Ep 36: Demystifying Lifting, Cardio, Nutrition, and Fat Loss

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Philip Pape (00:08):
Welcome to the Wits & Weights podcast, where we
discuss getting strong andhealthy with strength training
and sustainable nutrition. I'myour host, Philip pape, and in
each episode, we examinestrategies to help you achieve
physical self mastery through ahealthy skepticism of the
fitness industry, and acommitment to consistent
nutrition and training forsustainable results. Welcome to

(00:31):
another episode of Wits &Weights. This episode is a
replay of my appearance on KarenMartel's podcast, the other side
of weight loss. She interviewedme about everything we could
cover in about an hour onlifting cardio nutrition, fat
loss, so much more lots ofnuances, lots of back and forth.

(00:53):
She's really an amazinginterviewer. Her podcast is
fantastic, I encourage you tosubscribe to it. It's called the
other side of weight loss. Butanyway, I hope you enjoy this
replay of our interviewtogether.

Karen Martel (01:05):
Ladies, welcome back to the show. We've got a
good one for you today. I mean,when don't I have a good one for
you like, let's be honest. Buttoday's something that I haven't
gotten into on this podcast andyou've been listening to me for
the last year and a half talkingabout my my journey with losing

(01:25):
weight in men of perimenopauseand how I did that. And one of
the biggest things that I didthat impacted my finally my
ability to get off some poundswas I started to take my
exercise more seriously than Ihave ever taken it. Thanks to my

(01:49):
lovely, gorgeous Pam Sherman,she really helped me get back
into working out and I've talkedabout this on several podcasts
and how instrumental it was tohave that accountability with
her. And really started to justget into the lifestyle of

(02:09):
exercising on a on a regular andtaking the lifting weights far
more seriously. So of course,because of that I've been trying
to just dive deeper into musclebuilding. And I think that
that's something that'simportant to do to get excited
about it. Rather than just likeokay, I guess I should go to the

(02:32):
gym because I have to becauseKaren said on her podcast, this
is helpful for us menopausalwomen. You know, like it's super
important to go. Okay, let'sreally dig into this. How do we
build muscle? What is how muchprotein do I need to build
muscle? How often should I beworking out? How often should I
be lifting? You know, increasingmy weights, you know, is 20

(02:54):
minutes not enough is an hourtoo long. So ladies, this is
what we're getting into today,we're gonna get into the nitty
gritty of weightlifting andexercise. And I'm super happy
that I found my guest today.
Well, he kind of found Yeah, hefound me actually. And he
approached me and he wanted todo some ads on my podcast. And I

(03:15):
was like, yes, because his stuffsuper aligned with mine. I knew
that my audience would all couldvery easily be his audience as
well. So we connected and thenhe asked me to be on his podcast
and I was like, you've got tocome on my podcast. So let me
introduce you to my new friend,Philip Pape. He's a certified

(03:39):
nutrition coach, mindsetspecialist, strength training
expert and host of the Wits &Weights podcast. Through his
personal journey of weight lossand strength Philip learned
about evidence based nutrition,resistance training and body
composition. He started sharingwhat he learned through the Wits
& Weights podcast and eventuallynutrition coaching. Philips

(04:01):
approach emphasizessustainability, consistency and
mindset. Each person's path isunique and his mission is to
help you balance optimal healthwith the zest for life without
excessive dieting, cardio orfood restrictions. Yay. Philip
helps working professionals withbusy lives, burn fat, get lean,

(04:22):
feel energized and projectconfidence in their career and
relationships as founder andhead nutrition coach of Wits &
Weights nutrition and healthcoaching. You can find Phil at
wits & weights.com. So welcomePhil up.

Thank you Karen so much. I'm really excited to be
on the show and have thisconversation with you. Yes.

And okay, so what I love number one about you,
Philip is you're not one ofthese people that came. This
came naturally to Do you see alot of that, you know, when you
go on YouTube and you're lookingfor exercise programs or you're
online trying to find anexercise program, and majority

(05:10):
of it, you're seeing these womenand men that are freaking
shredded. And they're just like,and they're, you know, 1% of the
population. It was like theycame out of the womb lifting
weights shredded, because it'sjust genetically that's their
thing. They can very easily havethese physiques. You were not

(05:32):
like that.

That's why I'm trying to get them. But yes,
you.

So tell us your story of how you got into this.

Yeah, I guess it's more of the the average Joe type
of story, which I think isrelatable to a lot of people. As
I was growing up, I was anactive kid growing up in South
Florida, we played outside alot, but I was never in sports.
And I was never into fitness.
And frankly, my diet was neververy good. And as I grew up, I
started to gain weight, went tocollege and gain the sophomore

(06:05):
30 You know, the freshman 15 Forme as a sophomore, 30. And, you
know, I always chalk things upto genetics, like you said, I
wasn't genetically blessed inany way overweight, most of my
family struggled with weight. Wehad our disease, we had diabetes
in the family. And I think mostpeople walk around thinking,
Okay, this is my lot in life,there's really a small envelope

(06:26):
that I can actually improvewithin that I'm not going to be
like you said these fitnessinfluencers with a six pack that
are totally jacked. And I spentprobably two decades through my
20s and 30s, trying to figure itout, not really succeeding, but
learning everything that didn'twork, which is valuable. And I
cycled through all the diets. Idid Atkins back in the day I

(06:48):
did. I went through paleo, mypaleo phase, keto, a whole bunch
of weird diets that I can't evenremember that I did leading up
to my wedding just told me Yeah,you know what I'm saying? And
every time I did, I would lookin the mirror and say, Okay, I
lost weight. But what is thatdoing? For me, I'm just
skinnier, more guns pastyversion of myself, and I don't

(07:11):
feel good. I don't look good. Idon't like take my shirt off at
the pool. Like, and these areimportant things for people, you
know, in your 20s, just thevanity side of it, we can't
under under estimate in our interms of our body image. And let
alone as we get older into our30s and realize the other health
effects that these things have,you know, things like blood

(07:31):
pressure, and so on. So I, Iwent through these all these
phases of what's the next bigthing? What's the next quick fix
that's going to do it? Inparallel, I was not working out
very much through my 20s. Itried machines at the gym, I
tried cardio, you know, my ideaof fitness, like most people
was, move as much as you can andeat as little as you can. Right?

(07:53):
That's the standard formula. Andthroughout my 30s I actually did
do CrossFit. And I have to saythat CrossFit turned me on to
barbells, that, you know, I had,I had no comfort level
whatsoever before then in thegym, near dumbbells or barbells,
whatsoever. So it turned me onto, to barbells, to Olympic
weightlifting, and to kind ofworking out hard, you know,

(08:16):
getting that conditioning andsee what it feels like to push
yourself. So for all of itsfaults, it did that. But I still
felt like I was stalling foryears, I still felt like the the
physique and the bodycomposition wasn't there. If I
lost or gained weight, it wasprimarily due to diet. But I'd
have much muscle. And then whenI turned 39, so this was just a

(08:37):
few years ago, I vowed to get inthe best shape of my life. By
the time I was 40. You know, Isaid I'm gonna give myself a
year. So start to figure it allout. And I talked to my coach, I
had a coach at the time at thesame gym. He's a strength and
conditioning coach. They said,We got we've got to stop all the
bootcamp stuff, and you got tofocus on strength. I'm like,
Yeah, but doesn't that mean I'monly working out three days a

(09:00):
week and, you know, it doesn'tlook like as far as volume, how
could I possibly nope, that'swhat you got to do. That's gonna
work. Let's go figure it out. Sohe programmed some, some basic
compound moves from movementsfor me, we'll get into that, you
know, compound movements, withbarbells in the gym to get
stronger. So I started to dothat. Not the high rep, high

(09:20):
volume stuff, but low rep, veryheavy barbell based training,
maximum effort, you know what itfeels like to workout hard, and
then adding weight over time toget stronger. And we can get
into some of those details in abit. CrossFit wasn't doing that
for me because they don't focuson progression over time. That
then I realized the nextrevelation would have been

(09:43):
nutrition. So up till now Irealized I could get stronger,
and then I needed to feed themuscles to get stronger. But I
probably went a little bitoverboard. I probably gained
quite a bit of weight whiledoing that.

You're like, I'm gonna start walking. That's what
it was. Yeah.

Got a book, I was drinking whole milk. Okay, I was
eating whatever right theseafood diet as they say. And I
probably gained 30 pounds inlike six months. And you know if
I'm around 180, so that's adecent amount of weight again.
And but but I but actually I wasfeeling better I was feeling
stronger I was I was lighter onmy feet, you know, I was being

(10:20):
able to I was able to play withmy kids in a way that didn't
tire me. So I knew there weresome benefits here even though I
was getting a little bit fluffy.
And so this was around 2020, thepandemic lockdowns occurred. And
I had time now to kind of focuson learning and studying and
reading listening to podcastslike yours. And listening to the

(10:42):
evidence based experts talkabout nutrition strength
training, flexible dietingprotein, you know, the the right
rep ranges, all of these things,and I just dove in headfirst and
learned as much as I could, andfinally started to get it and
figure out what the things I wasmissing. Some of the things we
can get into today. And comelate 2021, I made significant

(11:05):
progress is in the best shape ofmy life as I get, I finally had
decent body composition finallyhad some muscle. And I'm like, I
want to tell people about this.
I like to talk a lot. So how didI do that? I'm not a huge fan of
writing a lot. So forget theblog. Let's go with the podcast.
And that's how I started theWits & Weights podcast in late

(11:27):
2021. And then fortuitously, oneof my listeners who was also a
co worker of mine, she was apowerlifter. And she came on my
show, she was one of my earliestinterviews. And afterwards, she
said, You know, I learned somuch in a week of binging your
show, compared to what I hadlearned in years of lifting and

(11:48):
nutrition. And I think you makea good coach. So that kind of
gave me the bug to pursuenutrition coaching, became
certified. And now I help peopledoing that as well and come on
to podcasts like yours. And Ithink that's why I'm here today.

Wow, oh my gosh, I see so many parallels between
you and I like my story is sosimilar, but it's like the
female version, trying you know,all the different diets and, and
then thinking that CrossFit, itwasn't called CrossFit was
identical to CrossFit, though,thinking that that was the

(12:20):
answer that you know, what if I,if I really pushed it and did
these, like super hardcoreCrossFit like workouts, then for
sure, I'm going to lose theweight, and trying paleo and
Atkins and keto and vegan andall of these things, and just
not coming up with results. AndI feel like I did this dance

(12:41):
for, oh my gosh, probably 15years before I finally got went,
Oh, this is not working. This isnot what my body needs. And I
had to go on a completelydifferent path at that point
than you did. Because that'swhat my body needed. But now
come the last few years, I'vegotten back into it and been

(13:02):
like, Okay, how do I do this nowfor real? Like, and how do I
sustain it? So I think, youknow, I think you need to share
with us what you feel was kindof, you know, you're a mindset
specialist. So in this last twoyears, what really shifted in
the mind to get you to do this,like isn't, stay with it? And,

(13:27):
you know, did you just becauseyou started seeing results, or
just the education or youfigured out how to do it, right?
Like, what really got you to gothis is it and I'm going to
stick with it.

Yeah, that's, that's always a great question.
Because in hindsight, you cansee, you can find key moments
that might have caused thebreakthrough. And in reality, in
the moment, it was a combinationof education, awareness and hard
work. And when I say hard work,I don't mean to turn people off
to the idea that, Oh, this isgoing to be a struggle. I

(13:58):
actually mean that in thepositive way in that once we
start seeing those results fromthe process, and you know,
process works, it literally is amatter of okay, repeating the
process over and over again, andthen refining it from there. So
things like you mentionedcardio. For years, the mode of
exercise, for me was running,lots of cardio, biking, running,

(14:20):
rowing, and even the cardioconditioning. And I always
thought, Okay, we need to burncalories. And then I read a book
by Henry Ponsor, it was I thinkit's called Burn came out a few
years back, which was about adifferent way to look at
metabolism, not in the Okay, themore you move, the more you
burn, but our bodies adapt, andthere's not a lot you can do

(14:43):
about that from an exerciseperspective. But if you have
more muscle mass, you can burnmore calories. And that was just
one of those little revelationsthat came along. I said, huh? So
you're saying to people the samesize in the same way, the person
that has greater fat free masssimply burns more calories 23
hours a day when they're notextra? sizing. And it's those
little revelations over time andstarting to open your mind to,

(15:07):
oh, I actually need twice asmuch protein as I've ever eaten
before. That sounds crazy. Isn'tthat gonna hurt my kidneys? Or
is it going to cause otherproblems? You know? No, those
are myths. But until you lookinto it until you understand
what the evidence says, Youdon't know that it works. So
this is kind of a long windedanswer. No, it's right. Yeah.
But but it really is awarenessand education I tried to do with

(15:29):
my clients from day one is whydo we do this? Why does it work?
What does the evidence say? Sothat you buy in and you say,
Okay, well, I can't argue withfacts. Now. I just need to do
it.

Yeah, exactly. I used to think that if only I
could become a runner, then Iwould be thin. I did a whole
blog post on it was one of myfirst blog posts because I had
that belief for so many years.
And I would think, Okay, I'mjust gonna get out there, I'm
gonna start running every daywould last like two days. And
I'd be like, I hate it. Theyhate running. But I thought that
that's how I could be thin. AndI think women are so stuck

(16:01):
still, in the headspace ofcardio is key. Even though
they've been hearing so muchmore than weightlifting, so
important. And I think there's ablockage. Do you tell me if you
think there's a blockage? Likewhen you're working with female
clients? Do you not think thateven though they're hearing so

(16:22):
much about weight liftingweights, they still have this
like subconscious belief thatlifting heavy is going to make
them bulky, that it's not likehow is it that that's going to
help them lose weight, ifthey're not sweating and running
for an hour on a treadmill?

I do get that.
Although, right from our veryfirst conversation, I think I
try to let them know who I amand what I think and a lot of
people that I meet clients, theycome through listening to the
podcast, for example, and, andthey have that level of trust
and knowledge. And fortunately,the knowledge is is
disseminating more than in thepast. Like I think the the noise
of the fitness industry isstarting to get some clarity

(17:04):
with with these. But having saidthat, yes. If you have more
clients, they love to do theirPilates and yoga and tennis and
peloton and all the other thingsand like, okay, we can still do
those. We have to dial it back.
You know, let's think about howmuch we lift versus how much we
run. And what do we care about?
What do we prioritize? And let'sdo that. I'm not going to cut

(17:24):
out something completely for youenjoy it. But like if you said,
if you're just running becauseyou think it's the right thing
to do, but you hate running.
We're not going to run anymoreat all.

Yeah, yeah.
Fantastic. So ideally, let'sstart kind of getting into the
nitty gritty now myths andfacts. Ideally, how much cardio
versus weight training shouldthe average woman that's in her
40s and beyond, because we'remost of my listeners are in that
mid life phase? What do you feelis ideal. As far as that balance

(17:54):
goes, if somebody's goal isweight loss?

Yes. So if your goal is, whatever your goal is,
so I want to be clear whetheryour goal is weight loss,
maintenance muscle building,you're going to want to train
roughly the same amount. Andit's going to be, you know,
sufficient to build muscle andit's gonna be sufficient to
retain muscle when you're losingweight. Because we don't just
want to lose muscle and fat, wewant to lose fat, right want to

(18:23):
hold on to that muscle. Sosimple rule of thumb when you're
a beginner, three days a weekfor about 45 minutes to an hour
is what it's going to come outto, if you're doing some big
compound lifts, compound liftsbeing the multi joint movements
like squats, deadlifts, benchpresses, and so on. And cardio
should be about half that. Sofor lifting three hours a week,

(18:47):
cardio should be an hour and ahalf maximum. Ideally, I would
say in a fat loss phase, themain form of cardio is going to
be walking, right and a lot ofpeople don't realize, okay, you
know, walking right? Getting atleast 7500 steps a day is
correlated with a significantdrop in mortality, and increase
in ability to lose fat, and aton of other health benefits.

(19:11):
And it's a lot easier thanrunning for most people and more
enjoyable. Yeah, it's easy tofit into your day like pacing
around the house and parkingfarther from the store, going up
the stairs, just going for awalk for 10 minutes after a
meal. And that'll be the primaryprimary form. But if you want to
do other more intense forms ofcardio you come from the
CrossFit world or something. Thenext best thing would be high

(19:34):
intensity interval training,maybe two or at most three times
a week for about 10 to 20minutes. And that would be the
traditional one to two ratio ofall out to rest. So for example,
if you're gonna do 10 minutesession of sprinting, you might
sprint for 30 seconds and restfor a minute to a minute and a

(19:55):
half. And then do that six timesand you're done. Once or you
know maybe once or twice Sweet.

So if somebody's like, Oh, but I just love
running and all I love hit somuch is, is it bad to do more?
Like, what happens if we'redoing more, we're still doing
what you say, and we're gonnago, Okay, I'm going to commit to
three times a week, 45 minutesof lifting. But now I want to do
cardio every day, I want to gofor a run for 30 minutes. Is

(20:24):
there a detriment to that? Orwhat starts to happen? Does it
take away from the body buildingin any way?

The answer is yes, to an extent. So there's
something called theinterference effect, which, like
many these things, evolve overtime, it used to be this this
this scary thing, like if you doany cardio at all, you know,
you're gonna interfere with yourgains, and you know, cardio is
gonna kill you or something. Butit's a little more moderated
than that. If you do a lot ofcardio, especially running,

(20:52):
you're going to interfere withyour lifting in a few ways.
Number one is recovery. So a lotof running is you're basically
marshaling resources to recoverfrom that stress, that now
cannot be devoted to recoveringfrom the stress you put on your
muscles, so that they adapt, getstronger and bigger. Another way
that interferes with recovery isphysically with the joint

(21:13):
impacts from running, you know,on your knees, for example, and
also the fact that when you run,there's both concentric and
eccentric motion involved, justlike when you do squats, you go
up and down. And that causessoreness. And that also causes
recovery, to, again, requireresources for recovery from the
running more than does for thelifting. And then the last thing

(21:37):
that can be a problem is if yourun too much, you send your body
and endurance signal that's sortof in conflict with the strength
building signal, meaning yourbody is is saying, Hey, I'm an
endurance athlete, for lack of abetter word, and I need to be
efficient with my calories. Sothis down regulates your
metabolism. So it actually hasthe opposite opposite effect of

(21:57):
what we want. A lot of people docardio and running to burn
calories, but too much of itwill actually cause your
metabolism to decline.

Awesome. I love that cn CF, I did not know. And
on a hormonal standpoint, I willjust add, running is more far
more of a stressor thanweightlifting is and women in
midlife have a lot of issueswith cortisol. Naturally, this
happens where our cortisol, wetypically rise when we're going

(22:27):
through perimenopause. So ifwhen we think about it from that
stress bucket view, and we'readding, you know, we've got all
the all these stressorshappening in our life, and then
we're adding on top of thatexcessive amounts of cardio,
then it's going to overfill thatbucket, and then that stress
becomes too much for the body.
And when that happens, you canactually develop sarcopenia, so
you can start eating away atthose muscles that you're trying

(22:50):
to build. Yeah. Okay, so here'sthe million dollar question.
When I was on this journey Ididn't, I started at the three
times a week. So I think thatthat, you know, for anyone
that's listening, that hasn'tstarted out doing any
weightlifting, I think that issuper ideal. And it's such a
great, easy place to start thatcan be easily committed to like,

(23:15):
I think most people can say,Okay, three times a week is
doable. I really wanted to takeit up a notch. And so I wanted
to do five days a week, four tofive days a week of lifting.
What I have noticed is I can Imore so four than five. But I,
when I started, I was like, Iwant to do it five days a week

(23:36):
because I want to put even moremuscle on is that a problem.

So building strength and size requires a
certain amount of intensity,which means weight on the bar
and a certain amount of volume.
And oddly enough, women can tendto handle a little bit more
volume than men. And that's whythey we sometimes have different
rep schemes for women as theyget stronger. But as a beginner,
you have the capacity to recoververy quickly. So if you, if you

(24:06):
go three days a week, you canput in the most effort and
intensity in that workout andget the most adaptation over the
next 48 hours. Then if you wereto go four or five days a week
and have less of that recovery.
So you're actually and for somepeople, especially as you get

(24:29):
older, I mean 60s 70s, two daysa week might be ideal, you know,
every every third day orsomething like that. So it's
always that we want to do somuch we want so much volume, we
think more is better. Yes. Asyou get stronger, and as you get
into that intermediate phase,which is usually around six
months of really solidintelligent lifting, then you're
going to need more more days aweek simply because you need

(24:52):
long rest periods. And you'reworking with very high weights
and it's just going to take toolong in the gym otherwise, so
you need to spread it out. Alsoyou need more volume at that
level, because you're notincreasing the weight every
session, you might be increasingit every week or two instead.
Oh, so

if so, kind of six months or more in, then you can
do more days with moreintensity, longer between sets.

But more rest periods. Yeah, we can get into
that as well. All those details.
Yep.

Okay, awesome. So I'm not doing anything wrong.
Because I didn't start that tillI was well into it.

No, and I and I've done personally, I've done 345
And six day splits. But when Ifirst started, the three days
was where you could just put inthe most effort. I mean, if
you're going five days, what areyou doing on those days? So for
example, if you're going tosquat, are you squatting every
day? Are you splitting it up?
There, there's a case to be madefor splitting it. And then just
having much shorter sessions, ifit's a time thing, right? But

(25:53):
systemically like squats anddeadlifts, they're systemically
fatiguing. So you'd rather havethat rest in between to get the
most adaptation?

Right, yeah, because that's what I did. I
went to less body parts persession. And I did do like two
on one off three on one off,like I did split it up, because
and I felt like that was needed.
And I can really listen to mybody now. And I'll be like, Oh,
I really feel like I can't workout today, I need to rest I'll
be super sore from that workoutthat I did. So. Okay, I love

(26:28):
this. I get really excited. Sojust rewind a little bit and
just share a little bit aboutwhat the compounded movements
are. Why is it calledcompounded? Because I'm trying
to like, you know, for thepeople that really have no clue
because that's a big part of itto fill up is that women are

(26:49):
super afraid. Because they'relike, What is this jargon? You
know, like, what's compoundedexercise? What do they mean?
Like, you know, my little nephewthe other day, he's 16. And he's
been lifting weights, and he'ssuper into it. And I said, Where
were you at the gym today? Andhe was like, Oh, I was there.
You know, I, you know, it was itwas there an hour later than

(27:11):
you? And I was like, Oh, well, Icould have used you today
because I got, you know, Ineeded help with my I said, I
went up in my shoulder press andI needed help. And he's like,
Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. You had anew PR did? Yeah. I was like PR
was PR. He's like, personalrecord. My 16 year old
obviously. It's true. I'm like,yeah, the new PR.

lingo. Okay. So, yeah, so compound is just
because we're using multiplejoints. So compound meaning
multiple. That's what it means.
Okay, so it's a multi jointedmovement. So when you think of
what you could do in the gym,you could do something like a
squat, which uses multiplejoints, hips, and knees and

(27:59):
ankles, right? But if you did abarbell curl, or a dumbbell curl
uses a single joint, your elbow.
So you can kind of reverseengineer any move and say, Is it
compound by how many joints arewe using? The benefit of
compound lifts is they allow youto lift the heaviest weight,

(28:20):
using the most muscle mass, andalso the biggest muscle fibers
in the least amount of time. Soit's kind of the dream movement,
for getting the biggest bang foryour buck with our time in the
gym. So with beginners, a veryefficient approach is going
three days a week, and doingfull body every single day,

(28:41):
where you're squatting everyday, deadlifting every day, and
pressing every day, because youcan handle that. And you don't
need to be doing hip thrusts.
Ladies, you don't need to bedoing kickbacks. You don't need
to be doing any of thisisolation stuff, cable work
machines, nothing because littlebit of humor here, if I have a
male client come in and say,hey, I want to get big and
strong. Say, all right, we needto get you just strong all

(29:02):
around. First we build thatbase, we're going to squat and
deadlift. And a female clientsays, I want to get tone I want
to get bigger but tighter butbetter legs. Okay, we got to
squat and deadlift. It's thesame answer, because that's how
you use the most muscle mass andget significantly stronger. In a
very short period. I'm talkingthree months, you could probably

(29:23):
go from a 557 female waiting, Idon't know 161 70 could probably
go from 95 pounds on the bar toover 200 in that timeframe. You
know, for sets of five, and thecompound lifts are the way the
way to do that. They're safe.
You can use barbells and they,you know, they teach you how to

(29:45):
work hard and work towardmuscular failure. Yeah,

and and it's, I think an inexpensive way to get
started at home if you wantedto. Right like you could easily
get some heavier dumbbells whereyou know You could just do
squats, chest press, deadliftand shoulder press or all the
compounds. That's right. Yeah,yeah. Okay, well,

there are other movements that are compound
movements. Technically, all thevariants of those would be
compound movements. And alsothings like a hip hinge like a
Romanian deadlift, or verticalpole, like a pull up or chin up
is also compound. Right? a bentover row is a compound. So there
are a lot of things that arecompound movements. And I would
always start there before Istarted adding an accessory

(30:32):
movements and isolationmovements.

Right? What is do the isolation movements, though,
eventually have a place and canhelp to kind of get that more
shredded look in the arms, forinstance, let's say so some
single ones, everybody would be,you know, tricep work, bicep
work, hamstring work calves,right?

Yeah, I think of it as like layers. So if you are a
pyramid, you take the compoundlifts will give you the big
foundation at the bottom, theywill make you strong overall,
they'll use multiple musclegroups, every time you work them
out, they'll keep thingsreasonably proportional to your
own anatomy and youranthropometry meaning, like, if
you do a squat out on the grass,you're gonna move in a certain

(31:21):
way, if you lift a barbell,doing that same movement, you're
gonna keep everythingproportional, right? That's the
first layer. The next layerwould be things that support
those movements. So it might befor example, a close grip bench
press to support your triceps inthe benchpress. So again, now
you're starting to target thetricep a little bit more,

(31:41):
because the movement you'redoing emphasizes that but it's
still using multiple musclegroups. Or another example would
be like chin ups, I would tellpeople work chin ups before they
start doing curls. Because thatinvolve your back and your
biceps. Right. And that's,that's the second layer. And
then the third layer is okay,now I've got extra time. I'm an
intermediate lifter, I want toimprove my physique. I, you

(32:04):
know, I have the extra day inthe gym. Let's throw in pearls.
So that's kind of the approach Itake. Oh,

I like that a little layered a stallion, we'll
call it. Yeah.

So you stack it stacked and get jacked.

Nice. Oh, I like that. Put that as a little
tagline in our for thisinterview? Hey, you said you
know, three months, you can getresults. However, I don't think
many people do because they'renot pushing themselves hard
enough. So when it comes to howoften should we be adding weight

(32:44):
to that barbell? For instance?
Like, if I can push out 10 AndI'm struggling at 10? Is that a
sign that I need to put more on?
Like what how many reps shouldwe be able to get to before
failure in order to see resultsin three months and get some
muscle built?

Hey, this is Philip pape, letting you know that
applications are now open forone on one coaching. If you're a
busy working professional, whohas tried dieting and exercising
for years, with little in theway of results, and you want to
lose fat, get lean or feelconfident in your body without
excessive dieting, cardio orrestrictions, just go to wits &
weights.com/coaching to apply.
Right. So this is a this is adebated topic, because it does

(33:30):
depend on whether you're goingto use barbells dumbbells or
what have you. And it would bemy preference for someone who's
new to use barbells. But I knowthat we don't have always have
access to those, or a gym withbarbells. Or we can't do that at
our home gym. So then I wouldsay dumbbells are the next best
option. The challenge withdumbbells is going to be they
get unwieldy as they getheavier, right. Like to get them

(33:53):
into place for certain movementslike a benchpress. Very much. So
yeah, you risk you know, pullingyour shoulder, your elbow and
things like that. Whereas abarbell, you just unrack it. The
other thing is it's hard to jumpin weight, the amount you want
with a dumbbell, because youeither need, you need all the
dumbbells first of all, and ifyou're not super strong yet, you
don't want to make necessarilyfive pound jumps when you need

(34:16):
to make a two and a half poundjump. Right? And so then you
have to like look at gettingmicroplate magnets or something
like that. These are like littlehacks, but let's just simplify
it and talk about barbells. Thefirst workout you ever do,
you're going to pick a weightthat you think is reasonable,
whatever that is, I don't care,it might be too light for you
that day. And our goal is to doa fixed set of reps and sets. So

(34:39):
we're not working in rep rangesas a beginner. Like we're not
working eight to 12 or six toeight we're saying alright,
we're going to do three sets offive squats Monday, Wednesday,
Friday for the indefinitefuture. That first day you come
in, you put 95 pounds on the barand three sets So five, yeah,
that was no problem. Okay,great. So the next time you're

(35:01):
gonna put five, maybe 10 poundsfor, if I see that it's easy for
you go up by 10, which isroughly 10%, cheer up to 105. No
problem, then you have to 115.
Okay, now it's starting to gethard. Alright, maybe we start
making five pound jumps here,after maybe a month of that, now
you're pushing upper onehundreds. And this is really

(35:22):
hard, I don't think I could getall three set, no, you can get
all three sets, because that'swhat we're doing. We're getting
all three sets of five squats,like you've been doing every
session. But next week, we'regonna go up by two and a half.
So kind of logarithmicallyscales, right, you kind of go up
10% And maybe 5%, or maybe twoand a half. But the goal is to
never miss a rep. And you go inthinking, I'm never gonna miss a

(35:44):
rep, it's a mindset thing,you're not going to miss a rep.
And, you if you understand thereasons we fail reps, you'll do
the things ahead of time to notmiss a rep. Okay? So it's not
really about feel, it's notabout is this feeling hard, it's
you are getting the three setsof five. And because you got it,
you're gonna get a littlestronger. Over the next 48

(36:04):
hours, your body's gonna adapt,and you're gonna be able to get
five pounds more next time,because you got stronger. Same
thing over and over repeatedagain and again until you start
plateauing months down the line.
Now, what are the three thingsthat can cause us to fail reps?
Number one, you're not takinglong enough rest periods. So we
talked about that earlier. A lotof people think 30 seconds is

(36:25):
enough. I don't know what yourexperiences Karen, but 30
seconds to a minute. Let's justgo to the next set, I just want
to get this done, I would sayyou need at least two to three
minutes. And after about a monthor two of strength gains,
probably three to five minutesbetween those compound lifts.
Because you want to get all thereps, I don't want you to sweat

(36:45):
or get sore, that's not thepoint. Or just to get it done.
It's to get all the reps. Sothat's number one. Rest. Number
two is recovery betweenworkouts. So this goes back to
don't do a crazy amount ofcardio, eat enough food, get
enough sleep, manage yourstress. Now, it is pretty much a
fact that you can't, most peoplecannot build much muscle unless

(37:09):
you are at least at maintenancecalories or in a surplus. But if
you're very overweight, or ifyou're brand new, I definitely
have seen people gain muscleeven in a diet. So that that
gets into the nuances of whichdirection do we go? If a client
is coming to me and is 30 poundsoverweight, is struggled with
weight for years, and she justwants to feel better by getting

(37:30):
that quick win. I'm not going toforce her to start gaining
weight, you know, to buildmuscle necessarily. On my mind,
I'm like that might be the idealthing to do. You're not going to
like gaining another 10 poundsbefore we lose 30 pounds. Yes,
that's tough. Yeah. So thatmindset. So rest between sets,
recovery between workouts. Andthen the last thing is not

(37:52):
making jumps that are too big.
So if you have all those in yourmind, if you listen to your
body, and you start jumping weekto week, taking your session to
session, taking the right restand having the right recovery,
you should be able to stringthat up for three to six months
and get significantly stronger.

Okay, so let me get this right. So when we want
to, you know, let's say we needto get to five, we're doing five
reps, how many times are wedoing that? Three sets of five,
three sets of five for a squat?
It's so it's not about like, Wasthat too easy? It's more about
making sure you're adding weightto that on a weekly basis.

No on a session by session basis. Oh,

out. Okay. Yes,

yeah. That's progressive overload, right?
Let's just throw the phrase outthere in case people are
familiar. That's what we mean byprogressive overload, you're,
it's kind of a misnomer, becauseyou're not really overloading
beyond what you can handle.
You're loading just to the limitof what you can handle in that
session. And then your bodyadapts to that because you said
hey, I need to handleheavyweight body. And your body

(39:04):
says, Okay, let's grab theprotein. Let's break it into
amino acids and build muscletissue and make it a little bit
stronger. And then two dayslater, you come back. Oh, now I
can lift five more pounds.

And just to be clear, so in case I talk to my
nephew again, would that be poprogressive overload? Is that?
Is there an acronym for that?
No, no. Okay. So it shouldn't belike, Hey, did you pee? Oh,
today?

You never know.
Right?

Okay, well, I just want to get this right the slang
right. So it can be cool to mymy young nephews. Okay, I don't
do that. Oh my gosh. Okay.
That's very cool. And I'm reallyexcited about it. So each day of
the week, we're going up inweights.

Yeah, so if we're squatting, it's going to be
every time if we're deadliftthen we're probably not going to
do three sets because it's sofatiguing on the body that you
might do one set. And after afew weeks or maybe a month, you
might alternate deadlifts withanother pole like pull ups,
because it's just so fatiguingyou, this is where we have to

(40:16):
balance recovery and stress.

Right, and I guess when you're working with this is
where you can come in to like,where it's so valuable to work
with a trainer because like, Iwasn't doing this on my own, you
know, and to have somebodythere, that's gonna say, Okay,
that looks like, you know, itwas really, we're really
struggling. So we're going tonow pair this with, you know, a

(40:39):
chin up or whatever, you know,to watch what we're doing and to
tweak it however necessary atthat time. I think that that's
definitely take somebody atrainer, when you're starting
out to help you with that. Butthat's so cool. Okay, so we're
going up every session. And ifneed be, you're waiting three to

(41:00):
five minutes between sets,right? If it was part, yeah,
ideally, yeah. Probably. Yeah.
Ideally,

it's as long as you need to get all the reps,

right. And if you don't, let's say you're doing
that squat, and you can only dothree,

then you just can't. And that's where it's
like, we have to play the mindgame and the thought experiment,
say, Okay, we, our goal is neverto miss reps. We don't go in and
getting three. So what do weneed to do ahead of time to get
to be successful next time inthe gym? And it might be, well,
we only go up by two and a halfpounds this time, or might be,

(41:42):
hey, we need to, we need to getmore sleep. Because we're only
getting six and a half hours, weneed to get seven or seven and a
half. Little things like thatbefore we start saying I'm just
not getting stronger andplateauing. Right? Yeah. And you
see the same thing when it comesto dieting and other things like
we look at biofeedback. And wetry to bounce get the whole
system in balance before we makedrastic moves and say, okay,

(42:03):
you've got a medical condition,or you've got something else
going on. I do want to addressKaren, the other thing is, so a
lot of my clients don'tnecessarily follow and don't
necessarily use barbells,because they don't have access
to them. And they don'tnecessarily have to do sets of
five, right? So you are sayingyou don't do that you do
probably rep ranges, maybe youwork eight to 10 reps, or

(42:26):
dumbbell movement. So fordumbbells that actually makes
more sense, because you don'twant to go extremely heavy with
dumbbells just Yeah, I can.
We'll do. Yeah. So that's okay.
And as long as the the goal isto get close to muscular
failure, right, so if you'redoing a compound movement,
that's usually two to three repsshy of failure. A beginner

(42:47):
doesn't really know where thatis, though, let's be honest,
they really don't know, becausethe beginner doesn't know their
maximum strength, they can'texpress that yet, they don't
have the training, they don'thave the experience, they don't
have the form. So in that case,if your rep ranges eight to 12,
I would say your first setshould definitely be no more
than 12. Right. And if if youget to 12, you're like I can

(43:09):
keep going keep going. But knowthat that was too late, right?
So your first set should be nomore than 12. And your last set
should be no less than eight,right. And if every set is
around 11 or 12, then you'regoing to increase the weight
next week, you're going toincrease or the next time,
you're going to keep doing itjust like we do with the
barbells until one of those setscan't get to eight. So one of

(43:36):
those sets comes out at seven.
And that's absolutely the lastone you can do. That is where
you do a reset. That is whereyou say I'm now going to go back
down to a weight. That's alittle bit more for 12 than I
did before.

Just because we're limited with dumbbells.

Well, this is more of the double. This is called
double progression where ifwe're working in a rep range, I
don't want you to try to hit 10.
Exactly, I'd rather you pushwith the dumbbells. So it's
going to be in a range. That'swhy we have the range. But my
point is if you get you're goingto increase the weight each
session, if you then have asession where one of those sets
is seven and you can't geteight, then you hit your limit.

(44:16):
And the next week you're goingto reduce the weight on the
dumbbells, but it's going to behigher than the last time you
got 12 You know what I mean? Soif you started Yes. 1520 2530
And now you hit your limit. Andlast time you did 15 pounds for
12 will now go for 20 for 12.

(44:38):
Right? For 12. Yeah microplates.
Yeah,

great. Those are little nuances. That's awesome.
I love that. Yeah, I definitelyI was doing everything from home
and I got I have a barbell I gota rack that dumbbells, but I did
100% get to a point where I wasbecame limited with what I was
used. Same as, especially withthe dumbbells, I as a woman I

(45:03):
did, I used to do massagetherapy. So I don't have strong
hands, just to pick up thedumbbell that I needed to do a
chest press with became, Icouldn't do it. And same with
even just, you know, bent overrows, I was like, I can't this
is this is too little too latefor me. And so I had to go to

(45:25):
the gym, where I could getaccess to people helping me and
supporting me and being able todo the barbell with help. And
instead of doing dumbbells, andso I did have to go to the gym
eventually, if I wanted tocontinue building the muscle,
and it definitely helped me tojump up. And so I think those
that are listening, I think, youknow, you can get limited from

(45:48):
home. I think yeah,

it's about maximizing versus get it's
progress is progress. So I agreedoing any form of strength
training is going to get youstronger and build muscle, but
it just may take a lot longerthan you'd like, unless you're
pushing it with the right tools.
And in this case, that would bebarbells, for example, or it
could be certain cable machinesand things like that, where you
can load them heavy, butbarbells are the safest way to

(46:12):
go.

Yeah, I feel like with this was like, I feel like
I just got like a secret foreverybody. Because I just just
that just how to do this, Ithink this is so awesome.
Because most women that youspeak to will tell you that
they're doing what I was doing,which is 12 reps, you know,
three sets of 12. And you know,they're making sure that they

(46:37):
get so that it's a little bittough, but they're never going
beyond that, you know, 10 pound15 pound dumbbell, it's just
like we have this block orsomething I think a lot of us
do. And it's you get intoroutine, really. And so knowing
that you should should beputting an emphasis on putting

(46:58):
weight on maybe every session,like you said, there's nuances
to that. But that this weight isalways increasing, I think that
is so key, because most peopledon't get results within three
months. And they and then theygive up because they're like,
I'm not seeing any difference.
I'm not losing weight I'm done.

(47:18):
You know, this is and they can'tstick to it. So knowing that,
oh, this is a different way tomake sure that we are
progressively building muscle.
And that we could see results inas little as three months. And I
know you're not saying likewe're going to be bikini models
in three months or anything. Butjust knowing that as a goal to
keep in mind, like, because whenyou get started working out, it

(47:41):
can be really hard to stick withit and build up this new habit.
So knowing like, okay, but youknow, in three months, I could
start seeing results. I feellike that's really encouraging
for the people that are juststarting out.

Yeah, totally agree. Yes. Yeah, I agree. I
mean, I did CrossFit for eightyears. And if anybody listening
you know about CrossFit, there'sa lot of barbell work, right?
There's an Olympic lifts, andthere's deadlifts and all that,
but doesn't use this progressiveoverload. So you kind of tap out
pretty quickly, you get littlestronger, just naturally, but
you don't your weight kind ofplateaus for years. And then it

(48:18):
wasn't until I said, Okay, Ineed to do it this other way
that I realized within months,you know, I took my squat from
like, what was it 215 to 315. Ina few months. It's a huge jump
for a male to do that. Ofcourse, I haven't taken it much
more than that since then,because you start to plateau,
but I'm happy where I got.

Okay, so the next million dollar question,
protein, how much protein doesdo we need to be doing this
style of muscle growth, wherewe're really putting an emphasis
on putting more weight on andwe're not wanting to balk, but
we need to feed the muscle. Andif we're in this extreme caloric

(48:57):
deficit, you just can't getenough protein in. So how do we
balance this? How did it how canwe keep losing weight, get
enough protein in and put muscleon?

Yeah, Protein Protein is like the anchor
macronutrient. It's the one thatwe peg the rest of our nutrition
to. It's the one that we pickfirst, and we target first. And
whether you're gaining weight orlosing weight, the protein needs
are about the same. So on adiet, it makes it harder because
now you're sacrificing fats andcarbs. When you're building,

(49:29):
it's usually not as difficult.
So the amount of protein weneed, the quick rule of thumb is
one gram per pound. So that'swhatever you weigh. Take a gram
per pound. The more nuancedanswer is. There's a range
between point seven and onethat's considered optimal for
most people, maybe even a littlemore when you're losing weight,
and it's based on your targetweight. So if you're very

(49:53):
overweight, let's say you're 250and your goal weight is 190. I'm
going to have you shoot pretendthat you're 190 pounds and base
your protein off of that. Sowhat I find is, especially for
women, they tend to be undereating protein by roughly half,
that's usually what I see. Yeah,so 160 pound female should be
eating at least around 140, youdon't have to get all the way to

(50:16):
the one gram. And she's usuallyeating around 60 to 80. Right.
And that's what happens when youjust when you don't eat a lot of
meat, but you eat some meat, andyou usually don't have much
protein with breakfast, andyou're not having a lot of
snacks. Or if you'd likeintermittent fast, something
like that. You just can't cramin all that protein, unless you
intentionally do it. So everysingle plant I have struggled

(50:39):
with this when they come in. Andevery single client I have this
is one of our primary prioritiesfrom week one is getting that
protein where it needs to be.
And we talk about things likemeal planning for that. So if
you need to get I mean cared, ifyou need 160 grams of protein,
you don't want to cram thoseinto two meals, right? That's 80

(51:00):
grams. So by definition, do themath you need to eat four or
five times a day. But one or twoof those might just be a protein
shake, or a small snack withdairy if you eat dairy, you
know, like cottage cheese orGreek yogurt or something like
that. And it's just simple math.
And once you do that, yousatisfy your protein
requirements, no matter whatyour goal is, you get your
enough protein for the day, andyou spread it out evenly. You're

(51:22):
good.

Is there a? Is there an amount that we
shouldn't go over per meal? Asfar as protein goes?

There's no so there's no limit to protein per
meal per day? Absolutely not.
There used to be some concernabout kidneys and whatnot. All
of that is is a myth.

Wow. Okay. And something that one of my
trainers told me, she said,Because I said, I have trouble
getting in that much proteinbecause I'm not hungry. So I'll
prioritize protein, and thenfind that by the end of the day,
I still haven't eaten enough,but I'm not hungry. So it's
hard. It was really hard for me.
And she said, as you startlifting more, and then your

(52:02):
hunger will go up. And so thenthe need for protein will
increase. But so is that, youknow, if we're listening to our
body, we're not trying tooverfeed ourselves. Correct?

Right with the protein has been within our
calorie needs, depending on whatour deficit requirement or
surplus requirement is.

Okay. And so I would think especially doing
this kind of style of workoutthat you're talking about, I
could really see then that, yes,hunger would start to increase.
And so the first and foremostthing to be eating is the
protein because that's tellingyour body's telling you, you
need more protein, becauseyou're hungry.

Yeah, that's a good point. And protein has a lot of
benefits that are associatedwith that. One is protein is the
most satiating macronutrient. Soit will fill you up the most,
which would explain why somebodytrying to eat a lot would get
fuller, more easily. But it's agood thing when you're dieting
it helps. The second thing is ithas the highest thermic effect

(53:05):
of feeding. So it burns the mostcalories when being digested
compared to the other macros. Sojust eating more protein burns
more calories. And then what wasthe third thing? I can't
remember off the top? But that'sgood enough for now.

Yeah. And so with your clients and what you're
seeing, even just with your ownexperience, and what's out
there, how do we lose weight?
Are we is it? Is it that we'rejust putting on muscle, we don't
really have to pay attention asas long as we're eating healthy,
we're getting a proteinrequirement. Do we need to be in
still a caloric deficit to losethe fat part?

Yeah, what what is our goal can't so this is where
we can pick a scenario is thissomeone who feels that they're
20 to 30 pounds overweight, andthey're trying to lose weight?
Yeah. And so if it were a maleclient, and I said, Let's build
muscle first, they'll listen tome, and let's just do it, a
female clinic, and they'll lose20

pounds in a week without even trying. So let's
just hear women are different.

It's totally the opposite. So man, I struggle to
have them getting away. But forwomen, what we would do first
is, before we do any fat loss,we're gonna get you into a
maintenance phase and discoveryour true maintenance calories
and get some of these skills inplace. So the most important
skills for me are going to beenough protein training and
steps. Okay, there are otherthings like sleep and stress

(54:34):
that are also important, but itdepends on the individual, you
may have those handled. But ifit's a big red flag that might
pop to the top of the list. Soonce those are in place, and
you're at maintenance foranywhere from two to four weeks,
usually, and we see what yourtypical calorie burn is that we
know that deficit is required tolose weight. So you have to be
in a deficit to lose weightperiod. That's just energy

(54:55):
balance. You know, this, I knowis a rhetorical question, but

no, no, but no, but yeah, I think It's good to
remind people I'm

good, my people. So then let's say you're you burn
2000 calories a day, that's yourmetabolism, and you want to lose
weight, you want to lose about20 or 30 pounds, you're gonna
want to lose it at a reasonablerate of a quarter to 1% of your
weight per week. So if let'sjust for number, say you

(55:21):
starting at 200 pounds, so youcould go up to two pounds a
week, that's going to be toughin terms of the calorie deficit.
So in the middle, let's say apound a week. So a pound a week
is about 3500 calories week,divided by seven, it's 500
calories a day. So your deficitis going to be 500 calories. So
if your metabolism is 2000, youneed to be eating 1500. And I'm

(55:44):
sure a lot of women listening orare familiar with numbers like
1600 1200 calorie diets, eventhe very restrictive 800, which
is crazy. Yeah. So 1500, I thinkis, is reasonable, if not
slightly aggressive. But mostpeople have done that. You take
that number, and you start withprotein. Now you say, Okay, we
need, um, 200 pounds, and I wantto get down to 170, I need about

(56:07):
170 grams of protein. Sowhatever calories that is, you
know, multiply it by four yourcalories, then you go with fat.
So fat is typically around25 30% of your calories. Now, if
you come from keto, you'reprobably used to it being like
50, or 60%. But guess whathappens if you do that now you
crowd out your carbs completely,which is going to be detrimental

(56:30):
when we're trying to retainmuscle or even build muscle. So
that's, that's been a discussionabout carbs. We need carbs for
recovery. And we need it forglycogen when we work out.
That's the main purpose. Eventhough our brain doesn't, even
though our body, it's notessential, right? Carbs are not
essential. You learn this withketo that you don't have to
ingest any carbs and you cansurvive. But when we're trying

(56:51):
to build muscle retain muscle,we need them. So if you've got
Yeah, sorry

to interrupt, but I just heard this great saying
with this guy was like, Yeah,carbs aren't essential. However,
that doesn't mean they'renecessary that they're not
necessary. It just means thatyou could survive without them.
It doesn't mean there's notpurpose to them.

Right? Isn't there not optimal, and so on? Yeah, so
if you're on 1600 calories, andyou have 170 grams of protein,
and then whatever the fat comesout to be, you're probably going
to be in the one hundreds forcarbs, which is not really, it's
not keto. And it's not even lowcarb in some people's minds,
right? It's going to be enoughto to give you the energy you
need. So that's the formula. OneA lot of people do when they

(57:34):
diet those, they don't eatenough protein. And so now
they're trying to make up for itwith fats and carbs. And they're
just under eating in general.
Yeah,

yeah. Or they're eating and then they're eating
too many carbs, just trying tomeet that protein threshold that
their body wants. Yeah, yeah.
Yeah. Okay. And then once again,everybody, there's nuances to
that. So don't take it as it'swritten in stone, I always like
to say we're all individual.
Because if somebody's notlifting, then they should

(58:04):
probably be still prioritizingprotein 100%. But they probably
shouldn't be eating as manycarbs in my world, like, not
try. I don't I don't, not onefor like, Let's go below 50
Every single day. And being thatketo, I think that that's super
detrimental. Yeah, I agree. Somenuances there

sedentary, a lot of these rules change. But it also,
if you're talking trulysedentary and not doing any
resistance training, is going tobe hard to avoid losing muscle
if you're on a diet as well. Youknow, that's, I mean, honestly,
every one of my clients, I'vegot to have them trained. Like,
I've even thought of having thatas a prerequisite to getting
clients because I think it's soimportant that you do that.

Yeah, I know, I wish I could as well. A
membership group, like I dothese weekly meal plans inside
my membership group, and there'salways at least 150 members in
there. And it's so hard for meto decide what the macros are
going to be each day. Becausethere's such a wide variety, I

(59:11):
have some women that are comingin that's that don't have an
exercise for years, and they'resedentary. And then it's like
ooh, or they're, you know,insulin resistant or type two
diabetic. We have theseproblems. But then you have the
next woman who's working outfive days a week, who's putting
on muscle, and she's like, 1500calories. That's not enough,

(59:33):
Karen, I need to eat more thanthat. I work out a lot. And then
I'll have some people come inand be like, Oh, you've got more
than 50 grams of carbs in thisdiet. I can't do that. I've been
keto for two years. I'll put onfive pounds overnight if I do
eat like that. So it's like, oh,it's so frustrating for me
because it's, I want to be ableto have each person create their

(59:55):
own but yeah, you know, yeah, soit's always challenging. Yeah,
yeah. So I think it's justimportant. for everybody to
know, you have to make it yourown. And listen to this formula
that Philips talking about andapply that to yourself. And then
you may just if you're getting ameal plan from somewhere,
whether it's from me orsomewhere else that you adjust
it to meet those needs for you.
That's super key.

Philip Pape (01:00:17):
Yeah, yeah. And I think meal planning is a good
skill to develop on your own aswell. Because it helps you avoid
decision making in the moment,it actually helps with emotional
eating helps with overeating, inthat you can, like if today is
Tuesday, tomorrow's Wednesday,go ahead and plan out your day
and make it fit these numbersand see what it takes to do
that, you might find it verydifficult. And that's why you're

(01:00:39):
struggling every day to hit itin the moment because you can't
even do it on paper, you know,ahead of time, of course, it's
going to be impossible to do inthe moment. So let's, let's play
the game of Tetris. And let'sfigure out how to move things
around or go with a low fatversion of dairy instead of a
full fat or, you know, add somemore meat here and take
something out here and so on.
Yeah, I think that's a goodskill.

Karen Martel (01:00:59):
That's great.
Great, great, great. Okay, somindset. Last couple questions
here. You know, that's probablyeverybody's biggest failure, as
far as working out goes is theyhave that, that their mindset
hasn't changed. So then they getinto these programs, and you

(01:01:19):
know, a month in, they fall offthe old wagon. And next thing,
you know, they haven't workedout and I did this everybody, I
did this, like, I feel like myentire life, the start, stop,
stop, start stop when it came toworking out because of so many
different things that would justbe like, oh, yeah, I'm tired
today. I don't want to work out.

(01:01:41):
So how can you give us somepointers? For those women that
find it tough to stick to? Whatwould you say to somebody that
has a hard time sticking toworking out.

So this is where, of course, of course, you're
gonna have to ask the why,right? Because the reason is
going to be different. But thisis where I think controlling
your environments, and maybe aconcept like habit stacking
could be helpful, just a couplethings that come to mind. So
controlling your environment,meaning if your reason you're
not going to the gym is becauseit's early in the morning, you

(01:02:15):
get out of bed, you're like ohnine to get my gym clothes, and
my protein powder, and this andthat, and it's cold outside, and
then I have to jump like, forgetit snooze. Well, maybe you take
the day before you work out, oryou're fresh and you know,
excited. You put your gym bagtogether, you grab your blender
bottle, you get everything setup, put it near the door. And
then the next day, when you wakeup, you're like, you know,

(01:02:37):
that'd be way too much work toundo everything I just did. Let
me just go to the gym. It's kindof controlling your environment,
right to reduce friction.
Another thought is habitstacking. It's a cool concept. I
think that came from atomichabits, the book atomic habits,
where you pick a thing that youreally enjoy, and couple it with
the thing that you don't enjoyas much. And only allow yourself
to do the thing you don't enjoy,or the thing you enjoy with

(01:02:59):
that. So that could be like, I'mgonna watch streaming while I
get my steps on the treadmill.
And I'm not gonna allow myselfto watch unless I go on the
treadmill, or things like that,I can't think of an example.
I'll

give you a map because that that was one of my
biggest blocks was, I had somuch work to do. And I could I
just was like, I was so addictedto working, that it was so hard
for me to pull away and havethis block of time to go work
out because I'd be like, Oh mygosh, I have so much to do

(01:03:33):
today. I can't even I don't havetime for working out. And so I
decided that that's an excuse.
And so I'm like, I'm gonna Ididn't know it was called habit
stacking. I'm gonna have itstack. I didn't say those words.
But, and I started in between mysets because I was lifting
pretty heavy. I always took acouple of minutes in between
sets is I started doing I wouldagree with putting an agreement

(01:03:56):
with myself, I would say tomyself, you can check your email
while you work out and respond.
And so in between sets, I wouldI would reply to all my emails,
but I had to do so that tookaway because that's usually the
first thing I do when I get towork every day is check emails
and respond to them so that Ijust put them together and it
worked out beautifully. And nowI don't have a problem oral

(01:04:18):
listen to a podcast teaching mesomething so that I have this
because I think I have a littleadd or something because I need
like that constant stimulate. Soif I'm educating my brain as I'm
working my body Oh, that's justlike the dream team. Right?
They're totally, totally good.
Yeah, yeah. Mine's going whichtakes care of that. So I don't

(01:04:42):
feel unsettled there as well asmy body's working out. So it
really helped with that becauseit helps with people. I think
too that find working boring.

Yes, yes. And that's the other thing is the
boring working out part. It'slike again, why are you bored
because it's a lack of variety.
There's a there's a solution forthat. But if it's just like you
said, just you just always findit boring. Maybe you stack it
with checking your email. Yeah,for sure.

Oh, I love it.
Okay, so tell us now, what itlooks like to work with you. How
does? What does that? Look? Arewe doing weekly check ins? I
mean, are you working with onlypeople in person? How does it
work? Virtually? Yep. Tell us?

Yeah, no, it's online only. So I can work with
anyone around the world, in themodern day. And basically, we
work on getting you through aninitial phase that when we
prepare your metabolism for fatloss, so most of my clients that
come in, they want to loseweight, they want to lose fat.
So we want to spend that time upfront with a lot of the skills

(01:05:45):
we just talked about, proteinsteps, and so on. And there's a
whole bunch of other littlethings that I can work with, and
tools and resources and guides.
And the value of having a coachand Karen understands this and
our listeners is theaccountability and that
extrinsic motivation, because weall want to do this and know we
have to do it. But we don'talways do it. Having somebody to

(01:06:07):
push you day after day, give yousome tough love, whatever
communication style works foryou can be super helpful and
keeping you on path till thosethings become habits. So you may
know you have to get a lot ofprotein, but you continue to
struggle doing it, somebodythere's looking over your
shoulder and looking at yournumbers and having to track,
you're probably going to do it.

(01:06:29):
And if you don't do it, we'regonna have a conversation, we're
gonna understand why we're gonnasay roadblocks remove all the
things you just talked about, sothat you are successful,

Philips gonna ground you and you're gonna be
in big trouble.

Whatever your communication styles, it's all
good. I try try to be empatheticbest I can. And so we go through
that phase. And that might be asshort as two weeks, it might be
as long as four to six weeks.
And I don't want to say younecessarily earn your fat loss.
But effectively, I don't wantyou to start losing weight until
those other things are in place.
Because then it'd be successfultraining and all those other

(01:07:03):
things. So you get the benefitof of also working with me that
I tend to understand trainingand can give you recommendations
and do form checks and all that,then we do the fat loss phase.
And that can take whatever ittakes for your particular
situation, the entire time arefocused on not restricting and
not cutting out food groups, andnot taking away the things you

(01:07:23):
enjoy. But incorporating thoseat the right level, the right
level of restraint and learningskills to manage things like
going out on the weekends andsocial events and so on. Once
we're done with that, and hityour target, and you're super
happy now we're like what'snext? Well, do we maintain our
weight? Do we start buildingmuscle, and you might now be
inclined to actually gain weightand build muscle because you

(01:07:45):
know, you can control yourenvironment, you can control
your, your health. And that'skind of the long and short of it
care.

I love it. I think it's so important. And I think
everybody listening needs to askthemselves, you know, what has
been your history with workingout like when I was honest with
myself, and I could see that Iwas a yo yo exerciser that I
would you know, I've always hadthe eating down, it's always
come very easily to me, I eatreally well. But the working out

(01:08:16):
did not come easy to me. And itwas like I kept waiting for it
to come easy. I kept waiting forthe energy to want to go work
out and the desire to be like,yes, it's looks like so much
fun. I want to go work out anddo this every day. And it never
did. You know, in 40 years, Inever got those feelings. And so

(01:08:37):
I had to be very honest withmyself. And I want everybody to
be honest with themselves andask what you know yourself. If
it's if what you've been doinghasn't worked up until now, then
you need to do somethingdifferent. And that
accountability and havingsomebody watch over your
shoulder, as Philip said, ispriceless. In my eyes. It really

(01:09:00):
truly is. It's what got me intoit for the first time in my life
was simply by having a trainer,looking at my food, looking at
my workouts and checking in withme on a weekly basis. It was
amazing.

Yeah, and I like to say that if if you can fire me
and say six months and besuccessful for the rest of your
life, and I did my job. I don'tcare that I'm losing a client.
You can tell everyone Yeah.

Oh, yeah, that's that's like what what our goal
is, I want you to fire me in sixmonths. There we go. Like that's
awesome. Yeah. All right. Well,I think I'm gonna have to have
you back. I would love to do aq&a style with you fill out with
one from the listeners. Youknow, everybody can send in
their questions and we can setit up for those that are working

(01:09:51):
out or just getting started. Andin the meantime, though, you
guys you got to check outPhilips podcast Wits & Weights
I've been listening to Do it.
It's great. He's got greatinformation on there. Plus, he's
got a really good Facebook groupthat I'm part of. I also got
Philips free gift, which youguys can all go get. Which is it
the still the same because I didthis months ago it is yes. And

(01:10:13):
Ken. So tell us about what

that is. It's a 14 day protein power transformation
program that will just help youinstill those habits of getting
more protein.

Yes, which I think most of us ladies could really
use. So go check it out. It wasgreat. I did it. And it
definitely helped me to see howelse I could be getting some
more protein into my diet. Sothank you so much, Philip. I am
really excited about this newfriendship

to ecstatic this is this is great love. Yes, it was
so good.

All right. I'm gonna have you back again. But
thank you so much for coming onthe show.

Thank you, Karen.
It's great to be here. Thanksfor listening to the show.
Before you go, I have a quickfavorite ask. If you enjoy the
podcast, let me know by leavinga five star review in Apple
podcasts and telling othersabout the show. Thanks again for
joining me Philip Pape in thisepisode of Wits & Weights. I'll
see you next time and staystrong.

All Episodes

Episode Transcript

Popular Podcasts

24/7 News: The Latest

Therapy Gecko

The Joe Rogan Experience

.css-15opob5{left:0;position:absolute;top:0.8rem;} All Episodes

.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Ep 36: Demystifying Lifting, Cardio, Nutrition, and Fat Loss

Episode Transcript

Popular Podcasts

.css-r6mb8g{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:1;overflow:hidden;}24/7 News: The Latest

Therapy Gecko

The Joe Rogan Experience

All Episodes

Ep 36: Demystifying Lifting, Cardio, Nutrition, and Fat Loss

24/7 News: The Latest