Q&A - Rapid Fat Loss, Body Recomp, Building Muscle Over 40, Tracking Veggies w/Jeff Hoehn | Ep 184

Is rapid weight loss worth the risk? Can you really build muscle while losing fat? How important is nutrition tracking for your fitness journey?

Today, Philip (@witsandweights) welcomes back Jeff Hoehn for another co-hosted Q&A episode. This time, they discuss aggressive fat loss strategies, the benefits of higher protein intake, and overcoming menopause-related hurdles. They dive into the controversial topic of rapid weight loss, the importance of structured diet breaks, and the real deal about slow metabolism. Philip and Jeff also compare powerlifting and bodybuilding during fat loss phases, emphasizing the role of heavy compound lifts and hypertrophy training. They also talk about nutrition tracking, low-calorie, nutrient-dense foods, and fiber intake.

Today, you’ll learn all about:

3:24 What are your views on rapid fat loss and the frequency of aggressive cuts? Also, how do you feel about protein-sparing modified fasting in a 5:2 diet for general weight loss?
12:10 Does consuming more protein than recommended have any benefits?
19:35 How can I effectively lose fat and reveal muscle definition despite increasing my calorie intake, exercising regularly, and maintaining a high-protein diet?
32:38 How feasible is it to build muscle in a deficit?
44:15 Heavier weight or more reps for an older guy looking to build a base for longevity?
54:09 In fat loss, does counting veggies affect the macros? Should I log them?
59:10 Outro

Episode resources:

• The Mind Muscle Connection podcast

• Jeff’s IG: @jeffhoehn_

Related episodes:

• Ep 169: Q&A w/Jeff Hoehn – Menopause Weight Loss, Bulking Without Getting Fat, & Cutting on Low Sleep

• Ep 178: Sleep Science - Doing THIS in the Bedroom is Killing Your Fat Loss, Gains, Hormones, & Metabolism

• Ep 180: The New Over 50 Roadmap to Lifelong Strength, Health, Muscle, and Longevity

Episode summary:

In this episode, we delve deep into the multifaceted world of fitness and nutrition with Jeff Hoehn from the Mind Muscle Connection podcast. This episode is packed with science-backed strategies and practical tips to help you achieve your fitness goals, whether you're looking to build muscle, lose fat, or navigate menopause-related challenges. Join us as we uncover the truths about aggressive fat loss, high protein diets, and the importance of personalized fitness plans.

One of the central themes we discuss is the possibility of building muscle while losing fat. This concept, often met with skepticism, is explored through the lens of individual body composition and training history. For those with higher body fat percentages, muscle gain in a calorie deficit is achievable, provided that other conditions such as proper sleep, stress management, and a specific training regimen are met. We emphasize that while muscle can be built in a deficit, it is generally less efficient than building muscle at maintenance or in a caloric surplus. This nuanced understanding helps set realistic expectations and guides listeners on how to tailor their fitness plans.

Aggressive fat loss strategies are another hot topic. We break down the pros and cons of rapid weight loss, particularly the protein-sparing modified fast within a 5-2 diet framework. Jeff shares his own experience with a rapid fat loss protocol inspired by Dr. Bill Campbell, highlighting the importance of maintaining high protein intake and rigorous training during short, aggressive deficits. The discussion underscores the need for adequate recovery between cycles and the potential mental hurdles of adhering to such a regimen. We advocate for personalized approaches that ensure long-term adherence and success, rather than extreme methods that may lead to unsustainable habits.

High protein diets are essential for both muscle building and fat loss. We explore the benefits and potential downsides of consuming higher-than-recommended amounts of protein. While the optimal range for muscle building is typically between 0.8 to 1 gram per pound of body weight, higher protein intake can aid in satiety and thermic effect, which are beneficial for fat loss. However, we also address potential drawbacks, such as reduced carbohydrate and fat intake, digestive challenges, and dietary monotony. The importance of individual preferences and dietary goals in determining the appropriate level of protein consumption is emphasized, ensuring that listeners can make informed choices that align with their fitness objectives.

For those facing menopause-related fitness challenges, we provide tailored advice on how to navigate this life stage. We discuss the impact of age and hormonal changes on body composition and stress the importance of tracking progress accurately. Practical tips are offered on setting realistic goals, emphasizing other metrics such as strength and measurements over scale weight, and ensuring a balanced approach to nutrition and training. The episode highlights the significance of patience, consistency, and aligning fitness goals with personal values for long-term success.

Powerlifting versus bodybuilding styles during fat loss phases is another area of focus. We clarify the differences between these approaches and emphasize the importance of incorporating hypertrophy-focused training to maximize muscle retention and growth. The concept of auto-regulated training is introduced, where adjusting volume rather than just intensity can stimulate muscle growth even in a calorie deficit. This section aims to debunk misconceptions around the necessity of a caloric surplus for muscle gain, particularly for individuals with higher body fat percentages, and highlights the potential for body recomposition.

Strength training for longevity and functionality is crucial, especially for older adults. We discuss the benefits of combining heavy compound lifts with muscle-building exercises to enhance daily activities and prevent falls. Joint health and recovery are addressed, with recommendations on easing into routines and allowing adequate recovery time. Personal preference and consistency are highlighted as key factors in sustaining an exercise regimen, reinforcing the idea that the best exercise is one that an individual enjoys and can maintain over time.

Practical tips on tracking nutrition are provided, focusing on the practicality of logging meals and the importance of accuracy with calorie-dense foods. The discussion emphasizes that if positive results are being seen, meticulous tracking of low-calorie, nutrient-dense foods like vegetables may not be necessary. However, tracking might be beneficial if a plateau is reached or if micronutrient intake is being monitored. The importance of fiber intake for better health outcomes is also underscored.

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Transcript

Philip Pape  00:00

How often can you safely repeat an aggressive cut for rapid fat loss? Can consuming more protein than the recommended amount really benefit you? What's the best strategy for postmenopausal women struggling with fat loss? Is it truly possible to build muscle in a calorie deficit? Today I'm again conspiring with Jeff Hain of the mind muscle connection podcast for a special co hosted q&a, where we tackle these burning questions and more, leaving nothing on the table. Welcome to the wit's end waits 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.

Jeff Hoehn  00:53

Hey guys, welcome back to our second q&a cohosted episode so we have the mind muscle connection in the woods and week's podcast. Philip Pape is the host of the Whitson weights podcast and myself Jeff hain, the host of the mind muscle connection podcast. So yeah, this is the second one we did in the first one did great. So we want to tap back on here and get some q&a going. So excited to have you guys for this episode. If you aren't familiar with Philip, he is the host of the Whitson weights podcast. He has a wide range of coaches on and a few that you know if you listen to the mind muscle connection that you're familiar with Brandon Cruz, Brian Borstein, Jordan lips, among others. And and obviously I'm seeing guests that Phillip has on and having them on mine as well, too. He has multiple episodes per week going over all things nutrition, lifting, muscle metabolism and fat loss. So make sure you give his podcast a follow or subscribe. And again, I think Phil does a great job of breaking things down makes it very applicable for the everyday person, which I think is great. And not enough people do that. And sounds great. Everything looks awesome as well, too. So Phillip looking forward to doing this with you again, man. Yeah,

Philip Pape  01:51

Jeff, I'm really excited, man. I mean, last time, you know, we covered a lot of fun topics. And I think we'll do the same thing today. You mentioned the practical side of things. There's so much noise out there. There's also a lot of people that love to get into the science and we do that, but there's a certain limit to where you got to stop geeking out and start telling you what this means for me. And you probably see this with clients, sometimes they can overthink it, right? It's like, well, should it be 0.75 grams of fat per pound of protein right? And we try to distill it and make it simple. So for those of you listening to me now and Whitson weights Jeff ease the man I love his show, I follow up myself, the mind muscle connection, definitely follow it. If not, you are missing out. You know, he's a coach. He's got a ton of personal experience. He's not afraid to question the conventional wisdom. Like I was talking about to find what works. He's got solo episodes, got guest interviews, a lot of great names out there. And so after you're done with this episode, head over to mind muscle connection. Wherever you listen to podcasts, give it a follow. And I think we're ready to get into it, man.

Jeff Hoehn  02:47

Yep, absolutely. I think the last one, we I think it was right around an hour. I think we tackled them all in pretty good amount of time. But yeah, the last one was super fun. So that's why I was like, Hey, let's frickin do this again. And I think a lot of people found it super useful. I know. Like, I think you got good feedback from your audience. I got great feedback from my audience. And you know, everyone was kind of able to check out your podcast, hopefully, and everything like that. So yeah, let's, let's frickin get into it. Usually, when, when I do these with like Brandon and Jeremiah, you start asking Brandon questions. And the next thing you know, it's it's, we're like 45 minutes. And we haven't even answered a question. So yeah, the answer, right. Yeah. That's cool. Yeah. And I'm sure some stuff will come up about us a potential year with this. So cool. First question is what are your thoughts on rapid fat loss? And how can you repeat a very aggressive cut related to this? What do you think of protein sparing modified fasting in a five to diet fashion for the general population trying to lose weight? Yeah,

Philip Pape  03:38

so there's like three questions there. I think one is my thoughts on rapid fat loss. Another is how often can you do it. And then protein sparing modified fast, specifically as a five two, which is a little bit different than the original? Original one? So speaking of like, learning about what's going on with ourselves, right? I don't know if you are aware of this. But last year, I did a rapid fat loss protocol myself, and I recruited a bunch of people from my community to experiment with me, but two crazies who are like, Yeah, that sounds easy. And we did something inspired by Dr. Bill Campbell, who's a well known researcher, obviously, with aggressive dieting down at University of South Florida. And it was, it's pretty simple. It's four days in a very aggressive deficit, something like 40 45%, a low maintenance, and then a one day refeed, where you bring the carbs back up to maintenance, and then you repeat it once or twice. So if you do it twice, it ends up being about two weeks. And for a guy like me, 181 90, I might, I might lose like four pounds of fat doing it that way. The idea being that you keep the protein really high, at least one gram per pound, if not 1.2, or even a little bit higher. You keep training hard, and you're good to go. My thoughts on it are like any dieting approach, the more aggressive you go, the shorter the duration, right? Otherwise, you risk losing muscle. Also, I would put a bunch of caveats on this one, because people are like, you know, I'll have somebody reach me and say, I've got 20 pounds of weight to lose. I've never done any of this stuff. Should I do your Rapid Fat Loss Program? I'm like, no, no. Hey, let's get everything dialed in like you would before a fat loss phase anyway, but even more dialed in terms of your training, you're tracking your protein, like, keep it keeping the stress down all that good stuff in a good place, quiet time of the year, and then go after it really hard, and be consistent with that protein and making happen. And then yeah, you can lop off a couple pounds. If you have a lot of weight to lose, it's probably not the best approach from an adherence perspective anyway, because it's short. And now you're like, Well, what do I do after that? Do I just taper it down to a less aggressive cut? Maybe, but now you've already experienced like, all this adaptation and psychological pressure early on, you're not going to feel great? Or do you just punctuate building phases with this, or if you've already lost a bunch of weight, and you're fairly lean, use this occasionally. That's my thought on doing it in general. And then as far as repeating it, I wouldn't do it more than I wouldn't do it until you've come back to maintenance and fully recovered, and then do it again. But again, you shouldn't be doing them back to back the five to protein sparing modified fast from what I understand. And you may have a different kind of history on this, Jeff is the original diet was eat whatever you want for five days, and then have like, I don't know, 600 calories of protein for two days. And it's just another form of fasting, it's just another form of restriction that technically doesn't require you to track but at the end of the day, you could you could easily not lose weight, if you're just overeating on those five days, right? Like any other fast, it sounds miserable to me, but I get why you would want to do it, especially if you combine it with tracking. And now you're at maintenance for those five days. And then you go into the fast for two days. I know Brandon is doing something like that. So for the general population trying to lose weight, which was the question, I would say, do what works for you, and try traditional tracking and traditional, like, even if you want to cycle the calories, that's fine, but don't try to do anything too extreme? Because that could be what got you in trouble in the first place? I don't know. And I'll let you fill in the gaps. Because I know there's a lot of nuance to this one.

Jeff Hoehn  06:56

Yeah, I mean, this was something that I had seen the five two diet there with that. And after talking to Brandon, you know, I do think that there is some potential benefits of it. I was kind of thinking like, you know, from a lean body mass perspective, I could see how this could be beneficial. Because if you're doing those five days, which ideally, I'm assuming, we would ideally want you to be at probably close to maintenance, right? Like you said, you don't want to obviously overdo it. But the issue becomes like, Are you tracking during that? And if you don't track then do you end up kind of getting into a large surplus, right. But you know, if you're tracking and you're closer to your estimate of maintenance during that period of time, I really think that it could be great from a lean body mass perspective, just because you are going to be having so much time where you're giving your body plenty of energy, right. And then almost days that you're not, you're getting enough protein and and like you said, it's important that you lift weights in that process. So I could see how that could be beneficial from a lean body mass perspective. But I think you hit on this on both of these, it kind of comes down to the to me the challenge is the mental side of things, right? Like, is that something that you can stick to? And like you said, Does it just lead you to kind of this kind of yo yo approach, right? That would be something that I want to look out for, like, look out for the hunger on those really lower days, see how you respond to that, because some people, they can do those, like really low days, and they're good to go. But some people do those low days, and they're just like, ravenously hungry. And then like you said, it just leads to them over consuming, right. So I would really say like, that would be one that I would if I was working with a client, you know, this would have to be someone that's like I they've died in the past. And I know that they don't like that's not going to be a potential issue there. Because I do think that like having those lower calorie days, like if you're a busy person, like having those lower calorie days, a couple days a week could be super helpful as well to you know, from that standpoint, that's just like, I mean, shoot, like, if you had a day job where you just do like a bunch of podcasts or like client check ins and stuff, man, it would be nice to not have to worry about like eating sometimes right on like, and you could lighten up with those days. But again, you run into those potential issues there with that. So like you said, I think it is really individual. And I would probably lean towards, like from a general pop standpoint, probably not doing that at least for your first couple fat loss phases. And then, you know, kind of seeing how you respond to maybe some lower calorie days and then potentially bring that in there with that. So that's kind of my thought on the five to what I would say on the rapid fat loss. This was something that, you know, I was before I kind of talked to Bill Campbell about this, I was kind of wondering, like, what can you actually expect from a fat loss perspective in like a short timeframe, right, I was kind of questioning, like, can you really expect anything from it. And so from his studies from from what I took from it is, you know, you can't actually, you know, lose a decent amount in a few days. But obviously, you have to be super rigid with it, right? Like you have to really stay on top of the deficit and like it just runs back to the same issues that we just talked about, from the five to perspective, you know, are you prone to potentially overeating there with that and then like you said, again, the more weight you lose, the less you can do that. Right? The duration needs to be a lot shorter and obviously I think what you can run into is that can kind of be addicting of like seeing it go down super quick and then being like, Oh, I'm just gonna keep doing this right. And so that would be my biggest concern. And like you said, obviously once you really start to push that Are you losing some lean body mass in that process, but I do think that it can be motivating to see kind of those quick results. I haven't read it yet. But there's a new study on reps. And they were talking about, what are some patterns that are going to show that somebody's going to lose weight and like actually stick within one of it was like, one of them, the big ones was like kind of seeing that weight loss right off the bat there with it right it can be it can be motivating to see that. So that would be kind of a pro there of taking a quicker approach. But like you said, again, if you have a lot of weight to lose, that's probably not the way that you want to go there. But I am a huge fan of something I've become a more a bigger fan of is having these approaches where it does have some built in either extended diet breaks or days where you are a little bit higher maintenance, because I do think from a lean body mass perspective, it can be helpful, but but also a mental and flexibility side of things. I think they can also be helpful. So kind of my thoughts are on that. I don't know if there's anything I left out or anything like that.

Philip Pape  10:52

No, I mean, you hit on the there's always trade offs between physiology and psychology, right. And in psychology is the big one people underestimate, because they see these beautiful plans written out on paper. And, you know, even we experienced that you go into a new phase, and you're like, here's my plan, you know, it's like, it's gonna happen exactly like that, and it never does. And you have to be prepared for that. I do love like, for a more advanced person, like, like you said, Brandon, with the five, two, if you kind of know how your body responds and what you can tolerate, and also what your level of discipline and adherence is going to be. It's great. Also, if you're coaching somebody, sometimes I almost don't call that person Gen pop, because they have this extra direct support to kind of adapt to it. And then you know, kind of when you're often your own Gen pop is is where that comes in. But um, yeah, no, it's good stuff, man. Yeah,

Jeff Hoehn  11:35

no, I that's, that's a good point you bring up like having a coach to help you with it. Like having that like kind of extra set of eyes, man can really be super helpful. And that's a good point you bring up right, like, I would definitely feel more comfortable with that. I guess the last thing on this would be like either one of the things that you do, like, make sure you have some sort of game plan or plan afterwards. And again, this is where having a coach can be super helpful, because I think that's where you can really run into issues. I think, again, people can do these kind of short bursts of fat loss, but it's really comes down to what does that kind of period of time afterwards look like there with app? So

Philip Pape  12:06

yeah, man. So yeah, I think we answered the question there. We'll go on to the next one. That's good with you. Yeah. And that is for you, man. It's Do you think consuming more protein than what is recommended? Has any benefits? So

Jeff Hoehn  12:17

I'm assuming with this question, he means kind of that one gram ish per pound of body, we kind of like benefit there. Right?

Philip Pape  12:24

That's my guess. Beyond the normal our evidence base recommendation? Yeah. Yeah. So I

Jeff Hoehn  12:29

actually really liked this question. I had, like, a lot of thoughts that come. So I'm gonna go with some pros of it. And then I want to kind of go over some potential downsides of potentially going over that amount. So I think from a muscle building standpoint, right, so we're talking building muscle, I think once you get to that point eight to one gram per pound of body weight, maybe 1.2. I think if you go over that, you're not gonna see any more return on your investment from a muscle building standpoint, right. And again, this is under the assumption that you're you're training hard and pushing your training, right, because that's obviously the thing that's going to send that signal and then protein kind of completes that process, right. So I think from a muscle building standpoint, I don't think that you're going to get any more benefit from going too far over 1.2. Again, if you're really trying to maximize and trying to build as much muscle as possible, maybe you could, you might want to be on the safer side, and you could potentially go a little bit higher, but from my understanding of the research, you know, you're going to kind of Max us out at point eight to one gram per pound of body weight there. However, I do think there's some other benefits of potentially going higher than this one gram per pound of body weight. And again, that's a number we'll we'll kind of go for here. And I think the first one is satiety protein, in general is more satiating than other sources of you know, again, carbohydrates and fats. But I do think within that it does depend on your protein source, right? If you're eating 150 grams of protein through like protein powder, well, I do think that's going to bump that down a little bit, right. So I think your food selection for protein is super important. But generally speaking, protein is going to be more satiating than carbohydrates or fats, right. So I think that's the big one there. So if you're in a fat loss phase, you know, maybe you go over that one gram, 1.2 grams per pound of body weight to get a little bit more satiety out of it, the second benefit would be higher thermic effect of food. So protein uses the most energy to absorb and digest again, generally speaking here, so you could get a small benefit there from that, I think Jose Antonio had a bunch of studies where they did these like massive amounts of like protein, like I'm thinking we're talking like, three great, I don't know the exact numbers, but it was, it would be more than most people could actually do. And, you know, they found it actually did help with like, it was harder for them to gain body fat, right, because they had these higher protein amounts, but again, we're talking super high levels most I would not recommend that to anyone, I'm there with that. So again, a higher thermic effect of food, you could burn a little bit more calories, but it's just gonna be a small amount. Again, to be on the safe side from the muscle building standpoint, like again, if you really want to maximize it, you're a little worried about it, maybe you go a little bit higher than that. Again, the research kind of shows that it does max out on that around that one gram, and therefore to me you like it, like if you really like protein, and you enjoy those types of foods, by all means, you know, you can go higher than than this number. But with all these pros, there is some downsides I think to going over one gram per pound of body weight. So the first is you know, carbs fat and protein makeup calorie so at some point there has To be this give and take, if you're eating so such high protein, you know, this could take away from carbs and fats, right, your carbs could get super low, now it's going to impact your training, it's going to impact your recovery, right? Fat, same thing, you know those good to low. You know, fats are important from like a hormone standpoint. And we need, you know, a certain amount of essential fatty acids. So again, that can lower those things. If you're eating too high protein, I think to protein can for some people be harder to digest, you know, you may have when you get to these super high levels of protein, you may find that it kind of sits in your stomach, it's just a little bit harder to digest, right. So again, that would be a potential downside. And then, and then lastly, I think once you get over one gram 1.2, it's just tough to do and your diet is probably going to be a little less tasty overall, right? Because that means less carbs, and fats. But again, that could potentially be a good thing here on that. So I think, to kind of wrap this up, I think if you're in a fat loss phase, maybe you go a little above warrant, one gram per pound of body weight, if you're in a building phase, and you like protein, you find that you really don't want to gain, you want to limit fat gain, maybe you go a little bit higher protein, right. But again, from a muscle building standpoint, I think things get kind of maxed out around that point eight to one gram per pound of body weight gives you want to be on the safer side, and maybe go a little bit higher than that.

Philip Pape  16:08

Yeah, man might drop, you answered everything about that question. No, I don't want to I don't wanna make it too long, because you've covered like most of the points that I was going to mention, if they didn't come up, as far as the curve of when protein intake kind of maxes out, we know that there's a point of diminishing returns, and like you said, point eight, even point seven, I mean, the more they look at this, the more it's kind of angles down a little bit toward that point seven, where, you know, there's almost no benefits going to be of that, above that from a practical standpoint. So to the person asking the question, my question back to them is, why are you asking the question? Is it because you have a high protein diet that's much higher, in which case, I've had plenty of clients like that. Usually, they're bigger guys consuming Well, north of 3000 calories. And they're like, I love my meat, or I used to do carnivore or something like that. And it all works fine, because they have plenty of calories to work with fats and carbs aren't really being sacrificed, you know, what's the difference between 350 and four and 50 grams of carbs, right? So in that case, just keep eating the way you're eating, if you enjoy, and it works for you. And that's the second piece of this is, is it working for you? And do you want to experiment? Because if you're wondering if you're currently at the point eight, and you're like, what would happen to me if I'm at 1.2 1.3, especially during fat loss, that's where I see some benefit with some of this stuff, like you said satiety body composition, another Bill Campbell research, I think, I know he reviewed it about the impact of protein on body composition, even beyond what we already thought, just do it before and after and see how it works. Other than that, everything Jeff just said makes sense. There's no benefit intentionally of increasing your protein beyond the normal point seven to one gram per pound,

Jeff Hoehn  17:40

I think to like on that one thing that they kind of hit and I was kind of struck a chord with a few not struck a chord, this this resonated with few clients was like, people like, are super worried about getting enough protein one, I think, again, make sure your weight training is there, right? Because at the end of the day, like if that's not there, it's like protein, it isn't going to do anything if if you're not sending that signal to build muscle. So that's the first thing. Second is, you know, you're going from point three grams per pound of body weight 2.6 is that's going to have a massive impact on your like, the results you're going to see. But if you're going from like weight 7.8 to one gram, the return on that investment is going to be a little bit smaller. Right? So we need to think of it from from that standpoint, as well to like, where are you going from again, if you're one gram, and you're like, Oh, I really want to maximize to 1.2. It's like, again, the return on that investment is going to be a lot lower than if you were like, super low. And I think sometimes people you know, kind of overlook that, you know, when it comes to nutrition stuff and everything. They're always like, what's the most optimal? And so keep that in mind too. On there with that. Yep,

Philip Pape  18:38

totally agree on nothing to add to that.

Jeff Hoehn  18:40

So with with the protein, if you kind of like I guess the one thing that kind of changed my mind on it, too, was this kind of recent study where it was, you know, they they I think they had upwards of like, 100 grams, I think after, and they, their NPS, muscle protein synthesis was still elevate it, you know, hours after I kind of changed my mind a little bit on timing. I don't know if that changed it for you or anything that made me like, it's still important to me, but it made it maybe a little bit lower on the on the priority list. I don't know what your thoughts are on that. Yeah,

Philip Pape  19:07

if anything, it's not symmetrical anymore, meaning I used to recommend kind of a minimum but also make sure you distribute enough now I say like at least try to get the minimum in one meal. But there's not really an upper limit if you want to do it twice or three times in a day. Otherwise, it's a matter of practicality.

Jeff Hoehn  19:24

Yep. Right that that again, I feel like a lot of this stuff, man, as I learned more comes down to what's it what's really the practicality of it? So yeah, for sure. Cool. If you're good on on that one. I think we're good man. Awesome. So I'm a postmenopausal woman who has struggled with under eating for years due to a slow metabolism. Despite increasing my calorie intake, exercising regularly and having a high protein diet. I'm not seeing much progress on the scale, although I'm losing inches. How can I effectively lose fat and reveal muscle definition? Considering my unique circumstances and history?

Philip Pape  19:54

This is such a loaded question. I'm sure when you saw it, you thought the same thing. And I know you recently did an episode about It's probably not your hormones, right? It was something like that it's probably not your hormones. There's so much in here that I would want to first address before I even answer the question. For the person listening or really any women listening who are thinking these thoughts. The first one is the statement that I've been struggling with underwriting for years due to a slow metabolism. There's an assumption there that your metabolisms, quote unquote, slow. And it could just be, you know, in an adapted state, because you've been under eating. Okay, fair enough. Maybe you haven't been training, maybe you haven't been preserving muscle, whatever, you know, we don't want to assume your metabolism slow it is what it is. And we'd want to do what's necessary to recover and and see where it's the current setpoint is for that. But then she said, despite increasing calories, exercising regularly and having a high protein diet, so Okay, those are good things, right, like getting enough energy, exercising, I'm hoping she means training, we don't know for sure. And then having a high protein diet, I'm not seeing much progress on the scale, but I'm losing inches right there. I'd say that's a win. Like, that's a huge one right there to where, okay, why are we obsessed with the scale? What is it in your history or relationship with scale weight that causes you to think that this is a problem, right? I'm losing inches? And then she said, How can I effectively lose fat and reveal my muscle? Consider my unique circumstances in history? And so again, I would say, I mean, we're all unique, but we're also not unique, right? Like, you know, we all lose muscle mass with age, if we don't train, you know, for women hormones tend to decline or impaired post menopause, but lifestyle changes can massively mitigate those. So I do want to acknowledge the challenges that this person and all women face, we had a similar question like this in our last q&a, and you know, we're under eating for a long time, that definitely slows things down. But we don't want to attribute changes to menopause itself, necessarily, or fat storage or anything like that. The fact that you're losing inches, you're training, you know, you got protein already tells me you're doing a lot of the right things, right. So acknowledge that from a mindset perspective, that that's a huge win. And you're experiencing some sort of body recomp. Right. And again, just begun, body recomp. Here, if the scale staying the same, and your interests are going down, and you're getting stronger, that's all good. So I mean, really, to simplify it here is to keep progressing. It's finding the right, you know, approach for you. In terms of, if you want to have fat loss, let's let's find a moderate rate of loss. Let's make sure we're tracking, let's make sure like in the last question, you're getting at least that reasonable amount of protein, and then be patient and consistent as we work on that. And if the goal at the end of the day is to get a lower scale, wait, I would want to rewind and say what is your true reason here? What is your value based reason for this? It's okay to have short term motivations, physique, motivations, looking good in the mirror. I do that every day with clients and like, but that only take you you know, from here to here, how do we how do we make this a lifestyle for a life that works for you? So yeah, I mean, the basics, Jeff, are going to be what we recommend to everybody. Besides then getting bloodwork and things like that check if we do think there's some sort of hormonal issue. So I'll set it up that way. I'll let you go. And then we'll back and forth on this. Yeah, man. No,

Jeff Hoehn  22:56

you definitely nailed that. Right. I actually just did a q&a episode from a question I had somebody asked about fast and slow metabolism. So I dove into that. So definitely would lead people to that episode, I think it should be out like June 10. Ish, maybe something like that. But yeah, people, you know, like you said, we all kind of think we have a slow metabolism. But I think a lot of times, it is kind of the things that we're doing that actually lead to that, right. And again, maybe yours is a little bit slower, and whatnot. But again, I always like to look at like, what are you actually doing? You know, and usually, you know, if you look this over, it's like, okay, well, you can obviously improve this, you can improve that right, you know, before saying you actually have a slow metabolism. So I agree with you there on that. And like you said, we don't want to think that this is any special circumstance or anything like that, like all women go through menopause during that period of time, right? And then like you said, this is why we're coaches, right? Like people have these these issues all the time where they they they don't, they aren't seeing the results that they think they should so kind of like you said, you know, we obviously want to respect that like, hey, you know, every, everyone is unique and has different circumstances. But you know, these are pretty common things. Right. And usually, we think that it's just something with us, and then with that, but I had a few things I wanted to go over. So, you know, like, again, are you are you tracking the right metrics? Because kind of like you said, there, it's like not seeing progress on a scale, but you're losing inches. So it's like, to me, again, what's like you said with the scale? Like, do we really need to just focus on that, like, if you're losing inches, especially in your midsection, that's like you said, you're seeing progress. So is it more like, are you more concerned with weight? Are you more concerned with like, the aesthetic side of things? Because that's obviously going to be, you know, something you'd want to look into? There's that most people they don't, they end up not caring as much about the skills they think, right? But I also like, you know, within tracking the right metrics, are you you know, are you tracking your weight the correct way as well to you know, I'm sure you see this where people say they're not dropping weight, but then you look and you're like, your average weight literally is trending down and week over week, what are you talking about, but they get too caught up and like, one day, it's lower, and then it's a little bit higher, but again, they don't look at the trends. So, you know, make sure you're tracking the right metrics. It's easy to think you're not going in the right direction. I also find that a lot of times in this situation, people aren't tracking as much as they could, right. It's like, well, I'm eating I'm eating healthier. I'm making and better choices and scales not moving. But then again, they're not tracking consistently with the scale, they're not tracking, you know. So get make sure you're doing that. I would imagine if they asked you this question, they probably track their calories and stuff like that. But I also would want to know, like, what's your like? What's the diet dieting history as well, too, you know, like you said, you increase your caloric intake. But how long did you do that? What did you get it to? You know, what happened during that period of time? What, what is your current body weight? Because I think also that goes into expectations. You know, if you're 115 pounds, you know, we kind of need to reframe those expectations, versus if you're, you know, 175, like that weight loss is going to look a little bit different. So what's your current body weight? You know, what is your exercise look like? Because like you said, you know, we hope hopefully, you're, you're lifting weights. But are you consistent with that. So those would be things that I would kind of check there with that, but just some other things like to potentially look out for, like Phillip said, Lift, you know, protein, I think for this, demographics, especially, I think making sure that you don't go too long without protein after your workout. This is a kind of demographic, I think protein timing is maybe a little bit more important. So if you exercise, you make sure you're getting protein. You know, if you especially if you go in fast it you're getting it relatively soon after sleep is going to be another big one for this, Adrienne, because, you know, menopause can sometimes lead to lower quality sleep, you know, people waking up in the middle night, hot flashes, stuff like that. So I think there's a lot of things that people overlook when it comes to sleep. This isn't gonna asleep question, but man, we could probably dive into that as a whole topic in terms of some like low hanging fruit sleep hygiene tips there. But again, making sure you know, sleep is good, right? You're, you're prioritizing it, that's going to be a big one, that's really going to make things a lot tougher, you're doing the right thing here. But make sure you are taking some time away from fat loss dieting, to fuel your body, we're not just increasing calories for the sake of increasing the goal is to feel your body, you know, make sure you give it the nutrients and calories you need. And again, make sure you're doing that for a good amount of time, right? You're doing it for two weeks, and then you know, kind of just winging it, that's not going to be enough. Like you really do want to kind of stick that a little bit longer. I also wondered, I think you kind of mentioned this to like, could you have some maybe better fat loss methods? Like, are you trying to lose super quick? Like, can you could you improve that aspect of it like making sure you get enough protein, you're using more at a moderate rate versus feeling like you need to get off two pounds per week, right? With that. And then yeah, those those would be kind of the main ones that I would look at, in this specific example here with that, actually, sorry, there was one more thing I wanted to go over here on this, I want to go over some like potential supplements that I see that this kind of demographic misses out on get we know supplements are lower on the priority list, these things here are going to be your most important but a few that I see that are important for this demographic is vitamin D, make sure you're at least taking a nice maintenance dosage, you know, you can look at your bloodwork to see where that's at fish oils, another big one, I like legions, fish oil has the right amount of EPA and DHA there with that magnesium glycinate could be a good one, especially if you're waking up with hot flashes, Glycine can be helpful. So magnesium glycinate, and then creatine, and this is the demographic that kind of shiz away from creatine because it's kind of known as like a kind of like steroids. Oh, they're gonna make me super bulky. But for this demographic, I think creatine is super important, maybe more so than, you know, say, your 25 year old male who's trying to build muscle. So just some things there for you to focus on potentially, yeah,

Philip Pape  28:05

no, I mean, it's really the, you know, fat loss one on one episode, like, we just need to give that to most most women, regardless of the hormone state, and that'll get you most of the way there. But I didn't want to let the cat out of the bag on this, I eventually message back with this person. And one thing you mentioned was, is she actually potentially losing weight and look like she was very, very slowly trending downward in reality. And also, she wasn't really tracking in an effective way that linked her intake to her metabolism. So she's doing that now. I just want to I didn't want to bias the discussion. But you know, it's those kinds of things that are the basics. And then yeah, I love I love the idea of supplements and nutrients. I'm really getting a lot more into micronutrients these days, yes, especially for women with like thyroid issues and whatnot, you know, just even from a food perspective of trying to hunt, hunt around and figure out which foods give you these nutrients, because you may just be neglecting an entire nutrient like Selenium. Right? or what have you. The sleeping stress, I totally didn't even mention that. But like you said, that could actually be the deal breaker for a lot of women at that age with the life stress, the obligations, the kids and all of that. But yeah, I mean, it's checking all the boxes, and then going into a reasonable rate of loss, not overdoing it. If your metabolism is kind of lower. Now, because you haven't built a lot of muscle mass yet, you're not gonna be able to go in this huge deficit, because you're gonna be eating just like 800 calories. So you're gonna have to be patient and kind of go down a little bit and then continue to build that muscle which this person said she's already getting body recomp. So like, I think it's a great start.

Jeff Hoehn  29:26

There's two things that you said there that I want to point out. The first is the micronutrients. So with that, you know, and this is where like being low calorie can catch up to you is you know, you're you're more likely to have holes in that right so this is where again, this is why I said like, time away from fat loss time to fuel your body and this is exactly why because the higher you're not like you need to eat 4000 calories and gain a ton of weight. But you know, the more calories you have, the more you can, you know, kind of fill those holes there with with that, and then on the slow sort of weight loss side of things. I know we just talked about rapid fat loss, but again, we kind of talked how that's like a certain demographic that will really work well with you know, with kind To my content, like I've tried to reframe this lower weight, especially for this demographic, this soul weight loss is almost a pro because if anything, you're, and this is probably gonna go into our next question here, but you're kind of putting yourself in a decent, really good position to maintain it even potentially build some muscle in this process. And, again, that's the, for this demographic specifically, that's going to be super helpful for your long term health. Right. Um, because, again, I feel like a lot of people in this demographic, they really just focus on the weight loss side of things. And that leads to them doing things that lead to lean body mass loss. And we already talked about the importance of that and not to mention bone health and everything like that. So I think if anything, kind of reframing that, for this specific example, where you said she actually was trending down, even though it was slower, I would say that honestly, is perfect. And that is kind of what I would that's kind of what I would be wanting to go for anyways here because I think you're gonna put yourself in the best position long term with that. So yeah,

Philip Pape  30:49

as with it is within that like cone of body recap, like we think about a recomp it's just maintenance. But can you talk about this all the time, you can recomp at different levels of surplus or deficit, and even considered over the long term. So, yeah, good. Keep it up. Whoever sent in the question, you know, like a lot of good things going for you and let us know, you know, one or two things that you decide to change based on this conversation. Just understand

Jeff Hoehn  31:09

that, hey, we know this is a challenging time to like, it's not to just like brush out under the rug and be like, Oh, it's super easy. You just got to do everything. You know, we understand, hey, this is a challenging time. And, you know, there things are a little bit different now. So you do need to work with your body. So you definitely don't want to underestimate the impact of that. So,

Philip Pape  31:25

yeah, we're a blend of tough love and real love going on here. Like we get it. You know, we're not the we're not the 20 year old even though Jeff's 10 years younger than me. He's not a 20 year old guy with a lot of experience.

Jeff Hoehn  31:38

Okay, just work harder. Come on. I don't care if you have three kids, and you're in menopause just frickin work harder. Exactly.

Philip Pape  31:43

Yeah, seven days a week. All right.

31:46

Hi, my name is Alan. And I just want to give a shout out to Philip Pape of wits and weights for being a huge part of the foundation for my continued health and well being. Philip exemplifies a nutrition coach who demonstrates how much he cares. Phillip works tirelessly, and with dedication to provide coaching support and major content for us to use. He creates a practical approach from research. And Phillip empowers all of us to use food as quality for our health. He is skilled in how to assess and direct nutrition. Phillip creates a community full of wisdom, support and camaraderie. In summary, Philip Pape is the real deal. He knows how to assess and direct nutrition. And he continues to steer me in the right direction. Thank you, Phil.

Philip Pape  32:38

All right. I'll ask you the next question. We're ready to move on. Yep. All right. So classic question, How feasible is it to build muscle in a deficit?

Jeff Hoehn  32:46

This is right up my alley African love this one. So my big thing with this is, I'll still get kind of like messages. And like when I'll talk about this to people being like, oh, you know, it's typically the same kind of type of person, right? Usually somebody who has a lot of muscle and they are like, kind of bodybuilder, right? It's like, No, there's no way you can build muscle in a deficit, you know, if anything, you're lucky to maintain anything and whatnot. And so I hear that, and it's like, okay, yes, you are right. And but in certain situations, right, we need to we need to go a layer deeper than this. And it's really depends on the individual context. Yes, in that specific person. example, let's say you're a bodybuilder. You're, you're super shredded. You have a lot of muscle. Yeah, for you, you know, you're not gonna be able to build muscle in the deficit. But what you know, Phillip, I don't know about you. But yeah, maybe for us, it seems like that's a little bit bigger for the population. But in general, how big of the population? Is that? Honestly, like, if you were to take the entire

Philip Pape  33:34

world? Like, yeah, like 5%, right? or less?

Jeff Hoehn  33:38

I would say even less like out of the entire population, I would say it's 99.9% of people are not that person, right? If we take the entire population, now we get into, like, people who work out, okay, it starts to Oh, I

Philip Pape  33:47

see what you're saying. Yeah. Because if you take just the percentage of people even do anything we talked about here, you're already down to like 5%. So fair point.

Jeff Hoehn  33:53

So if you see one of the people that that we're probably talking to, okay, it's probably closer, like you said, 5% or so. But anyway, so 5% and 5%. Exit, right? You know, I think that we need to be careful with saying that because it leads to people thinking that it's them, and we need to dive in a little bit more to it. Right. So again, it is very individual. So I would kind of want to go over specific scenarios here, right? And things that are going to matter here. So can you build muscle in a deficit? So this is going to depend on your current body composition, okay? If you're somebody who has a ton of muscle, really low levels of body fat, you're not going to be able to build muscle in a deficit, right? Like, but in saying that it also is dependent on the size of the deficit. Okay, so the size of the deficit is going to matter. So people kind of think of a calorie deficit, as you know, oh, it's just a calorie deficit. Well, you know, there's a size to this deficit, right, the larger the deficit is, so the quicker you lose weight, the less likely this is to happen, right? You're not putting your body in the best position to build muscle. So you take somebody who's super shredded, has a lot of muscle and you put them in a large deficit will, you know for them, they're going to have to really do everything to maintain their muscle, they may even lose muscle in that process. But even that person they just talked about during the smaller calorie deficit, they're still probably not going to be able to build muscle but now Do you take somebody who is over, let's say, for men over 15% body fat, decent amount of muscle, women, let's say 25% body fat, decent amount of muscle for them, they're going to be able to build some muscle in the deficit, so long as all the things we talked about are in check. And that deficit is not too large, because even within that particular person, the larger that deficit gets, the less likely this is to happen, right. So again, we need to look at like training history, but that's gonna go into how much muscle you have other factors outside of the gym. So obviously, the less these are dialed in, the worse sleep is, the higher your stress is, the worse your diet quality is, the lower the likelihood of this is going to happen in a deficit, right? So we need to look at that, again, what your training looks like, if your training isn't super specific to building muscle. Again, this is going to be tougher, right? If you're somebody who does like a ton of group classes, maybe your training is geared more towards, like powerlifting style, I think you're going to have a tougher time building muscle and a deficit, right. But you know, somebody who's had a long layoff and coming back from an injury like you, the likelihood of this happening is going to be a little bit higher than so that's kind of my like, how feasible that is. Now, what I want to talk about here is, again, people hear this and they think, Okay, well, so I can build muscle and deficit now being in a deficit, no matter what is still going to be less, there's going to be inferior to being at maintenance for building muscle. Okay, no, wait, no way you put it right. Even if you're this perfect person that I talked about, like you're perfect for recon, you can build muscle and deficit, it's still you're gonna probably see a little less muscle in a deficit compared to maintenance. But even from there, you go to maintenance, right, you can still build a decent amount of muscle maintenance. But even then, like, if you're at a surplus is still going to be even a little bit better for building muscle. Right. So it's kind of on the stepladder here. So you really just need to decide like, if you're someone who's going to try to maximize muscle as much as possible, well, at some point, you're probably going to have to be in a calorie surplus, I don't think you need to go into that right away. But at some point, you're going to need to be in a in a calorie surplus there if that. So I kind of like to look at these as levels to and understand that again, you know, if you're someone who can build muscle and deficit, the longer you do that, the likelihood of it the the amount of muscle you're gonna see is going to trend down over time there. So I think I kind of hit on everything I wanted to there. I don't know if there was any follow ups or things you wanted to add? Yeah,

Philip Pape  37:08

no, that's a great foundation. I agree with all of that. I think the research has looked at various deficits. And I think 500 calories has been that limit of being a calorie deficit, where we start to see muscle loss in most populations, regardless, even even untrained. And I know they've done studies with trained lifters who have like three, four or five years of experience, on short durations, you know, these studies usually like six or eight weeks long, with a calorie deficit, and they still see muscle gain. So we know it can happen. And like you said, you're not the special snowflake, I shouldn't use that term that can be triggering, but like, super advanced train, like, yeah, they're not that many people in that that realm. There are a couple other demographics. I don't know if you mentioned them, one, one is of somebody who has excessive weight to lose. So I've had clients who are usually male clients are like 262 75, nine, and they want to get down to close to that 200 mark, and their body has so much fat storage, that that is like putting them in a surplus while they're in a deficit. Yep. And so they build a ton of muscle has their recopying. And everything's actually kind of smooth. If you've got it set it up, right, for a lot of a lot of people, especially especially males that I've worked with. The other situation is if you're D trained, right, again, I've seen that as well, some guy that did what I didn't do when I was a teenager in my 20s and actually worked out and hit the weights because I didn't do I didn't know this stuff until my late 30s. And they you know, they showed me pictures of how they were jacked when they were 22. And now they're the dad bod and you know, overweight and they're like I ride my bike. That's all I do. Okay, let's get you back lifting weights and then all of a sudden, their bodies like it just like sucks up the protein and just pack some muscle back on. And and there's a biological reason for that having to do with like satellite cells and neurons and stuff having already been built or developed and grown when you're earlier and they're always there waiting to get bigger again. So that population can probably hack their way to you know, somebody recomp and then i The one thing I want to ask you about Jeff is you said powerlifting style, I'm assuming you meaning during fat loss if you use in powerlifting style, because there's not very much volume or stimulus compared to like a bodybuilding style. And I wonder if you could explain that a little bit because my understanding is pretty much any auto regulated form of training where you can train hard close to failure, with sufficient volume is gonna give you what you need. Is the premise here that you're doing like squats once a week for one RMS and no back offs and no other volume, no accessory work that kind of stuff. Yeah,

Jeff Hoehn  39:27

pretty much yeah, like you're just doing like the main lifts you're literally just working in like the like one to three rep range, right? Again, is that gonna like again, I don't people will say this is the same thing as like the maintenance like building muscle and maintenance. It's like okay, that doesn't mean you're not going to build any muscle but like say you're in a deficit and like you know, you're trying to build muscle lose body fat the same time, you're just going to be it's not going to be as specific to building muscle is I would like it to be but again, if you're okay with that trade off, like understanding Hey, I'm probably gonna leave a little bit of muscle growth on the table for this. Okay, you know, it is what it is right? It just comes down to trade offs. So yes, it's just It comes down to the specificity of of the training, right that like you said, it's just not enough, it's gonna end up not being enough volume, you know that one to three rep range isn't necessarily the greatest for building muscle. It's a, you know, in in whatnot. So that's really what it comes down to. This is what I this is kind of something that I've changed my mind on, because I've always kind of talked about like, well, you need to have your training specific hypertrophy. And what I tell people is you probably want to have like, if you're really trying to maximize body recomp, and again, trying to build some muscle in the deficit, if you're under the circumstance, situation, or situations is, I would say you want at least 50% of your training to be geared towards hypertrophy. Right? So if you want to do with a thing, where it's like a power building style, again, is that going to be the most effective? From a muscle building standpoint? No, but it's still going to be good enough to build muscle, right, so long as 50% of its hypertrophy, you like to do group classes, again, maybe 50% of its group classes, but I want at least 50% at training to be geared towards, you know, building muscle there with that,

Philip Pape  40:55

I can attest, I can attest to that. I totally agree. That's why I wanted to clarify for the listeners, so they knew what you meant, because at least a lot of people I know who do the power building style, or they do West Side style or whatever. They do their main lifts, and they might be auto regulating like back offs and stuff like that. But then they're also adding all this. What did they call it? In West Side? The extra accessory work, man, I'm losing the losing the phrase what it's called? Not the accommodating resistance, but when you just repetition work, I don't know. But there's that. And then also, what was the other thing I was gonna say I'm losing my mind. Oh, yeah. Like, I've also seen like basic barbell type training work during fat loss, if if it's like set progression. So for example, we talked about increasing weights or reps at for progressive overload. And we rarely talk about adding sets. But there are some, you know, modulating programs where you start like, three sets, then four, then five, and six, and you actually end up being able to push that volume during fat loss while you're not really able to get stronger. But as a result, you're getting the stimulus. And if you're in this, like sweet spot deficit for recomp, you might get it under those scenarios, as well. Yeah,

Jeff Hoehn  41:59

yep. No, 100%. Man, no, that's, and like you said, the population you talked about, like, that's the perfect scenario where it's like, they're like, Well, you know, do I need to gain muscle? You know, I don't want to gain weight right now. Because I want to lose, but it's like, you're literally the higher your body fat is, like you said, the higher the likelihood is of a recap, because that's like stored energy. And on the flip side, real quick, I want to hit on this too. On the on the flip side, I think the other where I see this also kind of get where there's kind of thought process of like, Oh, hey, you have to be in a surplus, or hey, you have to be in a, you know, these kinds of things. And that kind of diving layer deeper. When it comes to a surplus where I see this kind of misapplied is somebody that you said there that, you know, maybe is like, say 15 20%, or higher and body fat for women 25 30% or higher, and they they feel like they can't build muscle, like they have to, like, Well, I'm not gonna go into building phase or I got to do fat loss until I drop all this weight is, you know, then they are they go into it, and they try to get in a surplus, they think that they need to start plus, well, now they start to gain a little bit more body fat than they need. And then it's like, well, these these phases don't work. Right. I just I didn't see any of that. But it's because you went into a surplus when you probably had some wiggle room here to be at maintenance or like in a small deficit or in deficit before going into that. So it's kind of like the flip side of that on there with apps? Oh, yeah, yeah, no,

Philip Pape  43:14

I think we covered it, it's possible, it's possible for a lot of people, and you just have to make the trade offs that you want to make, if you want all out muscle, probably don't want to be, you know, dicking around in these, like subtle phases just go after one direction or another. And that's my opinion. At some point. Yeah, no, but but then there's the lifestyle and the psychology, you know, it all comes into play. And it's like, if it's a woman who's 45, she's not happy with her body. And I'm like, I'm not going to tell her to sit around and like, continue to add weight or gain fat, let's just, you know, make that little bit of a trade off. So we get you some quick wins, like we talked about before, but then long term, I'll get you more convinced into like building. I

Jeff Hoehn  43:49

like your that's a that's actually a great way to put it. dicking around. That's honestly, I need to start using that a little bit more.

Philip Pape  43:55

Is that like an old guy term? I don't know.

Jeff Hoehn  43:58

I just never, I just never thought about saying it that way before where like, if you're, you know, trying to lose body fat build muscle the same time for too long. That's basically what you're doing. You're just kind of dicking around at that point. So I love that I need to start using that more.

Philip Pape  44:11

All right. All right. So speaking of old guys, actually, I think you're asking me this. I'll pull up the caption here.

Jeff Hoehn  44:16

Yep. heavier weight or more reps for an older guy looking to build a base for longevity.

Philip Pape  44:20

For longevity? Yeah, what are the longevity experts here right now? Yep. The answer is yes. No. Yes, train and you're good. So interestingly, I just recorded an episode for over 50 Guys, and it was in response to a follower who said, Hey, you should cover this stuff. And I had just recently listened to an episode of RP Right with Dr. Dre telling he was talking about old guys as well. And my thoughts on this are like, if you're asking the question, maybe you already have a little bit of experience training and you're just trying to kind of optimize your programming. I think the power building style like you mentioned before, something like where you have the big lifts, you have something That's focus on function and strength, like specifically strength, which is tends to be down in the heavier rep range is super, super helpful for older folks. And sometimes people people are, it's counterintuitive, like older folks say, Well, no, my connective tissue, my joints, my knees, blah, blah, blah, it's too heavy. It's bad for recovery. I disagree. Like, I think compound lifts are what you want as when you're older. I've seen older folks who never lifted before in their 50s 60s 70s have tremendous improvement in their health and function. And guess what we need for longevity, we need to be able to, like get off the toilet, but also be able to move our body around, avoid, you know, breaking bones, when we we fall, falling is like the leading cause of death besides heart disease, you know, at that age, the all the things associate with metabolic disease are also tied to muscle and strength. So like, yes, in other words, like, I think you should have a little both, I think you should lift heavy. And I think you should also have fun with it and work on building muscle where it makes sense. And then principle of it for older individuals is the recovery aspect, right? Like, you probably need to ease into it a little bit, when you get started, you probably need more recovery time, you may need to stretch some parts of your body that are like, you know, those are the wonky parts like guys, our shoulders, you know, our low back. And then don't be stupid, because you only have so much time like not till you die, but you only have so much time your body takes longer to recover. So like you don't want to get injured and then now spend months and months trying to come back from it always be behind. So I feel really strongly about it. Because I have parents and I have in laws and people that are that are older. And we got to stop making excuses. And I want to see this this generation, my generation become like the first generation that ages well, like ages into their 80s and 90s. That don't look like old people. We don't think of old people as like frail bent over weak, right? We are strong, we're independent, we're able to help other people. We're not like, you know, mooching off of health care, right, all that stuff. And I think that's the way to do it. So I know, I became very philosophical, Jeff, because I'm, like passionate about it. But the answer is yes. Both.

Jeff Hoehn  47:00

Yeah. No, I'm glad you took it for I'm glad you took it from that standpoint, because I'm going to take it from a little bit different. But I think you you make up you bring up great points, right, the recovery aspect of it a little bit slower at that point. And no, I think you, I like that you came at it from that angle? Because and I think this is the cool thing about us doing this is we kind of both come at it from from different. So like, basically my answer to you, though, or what your answer is? My short answer is yeah, I mean, like, why do we why would you need to choose one or the other? You know, I mean, like, that's kind of my thought. But I want again, as with most questions, I always kind of want to go a layer deeper. So I think it does, I did say depends on your goal. He said longevity? So but I would want it like what is that kind of look like? You know, again, is it straight? You know, like? So again, I think both is is there's that but but also, this is where I think people maybe miss out on from this is what's your preference? Like? What do you enjoy doing? You know, because at the end of the day, like we could sit you and I could sit here and we can talk about Well, hey, if you do this perfect combination of higher lower, you know, that's gonna be great. But also like, you just doing something is going to be better as you age as well to write to like, what is your preference to? And, you know, again, a lot of people I don't think are, I don't think they aren't as up to date on the research as we are with us. And we know that there can be a nice little range here that you can work with. So I think really, preference is a big one, right? Like, what's going to keep you staying consistent. And I think when it comes to strength hypertrophy, I feel like people ask these really nerdy questions, which I think are great, and it's fun to dive into it. But really what is going to keep you doing these things over extended periods of time. And if you buy us a little bit more towards heavier weight, and that feels good your current cover, you're seeing the results you want. Maybe you bias a little bit more to that if you are somebody you like more reps that feels better for you, you can recover from it, you're seeing the results you want to see, well, then maybe you buy us a little bit more of that on their fat. But from there, I also, again, I think this question needs to come at, like we need to look at a few more things. So exercise selection, what does that look like for you, you know what I mean? Like, you know, if you're doing some lateral raises or bicep curls will for you, I'm probably going to say hey, you probably want to go maybe a little bit higher reps. If you're doing back squats, you know, maybe you're gonna go a little bit lower reps versus doing you know, 15 reps on there if that so I think exercise selection is is key to what exercises are We are We specifically looking at here, I

Philip Pape  49:06

want to ask you about that. What about including exercises at all? Like what if this is the kind of person because I've seen them where it's like, they just want to do the isolation stuff. You know, what are your thoughts on that? Like? Yeah, should you have compound lifts? Or is this like what are your thoughts? Yeah, I'm, I'm pigeonholing you, man,

Jeff Hoehn  49:22

you're good. No, you're good. I love this. I mean I think preference again it's going to come down to preference right because I think you still do and more isolation stuff is gonna be better than you feel like you have to like you said kind of pigeonhole or put yourself into a box with it. So but I also feel like this comes down again to like, what do you consider compound right? Are we saying you do need to do like barbell stuff is are you counting leg presses a compound? You

Philip Pape  49:45

know what I mean? Like, sure, multi joint movements. Yeah, right. Yeah.

Jeff Hoehn  49:48

Yeah. You know, what does that kind of look like? Because I think sometimes that can get lumped into that more more isolation. You know, I would like to have if it was up to me, again, I would like to have somebody incorporate some, you know, things like Press squats, you know, those bigger lifts? Like I think that's a good base. But again, if it doesn't feel good for somebody, and they're more likely to want to stick to more isolation type stuff, leg extension leg curl, like, what would be a good isolated, I guess a laundry? I don't know. And they like doing that that's going to keep them going with it, then then that's the route, you know, we're going to go but I'd like to have a nice little Blend If it was ultimately up to me, you know, there with that. Did that answer your question there on that? Oh, yeah.

Philip Pape  50:25

No, I just put it out there. Because it depends on the context. Always Right. Like you said, if the alternative is not doing anything, and maybe for someone who's an older population today, that is the default right? Then then obviously, we want to take them from there to there to there. The other way we could approach the question is like, oh, this person already trains now they want the best out of it for longevity? What would that be? You know?

Jeff Hoehn  50:47

Yep, yep. And I think a good blend, for sure. But this also comes down to like, for example, I think it goes too far on the other end, where people try to, like you said pigeonhole them into like doing like, say, back squats or something, right, where they think they need to do these these, like compound barbell type lifts. And it's like, you know, we have some flexibility there. Right? So, you know, again, I think we could we could go too far on the other end. But another big thing here with this, too, is your execution and technique. I mean, what does that look like? You know, and I think that's going to be big, like, we need to make sure that's in a good spot before being like, what rep range do I need to work in? Or what's better for me, like, I think your execution and technique is, is super important in that process, as well. So I think, really, we need to come at it from like, stop looking at it from an either or I think both can work. What's your preference? What's your exercise selection? What do you like? What's your execution and technique? And then from there, what are your results? And are you happy with them? Are you not? And then and then from there, we evaluate and see, you know, can we make some some changes to that? But yeah, kind of my thoughts on that.

Philip Pape  51:46

Yeah. And I guess the other approach for longevity, because he also didn't, you know, longevity, could be I want to live a long life. But it could also be you can keep lifting for a long time, right? That's exactly that sort of the recovery. And I know from personal experience, and guys all the time, who just my shoulders a little sore, but I kept pushing and kept pushing, and bam, you know, the rotator cuff surgery or whatever. And now you're knocked out for six months to a year. So always keep those in mind of overall health overall function. And even when you're doing isolation work, you can, you can overdo it, if you're like constantly trained to absolute failure, and your volume is just tremendously high. And then you don't sleep like all of these compound plus diet, we didn't have to get it into nutrition, because he didn't ask about it. But of course, it supports all of this well. And

Jeff Hoehn  52:28

then and then in that specific example, this is where again, your execution and technique comes into, right. If you're you know, the more you do that with poor technique, the more that's going to, you know, so again, that's why I think it's important. And I don't know about you, but generally, I feel like when we go to these heavier, heavier weights, that's where you will start to see, especially for men, right, you start to see the ego take over a little bit. And that's where you do see execution and technique suffer a little bit. So you do want to be careful there with that that would be one kind of final thing with that. So

Philip Pape  52:57

And one final final thing, because we all have to get the last word going. Yep. Because you mentioned men, and I'm thinking women, a lot of women I've been I've gotten as clients, right, they, they tend to be doing the higher rep stuff anyway. And then they've explained it, they've said that they don't like going to the gym, or it's too much work or whatever. There's kind of a psychology to reps where everybody has a different sweet spot, right? And you could be working 20, RetinA 20 rep range for everything. And that could just be torture, like psychological torture for somebody. And all of a sudden, you know, you get somebody squatting, or RDL, or whatever, down in the five rep range or six rep range. And it's way lower than ever gotten like, This is amazing. I only have to, you know, each set is shorter, and I can always rest time. There's a big psychological aspect to it as well, that factors into sustainability and longevity to

Jeff Hoehn  53:44

this brings up one more thing.

Philip Pape  53:45

Yeah, let's

Jeff Hoehn  53:46

do what you have been doing, I think also should play a role in this right? I didn't even think of that. Right? Like if you are if you have found yourself to maybe bias one or the like one or the other. Maybe you need to get a little bit more of the other one in there. Right. So sorry, I just had I had to get the final word. Do you have the final final final word?

Philip Pape  54:05

No, that's yeah, I'm gonna go to the next question. I think we answered it. This is a fun little one about tracking in fat loss. So fat loss specifically, although it doesn't, I don't think it matters. Does counting veggies affect the macros and should I log them?

Jeff Hoehn  54:19

Yep. So 100% I mean, it's it's calories, right? veggies are gonna be calorie. So it will impact the macros, right? But I want to kind of, there's a lot of things that we can kind of uncover here with the width. So my thoughts on this, like, I'll have a lot of clients that you know, whether it maybe they're newer or again, maybe they're in a different phase where the on their checkout form, they'll be like, Well, hey, I'm having some, you know, my nutrition adherence was a three, I'm having a lot of like, either either meals out or hey, I had some like bites and licks and stuff like that. Well, my thought on this always is like, Well, where are your results at if things are trending in the right direction, and you know, I look at your food log and you're eating relatively well and maybe you're having some bites and licks or some tasty stuff from time to time and things are trending down in the right direction. It's like Let's keep going, like you're seeing the results you want. So why change it? So my thought on this is like, you know, if you're somebody that hasn't been tracking them, you're seeing things head in the right direction, you don't necessarily have to do it, right. Like, if you're really looking into your Mac micronutrients and stuff like that, like, you know, maybe like, obviously, veggies are going to be high on that. So maybe you do want to look at that, right. So that's kind of my thoughts on that. But then also, within that, you know, I feel like, it depends too on, you know, looking at it from the standpoint where like, veggies are going to, they're very nutrient dense, they don't have a lot of calories. So it's like, they're going to, they're going to count, but it's really hard to get a lot of calories in from veggies, right. So if you're like at a fat loss, but so and you're relatively early in the process, it's probably not because of your veggies, right, there's probably other things going on there. With that, where's like something like, let's just take peanut butter, I'm not in any calorie dense food, right chips, let's take chips, it's like, yeah, you're off by a serving size, or you're skipping out on those, like, that's going to start to add up more, because it's a lot more calorie dense. And that's a lot of calories that you could potentially be like, overlooking in that process. So just understand that, like, I guess my point there was, again, if things are heading in the right direction, and you feel good, you don't necessarily have to count them, if you are starting to maybe get plateaued, you know, definitely look at like your other tracking, you know, make sure you're tracking all your calorie dense stuff. But you know, adding in your veggies can be, again, they're going to count towards your macros. So again, if you aren't seeing the weight loss that you want to see, you know, you might want to look at a logging them and going from there. So kind of my Yeah, my answer there on that, and kind of how I would go about that with clients. Yeah,

Philip Pape  56:34

I mean, there's a big practicality aspect to this, like you said, like, even if people are not tracking everything, but they're getting the result, maybe what's their, what they're doing is working for them. I know, when I eat every night, and I track my food, it's like the veggie ends up being the last thing and it hardly makes a dent in the calories and macros. So you're like, I like to track it because of the micros as well. So if you'd happen to be tracking your micronutrients, it's nice to have those in there. And then also depends on how we're defining vegetables or including like potatoes and corn and like actually high energy, starchy type vegetables, then yeah, you should probably log those. And then for everything else, like greens, you know, non starchy stuff. My approach is like, let's say you're having a salad, and it has 20 ingredients, pick the three or four that are calorie containing log those and you're good. You know, now if you don't log them at all, and it's kind of inconsistent, the accuracy goes up and down, it tends to be kind of in the wash at the end of the day anyway, because all you care about is like, what's the change relative to my intake? It's kind of like supplements, like, I don't track my fish oil, even though it has, what 40 calories? Because I take it every day, you know? So yeah, practicality versus accuracy and precision. If you find that you can't track it all, because you're obsessing over getting the Swiss shard logged, just maybe don't log.

Jeff Hoehn  57:49

That's it? Well, people will be like, well, you know, maybe my serving sizes off with them. And it's like, it's gonna be really hard to get your your veggie macros off right from logging simply because it really is hard to get a ton of calories. And what you do need to be making sure your serving sizes are right on the more calorie dense but like you said, again, I think it comes back to the practicality of it, right? I would hate for somebody to stress out about tracking their macros and not do it. Because they're like, they don't want to count every veggie because then it's like, alright, we probably can can get away. The only thing I'll say on this is, if you do have a coach, though, because this is something I see is, it might not be a bad idea to put them in because like I'll do this where I'll be like going through food blogs, and I'm like, hey, you need to get some more veggies in and they're like, Well, I, you know, that would be that would be

Philip Pape  58:30

like fiber fiber actually, yeah, yeah. Fiber. No,

Jeff Hoehn  58:33

that's good point you bring up right, it will, you may show lower fiber. So, you know, again, I think it still comes back to what we said where it's like, if you're, you know, what you're doing is working and why why make it more complicated. There. And again, maybe at some point, you will have to do that. But you know, just kind of depends on your on your results. So I

Philip Pape  58:49

had a client who was showing like seven grams of fiber a day, like we gotta get that up, and they said, Well, I'm taking 20 Something grams of psyllium husk I'm like, Okay, so that's why I don't see it in there. But also maybe that's not how we want to get your fiber. Not the only way. Not the only way right. So yeah, all good practical stuff, man. I think we covered you know, training, nutrition, fat loss, all this fun stuff. Any last words? I think we had a good one. Yep.

Jeff Hoehn  59:12

No other additions to the to what we were talking about. I know. I mean, it was great to know like you said a nice kind of blend of training and nutrition questions and I think kind of all over the again, like demographic as well, too. Right? menopause and everything in between. So yeah, I guess you know, as far as what else, definitely make sure if you are a subscriber of my podcast, make sure you go follow with some weights. I think you're doing what are you doing? Like three episodes or a week now spot is five. Wow. Okay. And then you have like a couple like shorter ones to built in there. And

Philip Pape  59:46

bonus one and then an interview in a solo? Yeah,

Jeff Hoehn  59:50

yeah. So again, make sure you check out the Whitson weights podcast from my understanding you're on every major podcast platform that you'd be listening on. And make sure you like and subscribe. ascribe to his podcast as well to their arm again, filled man always fun doing these, you know, there's a couple questions that we had where, you know, you kind of had an interesting kind of thought process behind it. And it kind of made me rethink that. And I think definitely, you know, having you to go over these with it definitely synergizes it right, we get a lot more out of it. And like, for example, you asked me to clarify the powerlifting thing, right? Whereas like, in my podcast, I would have just not even thought to, you know, would have thought about that. So I think it's super helpful. And, yeah, definitely give your your podcast a listen. It sounds great. Always super professional as well, too. So make sure you go give Philips podcast a listen.

Philip Pape  1:00:33

Yeah, man. And likewise, I mean, people like these shows, I think it's partly because of us, I hope, like having our different opinions. And sometimes we're strong about those opinions. But we come to it from a point of like wanting to help as many people as possible. And also understand that we've had a lot of both clients and listeners who, like they've listened to a lot of stuff, and they've consumed a lot of information. And it's not always the information that they need. It's like, how do you apply that? How do you implement that? And we always say, it depends. We always say like experiment and this and that. But keep asking the questions because at the end of the day, like that's how you learn and that curiosity is at least I thrive on that and I'm sure you do as well. So check out the mind muscle connection podcast if you listen to Whitson weights right now. If you're not following Jeff show, follow it right now. You've got three a week, right? Three

Jeff Hoehn  1:01:17

Yep. q&a guests and solo. Yeah, exactly. So

Philip Pape  1:01:21

check those out. And look if you don't like an episode of either of ours, you just have to delete it, but follow it so you get each one and some of them are gonna be a huge hit. You never know. You know, my latest episode it says do this in the bedroom dot that dot see curiosity you're like, what is that one about? And I'm sure

Jeff Hoehn  1:01:38

that's a really cool right now to download that episode right now.

Philip Pape  1:01:41

He's like, Yeah, I'm not gonna say what it's about. But anyway, go go follow the mind muscle connection. And stay tuned a reach out to both of us on our various IG. We'll throw those in the show notes so that you can ask questions we ask q&a In our stories as well all the time so that you might see it on the podcast.

Jeff Hoehn  1:01:58

Yep. And I would say to if we you know, if you do have any, like clarifying questions on what we talked about today, I think, you know, for me, Instagram is the best place like if you want to ask any follow up to that I'm sure same thing with you follow up probably the best place to like reach you for like specific questions. And then I plan on doing this again, in the next couple months with you. So be on the lookout for questions and our question boxes so we can answer these on here. So

Philip Pape  1:02:19

that Jeff Hain underscore, yes, sir. At Woodson, waits, and waits and waits. Cool. Awesome. All right, so stay strong, everybody. Thanks for tuning in.

Jeff Hoehn  1:02:26

Talk to you guys soon.

Philip Pape  1:02:29

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 wits 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.