Ep 6: Set Your Fitness and Nutrition Habits on Autopilot
We wrap up our foundational series by diving into some practical strategies, tools, and life hacks to set your fitness and nutrition habits on autopilot.
If you’re at all familiar with the autopilot in an airplane—and as a side note, I used to fly small planes years ago and still work as an engineer in the aerospace industry—you know it’s a tool to eliminate constant manual intervention by the pilot.
In a similar way, we want to find ways to create consistency with our lifting and eating by using systems and tools to eliminate manual steps, barriers, and—frankly, excuses—that prevent us from taking action and developing solid habits.
Given that you have enough to think about between your profession, your family, and the million other things you enjoy, why not put in place some “life hacks” so you can just get to it and make progress! A word of warning—none of this relieves you of discipline and hard work—but a little preparation when you’re more motivated will set you up for long-term success, even when you’re not.
In today’s episode, we cover:
Establishing a plan for your lifting ritual
Locking in your programming calendar to make consistent progress
Removing the most common barriers that prevent you from going to the gym or working out
Establishing a plan for your diet and weight phases, and
Planning ahead for consistent meals and successful nutrition progress
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MacroFactor app for food logging and calculating expenditure (use code "WITSANDWEIGHTS" to extend free trial to 14 days)
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Transcript
This podcast was transcribed automatically, so please forgive any errors or typos.
[00:00:00] Philip Pape: Welcome to the Wits & Weights podcast for busy professionals who want to get strong and lean with the strength training and sustainable diet. I am your host Philip Pape. And in each episode, we'll examine strategies to help you achieve physical self-mastery through a healthy skepticism of the fitness industry and a commitment to lifting heavy and eating right.
[00:00:29] Welcome to episode six of Wits & Weights. Today, we wrap up our foundational series by diving into some practical strategies, tools, and life hacks to set your. And nutrition habits on autopilot. If you're at all familiar with the autopilot in an airplane. And as a side note, I used to fly small planes years ago, and I still work as an engineer in the aerospace industry.
[00:00:56] You know, it's a tool to eliminate constant manual intervention by the. In a similar way. We want to find ways to create consistency with our lifting and eating, by using systems and tools to eliminate manual steps and barriers, and frankly, excuses that prevent us from taking action and developing solid habits.
[00:01:21] Given that you probably have enough to think about between your profession, your family, and the million other things you enjoy. Why not put in place some life hacks so you can just get to it and make progress. A word of warning, none of this relieves you of discipline and hard work, but a little preparation when you're more motivated will set you up for long-term success.
[00:01:44] Even when you're not in today's episode. Establishing a plan for your lifting ritual, locking in your programming calendar to make consistent progress, removing the most common barriers that prevent you from going to the gym or working out, establishing a plan for your diet and weight phases and planning ahead for consistent meals and successful nutrition products.
[00:02:13] Almost everything we talk about today involves planning ahead taking action when you feel the energy and motivation to do so, rather than acting in the moment, which is a surefire way of sabotaging your progress. Instead, we want to build the scaffolding of your new fitness and nutrition habits. So you can just focus on executing your plan in the moment without any excuses to fall back.
[00:02:40] Let's start with planning ahead with your lifting. The first thing I want to talk about is picking a gym that is convenient in terms of distance equipment and the type of policies they have. So if you pick a gym that's an hour away, it's going to be tough to feel that you can find the time to get there.
[00:03:00] So picking a gym that's closer is probably a good idea. However, it's got to have the right equipment, meaning at a minimum. Iraq rack and some barbells, but even better yet. Some of the other equipment you might need for the other movements as you plan out your programming. And then it has to have good policies that are friendly to lifters like us.
[00:03:22] For example, they don't let you deadlift. That's going to be a non-starter. So picking a gym that meets all of these criteria is going to reduce the excuses for going to the gym. Now here's a bonus. If you can start building your home gym earlier than later, and do it in a way where you can do at least one workout each week from.
[00:03:45] Then that's one less barrier to worry about in terms of working out. And then as you acquire and collect more equipment and you will do that as you get into this and find out how much fun it is, then eventually you can do more workouts per week and perhaps all of your workouts at home. And this just eliminates the excuse of needing to leave the house and drive to the.
[00:04:07] The next thing is to pick a training program that works with your schedule. If you are extremely busy and it's very hard to find more than say two or three days a week to work out, you don't want to pick a six day. Program. And in fact, if you go back and listen to, I think it's episode two, where we talk about choosing a strength training program that is inadvisable anyway for a new lifter, ideally you would pick something like a three-day per week, full body program.
[00:04:39] If you're a beginner or even intermediate, and then later you can progress to say a four day split or even a five day program. I currently work out five days a week. So from day one, picking a program that works with your schedule will eliminate excuses from doing that program. You could even, let's say you have only two days a week.
[00:05:00] You can take a three-day per week program and just stretch it. The next little tip I have is to pre schedule your lifting sessions. And you can do this with appointments, whether it's in a, an appointment book or your smartphone or on your computer or work calendar or reminders, whatever works for you.
[00:05:20] The point is, look ahead. And actually block that time out. That that means you have, it's like going to a doctor appointment or going to an important meeting. It's just going to happen. You are committed. It's in your schedule. And the next thing related to planning ahead for your lifting is deciding on the best time that works for you.
[00:05:42] Again, to minimize excuses. If you are a morning person, you love to get up early and start being productive, then go ahead and do your workout. First thing it gets you energized helps you continue with your day. You've got it out of the way. That's what I do. I've been doing that for years. I couldn't do it any other way.
[00:06:01] Now. Other people. I want to sleep in, or they couldn't imagine training in the morning, whether due to energy or motivation or whatever else. So they might work out at lunch and this is convenient if you're working out from home or if you're working from home and you can squeeze it in between meetings or working out in the evening.
[00:06:22] And that could be right after work or it could be after dinner or even later in the evening before. And some people might have more energy at this time and it see it as a good way to cap off your day. It's a reward. It feels good. Helps you sleep. Whatever reason motivates you choose the best time of the day.
[00:06:39] Right now, as you get started with your training, that will help you commit, help you enjoy it and helping you remain. Next, let's talk about planning ahead with your programming. So we talked about lifting in terms of the facility, time of day, things like that. Now let's talk about the programming itself, and this is really critical because most people just go to the gym and they just go to exercise and build up a sweat and fill in the time.
[00:07:08] We're not doing that. Here we are. So we have to plan for our training in a methodical way, but we can do it to significantly reduce the amount of thinking and work we have to do when the time comes to actually lift. So let's start from the. We need to look out at our upcoming cycle. What do you call that?
[00:07:28] A cycle? A mesocycle macrocycle whatever makes sense. It could be four weeks. It could be eight, could be 12 weeks. I like to do 12 weeks, but if you're just getting started and it's fairly consistent, repetitive type programming, like an AB AB or ABC type program, you don't need to look too far out and what you want to.
[00:07:49] Identify is exactly what your progression is. Meaning. And am I doing a linear progression where I'm going to increase weight on the bar for all the main lifts? Am I doing a 8 5, 2 or 5, 3, 1 type progression? Am I doing double progression? Whatever your progression is and your programming, and it gets more advanced.
[00:08:08] The more advanced you are as. But you can plan out the next four weeks and say, okay, I'm doing squats on Monday and I'm going to go up five pounds a week or 10 pounds, whatever it is or I'm doing, I'm doing bench press on Thursdays, and I'm going to cycle through eight reps, five reps, two reps, and then I'm going to repeat eight reps, five reps, two reps.
[00:08:31] Then you want to choose which weeks and days you're performing those workouts, the actual. Days in this cycle, given this calendar and time of year, look at your vacation, special events appointments, and basically eliminate all your excuses. If you know, you're going to have a big event in the morning on a day that you would do a heavy workout in the morning.
[00:08:58] Well, the you're probably not gonna be able to do that workout on that day. So can you do it later in the day, or can you shift your work? Your workouts by one day that week, plan it ahead so that you've got it booked in your calendar. And you know, when you're going to do it, there's no excuses. And you can track all of this in a spreadsheet, in a notebook in your app, whatever is your favorite medium for doing this.
[00:09:22] Okay. Then we bring it down a level and we want to plan ahead for the upcoming. So you've got your, your next four to 12 weeks mapped out at a high level. Now we say it's Sunday, for example. And we're going to look at the upcoming week, which days of the week am I working out based on what I planned earlier.
[00:09:44] Am I doing Monday, Wednesday, Friday? Am I doing Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday. Are there any special times this week because of what's going on and based on that, now you can preplan. All of your lifts sets, reps and loads because you know what you lifted last week, and now you can plan out this week at that greater level of detail and do it all in one day.
[00:10:06] It's like meal planning, just get it all done, take the effort, plan it out. And then when the time comes, you just have to execute. Look at the week as a whole, and then move things around if needed. If you find that Thursday's workout just can not be as long as it normally is. Maybe you move something to Saturday or you eliminate a movement.
[00:10:28] And then finally, we get down to the one day, look ahead. We're looking at tomorrow. So let's say it's Tuesday and we are looking ahead to our Wednesday workout. Go ahead. And pre-fill. Your notebook or your app with the exact lifts sets, reps and loads. If you're using an app, for example, you can enter the movements in, you can put in your reps and loads and all you have to do then in the gym is check it off.
[00:10:56] As you execute, add any specific cues or notes, if. If you're doing a particular movement and want to remind yourself to use a particular form or queue, go ahead and put that in now for the next day. And then again, all you do the next day is execute. Now, let's talk about the logistics of going to the gym of doing your workout and all the excuses we make for ourselves to just hit the snooze button and sleep in or whatever other excuse not to go to the gym.
[00:11:27] And the first thing we'll talk about is preparing a go-bag. Now, you've got your programming all set up, you know what you're going to do the next day. You've already entered it in your notebook or your app. So you're already somewhat committed, but now you can select the exact equipment you're going to need for the gym.
[00:11:44] Some examples might be your lifting belt, your lifting shoes, a chalk bag, or liquid chalk lifting straps. Wrist straps. These are just some examples. I might bring a neck pad if I'm doing, I don't know, calf raises with a barbell in the gym. Cause I don't want to use somebody. Else's use neck pad. I might have to pack my three in one soap and clothes.
[00:12:10] If I'm going to shower and change, if I'm headed out to work. Now we're talking about preparing your bag the day before at a time, when you feel motivated, you have energy. You're getting things ready? You have no problem doing this. There's no pressure to actually go to the gym at that time. Go ahead and prepare this bag.
[00:12:29] You could also remove your jewelry. Like if you have a wedding ring and you want to zip it up securely, or your personal items, like your wallet or keys, all that stuff, get it ready. And then place the bag right near the door where you're going to leave. That is one less excuse for the next day. Not only that I know I've, I've been in situations where I wake up think, do I really have to go to the gym?
[00:12:50] And then I realized, you know, it's gonna be a lot of work. Unpack the bag I just packed up and I'm going to not feel so great about myself. If I do that site might as well just. The next thing for preparing for the gym is to prepare your clothes, lay it out, lay out your shirt, your pants, socks, shoes, pick them all out ahead of time.
[00:13:11] Lay them out in advance. I work out really early, so it's dark. And if I had to find all that stuff, well, my wife is sleeping. That would be a problem. That would be one more. Excuse me, hunting around my flashlight, realizing something's not clean. Can't find my socks. You get the idea, prepare entertainment.
[00:13:29] If you need to download the latest episodes of your favorite podcast to enjoy during your drive or at the gym. And then if you're working out from home, instead of going to the gym, some of the previous steps may not apply, but most of them do you still want to prepare all that stuff, even in your home gym, go ahead and prepare the equipment in your gym.
[00:13:50] Move. J hooks and your pins or spotter arms on the rack for your first lift of the next day, a ranger bench and your barbell, wherever you need it prepare any special equipment, your easy curl bar, your calf block, your cable attachment, whatever it might be. And that will save you time in getting started and potentially between exercises.
[00:14:14] All right. So we've talked about preparing for lifting your programming and going to the gym. We are knocking down excuses one by one. We're being disciplined. We're setting ourselves up for really good habits here. Next let's move to the food side of the equation. Let's talk about preparing your workout nutrition.
[00:14:33] Now this may be going to the gym or at home, but it's just one more thing you can do ahead of. For example, if you use blender bottles, the shake bottles for protein shakes, I like to have four or five of them in the kitchen available so that if I've used one or two yesterday and haven't washed them yet, for example, I've still have new ones available.
[00:14:56] Again, one less excuse to think about having plenty of bottles, plenty of vessels for your powders and whatever you need. Also grab or prepare. Pre-workout pre and post-workout nutrition as best you can. For example, if you eat a banana, like I do, or something that you can hold like that it doesn't have to be refrigerated, get it ready and put it on the counter.
[00:15:19] You could also preload your protein powder, your creatine, your pre and post-workout drinks. Put them all in either the shakers or in little containers. So that they're all organized, ready to go. So when you need him and he's just, boom, boom, boom. Pull them out. Go ahead and place all of that on the most convenient counter.
[00:15:40] So it takes just a few minutes to prepare before you leave for the gym or before you work out at home. Again, we're trying to eliminate excuses, do this all before the day before when you've got the energy or gone around doing things around the house, get it right. And then the next day it's all set up.
[00:15:57] All right. We're going to shift the discussion a little bit now and talk about nutrition. We'll start with. Goals for your weight change. That is whether you're trying to gain weight, lose weight, or maintain. You should refer back to the last episode, episode five, which is all about going on a diet without being on a diet.
[00:16:20] And it talks about estimating your maintenance calories and setting a reasonable weight loss or weight gain. We talked about adjusting that each week. So what we're talking about today is, okay, you've got that information. Now you use those inputs, your maintenance calories, and your goal, your change goal to plan your calories and macros for the upcoming week.
[00:16:45] So again, we're saying Sunday, isn't. You want to plan it out? Are you going to increase your calories by 50 a day? Are you reducing them by a hundred a day? You've had a certain target this week and the next week it'll be something else, but you want to know what it is now. I'm going to plug macro factor again because that's the app that I use to do this pretty much automatically.
[00:17:07] I get up in the morning on Monday, the app checks in and says, we're going to increase your calories by 25 calories a day based on. T D E right, your total daily energy expenditure over the past few weeks, as well as your food intake. And that takes about five seconds, which is why I like to use that. So if you want to download macro factor, check out the show notes for how to do it.
[00:17:30] And now that you know how many calories you're shooting for in your macros, you can plan your meals for the week and, or work around special occasions. Or high calorie days, if you know, Thanksgiving is this week or there's a birthday party, or you want to go out with your friends and there's a big social event.
[00:17:48] Plan for it. It's it's Sunday, the events on Friday, you know, you're going to consume an extra, say 1500 or 2000 calories that day. Now you can plan for it for the week and know that you're going to stay on track going into the subsequent weeks. You can also take this further and look ahead to the next 12 months and even plan.
[00:18:11] Cuts and bulks to coincide with the seasons or special events and make it easier to stick with during those times. Again, things like holidays where you want to bulk during the holidays, because that's when you want to enjoy eating a lot more. Or if you want to cut for a bigger. So even if your plan right now is to say, lose 20 pounds and you do doing it at a reasonable rate of say a pound and a half per week, and you know, how many weeks it's going to take.
[00:18:40] Well then great look ahead toward when you will hit that goal and decide what will be my next goal and sort of plan out three months, maybe six or even 12 months to, to deal with the ups and downs or maintenance that coincide with the seasons or the. That's from the numbers side. Now we want to talk about planning ahead for your actual meals, the food you will be eating, and I'm not one of these obsessive.
[00:19:07] Meal preppers. And I admire people who are people who can basically, they can prepare all their meals for the week and store them all individually in Tupperware. And then they just pull every single one out when the, that takes quite a level of planning and discipline. And it may be to such an extent that you would not stick to your plan if you had to do that.
[00:19:29] But if that sounds awesome. If you're like an organizational guru and love doing that, by all means do it. I'm just going to share with you my experience. So the first thing I like to do is buy food in bulk. That's a simple thing that most of us understand many of us already do this, but this might look like choosing one meat of the.
[00:19:50] For your protein for lunch. Okay. Now I work from home currently. And so I can go ahead and easily pull that out of the microwave, but even if you go to work, you can pack it up. And this might enable you to cook one or two big recipes, say on Sunday and then just portion it out and heat it up when you need them during the week.
[00:20:11] And this, this could be fairly. So you would save the recipe probably in your nutrition app. So if you're using macro factor, you can just enter each bulk amount of food. The total grams of total macros, put them all in as a recipe. And then when you measure it out individually later, the combined recipe it'll automatically enter.
[00:20:35] Calories and macros for that portion. Pretty simple. So here are some ideas. For example, you can buy five pounds of ground beef and then cook it up with some rice, some Jasmine or basmati rice, throwing some taco seasoning. And now you've got a pretty rich, uh, modestly high fat, high protein, lot of carbs.
[00:20:58] Good lunch that you can. Or you can get a 10 pound pork roast and do pulled pork in the oven that allows you all week. You can get a Turkey, you know, do it Thanksgiving style, get a 15 pound Turkey, carve it up. And now you got 6, 7, 8 pounds of meat. Or I like chicken thighs. I love chicken thighs. So I might get a dozen chicken thighs, bake them all at once with some sort of very light seasoning or sauce on it.
[00:21:22] And then they're versatile. I can just eat them straight. Heat them up for lunch, where I can chop them up and mix with a salad or eat them with my carb or veggie of choice during the week. And again, you can go more extreme and, and make individual meals and split them all out if you want, but you don't have to do it that way.
[00:21:40] Just make things easier so that during the week you can quickly grab something. That's not junk food, that's not processed food necessarily, but it's something you enjoy. And you've already prepared it and you don't have to do this for every meal. I'm suggesting start with lunches. Dinners might be a little bit more of an involved affair depending on you and your family, but a similar thing can apply when you make dinners make a lot more than you normally would.
[00:22:06] So you have plenty of leftovers. Here's another tip related to meal planning. A lot of people don't do this, but you can pre enter food in your nutrition app to quote unquote, reserve those calories or macros. And. For example, if I want to have my casein pudding at the end of the night, I know it sounds kind of gross, but it's basically just casing.
[00:22:29] Vanilla flavored caisson powder mixed with some Oland milk. And it's probably 200 calories with maybe 40 grams of protein. It's slow digesting, so I can have it at the end of the evening, you know, watch some Netflix or something and relax right before I go to bed. Get the protein bolus in there. So that I can have protein synthesis going on for the next few hours.
[00:22:51] These are those advanced timing strategies don't necessarily have to worry about at this point, but it's fun to do. And I will enter that into my app. I might do it at 10 in the morning, but I'll enter it for eight or nine. And now I've reserved those 210 calories. So as the day goes on and I see the calories left, that's already accounted for, and you can do this for anything.
[00:23:13] If you know, you're going to have a huge party meal with family, it's going to be 2,500 calories. You're going to have Thanksgiving, whatever, reserve them ahead of time. Just to give you the signal that maybe you can take it easy the rest of the day and stay on track. All right next. I just want to talk about some of the technology that can help with some of the tips that we've discussed.
[00:23:38] And we'll start with apps, smartphone apps. There's really only one that I strongly recommend, and that is macro factor, which we talked about already for nutrition, because it's a food logger combined with an energy expenditure estimator, and. Adherents neutral. It does not penalize you for going over or under your calories.
[00:23:59] It simply tells you the data gives you the plan and then it adjusts based on what you do. Check that out in the show notes, as far as lifting goes, a lot of folks just love a plain notebook notebooks, great whiteboard if you work out from home. But if you'd like to use technology, there are plenty of apps out there like stacked, which I think is from Legion athletics.
[00:24:21] Mike Matthews strong is popular with a lot of folks. I use train heroic because I'm associated with a gym that has a coach that I work with sometimes, but also. In a program on train heroic, you can create your own sessions. And I have several years of history in the app. And the reason I like apps for this purpose is you can easily track all of your maxes, your one, RM three, RM, five RM, et cetera.
[00:24:50] You can see what you did last time. You know, there's a lot of. Ways to help the next time you have to go to the gym, which again, I like things that make it easier for me because it reduces excuses. Then there's the health integration, whether you have an iPhone or an Android device, there's apple health and there's Google.
[00:25:11] And they both are the defacto standards on those platforms that can link to most other. So, if you're using a nutrition app, like macro factor, you can then link it to apple health to pulling your weight. And eventually it might pull in fitness data, which really isn't that important from a calorie perspective.
[00:25:30] But because I use a smart scale, the smart sale can connect to apple health, apple health connects to macro factor. It's all Daisy chain again, making it super easy where I don't have to manually enter. I even have a blood pressure cuff that does the same thing. And you can link these to fitness wearables.
[00:25:49] When you have the apple watch Fitbit or whatever. Another way you can use technology is reminders set up reminders on your smartphone. A couple of examples would be a daily reminder to weigh yourself. I know it seems simple and eventually it'll just become. But if you get up at six, am you set the reminder for, you know, 5:45 AM?
[00:26:08] So when you wake up, you see it there. Oh, I got to weigh myself. Just don't want to forget first thing in the morning or a weekly reminder to take body measures. I strongly encourage measuring your waist, your arms, your chest, your thighs, or even your body fat with calipers or the Navy measurement using a tape measure of your neck and abdomen.
[00:26:32] But a weekly reminder, let's say Sunday. That says, make sure to take measurements and even photos of you want to take body photos. And I have one final bonus tip when it comes to setting your fitness and nutrition on autopilot. And that is to join a like-minded community, either up the place you work out, it could be at your.
[00:26:58] Or it can be online, a place to share ideas, videos, get form checks, keep each other accountable. You can yourself contribute to these communities as you learn and help others, which is extremely rewarding. And then you can continue to learn yourself and stay on top of things as they evolve, as they change over time.
[00:27:19] As we learn new information in this. Exciting, but sometimes confusing and complicated world of fitness and nutrition and one such group would be our wits and weights listener community Facebook group, which you can find in the show now. Okay. I think we've covered everything I wanted to get to. And I hope you find these ideas helpful and practical.
[00:27:42] You don't have to do them all at once. Just start with your biggest sticking points, figure out where you tend to struggle and the things that tend to hold you back from turning these actions into habits, and then just experiment with automating things, using technology, planning ahead, removing barriers to progress using some of that.
[00:28:05] We've talked about. I'd also love to hear your ideas for strategies or tools you've used to put your fitness and nutrition on autopilot. Just drop me a line by email or on Instagram at Whitson weights or on Facebook. This concludes our foundational series two. The wits and waits podcasts, but I think the fun has just begun.
[00:28:28] Stay tuned for exciting topics related to resistance, training, diet, programming, even mindset, and lots more to come in upcoming episodes.
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