Ep 169: Q&A w/Jeff Hoehn – Menopause Weight Loss, Bulking Without Getting Fat, & Cutting on Low Sleep
How long should you rest between sets? What to do if you're gaining too much on a bulk? Can women over 50 overcome menopause weight-loss resistance and is it a thing? How to train when transitioning from bulking to cutting?
In today's episode, fitness expert and coach Jeff Hoehn joins Philip (@witsandweights) as a co-host. They dive deep into various fitness topics in this Q&A session, including the challenges of weight loss during menopause, strategies for bulking without excessive weight gain, the optimal rest intervals for muscle growth and strength, and the impact of sleep on cutting cycles.
Jeff Hoehn hosts the podcast The Mind Muscle Connection. His podcast stands out for its science-based approach to fitness and nutrition, and the mental aspects of achieving overall wellness. Jeff's podcast covers a range of topics, including the often-neglected topic of body recomposition. For those who don’t want to bulk or cut exclusively, his workshops offer a holistic approach to achieving the best of both worlds.
Today, you’ll learn all about:
6:24 How long should you rest between sets for muscle growth and strength?
16:17 Are there too many cons of cutting during periods of low sleep? Should I just stay at maintenance calories?
23:50 I'm gaining a little too much weight in a building phase. What do I do?
41:10 How do I adjust my programming during the transition from a bulk to a cut? Which training variables are most important?
48:58 Is menopause and weight loss resistance a thing? Related to this, what's your advice on programming and nutrition for women over 50?
58:28 How do you "prep" before a season of "going nuts" with food (Thanksgiving, Christmas, etc.)?
1:06:30 Outro
Episode resources:
Episode summary:
Unlocking the secrets to effective muscle growth and optimal nutrition requires a deep dive into the science behind our bodies. In this co-hosted Q&A, we tackle the multifaceted world of fitness and nutrition, offering listeners practical strategies for different phases of their fitness journey. Whether you're in the bulking stage or cutting phase, understanding rest intervals, muscle growth, and the concept of a caloric surplus is essential. This episode provides listeners with a roadmap to fine-tune their approach for maximum impact on their physique.
In our discussion, we delve into the topic of rest periods during strength training. There's a delicate balance to be struck between allowing muscles enough time to recover and maximizing gym time efficiency. For those focused on hypertrophy, longer rest intervals can lead to increased muscle growth, provided the training volume is matched. However, it's equally important to recognize that shorter rest periods can be offset by increasing the number of sets to maintain training density. We also consider the impact of sleep deprivation on cutting phases, acknowledging the intricate relationship between sleep, recovery, and dieting.
As we shift gears towards the building phase of fitness, we highlight common tracking inaccuracies that can impede progress. It's crucial to run an energy audit to ensure adherence to nutrition plans, taking into account all aspects of diet and movement. Misjudging one's caloric surplus can lead to unintended consequences, making it imperative to have a nuanced approach to body recomposition. For those aiming to gain weight with a balanced fat-to-muscle ratio, understanding the dynamics of daily movement and metabolic rate is paramount.
We also explore the psychological nuances of weight gain, especially for women, who often face societal pressures regarding body image. The podcast offers strategies for muscle gain without excessive fat accumulation, emphasizing the importance of monitoring the rate of weight gain and the value of personal support in boosting self-confidence and motivation. As we approach the transition from bulking to cutting, the significance of maintaining training intensity becomes clear. We discuss the need for a structured training regimen and the benefits of auto-regulation to ensure muscle mass preservation during a calorie deficit.
Navigating the hormonal changes that come with menopause presents unique challenges for women over 50. This episode offers compassionate counsel, addressing the impact of decreased estrogen on sleep, stress levels, and fat distribution. We encourage strength training and gradual progress to build muscle mass, improve bone density, and maintain overall health during this transition. Moreover, we provide actionable advice for managing holiday feasting without compromising fitness goals. The podcast wraps up with strategies to enjoy festive seasons while maintaining a balanced approach to nutrition and weight management.
In conclusion, this episode is a treasure trove of information for anyone looking to master their muscle growth and nutrition. We’ve constructed a comprehensive guide to help you navigate the complexities of body transformation. Tune in and transform your training, nutrition, and well-being with us.
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Transcript
Philip Pape 00:00
Today I'm teaming up with Jeff Hoehn of the mind muscle connection podcast for a special co hosted q&a, where we'll share our thoughts on rest periods for muscle growth, managing your diet, unlimited sleep, what to do if you're gaining too much weight in a book, how to transition your training from a bulk to a cut, menopause and weight loss resistance for women over 50 and how to prep ahead of time for inevitable holiday feasting all in today's cohosted q&a with Jeff Hey. Welcome to the wit's end 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. Hey, everyone, and welcome to a special episode that dropped in two of your favorite podcast feeds, Whitson weights and the mind muscle connection. I'm one of your co hosts today Philip Pape of the wits and weights podcast. And I'm thrilled to share the virtual mic with a man himself Jeff Hoehn of the mind muscle connection podcast, Jeff, thanks, man for collaborating on this q&a. Yeah,
Jeff Hoehn 01:18
no, thanks for setting this up. You definitely took the lead on this, you were keeping me very accountable to making sure that this ran smoothly. So I appreciate your ability to you know, kind of keep things running smoothly. Like that was certainly helpful. And you do a great job with all this stuff. So really looking forward to doing this as well, too. Yeah, man,
Philip Pape 01:33
well, you always step up to the plate, I know how professional you are in the podcasting game. And it was super easy and efficient. I'll say to get ready for today. And we didn't have to do a ton of prep, but it's gonna be solid. Yeah,
Jeff Hoehn 01:44
your professionalism with the podcasting and how you have things set up, like, you know, it definitely was eye opening to me, especially the first time you know, when I came on before and and then getting this set up, like you definitely are really good at like getting this stuff together and, you know, different shows with how the podcast has grown and everything like that. So I'm just wanting to kind of give you a shout out for that, like super organized, man, I wish I had six of your organization skills. And I would be doing a lot better if if that were the case. So
Philip Pape 02:09
don't sell yourself short. Just you're one of the guys that listened to early on and inspired me. So like, you know, you get the information out there. And to this day, I have even my feet. So that's one of the reasons I reached out to you to do this.
Jeff Hoehn 02:19
I'm still on there. That's good.
Philip Pape 02:23
Like, there's Jeff again, man. No, no, for sure. So I mean, for those listening to my audience are in Whitson weights. Before we dive into the QA, I do want to quickly introduce Jeff, he was on an episode a long time ago, on I think we talked about maintenance. And he is the host of the mind muscle connection, Jeff Hoehn, one of the again, one of the shows in my feed, because you know, it gets to the nuts and bolts, the mental side as well fitness and nutrition, and it's all science based. But he also interviewed some really cool guests like Steve Hall, which he introduced me to, and then I had him on the show. Again, I'm grateful for that. The main thing is, you know, your shows are super practical. They focus on things like body recomp, which don't often get enough attention, but are important phases that a lot of people want to live in. I get questions all the time, like what if I don't want to bulk whatever I don't want to cut, I just want to kind of get the best of everything. And he's got a really good workshop on that as well. So I want everybody listening to my show to go subscribe or follow his podcast, which again is called the mind muscle connection. Over to you man. Yeah,
Jeff Hoehn 03:20
no, absolutely. That's a great intro. I appreciate that. So for my audience, as we're co hosting this, so Philip, as he posts the Whitson weights podcast he has a wide range of of coaches on I feel like every week you have new coaches on that you know I'm not familiar with so you do a great job I feel like bringing those those type of people on but also you've had you know, people that my audience is probably familiar with right you've had Brandon on I think a couple times you had Brian Borstein on you had Jordan lips on you had Steve Hall on um so some definitely some carryover there as well too. And I know for you you have multiple episodes a week when you go over nutrition lifting muscle metabolism and fat loss and I think you also give your unique perspective on things as well I know you had your shoulder injury surgery that you had recently so kind of getting that insight into it is super helpful. And so you know, you also do a great job of making it practical for everybody as well too. And I think that that's key right because you know some of the science based stuff it can go over people's head and we we feel like we're smart when we say it but it's like you know does people do people actually understand that as well. So I think you do a great job of that and like I said you're very professional you're super nice dude awesome do down to earth so I think that's another thing that can't go unnoticed and again, everything's professional from your podcast logo, do background everything the sound like it all sounds great. So make sure you give him a follow as well to follow and subscribe and enjoy this episode and obviously all future episodes on as well too. So again, looking forward to doing this with you.
Philip Pape 04:46
Awesome, man. I appreciate it. All of that and yeah, I forgot Brian Borstein is another guy. See if I just I listen to your show. I look you bring on him. Like let me just go reach out to that guy. I'm on my show too, because they're awesome individuals.
Jeff Hoehn 04:56
Well, I'll do that sometimes to where like if I'm like, Okay, you should bring it It'll always go and kind of check out other people's like podcast as well, too.
Philip Pape 05:03
You also mentioned something about science based and also making it practical. And it's funny, one of the episodes I actually got a bad review on on the podcast about was, I was talking about how fat is oxidized and released from the body and all this and it's like, this guy sounds like a Wikipedia article, and he doesn't know what he's talking about, like, Oh, my God, you know, stuff like that hit you you go. But then you realize there's always some truth in, you know, people are looking for an understanding. So even if there's a little bit of truth there, I want to keep improving based on that.
Jeff Hoehn 05:31
Yeah. And that's a cool thing, you know, with you, too, right? We like you said, you want to learn you want to get better. And, you know, instead of letting that holds you down, you, you know, you take it and you get better. And I think that that's, that's part of this whole process. And this is what I wanted to mention, actually. So it did come back to me, I knew it would, you also introduced me to, you know, listening to some podcasts on improving podcasting, and I am all about self development. And I like never thought about doing that. And so that's been super helpful. The podcast growth university that I listened to, and has been super helpful. So I appreciate you sharing that with me when we connect it. You know, I think it was like a couple months ago already. So cool,
Philip Pape 06:05
man. Yeah, no, all these are skills, right? They're just skills, you got to put time into them. If you can, right. We have busy lives. So it's like, which one do you do the training, the nutrition, the podcasting, and so on? All of them? Yeah. All right. Let's just do them all. It's it's more about harmony than balances. Somebody put it to me. Yep. Cool, man. So for today's q&a, what we did is we each chose three questions from each of our communities. So we're going to smush them together. But we'll do Jeff three first, and then my three, but we're gonna take turns asking them, and then you guys, the listener, and the viewers can hear both perspectives. So you get a really well rounded, solid idea of the things to consider in your own fitness and nutrition journey. So I'm just going to ask you the first one, which is from your community, Jeff, and it's a classic one about training. And that is, how long should you rest between sets for muscle growth and strength?
Jeff Hoehn 06:53
Yeah, so rest between sets for muscle growth. This is one that I get commonly, and I think one people overthink it, but then people also want like, this exact time, and I think they think there's this like, like magic amount. Now, as we get into this, there probably is a, you know, we're talking I think we need to understand that we're going to take this from a muscle growth and strength perspective, I do think from a strength perspective, there probably isn't a magic time. But there, you probably want to make sure that you know what strength it's, you're resting enough on in between, right? So we can we can kind of touch base on some of these numbers. But that's kind of the kind of background on that, right, like people will ask all the time, you know, when I remember back when I first started training, like, what do my rest engineers need to be? Do I need to sit there and kind of like, watch, you know, all my watch, like every last second and then and then go? Or can you auto regulate it a little bit more. And from my perspective, this is something that I have kind of changed in terms of like, I think you need want to be you want to auto regulate it a little bit more. And what I mean by that is, you can kind of have a time frame, but you want to kind of go off of your feeling and your feelings and how you're feeling in that moment. Versus like, Okay, two minutes, I got eight seconds, boom, okay, now I can go again, right? So I don't think you need to do that. So I think you can't auto regulate it. And so what I'll do is I'll go over, what are some things you can look at? And what are some kind of general times and then maybe when you know, when would this change? Right, so let's start from a muscle building standpoint. So in the research, you know, I think there was a recent study that kind of shows like, hey, two to three minutes, you should rest in between sets. And you know, that's going to lead to more muscle growth than if you rested for like, you know, 30 seconds or a minute, right. But when you kind of dive in a little bit deeper, when you actually match the volume, yes, if you're doing three sets, and then three sets, and you rest for like one minute, and then you rest for three minutes, because you're resting longer. And the three minute one, and again, I'm just kind of making up numbers here, you will see more hypertrophy, right? Because you're you're more rested, you can maintain that volume load, you can, you know, you can maintain your intensity. But if you add in a few more sets, in the shorter rest time, that can kind of offset some of that, right. So, you know, so kind of increasing like your training destiny. So like, if you do go shorter rest, you could potentially just restless and that will kind of offset some of that. Right? So that's kind of, you know, the background there on the, on the hypertrophy side of things. So I think like, what would be some practical numbers there, I think, again, two to three minutes, I think is solid. And then like, again, for more isolated stuff, maybe one to two minutes on there on that. But this is also also going to be dependent on how you feel, and probably the exercises that you're doing, right. So if you're doing more compound lifts, like stuff, heavier stuff, you know, probably closer to three minutes and beyond there potentially with that, because, you know, those are going to take more out of it for you, you know, more isolation exercises, bicep curls, smaller muscle groups, you know, maybe you can do closer to one minute, right. So those are kind of some practical numbers that you can take, but to be kind of to take it from auto regulatory standpoint. You could also kind of go off of, you know, your breathing in between sets. So if you're like, you know, sitting there like, hey, I need to do a minute and a half, but it's like a minute and a half and you're like breathing super heavy and you're not ready to go. It's like okay, maybe you need to rest a little bit longer there on that right. What does the target muscle feel like Right? Is it still burning? Do you still feel it? Okay. Maybe you need to rest a little bit longer. But if it's feeling good, hey, it's probably time to go there with that, right? So those would be my two big ones there. And then also like, again, if you're doing more compound lifts, you know, how's like your core feeling? Like, you know, is that ready to go? Or is that still tired? Because if that's still kind of tired and fatigued, you know, you might want to rest a little bit longer. And then just your general sense of like, are you ready to hit the next set as well, too, right. And again, I think if, if you can think about this practically, like, when you're doing like lateral raises, or bicep curls, like, Okay, do you need four minutes rest on that probably, you're probably all checking all those boxes off way earlier, there was that. So again, I think I gave you some practical numbers to hit. But then also, you know, you can utilize some of those other proxies as well, too. And then I think also, there are going to be times when you're training for hypertrophy, that you may do some like, incomplete rest periods, right, you may do mile rep sets, you may do drop sets, right. So again, those could be some things that you could potentially incorporate in. But just, you know, again, that would be the goal, there is incomplete rest on that, right, you're not trying to rest on in between. So I think from a hypertrophy perspective, I think resting longer is never a bad idea. Because you're going to preserve, like, you're going to be more recovered, you're going to be ready to go. And I think resting longer is not going to hurt you. Whereas I do think under resting could potentially hurt you. Unless that is the goal on there. If that the only downside with resting longer would be, that's more time that you're going to be at the gym, right? So if you want to kind of increase that efficiency a little bit, you can improve that. So I think that kind of summed up the hypertrophy side of things pretty well. I can go into strength, or I don't know, if you want to kind of hit on the hypertrophy side first, before I go into strength or Yeah,
Philip Pape 11:27
yeah, I can. And we were joking beforehand that like, we're gonna agree 90% on this stuff. And you're like, exactly, mirroring the notes I had, I had, like, you know, some of the studies originally suggested one to two minutes, and I'm like, but I like two to three, and you're like, Yeah, two to three. So the only things I would add to that is, if you're not used to these slightly longer rest periods, especially for strength, as we're gonna get into it, it can help to have a timer initially, almost like tracking your food, it's just get, you know, giving you a baseline of what that feels like. Because for some people, two minutes might seem like a long time, if they're used to just banging out reps constantly in the gym. The other thing is, I do love the autoregulation and feeling it, give yourself more time if needed, for sure. And then don't get distracted to like some people in the gym, you know, they get on their phone, they start doing email and stuff. This is not really answering the original question necessarily. But if people give themselves a license to rest for five minutes, it can become eight or 10. If you start walking around looking at your email, and then you mentioned the intensity techniques already, which, you know, just this morning, I was doing, you know, bicep curls and like, drop sets. And you're right. In that case, the goal is to shorten the time. And the main reason for that is usually time efficiency. Eric Helms and Mike Soto's came out with an article just in mass yesterday, I think about drop intensity techniques, and they covered three different ones, and then compared like not using them versus using them and how you can save like a half hour in the gym every time you go. So that could be a really good reason for it.
Jeff Hoehn 12:48
Well, on you're kind of resting too long in between, I think from like a physiological standpoint, you're not going to do any harm by resting that long. But from like a mental perspective, like you said, What's your engagement now of what you're doing right now, it's like your, your mind is elsewhere. So I think that would be the thing to, you know, look out with with that. Like, it's not like a, you know, again, if you were to like study things physiologically, like you're not going to see a difference, you might see a little bit better, because you're resting longer, but it's like mentally, like you're just not going to be as engaged I feel like anymore, because this reminds me of when back when, during COVID, I was training at home, and there's just so many things that you can freakin do at home that you can't do at the gym. So it's like, I just found that, like, I just met from a mental standpoint, I wasn't staying as engaged in the workouts for that reason, again, the longer rest may have been helpful, but you know, because I wasn't as like mentally engaged that that was that was the issue there. But But you make a good point on like, getting started, like if you're used to, like, you know, maybe more of like a circuit style of training, like kind of like, like those kind of like group classes, fat loss style workouts, that may be a little bit of an adjustment for you, like you said there with that. But I think also, as you get more advanced and you do it, like you start to learn how to, you know, kind of push yourself a little bit more from a hypertrophy perspective, I think you, you get better at that. And you almost kind of want a little bit of a longer rest time where it's like, initially, I could see where you know, maybe you do have to like, go slightly lower with everything because you're just not the intensity is not there yet and everything like that. But that goes back to what we talked about with like the proxies on this wall, too. So
Philip Pape 14:16
yeah, one last thing is you alluded to the strength regime of just being longer rest periods. Right. And I know I found early on when I started I did starting strength years ago, and it was like, Yeah, you can rest 578 Even 10 minutes. Oh my god. It's crazy until I got into super heavy sets of five deadlifts and like now I understand I get it. Yep, I need all the rest and went by rest. I meant like sitting on my ass for just that time and letting my heart rate and everything was to get restored. It's crazy. Well, on
Jeff Hoehn 14:43
strength real quick, that's where you do probably want to make sure you do rest a little bit longer in between because with strength, you know, we're kind of want to make sure you're fresh and you're able to lift the lows that you need to so that that would be a time and I feel like you do a little bit more kind of strength as type two raining overall, at least from what I see on Instagram. So you know, that would be something that like, you would want to make sure that you do rest enough if you're going for strength, right, because you really do want to make sure that you're recovered and ready to go where I feel like with hypertrophy, we have a little bit more of a leeway there. With that potentially, right where it's like with strength, you're not, you can't use that kind of concept that we talked about of like resting less, and then getting in more volume, because you want to make sure you can move the heavy loads that you need to lose in our move and strength. So that would be kind of the only difference there from like, a strength perspective versus muscle growth.
Philip Pape 15:30
Yeah, in fact, it's kind of cool. You can take a hybrid approach almost where if you're doing a like a heavy, like medium style program, on a heavy day, you're going to take full on rest as long as you need. But light medium day, you're probably pushing speed and volume anyway, so that you can use rest periods as a training variable, you know, you I've had, like programmed in, I'm going to do 30 seconds, or I'm going to use 90 seconds, specifically to show progression week over week based on that rest period. Kind of an interesting angle. Yeah,
Jeff Hoehn 15:57
no, absolutely. I love that. Cool. Any any anything else you wanted to add to that one or anything? You want to?
Philip Pape 16:01
Keep going? Yeah,
Jeff Hoehn 16:03
good. We gave people plenty of plenty stuff, I think to work with on that. But we never really gave an exact number. And that's unfortunately, I feel like how it always is going to be you're never going to get an exact number with things there. One
Philip Pape 16:13
to 10 minutes there. No, no 30 seconds to 10 minutes.
Jeff Hoehn 16:16
Figure it out. Cool. All right. So another question I got was, Are there too many cons of cutting during periods of low sleep? Should I just stay at maintenance calories?
Philip Pape 16:25
So when I hear a question like this, my instinct is just to say yes or no. And then I stepped back as a coach. And I'm like, why are we asking about low sleep? That would be the first question I want to know is, you know, is this a temporary part of your life? Because you're going to have a baby? And you're going to have like three months where you know you're going to be shot? Or is it something you've identified something you've like, accepted as part of your life? Or is it a job issue or something like that with your schedule? And you just can't get around it? I don't know. So that's the first thing I would ask is do you have to have like all this low sleep, because I think sleep is on the top three things that affect your your strength and muscle development and recovery, along with training and nutrition, like in my opinion. So I would ask what it is, if it's, if it's a temporary part of your life, I would say maybe not a good idea to cut at the same time. Right? If cutting isn't something you absolutely have to do for some specific reason. Maybe do it when you you know you're outside of that period, consider the long term consequences of that, because cutting calories on top of sleep deprivation is going to have just a massive impact on your insulin, your hunger hormones, your satiety, your, you know everything, it's gonna be harder to stick to the calorie deficit, let alone the stress that it's putting on your body. So yeah, I would say they kind of go against each other. But if you're going to be at a period of low sleep for the next three years, and there's nothing you can do about it, you might have to make some trade offs to fit in, you know, a very conservative cut at some point. But make the trade off. So you're not going all out aggressive on your cut, and all out five hours of sleep a day. That's my first thought on that.
Jeff Hoehn 17:55
No, I mean, that's a good point, right? It's like, okay, well, why are you getting that that poor sleep? Right? Like, are you just accepting it? Because you don't want to get more sleep? Or is it like you actually have something, you know, going on? Because I think that's like you said, that's super important to find out there. Because you're probably going to have to fix that at some point, if you really want to have, you know, you want to prove your body composition, and things like that. Yeah, no, I mean, those were all great points. And then like you said, though, if you can't like something's going on, and you're not gonna be able to get good sleep for three years, or something like that, or whatever it may be, like, you know, if it is going to be three years, like, yes, going into a less aggressive approach is probably going to be the way to go there with that, right. Like you said, like, you know, maybe we're not going to be able to go all out and lose as much, you know, weight as we want, it might have to be a little bit slower there with that to offset some of that. So those are, those are great points there with that, but I think this person specifically that asked, I think they was like a, I think they just had a new child. So that would certainly be a time they're not going to get great sleep. And we both would probably be like, Hey, we're not going to cut during this time, right. And I think you kind of hit on it. The big things are higher hunger, right cravings, you know, that's going to lead to poor decision making lower willpower, right from that, which is just going to make the deficit harder, just going to, you're just going to have like more friction, like you said, insulin or higher hunger, things like that. But for me, the big thing is the lean body mass loss rate, that would be the thing that I would be most concerned about there with that, you know, with the lean body mass loss, so there was a study, and again, I don't have the exact study here, but they they looked at two groups, right? So one group had eight and a half hours of sleep, another had five and a half hours of sleep. And they both were in an energy deficit, the group that was at five and a half hours, lost more lean body mass, they lost the same amount of weight, but they lost more lean body mass, right. So that just kind of goes to show that, you know, potentially that's going to be a thing that we need to look out for here is that lean body mass loss, which in turn, I think with that leads to other issues down the line, right? We lose lean body mass during fat loss, you're probably going to be a little bit hungrier and then on the way up, you know, you're going to want to regain that weight and now you do that quickly. Now you're going to gain more body fat. Now you're going to be at the same weight but more Fat, less less muscle there. So I think the lean body mass one to me, is the big thing that we need to look out for there with app. So
Philip Pape 20:07
question about that study, do you know what the training and the protein was? Like there?
Jeff Hoehn 20:11
I actually went over this on my Instagram, and I'm pretty sure so I'm gonna pull it up. I'm gonna look, I'm gonna keep talking while I go through this, but I'm pretty sure that they weren't weight training. Right. So that's obviously a big thing there with that. Like, obviously, we want to make sure we wait train. I don't think they track protein. Right? And I would imagine that if these people weren't training, they probably did not care about protein either. So that's a great point. Right. And I think that was one of the kind of caveats I had with this study was that what were those two things there that if you have anything to say, let me know. I'm looking up. Yeah.
Philip Pape 20:43
I mean, nonetheless, and I'm not, you know, challenging it. It's just I always ask those questions about the studies. Because hopefully, if you are training and eating protein, that impact is lessened if not negligible, I don't know. I know sleep deprivation, there are plenty of studies that show just a cascade of very negative impacts, even when you're gaining weight, right in terms of like fat storage, visceral fat storage, and stuff like that. And a lot of people misconstrue, like the lack of sleep and weight gain, as as if it's causing you to gain weight. But I think a lot of it just comes down to the loss of muscle mass, like you said, but and also the hunger, just the ravenous hunger, people will consume, like 500 calories more a day, by just by having an hour or two less of sleep on an ad libitum type type diet. So did you did you find it? Well, I
Jeff Hoehn 21:28
did it and so on that real quick before it before I dive into that, like you said, in from my understanding, we just have this higher propensity to want more highly palatable food. And that process as well to which you know, that's going to lead to like eat, you know, higher, like, you're going to want that that tastier stuff. So if you have that on top of it, your willpower is lower, like, you're just going to want more and more of that there. So that's going to be an issue. So with this study, so I did mention there was some limitations. So this is by the del Sheva in 2010. So just just to give somebody actual name there for that they might post I made, I said, there were some limitations to the study, it was a small sample size, so it wasn't a lot of people. Okay, um, it was only 14 days. So it was only two weeks, they didn't lift weights. And obviously, when we look at lean body mass, it's not just muscle, right? It can also be glycogen storage, it can be bones, organs, water, and everything else that is in body fat. So we also need to take that into consideration there with that, so yeah,
Philip Pape 22:24
yeah, and I don't want the person asking the question, to use any of that as a reason not to listen to everything we're saying here, which is, don't cut aggressively and lose sleep all at the same time Pick, pick one or the other, or make the trade off, I see it as kind of like a seesaw. You know, one, one can be a little worse, one a little better. And you can, as one gets better, you've got a little more leeway on the other. It's just a matter of trade offs, and how you feel really the biofeedback that you're tracking along the way. Yep.
Jeff Hoehn 22:48
And I know probably anybody that's gotten poor sleep, like you just know how it can, how it can impact you. From that perspective, I think the motivation to write like, now you're going to be less motivated to train and want to do those things that you that you need to do as well, too. So cool. Yeah. So again, this would definitely be a time that I like, and it sounds like you're in agreement with me, like, if it's a short term thing, we're probably not going to fat loss diet. During this time. I literally, I just actually, before we hopped on here, I had a conversation with a client about meal thinking about going into fat loss. And it's just like, I mean, if you if you don't do it right now, it's like, can you never do it again? Like, do you have to do it right now? You know what I mean? It's like, I think a lot of times, we think that we have to like go into it right now. And if we're not fat loss, dieting, we're not gonna see any progress whatsoever. And that's just not the case. Right? So I think sometimes taking the pressure off of that can be super helpful.
Philip Pape 23:36
For sure. Yeah. And a good coach or community who's telling you that just like, Look, do you really have to do this? If not, I'm giving you the tough love. Let's not you're gonna feel so much better. We can fit it in another time when it makes more sense. Let's check all the boxes first. And let's go. So yeah. All right. You want to go to the next one? Yeah, for sure. yet? I'm ready. So Question three. This is the last one from Jeff community. And I'm asking it to Jeff question. I'm gaining a little too much weight in a building phase. What do I do? Yep.
Jeff Hoehn 24:01
Cool. I like this, because I thought this was a great question. Just because, again, you know, a lot of times people have that urge to just go back to cutting. Right? So I think real quick, I'll go what I described as a building phase, because I think there's some semantics involved with this, like, what exactly is the building phase? Right? To me, a building phase is just a period of time where you're out of a calorie deficit, right? You could be at maintenance, you could be in a surplus, but we're trying to minimize fat gain, maximize muscle growth, and really just the main thing is we're trying to get out of a calorie deficit, right. So you know, within that kind of parameters there, you may end up gaining some weight, right? So I think the big thing is, you know, if you get to a point where you gain too much weight, like what do I do? Do I just go back to cutting or, or whatnot. And I think we have some options here is it isn't just hey, you have to do you just have to cut right and I think doing that too much I think can lead to issues, right? If you just go straight into like, Oh, I've gained a little bit of weight I need to go back to cutting. I think that's from body comp standpoint. I think you're setting yourself up for failure in that situation. So I think if you can find some ways to potentially improve your adherence for whatever it is, during this building phase, it can go a long way. So the first thing I would do in this situation is I would run an energy audit with a client, right? So an energy audit is going to be like, Okay, are we out here? Are we to the plant? Right? Are you adhering? And you know, a lot of times I think people think they're more adherent than what they are. And then you actually, like, dive into and it's like, holy crap, I'm actually only adherent 60% of the time. It's like, well, boom, you don't need to make any adjustment. Just frickin we need to improve that. Yep, that's the big thing first, and that's the boring like, oh, no, that that can't be the issue. But, you know, Philip, I'm sure you can say the same thing here. Like when it comes to nutrition, adherence is the issue.
Philip Pape 25:34
I think,
Jeff Hoehn 25:36
I think you're gonna see 90% I think I'm underselling how much it is. So it's at least 90%. And probably more than that, probably 99%. Right. So looking at adherence, and I think, you know, so again, like, that's the first thing that I would do on there that also looking at just your movement, where's your movement at? Right? Could that potentially be increased? So again, is it just your steps, or whatever it is, has that potentially gone down? So kind of looking at that, but from there, you know, I think when it comes to I don't know, everybody's little bit different in terms of how they monitor food intake with their clients and stuff like that, but I do like to have clients track calories and like, at least protein. And so for them, that's going to be, you know, are there some potential tracking errors that are going on? And again, if adherence isn't the issue, the next thing that really can hurt people from like, a calorie perspective is tracking inaccuracies. And it's, some of it is on purpose, right. But I think a lot of the times, it's on accident as well, too. I think that's more of an issue than anything is just on accident, right? You, you know, you forget, you know, I couldn't even tell you what I ate, you know, yet? Well, I could, that's a bad example. But you know, some people can't remember what they ate, you know, or they can't remember what they did yesterday. So how are they? How are they going to remember what they ate? You know what I mean with that. So, you know, that's the first thing there is, you know, you might forget to just block some things, you got a million things going on, too. You know, even if something says it has a certain amount of calories, it can be off by up to 25% plus or minus, right. So then we already have that, like, that's a potential issue right there on that you can be off, if you like to go out to eat, you know, just because someone says it's 500 calories, the chances of it actually having 500 calories are slim to none, right? I mean, the depends on the chef, how they make it, what the you know, who's working with what serving size they give you their with that. But then there is, again, people just forgetting how to or the serving sizes side of things, right. So again, like getting your serving sizes off could be could be a big problem, as well to there with that. So, you know, looking at your tracking, are you tracking your condiments? Are you tracking correctly, right? And typically, you'll you'll find that people are off there with that and potentially fixing that, right. So we're going to run an energy audit there and see if there's anything that can change there with that. And, again, most of the time, you're going to find that, hey, that's off. So then, you know, that's the first thing that we can do there is work on that adherence to everything, run that energy audit and see where we need to make any adjustments on there. If that. So that'd be the first thing. And again, like I said, a lot of times, that's going to help, because you know, when you go into building phase, you're going to, you're going to get to the point to where maybe you aren't tracking as much now because you're not in a fat loss phase. So you know, you have that, you know, to potentially look at there with that. So I don't know if you had anything I have a few more. I didn't know if you wanted to comment on that one first, before I go into the other ones. Yeah,
Philip Pape 28:05
you're already knocking off all the bullets on my notes, which is no surprise. Because the first thing I said, the first thing I would have asked is how are you tracking because I want to look at all of that, like you said that the errors, the adherence, everything else, as well as look at the expenditure side of the equation, some people may not even know either what surplus they need to be in to gain the weight they want to gain, they are in the wrong surplus for what they're trying to gain. And that's what I want to touch on in a little bit. And or, like you said, you know, things are shifting in a direction that is unknowable, because your tracking is off. And so data, data data, right? Like the better the data coming in, the easier the decisions going out. And then if you're just not making the choices based on what the data is telling you, that is a different issue. So why don't you finish your list? And I want to just address one piece that I that I might be a different angle here. Yeah,
Jeff Hoehn 28:53
those are all great points, man. Like I agree. And I think the calorie one is, is a huge one that a couple other ones I had the other options you have. So again, running the energy audit, and like I said, most of the time, like you're gonna, you'll probably find something there that you can fix on with that. Again, it's something there from adherence or anything like that. Next, you know, if you do find that everything's good, and like you said, you might just be eating more calories than you want potentially. Or maybe you just like pick the wrong number. Or, again, you're accidentally just eating more overall, you can decrease your calories closer to maintenance, right? I think a lot of times people think that like, Oh, hey, I have to be in a calorie surplus, I have to be in a calorie surplus to build muscle. That's the only way and it's like that's not necessarily the case. Right? Like I think that, again, the leaner you are, the more muscle you want to build, okay, we probably want to push a calorie surplus but if you have a moderate amount of body fat, you know, you want to push like your trainings in a good spot or, yeah, if you're on the leaner side, you want to build a lot of muscle like at some point you will need to get into a calorie surplus right to continue to build muscle but I think if you fall outside of those things where you're like it moderate body fat levels, you know, you don't want to be Mr. Olympia right like you have some wiggle room here too. don't necessarily have to be in a calorie surplus, right? And I think even within a building phase, like yeah, maybe you started out lean and you have a lot of muscle, but then you kind of gained some body fat in the building phase, like, I still think you have some wiggle room there to potentially go down to maintenance and continue to build muscle, right? Because again, you're you're at higher body fat levels. Now, I think people underestimate that aspect of an energy surplus is what are your current body fat levels, because that's, that's stored energy that you have, right? Right then and there, right. So you know, you have that option as well to to decrease your calories closer to maintenance, as well, too. And that's, you know, you can kind of recap in a way, right, maybe you're not going to lose body fat, but you're going to be adding some muscle with not adding any more body fat. In that process. Again, so long as your train is in a good spot, your, your sleeps good, you're getting enough protein and things like that,
Philip Pape 30:43
for sure, man, I want to piggyback off that, because the idea of going back to maintenance. First of all, I love that idea is like a reset. Because if you if something else is off if your adherence or movement or tracking has changed. And the movement I know we didn't talk a lot about but I mean, if you you know, if you're if you're moving 5000s, you know, steps less a day, because you're no longer in fat loss, you're like, Well, I don't need to move as much that could be, you know, pushing down your metabolic rate, and all of a sudden, you're in an accidental surplus, not even meaning to be. But the idea of going back to maintenance. If you do that, and then you're still gaining weight, you know, you weren't really at your maintenance, like, you know, you didn't end up paying maintenance. So that tells you something, too, one little extra thing I want to throw in here is let's say you're doing all the things and you are tracking well, and you know, your step count, and everything's consistent. And you're still quote unquote, gaining more than you want. I would ask, are you calculating the surplus correctly, if you have a coach, hopefully they know what they're doing, and they're getting you in the right surplus. But one rule of thumb I've been using a lot lately is the 2500 Calorie rule. And I want to explain that for the listener. Because a lot of people don't have heard about this, we know about the 3500 Calorie rule, right, roughly 3500 calories of energy in a net pound of adipose tissue a net pound of fat to lose fat. So when we lose weight, if we want to go one pound a week, it's 3500 calories, or 500 calories a day. Pretty simple, like cocktail mat, napkin math, when you gain weight, however, we're not just gaining fat, right, we're gaining some ratio of fat and muscle muscle being about five times as dense as fat means that you don't need as many calories to gain one pound that contains half of as muscle. And so it's roughly two thirds. If you just ballparked it and said okay, instead of a pound a week, I would actually need to gain two thirds, not pound, but two thirds of the calories a week to gain that pound, if I'm going in a surplus. And therefore if you're using the 3500 Calorie rule, you're actually eating a third more than you intended. So just a cool little fact for people trying to like fun, suck it and figure out their maintenance, their surplus calories is actually going to be less than in a fat loss phase.
Jeff Hoehn 32:45
Yeah. And again, to piggyback off that, like I think that's great. I think that's a great way to set it up to make sure you don't, you know, gain too much fat in the process. I like and maybe you do this too, but I like going off of like percentage of body weight gain as well, because I'm kind of that kind of tells you where exactly it's at. Right? Like if you start gaining a little bit too much weight, you know, Jetstar, the quicker you gain weight, the more it's going to be body fat. So if you can kind of go off of where your your weight is trending over time, like that can be super helpful on there to make sure that you are you know, it's going towards more muscle than body fat. Yeah,
Philip Pape 33:17
I like point two 2.3 For most people, I don't know if you're in that range to that's like, yeah, ends up being
Jeff Hoehn 33:23
about like a percent a month or something like that. When you when you kind of zoom out there with that. Yeah, I mean, that's the way to go. Because then you can kind of like that helps. In your specific example there where it's like if you set your calories too high, because you have to be a certain amount of calories per week, like, oh, I need to be a 500 calorie surplus. It's like, well, for you, that may not be a 500 calorie surplus. It may be more, maybe less, because our bodies are you know, pretty adaptive. From that perspective, there was that.
33:48
Before I started working with Philip, I had been trying to lose weight and was really struggling with consistency. But from the very beginning, Philip took the time to listen to me and understand my goals. He taught me the importance of fueling my body with the right foods to optimize my training in the gym, and I lost 20 pounds. More importantly, I gained self confidence. What sets Phillip apart is the personal connection. He supported and encouraged me every step of the way. So if you're looking for a coach who cares about your journey as much as you do, I highly recommend Phillip Pape.
Jeff Hoehn 34:30
So the other option and this is kind of like this isn't super helpful, but it then they could just keep going as well too, right? Because, you know, at the end of the day if you really want to build muscle like I think you've been taking some time away from like being out of a calorie deficit like yeah, you're gonna gain a little bit more body fat in the process, but is that the absolute worst thing in the world right now if you're gaining crazy amounts of body fats like okay, obviously you're gonna you know, depending on where your body composition is at, you might want to work on that but at the end of the day, is it the worst thing in the world to gain a little bit of body fat for you? For a period of time, right, like, is that going to be the worst thing for your physique? Is that going to be the worst thing for your health? You know, probably not, again, unless you're already over 20% as a male over 25% is female like then okay, maybe we probably don't want to just keep adding body fat, but that's my next one. That's just like, potentially just just keep going on with it. You know, I think that's that's another option as well, too.
Philip Pape 35:19
That's true, because we didn't even ask the person when they say a little too much weight. Is it just a reframing thing? Is it just they're uncomfortable with something that they've never done before? And maybe this is a female too, because I tend to get that I tend to not have problems with most of my male clients gaining weight. They're like, yeah, deadlifts are going up. Let's keep going. But you know, more with women that I'm feeling uncomfortable, I'm feeling fluffy. My pants are a little tight. Maybe that's where we focus on all the other things that are going up in a positive direction. You know, like our lifts, and like our bicep circumference, and all the other fun things? Yeah,
Jeff Hoehn 35:50
no, I mean, like, like I said, you know, yeah, looking at other things, and reframing it is super important. Because again, you may not act like you said, What is that little bit of weight? Is it like, Hey, you gained two pounds over six months, like, okay, all right, that's a different than, hey, you've gained 15 pounds in six weeks? Right? That's a different conversation. So definitely clarifying that, as I'm sure you've noticed, with being coached to like you got it, you do need to ask these kind of follow up questions. There if that So, alright, so the next one would be just enter your building phase, right. But I want to caution on this. Because I think if you're only been doing it for six weeks, it comes back to what we talked about earlier, you need to work on the adherence, you need to work on these other things first, right, like, that's going to be the most important thing. But if you've been doing it for 1824 30 weeks, you know, maybe it's just time to end the building phase. Now at this point, right. So, you know, that's another option there where, you know, kind of seeing where you're at, and how long you've been in the building phase can be key. Again, like I said, if you've been not doing it for a while, we need to work on these other things. But if it's been a while, hey, maybe it's just timed to end it at that point. Yeah,
Philip Pape 36:50
exactly. I mean, it really depends on why they're asking the question. So I'm also good with, you know, five, six months continuous building is a nice point to shoot for, to know for sure. You've got all the enabling them that you can out of the phase and not cut yourself short die these days, like to go nine or 10 months, because then you do a mini cut for two months, and now you're eating a lot of food 10 months out of the year. And who doesn't like that? Right? Yeah,
Jeff Hoehn 37:12
absolutely love love eating that food. Yeah, no, I agree, though, I think if you can, because I think when it comes to building muscle, I think there's some momentum to it, right. And I think if you're kind of going in and out, you're just going to break up that momentum, and you're never really going to, you're just not going to be happy with your physique, you know, long term with that. So So I think having that momentum on the super key there with that, and then you kind of just hit on the one that you said there the last option. And I leave this last because, again, I think this is dependent on the person in your experience and everything like that. But the last one would be doing a mini cut. Right? And I think it depends on your kind of definition of mini cut, because like I said initially, like with the building phase, it is partly semantic, like in terms of like, Hey, is it a bulking phase, like it just depends, right. And I think with fitness, there's a lot of this like, it's one person means this it this way another. And so when I say a mini cut, I'm talking a mini cut, during a building phase where you like, you would decrease your calories more than what you'd like typically do and like a regular cut, right? This is like a very short term, like anywhere from like three to six weeks where you really cut your calories. And you could potentially use a mini cut now, in that, you know, you're really going to decrease your calories. And the goal is going to be Yes, a little bit of fat loss, but part of it is going to be ramping up your hunger. So you know, if hunger is something that you're dealing with, where you're having a lot of hunger, this might not be a good option for you, because part of the mini cut is you're going to increase your hunger on their fat, and it's going to give you more runway to continue adding weight. But what I will say I would only do this, if you're very experienced Dieter, and you're working with a coach, those would be like, if you fall outside of that, which I would say most people fall outside of that I wouldn't do I would be careful with mini cut. But again, this comes down to you know, you mentioned the mini cut, you may mean something slightly different from that. So I'm curious to kind of hear your thoughts on that.
Philip Pape 38:54
Yeah, I mean that in that case, I just made a short duration cut between my bulking cycles. However, I did on my last building phase, do a two week like Bill Campbell ask Rapid Fat Loss protocol. And it was like an experiment with the whole community, like 12 Other people sign on, we did it together. And that was just it wasn't even for hunger. It was more of an experiment of can we reset things just a little bit, you know, on the scale before we continue and it worked pretty well, right? Because you could cut a lot in two or three weeks if you're just going all out. And honestly after you've been eating for eight months, you might feel like it's a nice relief for a while on your gut and everything else. And then you just you know you lop off three or four pounds of pure fat and then you continue for another four months after that. So yeah, that's what I meant. Yeah.
Jeff Hoehn 39:37
So So sounds like it was yeah, pretty pretty similar to kind of the the definitions there because kind of like you said, you know, I think sometimes when people hear many cut, they think it's just like a short term cut, like I'm just gonna cut for four weeks, right? And yes, that is a mini cut. But this is where like, we need to be careful with like definitions and kind of what exactly you mean there. So those are the things you can do if you gain a little too much weight in your building phase. One last thing that I want to hit on real Quick on this and this kind of overlaps. Everything is if you don't feel like you're making good progress in your building phase. I think sometimes people put too much stock in the nutrition. While it is important, right? What did I say was one of the main goals of building phase, we want to be out of a calorie deficit. But I think people overlook the training side of things they want to like, have this perfect macros play perfect surplus. It's like, okay, well, what's your training look like? And it's like, oh, well, you know, I just go and do this, they don't have a game plan. You look, they're training six plus reps in the tank, or they're not doing enough volume, it's like, do your training needs to be on point, that's the most important. So if you feel like you're not seeing the results that you want to see in a building face, like, look at your training, I think that's the most important thing and see if you can make that a little bit more geared towards hypertrophy, you know, if obviously, building muscle is your main goal, so that kind of over laps, everything there. Um, with that, that would go into like, the first thing that we would be looking at on this wall, too.
Philip Pape 40:50
Yeah, 100%, you don't want to go to waste. You don't want all that weight gain to go to waste. And hopefully, there's things you can track that can tell you that that's happening, like your waist size is just ballooning. And your lifts are not going up. I mean, right there. That's a pretty obvious indicator. But uh, yeah, no, I think we covered a lot on that one, we feel free to go to the next question. If you're good. Yep. I think that's I think it's us. Okay. No, no. All right.
Jeff Hoehn 41:10
So this is from your community. So how do I adjust my programming during the transition from a bulk to a cut? Which training variables are most important?
Philip Pape 41:18
So you know, this is a big topic, right? Like, we could easily fit a two hour long episode talking about training during a cut. And originally, I was going to answer the question directly, like, what are the variables I care about. And at the end of the day, I think they all matter. I like intensity, you know, like load as the driving variable for holding on to that muscle mass. But I do think there's a still a lot of play between, with volume with sets with recovery, too, because recovery is going to be even more important, if you want to think of it as its own training variable can be helpful. When it comes down to those the overall answer here is, if you can have a program that helps you auto regulate, you mentioned autoregulation, before in a different context, but for training, whether it's rep ranges, whether it's percent, or whether it's RPE, even set progression, like a lot of ways to do that, you'll be able to continue pushing and training hard, you know, we talked training, hard proximity to failure, if you rep shy of failure, whatever that means. And that's really what we're trying to get right is that stimulus. So for me, I like hypertrophy style programs with rep ranges, I like, like percent RM based like Westside style can be actually useful in a cut, believe it or not, where you're pushing your one RM for the day, which may not be your PR, but then you can do back offs based on that, so that, you know, you're hitting it hard. And then I also like the idea of spreading out fatigue, not locking yourself in the idea that it has to be three days, five days, six days, whatever, that recovery is very hard to come by, the more deep you get into a fat loss phase. So all of these forms of autoregulation that, that let you just train hard and get the stimulus is kind of the principle based answer that I wanted to start with. And then we can get into things like okay, but what about specific training variables? And this will, I'm going to turn it over to the master Coach and Trainer jumping?
Jeff Hoehn 43:03
No, I mean, that's a good point. Like, I think no matter what, like you said, even if you're in a cutter, ballpark, you want that training intensity to be there. So that's, you know, super important, like that needs to be there. And again, this goes back to like, hey, what's the what are these specific variables? And it's like, are you pushing yourself? Is that effort there? Right? And if that's not there, like you need to make sure that's, that's there. So I think like, as far as like some some smaller things go. I mean, like, when I saw this question, like, the only thing I could really think of that I say would be different because like you hit on the intensity, like we still want that to be there would be maybe like, again, this is from a building muscle perspective, that's usually where I come from on these things is maybe volume, but there's no like direct research that shows hey, you need to do more or less volume, I think it comes back to what you said auto regulating it like like, how do you like, can you recover from it? Or if you are, then you know, you should? Probably, you know, you can keep it the same? Maybe you could add more, right? If you're recovering from it, if you're not recovering from it, do you need to decrease a little bit? Or do you need to look at your sleep and and other things outside you need to improve? Like, if you're going to cut D maybe you need to change your meal timing around and make sure you have plenty of food around your training sessions. Right? Those would be things there with that. But I find that, you know, again, the big thing that you want to do is if you're transitioning from a block to a code is you really don't want to change anything, I think you need to I think you need to train the same right train, like you're still going to build muscle act like you're going to build muscle I think a lot of times, and this is why I hear from clients that are going into phallus eight oh, well, you know, I just know that training is gonna suck. And I know I'm gonna not build any muscle during this period of time. And I'm like, Are you sure though? Are you sure that you're not going to do that? Is that more of a mental thing that you think? Because you've heard this that like, Oh, hey, that's going to happen. This isn't the best. You're not like surplus, you're not going to build muscle. But we have research that shows that you can still build some muscle in a small calorie deficit under the right circumstances, right. So because I think if you go into it thinking like training is gonna suck. I'm not going to build any muscle. I think mentally now you go into your training sessions. And that kind of impacts how hard you can push yourself and your training and then yeah, now you're gonna set yourself up to not It really pushes hard. So I would kind of challenge not you, Phil, Phil up on this, but I would challenge the listener like, are you for sure not going to build muscle? And are you for sure going to like your your train is going to be impacted? Right. So I think another day, you don't want to change how you're training, your weight training in a cut from a bot to a cut?
Philip Pape 45:19
Yeah, yeah. So I have some more things that came up since you just triggered a lot of great discussion there. One is about the maintaining of muscle mass. I mean, we've seen studies that show as little as like 1/8 of the volume is potentially can maintain your muscle mass. Now, I believe that's not necessarily also, while you're in a cut, like there's some trade off you're making. But it takes a lot less volume to make just maintain muscle mass. Like Jeff said, you know, maybe you can still even build a little bit, or you may need to over overcompensate for that, that minimum during fat loss, because you don't have all the resources coming in, you know, you're trying to get the protein higher, you don't have any carbs, you're probably sleep is a little bit tougher to come by. And all of that. The second thing is people don't realize you're losing weight. So if your reps stay the same, and your loads the same, your relative strength just went up, right? That's really important from a framing perspective to say, No, I'm not actually getting weaker, I'm just getting lighter, you know, get it, it's like when you're the other direction, you do chin ups, and you get heavier and you get the same reps. Same thing, you actually just got stronger, right? So think about that. There's also a difference between strength and muscle mass in that, you know, the lack of energy and lack of resources and lack of carbs may cause you to feel like you're less strong, or like you're losing strength, when you might still get the reps and you're still holding on to that muscle. So there's a lot of psychology and mind games going on. And then recovery, I do want to come back to that, especially for us older guys. And ladies, when life is there's a lot of life stress, you know, sleep can be a little bit hard to come by, you know, you're worried about the joints and all that now you're lifting heavy with very few calories coming in, it can all kind of add up together to where you really have to pay attention to that biofeedback of your soreness, and your ability to get through a session, you know, think about like, Are you training fasted or not, because that can make a big difference. When are you eating your carbs during the day, you're gonna have, you might have to make some subtle changes based on this, like limited pie of food coming in. The last thing I was thinking of is if you are more strength focused, and you're doing like a sets across, or a five by five, three by five type program, that is going to be very difficult to progress during fat loss. And you could get discouraged if you're not just pushing the weight every session. So that's where you want to get creative and maybe, maybe switch to like rep range scheme. Or even I've done something in the past Jeff, I did a set space progression during fat loss that was super effective, where you start at like three sets, you do like three, then four, then five, and six, and then reset and a slightly higher load. And the body's ability to kind of handle the submaximal, third fatloss seems to be more effective. And then you're still getting all the volume. So just throw a whole bunch of details in there that I thought that came up from, from what you mentioned. Yeah,
Jeff Hoehn 47:59
no, I mean, you brought up a ton of great points in there. Yeah, I think you really don't want to change much other than and I think, again, auto regulated, right? Like if you can do if you can do more, and you recovered, then do more if you if you can't, then you know, obviously, look at those other things, see if those can be improved, but understand, hey, it might just be a little bit lower, I do think in a deficit, potentially, everything will just maybe feel a little bit tougher, right? So you maybe need to kind of push through that kind of mental fatigue, like you've mentioned, the mental fatigue, so you might need to push through that a little bit more. And you might start to feel it sooner, right, like in a surplus or maintenance or surplus. It's like your sets of 10. It's like it starts to get hard at rep nine or 10, where it's like in a deficit, it might be seven or eight that it starts to get a little you know, something like that. So keep taking your creatine to imbalance.
Philip Pape 48:47
Keep taking creatine. Yeah, this question was asked by Christos by the way and I know him and crystals, man, just just keep training like you're training when you go into the cut and then see how it feels and report back in our community. We'll see. We'll help you. Yep. All right. Let's go to the fifth question. Again. This is from my community. Evelyn asked this one. Another big hot topic these days. Is menopause and weight loss resistance a thing related to this your advice on programming and nutrition? For women over 50? big topic? Yeah.
Jeff Hoehn 49:13
So I mean, I definitely think that as you age, you know, things change. Right? Do I think that, obviously, there's a ton going on in menopause that, you know, we can't we can't relate to, but there's a ton of, you know, hormonal change going on. Right. So I think that's the big thing there is that it just changes things a little bit, but in those things can definitely impact you. Right. So I know like as your estrogen will go down. And that's going to, you know, that's going to affect many things from from a woman's perspective, right. But I think it's more the lifestyle and I think people underestimate this right. So, you know, I think one kind of common menopausal symptom is like poor sleep, right? What did we talk about sleep earlier, man, that's going to increase your hunger cravings. You're going to be less motivated to do things you're not going to make as good of a chore He says, right. And I think that has a trickle down effect right now you begin, you don't want to go training, maybe you're not moving as much. Now, poor sleep can lead to higher stress, you know, higher stress can lead to like you talked about visceral fat, right? That can lead to some fat accumulation in midsection, particularly, right? So it's, to me, it's more of a trickle down effect of what's going on, right, and maybe not working with your body and instead, trying to work against it and relying on things that maybe you thought, you know, you thought you were supposed to do. And again, maybe worked for you when you're 20. And now it's like your body's just, you know, changing a little bit, and it's just less receptive to it. Right. And I think currently, there's kind of current state of people that are in menopause, that demographic that are going through that currently, they kind of grew up with this, like, you need to be skinny, you need to be as small as possible, right? And that stuff kind of has her with them. Because I know, any client I have in this age range, that's like the thing of like, they're just very, like, if they gain a pound, it's like, oh, my gosh, what is going on? You know, again, that's an overgeneralization. But that's, I don't know if you can relate to that. It seems like that's kind of how it is with this kind of, you know, that demographic,
Philip Pape 51:03
if I if I wake up and I see very long messages from clients, I know. It's easy, like, Please help. And it's this the whole story of what's going on, which is cool. That's what your coaches for. Often it is related to just a little bit of framing and kind of panicking that goes on, but it's okay. Yeah, yeah. I mean, I mean, to add to some of that, you know, the note, the big note that I had had was, you know, menopause is this major change and transition in your life, it's physical, it's physiological. But it's also tied in for a lot of women with other things that compound that you've got the life stress, you've got kids, which then lead to less sleep, you've got things like hot flashes, which also can interrupt sleep, the loss of muscle mass that has been occurring if you have not been training. And for women, it's exacerbated by the hormonal change and bone density decreased. And we can go on and on. And like Jeff said, lifestyle is the first thing I would go to for all of this stuff. Once you get that dialed in, of course, if things are off, like difficulty, I knew someone who had, you know, she gained like 80 pounds in six months without changing anything, you knew something was up, and it was her thyroid. And that can happen as young as I've seen eight years old, right? So a lot of women out there that, you know, I know, we're talking menopause, but like the gaslighting in the medical industry and everything that leads to decades of not dealing with the issues. But for many women, that's not the case. So I don't want you to use it as like an excuse and the tough love, like, you know, we're a couple dude, coaches here, we've worked with a lot of women, and a lot of them tell me like, just give me the tough love and help me, like, do what I need to do. If I'm doing all those things. And I know there's still an issue, okay, let's, let's look at hormone therapy, and whatever else, and take care of all the things outside the gym as well. Like, definitely train hard with intensity and execution. Ladies, that that's an area of improvement for a lot of you. It's, that's cool. Definitely progress over time, right with to show that expression of strength and muscle mass over time, it's going to make you you know, strong, fierce, lean tone, whatever word you want to use. And all the things outside the gym, you know, your stress the recovery, right, like how we handle food and the emotional issues around food as well. Like it just goes on and on. So it's a big topic. But like Jeff said, like, we have compassion for all of you. And we want to help you win this thing on your own with complete freedom and control using lifestyle changes. Yeah,
Jeff Hoehn 53:15
no, I mean, he hit on it perfectly. Right. Like, I mean, it is like, like we said, like you said to like, we know it's a tough time, right? Like, very empathetic towards that. Right? Like, oh, pay just, it's, you know, whatever, like, so. Yeah. No, we're not saying that. But, you know, I think a lot of times people overlook that. I would say, from a programming perspective, I can just kind of hit on maybe some few, like, kind of common mistakes I see from a programming and nutrition perspective, with this demographic, I think it's one, I think it's the way they train, right? I think it's, you know, again, it's, I think they're kind of mindset towards exercises. More sweating, or feelings, like the exercise is super hard, getting that heart rate up, I have to feel like super beat up, right, like more cardio based kind of style training. I'm gonna get I think any exercise is great. So I'm don't want to bash that. But I think for this demographic, like, this is where we have to like, again, get out of that mindset of what worked in the past. And now we need to start to shift it towards working with our body. And so like, you kind of hit on it like, hey, let's, you know, let's do some cardio. Right, but let's do it for our heart health. Let's not do it for fat loss purposes, right? That's going to come through some nutrition interventions. But from a training perspective, hey, we, at this point, we need to work on weight training. Again, yes, for muscle, but for bone health, too, right? Like in this demographic. So we need to make sure we weight training needs to be we need it to be in a progressive overload style, as well, too, right. So that's the big thing. So the mistake there is training in a way that's just going to burn the most calories. Right? With that. From a nutrition perspective, I think two big things that I see is one trying to always fat loss diet. Okay, so that's another big mistake here because we talked about losing lean body mass, we talked about the bone density thing, but also if you're not sleeping, well, we this goes back to what we talked about earlier, right? You have that issue and you just have a lot of other stress going on again, adding a calorie to So to that all the time is going to be a stressor on the body. So I'm not saying don't ever fat loss, but I think it would be being smarter about it being in a smaller calorie deficit, and doing it less often there with that, right. And I think the other thing, and these, I guess, kind of go hand in hand, or they're two separate, but I'm going to lump them into one is protein, like I think protein is something that is important. I personally think proteins may be been overblown now, like it's kind of swarmed to where like, people are over relying on protein. But I think in this demographic, you do need to make sure you're hitting about one gram per pound of body weight. Again, if you're overweight, maybe a little bit less than that. But I do think it's important and you know, make sure that you're you're getting enough protein in again, you don't have to get massive, massive amounts, but he makes sure you get enough. But also carbohydrates, right? Do make sure you're getting some carbohydrates as well, too. I think that's only going to help things there with that. And so those would be my kind of like big things, aside from the lifestyle stuff there.
Philip Pape 55:48
Yeah, I love it. I'm glad you mentioned carbs, because that has been a game changer for a lot of women I've worked with. And there's such resistance, sometimes even when they're open minded to the idea of doing it, there's still this like, built in either societal or trained behavior, over years of being told carbs are bad. And I hear it in the A lot of times in the women hosted podcast space, where you've got like the Keto and the low carb, like that is the thing for hormones, you know, for Perry and post menopause. And I'm like, I don't understand it, it may be the thing for an individual for sure. And that's one of the messages we want to get through is like, there's something different for everybody. But ask everybody to experiment with these things. And if you're low on energy, if your training is tough, if your sleep is poor, if your hormones seem off carbs could be the answer, believe it or not, carbs give the answer just eating more food. Speaking of so you cover training. And actually, the original question was also about his weight loss resistance of thing. And I did want to address that quickly. Yep, I think for men and women, as we age, with the loss of muscle mass, if you're fairly sedentary, if you're not training, your metabolic rate is just going to slowly go down over time due to the loss of muscle mass, but also probably lifestyle, you know, you're sleeping less all the things we talked about before, higher stress, less movement, you're sitting at a desk all day, it just all adds up. And so the appearance of weight loss resistance is definitely a thing. It's only resistance, because you can maintain it, you can't maintain your weight on the same counter as you did 20 years ago. Without all these other things, the really exciting part about it is you can reverse that you can bring it back the other direction, so that you can break through and then it doesn't become a thing. Just knowing that for women, it could be a tiny bit going against you with the hormones, but it's it's in the noise compared to the lifestyle signal, if you can, if you can improve that. So just wanted to touch on that. No,
Jeff Hoehn 57:36
man, that's a great point, right? The weight loss resistance, right? It's like not Oh, hey, you're in menopause now. And all of a sudden you can't you know, drop weight. There was that? You know, that's that's not the case. Right? Like, again, like you said, things could be a little bit tougher. But ultimately, it's probably the things that you're doing there in your history of, again, what what do we talk about the the kind of demographic here and like what they've kind of been like taught is like, eat less, move more burn as many calories as possible in that that does, like your body will adapt to that. And so like you said, there it's like, but the cool thing with that is it's not, that's not permanent, right? Like you can do some things to start to improve that as well, too. But you may find that initially, it is a little challenging because your body is just adapted to that. And that's kind of what your body has had to work with. So you kind of sent that message. But But the cool thing is, is you can you can change that by doing some of these things that we
Philip Pape 58:23
that we talked about. Yeah, no, I think that answers it. For Evelyn. So maybe we go to the last one. Cool.
Jeff Hoehn 58:28
Yep. How do you prep before season of going nuts with food? Like Thanksgiving, Christmas? And this is from from John. So, John, you're the only person that would do that?
Philip Pape 58:39
No, but I do love the question. I like I want it in there verbatim. Because I think this is a great reframing opportunity. The first thing I would ask you, John is like, are you really planning to go nuts for like, a multi week or multi month binge fest? Right? That's, that's one thought. Or is this more like, you know, you know that there's a few days coming up here and there the parties in the holidays there one or two days at most? Usually for most people, maybe maybe a few extra days? And is this where your current eating is, is restrictive, and then the holidays come around, you feel like you can't enjoy them because you're trying to adhere to that, you know, form of eating. I mean, that's one thing I would ask just from a reframing is you could probably for a lot of people I would say who I coach just relax and enjoy the day, right? Like just enjoy yourself. You may not even need to track you may not even need to plan and the most that it's going to do is if you over consumed by 2000 calories or 3000 calories, you're still gonna gain less than a pound of body fat. However, however I'm gonna say that if you're gonna enter a period where you expect to indulge more, I would say is everything dialed in to begin with right like for John I'm just gonna say all the other things in the rest is podcasts apply to you too. And is all that dialed in? Because I'll tell you what if it is like I don't I don't even think about holidays anymore. I'm like everything's great holiday comes join myself moving On the next day you get back on track, you don't make up for it, and you move on. However, if you're gonna go on a cruise for a week, I get it, right. There's like Unlimited, very rich foods available to you. Can you plan ahead? Sure, like you can be prudent and have a little bit of restraint, if you'd like ahead of time, and have maybe even do a little mini cut or whatever you can, you know, you can prioritize your protein, you can, you can maybe bank a tiny bit of calories here and there. There's little strategies like that. But I think the most important strategy is just to plan for it, and give yourself a plan of what works for you that doesn't feel restrictive. And that could be like, Okay, I'm gonna have three drinks instead of unlimited drinks, you know, of alcohol, or I'm going to eat all my protein and salad type foods first, and then I'm going to indulge on, you know, grandma's apple pie. Like, it's just simple. We're adults here. And like, I heard somebody say, in a podcast, you can go to the grocery store right now and buy an entire cake and eat the whole cake if you want, like, we have that choice as adults. You're not going to do that, though. And so there's a spectrum of choice here. So let's reframe it. Let's not sweat over it. And let's do all the other things we talked about in this episode, I think it'd be golden. What do you think, Jeff? Yeah,
Jeff Hoehn 1:01:07
no man, that those are great points, like definitely, like, have some sort of structure to it, right? I think this were sometimes like, like, from a mental perspective, you can start to see how people think, with some of this stuff, like, oh, I need to, I need it to be all or nothing, right? I either need to be fully on it, or I can't do anything at all. It's like, okay, well, you're, you're missing out on a ton. And if that's your thought process, it's not to me, it's not the Thanksgiving, this issue that now it's a mindset thing that needs to be worked on there with that, right. This reminds me I reached, you know, I like to put money away, you know, for my investments account, you know, my retirement accounts and things like that, well, I kind of got to a number in my head that I needed to put away each month. And it's like, lately, you know, expenses are up. And I haven't been able to put all that in, but I'm like, thinking I'm like, Dude, why I don't need to put that in, I can put in a lesser amount. And it's fine. Like, it's still going to help build it, you know, but I started to see this like, kind of all or nothing mindset dig into it. I think that kind of reminds me of that there. So, but no, you had great points there, like have some sort of structure, something is going to be helpful on there with that. And you may have kind of hit on this, but like some things that I fought over, like, it's not those events that are issues, it's what you're doing outside of it that I think is the most important, like, if you're staying on top of it, then again, maybe not even 100% Well, that's better than you just like, Well, yesterday was Thanksgiving. So you know what, now I'm gonna also go and eat two pizzas for the day, it's like, come on, alright, you know, you need to, you know, what you're doing outside of that's going to be key. But like we said, I think other things that can do are lift weights. Because again, if you're say you are in some sort of energy surplus, and you're lifting weights, well, hey, that's going to be better from, you know, that can help you build some lean body mass on the process, you know, make sure you're moving, getting your steps in, you know, throughout that time, because that's gonna help you expend your or increase your energy expenditure, right? I think this period of time comes with, you know, colder weather. And I think people tend to be less active during this period of time. And if you're not weight training, and you're not staying active, and you are eating a lot of foods, like, where's that food gonna go? You know, you're not really, your body's gonna be like, Oh, well, well, hey, let's store this as body fat, right. Whereas if you stay active, and you lift weights, like that's going to help shuttle that, that food into place, like, again, to your muscle, that will shuttle it to your muscle, right, and you can use it for energy, and it's not going to get stored as body fat. So those would be the big things there with that. And maybe here's one like blessing, I would add to this as maybe kind of reframed, like, when you're going to like, try to drop weight or lose body fat, you know, is that the best time to do it then Right? Can you maybe, you know, from like, October to January, maybe that's your maintenance time, right, you're more focused on just you're not focused on losing weight, you're more focused on lifting weights getting enough food in but not too much. So then that way, it's like, because if you go into the holiday season, coming off a coat, you lost 20 pounds, you're being restrictive, you're super hungry, well, now it's gonna be really hard to manage that period of time. So maybe use that as a time where, hey, I'm not going to fat loss diet during this period of time, I'm gonna wait till you know, January starts or something like that, you know, it's just another potential thing you can add in there.
Philip Pape 1:03:54
Yeah, that that was actually added. I wrote that as you were talking, and then you, you beat me to it. But yeah, aligning your period of periodization of your nutrition with the year or with the seasons is really good. I mean, I almost inevitably do that with clients, we try to kind of, depending on when they start during the year, we look at that, and we say, okay, it doesn't make sense to be fat loss, you know, have a fat loss phase here, or would we rather be eating more here, and this can go for the short term as well, if you know, you're going to have two week long vacation or you're going on a trip or something like that. Those are moments for diet breaks, those are moments for going back to maintenance. If it's a bunch of those, like in a short period, like three or four months, maybe that's your bulking or your maintenance season. I know Jeff, you're you're big on like recomp and maintaining kind of that leanness. So, but I would even say if if you're willing to just gain the weight, that's a perfect time to do it as well. I tried to do that because most people who aren't tracking any of this stuff who are not in our world, gain all their weight in those couple years. Yeah, months of the year, which is insane. When you think we got 12 months out of the year and the gain at all then, but if you intentionally gain there because you're building muscle, then great then you just solve the problem. You just offset problem, because the rest of the year tends to be easier, quote unquote. Yeah,
Jeff Hoehn 1:05:03
no, absolutely. And, yeah, just make sure you're lifting weights in that process. You know, I think anytime you're if you're going to be gaining a little bit of weight, if you can lift weights, that's going to help offset some of that weight gain, you know, at least helps shuttle it to for better use on their app. So yeah, man, I
Philip Pape 1:05:18
think that's it. I don't know if we want to add anything else to this or shelter. I feel good with it. Cool, man. So I mean, that was a lot of questions. But I thought it was nice to have both of us there and kind of share our perspectives and yet bounce off each other. And, you know, thank you for doing this. Because this is co hosted episodes, drop it on to podcast, if you're listening, it's Whitson weights and the mind muscle connection. And you got to see some similar but unique perspectives from two different coaches who both, you know, can we care a lot about our clients and about you as a listener, as well. And at the end of the day, you've got to find what works best for you, and find the information and a community or coach that can help you, especially if you want to, like accelerate getting to that answer for you. So those are those are my closing thoughts.
Jeff Hoehn 1:05:57
Yeah, no, I want to thank you for like I said, You got all this setup, man. I thought this was super fun. And I would love to do more of these. I think it's really cool to get these questions from both of our communities and share our thoughts on them, as well. But ya know, I mean, like you said, there was a ton of information in here, but I think probably the takeaways are, get good sleep, lift some weights, and look at your mindset and work on that with the coach, because that can be super helpful there with that. So yeah, ton of great information, I think a ton that you can take away in this. So yeah, I think now I'll hand it back to you there for
Philip Pape 1:06:29
that. Yeah, yeah. And for those listening, like, if you want to hear us do this, again, send us a message. You know, we both have our contact information in the show notes, whether it's IG or email and send us your questions or just tell us what you thought about the show and anything we could do differently. And to the Whitson weights community. Don't forget to look for the mind muscle connection in your podcast app. Go subscribe and follow right now. You won't regret it. You'll get a ton of awesome episodes in the near future. I think he drops like three weeks of just solid gold. And I'll include the link to the show in my show notes. Yep,
Jeff Hoehn 1:06:58
absolutely. And same thing for my audience. Go fall Whitson waits, subscribe leave a comment as well too. I'm Phillip loves those comments as well. He loves He loves getting those I know you also have a really good community on this wall too. And I think you just opened your replica education platform as well too. I think that you
Philip Pape 1:07:15
Yeah, man. Oh, thanks for the plug as well with some weights physique University, its courses and community. Yeah. Sounds
Jeff Hoehn 1:07:20
awesome. Sounds like stuff that would be right up the audience's alley there that social media definitely go check that out. And again, man, appreciate you putting this together. You definitely have to say and I said this earlier, Phil, Phil definitely took the lead on this and really got it together. So appreciate that. And like I said, it was super organized all on your part. I'm so appreciate that. Man.
Philip Pape 1:07:38
given each other spot. That's what we do. Yeah. All right. It was a lot of fun, man. Thanks for doing this yet. Thank
Jeff Hoehn 1:07:43
you, too. I had fun.
Philip Pape 1:07:46
Thank you for tuning in to another episode of wit's end weights. If you found value in today's episode, and know someone else who's looking to level up their weights or 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.
