaneously. Let me put it a different way it's going to identify that if you fix this one thing here, it's going to fix these five different areas of your physiology over here. Now that's powerful. You don't get that in a normal blood pattern and even in many functional workups right. Most functional workups go like one degree or two degrees in, but they don't necessarily connect you know five or six different, seemingly unrelated blood markers to a pattern where they might have a common root cause.
Philip Pape: 9:48
And hasn't that always bothered you Like those of you listening, not in your head? Think about it. Hasn't it bothered you that we have all these separate blood markers and we get the result and we have them in our loaded in our app, or we go to quest or lab corp or whatever. You look at the result and you have to, like, start Googling what these all mean and still it doesn't make sense. You're like, okay, my erythrocyte pattern is high and my you know albumin is low. How does it all connect Right? And so this is this is the next thing I want to talk about is these hidden constraints that standard blood work misses. That we're going to address. We're going to address that. So, individual markers again, they tell you part of the story. Patterns are what tell you the actual story, the whole story. So I'll give you an example.
Philip Pape: 10:28
I mentioned albumin. Albumin is a protein made by your liver, but it's also what we call an acute phase reactant. So when you have inflammation, albumin gets pulled down. When you're dehydrated, albumin gets pushed up. Well, what? If you are both inflamed and dehydrated, the markers are going to cancel each other out. Albumin will come back normal, even though you have two significant constraints affecting your recovery, your performance, your body composition. This is why pattern analysis changes the game here.
Philip Pape: 11:06
Every blood panel, when it comes to performance analysis, what we are doing now in partnership with Vitality Blueprint, undergoes thousands of calculations that are looking at the relationships between the biomarkers, not just the individual values. Somebody asked me hey, when I sent them information on the blood work analysis, because they were wondering what was some things weren't feeling well for their energy, for their sleep and also for their metabolism. That used to be working fine. And they say you know, I already get blood work and work at a functional doctor and I get like 80, 90, 100 different blood markers. But those blood markers are being looked at in isolation and I said, well, are you able to spot the clues that are invisible to those based on the relationships between the biomarkers? They're like no, I didn't know that even existed.
Philip Pape: 11:55
So the platform that I use runs over 20,000 calculations on top of 4,000 scientific references for every single blood draw. So when you get a blood draw and I've done it myself for me, I did the standard version of this, which is 85 plus markers, which was like five vials it was three big vials and two small vials and the phlebotomist was really good, very experienced, simple pinch in and out. It was good. But I've done this myself and, based on the 20,000 calculations and the 4,000 references, you're looking at biomarker ratios, you're looking at calculations, multi, multi-factor patterns, and you're trying to find the hidden constraints. So really, this all is about constraints and that's the level of analysis that I provide through our new performance blood work analysis, which I'm so excited to bring to you guys because I'm again, I'm doing it myself. It's, it's incredible.
Philip Pape: 12:38
You get a comprehensive performance plan that I put together for you based on what the data is telling me, and this is not just me figuring it out. This is built on a system that has already done all the heavy lifting, the calculations and the patterns that I mentioned, and then what I'm able to do is take a smaller choice set of interventions for you and, with my you know nutrition coaching hat on, identify the most effective ones that are going to give you the widest distribution of fixes and improvements in your constraints, and so that's a targeted plan that has lifestyle nutrition supplements. All that and you know, wink wink. I like to supplement that with some extra recommendations that you wouldn't even get from anyone else using this platform. So if you want to do that, witsandweightscom slash bloodwork, at least check out what it's about.
Philip Pape: 13:25
We just launched this. We have a couple of different plans. There's a higher elite plan that has way more blood markers, but that's more for elite athletes. I would say that most people are going to be fine with the standard plan with 85 markers. We do take HSA and FSA payments, but it is out of pocket versus it's not covered by insurance. So cause again, this is not a healthcare service. This is performance blood work analysis. There are medical professionals who actually look at your data and if there's anything out of range from a, from a, a what am I trying to say? A health or medical perspective? Uh, they will intervene cause. That is outside my scope of practice, but you can go to witsandweightscom slash bloodwork for that performance bloodwork analysis.
Philip Pape: 14:05
All right, so I want to talk about these interventions and how this all works, because once you identify the constraints, you have to address them efficiently, and this is where the impact scoring is important. I mentioned impact scoring before. Not every intervention is created equal, right, some changes are going to improve one thing, others, like strength training. All right, spoiler alert strength training is probably at the almost, if not, top of the list for improving blood markers in general. But, of course, if you're already doing that many of you are you're already lifting weights. Well, that may not move the needle at all for you because you're already doing it. But by definition, you know some other mark, some other intervention over here that you hadn't even considered, like, say, a nutrient deficiency, might improve five, six, seven markers, and you didn't even realize that would happen because of the cascade and the relationships. Right, the cascading impact Built on Vitality Blueprint, which is from Dr Andy Galpin, and it's in association with him and a few others it uses.
Philip Pape: 15:08
It grades every recommendation as accurate medium, high or maximum impact, based on how many markers it addresses in your specific case, based on your blood work. So I'm able to use that to even further optimize your performance plan. And, by the way, this is not coaching or anything. I mean. It is coaching in a sense that I'm giving you a plan to act on, but it's not like an ongoing coaching contract or anything like that. It's a one-time thing. Obviously, we could do a before and after or we can talk about an ongoing thing if you need it, but it's a one-time thing. So if you are, for example, busy, if you're a busy person, like many of you are, you don't have a lot of time and I give you your plan and it says okay, here are the six interventions that make the biggest impact. If you listen to this podcast, you know I don't want you to go out and do all six tomorrow. I want you to focus on the maximum one first, which is your biggest immediate constraint.
Philip Pape: 16:00
Now, if you're motivated to optimize everything which I hope you are you can slowly work through the full list and you know that you're prioritizing correctly and that at any point you can get a follow-up blood panel to see how much you've moved the needle in each of those and, by the way, you will move the needle. And how do I know that confidently? Because, again, the interventions are based on decades of established science, which there's a lot of science when it comes to blood markers. It's a much more objective, empirical type of research than a lot of the other things that we hang our hats on in the fitness industry, and you're going to hear a conversation coming up with Dr Eric Helms where we talk about how you evaluate all of these things. So I'm very, very confident in the use of blood markers. I'm less confident in the use of, for example, genetics, right, because that's a little more ambiguous today given the state of the science. But blood markers are pretty solid.
Philip Pape: 16:53
So you can prioritize your list and then you create what I call the engineering feedback loop, right? The test. Identify the constraint. Apply a targeted intervention, retest, identify the next constraint. Now you don't you know if the constraint takes you three weeks to implement. You're not going to just wait for months, get blood work before going to the next constraint, necessarily, although for some people who are super into this and have a lot of things they want to work on. You could get blood panels, say, every three months or so. That's probably enough time to go by. Many, many people, myself included, are going to do it like semi annually or maybe even once a year.
Philip Pape: 17:30
And remember, this is totally different than your what do you call it? Physical labs. However, however, I do want to mention this If you go to winstonweightscom slash bloodwork, you'll see a plan that will save you some money if you already have labs that you could upload. If they're recent labs, you could actually upload them and actually save money. But if you don't have them, the plan includes the script and the instructions for the blood draw and how to schedule the blood draw through one of a couple very common labs that are near everybody. I'm not going to name names here, but you'll find out if you go ahead and sign up. You know when I got my blood work, I went 15 minutes away on a Monday morning and got it done at a lab corp nearby. So we want this loop of continuous improvement.
Philip Pape: 18:13
You test, you identify the constraint, apply the intervention, retest, identify the next constraint. It's the one variable at a time philosophy. Now, of course, if you go ahead and you apply multiple interventions at once. Well, good on you. It is probably going to speed up the process in some ways, but it's going to maybe muddy a little bit, like what you did versus what the outcome was.
Philip Pape: 18:33
But for many of you are like I don't care, I just need to improve my lifestyle and I'm going to go ahead and do these things and if my blood work looks great next time, great, I've done it. If not, you can drill down from there. So as you fix one constraint, the cool thing is another constraint is going to emerge. So if you fix a constraint that was connected to six biomarkers and then you get follow-up blood work and three of those six biomarkers are now cool or they're good, they're optimal, and the other three are not, what's going to happen is the new analysis is going to now pick a different constraint that's affecting those three. So you can definitely have multifactorial issues in your body. In fact, most people who are not living an optimal lifestyle are having multiple causes, affect multiple results, and that's where it gets so confusing. So if we can figure out the likely causes, address those and then reduce what's left, that's going to help you make a lot of progress because you're systematically removing the bottlenecks that limit your performance.
Philip Pape: 19:32
Very, very important and powerful way to do this using something so objective at blood work, which seems like magic, but it's really just looking at everything that is in your body right now, signaling and screaming as to what is happening. All right, now let me walk you through how this works with some examples in practice. Let's say you have a fat loss plateau, you're trying to lose weight, you're trying to lose fat and let's say you're strength training. Okay, if you're not even strength training, I can tell you right now don't waste your money on the blood work and start lifting weights for about I don't know six weeks and then get the blood work. Like, I don't want your money if you're not lifting weights, cause, right there, that that kind of is a high signal among the noise. If you will right, I think I'm going to do a whole episode about how, like, not lifting weights is the worst thing for your health. It just really is. It's way up there. Let's just put it that way. So how does this work? If you have a fat loss plateau?
Philip Pape: 20:31
A lot of people think it's really that you're just not eating enough, or you're not eating few enough calories. You're not in a big enough deficit, right? That's what a lot of fit fluencers will say oh it's you probably just don't know you're eating more than you think. You got to track your food you got, okay. Yeah, the basic principle is if you're not even tracking, if you don't know how much you're eating, why are you even in fat loss If you can't induce the proper deficit? Okay, right now, with this discussion, you want to go back to the basics of track your food, use macro factor, identify where your metabolism is, go into the proper deficit at the proper intake you know, see what happens and then you'll. You'll have already eliminated one constraint, but most people think it's about calories or moving Like they're not moving enough. Even if you've heard me talk over and over again how you can lose weight and you can lose fat successfully lifting weights and walking, with no other cardio, many of you are going to want to incorporate some strategic cardio.
Philip Pape: 21:24
But if your blood work shows your thyroid markers trending quite low and your inflammation is elevated, the constraint is it's not about the energy balance per se, it's about the metabolism side, which is part of energy balance, for sure, but you're not being as efficient. We literally just talked about this on the last episode about recovery, and we do know that thyroid declines in a fat loss phase no matter what. So it's not a bad thing in and of itself. But if your thyroid has tanked a lot which again, I have some clients who came to me with much lower thyroid Even when they go on medication and they bring it up, they want to improve the lifestyle and then they can reduce or potentially go off that medication.
Philip Pape: 22:06
So if your inflammation is high, if your thyroid is low and there's a way to address that besides the strength training, which again is a very important way to do it strength training, which again is a very important way to do it the intervention might be you're doing too much and you need to tone it down and find a way to reduce that stress right and get more sleep. I don't know, it's going to depend on, again, you, your individual intake and your blood work, but I'm going to be able to identify the very things that might help you reverse that. Now, of course, not dieting is always going to increase in general increase your thyroid, naturally, but then you're not going to get the fat loss you want. So we want to be able to do it in a healthy way, so that the fat loss resumes, without you having to go cut calories way low or to feel like you have to move a whole bunch more, which you shouldn't.
Philip Pape: 22:52
Growth like muscle gain, and I don't just mean a calorie surplus, I mean just in general, gaining muscle. You may be doing that as a body recomp, where you're trying to build muscle and lose fat at the same time, something we help a lot of people with. If you go to Physique University and check out what we're about, go to physiquewitsandweightscom, you'll see that you know that is what we are targeting. We're trying to help you learn to build muscle the right way while losing fat, and for many of you, that means not doing a calorie deficit and getting all the negative consequences that come with that. For some of you, though, you want to go the extra mile and go into a surplus and build muscle.
Philip Pape: 23:25
Either way, your strength training is a necessity. It's dialed in. You've got to be eating sufficient protein right, and again, if you come to me for blood work analysis, I'm going to want to know what you're already doing right now, to see if there isn't just an easy low-hanging fruit to the point where I might convince you not even to do blood work just yet, like I mentioned earlier, and just deal with a couple of these things first. But it doesn't hurt to do them both at the same time. It's fine, because you still may have some issue you want to address. Now let's say you get your blood work and your testosterone is suboptimal and your vitamin D is really really low. Well, the constraint here is probably not the training stimulus. It may not even be your nutrition, other than the vitamin D piece, which is kind of a debate of how much can you address that through nutrition and through sunlight exposure versus supplementation?
Philip Pape: 24:16
I personally supplement vitamin D. I live in the North. I don't get nearly as much sun as I would like, especially in the winter. I'm a white guy, favorite pale skin. All of those factors hit against me and my vitamin D was low, and so I supplement with vitamin D. I take what is it? I take 10, 5,000 IU a day. I think yeah. So it's a moderate amount, it's not super high, it's not super low and when I get my blood checked, vitamin D is right in the range it needs to be, you know the optimal range, not just the non-sick range.
Philip Pape: 24:44
So if your hormonal environment for muscle growth is stunted due to a lot of factors like your hormones, with testosterone, but also the vitamin D, which is technically a hormone. I don't know if a lot of people realize that then addressing these is going to translate into the muscle gain you want, because it's just going to jack up the pun intended, jack up the efficiency of what you're trying to do. There's so many little things besides your movement and your training and your sleep and your recovery in your blood that can tell us that you don't have the right environment for muscle growth, regardless of whether you're in a surplus, just in general. And then you could be frustrated because you, you know you do deficits. Then you get out of a deficit, you maintain and you're in the gym, but things are not progressing like you expect.
Philip Pape: 25:26
What about energy and recovery? Okay, our last episode talked about recovery and let's say you're doing all the things. I know people are like I sleep eight hours, I'm well-rested, or I feel generally well-rested through my sleep, but then I feel sluggish in the gym or throughout the day my energy crashes or I feel like just my overall recovery isn't where it needs to be and you do your blood work and the inflammatory markers are high. Okay, there's specific markers of inflammation in your blood that tell us that your cells are high. Okay, there's, there's specific markers of inflammation in your blood that tell us that your cells are stressed. We're not talking about the boogie word inflammation in the fitness industry. That's meaningless. We're talking about measurable, objective inflammation markers. And let's say they're really high.
Philip Pape: 26:08
Right, I have an autoimmune condition, so if I weren't treating it, my inflammatory markers start to shoot way up. Well, I know that that's what I have, so I treat it and therefore my inflammatory markers are just a little bit on the high end, but manageable, right, and you might have these higher than you realize, not even due to a condition, but just because, for example, your micronutrients are deficient. I mean, a lot of it does come down to that People aren't eating quality enough food and they're probably not supplementing, and all of a sudden, you have some of these issues, and so it may not be your sleep, it's the quality of your recovery, because it's held back by the inflammation in your body and the gaps in your nutrition, and then, once you fix those, the sleep now becomes a huge complement to what you're trying to do and it makes sense to, you know, makes you more rested and recovered. So this is also, by the way, why adherence matters so much. Let me explain what I mean. Adherence meaning sticking with and being consistent with your lifestyle plan, you know, your training, your nutrition, all of those things. Not perfectly, but just being consistent.
Philip Pape: 27:12
Well, the system here, your body and your multiple blood markers, as they relate to each other, will provide multiple pathways to address each constraint. I mentioned this earlier. It's not as easy as okay. These five things are a problem in your blood work. Therefore, here's your one root cause. No, it's. These five things are a problem. You have three potential root causes that could overlap with those five things. Which one is the most likely? Let's address that Now. Once you address it, maybe you still have one of those five things. That's an issue. That's what I mean is there's multiple pathways to address each and then there's multiple causes of each pathway. If you know what I mean, like it goes both ways. So if you and I guess the power of all of that as well is that you have multiple choices you can make based on what you can achieve, what's doable, what's in your budget, you know those sorts of things where I'm not going to be the guy that says don't make excuses, do this.
Philip Pape: 28:12
It's more like, hey, there could be three things that are going to be helpful. Let's start with the one that's the most accessible to you. That helps with your adherence as well. You know, if you prefer lifestyle changes, there are lifestyle solutions. If supplements are convenient, I'm not going to knock you for that. I mean, magnesium is something I tell everybody to take, right? I just pretty much do only because everybody's deficient in it. So why not? And maybe you're not, maybe you're not. But supplements can be convenient. They're not a shortcut, but they can definitely help with things like nutrient deficiencies. And then, of course, nutrition. There's so many dietary interventions that you can do for nutrition. Some of them are more extreme than others, and I say that not from the lens of don't do restrictive diets for fat loss, but from the lens of you may need to eliminate some things, to identify a root cause before you add those foods back. You know what I mean. So there's lots of ways to get to it.
Philip Pape: 29:06
And then the most powerful part of all of this is what happens over time. A lot of people are just chasing symptoms. They're going in circles. You know they have low energy so they fix it with more caffeine or a stimulant and that just is a band-aid. They have poor recovery, so they just think, okay, instead of working five days a week, I'm going to work out three days a week. And they find it didn't really help, or the fat loss is slowing down. So people do all sorts of things for that. The simple things people try are just more cardio or cutting calories, but they also might try fat burners or, let's be honest, the GLP-1 weight loss drugs, which I've talked to. Some amazing people lately, including Jamie Seltzer was on the show recently. He was our last interview about how powerful and beneficial of a tool that is for some people.
Philip Pape: 29:52
But my point is people will chase a fix for something without fixing the root cause and, like Jamie did, address the root cause right, his root cause. Well, one root cause was food noise, which the GLP-1 helped, but then the other root causes where he wasn't moving, he wasn't lifting weights, he wasn't doing something sustainable. Now he has all those in place, so he's good to go. So when you can identify and address your constraints, your biggest immediate constraint, okay, you are going to create the upward spiral, right, there's that term again for positive psychology an upward spiral, because you're going to fix one thing and it's going to boom, boom, boom like whack-a-mole, but it's going to knock some things out and those moles never come up. And then there's two moles left. Now you boom, boom, get Like.
Philip Pape: 30:40
Lifting weights is the first big one. That's going to help a lot of these other things. Better hormone function is going to improve your recovery. Better recovery is going to improve how you adapt to your training and build muscle. And then better training and adaptation gives you what Adaptation sorry, I'm slurring my words gives you what Improved physique and body composition and health, which is all you want. Because what does that do? It gives you more confidence and it helps. You want to do this for the rest of your life because it's fun and helps you look good and feel good, and that is what we all want, isn't it All right?
Philip Pape: 31:11
You're going to stop fighting your physiology and just optimize it a piece at a time, but with some clarity and confidence, which I know a lot of us are lacking and we don't know what to do. I get it. That's why you're listening to this show. Instead of being reactive, you're going to be proactive. Instead of guessing and, I'll say, blindly experimenting, you're going to measure and then intentionally experiment. Instead of the classic phrase spinning your wheels, you're going to actually have progress. Systematic progress is the way I like to think it, one thing at a time.
Philip Pape: 31:42
The constraint theory approach we're talking about today treats your body as a system that can be finely tuned, where all the components support all the other components, and that's when these breakthrough results that you might be seeing other people get and you're not. Therefore, you are going to become inevitable. Instead of accidental, blind luck or never, and I think we want that to be the case. We want to be intentional guys. We want to make it happen through our choices. It doesn't have to be super difficult, though, and it can be done with confidence. Right, your body is not.
Philip Pape: 32:16
I don't want to think of your body as a mystery to be solved through trial and error. Now, I might have used that analogy here and there, but it's not a mystery. It's actually something that can be fairly well understood. You don't have to understand everything. I'll give you an example. You don't have to understand all the things happening inside your body that cause you to burn calories. You just need to know that when I eat this much and my body weight changes like this, I must be burning this. It's a black box approach.
Philip Pape: 32:45
I don't know if I've talked about that term, the idea that you can simplify or use a proxy for what's happening in your body. Well, I'm going to break that rule a little bit and say that blood work is actually a very precise, objective way to measure what is going on in your body. The problem is, even then, it doesn't really tell you how it got there unless you look at multiple blood markers, look at the patterns and the relationships, use all of this data and machine learning that Vitality has already put into it Only company I'm aware of that has done it like that so far and then you can abstract it up to the level of, okay, five issues, potential issues, because of these 10 markers in my blood telling me something. Now I can focus my efforts right, I can optimize, I can measure and have a targeted intervention.
Philip Pape: 33:34
And the difference between people who break through the plateaus and those who stay stuck, it's not their willpower, commitment or discipline or genetics. It's identifying and addressing the right constraints at the right time. The right constraints at the right time. So stop guessing. Stop working with coaches who want you to try this and then try that, and then try this, and you go months and months and then you're frustrated and you don't even get anywhere near the result you're looking for. Right, stop trying to do it on your own, blindly.
Philip Pape: 34:04
You know, even if you are doing a lot of what we talk about here, which is okay I'm lifting, I'm training, I'm tracking my food, I'm tracking my biofeedback that's not necessarily everything. You want to measure all the things that will tell you what you need. Not necessarily to the level of biohacking where it's like two and three degrees of measurement that don't really matter, but at the very basic level, which blood work is an important part of. That is what I've finally come around to realize. That's why I'm doing this myself with clients, with anybody who wants to do it, and then you can get the results you've been working for, knowing there aren't any other constraints going on, because you've objectively measured it right.
Philip Pape: 34:42
So if you want to find out what is constraining your progress right now at the physiological level, I'm offering performance blood work analysis with this comprehensive performance plan, personalized interventions that I put together for you. I'm also going to give you full access to the platform yourself, because you guys are like me. You want to nerd out and go in and look at all the data and graphs, you want to see how everything connects, and that's going to give you the power to even put together your own plan. That's different than the one that I put together for you, but you get both, and so that's that's my gift to you, to say I want you to have all the power of the tool possible. So, wits and weights listeners, get 20% off the public price with the code vitality20. This is the only place you're going to hear that, okay, in the show notes and here Vitality20,.
Philip Pape: 35:30
Go to whitsandweightscom slash bloodwork and use code vitality20, you know, because it's not the cheapest thing, right, like getting blood work, getting the labs, getting the performance and analysis, all that. It isn't, you know, the cheapest thing in the world. I get it Right, but it's the amount that it's going to save you down the road, because you're going to know what to do is pretty much priceless, and I'm trying to make it more accessible. So, for those of you who listen to the podcast, I'm giving you this code vitality 20,. Go to Winston weightscom slash blood work or click the link, It'll be in the show notes and let's identify your constraints so you can break through the plateaus, and I could just see you soaring in the future and getting that result that you want, whether it's fat loss, building muscle, improving your health and blood markers. All of it, all right. Until next time, keep using your wits, lifting those weights, and remember your body is a system waiting to be optimized. I'll talk to you next time here on the Wits and Weights podcast.
