Ep 104: Fat Loss vs. Weight Loss
Today, we get into the very relevant differences between two terms that seem similar on the surface, fat loss and weight loss, but are polar opposites in terms of the behaviors you would take to achieve them.
One of these can be downright destructive to your body, leading down a dark path that you’ve probably been down before, many times, that sacrifices your health and physique for the sake of hitting a number. The other drives you to make the changes you need and want to vastly improve your health and physique and do it in a sustainable, life-altering way that aligns with your body.
We talk about the semantic differences in how we use language in the fitness industry regarding the terms ‘weight loss’ and ‘fat loss.’ We talk about why fat loss is more important than weight loss. We also talk about the dangers of crash dieting and yo-yo dieting, and how they can backfire and make it even harder to get the results you want. Finally, we talk about how to achieve fat loss to get the exact results you want without the negatives of weight loss.
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[3:43] Weight loss vs. fat loss, definitions, and industry problems
[7:51] Struggling with weight loss before the wedding
[10:52] Unsustainable cycle of crash dieting and weight regain
[12:30] The backlash against weight loss and extreme approaches
[15:27] The debate between restrictive dieting and intuitive eating
[17:23] Using a data-based approach for efficient weight management
[26:32] Losing fat instead of losing weight
[28:13] Combining strength training with proper nutrition for muscle-building
[32:34] Recovery and stress management for a better physique
[37:24] Focus on fat loss
[38:09] Take action now for successful fat loss
[40:23] Outro
Episode resources:
Ep 88: Break the Cycle of Body Fat Overshooting for a Stronger, Leaner, and Healthier Physique - https://www.witsandweights.com/88
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Transcript
Philip Pape 00:00
Here's the thing, if you're serious about losing fat and improving your health, improving your body composition, then you're going to focus on fat loss and not weight loss. You're going to train, you're gonna eat protein, you're going to keep that muscle while you lose your body mass. So it's just fat. Welcome to the Wits & Weights podcast. I'm your host, Philip pape, and this twice a week podcast is dedicated to helping you achieve physical self mastery by getting stronger. Optimizing your nutrition and upgrading your body composition will uncover science backed strategies for movement, metabolism, muscle and mindset with a skeptical eye on the fitness industry. So you can look and feel your absolute best. Let's dive right in Wits & Weights community Welcome to another solo episode of the Wits & Weights podcast. I hope you enjoyed our last episode 103 Sweet proteins, food science and the future of sweeteners with Jason Ryder, where we learned about sweet proteins, including the science behind them, their potential health benefits and new nutrition strategy to what foods you might find them in now and in the future. Today for episode 104 fat loss versus weight loss, we will get into the very relevant differences between two terms that seems similar on the surface fat loss and weight loss, but are polar opposites in terms of the behaviors that you would take to achieve them. And what the results actually look like? One of these can be downright destructive to your body leading down a dark path that you've probably didn't bend down before many times as of AI, a path that sacrifices your health and physique for the sake of hitting a number. The other drives you to make the changes you need and want to vastly improve your health and physique. And do it in a sustainable, life altering way that aligns with your body to find out what I mean, let's stick around and get into today's topic. Fat Loss versus weight loss. Here's the thing. What if I told you that the way you've been thinking about weight loss is all wrong? What if what you want is not actually weight loss? Here's the thing. The truth is that weight loss is not the goal for most people, even if it's what you tell yourself, even if it's what the advertisement advertisers tell you, even if it's part of the process itself, right, actually reducing the weight on the scale. What most people really and truly want is fat loss. And they want that for certain reasons that go even deeper than that. But we're going to talk about the semantic differences in how we use language in the fitness industry, when it comes to those two terms, weight loss, and fat loss and stick around. Because I have a lot to say and a lot of opinions. Some might be a little controversial, hopefully not hopefully, there's just reality based on my experience and what I've seen. But when it comes to those two terms, weight loss and fat loss, there are definitely some differences in the industry. We're going to talk about why fat loss is more important, just much more deeply more important than weight loss. And we're going to talk about the dangers of Crash dieting, yo yo dieting, all the I'll say the benefits that you get from potentially losing weight, but also the dangers of a purely weight loss approach, and then how these things backfire and make it even harder in the future to get the results you want. And then finally, we'll talk about how to achieve fat loss, right, because if we're going to put it on this pedestal, I need to justify it for you and talk about how we get there to get the results that you want without the negatives of weight loss. So let's start off with the definitions. And let's talk about the industry and the problems with weight loss because I think these things are very important, these differences and distinctions are important. So in the industry, the terms weight loss and fat loss are often used interchangeably. But there's a subtle or maybe not so subtle, but important difference between the two. Okay, weight loss is simply the loss of any kind of body mass. This is just the weight on the scale, going from one number to a lower number. And this is fat tissue. muscle tissue also includes daily fluctuations like water, but generally we're talking about over time, some sort of permanent loss in tissue as measured by weight on the scale. Now in this episode, I'm not going to get into fluctuations and averaging your weight and all that kind of stuff. We're just going to assume that when somebody says weight loss, they mean true a true drop in body mass over time, whether it's five pounds, 20 pounds, 50 pounds, 200 pounds. Fat Loss on the other hand, respire refers specifically to the loss of body fat, and it may be in the context of a loss of weight. So most people want to get past that initial A new training phase where you might be able to build muscle and lose fat at the same time and not change your number on the scale. Most people when they want to lose a decent amount of extra fat will still also lose weight. But there's a very different process to get there a different result. And the the recurrence of weight regain, and the psychology are vastly different. Okay, this is why I prefer one or the other over the other. By leagues and leagues, when people lose weight quickly, when people lose weight quickly, they're more likely to lose muscle and water but muscle than fat, right. And this is why crash dieting, yo yo dieting, the way that most people diet with restrictive diets, where they really don't have much understanding of how much they're consuming, and what deficit they're in, and how and why the weight is falling off. And so generally, to get the results that you think you want, and get to that number, you go to extremes. And sometimes you push that extreme further and further during a diet, especially as you hit plateaus to make sure that you lose that weight. And this is a very dangerous process. If you want to lose fat and keep it off, it's really about losing weight slowly and gradually, but also preserving muscle and we're going to tie that all together toward the end. But I want you to understand that that's that's the key difference between the two. Now, here's the problem with weight loss. Weight loss is often seen as a numbers game, right? People focus on losing as many pounds as possible, regardless of how they do it by numbers game, you know, I like data, you know, I like numbers. But it's a single number that people focus on, instead of taking multiple data points, multiple qualitative measures of your feedback, multiple aspects of your movement training, nutrition, it's this one number. And for what, what is your real goal here, I want you to just take a step back and ask yourself, why do I want to lose 20 pounds? Right? Or 30 pounds or 50 pounds? And when I do, how am I going to feel when I get there? And is that what I'm after? Meaning? If I lose a 30 pounds, am I going to now feel very confident with myself comfortable in my clothes, I'm going to have the physique I want. I'm not going to have any more insecurities about food, or my training my nutrition, I'm going to be able to maintain my results for the rest of my life. I'm going to be able to keep eating the way I've been eating. If those are all true statements, then, then yeah, maybe you're in a great place. But tell me if that has ever happened to you, when you just lost a bunch of weight. We know it doesn't happen because we know 95% of people regain the weight that they lose, because they're doing it in this way that's focused specifically on that number on weight scale. Wait, let me just tell you a quick story about my my wedding. This was almost 20 years ago. Okay, so I know I'm dating myself. But you guys know I'm in my 40s right I'm the over 40 Crowd says a lot of what I talk about. For my wedding. This was back in the mid 2000s I did some sort of crash diet and on for the life of me no matter how far back I go and emails and everything. I can't figure out what I was doing. It wasn't like a named a big names diet. I did those later paleo zone keto, and so on. I did Atkins earlier than this. But well, all I remember was I had a piece of paper with a list of foods that I could eat. Okay, sound familiar list of foods I can eat. And they were actually very specific foods. It was like, I could eat lunch meat. And I could eat
Philip Pape 08:45
strawberries, you know, and maybe a little bit a few nuts, right? And it was like these very specific prescriptive quantities and types of food. And they were like, I don't know 15 foods total at most, and I can mix and match them. And that's a whole a that's all a it was. It was miserable. And here's the thing, my wonderful wife who loves me and we're getting ready to get married you know, she's just supporting me all the way she was the opposite of a bridesmaid I have to say so good throughout the process had really had fun with it. We had fun planning for our wedding. And deal she never said a word she just supported me you know we were still living separately so I was kind of doing it on my own anyway it's not like she was making my meals for me and come the wedding. I had lost probably 1520 pounds I was you know nice and trim fitting in my suit. But when I look back on pictures of myself back then I said Man, this guy is kind of emaciated is the word I might use like extremely skinny pale, not healthy looking as the word now far be it for me to judge other people like that, you know, at least out loud. We all judge people in our heads I get it. I'm not going to do the on this podcast and say that but I'm talking about myself here so I can do it. that, and this is what I was feeling. But at the time I didn't, I didn't have the same perception. I just knew that I had hit a number on the scale, I was able to fit in my suit. And guess what happened? We go on our honeymoon, we go to Italy, and we go on a cruise. I mean, it was quite the honeymoon, I have to say. And I just was unhinged when it came to food I just picked out I ate everything, all the things. I said, well, the diet did what it was supposed to do. I fit in the suit, and it's over. And now we're married. So there we go, I'm just going to enjoy everything, I'm going to enjoy the unlimited food on the cruise, I'm gonna enjoy gelato is everyday in Italy. And we had a great time in Italy. And I really enjoyed the food. And I don't regret it at all. I don't regret it at all. We had wine, the wine was less expensive than Diet Coke. You know, it's crazy in Italy. So we had we had those prosciutto sandwiches every day, you name it. And I had a great time. But in hindsight, I know that I was completely out of control and had no clue what I was doing. And none of this was sustainable. And the goal of weight loss was fleeting, I hit it, and all of a sudden was over and I gained the weight back. And for years and years went on that same process, right? So just because you hit the number, it doesn't solve all your problems. And that's one of the big problems with weight loss. And then it leads to this unhealthy unsustainable relationship with food with with the dieting process with the what dieting even means, right? We think of dieting as a negative thing of like, Okay, I gotta turn on the switch. And I've got to go, just cut, cut, cut. And I'm going to suffer through this short term period, or maybe long term period, or maybe, maybe years. And I'm gonna get to this number, and then I'm done. And then why, right. So that's if it ended there, that would be bad enough. But we know and you've heard me talk about this on on a previous podcast, this mentality of Crash dieting, and doing it over and over, can make it harder to lose fat in the long run because of what it does to your body, physiologically, and somewhat permanently. Right. And I'm gonna get to that in a second. But besides that, you end up gaining the weight back, you end up having an increased risk of disease, you generally gain more weight than you started with. And this leads to just most people becoming more and more overweight throughout their life. And this is part of why we have just a massive problem with obesity in the Western world. And it's a problem. So I would love to say that the fitness industry understands this perfectly, and has decided to, in principle, do the right thing. But instead of adding nuance, we know that the fitness industry perpetuates misinformation, it perpetuates unhealthy practices, right. And sometimes they are a backlash to weight loss. But instead of solving the problem, they go to another extreme. So I want to touch on a few of these. I know this isn't like the controversy episode. But I think this is so important to the idea of, of weight loss and why I just I almost despise the term I try to never ever use the term, I will use it occasionally. And I very much respect people like for example, Brandon Cruz was on my show twice. And he will use the weight loss quite often. But I know that the way he's using it is really to mean fat loss. And if you listen to what he says that's exactly what he's talking about. So I don't hold it against people who, when it comes to semantics, who use the term and really mean something, that that's cool. Like I really I don't want to get into that. What I think is the nefarious part of all of this is when influencers or people in the fitness industry will say well, weight loss is unhealthy. So we do the opposite of weight loss, whatever that is, right. But let's just focus on how weight loss is portrayed in the industry. First and foremost, it's everywhere, right? It's the very first strategy regardless still the majority strategy online, offline on billboards in ads, we were on the highway, my wife and I were taking a road trip the other day, we were on the highway near the airport, and you have one billboard after another and it's either a lawyer or weight loss add pretty much right? A lawyer or weight loss ad. And I'm like oh, and they always show somebody with a you know, oversized pants, they're stretching them out and look at all this weight they've lost and you can lose, I don't know 10 pounds in your first week or second week at some massive claim always right. And here's the thing, weight is this tiny metric. When it's used out of context, it's just one tiny element of your of your body. Right. And it's virtually meaningless, except for generalizations about obesity and disease risk overall meaning if some, if I told you a person weighed 400 pounds, you wouldn't even have to ask their gender, their height, their age, you automatically know that as far as the human population goes that that is an unhealthy level of weight, most likely now now there actually could be a tiny segment of say, Sumo wrestlers, power lifters athletes who just have so much muscle They're metabolically protected that way. Okay, but come on, we're talking about the 99% of the population that 400 pounds would be excessively overweight. So in terms of generalizations, that kind of makes sense. But in terms of what the day to day person is trying to do to just quote unquote, lose 20 pounds and lose 30 pounds, meaning they really want to be healthier, they want to look better, they want to feel better in their clothes. It, it takes it out of context, from all the other things that matter. Because it's such a powerful marketing tool, I think of weight loss is like restrictive dieting. Right? Restrictive dieting, makes things very simple, because they tell you just eat these foods. That's it? Well, weight loss is very simple, because they say, we're just going to focus on this one number, if we get this number from here to here, you're successful, we're successful, we've taken your money, you're not going to sue us move on. And then next time you regain the weight, just come back to us.
Philip Pape 15:50
And if you send some note of cynicism in my voice, it's legitimate and warranted, in my opinion. Then there's the backlash of the anti diet crowd. So this is what I was talking about before where, where they say, okay, dieting is inherently harmful in all its forms, meaning like being in any calorie deficit, just a bad thing, calories in calories out. All that's just awful. And it can lead to disordered eating and other health problems. And here, you need this holistic approach to health that focuses on listening to your body and eating intuitively and listening to your hunger signals. And we're going to teach you exactly how to do that. And there's a couple problems with this. The first problem is that they're assuming that restrictive dieting, right named diets is the only way to create a calorie deficit and lose body mass or lose weight, or whatever it is. But we know that a flexible approach to dieting can also induce weight loss and fat loss without the problems of disordered eating and weight regain. In fact, it's like this idea of flexible dieting, we know is very much associated with a healthy approach, and a healthy relationship with food. And you can use it to lose some body mass as well, which means we have to add nuance, okay? Intuitive Eating on the other hand, can actually be a problem, because most people are going to have a very hard time learning, intuitive eating without developing the intuition first, and you can only do that through awareness. Now, can you develop awareness via looking at portion sizes, mindful eating, and all of those practices, you can, I will say, however, that if somebody feels that they are an unhealthy level of weight, and is trying to lose some fat, to be healthier, metabolically healthier, it may take a lot longer, it'd be a very frustrating, long drawn out process that requires a lot of discipline and willpower to get those kinds of skills in place. Whereas a simple feedback loop of tracking your macros and calories, and managing a few things like your training, and sleep and stress can be more approachable and measurable, to get you to where you need to be and create that awareness. Once you've got that awareness, you can then do things more intuitively. But I'll tell you what, I talked to people who are experts in physique enhancement, like Dr. Bill Campbell, like Brandon Cruz, and decrees and others. And they will tell you time and again for themselves and all their clients who have a goal. And it doesn't even have to be a super aggressive goal. It's just, they want to get from here to there. And they want to do it efficiently. They don't want to drag it on forever, because dragging things on forever, is unsustainable. They want to get it over quickly. And so using a data based approach with tracking and a science based mindset of you know, we're going to apply all of our tools we have as efficiently as we can to get it done quickly, is what they use. And that involves using a calorie deficit with a known number of calories rather than trying to eat intuitively. Not to say it's not possible. I'm not Pooh poohing intuitive eating. I'm just saying that. It is not the only antidote to weight loss. Okay. Then there's there's the Bazi excuse me, fumbling over my words. Then there's the body positivity movement. Oh, here he goes. Watch out what is Philip gonna say today? So, this is this is this movement that challenges the idea that there is only one ideal body type. Now, right there the premise, I already reject that premise as well. Just like the movement does, I reject the premise that there is only one ideal body type because there isn't. Hey, this is Philip. And I hope you're enjoying this episode of Wits & Weights, I started Wits, & Weights to help people who want to build muscle, lose fat and actually look like they lift. I've noticed that when people improve their strength and physique, they not only look and feel better, they transform other areas of their life, their health, their mental resilience and their confidence in everything they do. And since you're listening to this podcast, I assume you want the same things the same success, whether you recently started lifting, or you've been at this for a while and want to optimize and reach a new level of success. Either way, my one on one coaching focused on engineering your physique and body composition is for you. If you want expert guidance and want to get results faster, easier, and with fewer frustrations along the way to actually look like you lift, go to wits & weights.com and click on coaching, or use the link in my show notes to apply today, I'll ask you a few short questions to decide if we're a good fit. If we are, we'll get you started this week. Now back to the show. Everybody has a different body type first of all, and can nobody can look the same as anyone else. And whatever you are happy with is your ideal body type. And by happy, extrapolate that to whatever it means for you capable, functional, healthy, fit, long life, high quality life. And the again, this is where we talk about extremes, the Buzet body positivity movement encourages people to celebrate their bodies, okay, okay, all good with that, regardless of their size or shape, I'm good with that, too. There's no doubt that they are really focused more on the mental health side of things, which I think is a great mission, because you should definitely love your body, no matter what, no matter what. And that includes giving your body the best shot at a long, high quality life. That is where I have the that's that's my statement, where I think it starts to differ from some in the body positivity movement, that will claim that you can be healthy at any size. And that's really the statement that I have a problem with, because we know physically, physiologically, objectively, medically, that is not true. We just know that we know that above a certain weight, or with a certain lifestyle, or even if you're not above a certain weight, but you have a certain sedentary level of activity, we know that those are associated with higher disease risk, our disease, diabetes, you know, mortality, and so on cancer, whatever. And that's a physical objective thing. I like to think of it as I am positive about my body, I love it so much. And because I love it so much, I'm going to do everything I can to keep it alive and thriving. So get into a healthier weight, ideally, via fat loss. So we're going to talk about and not indiscriminant weight loss is associated with improvements in self esteem, and mood, not to mention the confidence in your body and its capabilities for the rest of your life for the decades to come. So hopefully I gave that the right. That subject the right respect, you know, I'm not the type to go off on things and become the radio jockey kind of guy. I am trying to give it nuanced, but also recognize that there's a ridiculous, if not stupid level of irrationality out there. When it comes to Oh, yeah, you can be 500 pounds and healthy, no, not possible, I'm sorry. But if you're 500 pounds, you can love your body. And you love it so much that you want to do something, and hopefully there are people to help you do that. Right. And that's, that's what we're trying to do in this show is help you do that and do it in the right way. So we know that losing weight in general, can lower the risk of developing chronic diseases like heart disease, diabetes, but only if you can maintain the weight loss. And as we're going to learn in a bit losing fat instead of losing weight is the way of maintaining your newfound health. So let's take this for what it is.
Philip Pape 23:24
There is Vanbrugh. And by the way, if I if I offended anyone I didn't mean to hopefully I didn't. And if I did, please send me a note and let me know that I did. So I can apologize, I don't think I got off track on that. But that some of these subjects are highly sensitive. So you know, and I am a sensitive guy, I think and want to give it the treatment it deserves. So let's take this for what it is, there is value in losing pure body mass from a health perspective. Yet, the only way to do that in a healthy and sustainable way is by prioritizing fat loss instead of weight loss. Therefore, let's take advantage of these benefits of losing weight. And understand that if you only lose weight indiscriminately, and don't lose fat, there are three things that are conspiring against you. Okay, these are physiological things that ultimately also become psychological. And these are the things that make it impossible for 95% of people who lose weight to maintain that weight loss. We are trying to avoid these things. So I want to clarify what those are. All right. So if you say need to lose 30 pounds, and you go and you do a crash diet or you do keto or something you just the weight starts flying off. Okay? There's going to be a few things that happen along the way that are going to backfire because you went so aggressively and you didn't prioritize fat loss. I talked about this on episode 88. It's called break the cycle of body fat overshooting for a stronger leaner and healthier physique, but I'm going to recap them so the first one is body fat overshooting. This is when you lose weight too quickly. The body tries to conserve energy you have metabolic adaptation. But even worse, you start To lose muscle, this leads to an increase in appetite, excuse me, a decrease in your metabolism much more quickly than it would otherwise, which makes it harder and harder to lose the additional pounds that you're going for. And then when you are done, you more easily regain weight for a variety of reasons. Having to do with the hunger, for example, having to do with the fact that you are on a restrictive diet. And now because you've turned off the dieting, switch, everything's back in play, and you're not sure what to eat. So you just eat all the indulgences and all the high sugar, high fat, high carb, whatever things high, everything high calorie, doesn't matter what macro it has probably not a lot of protein, let's be honest. And you regain all the weight and then some and this happens to 95% of people within I think five years. The second phenomenon is called hyperplasia. This is the growth of new fat cells. When you lose weight too quickly, the body might produce new fat cells to replace new ones that had been lost. Now I've seen this been called into question by, you know, reputable evidence out there. So I'm waiting to see more evidence come out, it may not be as big of a deal as we think. But you know why chance and I guess, and if you create new fat cells, you're never going to lose them, you're always gonna have those, it's just more energy storage for future weight regain. And then hyperphagia is the third one. And this is the excessive consumption of food, I believe it's triggered by the metabolic adaptation and the loss of muscle, like we talked about first, and you get these intense hunger pangs deep into the diet. And then that leads to binging, overeating weight regain. Okay, so enough of the doom and gloom, there's a very simple solution, all this to all this, okay? It's not not easy, but simple. We want to lose fat, instead of lose weight. And by losing fat, we're gonna gain all the benefits of losing weight, the health benefits of living at a lighter body mass, but none of the consequences that we just talked about. And so we can get the exact physique we want. And we can know with confidence how to shape our bodies, anytime in the future, do it sustainably feel in control, feel a sense of freedom, it's a great place to be. It's a place that I finally discovered about three years ago, and I've been living in ever since. And it's been so liberating. And then all my clients get to experience this as well. And it's just a joy to see them go through that transformation in such a short time, you know, we're talking three to six months, come out of it with a clarity they've never had before. And it really comes down to body composition. When we talk about our physique. We're talking about looking lean, and strong, and having less fat, which can be dangerous, depending on where it is stored in the body.
Philip Pape 27:51
Being at a healthy level of body fat, and then having carrying a lot of muscle, right. So body composition is what most people are going for. Now you can improve your body composition as a new lifter, without even losing weight on the scale. In fact, you can improve it while gaining weight on the scale. You could of course, build muscle and lose fat while losing weight on the scale. And you could just hold on to muscle and lose fat while losing weight on the scale. So now we start to see, okay, wait on the scale is one metric. But it's not everything is one metric. And we can use that metric. And we can use it for its advantages. But we need to do it in context. And so there really, I'm gonna say four major things that if you can do these, you're gonna have 8590 95% of the progress you want. And the first one is strength training. Absolutely, bar none. We want to build muscle when we are eating. We want to preserve muscle when we're in a deficit, we want to increase our insulin sensitivity, we want to burn more calories at rest. We want to better utilize our food as energy, we want to get stronger, we want to get better bone density, I can go on and on. I've done podcasts in the past all about the benefits of muscle, there are no disadvantages, and there are only upsides to having more muscle. But that is number one. And all the things I talked about before about weight loss and all the programs, all the crazy crash diets, all the billboards I see on the highway. None of them talk about strength training, they are all about just cutting and restricting. And so the people on those programs are going to be in for a rude awakening because when they're not strength training, they're just going to lose a ton of muscle, they're going to get more skinny fat, they're not going to be happy when they hit that magic number. They're going to regain the weight. They're gonna have even higher body fat percentage than before. They're gonna repeat the cycle over and over and over again. Again, body fat overshooting. But strength training is their biggest protector against this. It's your biggest protector against us both in the muscle mass you add, but even in the act of strength training itself and the adaptation and the signal that it sends to your body the day after the week after you know while you sleep. Because once you're in that calorie deficit and you're losing Weight, yes, you're losing weight, you're losing primarily fat tissue. As a representation of most of that weight, the man or woman down the street following the billboard program is losing half of their tissue as muscle, you're losing zero of that tissue as muscle. So while they're losing 10 pounds of muscle and 10 pounds of fat, which is just killing their health, you're losing 20 pounds of fat, period. That's what we want. So strength training is going to be the biggest signal toward that. And then it has to be combined combined with the right energy, the right food for that training. And this is the way I like to approach I'd like to start with strength and start with training. Because once you become an athlete, okay, all my clients are athletes, I'm not saying that they are athletes, and then they become clients. I'm saying they become clients, and then they become athletes. And anyone listening to this show, you can be an athlete, you can be an athlete starting today. Okay, once you're an athlete, and you think that way, and you train like an athlete, an athlete who recovers well, of course, we're not talking about an in season athlete, let's call it an offseason athlete, you're gonna then want to fuel that performance. And we fuel it with the right balance of protein, fats, carbs, which is probably a lot more protein than you're getting now, probably double for what a lot of people are getting, if you haven't ever tracked before, it's probably at least double and probably a lot more carbs than you used to as well. And then you're like, Well, are you telling me to eat more of everything? Yeah, actually, you're probably gonna need more calories overall, to fuel that act of building muscle, you're gonna be able to burn more calories, you're gonna be able to do so with gaining little to no weight, to set yourself, set yourself up for this fat loss phase, where you're training, send your body a signal, that muscle is important. And you're feeding the repair of that muscle with protein and sufficient carbs. Because remember, we've talked about this before, carbs protect protein, so we they kind of complement each other. But when you're in a calorie deficit, you're not gonna be able to have that many carbs. So you try to keep the protein as high as possible. Okay, so we've got training, we've got protein, folks, this is nothing new. You've heard me say this over and over again, these are the, this is the checklist. This is the checklist, okay, but it's good to be reminded of, it's good to remind myself of how important these are. Because as soon as one of these these things drop off, you enter the realm of weight loss instead of fat loss, then we have the appropriate rate of loss that is really important to this, because when we talk about the diets on the Billboard, those are crash diets because they promise fast weight loss and you probably get fast weight loss. And that is a problem because go back to my previous thing about body fat overshooting, hyperphagia, hyperplasia, hunger, you know, unsustainability, on and on and on. We don't want those, we want to go at a reasonable rate, which can still be somewhat aggressive, depending on your starting point, depending on how you feel, depending on how much metabolism adapts, and we're starting from, and depending on your hunger signals, we can vary that between, you know, moderate to pretty aggressive. Depending on where you're starting from, right, some of my more advanced client athletes can go more aggressive because they have a higher metabolism or they're bigger, they burn more calories, or they do a lot more activity and training. Whereas somebody who's been dieting a lot, who has kind of a suppressed metabolism, even once we recover it, it's still not may not be that high in relative terms, or it could be someday. And so you're not gonna be able to go as aggressive on that dieting phase on that fat loss phase, right. So it really depends. But the typical rate of loss is anywhere from a quarter to 1% of your weight per week, we won't get into aggressive fat loss today, because I don't want to mix the signals between that and crash dieting and confuse you here, I will do a future episode, I'm pretty committed to doing a future episode all about aggressive fat loss and how to accomplish that safely. And effectively. And you know, kind of what the limitations are. But today, I'm just keeping it to the standard quarter to 1% of your body weight a week, which for most people is going to be kind of in the middle of that range a half to three quarters of a percent of your body weight per week. So for 200 pound person that's going to be like one on one and a half pounds a week, which is about like a 500 to 750 calorie a day deficit. Okay. And then the last thing is recovery, getting enough sleep reducing your stress. I recently heard something on the revived stronger podcast, Dr. Mike Israel was on there. And he used the phrase, I think I posted a story about it, where he said physique, or he said fatigue kills physique. Fatigue is a killer for the physique. And what he was talking about is when you have too much stress in your life, and the stress could be in the form of too much training too much Exercise and Movement, right? If it's just too much, that creates fatigue that you cannot recover from and it starts to compound on itself. And this creates a load on your body a stress in your body that suppresses your metabolism quite a bit, in addition to the other things that suppress it. So getting enough sleep, reducing your stress are great ways to do that. I'll tell you about my personal journey right now. I'm eight weeks out from left rotator cuff surgery And around the time I record this episode, and I talked to one of my physical therapists about, actually, John Patrizio, he's going to be on the show soon, he's a starting strength guy who's also a physical therapist in my barbell club. And he and I went over some ideas for how I can ramp up my lifting. Now, I can start doing some things like some limited rom bench pressing, I can do safety bar squats, I can do some conventional deadlifting again, so I'm getting into that phase where I can start loading my recovering arm. But instead of doing a four or five day split, like I was used to, he's like, why don't we go to three days do full body. And the reason we're going to do that is because I can't lift that much weight with some of these movements right now. And so it's kind of like I'm a beginner, I'm regressing a little bit to linear progression, like a novice, almost like a novice linear progression, where I'm going to start deadlifting, like 90 505 pounds. Whereas Normally, I'd be up in the mid to upper three hundreds, right. So I'm doing that because I have this bottleneck of my left shoulder, preventing me from lifting as much weight. But now I can do it three times a week instead of once a week. So as an intermediate lifter, I was doing most major movements once a week, because that's the, that's as frequently as I can do them to progress, I might do a second or third day of that movement, at a much lighter weight or a variation of it. But now I could actually deadlift, Monday, Wednesday, Friday, for example, you know, maybe a set of five heavy set of five. And by heavy, I just mean, you know, my top set, what I can handle. So what is my point with all this, I'm actually going to work out one day less a week. And I'm going to increase the frequency. And this is a way to manage fatigue and stress, I'm going to increase the stress that I need to progress my deadlift. But I'm reducing the systemic stress and the frequency stress by going to three days a week and making a full body. These are all important concepts. Now, I don't mean to go off on this long tangent about training in the context of weight loss versus fat loss. But if I was in a fat loss phase now, which I'm not, if I was in a fat loss phase, this would be very important variable in how many calories I can eat. And I like to keep the calories as high as possible during fat loss. So that it's easier, don't you, right, so that's another benefit of keeping your energy coming in as high as possible by keeping the stress down. So those are the big things training, protein, appropriate rate of loss, and in managing sleep stress recovery. Okay, here's the thing, if you are serious about losing fat, and improving your health, improving your body composition, then you're going to focus on fat loss, and not weight loss, you're going to train, you're gonna eat protein, you're going to keep that muscle while you lose your body mass. So it's just fat, while the billboard folks are losing muscle, and worsening their body composition. So it's not easy, but it's doable. And it's totally worth it. And remember, if you haven't done these yet, if you haven't done what we're talking about here yet, if this is all new to you, you know, don't beat yourself up. In fact, congratulate yourself for listening to this content and getting these ideas and learning. And now you have something to run with. And I would absolutely love you to reach out to me if you have any questions if this is confusing in any way, because I know I can cover a lot in one show. But here's the thing, there's no time like right now to get started or to restart this process. There's no time like right now, there really isn't, now is the time. And then once you do once you make that progress, if anyone asks you what you're doing to look so incredible, I want you to share this episode with them and start using the language of fat loss. Instead of weight loss in your conversations. Instead of saying, Yeah, I lost a bunch of weight, talk about how you lost fat and improved muscle composition, or body composition. Or I built some muscle and I lost some of that excess fat in the process, rather than making about weight loss, right? Because at the end of the day, you're gonna probably weigh quite a bit more than you thought you could actually look leaner than you thought you could. And then we can spread the word about the important differences between weight loss and fat loss and why they matter. And if you're tired of not seeing the results you want, I get it. Right I work with people like you every day, we use the same science backed methods I talked about on this podcast who lose fat, no BS, just stuff that works. It worked for me or for my clients. It's not the stuff on the billboards that the show that they're trying to show you in the fitness industry. It's just reasonable, simple, not easy, simple things at work. So if you want to lose fat, not just weight, you want to actually look like you lift. That's what we do. My coaching program, if you're interested is a six month commitment to do just that. It's pretty much the fastest time period you can imagine getting that kind of result because we know how to do this. We take your diet, your training, your lifestyle, we make it all work together. It isn't for everyone. It's just not. It's for people who are serious about making the change we talked about today and who are tired of wasting time. And if that's you, there's a link in my show notes It says apply for coaching, I want you to click it, fill it out, I'll get back to you with a couple of questions. And then we'll see if this is the right fit. If it is, we start immediately, no messing around because I hate wasting time as much as you do. So you don't want to be in the same spot. Six months from now, thinking about weight loss instead of having gone through successful fat loss, I want you to click the link to apply for my one on one coaching program. And let's get to work. All right in our next episode 105 Strength, power and vitality for women at any age with Cheryl I love Cheryl and I will be discussing the art of movement, the challenges faced by women in fitness, and actionable strategies to enhance vitality and build confidence No matter your age, or where you're starting from. The best way to get these new episodes and help others find the show is to click subscribe or follow or whatever it says in your favorite podcast app. And I'm always grateful when you tell others about the show. Because they too can become more informed. They can learn the differences between fat loss and weight loss and they also can have the power to get the outcome they desire. As always, stay strong. And I'll talk to you next time here on the Wits & Weights podcast.
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