This episode from my appearance on Paul Hanton’s podcast, The Healthy Fit Life, for the episode “Avoiding Common Issues with Sustainable Fat Loss.”
 
Paul interviewed me about body composition, body fat overshooting, the difference between weight loss and fat loss, what happens when we lose weight, mistakes people make during weight loss, and what we can do instead for a more sustainable approach while still getting results.
 
If you feel like you’ve put in effort to improve your health and fitness but aren’t getting results, I’d like to invite you to apply for my one-on-one coaching program to get the body you desire, lose fat, build muscle, and make real progress.

We’ll work together to examine everything you’re doing and NOT doing to figure out what’s missing so you can look better, perform better, and feel better. Just go to witsandweights.com/coaching to learn about my program and apply today.

Thanks for listening and enjoy our conversation about body composition!   

Topics discussed in this episode:

• What is body composition?

• What is body fat overshooting?

• The difference between weight loss and fat loss

• What happens to your body when losing weight

• Mistakes people make when trying to lose weight

• Strategies for a more sustainable approach to weight loss

RELATED LINKS

• Subscribe to The Healthy Fit Life podcast

• Find Paul on Instagram

• Find Paul on TikTok

🎙️ ABOUT THE SHOW
At Wits & Weights, we help you achieve optimal health that fits your lifestyle—without excessive dieting, cardio, or food restrictions. Philip Pape, podcast host and head nutrition coach, helps high-achieving people burn fat, get lean, feel energized, and project confidence in their lives through one-on-one nutrition and lifestyle coaching at witsandweights.com.

• 👉 Just go to witsandweights.com/coaching to connect with me.

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Transcript

Philip Pape  00:08

Welcome to the Wits & Weights podcast, where we discuss getting strong and healthy with strength training and sustainable nutrition. I'm your host, Philip pape, and in each episode, we examine strategies to help you achieve physical self mastery through a healthy skepticism of the fitness industry, and a commitment to consistent nutrition and training for sustainable results.

 

Philip Pape  00:31

Welcome to another episode of Wits & Weights. This episode is from my appearance on Paul Hinton's podcast, the healthy fit life for the episode avoiding common issues with sustainable fat loss. Paul interviewed me about body composition, body fat overshooting the difference between weight loss and fat loss. What happens when we lose weight mistakes people make during weight loss and what we can do instead for a more sustainable approach while still getting results. The last thing I want to mention is that if you feel like you've put in effort to improve your health and fitness, but are not getting results, I'd like to invite you to apply for my one on one coaching program. To get the body you desire, lose fat, build muscle and make real progress. We'll work together to examine everything you're doing and not doing to figure out what's missing. So you can look better perform better and feel better. Just go to wits & weights.com/coaching. To learn about my program, and apply today, or click the link in the show notes. Thanks for listening and enjoy our conversation about body composition.

 

Paul Hanton  01:39

Hey, and welcome to The Healthy Fit Life podcast. I'm your host Paul Hanton. Today we'll be talking to Philip Pape, a certified nutrition coach, mindset specialists and hosts of the weights and wits podcast, we'll be discussing how to avoid body fat overshooting for sustainable fat loss. And if you're a fan of the show, please do remember to subscribe so you don't miss any episodes. And we leave a review if you enjoy listening. So Philip, how you doing today? I'm doing great, Paul. Thanks for having me on the show. Yeah, thanks for coming on the show. So I'm really excited to talk about this thing something that while people can learn more about so an intro mention body fat overshooting for sustainable fat loss. So I think it's a really good place to start. What is body fat overshooting?

 

Philip Pape  02:24

Yeah, body fat overshooting is a concept that I think if if more people really understood it, it's probably the crux of many of the issues people have getting results. And I think the The term was coined by Layne Norton in fat loss forever years ago. And it's been used many times. But in a nutshell, it's the idea that every time we diet, we lose fat, but we also lose some muscle right there, there are a bunch of side effects that come along with that, that we can get into detail on that then cause us to want to eat, eat the weight right back and then some and overshoot the original body fat level that we had. And there's a sobering statistic that at least 1/3 and up to two thirds of people regain the weight they lose within a year and up to 95% will regain that within five years. Wow. Yeah. That's, that's crazy. That's kind of puts it in perspective, right? If you have some sort of goal, especially when it comes to fat loss,

 

Paul Hanton  03:26

like this one, get 33% chance of getting it back within a year. And then the vast majority people sound like they gain it back within five years.

 

Philip Pape  03:34

Yeah, it's it's and it actually is even more insidious than that. Right? Because we're gonna get into the body composition outcome of all of this. It's not just about weight. It's it's really about fat and body composition and overall health.

 

Paul Hanton  03:47

Yeah, and that's a good segue. So why people use weight loss, fat loss interchangeably. And, you know, I think I've been guilty of that myself a handful of times, sometimes it's easier just to generalize a weight loss. But what is it between fat loss and weight loss?

 

Philip Pape  04:06

Yeah, I think the the fitness industry and the way we've sold results over the years, has always focused on weight loss, because nobody comes to you saying, I need to gain more weight. Right? Right. It's something has happened over my lifetime. The older I get, the worse I feel. I look in the mirror. And every time I lose weight, I think I'm gonna be happy and yet, something's not right. My moods worse over time, my energy, my overall health, my blood markers, my strength, etc. And it just accelerates over time. And what we fail to realize is that there are very negative effects as being a human being over time if we don't give us ourselves the right stimulus, the right stimulus in terms of details we'll get into but things like training and protein, and so our bodies think, okay, I don't really need the muscle. You're not feeding me enough protein. I'm getting older. I'm sitting around all day, probably working from home now, and I just don't need this. So you start to lose the muscle and you start to get weak over time. And when we talk in the language of weight loss, yeah, it sells. And a lot of people know what you're talking about. But when I work with clients, it's it's how do we change our lifestyle, our habits, our skills and behaviors, so that we can improve our body composition, and then gain all the health benefits that come with that from increased strength to avoiding disease to just just greater vitality and, you know, healthy living.

 

Paul Hanton  05:33

Right? So I agree that the fitness industry sells weight loss. And most people, they what they want is fat loss, right? They they, especially for men, they want to go the body composition route, where they they are dropping fat, but they still retain some sort of muscle mass. But I agree that I think the fitness industry is really oversold weight loss. And that's what you see everywhere, when people what people really want is fat loss. But I do also want to talk about body composition. So maybe you can describe what is body composition? To me, the general audience, what does that mean? What does it look like body composition?

 

Philip Pape  06:14

Sure. I mean, in simplest terms are bodies made up of tissue, fat, organs, muscle bones. And the simplest way to describe body composition is how much of that is fat. So what is your body fat percentage, and for you know, there's a there's an essential level of fat we need to survive. So if you look at bodybuilders who are staged, lean, men can get down to three or 4%. Below that you would just die. Right? That's an insane level of leanness, and for women, it's 10%, higher than that roughly about 12%. And then there's a level of essential fat you need on top of that for health, right? It protects your organs. It's good for your hormones, and we need to have somewhere for men, it would be somewhere between 10 and 20%. Body fat and for women are going to be 20 to 30%. So that's what we mean by body composition. And most people, if they don't do anything about it will slowly slide higher and higher, you know, for men into the 20s and 30s. As they get older.

 

Paul Hanton  07:12

Yeah. And I think I know, one of the big myth, maybe back maybe it's gotten better now. I think it's gotten better now of how, you know, fat is bad, right? But like you just like you mentioned, we our body actually needs some sort of some some level of fat to to just survive, right? Not not excel, but just to survive. And I think I think we've moved maybe, hopefully move past that in the industry. But I know for me, that was one of the myths I held for a long time that fat is bad. fat is bad. And but really, we our body needs a certain level of fat, just to survive.

 

Philip Pape  07:51

Yeah, and I think like, especially when I have female clients who they just want to lose weight right away, right, we talk about body composition. It's it's like, even if you focus on losing weight, and think that's gonna get you to your level of leanness, a lot of what you're losing is not fat, it's also muscle. And that's part of the problem.

 

Paul Hanton  08:11

Right? Right. And so let's talk about body composition. That's another word you mentioned. So what we talked about body composition, which is like that percentage of fat that you have, what is body composition? So someone said, hey, I want to, you know, decrease fat, but keep my keeping in the lean muscle mass that I have. But what is body composition? Mean?

 

Philip Pape  08:34

Sure. And I guess I would split into two definitions. One is what people go after. That's like the Holy Grail of building muscle and losing fat at the same time, which is, it's possible in a few cases, it's possible if you're very overweight, because you haven't significant fat reserve your effectively. Even when you're in a deficit, it's almost like you're in a slight surplus, right? Initially, because you have the extra fat, right? And then in brand new lifters have never lifted before. Because it gets such a huge stimulus to build muscle, that even if they diets slightly or at maintenance that they can recomp. So that's that's re composition. But we could also think of it in terms of just over time changing our body composition. And we can't focus on just one half of the equation. We can't just focus on losing, right? Yes. When I when I have to get a new client and convince them that, you know, if they want to lose 30 pounds, at some point, we want to build muscle. We generally still start with a fat loss phase after after we go through a pre diet maintenance and prep phase, of course. But then once they get there, and once they realize the importance of muscle, then we turn it around and we say Okay, now let's focus on building muscle, which very few people do. Right? And when they do it, they often don't do it for long enough. They'll do it for three months, say Oh, I'm starting to get fat and then they want to cry. And my general recommendation is to build for at least six to nine months, if you've never done it before, because that's where all the wonderful new gains are going to be.

 

Paul Hanton  10:05

Yeah, those newbie gains, just very popular newbie gains. So you mentioned, like you recommend people will do the six to nine months of just strength training, especially if they're new. And I think that's really, really important consideration, especially if you're starting out. And you're brand new, because those newbie gains are very real. And so what you're saying is, the longer you can prolong that, the more of the longer you get those benefits from being that newer lifter, right?

 

Philip Pape  10:33

Yeah, that's it, there's, there's some sort of threshold where, like, the anabolic threshold, whatever you want to call it, after a few months, where it starts to kick in, your metabolism really starts to ramp up. And especially for a new lifter, a brand new lifter is going to have what they call neuro muscular adaptation, right for the first three months or so when you're doing a novice program, you have this inherent level of strength that your body is capable of, but you're not quite expressing it until you start getting under heavy barbell for a while. And so you start to recruit more and more of those muscle fibers and develop into your maximum maximal strength. And then you start to develop new and bigger muscle tissue at that point. So there's like this threshold where it starts and then it starts to take off. So if you don't let it go long enough, you're not gonna, you're gonna see that can be very inefficient for years.

 

Paul Hanton  11:18

Right. And then after that, after those newbie gains, that's when the real work starts. Right. The fun stuff, right? Just trying to try to make a little bit of progress. But yeah, so let's jump into what happens when your body when you actually start to lose weight or fat. So what is what are some sort of adaptations that your body goes through? When you start to decrease weight or fat?

 

Philip Pape  11:42

Yeah, and I liked the way you put that as adaptations, because I think people have to understand that the body is very dynamic. It does adapt whatever you do to it. But it never breaks and never like totally, you know, falls apart. We I've heard the term broken metabolism. Again, it's a sales tactic, in my opinion, say, well, your metabolism is broken and needs to be fixed. Really? No, it's downregulated. So what happens when you're dieting, let's talk about the average person who isn't doing the things we're going to talk about a little bit later, or who's maybe sedentary with a standard diet. And they use a typical restrictive diet, either cutting calories, and or cutting food or food groups, like keto or all the fat, I've done them all myself, okay. And so so you're doing that. And what happens is, you start to lose weight pretty quickly, initially, and your metabolism will start to decline right away your your daily energy expenditure, so the amount of calories you burn, right, so one of the first plateaus people get to is, hey, I'm eating on so few calories, and yet, I'm not losing weight, I can't lose weight, when in reality, it's you're probably losing weight way too quickly. And your metabolism is keeping up with that. And now you need to cut further because you're not doing the other things that we do to try to diet on war calories. Right? Right. There's a lot of hormonal changes, right, your your thyroid hormone decreases, that affects your metabolism, cortisol goes up, that's stress, leptin and ghrelin, which regulate fat cells as well as appetite change. So what happens is, as you're losing weight quickly, and you're not training, and you're losing muscle, all these things create a vicious cycle, where you experience number one, muscle loss induced appetite. Number two hormone induced appetite. And then and then when you you, you get to the bottom of that diet, you're so ravenous, and you've been restricting so much that you just now want to binge on high, high carb, high salt, high sugar type foods, or high fat foods that nature is telling you, it would be the best thing to bring into your body to get back to good health. Right? And, and that's what basically accelerates the desire to binge back. What causes you to overeat and body fat overshoot? And then on the way up, when you regain that weight, here's what people have to understand all that muscle you lost, which could be up to half the tissue, right? So let's say you lost 20 pounds, maybe 10 pounds with that as muscle. If you regain that 20 pounds back, most of that is fat. So every time you're cycling up and down and up and down, you end up with the same weight, but fatter and fatter.

 

Paul Hanton  14:26

Yeah, yeah. I think that's something what you what you mentioned initially about the people would generally just decrease their calories to an unhealthy amount. Which, which makes sense, right? We talked about being a caloric deficit. And so you think well, okay, well, I'm going to keep decreasing my calories in July. But then you have to ask yourself, Okay, at what point are you going to stop rikes 500 calories a day? You know, 100 right there. It doesn't really the logic doesn't really make sense when you start to really think through Okay, yeah. EDB caloric deficit, but But how far can you go and I think people sometimes go too far, and they got hit that plateau, then they can get they realize they can't go any further. They kind of get stuck.

 

Philip Pape  15:10

Yeah, exactly. And so that's, that's why I think it's very important to spend some time bringing up your maintenance calories to a higher level that where you can diet on a higher level. Now, you can't just magically do that. There's there's two pieces that I think make the biggest impact. Based on what I've seen, based on what the evidence supports. One is going to be training, you know, strength training, where not not the training itself, which does burn some calories, it's the adding muscle mass again, talking about body composition, that increases your base level of metabolic rate. And because muscle is more expensive than than fat, and then the other is activity. But here's where people go off the rails again, because a lot of people think of activity as cardio, like tons of cardio hours and hours on a treadmill. When in reality, we just need to move and generally that steps. So it's, you know, I used to tell people step count, because if you look at our ancestors, right, they had to move all day, they had to expend energy all day. We don't do that today. But as little as an extra two or 4000 steps a day can probably up your calorie burn by several 100 calories every day.

 

Paul Hanton  16:18

Yeah, and you touched on a one one big misconception or mistake that people make when it comes to trying to lose lose weight or lose fat is reliant over relying on cardio or only focusing on cardio or, or thinking that that's the only way that's the best way, or the only way to lose weight and fat. So how do you help people kind of understand that, you know, cardio has a lot of benefits for you. But when it comes to weight loss, fat loss, strength training is just gonna be better for you.

 

Philip Pape  16:51

Yeah, I mean, it's hard, it's hard to convince people who do the pilates and the orange theory and CrossFit, and they're just so into all of these things. And that's where you have to develop a relationship of trust. And, and basically, have them try, you know, an effective training program and understand what that's all about. And that we have goals we have, we have a goal, and our goal requires us to prioritize certain things, and we can't do everything. If you want to be a world class tennis player, or marathon runner, fine, we're gonna have to focus on that. If you're trying to improve your body composition, then then strength is where it's at. And too much cardio is going to interfere with the recovery from that lifting, which then interferes with the adaptation from the lifting. And that's how we build muscle. It also can send our bodies and endurance signal that, hey, we're it kind of conflicts with the strength training signal, it basically tells our body, try to be more efficient with calories, because I see you really need them, you're moving a lot every day, be efficient, and thus bring down your metabolism. Right? So what a lot of people find is that they start, they go from hours and hours of cardio to three days a week in the gym for an hour, and all of a sudden the metabolism starts to go

 

Paul Hanton  18:06

up. Right, right. And then another another common mistake that you mentioned already, but I want to talk a little more about as the extreme restriction around what you're eating or even caloric intake. And I think the fitness industry pushes that a lot, right? Because it sells well. So when it comes to those extreme, restrictive diets, or people dropping their calories to unhealthy mount levels, how do you help people kind of overcome that?

 

Philip Pape  18:39

Yeah, I think a lot of people that are seeking help with their nutrition have have tried these diets? And the answer, you don't want to ask them? Did it work for you? The answer is always for a time. Like it worked for a time well, why did it stop working? Well, I can't not eat carbs for the rest of my life. Or I can't, you know, whatever, whatever restriction it is, you know, if it's carnivore, I can't just not eat vegetables. Maybe some people can't. But but it comes down to sustainability, right? And yeah, maybe it's a buzzword, maybe we throw it around a lot. But how do you solve both sides of the equation one is trying to lose weight and maintain a healthy body composition, and the other is eating things I enjoy for the rest of my life. Right? And a lot of people think those two aren't compatible. They think of dieting as an on off switch. Okay, now I'm in dieting mode. So I'm going to start cutting everything out. Okay, I'm done. Now what? Like how do I sustain it? Do I just eat everything I used to not eat or that I cut out but less of it. I don't know what to do. So, we tend to work on from a principle of some people call it flexible dieting. But I basically say if, if it's consistent with your lifestyle, right? If it's foods you enjoy, we try to fit them in, but we understand where each where it serves. You and your goals. So if doughnuts are a non negotiable, okay, let's find a way to fit a doughnut in and maybe it's a homemade donut. Or maybe it's you know, one versus two donuts, you know, there's decisions we can make. And there are occasionally hard rules people need to set for themselves when things are just completely triggering for them. But I don't want you to just say, I'm not having carbs. Hey, this is Philip pape, letting you know that applications are now open for one on one coaching. If you're a busy working professional, who has tried dieting, and exercising for years, with little in the way of results, and you want to lose fat, get lean or feel confident in your body without excessive dieting, cardio or restrictions, just go to wits & weights.com/coaching, to apply.

 

Paul Hanton  20:48

Yeah, and that sustainability piece, you mentioned, really ties back into those statistics, you mentioned in the first half of the first part of the episode about breather thriller, a third of the a third of people, the 30 people in the first year just ate it back. And then the 95% of people gain it back within five years. That goes back to sustainability, like you mentioned. And so I also am a big proponent of what we call flexible dieting, of trying to incorporate, try not to restrict people from eating some of the foods that they love, and they just cannot do without for a long period of time. I think people can maybe suffer through it for a month or two. But it's really hard for people just to go without it for the rest of their lives. And as against sustainability, and thinking long term about how you approach your nutrition. And your health. Yeah, totally

 

Philip Pape  21:37

agree. Yeah. And then and then the other piece of that, of course, is the the macro balance all the things that we do, as part of that dieting approach that most people don't do, for example, the big thing, and we can call this a mistake, or we can call it a solution, but most people don't get nearly enough protein. Right? That's a huge one right there. Every client that comes in who who doesn't already have a good solid education on this stuff is probably under eating by 50 to 75%. Yeah. Right. I mean, you have 170 pound female eating 60 or 50 grams of protein a day, and she needs to be eating 140. And of course, in the from week one, it's how the heck do I do that? Right? And that's what we that's where the education, awareness and skills come in?

 

Paul Hanton  22:26

Yeah, yeah, exactly. That's another common mistake, the macro balance is very easy. It's very easy to consume carbs, especially in here in Texas. And so yeah, I see that all the time, too, is the skewed macro balance of not enough protein, but, you know, overall reading on the carbs and fat. But I agree, I think part a lot a large part of it is just education and educating people on proper nutrition habits. And I think just another key thing is just making sure people plan ahead too, as well, which was meal prepping. And, and he'll put together a grocery list and, and again, like the triggering foods that they may that may trigger them to overeat or, you know, stuff like that. But yeah, I think this education around proper macro balance, why protein is important goes a long way knows a lot of my clients.

 

Philip Pape  23:20

Yeah, for sure. And you mentioned some some great tips in there, including the, the planning ahead. I mean, just in general, that's a that's something people are missing. And why we often emotionally eat or overeat is we make decisions in the moment. So if you tie that into protein, for example, someone listening who's thinking, I need to go from 50 grams of protein a day to 100/41 of all you have to know that you're eating 50. And the only way you know that is to log it somehow. My clients log because I think it's an educational tool. I think it's a great habit to learn about food and how much is in food. And I grew up eating foods out. But you could also do Fun, fun tricks or techniques like pre logging your food for the next day. Or for the weekend. If you're going to go to a party or event just pre log in and see what it looks like. Or, Hey, I can't get enough protein. So how do I do that? Well, let's do the math. You have have to get 160 grams of protein, you only eat twice a day, you have to slam down 80 grams a meal. That's probably not feasible, right? Unless you're in Texas with the barbecue, right? Yeah. But so then you do the math, say okay, maybe I need to eat four or five times. And each of those has to have 30 grams of protein. Well, how do I do that? And how do I have the groceries for that doing? Am I incorporating dairy and eggs and meat and all the things I need for that?

 

Paul Hanton  24:39

Yeah, that's a good. So we talked about some common mistakes that people make and I think it's also good to discuss what people can do better how people what people should be doing. Instead, he brought up a really good point around finding out where they're at first. So like you mentioned, if someone doesn't know how much protein they're eating I know that you can do like intuitive eating. But I'm also a big one to like you have of tracking that way you want education, so you understand what you're putting in your body and how much. I think another common mistake people make is they say, they under under zoom over, zoom, under, over over zoom. Understand how much they're eating right over zoom.

 

Philip Pape  25:20

Yeah, under underestimate.

 

Paul Hanton  25:23

underestimate how much they're actually eating for sure. Yeah. And then when they started tracking, they go, Oh, wow, that's a lot. Okay. So I think education piece is really important. But so when it comes to what people should be doing, you mentioned, the training. So let's talk about the training. What should someone's training be focused on if they're looking to lose weight, or especially for fat loss?

 

Philip Pape  25:45

Yeah, so I love I love talking about training. And I know a lot of nutrition coaches don't get a lot into that. But it's a huge part of my life and what my my clients have to train like, they always have to train, you know, that's the big missing ingredient for most people to give you that stimulus for muscle growth. So I like to start with principles. I hear myself in the recording. Do you hear that?

 

Paul Hanton  26:09

No, I don't have my headphones on sign on. Alright.

 

Philip Pape  26:11

Alright. So I'd like to start with principles, the first big principle is going to be mechanical tension, that whatever you're doing in the gym, you have to have sufficient stress on your muscle. Usually, this comes from very heavy weights, right. And this could be could be barbells. But it could be dumbbells, it could be machines, whatever. I'm not going to be dogmatic about it. But But most people are lifting in high rep range, high volume lightweights. And they need to put a lot more stresses on muscle. So that's mechanical tension. The second principle is going to be maximum effort. Whatever you're doing, it has to be training hard. So even if it is a while, or if it's three reps, those last few reps have to be really hard and feel like something you've never done before. Right? Right. Big missing, greedy. And then the third principle is going to be progressive overload. So a lot of people will go into the gym, and they'll do the same thing over and over again, and they won't change the weights. But we need to increase the load, right, we need to add weight to the bar, add weight to the dumbbells, or add reps. They're both effective. For beginners, I recommend, you know, focusing on weight and just going literally adding five pounds to the bar every session so that your body gets greater and greater stress each time that it adapts to and you come back stronger each time.

 

Paul Hanton  27:36

Yeah, like I said that adaptation is key, right? You're wise and adapt to whatever you throw it. And that includes what it how if you do stress at it, ie lifting weights, right, so your body's gonna adapt to that. And you mentioned a great point about progressive overload. I think that's something that people overlook, they don't think about and so I make all my clients track their workouts that way we can see our how are they doing in their workouts? Because you mentioned how important intensity is for your workouts in order to see any sort of adaptations for your body. Because if you're just you know, kind of lollygagging through a workout and you're really comfortable, we'll Good on you. But I don't know it's really going to have any sort of adaptations, right?

 

Philip Pape  28:16

Yeah, exactly. I mean, and I'd like to illustrate this through videos for people and show them kind of what somebody looks like who's really working. And it might be myself, it might be Hey, guys, this is what you have to look like when you're training hard. It's tough being an online coach, you know, as opposed to like an in person personal trainer, because you need them to send you videos to do format checks. And like you said, track their factor reps and weight and see, are they actually progressing like you would expect if they're truly getting stronger?

 

Paul Hanton  28:44

Right, right. So we talked about training, let's talk about nutrition as well. So you mentioned making sure someone gets enough protein of crucial protein is so when it comes to nutrition, and so wants to focus on say fat loss, what can they do with your nutrition? How should they structure their nutrition? At a high level?

 

Philip Pape  29:04

Yeah. So there's a couple of things. First, we want to have the macro balance sorted out, right. So we talked about that before, of starting with protein, always starting with routine and making sure you're getting roughly a gram per pound of target body weight. But we know there's a wide range anywhere from point seven to 1.2. And if you're getting currently point three

 

Paul Hanton  29:28

different Yeah, right, right baby

 

Philip Pape  29:30

steps, it's let's work with the client. And if you know, let's work them and titrate them up toward that level. So it starts with protein, fat 20 to 30% of your calories is usually doable for most people unless they come from keto and they have to have more, and then the rest goes to carbs. And you might find that it's more carbs than you're used to eating with some of these diets. All right, on a fat loss phase. What you're going to do then is select your target weight and you want it go with a reasonable deficit. And the evidence supports a deficit of between a quarter to 1% of your weight per week, right. And the sweet spot for most people that I've seen is around a half percent 2.75. Because if you go too, too aggressive, it's just too few calories for most people. So if you're 200 pounds, you're looking at maybe one and a half pounds a week, something like that. And when you do the math that comes out to what 4500 calories a week deficit, which is, which is four to 600 calories a day, something like that, just doing quick math, which is just not terrible. For most people, if you have a metabolism, that's around 2200 calories, that's gonna put you at 1800, for example, 1700. But that's, that brings us back to why we need to diet on more calories and bring that metabolism up. Okay, I have a client who I've never seen, it's so extreme, but he was very overweight, we're talking maybe 5060 pounds overweight, he trained when he was younger, he got pretty jacked when he was in his 20s. And now he's in his 40s. So that that's a point going for him. Because if you train before it comes back quickly. And we started them diet dieting at the full 1%. And his his expenditure, his metabolism just keeps climbing and climbing and climbing. Because he's strength training, and he's getting protein. And then the next thing I haven't talked about, but getting steps. So he's doing all these things. And every week we say, man, let's just let's just stay where you're at your deficit is getting bigger and bigger without even changing your calories. Yeah, yeah. So it's, it's I don't throw in a lot of things that people and I could go there. There are other things that support this, like stress, sleep, recovery, and so on, we can get into but those are the big ones.

 

Paul Hanton  31:42

Yeah, I think one of the key things that you mentioned is taking that gradual approach and not looking to lose 10 pounds in a week, right, trying to do something in a healthy and more, say more importantly, but also as just as important as sustainability, right. And making sure that whatever your clients do, is something that they can sustain for a long period of time. Because if you look at health as a, as a lifelong pursuit, or endeavor, whatever you do, is gonna have to be sustainable. I know I've seen people start and stop things, and they'll start for a month or two then quit. And that's because they're just trying to go from 00 to 100, you know, overnight with their training or their nutrition. And really, he's gotta look at a gradual baby steps, like you mentioned, right? Just take baby steps to where you need to go or where you want to go.

 

Philip Pape  32:35

Yeah, I mean, it's about progress and process. And that gets to tumors, all right, because if you can't stick to it, if it's not enjoyable, you won't get anywhere. And I liked the point you made about the the deficit itself being part of sustainability, meaning besides all the food selection, quality, and so on, the fact that you are measuring, tracking, and then trying to stick to a certain glide path that is conservative, conservative enough, is part of sustainability. Because along the way, now you get time to figure out, okay, how do I eat a little bit more fiber, and a little bit more fruits that have more water in them. So I don't get as hungry, you start to learn these techniques as you go on the way down. And then when you've lost all the weight, and not much muscle because you're doing it right? When you come back in a surplus. You don't just go start eating pop tarts and pizza. Okay, and kind of scale up the things you just learned to eat, and maybe incorporate some treats along the way. But it's sustainable.

 

Paul Hanton  33:32

Yeah, exactly. It's a lot of the same foods, whether you scale up or scale down, right. It's mostly just the quantity that and the macronutrient profile. But yeah, again, like sustainability and education. Do you like you mentioned just educating your clients or people in general on on proper habits additionally be adopting? So I think that's a I know that there's a lot of information out there on the on the internet when it comes to fitness and health and who do you listen to? Who do you trust? So sometimes I know it's hard on the outside looking in to kind of filter through the Bs in terms of what you actually should be doing. But I think two things that I always stress is just make sure it's sustainable. You know, you don't want to over commit or overdue if you've never done anything like this before. And then just educate yourself, right? There's a lot of resources out there to educate yourself. But education and sustainability are two key key things that everyone should be doing if they want to make they're really committed to health for the rest of their life.

 

Philip Pape  34:29

Yeah, I agree. I mean, education is a huge gap and podcasts like yours hydro fitness podcasts like mine Wits, & Weights, right there are, I mean, that's how I learned a lot about nutrition is through through podcasts. And that's a big piece. And then once you have the education where people get stuck is just doing it by themselves. Right. And you know, some people have, I don't want to call it discipline or willpower. It's just everybody's different and some people have the willpower Fall to just kind of hold themselves accountable, and many more people need extrinsic motivation to get started. But once you get started and start getting those results and developing the habits, it starts to stick. And again, the sustainability piece comes in where a habit can be developed in maybe three to six weeks, and you start to stack on habits. And before long before, you know, say, three months of this process, you're really well equipped to do this for the rest of your life on your own.

 

Paul Hanton  35:24

Yeah, absolutely. I think that the action taking action pieces was also a huge challenge for a lot of people and education is important. But you also have to take action to incorporate that education or do something. If you don't you want to improve your health or lose weight or lose fat. So I think that's a really great point is to not forget to take action, right? And we will need help. We need new trainers like us to help now with that, to be able to rely on their intrinsic motivations that people need extrinsic motivation, their spouse or their kids, right. So that take an action piece is really, really crucial. So before we wrap up this episode, I think it's been really a really great discussion and a lot of great points. We talked talk through what are some last minute takeaways or big things you want people to get out of this after listening?

 

Philip Pape  36:16

Yeah, there's a lot of takeaways here. Yeah, there's a lot of takeaways, I think, the big takeaway is the thing about weight loss, that there's, there's a different way to think about this, that we don't have to struggle for the rest of our lives thinking that it's a constant battle of dieting and gaining weight, that we can take control of our not only our physique, which I know a lot of people get into this, because they just want to look better in the mirror. But our health, and I think that that cannot be overstated, is that if you're worried about diabetes, or heart disease, or fertility, or some you know, frailty and old age, at any age, you can start to turn that ship around, you can you can avoid what 95% of people experience with sarcopenia osteopenia, all these disease, diseases of aging, and take control of your vitality. By telling your body Hey, you've got to be stronger and more capable in this physical world that humans evolved in, by getting by, you know, strength, training protein and other things that we talked about.

 

Paul Hanton  37:24

Right? Yeah, I think that thing is a really great point to end the episode on is, when you look at health over the rest of your life, like one there's, it's not too late to start, you know, if let's say you, you were training and then you stop in kind of wondering if, when they get back on the bandwagon, we'll start tomorrow or start start today, right, there's, you can start at any point in time when it comes to the rest of your life for your health. And I think the other thing is to like, again, is want to keep reiterating sustainability. If you start something, but then you're only going to last for two months, who is not really going to help you out. And so whatever someone decides to do, and I'm a big proponent of strange training, but you know, some people don't like it, some people don't want to do that, you will rather go ride their bike or run, which I don't like so, you know, props to them. But whatever someone does, it needs to be sustainable, and they need to have some sort of enjoyment behind it. Otherwise, we'll just quit. So, again, I just want to reiterate how important sustainability is.

 

Philip Pape  38:29

Yeah, I agree. Fun, balance all of those things. You know, you don't want to be crazy, the crazy weirdo who is just an exercising their family. Just live your life and enjoy. I agree. Those are those are great words to live by.

 

Paul Hanton  38:44

Yep. And I think that's a great a great ending point. So Phillip, thanks again for coming on the show. Really got a pleasure talking to you. And I think there's some really, really, really great takeaways that people are gonna get from this episode.

 

Philip Pape  38:56

Thank you, Paul. I also enjoyed the conversation was a ton of fun. Thanks for having me on.

 

Paul Hanton  39:00

Anytime.

 

Philip Pape  39:04

Thanks for listening to the show. Before you go, I have a quick favorite ask. If you enjoy the podcast, let me know by leaving a five star review in Apple podcasts and telling others about the show. Thanks again for joining me Philip Pape in this episode of Wits & Weights. I'll see you next time and stay strong.