Ep 9: 10 Fitness and Nutrition “Facts” I Changed My Mind About
Today I share some helpful and sometimes counterintuitive things I’ve learned over the last year about fitness and nutrition that either changed my mind or were completely new to me.
As a 40-something-year-old lifter who has only been training seriously and effectively for the last few years, I used to believe a lot of nonsense—ideas, myths, preconceptions, assumptions, whatever you want to call them—that often held me back from progress or, even worse, were counterproductive.
Chances are that you’ve heard some of these too, and it’s quite possible you’ll be surprised by some of my thoughts in this episode—or perhaps not. At the very least, I hope you’ll learn something new that will help you continue to remain skeptical, ask questions, and become even more informed on your journey to greater strength, better health, and long-term consistency.
More muscle means you can eat more
Metabolism is determined by body composition
Genetics are no excuse
Calories are the LEAST important reason to exercise
Walking has more benefits than you think
Carbs are not the enemy (they are crucial for training)
Losing weight is as "simple" as being in a caloric deficit
There are multiple ways to make objective progress
Being strong makes it easy to recover from injury or surgery
We don't know everything yet but learn new insights every day!
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Transcript
This podcast was transcribed automatically, so please forgive any errors or typos.
[00:00:00] Philip Pape: Welcome to the Wits & Weights podcast, for busy professionals who want to get strong and healthy with strength training and a sustainable diet. I’m your host, Philip Pape, and in each episode, we’ll examine strategies to help you achieve physical self-mastery through a healthy skepticism of the fitness industry, and a commitment to consistent lifting and nutrition.
[00:00:26]Welcome to episode nine of Wits & Weights. Today, I wanted to share some helpful and sometimes counter intuitive things I've learned over the last year about fitness and nutrition that either changed my mind or were completely new to me that I found.
[00:00:51] And as a 40 something year old lifter, who's only been training seriously and effectively for the last few years, I used to believe a lot of nonsense ideas, myths, preconceptions, assumptions, whatever you want to call them that often held me back from progress or even worse were counterproductive.
[00:01:11] Chances are, you've heard some of these too, and it's quite possible. You'll be surprised by some of the thoughts that I have in this episode, or perhaps not at the very least. I hope you'll learn something new that will help you continue to remain skeptical, ask questions and become even more informed on your journey to greater strength, better health and longterm consistency.
[00:01:35] Number one. Adding muscle, lets you eat more food, even in a deficit. Now this is a big one because for most of my life, when I was either sedentary or doing things like CrossFit and not really lifting and adding. It was always a struggle to maintain my weight. At least for me, I would call it a quote unquote, slow metabolism, which is not really a thing.
[00:02:04] And we'll get to that in, uh, the second item. The, the fact is that whatever my metabolism was based on my activity levels and based on my body composition, I would have to always be in a slight state of hunger to maintain my weight and definitely to lose weight. So I couldn't necessarily, at least in my mind enjoy eating without the risk of gaining weight.
[00:02:30] And if that sounds like you, the revelation I had over the past few years, when I. Singularly on strength, training and building muscle. Is that muscles and expensive tissue. You probably heard that before. It's more expensive than your other tissue. And having more of it generally increases your metabolism relative to your.
[00:02:53] Baseline. So it essentially increases your set point, but the idea is that while everyone is on the hamster wheel of cardio, trying to burn the fat off with burning calories, I was here lifting three or four days a week, which is a lot of fun. At least for me building muscle, not doing much, if any cardio not doing CrossFit anymore.
[00:03:18] And all of a sudden. I could eat more and more and more without gaining weight, or if I wanted to gain weight on purpose, I would have to even more. And then when I went into a cut last year, I had to reduce my calories, but it was reasonable. I'm five, nine, and I had to get it down to maybe 20 to 2300 calories a day, which is not starving.
[00:03:45] And before I had gained that muscle, I would have had to go much lower than that. If I were to lose any significant weight. And now that I've been in a bulk, I found that my metabolism continues to go up and up and up as I add muscle, allowing me to just eat tons of food. So the moral of the story is if you like to eat, like I do, you can eat more.
[00:04:07] If you add more. Number two, your metabolism is explained primarily by your body composition. We often talk about how metabolism is different for everybody, and it slows down as you age and men have a higher metabolism than women and all of these. Um, what I now know to be proxies of metabolism, but not direct causes.
[00:04:35] It turns out that the largest explanatory variable of a higher or lower metabolism is how much fat free mass you have. That is simply the more muscle you have, the less fat you have. So in other words, the lower body fat percentage, you have a higher metabolism. You have. If you took two individual. That were roughly the same height, same weight, but one had a significantly better body composition.
[00:05:03] That person would have a high on average, a higher metabolism. Now, if you extend that logic and say, okay, well, why do older people have slower metabolisms? It's because as you age sarcopenia and osteopenia kick in your muscles and tissue degrade waste away, whatever you want to call it. And your fat free mass declines.
[00:05:23] So your metabolism decline. Why do men have a higher metabolism than women? Well, again, all things equal. Men have a higher fat free mass they're leaner women carry more fat, just biologically. So men are going to have a higher metabolism. And what this means is that you can actually flip the switch and turn the dial and increase your metabolism simply by improving your body composition and adding muscle.
[00:05:49] Oh, that's exactly consistent with the first item I was talking about. Which brings me to number three related to these. And that is genetics are not really an excuse. Having a quote unquote, slow metabolism is not an excuse. And I know this from personal experience, but we also see this in the literature.
[00:06:09] And we see this among the population that if you engage in really any form of fitness, but especially resistance training. Eat properly, meaning to maintain a healthy weight that no matter what you are born with genetically, you can significantly improve and transform your own body. No, not everybody is going to look like the rock or Arnold or whoever your ideal physique.
[00:06:38] Of course not. There are differences between people and genetics do give you a different baseline and a different set point. But in relative terms, you can go from what you are now to a significantly improved, healthier version of yourself through your own effort. And this is liberating. Number four calories burn.
[00:07:04] Is the least important thing about exercise for many years, I came to realize that diet was definitely the most important factor in whether you gain or lose weight in general terms. But I also thought that calories burned while performing exercise was significant. And you've heard the phrase that you can't outrun a diet.
[00:07:26] That's true, but even more important than. I think lots of folks in society have gotten into their head that lots of cardio, that should be the primary form of exercise and that the more you run and the more you bike and the more you swim, the more calories you burn, that's how you stay on top of your weight gain.
[00:07:46] When in fact prioritizing cardio and not doing resistance training will send your body a signal that endurance is. And you will become more efficient, meaning your metabolism will actually decline. And you may even see reduction in muscle tissue, which is the opposite of what we want. What we instead, what are, what I talked about in number one, and number two, you build more.
[00:08:15] You drive up your metabolism. You don't have to do a crazy amount of cardio. Cardio is great. Cardio is healthy for you. There are a lot of reasons to cardio, but not as the primary driver of fitness in the context we're talking about, which is improved body composition, additional muscle ability to eat more, to eat in a healthy way to maintain a healthy weight.
[00:08:36] And therefore we don't perform exercise to burn calories. We perform exercise to lift weights and add. And to get healthy. Now having said that I'm going to contradict myself slightly with number five, and that is that while. Has so many more benefits than I realized, including the fact that if you walk regularly, you are going to burn a few more calories and those extra calories will give you a little bit of cushion in your.
[00:09:08] But that is different from doing medium or high intensity cardio on a regular basis for the sole purpose of burning calories, which then may lead to you adapting to endurance, which is counter to our goals of building muscle becoming less efficient so that we have a higher metabolism, but walking is such a great movement.
[00:09:32] I had back surgery last year, a microdiscectomy. And the best way to rehab that in the early weeks after the surgery, because I couldn't do much else was to walk now all of my life, I've not been a huge fan of walking. I've talked about this before. My wife would have to drag me out to go on a walk. I just thought it was kind of boring and a waste of time.
[00:09:56] I'd rather be, I'd rather be doing just about anything else, but. All of a sudden, it's the only thing I can do. It helped me heal. And I, all of a sudden had a new, found psychological link to the benefits of walking and I wanted to do it. And so I started to give myself a daily target of, I think it was initially 8,000, then 10,000.
[00:10:18] And currently it's 12,000 steps a day. And I think that's planning for most people. In fact, it's a little bit tough to get that if you work at home or are you work. Sedentary at a desk, you have to force yourself to either go for walks or have a treadmill, or get on a bike even, and get some steps that way at a low intensity by.
[00:10:41] But I've found that there are so many benefits to walking. One of those is it keeps you generally active. Meaning if you know, you want to get certain step amount of steps in for a day, you're going to find a way to do it. You're going to go get some vitamin D outside, go for a walk. After lunch, after dinner with your family, you're going to maybe walk around the house and pace a little bit while you're on the phone or doing work, it keeps you generally active as opposed to just sitting around all day.
[00:11:10] Second. It does burn a bunch of calories, almost you, without you realizing it, you know, several hundred more calories a day and it doesn't do so in a way that causes your body to adapt and go into the endurance mode. Walking gives you the opportunity to enjoy your surroundings, your environment. Get out into nature.
[00:11:30] You look for any excuse to walk more. You park farther from the grocery store entrance. You look for a reason to go upstairs. And then as I get older, I'm in my forties and I realized walking keeps me. It keeps the joints lubricated, so to speak. It's great for just general movement and joint health. Hey guys, I just wanted to thank you for listening to the podcast.
[00:11:56] If you find it valuable, you would be doing me a huge favor by sharing it on social media. Just take a screenshot, share it to your Instagram story or Facebook, please tag me so I can personally. And we can talk about what you found helpful and how I can improve again, an incredible thank you for supporting the podcast and enjoy the rest of the episode.
[00:12:17] Okay. The next couple items are related to nutrition. And the first one, which is this is number six, is that carbs are not the enemy. And not only that, they are crucial for training. If you're doing resistance training and trying to build. I followed low carb diets for many years from Atkins to paleo and primal, which by default are low carb because you're avoiding grains to Quito.
[00:12:48] And all of them helped me lose weight to an extent simply because I was excluding many food groups and many sources of calories, including processed foods, but none of them are sustaining. Nonetheless, I kept trying them over and over again under the mantra that carbs are somehow evil. And then when I got into serious lifting a few years ago and I had to really eat for the first time in my life, I couldn't do so.
[00:13:14] Without having some amount of carbs over 150, 200 grams a day, otherwise I'd be eating just a ton of protein and fat and nothing else. And I found that it just gave me a huge burst of energy and this is not unheard of. And some people may operate perfectly fine. Without too many carbs in their diet, but generally the, the evidence supports the idea that if you are training hard, whether you're doing endurance or heavy lifting, that you've got to have some carbs in your diet, and it doesn't have to be a massive amount, but if you're trying to shovel in 4,000 calories a day on a bulk, it's going to be meaningful.
[00:13:51] It's going to be probably. Four, maybe 500 grams of carbs. Now want to know when you're on a cut, when you're keeping your calories low and you're trying to lose weight, the carbs will naturally decline because you're keeping your protein high and you might to keep a little fat in there. And so your carbs may be down in the hundreds, which by some definitions is bordering on low carb.
[00:14:13] Anyway. So I have come to embrace carbs and they're just a macronutrient they're found in all sorts of delicious, healthy, natural foods. And it is a liberating experience to focus more on what's my target for calories and macros and not worrying that any particular macronutrient is good or bad. And that brings me to numbers.
[00:14:36] Losing weight is really as simple quote-unquote as hitting your calories, whether it is low carb, high carb, whatever, if you are training hard and you're trying to build muscle, you've got to hit your protein target no matter what, but when it comes to gaining weight or losing weight, especially losing weight, there is no magic to it.
[00:15:00] There's no special diet. I covered this in my episode, all about. All about dieting without being on a diet. That is as simple as the first law of thermal dynamics. Energy can neither be created nor destroyed. If you want to lose weight, you simply have to be in an appropriate reasonable caloric deficit and be consistent.
[00:15:24] And generally, as I always advise that does require some form of tracking. So you know how much you're eating and eventually if you get good at that, you may not need to track it. But like many of the other insights I've talked about today, this is also quite liberating because it means you don't have to be on a specific diet and restrict all sorts of foods.
[00:15:45] You can enjoy what you like, as long as it fits your calories or your macros. You're good to go. The next to number eight and nine have to do with training. Number eight, you can make progress. In multiple ways in the gym, not just with weight on the bar, although that is the best place to start when you're doing a novice linear progression, but you can also progress the number of reps with the same weight.
[00:16:15] You can even add sets, whatever you use to measure progress. Make sure it is objective and demonstrates. So, for example, I've recently started a power building type program where I do a combination of the big strength movements, the compound lifts combined with some accessories, for physic development and on the accessory movements.
[00:16:43] The progress is sometimes with. But sometimes I use different rep ranges and I keep the weight on the bar and I try to hit slightly more reps. It really depends on the type of movement. Isn't an isolation movement. Is it something heavy multi-joint and so on, but the point is, have your notebook, have your app and make sure that every week you are making.
[00:17:09] Somewhere when you initially start that's five pounds on the bar, 10 pounds on the bar, two and a half pounds on the bar, whatever it might be for the same number of reps. But as you get more advanced, you may have different schemes that rotate using periodization. You may go through different rep ranges and you may be progressing weight within a rep range, and then you reset and try to get more reps and progress the way to get, or you may progress using.
[00:17:38] And then you add a fourth set and then maybe a fifth set, and then you reset back to three sets, but with a higher weight, always make objective progress and you will eventually hit your goals. Number nine, being strong makes it easier to recover from injury or surgery. And I have personal experience here.
[00:18:03] Because of my back surgery last year, which was followed two months later by an appendectomy. And in both cases, I felt during preparing for the surgery, the surgery itself, the early recovery, and then the rehab. That I could quickly bounce back. I had the willpower to do it. The discipline, I felt strong. I felt that if I just moved and use my joints, I could quickly get back to lifting and making progress.
[00:18:33] And indeed, that is what happened. It wasn't long before I was back to heavy deadlifts, heavy squats, everything I'm doing today and it's as if it never happened, but I attribute much of that to the year and a half or two years of discipline. Efficient effective strength training that I had performed prior to those surgeries.
[00:18:57] And if you go back to, I think my second episode, which was about all about strength, we talk about the benefits of being strong and health and recovery, vitality being useful are key parts of that. And number 10, the last item on the list today, we don't know everything. We really don't, but we learned fascinating new mechanisms about how our bodies work.
[00:19:25] Every single. For example, last year I was reading the newspaper and it referred to a recent scientific article that had come out called mechanical overload, induced muscle derived, extracellular, vesicles, promote adipose tissue lipolysis. And you're asking, why am I sharing this? Well from the abstract, the authors wrote.
[00:19:48] That their findings demonstrate that skeletal muscle promotes metabolic adaptations in adipose tissue. And what it seemed to suggest is that strength training and specifically the act of actually doing the resistance training and the results shortly thereafter causes your muscle cells to release some sort of genetic material.
[00:20:10] They called it intracellular. That and this material normally suppresses hypertrophy prevents your muscles from growing. And when you work out your muscles apparently release this material and it gets transmitted through these bubbles called vesicles to your fat cells and their, they signal your fat cells to break down and release energy.
[00:20:36] Now it's just one paper of many, but it seemed to indicate that maybe there are multiple complex mechanisms for how building muscle and working out, help us burn fat things that we still don't understand. I've heard it said that muscle is an expensive tissue, but the calories burned just from the additional muscle on your body.
[00:21:00] When you gain muscle are not enough to explain the increase in metabolism you get when you start building muscle. And perhaps this is just one of the many insights into those possible mechanisms. Th the point is it's fascinating. The body is fascinating and we know lots of things anecdotally, and by the way, anecdotes are a part of gathering data and research.
[00:21:25] And we know a lot of things from the scientific literature, and we know a lot of things from repeated practical use over thousands. Millions of real life people over decades. And I think the point here is not that we need to just latch onto the latest study to say, okay, this proves this or proves that, but that we don't know everything.
[00:21:48] And so we should make the best with what we do know. And the only way as an individual to try things out is to try things out and equals one. You are your own experiment. So get in the gym, start trying. Start making progress. See what works, see what doesn't and iterate until you get something that works for you that sustainable, that helps you be consistent.
[00:22:15] And most importantly is. And that's it. 10 things I learned over the last year that changed my perspective for the better. And we'll hopefully give you some insights that make it easier to progress toward your goals.
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