Does the Perfect Fat Loss Plan Exist? (Black vs. Blue Line) | Ep 306
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You've tried following your calories and macros perfectly, the "perfect" fat loss plan, a meal plan, or a diet where you have to eat specific foods or eat at certain times (like keto, carnivore, or intermittent fasting)...
But then life happens and you fall short. Why do these approaches consistently fail? And what should you do instead?
Today I introduce the powerful engineering concept of Black Line vs Blue Line thinking that completely transforms how we approach nutrition plans.
You'll discover why perfection isn't just unnecessary... it's actually working against you.
This episode provides a framework that aligns with both human psychology and the realities of daily life. You'll learn to build intelligent flexibility into your nutrition plan, navigate challenging scenarios like social events and travel, and transform your relationship with food!
Main Takeaways:
The Black Line represents the "perfect plan" while the Blue Line represents what actually happens in real-world execution
Success comes from skillfully navigating deviations, not eliminating them
Rigid plans create all-or-nothing thinking that leads to the "diet spiral"
Building adaptation skills is more valuable than strict adherence
Strategic flexibility accelerates results rather than slowing them down
Timestamps:
0:01 - The problem with plans
3:57 - The Black Line vs. Blue Line concept
7:19 - Why rigid nutrition plans typically fail
14:11 - Design with flexibility from the start
15:46 - "If/then" frameworks for common scenarios
17:49 - Your hierarchy of nutrition priorities
19:41 - The 80/20 principle
21:05 - Pre-planned contingencies
22:31 - Mindful deviation
23:42 - Momentum vs. perfection
Why the Perfect Fat Loss Plan Is Failing You (And What to Do Instead)
You’ve been told to follow the plan. Hit your macros. Stick to your meal prep. Don’t deviate. But what if that rigid, disciplined, Type-A mindset is exactly what's slowing you down?
In this episode, I introduced a powerful engineering concept called black line vs. blue line thinking, and how it reveals the real reason most fat loss plans fall apart—especially for high performers who “do everything right.”
Let’s break down what this means and how it can radically change your approach to nutrition, fat loss, and fitness.
The Black Line: Your Ideal Plan
The black line represents perfection. It’s the detailed, structured, idealized plan:
Calories and macros are calculated
Meal timing is dialed in
Grocery list is prepped
Meal prep is flawless
You hit your training days and stay on track
It’s the plan you create with full control and zero friction. It assumes your life behaves like a controlled experiment.
But guess what?
That’s not real life. And it’s definitely not sustainable.
The Blue Line: Real Life in Action
The blue line is what actually happens:
You have a surprise meeting at work
Your kid gets sick and needs you at home
You forget to prep lunch
You go out to eat and can’t track perfectly
You hit your calories but your protein is low
You overeat one day and under-eat the next
The blue line is your actual path through daily life—full of variability, messiness, and unpredictable events. It’s where real fat loss happens.
The irony?
We think fat loss depends on following the black line perfectly. In reality, success depends on how well you navigate the blue line.
Why Black Line Thinking Sabotages Progress
Most clients who come to me have internalized this black line mindset. It sounds like:
“If I go over on calories, I blew it.”
“If I miss a workout, I’m behind.”
“If I can’t track on vacation, there’s no point.”
“Once I fall off, I need to start fresh next Monday.”
This creates:
All-or-nothing thinking
Psychological stress
A fragile system that breaks with any deviation
You don’t need more rigidity. You need resilience.
How to Shift to Blue Line Thinking
Instead of obsessing over the perfect plan, build skillful adaptation strategies into your nutrition from day one. Here's how:
1. Start With Flexible Targets
Use ranges, not hard numbers.
Example: Instead of “I must hit 2000 calories,” try “anywhere from 1800–2200 is fine across the week.”
Set minimum protein goals and then let carbs and fats vary based on life and preference. Focus on consistency over precision.
2. Plan for Real-Life Scenarios
Create go-to strategies for events you know will happen:
Eating out? Pre-log your meal.
Social event? Hit protein early in the day.
No time to track? Use hand portions or “good-better-best” food choices.
Most people don’t fail because they’re lazy—they fail because they didn’t have a plan for what to do when the plan breaks.
3. Practice Mindful Deviations
Not all deviations are failures. Some are intentional choices—like eating dessert at your anniversary dinner. Others are unplanned but still manageable.
Either way, reflect, don’t react:
What happened?
Why did it happen?
What would I do next time?
This is how you learn.
4. Use the 80/20 Principle
Aim for 80% consistency, not 100%. This gives you breathing room to navigate life and prevents the guilt spiral that happens with tiny slip-ups.
80% could mean:
22 out of 28 meals on plan each week
5 of 7 days hitting protein
4 strength sessions out of 5 planned
It’s not a cop-out. It’s a reality-based framework.
5. Track Data, Not Just Targets
The real power of the blue line is in the feedback loop. Track what you planned (black line) and what actually happened (blue line). Look at the gap, and use that to make adjustments.
That gap isn’t failure—it’s opportunity. It’s the space where coaching happens and where sustainable change lives.
The Unexpected Benefit of the Blue Line
Here’s the counterintuitive part.
When you embrace flexible, resilient thinking and stop trying to “nail it” every day, your results actually improve:
You stop starting over
You avoid binge/restrict cycles
You build lifelong skills
You feel less stressed about food
You get more consistent
The blue line doesn’t slow you down. It accelerates your progress—because it aligns with real human behavior.
The Real Goal Isn’t Precision—It’s Progress
You don’t need the perfect fat loss plan.
You need a plan that bends without breaking. That adapts with you. That survives a chaotic work week, a kid’s birthday party, and a summer vacation without completely unraveling.
So ask yourself:
Are you obsessed with walking the black line?
Or are you ready to embrace the blue line—the messy, real, adaptable path to your best body and most confident self?
If this resonates, it’s exactly the kind of flexible strategy we use inside Physique University, my system for sustainable fat loss and muscle building. You’ll learn how to build a plan that bends, not breaks—and finally make progress that lasts.
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Transcript
Philip Pape: 0:01
Maybe you've tried all the diets, you've tried all the plans, you've joined multiple programs for fat loss and you've stuck to the rules. You've stuck to the targets. Even if you have calories and macros and you follow them perfectly, somehow the results don't always match the promise. Is it a lack of discipline? Is it your genetics? Is it your hormones? Or could the entire approach be flawed from the start? Today, I'm revealing an engineering concept called black line versus blue line thinking that will probably change how you think about your plan in the context of the real world. This episode is going to give you a more counterintuitive approach that I think will lead to better, faster results than the perfect plan ever could. Welcome to Wits and Weights, the show that helps you build a strong, healthy physique using evidence, engineering and efficiency. I'm your host, philip Pape, and today we are examining a concept that I learned recently from the engineering and manufacturing world that will revolutionize your approach to nutrition and help you break free from the rigid all-or-nothing mindset that sabotages so many people. You might have heard people talk about all-or-nothing before, but this is going to be a different look at that, because, whether you've tracked macros for years or you're just starting your nutrition journey, understanding the difference between the black line of perfect planning and the blue line of real world execution are going to change your approach to dieting and eating food in general for the rest of your life. It is a paradigm shift. It's been a game changer for my clients and now I have a framework to better explain it by. It's going to give you both better physical results, but also better psychological relationship with food. So today you're going to learn why pursuing nutritional perfection actually works against you, how strategically deviating from your plan can accelerate your progress, and then a framework to build intelligent flexibility into your nutrition plan. I'm going to be specific today, as always, I'm going to give you tactics to navigate real challenges, like social events, like travel, those inevitable days when cravings feel overwhelming, and if you are tired of feeling like you're constantly falling short of your goals and trying to start again over and over. I think this episode is a different perspective that aligns with both human psychology and the realities of daily life. Now, before we get into it, if you are enjoying this engineering approach to fitness and nutrition, I think you're going to get tons of value from the Physique University, where I teach a complete system for transforming your body using evidence-based science strategies, engineering principles just like we are discussing today, in a very accessible way. Students in Physique University learn to implement this kind of flexible approach to nutrition, to training, really to everything in life, while still achieving remarkable results. And if you wanna join us there to take advantage of that, get your free two-week trial, get your free first challenge, get a custom nutrition plan and everything else that comes in there. Go to witsandweightscom slash physique or click the link in the show notes Again witsandweightscom slash physique or click the link in the show notes.
Philip Pape: 3:34
So let's talk about this engineering concept called the black line versus the blue line. It's something I actually just came across recently, but it explains this so well. It comes from systems thinking and from human factors engineering. I saw it in a number of places. One place was an article by an engineer in LinkedIn. His name is Jason Daring, I think is how you say it.
Philip Pape: 3:57
But the actual concept goes back to safety science and organizational psychology, where researchers like Sidney Decker, eric Hallnagel, pioneered the study of how work is actually performed versus how it's prescribed. So listen up, because this actually applies to your job as well, not just nutrition. So the fundamental concept is that the black line represents work as imagined, planned or designed. So that is your idealized path, that is the perfect procedure, the flawless execution. So in the engineering world it shows up as detailed procedures, steps, checklists, process documents right, so stick with me, because we're going to apply this to nutrition. The blue line, however, represents the work as actually performed in the real world. It's what happens when humans execute the plan in variable, complex environments where the conditions are constantly changing, and the blue line, naturally, of course, is going to deviate from the black line as people adapt to all the things going on, all the things that are changing, all the unexpected variables. So this concept is central to what safety scientists call safety two thinking Okay, safety two, like not one, but two.
Philip Pape: 5:17
And that focuses on understanding why things go right most of the time, rather than just analyzing the failures. Pretty cool, right? Why do things actually do go right most of the time, rather than just analyzing the failures? Pretty cool, right? Why do things actually do go right most of the time? And the insight that they found is that success doesn't come from perfectly following the black line, the plan. Success comes from skillfully navigating the blue line, making smart adaptations, having flexibility, maintaining resilience when the deviations occur. In fact, research in this area shows that things go right most of the time, not because people originally follow the plan and the procedure, but because they successfully adapt to the changing circumstances, which are inevitable. And when things go wrong, it's rarely because people deviated from the plan. Right, we don't blame the person. When things go wrong, it's usually because of an outside force they encountered a novel situation beyond their experience or their adaptability.
Philip Pape: 6:12
So now let's translate this directly to nutrition. Right, we talked about the black line versus blue line generally. Now we're gonna talk about why, normally rigid plans usually fail with nutrition. So the black line in nutrition is your perfect meal plan, right? Your perfect nutrition plan, it's the calories and macros, tracking to those exactly the precisely measuring and weighing your food. You know, having your meals with the right timing, the absence of, maybe, things you're trying to avoid. It might even be the absence of complete food groups. If you're trying to avoid. It might even be the absence of complete food groups if you're trying to follow a rigid diet. It's basically the plan that you design on Sunday night, that you say I'm going to start on Monday with the best of intentions, and this could apply to even when we do this right a proper fat loss plan where you do have some calorie macro targets and you know exactly what you're trying to do and you have a lot of flexibility in your food choices. This could still be the black line. You're assuming you're going to be able to hit those targets and your protein, fats, carbs, your meal timing every day right, you're going to assume that that's the perfect plan. That's the black line.
Philip Pape: 7:19
The blue line is what actually happens in life. Okay, you execute that plan and, starting on day two, things start to go wrong. Your meeting runs late and you're starving right, it's what happens when your friend invites you to an impromptu dinner. It's what happens when you're traveling and your options are limited. It's what happens when stress, when emotions, when just the human cravings we all have start to influence your choices. Okay, and most people approach nutrition with the first mentality, the black line mentality.
Philip Pape: 7:47
I can even accuse myself, when I have a brand new client, of having that to an extent, because I give you a plan, I give you an idealistic scenario of all the things that if we do them, we're going to get from A to B. Right, that is a black line, where you believe that success means following the plan perfectly and any deviation represents failure. And this perspective from engineering shows us why this fails. And it's simple. Think about it this way In a complex environment and guess what? Daily life is right, complex, unpredictable.
Philip Pape: 8:19
There are simply too many variables to account for. You just cannot account for everything that's going to happen. Just like if you made a map and gave yourself directions from here to the store, you don't know if there's going to be a squirrel crossing the road construction along the way. Just you don't know what's going to happen. Somebody's going to sideswipe you, right? Just as no procedure can anticipate every possible scenario, your plan, your nutrition plan cannot possibly, nor should it account for every situation you're going to encounter.
Philip Pape: 8:49
Um and and I think the driving example is apropos, right, because if you try to do that, if you try to tell somebody when they have to break, accelerate, change lanes et cetera, you're not, you're not going to account for what's what's happening, you're not gonna know when to put in those instructions. You can try, and then, when you actually drive, you see how closely you follow your procedure. In reality, you don't right it it. So your procedure only captured the most basic aspects of that driving trip right, turn here, stop there, et cetera. But then every trip you are actually successful and you get to the store. You adapted and adjusted to tons of things that were not in your plan right, and so you didn't succeed because you followed your plan perfectly, but instead you skillfully navigated the variables and unexpected events.
Philip Pape: 9:34
So when we think of nutrition plans and why they fail, there's a few obvious reasons. The first one they ignore the complexity of real life. So, again, going back to the plan that I provide to clients, we go in already discussing from day one that this is an adaptable plan and that we're not. We're probably not going to, it's probably not going to be working like you think by day two or three, because something's going to happen in your life and that's when we're going to have to have a conversation, coach and client um, to help you get through that. So plans ignore the complexity of life. They assume a level of control and predictability that does not exist, and so when you design a meal plan, for example, this is a good example of something too rigid. A meal plan doesn't account for all the variables that affect your eating behaviors, from your emotional state at the moment, to your work schedule, to your social obligations.
Philip Pape: 10:23
Second is that rigid plans do create an all or nothing mindset. The more rigid, the more of that mindset you're going to have, because when hitting that target exactly is the only acceptable outcome. Any deviation is going to make you feel like a complete failure and that's what leads to what I call the diet spiral. This is where a small deviation triggers that feeling of failure, like you let yourself down. It leads to you giving up entirely the effort mentality and that leads to even more extreme behaviors in both directions.
Philip Pape: 10:55
The third thing is that rigid plans don't build the adaptation skills right. So when I give my clients a plan, it's understood that this is just one little piece of an overall strategy. But when your strategy is just stick to the plan perfectly, you're not going to develop the decision-making abilities, the skill needed to navigate the challenges that come up. And this is a skill. If you want quick weight loss, you can crash, diet on really low calories, you can cut out carbs, lose a bunch of weight. You won't even know how you got there and if you try to do it again, it's not going to work. And then what do you do afterward? Right, you didn't develop any skills, and then you're extremely vulnerable to any situation that disrupts your routine in the future.
Philip Pape: 11:37
The last thing about rigid plans is they create psychological stress, and it's unnecessary. It's just not necessary. It's this constant pressure to be perfect. It's the guilt when you inevitably deviate. It's the anxiety about social situations. Tell me if this doesn't sound familiar, right? All of this decreases your quality of life. It just makes life suck and then, ironically, guess what happens.
Philip Pape: 12:03
It makes the adherence to the plan harder and harder and harder, and so it's something I see with clients all the time who've come to me in the past having tried all these different approaches. Usually it's specific diets keto, carnivore, whatever and they're rigid, right, it's like you have to cut out these food groups or you have to stick to this specific meal plan, and they always start with enthusiasm, they stick to it for a while, they get some quote unquote progress, and sometimes I'll even ask, hey, what's worked for you in the past? And I say, well, keto worked for me for three months, but then it stopped, right, like you're not still doing it for a reason. You feel like a failure. You then abandon the plan. You think all plans are like that, and even when you start a new cycle again, you have more and more skepticism for each one. And then they come to me and they're like super skeptical, not even thinking they should hire a coach, because every other coach or plan they've tried hasn't worked. And it's not a personal failure, um, it's a predictable outcome. This is, those are.
Philip Pape: 12:57
Those are flawed approaches, because you're trying to follow the black line perfectly. It's, it's. It's not just difficult, this is not, guys. This is not a matter of getting over the hump and doing it. It is fundamentally misaligned with how humans operate in complex environments, and that's why I thought the black line versus blue line was really a really great concept, right.
Philip Pape: 13:18
And so if, if, rigid adherence to this straight black line, this perfect plan, is not the answer, how do we embrace this more curved, meandering blue line and still make progress? Because, at the end of the day, you want to end up close to the black line anyway, don't you, right? And so the key here listen up. The key is to shift from a perfection-oriented approach to a resilience-oriented approach. Go from perfection-oriented, where you're trying to stick to your plan, stay on track, stay on the rail, to a resilience-oriented approach, a very flexible, adaptable approach and instead of trying to eliminate the deviations right, which is just as good as trying to eliminate all the things that stress you out in life, you can't, you're not gonna eliminate them we need to get better at navigating them. So here's how to do it. Here we go.
Philip Pape: 14:11
All right, first, I want you to design a plan with flexibility built in from the start, and that means guidelines instead of rules, ranges instead of targets, identifying your non-negotiables, but being flexible everywhere else. That is the kind of plan that I put together for you when you join Physique University or you work with me as a client, in that we give you yeah, we give you some protein and protein, or we give you some macro and calorie targets, but actually I don't even give you targets technically, we have you use an app that will determine the right targets for you flexibly based on your metabolism as it changes. So already we're getting more flexible. I also don't want you to hit the numbers. I want you to get a minimum protein, but then stay within a wide range for your fats and carbs and a range for your calories, right. I also want to allow you to eat all the things that you love to eat whenever you want to eat them, as long as you're sticking within the overall guidelines for your overall diet, that is flexibility. That is flexibility. That means you can eat whatever foods you want and as long as you're eating largely whole, nutritious foods with plenty of protein and fiber. Right, hitting those minimums, getting into those ranges, but not hitting the exact targets, you're going to be good. So instead of saying I have to eat 2000 calories every day because that's my target, you're going to say well, first of all, let's look at it across a week. If I'm aiming for, say, 14,000 calories for the week, I just want to get close to that for the week. So I can go, you know, 1700 one day, 2300 the next, no big deal. I've got some up and down flexibility and then at the end of the week if I found that I was too far off one direction or the other. That's just data that I know I can adjust from and it acknowledges the reality of the blue line right from the beginning.
Philip Pape: 15:46
The second thing you're going to do is have decision-making frameworks for common scenarios for you, things that all you know are going to happen. Right, the goal is not to eliminate those, it's to intelligently foresee them and navigate around them or through them. For example, you could develop your strategy for eating at restaurants. Super common, everyone goes to restaurants, like 99% of people do, right? So what are you going to do? Are you going to download the menu ahead of time and pick what you want and pre-log it? Are you going to look at the calories and macros if it's like a chain restaurant or get something similar to that? Are you going to look at the calories and macros if it's like a chain restaurant or get something similar to that? Are you going to have just a simple plan of I'm going to start from my vegetables, then lean protein, then carbs, I'm going to have two drinks, no more. Or I'm going to have non-alcoholic beer right, you just have a strategy because you know you're going to the restaurant. So I don't want you to go there with no strategy and then the next day say I went to a restaurant, couldn't help myself. Or the reason I went over my calories and macros is because I went to a restaurant.
Philip Pape: 16:47
Well, you didn't have a strategy, right? Same thing goes for any social event, a party. We just had my wife's birthday and I knew for a fact I'd be eating cake and I'd be eating leftover cake for the next few days. So, guess what? That cake goes into my plan ahead of time and now I know what's left for the rest of the day, right, you know when you're going to have periods of high stress, the things for your kids you know play or sporting event or when you're going on vacation. You know that 90% of these things you know. And for the things you don't, you probably are 90% confident that they're going to happen at some point. Like you know, your friend's going to ask you out on some given day. So have a strategy, right? And when I work with clients, we like practice these scenarios, we try to role play. Or I will ask them what would you do when this happens? And let's talk about your vacation in a month rather than, you know, tomorrow, the vacation starting tomorrow. Let's give it some time and build confidence and competence about those scenarios. So with that, let me share some practical strategies, of course, for implementing the blue line approach, because that's what we're all about.
Philip Pape: 17:49
So strategy number one is having a clear hierarchy of your priorities. So what this means is list out on a piece of paper or in a note app the order of things as they are in terms of importance to you. So what is the most important thing? Is it your strength training? Yes, that is part of your nutrition, believe it or not? Threw you for a loop there, I know, or did I. Is it your protein intake? Is it your overall energy balance? You know your calories and the deficit or surplus you're trying to be in. Is it the whole food consumption? Like, maybe you are eating a lot of processed foods or going out a lot and your goal is to shift more toward the whole foods for the nutrients and for the satiety right. Any one of those might deserve more of your attention than just trying to hit exact numbers. In fact, they always will.
Philip Pape: 18:40
So create a hierarchy of your priorities. I don't talk about this a lot because sometimes we think of these as pillars, that we have to do all of them, but in reality we should do one at a time to start, unless you're working with a coach or a support system where you can really fall back on that as you slip along the way, which is going to happen at first. I would just do one at a time and then you can make better real-time decisions when the deviations occur, because you'll know which aspect of the plan you're going to protect most fiercely, like if training's at the top. You know that that's going to affect all the other decisions around it in terms of your schedule and what you're doing for your training. So that gives you the flexibility elsewhere in all the rest of your schedule or all the rest of your plan, because you're protecting the one thing that is most important right now, and for food-wise, for nutrition-wise, this could be definitely protein intake. Right, that might be the thing that you're going to fiercely protect, no matter what. That's number one Strategy.
Philip Pape: 19:41
Number two is I alluded to this with Whole Foods, but it's the 80-20 principle. We come back to this a lot, but it's because it's super simple and powerful and it's the rule of thumb that if you aim for 80% adherence to whatever it is your core principles, then you have 20% flexibility your core principles, then you have 20% flexibility. Yes, this applies to the whole foods versus anything else, but it also applies to 80% consistency to your protein, 80% consistency to the calories, and it'd be when, when we say consistency, we don't mean, um, like 80% of the week, you try to hit your calories and then the other 20% you go hog wild with, like cheat meals. That's not what we're talking about. We're just saying you know you're going to try to adhere but in reality it's not going to be perfect. So give yourself an 80% goal is my point, and however you want to define that 80%. So, for example, if you eat four meals a day across seven days that's 28 meals in the week then that means 22 or three of those meals are going to align with your plan. If you have 80% and five to six of them may not right Again, it's not cheat meals, it's just building in adaptability. And you notice it's not a lot, it's five to six, but it's not zero either. You're not giving yourself a completely rigid approach. So that's strategy number two is apply 80, 20, wherever it makes sense.
Philip Pape: 21:05
Strategy number three this is if, then contingencies, pre-planned contingencies for common scenarios. Like you know that Christmas is going to come on December 25th, so why haven't you budgeted and saved up for the gifts instead of spending it on your credit card? Right, that would be what a financial person would chide you for. I'm the nutrition guy, but I know a little bit about finance. What I'm going to suggest is think about the situations that are most often derail your nutrition efforts, but are going to happen one way or the other. They either happen on a consistent basis or they happen randomly, but they happen and then come up with strategies for handling them.
Philip Pape: 21:43
So, if work dinners right, if you you know work maybe you're an executive, maybe you're a lawyer or something and you have to go treat customers or suppliers, take you out for dinner all the time or whatever and that's a challenge then you might have a standard approach developed ahead of time. You review the menu in advance, you decide on your meal before arriving, you pre-log it. You have a protein shake beforehand or some other lean protein earlier in the day. If you're concerned about portions etc. Having some sort of plan, you can come up with that plan. Right. That's flexibility too. You can come up with that whatever makes sense. If I'm your coach, I'm going to help you come up with that, but ultimately it's on what works for you, and that means you can navigate any deviation with confidence. Maybe not 100% of them, some things are going to surprise you, no matter what, but the vast majority of them you can foresee All right.
Philip Pape: 22:31
Strategy number four is what I call mindful deviation. So when you deviate from your plan. You will. You always will. You will many times. Except that I want you to deviate mindfully rather than reactively.
Philip Pape: 22:48
Somebody else called this a planned reaction. I think, or a what do they call this? A proactive reaction. It's a mindful deviation. It's a conscious choice. It's made with awareness as opposed to impulsively reacting to your circumstances. This could be anything from pattern interrupts to Having your priorities in your head that we talked about earlier and then acting on those, to taking a pause and thinking about the emotions going through your head. There's a lot of reasons, so I'll give you a specific example. Choosing to enjoy your grandmother's special brownies at a family gathering is very different from mindlessly eating cookies because they're in the break room at work, right? The former is a blue line adaptation. The latter is you're just getting knocked off course, you're just letting it happen. So even with deviations, they can be mindful, important distinction, all right.
Philip Pape: 23:42
And then strategy five is I want you to focus on the momentum rather than the adherence or the perfection, because if you think of the blue line approach, where we have a black line, that's a straight perfect line, and then we have this meandering blue line, that's reality. Remember that success is not defined by adhering to the black line. It's defined by your ability to maintain momentum right, even though it zigzags, even though you have inevitable deviations from the black line. You're going to end up near the black line, but you're going to deviate constantly. It's your ability to keep the line being drawn forward right. And so that means, for example, celebrate when you get through a challenging situation reasonably well, instead of beating yourself up for not handling it perfectly. Celebrate yourself for getting through it reasonably well. Celebrate yourself for getting through it reasonably well. It means quickly returning to your baseline after a deviation, right, getting up near that black line, but not necessarily on it, but close to it, rather than allowing one off-plan meal that you feel guilty about turn into an off-plan week. So think about it visually that blue line it starts to deviate away from the black line. That's your off-plan meal. Well, all you have to do is deviate back to the black line the next day, instead of continuing to go farther and farther away from the black line and going off the page.
Philip Pape: 25:04
And then kind of putting this all together is using data to refine your approach to all of these things over time. Right, you knew it would come back to data with me, didn't you? I mean, one of the most powerful aspects of this concept, this blue line concept, is it creates a feedback loop, because you are tracking both your plan, which is the black line, and you're tracking what happens, which is the blue line. Pretty cool, right? You're actually tracking what you intend to do and you're tracking what you actually do, and that gives you an idea of the gap and the insights so that you can keep improving. And the gap isn't something to beat yourself up over. It's an acknowledgement of reality and how you're able to navigate and how you can better navigate in the future.
Philip Pape: 25:44
So if you, for example, notice that you consistently struggle with late night snacking on work days very common that is valuable data. So instead of saying I'm going to try harder to resist, which is willpower, you might adjust your meal timing right To put a snack toward the end of the day to take care of your hunger. Or you might change the composition of your meals to have more fiber and vegetables to make you fuller, more protein in your dinner right. Whatever it takes to better manage evening hunger, other than dealing with emotional triggers and things like that as well, it may just be a simple solution like that that helps you get back near the black line. So I wanna talk about something counterintuitive here, related to this. That is directly from experience with clients.
Philip Pape: 26:34
Okay, as a nutrition coach, one of the most difficult things for me and the challenge that I fully embrace is getting clients to adopt this blue line approach to nutrition. Now, I haven't called it blue line before. I might start doing that, but there's this assumption that embracing flexibility means I'm going to slow down my progress, right? Well, if I deviate constantly, aren't I going to get fat loss slower? Right? Aren't my results going to be mediocre because I'm allowing for constantly getting off track? In reality, the opposite happens, because when you shift from a rigid, the black line mentality to the flexible blue line approach, your results usually accelerate, and the reason why is you're no longer caught in the cycle of perfect adherence followed by complete abandonment. You maintain consistent progress. That's all it comes down to. You don't do it perfectly, and that's the point. You do it consistently, though, and you keep doing it. The small, deliberate deviations that you allow prevent the massive unplanned deviations that derail your progress completely.
Philip Pape: 27:40
I think even more importantly is that the blue line approach helps you build skills, what are called progressive adaptation skills. Right, just like with training. Think about it. Just like with training, where progressive overload increases your strength and muscle over time, progressive adaptation with nutrition makes you more resilient, makes you more capable, makes you more skilled. You're going to be able to teach this stuff, my friends. If you work with me as a client, you are going to be able to come out the other end teaching other people how to do this, because you'll just know how to do it, and that's what I want for you. I want you to know how to do this, because you'll just know how to do it, and that's what I want for you. I want you to know how to do it. You can get some of that from this podcast, but you get a lot of that doing it yourself.
Philip Pape: 28:21
And so what happens is some wonderful side effects. Yes, you transform your body Great, we all want to do that but you also transform this relationship with food, because a lot of that relationship is tied up in the anxiety and those situations that cause the deviations. You no longer fear social situations because you're prepared, or going on a trip because you have the skills to navigate them. Food becomes a source of nourishment and fuel and enjoyment, yes, rather than anxiety and guilt. And then, probably most powerful of all just to wrap this up and then I'll shut up is when you do this, you stop identifying progress with perfection and then you understand that any path to any goal not just nutrition, anything in life it's not a straight black line, but it's a winding blue one. And not only is that okay, it's exactly how it should be, isn't that powerful? I'm exciting myself as I talk about this, because when I came across the image of the blue versus black lines, that oh, light bulb clicked, got to share this with my audience.
Philip Pape: 29:20
So if we bring this all together, the black line versus blue line concept shows us that in a complex environment AKA life success is not from perfectly following an idealized plan, but from navigating with skill that you develop over time, the inevitable deviations, the inevitable adaptations that are required, because it's the real world. So when we talk about adapting to your goals, your lifestyles, your preferences and all that which sometimes sounds like marketing speak, that's kind of what we're talking about. And when you apply it to nutrition, your approach changes, your mindset changes. You no longer try to be perfect, but instead you try to develop the skills, the strategies, the mindsets that allow you to maintain progress right. Maintain progress despite the complexities of real life, and you're not lowering your standards by doing this. You are not giving up on your goals. It's approaching those goals in a way that aligns with reality, rather than fighting against it, and building a sustainable approach. Boom, that's what it is. That is what sustainability is.
Philip Pape: 30:29
So I'm going to encourage you right now to examine your own approach to your nutrition. Are you caught in the trap of black line thinking, where any deviation feels like failure, or have you or will you embrace the blue line reality, where skillful navigation and adaptation lead to progress and lasting success? All right, if you enjoyed this concept, if you found it helpful. I'm all about frameworks. I'm all about systems and applying engineering-type principles to your nutrition and training, because they work. They reflect some of the most complex environments and situations in real life, and imagine if you can deal with your complex human body in the same way, with simple frameworks and systems that just finally help you break through and make it work.
Philip Pape: 31:17
If you want to do that, please join us in Physique University. Link in the show notes. You get a two-week free trial. Tons of goodies in there. We do masterclasses with guest experts. Now we do challenges every month. You've got courses. You've got a free custom nutrition plan when you join, put together by me. And remember that plan is the black line. The blue line is what we teach you Evidence-based. They work in the real world, not just on paper. You can get all the details. You can learn more Zero risk. Go to witsandweightscom. Slash physique or click the link in the show notes. All right until next time. This is Philip Pape reminding you to use your wits, lift those weights and remember that life is a meandering, flexible, adaptable blue line and if you follow it, you will get all of the results you ever dreamed of. I'll talk to you next time here on the Wits and Weights podcast.
