Ep 136: How to Maintain a Lean Physique Year-Round (Without Cuts or Bulks)
How do you transition out of a dieting phase to maintain your results? Do you keep cycling between cutting and bulking? Or can you live at maintenance for a while, and if so, how do you do it effectively?
In this episode, Philip (@witsandweights) shares a proven blueprint to effortlessly transition out of a fat loss phase or an intense cut into a sustainable maintenance phase so you can recover from the deficit as quickly as possible, optimize your performance without going to extremes, and lock in your hard-earned lean physique year-round.
Maintenance is a critical but often overlooked fitness phase, especially when transitioning from a fat-loss period. Even though cuts and bulks are often emphasized for those going after body composition changes, sometimes living at maintenance is the best option to sustain an optimal physique and performance level that has already been achieved. Maintenance allows for metabolic recovery from a calorie deficit. Athletes who rely on a particular strength-to-weight ratio should avoid the extreme changes that come with cuts and bulks, and sustaining an ideal physique year-round provides its form of consistency.
Episode summary:
Achieving and maintaining a lean physique throughout the year is a common goal for many fitness enthusiasts. It's an admirable pursuit that often becomes entangled with the complications of strict dieting and the frustrating yo-yo effect of weight fluctuations.
The discussion opened with an important focus on the transition from a dieting phase to a sustainable maintenance phase. This is a crucial period where individuals often struggle. The mindset shift required during this phase is not insignificant; it demands a psychological adjustment that acknowledges the importance of a balanced lifestyle over the allure of extreme dieting. It's not just about hitting your target weight but learning how to sustain it without the need for continuous cycles of cutting and bulking.
Nutrition and training strategies were dissected in detail, with an emphasis on metabolic recovery and performance optimization. Listeners were provided with practical advice on how to navigate the common pitfalls that can derail maintenance efforts. One of the pivotal aspects of this transition is understanding how to adjust macronutrient intake to support long-term leanness. It involves fine-tuning the balance of proteins, carbohydrates, and fats in a way that complements the body's energy requirements and supports hormonal balance.
One of the more technical discussions in the episode revolved around the concept of the 'top side of maintenance.' This approach encourages individuals to slightly overshoot maintenance calories to facilitate metabolic recovery and avoid accidental deficits. This strategy, combined with monitoring biofeedback and energy levels, ensures proper recovery and helps maintain an optimal body composition.
The psychological hurdles that accompany the increase in calorie intake post-dieting cannot be understated. The initial weight fluctuations due to water retention can be disheartening, but understanding the physiological changes that occur during this period can help maintain perspective. It's essential to trust the process and recognize that these changes are part of the body's natural equilibrium process.
Training strategies, including the pros and cons of fasted training, were also explored. The podcast provided nuanced advice on how to approach training during a maintenance phase, emphasizing the importance of protein intake throughout the day and discussing the benefits of supplements like creatine monohydrate.
In conclusion, the episode emphasized the importance of a holistic approach to fitness, one that incorporates physical abundance as part of a broader philosophy of abundance in life. It's not just about reaching fitness goals; it's about empowering overall well-being and living a balanced, strong, and abundant life.
Today, you’ll learn all about:
3:07 What inspired this episode
7:21 What is maintenance, and why is it important?
10:16 Psychological shift to maintenance
16:06 The physiology of maintenance
20:19 Setting calories and macros for maintenance
24:32 Jumping to your maintenance calories
27:41 Weekly adjustments
31:53 Structuring your nutrition around your workout
35:01 Two advanced strategies
38:44 Five common pitfalls during maintenance
49:34 Outro
Episode Resources:
MacroFactor app – use code WITSANDWEIGHTS to extend your free trial to two weeks (and support me and this show!)
Ep 96: Why Reverse Dieting Doesn't Work Like You Think (and What to Do Instead)
Ep 116: 7 Lessons from My Rapid Fat Loss Micro-Cut (Aggressive Dieting is Not for Everyone!)
Ep 126: More Carbs, More Muscle (Why Low-Carb and Keto Are Keeping You Skinny Fat)
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Transcript
Philip Pape 00:00
How do you transition out of a dieting phase to maintain your results, you finally reached your fat loss goal. And now what to keep that hard earned lean physique without overshooting and gaining a bunch of weight or fat? Do you keep cycling between cutting and bulking? Or can you live in maintenance for a while? And if so, how do you do it effectively? Today, I'll share with you an evidence based approach to help you seamlessly transition out of an intense or prolonged calorie deficit, so you can sustain your physique and optimize your performance. We'll get into everything you need to know including mindset metrics, nutrition, training, and common pitfalls so you can master maintenance with confidence. Maybe your goal is to stay photoshoot shredded year round, to maximize your strength to weight ratio as an athlete or just enjoy your results without going straight into a bulk and gaining more fat. Either way, you'll learn in this episode, How To sustain your results for the long term. 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 in our last episode 135 The truth about testosterone for women's health with Karen Martel. Karen was back to chat about the role of testosterone and women's health and vitality who might benefit from testosterone therapy, common questions related to the benefits, safety, dosage and much more today for episode 136. How to maintain a lean physique year round. Without cuts or bulks. I'm equipping you with a blueprint to effortlessly transition out of a fat loss phase or an intense cut into a sustainable maintenance phase so that you can recover quickly from the deficit as quickly as possible. Optimize your performance without going to extremes and lock in your heart and lean physique year round. Maintenance is a critical but often overlooked phase of fitness. It's kind of sounds boring, just staying where you are. But it's very important especially when transitioning from a fat loss period. And even though we often emphasize cuts and bulks for those going after body composition changes, sometimes living at maintenance. What you've heard called the magic of maintenance is the best option when you're looking to sustain an optimal physique and performance level that you've already worked hard to achieve. Maintenance allows for metabolic recovery from that calorie deficit. And for example, athletes who rely on a particular strength to weight ratio might want to avoid extreme changes that come with cuts and bulks. And honestly sustaining an ideal physique year round provides its own form of predictability and consistency. Now, I'll be honest, I wasn't even considering doing an episode about maintenance because it's not that sexy of a topic. But one of our listeners, Neal reached out to me last month on Instagram at Wits & Weights and he inspired this episode, I'd like to read what he sent me because, you know, he made some good points. It inspired the episode and I thought many of you who listened to the show would relate to them. He said quote, hi Philip. I recently found your podcast and I'm really loving it. I have successfully used a high protein macro factor tracking flexible dieting approach to achieve about 10 to 12% body fat, and I'm 50 years old congrats me on that. I do strength training and nutrition to help achieve my athletic goals in rock climbing where I perform at a relatively high level. One thing I've noticed in the fitness industry is that about 70% of nutrition discussion focuses on fat loss, and 30% focuses on bulking however, pretty much 0% is focused on maintenance. This is unfortunate because the performance period of many athletes is best when they are consuming maintenance level calories. In addition, I imagine that most people find a body composition that they are happy with. But there's almost no information how to maintain this composition. Through combining exercise and nutrition over long periods of time. I believe many people would like to go from cut to maintenance rather than to a bulk. However, I found this is not easy. I would love to hear more discussion about what happens to the body after going from a cut to maintenance. How can we make this transition psychologically? How can we expect our body to adapt? Can we expect some weight gain or loss during this transition? What are people's experience with this? I would love to hear you discuss this on your podcast. I assume you have a lot of experience with maintenance periods and I think your audience would love to hear about how you program in maintenance for clients. Awesome,
Philip Pape 04:48
awesome question. I'm so glad you asked me that Neil. And that's what this episode is all about. And if you're listening thank you first of all for listening to the show and supporting it, but also for bringing this up and inspiring the episode. I just hope I do it justice for you and that you find it helpful. My personal experience is that there are often more psychological, more mental challenges than anything when it comes to staying at maintenance, especially for those of us who are always chasing that next goal. So I'll be covering all of those aspects today those in the physical ones as well. Of course, by the way, today's episode is brought to you by Wits. &. Weights nutrition coaching, yes, I'm promoting myself because this show is completely ad free. So why not? I started Wits & Weights to help people who want to build muscle lose fat, who want to look like they lift. And if that's you, if that resonates with you, 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, with fewer frustrations along the way to actually look like you live, just go to wits & weights.com/coaching, or use the link in my show notes to apply. I'll ask you a few short questions to decide if we're a good fit. And if we aren't, we'll get you started this week. And by the way, I don't keep anything secret. I don't hide anything behind my program. If you go to wits, & weights.com/coaching, you can watch a video where I walk you through the entire process. And then when you apply I'll be fully upfront about the price. I'll answer any questions, you have no high pressure sales calls, no funnels, nothing like that, because I don't like that stuff. And I'll be honest, though, if you're new to this podcast, you might want to check out some of my other episodes first to get to know me and make sure I'm a good fit for you. Because there are a lot of nutrition coaches out there. There's a ton if you've if you follow social media, and you've got to like and trust the person that you are going to work with. One other thing you can do is step into our Facebook community and ask others what they think and get a vibe for the community and my style of coaching. And then the last thing is if you want a world class education in personalized nutrition, without the cost of going to college or dozens of courses, coaching could be perfect tea for you because I take a very education centric approach. So you'll learn a ton in the process. So if you're driven to learn if you have a high level of curiosity, if you love to take action to improve your health, I think you'll love working with me again, just go to wits & weights.com/coaching to apply or click the link in my show notes. Alright, with that, let's get into today's topic, the blueprints for maintaining a lean physique year round, without cuts, or books. Let's start with what is maintenance. And why is the maintenance phase. So important? First, if you don't know what I'm talking about, maintenance simply refers to eating the same amount of calories you burn, so that you maintain your weight, you don't gain weight, you don't lose weight, your maintenance calories. A maintenance phase, or what we might call living at maintenance for the long term, or even months or even years is meant to sustain the physique and performance level that you achieved during a cut. Okay, fat loss phase. So if you've never gone through a muscle building phase, and then a subsequent fat loss phase are cut to improve your body composition, maintenance probably won't be very helpful other than to achieve body re composition for individuals who are new to lifting or returning from a long absence or as a prep phase for a fat loss phase. So today's episode is not really about body recomp and maintenance for beginners, but rather shifting from cutting to maintenance so that you can sustain your results. Now, it's still relevant to everyone listening because all of you want to get to that point. And it will happen pretty quickly if you you know, follow the advice we talked about on the show. Other athletes like athletes, or other populations, like athletes might find this relevant as well for sure, just like Neil, who wrote in about, you know, being a rock climber. So really anyone coming out of a fat loss phase is going to benefit from this discussion. The question is, why is it beneficial? Alright, one reason maintenance is helpful is it prevents having to plan for and endure and constantly tweak and go through these constant cycles of cutting and bulking some people just don't want to do that and constantly be gaining and losing weight. Maintenance also allows you to consolidate your progress and kind of stay there and celebrate it and hold on to it for a while rather than what might seem like undoing your fat loss. So to speak during a subsequent bulk you're not you're not really going to undo your fat loss, you're going to use a bulk to build muscle but many people have that perception and if you feel more comfortable in it and maintenance first this could be a reason why it's also helpful like I mentioned before, for athletes who are in say, weight class sports or fitness competitors, models, actors, essentially anyone wanting to stay lean long term without driving themselves crazy with the big changes that come with cuts and bolts. And again, I don't doesn't drive me crazy to do those things. Lots of us love to go through that those cycles but many of you don't want to do that or don't need to or need to stay at maintenance for other reasons. All right. So to recap a maintenance phase avoids the yo yo effect of body composition. It prevents your metabolic adaptation from going Going up and down all the time, right. So you can say relatively consistent with your expenditure. It improves hormones and energy because you're not in a deficit. So this is really important when we talk about energy availability. And then it cultivates a constant or consistent diet and training lifestyle. So that's the that's sort of the intro to maintenance. Now, let's talk about the psychological shift to maintenance, because this is probably the thing that holds people up the most. Transitioning to maintenance, after you worked really hard in a calorie deficit, can be mentally taxing. In fact, I've had clients who work with me, for the sole purpose of getting to that point of what it's like to successfully come out of a diet into maintenance, really, like on the call when we talk, they're like, Yeah, I want to lose fat. But really, I want to learn what it takes to come out of fat loss and not be scared of gaining weight, or actually gaining weight, and repeating the cycle I've done in the past. So you listening to this, my dear listener may experience this fear of regaining weight, or too much fat if you increase those calories, especially after you've been in a prolonged deficit. And it almost feels counterintuitive, right after you've dieted down for so long. So what I want you to understand is that a calorie increase to get back to maintenance, combined with smart training is absolutely 100% necessary to sustain your long term leanness, because we don't want to stay in a diet, that's a fact. So the only thing that's not a diet is at least being back to maintenance. Now, remember, you are not going into a surplus by eating more, you're simply coming out of a low energy state of a calorie deficit and returning to a state where you will not lose or gain weight. So just wrap your head around, right is that you're not, you're not over eating, to come to maintenance, you are stopping the under eating, it's a difference. So give yourself permission to eat more, while trusting the process. And hopefully going through this episode and referring to it again in the future will help you do that. Avoid thinking in extremes or getting anxious over small changes. It's really about being patient, controlling what you can, the thing that's in your sphere of influence, hitting your macros training hard, and not getting fixated on skill weight. Because when you go to maintenance, it's very common to fear the scale weight increases, especially since you will, you will gain a few pounds initially from water weight, just accept that that is going to happen. Okay. However, you don't want to slow down your recovery by keeping the calories too low. I just spoke to somebody earlier today, whose expenditure was dropping after she went back to maintenance. And it's probably because she's still under eating even though it's more than when she was dieting. It's not quite enough. And so the body is not quite recovering. And so this could just prolong the effects of being in the deficit, which is what we're trying to avoid. Now, if you're using macro factor, you'll know your exact expenditure at any given point in time. And you can confidently increase calories. Immediately, literally the next day if you want to, to your post diet maintenance level, post diet maintenance level, not the not the maintenance level before you started the diet, the maintenance level you're at right now. And then that level, that expenditure should then start to rise as your hormones and energy recovering. And the caveat is if they don't, you're probably still under eating, if no other variables have changed. Like obviously, if you if your step count goes from 15,000 to 2000, that would be another cause of your expenditure dropping. But assuming nothing else changes, your hormones and energy should start to recover. And this is where it's important to trust the process and not react to short term fluctuations because you'll see things that happen that just may not make sense in the short term like with your scale weight, it may feel like you're taking a step back, because it seems like you're eating too much. For example, for some people, it's like wow, this just seems like a lot of calories, or the extra carbs make you feel a bit fuller or bloated because of the additional glycogen and water retention. But this whole thing we're talking about here is a transition period. All of these feelings are normal. And this is where that that mental resilience and patients are going to be your friend as you stick with it and come out the other side. So patience is required to get through this phase until you see from your longer term weight trend. Okay, we're talking three, four weeks and longer and your biofeedback right how you feel your energy, your sleep or stress. Based on all of that
Philip Pape 14:44
it will tell you that yes, you are indeed at a new level of energy and performance. And guess what, you're not going to all of a sudden gain a bunch of weight other than that small bump initially from water weight, you should more or less maintain your weight. And even the person I spoke about earlier whose expenditure started to drop her weight went up by maybe two pounds over two months since coming out of the diet. And most of that was at the beginning because of the water. The last tip I have for the mental side is track and measure those things that you can control, that should be moving in a positive direction. This could be the most important tip of all, because this is what gives you clarity, and awareness to know that your choices are causing a certain outcome. So this would include your calories and macros, your lifts, your sleep, the self care practices to help manage stress, all of those things, you should feel a whole lot better at maintenance pretty quickly if you fully recover to your current expenditure. So on one hand, if you're not, you know, something is not quite recovered. And then on the other hand, if you are, I want you to embrace that, embrace that, because that means it's working. Alright, so that's, that's the psychological piece of it, that there isn't a lot more other than trusting the process, being patient, and being aware of what's going on. And knowing that certain things are going to happen that seem counterintuitive at first, but they're really not. So now let's talk about the physiology of maintenance, right? What's happening to your body physically, because then this awareness can also further improve your mental perception of the situation. So when transitioning from a cut to maintenance, you're going to get this fluid shift in the scale weights going to rebound, as I mentioned before, and it could be by what I see with my clients, anywhere from three to five pounds, it's probably less than that, but I want to prepare you mentally for it. And if you're a little bit bigger, if you're a bigger man, for example, you might be up to four or five pounds on the scale weight of pure fluid shifts, okay, it's gonna be more or less depending on the relative size, but it's important to be aware of that. This is just glycogen storage, this is intracellular water normalizing back to their full levels. As you increase calories, also, this is a different thing that happens, hunger hormones, leptin gralen, those improve, so your satiety or fullness should increase. If you are experiencing hunger during a diet, that should start to dissipate and go away. Right, your appetite and hunger should go back to normal levels. Now, again, it may not the transition period is the period where you just trust the process and you don't react. After that after let's say, three, four weeks, the hunger should be back to normal. If you're still experiencing hunger, that's a possible sign that you're still under eating. Now, here's the other thing, your metabolism will definitely well, I'll say likely, but almost definitely have down regulated have decreased from the calorie deficit, right metabolic adaptation. This adaptation should reverse when you go back to maintenance calories, right. However, it may remain a little bit suppressed for a few weeks during the transition period. So again, transition period trust the process. And this is why there's a little hack that I like to use with my clients. And I've mentioned it before, called the top side of maintenance. So if you're using macro factors, this is really easy. Instead of just setting a goal to maintain knowing that a, you're going to actually gain a few pounds to be at the beginning anyway. And you don't want math per factor to be maintaining you an artificially low weight. But then be, you want to make sure to recover as fast as possible, what we're going to do is set the app to a goal of gain, but the rate of gain to as small as possible. So there's a little slider, you're gonna go left well below the green area to almost no gain at all. But it's still considered a gain from the apps perspective. And so the app will give you a calorie target to eat to consume that slightly overshoots your maintenance calories. And we're doing this with the expectation that your expenditure will start increasing quickly as it recovers, and helps you avoid being in an accidental deficit. And that's the guidance I just gave the person I mentioned earlier, is why don't we overshoot. And she's not doing it this way. She's she's set a goal to maintain. But she's over consuming by 50 to 100 calories every day, at my suggestion to see if that actually helps her recover fully. And she's in a kind of a suppressed state right now. But a nice easy way to do it a macro factor without having to think about it is just set it to a game with a really low rate, however you do it. The key here is to manage your expectations. Your body prefers homeostasis, right prefers to be at a stable state. So it will be regaining equilibrium through multiple adaptations. It's not a simple linear thing, right? There's a lot of hormones, there's a lot of complexity involved. And as you improve and as your energy improves, it cascades and helps other things improve as well. Like for example, you could sleep more or you can train harder, right and then these will all feed on themselves. So to recap physiologically during maintenance in the transition to maintenance. It is normal for glycogen storage and intracellular water to balance meaning you're gonna get a bump in weight. There are multiple signals at in your body that regulates homeostasis. So it's more complex than you realize you are not regaining fat, and you are not losing muscle. And your fat cells are filling with water during the transition. Very important understand all of that. So we don't overreact during that transition. Alright, so now let's move to some practical matters. First off, how do you set your calories and macros for maintenance? You might think that being a maintenance means you no longer need to track your food. My answer to that is maybe one of the interesting challenges that maintenance is that you are aiming to avoid going into an accidental diet, you know, deficit or diet, which would impede your energy and performance. But you're also trying to avoid gaining weight too quickly and producing unnecessary fat regain. So you could eat intuitively based on the skills that you've built so far. And I have had a few clients that take this approach that eat a lot of Whole Foods, they are in touch with their hunger signals. And they track when they gain and they lose, but they don't track on maintenance. I've definitely seen this work. My recommendation here, however, is continue tracking for a while until you're completely confident in those skills and intuition. Okay, I spoke about this with Dr. Eric helms on he was on the show. And even he It took years and years for him to develop that, right. And he recommends most people track in some way. It doesn't hurt to track and measure the things that you want more confidence in measuring, right and being aware of, especially, especially when you still harbor some of that, you know, fear about going to maintenance, whether it's fear of gaining weight or any other fears. So, having said that, what do those targets? What do those minimums look like? And here we go. As soon as you're done with your cut, I want you to increase calories as quickly as possible to your current expenditure, your current maintenance calories, not the maintenance calories before you started the diet, the ones you're ending the diet with, which means you would have had to track to that point to know what those are. And using a tool like macro factor or a spreadsheet, or some other way to estimate it. Right? Because Because apps like My Fitness Pal chronometer aren't going to do that for you. And or they'll do it. And it's actually completely wrong. I've talked about this before, I don't want to rehash all that. But be careful what tool you use. The trick here is that you must know your current dynamic maintenance to be able to do that. I did an episode I don't have the number with me right now. It was about reverse dieting versus recovery dieting. So you can go back and find it. I think the title was why reverse dieting doesn't work like you think. Right. And the idea is that a reverse diet is increasing calories slowly by let's say 200 calories this week, 200 calories next week, until your body recovers after diet. The problem with that approach is first of all, it's guesswork. Secondly, it takes too long. And third, it doesn't provide any benefits that people claim that it provides. For whatever. There are many benefits that it claims I talked about in the episode one of them being you can, you know, increase your metabolism and make dieting easier next time. For example, there's a whole bunch of claims that are just false. Whereas recovery dieting is simply going from your deficit to no deficit. That's all it is. It's going from a deficit up to zero deficit. And the rate, the way you know you're at zero deficit is your eating what you burn, you have to know what to burn. That's it. So if you don't already use macro factor, literally the only food logging app in existence that does this correctly. Pause right now download it from your app store, use my code Wits & Weights all one word, Wits & Weights, to extend your free trial by a week, give it a shot, you'll need to use it for about three weeks to get a good idea of your true maintenance calories. Now, hopefully
Philip Pape 23:42
you already used macro factor during your dieting phase, and now have the confidence to jump right to your maintenance calories. Okay, that's we're kind of assuming you've gone through that you've tracked you know where it is, and you can jump otherwise. It's hard. I mean, it's harder to know what to jump back to without overshooting or under shooting because if you undershoot you're not going to be getting enough recovery, and if you overshoot, of course, the fear of gaining weight becomes true because you could that's what happens to most people with a yo yo cycle throughout their life is a comeback. And they over consume. Not to mention they're not training, so they're losing muscle, and then they're gaining only fat and all that good stuff. Alright, so the the caveat with the macro factor thing of jumping straight to your dynamic maintenance is that if you were in a fairly aggressive diet, like 1000 calorie deficit or more, let's say the jump back might feel like too much to do in like one or two days. That's all it might feel like wow, I you know, your stomach can't even handle it. Your digestion, that's fine. It's okay to titrate it up over a few days, let's say two or 300 calories a day. Until you get there your body will adapt quickly. This is not a reverse diet. Reverse diet is like okay, we're just gonna shift by 200 calories this week. See what happens. All right now we're gonna shift by 200 calories next week. See what happens? Totally different. This is just quickly jumping calories until you get to what you know you want to be right now. It's like stair stepping up to creaminess. 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. So that's calories. Now within the calories. You know, we talk about macros all the time, but we're going to reiterate, protein should be set around 0.7 to one gram per pound of your new body weight, fat, probably around 30% of the calories, maybe more, maybe less. And then the rest is carbs. So when you do the math, you'll see that the biggest jump comes from carbs, because protein should be around what it was during the diet. If anything, it might come down a little bit, excuse me. And then the fat comes up. Because it's scaled, it's scaled to calories, right 30% of your calories and lower calorie, it's going to be hired higher calorie, obviously. But then the rest is carbs. And so carbs will see the biggest jump. And that is where some of the fear and the feelings around weight gain and fat gain come into play. I know it, I hear it all the time. That's where the fear comes is like, oh boy, I have to I have to eat this many more carbs. Now. I look at it as I get to eat all these extra carbs and the energy is going to flood in. And hopefully you can shift to having that positive approach. And trust the process and enjoy those carbs for the added performance recovery energy that they bring you. We love carbs on this show. This is not a low carb diet show. Okay? Now you can consume a low carb diet, and I'll be your friend and you can get results. But we are not anti CARB is my point if you have no intolerances. And if you enjoy carbs, they are a beautiful part of a flexible lifestyle and will help tremendously when you're trying to build muscle. So here that was my car brands for today's episode. So once you've jumped up, you've got your protein, fat, and then carbs increased to where they need to be over the next say two to four weeks, you're likely going to make weekly adjustments in response to your metabolism, which may start climbing, though it may not everyone responds a bit differently. Okay, the key here is not to fall into an accidental deficit, because we want to at least ensure give us the best chance of that complete recovery as fast as possible. And by chance, I don't mean it's not going to happen for you, it will. But I've definitely seen cases where your body needs more energy than you think it does for the maintenance. And because you're still under eating a little bit, it slows down the recovery. So if you're using macro factor, this is super easy. Any other app will require a lot more manual calculation on your part to keep up with your expenditure. But either way, also track and monitor the things that you care about during this process. Okay, strength and progress and your lifts, circumference measurements, biofeedback, all the things we talked about track track track, you see, I'm a big fan of data and tracking and awareness. I have calls with people all the time who are looking for guidance, or you know, we have a results breakthrough session or they're interested in coaching. And I'm always No, I shouldn't say I'm surprised because I've been there and we've all been there. But I was gonna say I'm always surprised at how little they're tracking things that could have given them an answer weeks or months ago. For example, just tracking your waist measurement weekly, can reveal a lot of things if you hit a plateau on your scale way, like if you hit if you're in a dieting phase and your scale weight plateaus. And let's say it plateaus for three weeks, but your waist dropped by an inch and a half during that three weeks. You may be you may have been gaining muscle and losing fat at the same time. And that caused the scale way to flatline. However you are becoming leaner, right? Little things like that. And so that's not a judgment on anyone. In fact, it's why I want you to reach out to me and schedule a call and talk so we can go over what you're doing and say, Hey, let's audit you know what you're tracking. If there's a couple things you could just add to your tracking portfolio, so to speak, that are easy and give you a more awareness that's going to that's going to really accelerate your progress. So remember that your activity level also affects your expenditure. Okay, and you're going to have more Energy to lift. Now with the carbs in the calories, you're gonna be able to lift a bit harder a bit heavier, you're probably gonna be able to walk and move more consciously or unconsciously sub or consciously, or what's the word I'm looking for? Subconscious that Yes. And all of these things would further ramp up your metabolism. So it's very interesting. When you actually get all the energy, you need to recover from a cut to a maintenance, it starts to feed on itself. And your expenditure does not remain fixed. I mean, this is the big, the big irony of being at maintenance that to maintain your weight, you need to adjust your calories regularly and not assume there'll be the same. That's why I said tracking versus Intuitive Eating is going to be more beneficial for a lot of people.
Philip Pape 30:44
The rules of higher protein for building muscle of improving your body composition still apply. But now much higher carbs are part of the equation, especially if you're trying to build muscle. So you know, a low carb keto diet is going to make that much harder. It just is right and we're talking about going back to maintenance and be recovered and building muscle. Check out my episode 126 on that actually, it's called more carbs, more muscle by low carb and keto are keeping you skinny fat. I got a lot of great comments on that one, including some hater comments, which I always love, you know, people who they see the title, don't even listen to the episode. And it's like, Oh, can you tell people that you know, you have, you should eat all these carbs, it's terrible for your health, you're gonna get fat or, you know, no, you could build muscle just fine and a low carb. And it's like, listen to the show and listen to the full context, please, before we reach out, and for those who do and then offer criticism and critique, Oh, I love you guys. Like it's great. We need to have those dialogues and conversations because not one thing is going to work for everyone. And I never claimed that everyone should be eating moderate to high carb diets. what I claim is you should not cut out anything when evidence doesn't support cutting it out. Okay. Now that brings us to how to structure your nutrition around your workouts. So we talked about the calories and the carbs, the extra carbs are going to make it easier to fuel your workouts. Still, you want to shift a large part of your carbs around your workout. Well, we call parry workout, right? This maximizes your energy during your lifting sessions. It also maximizes the repair the hypertrophy response of your muscles, the protein sparing effect of of that and subsequent recovery. So not only do we like the carbs, we'd like to time the carbs around our workouts, put it in the numbers, the numbers are as follows. I recommend 25 to 40 grams of protein before and after training and about 30 to 50 grams of carbs pre workout, up to 100 grams of carbs post workout in something like a two to one or three to one ratio of carbs to protein. So I know he just threw a lot of numbers at you. But it's basically get a decent amount of protein before and after. Get a decent amount of carbs before and after. But definitely a lot of carbs after and maybe even more carbs than that. If you're a calorie support, I do not recommend fasted training. However, if you must do to your schedule, do your medications, or it works well for you. And you really love, you know time restricted feeding intermittent fasting, that approach and that works for you, then do it right, if I don't recommend it as a default is what I'm trying to say. I recommend trying both approaches. And don't assume that there's some extra benefit intermittent fasting. Now, I don't know if it came out before after this episode. I think it's after this episode, there's a conversation I had with a gentleman where we talked about intermittent fasting and he does it because it makes him feel good. Right and his body's used to it and great, that's awesome. Plus he has intolerances with a bunch of types of foods that contain certain carb sources. If you train fasted, you might want to gulp down some essential amino acids before we work out. That's the only scenario where I think they're probably helpful. Other than that, they're a waste of money and you don't need them. If you're not training faster. Definitely whoever you are, consider taking creatine monohydrate right unless you're allergic to it, which actually is a thing I had one client in all my time that was allergic to it. And I'd never seen that my entire life since before or since but it's possible. But yeah, creatine monohydrate five grams a day that can be taken post workout or really whenever it's convenient, hot cold with without caffeine, don't overthink it. And of course, space your protein throughout the day, across at least three meals, but more likely four or five, depending on how many calories you need. Now why am i Repeating lots of things that I've said before on previous episodes. First of all, this may be the first episode you've heard with me. Secondly, when we're talking about maintenance, I want this to be sort of a definitive guide of okay, your backup maintenance. We need to treat this seriously and take a solid nutrition and training approach. There's nothing you know, it's not like a cakewalk. It's still requires being in control and thinking and having awareness and making choices. But it can still be a very flexible liberating approach we can Take. All right, now I'm going to share two advanced strategies that I use with clients. Since Neil did ask about what I do with clients. The first is, I already alluded to it. And it's to use an extremely lean gain instead of pure maintenance. All right, now I mentioned setting macro factor to again, and going with a very low rate. What I'm talking about here is maybe a little bit more than that. So not quite a normal gain of like, point one 2.3% of your body weight, but maybe point 05 Or point 08. I know, it sounds like how can you be that precise? Well, again, if you're using manufacturer, or if you're working with a coach, we can be that precise. You know, within reason, it's close enough. Now I like this very lean gain, because it almost guarantees that you don't dip into an energy starving deficit, even the smallest one, even just for a couple of days that can impede your performance. And for Neil and others who are athletes, you know, who are worried about strength to weight ratio, I like this, because you're really not gonna gain much weight at all, it's gonna be over a very long period of time, but you're going to ensure that you have the energy flooding in, because you're effectively here in a building phase, not nearly the amount needed to maximize muscle gain. But the benefit is also you're not going to really gain much fat at as a trade off right as a trade off of also not really gaining much muscle because it's not a true muscle building phase, you're also going to ensure that you have a lot of energy flooding in and not be gaining fat as well. So you're trying to have your cake and eat it too, if you will, an actual cake you can have too, if you want. Okay, which leads me to the second strategy of micro cuts. So the first strategy is extreme lean gain, extremely lean gain, I should call it not extreme, just a an extreme lean, lean gain. The second strategy is micro cuts. Now I did an entire episode about this episode 116, titled seven lessons from my rapid fat loss. micro cut, aggressive dieting is not for everyone. Important to say the whole title there. And you can check that out since episode 116. And I have a free guide that goes with it called the Rapid Fat Loss guide. That explains the entire protocol. And in case I don't have the link in this show notes in the show notes for this episode, you can always go to wits & weights.com/free, okay, wits & weights.com/free. And you can find all those guides in there. So the Rapid Fat Loss guide is what it's called. And I bring this up, because if you if you indeed, slowly gain a few extra pounds by being in the Lean gain strategy, one I just mentioned. And that's going to happen over months, like that's not going to happen over days or weeks, it's going to take a long time, but you might actually start gaining very, very slowly over time, you can use this rapid, very aggressive fat loss phase of either a nine day phase, or 15 days, 15 days is the protocol I have in there, but you could cut out the last, it's three segments, you can cut out the last segment and do the first two segments if you want to have it even shorter.
Philip Pape 38:09
And that can cut a few pounds of fat while holding on the lean muscle and effectively reset your body composition back to the full leanness that you started with for the maintenance phase. That makes sense. So you can use a lean gain. And then after a few months, you know you've packed on an extra three pounds or something or four pounds and not much at all. That's beyond the waterway I'm talking about, we're talking about just a combination of some muscle and fat, you can then use a two or three a nine or 15 Day micro cut to just lop off a little bit of that fat. So think about that strategy. Okay, it's pretty cool. Last thing I want to address is some of the pitfalls I see. Okay, I came up with a list of five common pitfalls during maintenance, how to avoid them how to troubleshoot them, it is a given. Okay, it's a given with all of this, that you are continuing to train hard. If you did a proper fat loss phase where you are training hard, keeping the intensity variable high, right intensity, meaning percentage of your one rep max, right, the load on the bar, keeping that high during a fat loss phase you held on to most of your muscle, you're continuing that now back into maintenance, if not training even harder now. Maybe you're training, changing your programming, adding more volume, whatever it is, we should be able to train even harder. I'm going to assume you're doing that and not even put that on this list. Otherwise, that would be a six pitfall of just, hey, you're not training heavy enough. Okay, you got to do that. But here are the five things that I see number one, not tracking. He knew that was coming, not tracking and thus you end up relying on reverse dieting, and then that just takes too long or you overshoot your maintenance and you get unnecessary fat gain the thing that you're probably afraid of, you need to know your expenditure to return to it quickly and achieve full metabolic recovery, taking advantage of that high energy state as soon as possible. And if you If you do that a macro factor and you set your if you go back to maintenance, and let's say your metabolism has been suppressed by like 500 calories since when you started the diet. So you've gone from, let's say 2500 to 2000. And now you're in you were in a deficit below 2000, of course, and now you're coming back to 2000. It's okay to want to overshoot that just a little bit, when you first start consuming food, like overshoot it by 50 calories, or maybe even 100 calories, to make sure that you get that recovery, because your metabolism might be an over responder, and it starts to climb fast, and macro factor can't really like keep up with it, because it's just responding a little bit reactively to what's happening. Whereas you can be even more proactive by over consuming just a tiny bit. But because you know that number, the overconsumption is controlled, it's restrained, just just the right amount to push it along. Okay, so tracking is gonna help with all of that. Number two, the second pitfall is freaking out. Because the initial weight bump, and going back into a diet, in response, or even worse, slightly under eating and thinking, your maintenance, but still being in a diet. So this is more of an intentional thing, this is not the accidental one, this is you being scared, seeing the weight go up, oh, no, I must be gaining fat. And now you you step back, and you under consume, even though the target is telling you eat 2000 calories, you're like, I'm just gonna, I'm gonna try to stay lean, I'm gonna eat 1900 calories. You're shooting yourself in the foot by doing this because you're not trusting the process, and you're not getting the recovery and guess what you're doing, you're just prolonging your diet. And now you're not, you're going to mentally think you're not in a diet while you're in a diet. And you're not going to lose any weight either. Because it's so small of the diet, you get the worst of all the world, it's it's a lose, lose, lose. So even though you might freak out, trust the process. Number three, not increasing carbs enough and taking advantage of the energy and hormonal recovery. Or conversely, reducing protein and compromising your muscle retention and recovery. So I'm combining this all into one, protein should be about the same fats will come up a bit and carbs will come up a lot. That's what it should look like. Don't be afraid of carbs, embrace them. Again, unless you're on a specific protocol. That's a lower carb approach. And you're increasing calories by increasing fats and protein, like on a keto diet, for example, unless you're doing that, and if that's you, cool, do that. For most people, they want to have the extra carbs. But they don't want to have the extra carbs if you know what I mean. They know they need it. They know the target. The new targets say they need it. But something about it. eating all those extra carbs doesn't seem right to them. For some reason you know who you are, you're listening. And what we want to do there is think about carbs as the missing fuel that that we can finally introduce into our body. From that fat loss phase, it was one of the most critical fuel sources were missing. And now that we're going to get it back who watch what happens to our lifts, watch what happens to our sleep, watch what happens our hormones, watch what happens to our metabolism, your metabolism should go up faster once you have that recovery. So don't be afraid of carbs, embrace them. Number four. The fourth common pitfall I see is reducing your movement or your steps just because you're not in fat loss anymore. Right? Many of us we will ramp up our step count during fat loss, we'll go from like 8000 steps a day to 12 14,000 steps a day like yeah, this is great. I'm keeping that expenditure dry. And then you get out of the diet, you're like, Okay, I can go back to 6000 steps or 8000 steps. Well, that's going to blunt the metabolic recovery because you're reducing your energy flux. If the amount of steps you were able to get to in fat loss is sustainable, and it didn't feel forced. Keep that up, right, like keep that keep that consistent. Don't give it up just because you think you don't need it anymore. It can only help. It helps with cardiovascular health. It helps with metabolic health, your energy flux for your metabolism, your resilience, your digestion, your blood sugar, control, your sleep, it helps us all that stuff, hunger signals, right,
Philip Pape 44:10
keep it up. Now, if you were, let's say artificially bumping your step countering fat loss with some extra cardio or some extra walks that were not quite sustainable, but you were doing them for the fat loss phase. Well, I then naturally, I could understand why those would come down a bit, just know that that can cause a little bit of an offset in your expenditure. It may not right, it may not like I've seen plenty of folks, myself included, that you're lifting so much harder, and your body is so much more relaxed. Now because of calories coming in that even though your step count went down, it doesn't really make much of a dent in your expenditure. It's a very complex multivariate system we've got going on with our body here. The last the fifth common pitfall is adding in too much processed food instead of sticking with the approach that you developed during fat loss which is nutrient density, high protein, high fiber, right? Yes, we want to have flexibility. That's the whole point of something that you can stick with. But also we want to keep those current habits and the discipline you've developed, going. So what I recommend when the calories come up, and it's mostly in the form of carbs, just scale up some of the carbs you were eating and reintroduce some of the Whole Foods, sources of carbs that you've been missing, whether that's oats, rye, oats, rice, quinoa, you know, starches, fruits, you know, even breads and pastas, but just things you've been missing, they're mostly Whole Foods before you go to the processed foods. Now, having said that, the extra calories does give you a little bit more room for an indulgence or to beyond what you had before, right. So if that helps you stick with your diet, and you plan it in, please do that, like that is the point of all of this. And now you have more calories to play with. So for sure, but a common pitfall is going straight for those indulgences instead of just scaling up the whole foods first. Okay, I hope this was helpful. I think that covers everything about maintenance, that I wanted to address within a, you know, hour long app most podcast episode. And this is based on my experience with clients over the years, my education and nutrition, you know, researching for this podcast, and there's there's always more to learn. And one thing that I have learned is that living at maintenance can be deceptively simple. So as with any phase of your nutrition skills, like mindfulness, consistency, adaptability, these are going to be your big mental friends. Many of the clients in my program who get through this, not get through they they thrive and complete the three or six months and achieve their fat loss goal. And they usually lose between, let's say, 20 and 60 pounds of fat, it's pretty common, they then find that they want to continue working together because of the intricacies of this transition from the cut to maintenance and maintaining results. So again, Neil, thank you for bringing this up. Because it it is a common problem that we solve when we talk about nutrition, but I don't talk about it enough on the show. Maintenance is also a great time to assess to assess your future goals, your next phase, this can be very exciting. If you're a planner like me, it's a time to take a breath, let things stabilize, and then say, okay, I do want to build muscle, but I needed to take a break, I didn't want to like overshoot and gain too much weight too quickly. So I took my time I sat here meanings for a month, two months, three months, maybe I it allowed me to deal with some other things in my life that have nothing to do with my fitness. And now I can plan ahead and think very thoughtfully, mindfully, carefully, maybe talk to a coach, maybe reach out for a call or fill up a free call and talk about what is next. And let's map it out. So whether you're there or not, you know that I can help get there if you want to reach out as can our community. If you're not ready to apply for coaching, of course, I always have spots for those free results. Breakthrough calls with me. Think of it like an audit of your nutrition and training, where I help you get clarity on the most important two or three, maybe four, but probably two or three steps that you can take right now to get unstuck and move in the right direction. Like I mentioned before, maybe it's just something you're not tracking. And I can help identify that for you. These aren't sales calls, they're not sales pitches. Feel free to ask others in the Facebook community who've had these calls with me, and they'll tell you all about it. Their conversations to get you clarity, it's just a 30 minute zoom call with another human being just go to wits & weights.com and click free call or click the link in my show notes. Again, it's wits & weights.com and click free call or click the link in my show notes for the three three no for the free 30 minute results breakthrough session. Given that it is cost free and risk free, you have nothing to lose other than maybe speeding up losing fat. Ah, see what I did there. Okay, in our next episode 137 Unlock abundance in fitness and every other aspect of life with Rebecca Whitman. Rebecca shares her philosophy of the Seven Pillars of abundance, challenging us to rethink how we balance our lives with an emphasis on physical abundance. It was a great conversation if you've heard Rebecca before. She goes on a lot of podcasts and talks about these pillars but I really wanted to dial in on the physical abundance piece for you the listener who I know that's really what we care about on this show. From her unique approach to her morning routine. We talked about embracing abundance, building resilience being more consistent, reshaping your identity, all of those things to harness your full potential. So check that out. As always, stay strong. And I'll talk to you next time here on the Wits & Weights podcast. Thank you for tuning in to another episode of Wits & Weights if you found value in today's episode, and know someone else who's looking to level up there Wits & Weights, please take a moment to share this episode with them. And make sure to hit the Follow button in your podcast platform right now to catch the next episode. Until then Stay strong
