The Paris 2024 Olympics Strategy for More Muscle and Less Fat (Optimization Theory) | Ep 201
How do Olympic athletes achieve peak performance while optimizing their body composition? The 2024 Paris Olympics are in the final stretch this week, so we're celebrating with this special themed episode!
Olympic athletes (and most athletes) strategically cycle their nutrition to achieve the targeted goal at the targeted time.
We're applying this concept to YOUR goals (on YOUR schedule), using the engineering principle of Optimization Theory. You'll learn how to use nutritional periodization to build more muscle, lose fat, prevent plateaus, and make your diet more effective and sustainable—and then optimize it for your unique circumstances.
If you're tired of yo-yo dieting or struggling to improve your body composition, this episode will show you how to engineer your nutrition like an Olympian preparing for Paris 2024.
To learn more about optimizing your body composition using this approach, join my FREE mailing list at https://witsandweights.com/email
Main takeaways:
Nutritional periodization, inspired by Olympic athletes, can be adapted for everyday body composition goals.
The cycle includes Building, Maintenance, Leaning Out, and Recovery phases, each with specific nutritional focuses.
Optimization Theory allows for continuous fine-tuning based on individual responses and data.
This approach not only leads to physical changes but can transform your relationship with food and your body.
Episodes mentioned:
My 3 New Dieting Methods for Smarter, Easier Fat Loss in 2024 | Ep 186
My Stair-Step Fat Loss Process to Get Lean and Ripped | Ep 191
Episode summary:
We dive deep into the principles that Olympic athletes use to achieve peak performance and optimal body composition. By aligning nutrition with your body's natural rhythms and incorporating periods of progress, maintenance, and recovery, you can avoid the pitfalls of yo-yo dieting and inconsistent energy levels. This blog post will explore the key topics discussed in the episode, providing you with actionable insights to transform your body and achieve your fitness goals sustainably.
Nutritional periodization is a strategy used by elite athletes that involves cycling through different phases of nutrition to optimize performance and body composition. The four distinct phases are building, performance, leaning out, and recovery. Each phase plays a crucial role in muscle gain and fat loss, making the journey toward your fitness goals more effective and sustainable.
The building phase focuses on muscle growth. During this phase, you create a slight calorie surplus and increase carbohydrate intake to fuel your workouts and support muscle development. It's important to consume enough protein to aid in muscle repair and growth. This phase might come with some weight gain, but it's essential for building a strong foundation.
Next is the performance phase, where you maintain the gains achieved during the building phase. Here, you shift to maintenance calories, ensuring you have enough energy to sustain your performance levels. This phase helps you hold onto the muscle and strength gains while preventing unnecessary fat accumulation.
The leaning out phase involves a controlled calorie deficit to improve your strength-to-weight ratio or reveal muscle definition. During this phase, protein intake might increase to preserve muscle mass while reducing overall calorie intake. This phase is particularly beneficial for athletes who need to make weight classes or individuals aiming to achieve a leaner physique.
Finally, the recovery phase brings you back to maintenance calories, giving your body a break from dieting. This phase is crucial for mental and physical recovery, preventing burnout, and preparing you for the next cycle of nutritional periodization. It's a time to focus on sustaining your habits and enjoying the benefits of your hard work.
Optimization theory, an engineering principle, plays a significant role in nutritional periodization. By maximizing or minimizing a function, you can find the best solution for your fitness goals. This approach involves continuously gathering data and making small, calculated adjustments based on your individual response. Tracking metrics such as scale weight, circumference measurements, lifting progression, and biofeedback like hunger, recovery, energy, digestion, sleep, and stress levels are essential for fine-tuning your nutrition plan.
One of the most transformative aspects of nutritional periodization is its impact on your relationship with food and your body. Instead of perpetual dieting or avoiding structure, you adopt a strategic and purposeful approach to nutrition. This method not only leads to physical changes but also fosters a healthier mindset toward food and body composition.
For example, one of our clients, Sarah, experienced a profound transformation through nutritional periodization. After years of yo-yo dieting, she learned to map out her nutrition over six to twelve months, aligning it with her goals. By starting with a maintenance phase, she relieved the pressure of constant dieting and developed sustainable habits. During the leaning out phase, she achieved significant fat loss without crash dieting. The recovery phase allowed her to maintain her results and enjoy a balanced approach to nutrition.
Nutritional periodization offers a structured approach that can be tailored to anyone's body composition goals, not just elite athletes. It provides a clear roadmap, enabling you to progress efficiently and sustainably. Whether you're aiming to build muscle, lose fat, or improve overall performance, this strategy helps you achieve your goals without constant struggle.
To further support your fitness journey, we invite you to join our email list at witsandweights.com/email. By signing up, you'll receive exclusive content, practical tips, and direct access to our community. This is an opportunity to gain valuable insights and support as you work toward your fitness goals. Remember, achieving your dream physique requires a strategic and personalized approach, just like the athletes preparing for the Paris 2024 Olympics.
In summary, nutritional periodization is a powerful principle that aligns your nutrition with your body's natural rhythms. By cycling through the phases of building, performance, leaning out, and recovery, you can achieve sustainable muscle gain and fat loss. Optimization theory helps you make small, calculated adjustments based on your individual response, ensuring efficient progress. This strategy not only transforms your physical appearance but also improves your relationship with food and your body. Embrace nutritional periodization, and start your journey toward peak performance and sustainable fitness today.
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Transcript
Philip Pape: 0:01
What we're talking about today is how these Olympic athletes strategically cycle their nutrition to achieve peak performance, but also optimize their body composition, as some sports call for that. And if you're listening to this and you have a goal of leaning out, of building muscle, losing fat, we are going to talk about using the engineering principle of optimization theory to do that to build more muscle, lose fat, prevent plateaus, make your diet more effective and sustainable. So if you're tired of the yo-yo dieting, if you're not sure what to do with your diet, if you're struggling to improve your body composition, this episode will show you how to engineer your nutrition like an Olympian. Welcome to Wits and Weights, the podcast that blends evidence and engineering to help you build smart, efficient systems to achieve your dream physique. I'm your host, philip P, and I want you to think about this. You've been dieting on and off for months, maybe for years, and sometimes you make progress, sometimes you don't. Your energy fluctuates, your workouts feel inconsistent, you're not quite sure if you're building muscle or kind of spinning your wheels and going up and down Sound familiar. Well, what if I told you that there is a way to structure your nutrition that allows for both muscle gain and fat loss without feeling like you're constantly fighting this uphill battle and not really making progress. And this is a method that aligns with your body's natural rhythms, perhaps even with your schedule, with periods of progress, with periods of progress, with periods of maintenance, with periods of recovery. Whatever life throws at you, you can handle it, and that's what we're exploring in today's episode, which is all about optimization theory. We're going to break down how you can apply the nutritional strategies of Olympic athletes to your own body composition goals, even if you never plan to compete or step on a platform or go to the Olympics, like most of us won't.
Philip Pape: 2:09
Before we dive in, if you're enjoying the show, if you want more content on building muscle and losing fat efficiently, if you want content on periodization, sign up for my email list. The link is in the show notes or you can just go to witsandweightscom slash email and you will get all sorts of unique angles, interesting strategies, helpful content. Some of it's psychology, some of it's training, some of it is nutrition, special promotions, challenges all that fun stuff that you would only get on the email list. Again, click the link in my show notes or go to witsandweightscom slash email. So when most people think about dieting, they often fall into one of two camps the chronic calorie cutter, who's always restricting you know who you are. Or the eat whatever whenever crowd or eat in moderation. Or, you know, cut carbs or whatever, who avoids any form of structure other than some general blueprint or diet. Here's the thing neither of these approaches is optimal. I think you know that they're not optimal if you want to achieve and maintain your best physique and not even optimal. They're not even effective, they're not even sustainable, and that's the use of optimal that I'm using today.
Philip Pape: 3:13
But that is where a concept called nutritional periodization comes in, and it's a strategy used by athletes in general. That's where we get the concept from, but it can be definitely applied to you. It's not just for elite competitors. We can adapt it to body composition for anyone, and in fact, it's exactly the approach that I take with my clients, whether it is in Physique University or one-on-one clients. That is what we do. So I want to talk about optimization theory and you'll see how this all comes together, about optimization theory and you'll see how this all comes together In engineering. This is a principle that is about maximizing or minimizing a function to find the best solution. In our case, we are using nutritional periodization to maximize fat loss and muscle retention, or to gain muscle and minimize fat gain, right, all while minimizing the negative impacts of our dieting, because we want it to be at least sustainable, if not enjoyable, depending on what process we're in.
Philip Pape: 4:15
So if we think about the Olympics and we think about athletes and how they do this, right, they do periodize their training. That is not what we're talking about today. I wanna talk about how they periodize their nutrition. That is not what we're talking about today. I want to talk about how they periodize their nutrition, and they tend to have four different phases or seasons. And so the one phase is the building phase, and this is where you are focusing on building muscle. You're in a slight surplus, you have higher carbs and you're either building strength or muscle. You're working on that skill and you're not selling yourself short in the energy department. You're giving yourself all that you need and, yes, it might come with a trade-off of you're going to gain some weight, kind of like the off season. Okay, that's one phase.
Philip Pape: 4:58
Then we have the performance phase. This is where you shift to potentially maintenance calories. Right, you've gotten the skill development, you've gotten the strength, you've gotten the muscle and now you're going to balance things out and fuel your performance and hold on to those gains from the building phase. Then you might have a leaning out phase, especially for sports where they need an improved strength to weight ratio. Right, think of endurance athletes, where you need to lean out and get a little bit lighter. There's a lot of examples of this. Not all sports apply right. In some sports, bigger, bigger, bigger is better, and I'm not really talking about those. So the lean out phase this is where we now introduce a gradual calorie deficit. Maybe the protein comes up a little bit, you reveal some of the muscle you've built, or you lighten out just to reduce scale weight, maybe for a weight class or some other performance metric. But again, if you just care about how you look or your physique or aesthetics, this is also simply where you're going to reveal that muscle.
Philip Pape: 5:51
And then, finally, we have the recovery phase, which is where we get back to maintenance calories. We come out of the dieting phase and then we focus back on getting to the routine we were in before before we get back to the next cycle of building. Now, through all of these cycles, the principles are roughly the same, but there are changes. There are differences. It cannot be helped. The calories change, the hunger signals change, the goal is different, even though the principles are roughly the same.
Philip Pape: 6:21
And again you might be thinking look, I'm not an athlete, do I need to do all this? Do I need to do cuts and bulks and all this stuff? And the beauty of this approach is it doesn't have to be extreme, it doesn't have to be even that difficult. It could be very gradual and you can spend as long as you want in any of these phases. You could even skip some phases in certain cases. And it really comes down to how quickly not quickly as in quick fix, but how much you're willing to go in one direction or another and really step on the gas pedal to, overall, improve your body composition a little more efficiently than someone else who might be okay coasting for a while, right?
Philip Pape: 6:56
So for the average person, what does this look like? All right, in the building phase, you might have a very slight surplus, something like this a quarter percent of your body weight a week, right, and that's where you would have plenty of protein. You would still have good quality food. You might have to have extra food, though, to get the calories in. You're gonna have more carbs and you're gonna be training really hard and really building your growth, your muscle, without excessive fat gain. And for some of you, building phase can be very lean, but I typically recommend around that sweet spot of 0.2 to 0.3% body weight a week.
Philip Pape: 7:31
The performance phase, that's the next one. That's where you get out of the building muscle and you come back to more of a maintenance phase where you stay there for a while. You sustain your habits, you sustain your body composition. Maybe you're a little bit heavier and you're ready for a cut, but you've come out of that building phase and this may be as short as zero days for some people who just want to go straight into a cut, or it may be hey, I'm going to hang out here for a while and take advantage of my larger body mass for my numbers and everything else.
Philip Pape: 7:58
Then we get to the leaning out phase and most people listen to my podcast. They're coming here. They're like how do I lose fat? Or most people sign up as a client. You know how do I lose fat? Not everyone. Some people want to go straight into the building phase, but leaning out is where we apply that moderate calorie deficit. You know, moderate for you, which could be aggressive for someone else, but for you it might be moderate to aggressive, depending on your calories, depending on your metabolism.
Philip Pape: 8:21
And we do it strategically and we do it for a defined period. And by strategically I mean there's many ways to do it. We could do it as a straight line, like every day you're eating these calories, or we can alter it, we can cycle it, we can even cycle the dieting phase with breaks and these are topics I've talked about extensively on some of my recent episodes, such as my stair-step fat loss process or my three new dieting methods. Go check those out. And then we have recovery. We always have to have recovery out of a dieting phase, right, not a reverse diet, not a reverse diet. We recover straight to our maintenance calories and we give our bodies and minds a final break from that deficit. And we've revealed our muscle and now we are ready to walk around and just maintain those results for as long as we want, until you get the bug for the next building phase, which many of us do. So that is what we mean by periodization, and this allows us to optimize our nutrition for our goals at different times, just like Olympians do, just like athletes do, but tailored to your everyday life and body composition goals.
Philip Pape: 9:22
Now, I mentioned optimization theory before and I really want to tie it to that and show you where it comes into play, because throughout this process, we're constantly gathering data and making adjustments. Without that, you cannot do this, you simply can't. It is going to be so much more frustrating. You're not going to know what's going on, there's going to be much more uncertainty and it's going to take a lot longer. My clients want to be efficient, they want to get it done, they want to know what's happening, they want to have confidence and they want to be able to fire me and do it on their own. And so this curiosity of hey, what's going on with my body? What's going on with my? Well, we're going to talk about the metrics. We track, but what's going on, so that I can make those adjustments and rapidly prototype my body along the way and go from start to finish as efficiently as possible, rather than blindly following some fixed plan.
Philip Pape: 10:14
We're optimizing it based on our individual response, and that means tracking not just your scale weight which you should and daily would be ideal but also your circumference measurements your lifts, your lifting, progression, progress photos and, most importantly, honestly is how you feel, your biofeedback, your hunger, your recovery, are you recovering well from workouts, are you sore? Your energy, your digestion, your sleep, your stress. All of this is valuable data and then, like an engineer fine-tuning a system, we make small adjustments, just small adjustments. Right? Maybe you need a few more carbs in the building phase to fuel your workouts. Maybe you can handle a slightly larger deficit in the leaning out phase without losing muscle. And the key here is we are not making drastic changes. We're making small, calculated adjustments to optimize our results. And that's exactly what Olympic athletes and their nutritionists do, and they pay them a lot of money, or somebody pays them a lot of money and you can do this on your own. You can do this with a little bit of support. You can get a little extra support by reaching out to me and we can talk about that. But they're constantly fine tuning, based on their performance and based on their body composition data, to get where they need to be. And the real power of this just to give you a little bit of a surprise here at the end is nutritional periodization. While it does give you the physical changes. It profoundly transforms your relationship with food and your relationship with your body.
Philip Pape: 11:43
All right, so one of my clients I'm going to call her Sarah. She came to me after years of yo-yo dieting very common, right, you've been dieting for years and she was either always on a diet and she tried all the fad diets, including keto, which is probably the most popular one today, other than, say, carnivore. Uh, I think she did weight watchers in the past as well. She was either on or she was, you know, off the wagon, off the track, right, there's no in between. And even if there's an in between, it's like no man's land uncertainty.
Philip Pape: 12:13
And we started with the maintenance phase, at the recovery phase, as the lead up to the leaning out phase. And we talked about periodization and how, hey, we're going to map out the next six to 12 months and I mean literally map it out Like I will take a whiteboard, we'll draw a quick, quick and dirty little graph for the next 12 months and we'll scratch out what it looks like to periodize your nutrition over time. And it completely changed her perspective and I see this all the time. It's this aha moment of oh wow, like I can actually do this and I know with certainty that I'm going to go from here to there and here there maybe. Maybe as simple as I'm going to lean out with 15 pounds of fat loss right During the building phase.
Philip Pape: 12:53
Uh, you then, once you've leaned out, what's cool about that is, once you've leaned out, now you're confident you can do it. We can go the other direction and you're confident you can do that without gaining too much weight, just gaining the right amount of weight and doing it on purpose, to build muscle. And then you learn to eat, not for emotion or because you can't help yourself, but you eat for performance, you eat for recovery, you care about nutrient density and whole foods because they fuel you and they feel good, not because they're quote unquote healthy. When you're in a maintenance phase, you practice sustaining the new habits, and Sarah did exactly that right. She now knew what to do. She didn't have the pressure of being on a diet, but it wasn't like going back quote unquote back to whatever you were eating before. It's still eating the same way. It's just scaling things a little bit.
Philip Pape: 13:38
And when she was in a fat loss phase, she learned that she could lose fat without crash dieting. And that's the key it's controlled, it's controlled and then you don't do it forever. You give your body a break with the recovery. And this is so typical of pretty much everybody I work with. And in her case, by the end of that fat loss phase it was about 16 weeks she had lost something like 18 pounds. I was looking at her data. She lost about 18 pounds of fat, lost several inches on her waist. She actually gained some muscle because there was a net improvement in her body composition while she was losing fat, so she had some recomp. She actually built some muscle and lost some fat, so she didn't even have to lose that much weight on the scale. The most important thing is she now had this sustainable, fun, enjoyable approach to nutrition that she can maintain long term. She knew how to handle vacations. She knew how to handle vacations. She knew how to handle going out. She knew how to handle being in the summer versus being in the winter, versus the holidays versus the spring.
Philip Pape: 14:34
And that's the power of nutritional periodization, right, it's not just about the physical, it's the approach that keeps you progressing year after year and you enjoy the process All right. So, as we wrap up, let me just recap all of this. Number one nutritional periodization is a powerful principle that we can live by, that is used by athletes and we can adapt it for our own body composition goals. Number two it involves cycling through different phases building, maintenance, leaning out, recovery each with its own focus, each with its own goal. Number three by applying optimization theory, we can continually fine tune our approach in those phases, based on our individual response and data. It's not fixed. And number four this strategy not only leads to physical changes, but can also transform your relationship with food and your body.
Philip Pape: 15:30
Achieving and maintaining your ideal body composition, your dream physique, whatever you want to call it, isn't about perpetual dieting. It isn't about avoiding structure. It's not about intuitive eating. It's not just quote, unquote, listening to your body. It's strategic planning. It's purposeful nutrition with intent and ongoing optimization based on your feedback. That's it. That's really what it is when you put it all together, it's clarity and confidence.
Philip Pape: 15:55
All right, again, if you want to learn more about optimizing your body composition using this approach and many of the other things that we'd use, just join my free email list. That's all you got to do Join the list, you'll get the information and then, of course, if you ever want to reach out. You can reply and say hey, philip, what's up, I have a question and I'll answer it. That's it, simple. Go to witsandweightscom, slash email or click the link in my show notes. You'll get exclusive content that I don't share anywhere else tips on how to apply principles like these, journey, and you have a direct line of connection to me and our community. Until next time, keep using your wits, lifting those weights, and remember, in nutrition, as in the Paris 2024 Olympics, it's all about strategic periodization and optimizing. For you, this is Philip Pape. You've been listening to Wits and Weights and I'll talk to you next time.
