August 20, 2025 • 34 mins
Get your free Nutrition 101 for Body Composition Guide to learn the fundamentals of energy balance, macros, and meal timing for building muscle and losing fat: witsandweights.com/free
Get Chef's Foundry P600 Ceramic Cookware - 50% off at witsandweights.com/chefsfoundry
--
Stop letting inaccurate metabolism estimates sabotage your nutrition goals.
The fitness industry has convinced us that estimating metabolism requires expensive tests, fancy gadgets, or complex formulas, but there's one method that cuts through the noise using evidence, engineering, and efficiency.
Your fitness tracker says you burned 3,200 calories, online calculators recommend 2,400 for maintenance, and your metabolic test shows 1,850 RMR. They're all probably wrong.
Discover the one method gives you your actual daily calorie burn with scientific precision so you can run your next fat loss or muscle building phase confidently and with success.
Main Takeaways:
- Your metabolism has 4 components that fluctuate constantly
- Online calculators can be off by 300-600 calories per person
- Fitness trackers have 27-93% error rates for energy expenditure
- The only accurate method is to track calorie intake + trend weight over 3-4 weeks to reverse-engineer your actual TDEE
- This approach is self-correcting, personalized, adaptive, and works even with imperfect food logging
Episode Resources:
- Try MacroFactor for free with code WITSANDWEIGHTS - the app that automates metabolism tracking using the method discussed
- Get Chef's Foundry P600 Ceramic Cookware - 50% off at witsandweights.com/chefsfoundry
Related Episode:
Timestamps:
0:01 - Why most metabolism estimates are completely wrong
6:30 - Online calculators
9:10 - Fitness trackers and wearables
10:43 - RMR testing
12:29 - Measuring inputs/outputs vs. mechanisms/effects
15:10 - How to calculate your real TDEE
23:38 - My favorite app that does this for you
26:08 - Imperfect food logging, water weight, and metabolic issues
30:40 - Why you should start tracking TODAY
31:48 - Becoming the scientist of your own physiology
🎓 Join Physique University for just $27/mo + get a FREE custom nutrition plan with this special link: bit.ly/wwpu-free-plan
👥 Join our Facebook community for Q&As & support
👋 Ask a question or find me on Instagram
📱 Try MacroFactor 2 weeks free with code WITSANDWEIGHTS (my favorite nutrition app)
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Philip Pape (00:01):
Your Fitbit says you burn 3,200 calories.
The online calculator tells youto eat 2,400 for maintenance.
Your metabolic test results sayyour RMR is 1,850.
So which one is your actualmetabolism?
Here's the truth.
They're all probably wrong, andrelying on these methods to
guide your nutrition is likeusing a broken compass to
navigate.
(00:21):
The fitness industry hasconvinced you that estimating
your metabolism requiresexpensive tests, fancy gadgets
or complex formulas, but there'sone method that cuts through
(00:49):
all the noise and helps youbuild a strong, healthy physique
, using evidence, engineeringand efficiency.
I'm your host certifiednutrition coach, philip Pape,
and today we are going to exposewhy almost every method you've
been told to use for estimatingyour metabolism has some
fundamental flaw and ispreventing you from getting the
result you want.
Most people are walking aroundwith just lots of wrong
(01:12):
assumptions about how manycalories they burn each day.
It's one of the biggestquestions I get, one of the
biggest sources of confusion andthe lack of clarity and
confidence, because they areusing tools that are simply
inaccurate.
They are off by hundreds,sometimes even a thousand
calories, and then they wonderwhy their nutrition isn't
working.
I hear statements like I'm in acalorie deficit, but I can't
(01:35):
lose weight.
That is a fundamentally untruestatement.
If you're in a calorie deficit,you will lose weight.
The problem is, you are not ina calorie deficit, but think you
are, and this isn't aboutgaslighting.
This is a problem that I hadfor a long time and a problem
that many of you come to me with, and we can quickly solve it,
and that's what I'm intending todo today.
So by the end of this episode,you are going to know the one
(01:58):
method that works, why it's theonly practical, practical way
right outside of a scientificlab, to get accurate data and
then how to implement ityourself, starting today.
And the reason we care aboutthis is we want to know how many
calories we burn every day,because that is our maintenance
calories.
That is where we can then startfrom to build muscle or lose
(02:18):
fat and know how much we need toeat on a daily basis, and that
fluctuates every day.
So you're going to get someclarity by the end of today's
episode, but you have to listenall the way through to
understand how it works Beforewe get into it if you want to
understand not just this, notjust how to track your
metabolism.
That is the premise and that isthe foundation, but then we
have to optimize your metabolismto build muscle, to lose fat
(02:41):
and also understand how yourmetabolism changes over time.
Download my free Nutrition 101for Body Composition Guide.
It breaks down the fundamentalsof energy balance, macros, meal
timing the best tool for thejob to calculate your
expenditure and then change yourtargets weekly so that you can
hit your goal.
So if your goal is fat loss,you wanna download this guide
(03:04):
because it's gonna walk youthrough the exact steps to set
it up, to start running and goand start implementing the
information you hear today.
Go to witsandweightscom, slashfree or click the link in the
show notes for the nutritionone-on-one guide.
All right, so what is yourmetabolism and why is there so
much confusion over this?
Let us start with what we'retalking about when I say
(03:27):
metabolism on this show most ofthe time, and definitely today,
and that is your total dailyenergy expenditure, tdee, the
total number of calories yourbody burns in a 24-hour period,
and it's made up of fourcomponents and I'm sorry if
you've heard this before, butit's worth repeating.
Your BMR basal metabolic ratethat's about two-thirds of what
(03:48):
you burn every day keeps yourorgans functioning, your heart
beating, your brain thinking.
Number two is a thermic effectof food.
Tef, that's another 10%.
That is the cost of digestingand processing what you eat.
Then you have the two activitycomponents that can vary a lot
from person to person.
First we have exercise activitythermogenesis EAT, and that is
(04:09):
your planned, deliberateworkouts, and that can be
anywhere from 5 to maybe 10 or15% of your calorie burn, and
that is anywhere from 15 to 50%depending on how much you move
throughout the day, how activeof a person you are.
So when you add them all up andnotice, that's a lot of things
(04:30):
if you try to track themindividually, which spoiler
alert we're not gonna do.
Okay, spoiler alert because,for example, your wearable
tracks a tiny fraction of this.
It tracks how much you move andeven then it's not even
accurate, so it's useless.
Fraction of this it tracks howmuch you move and even then it's
not even accurate, so it'suseless.
So from an engineeringperspective, these components,
we have to think about them asnot just different from person
(04:51):
to person but fluctuatingconstantly within yourself.
Your NEAT alone, yournon-exercise activity
thermogenesis, can swing byhundreds of calories based on
stress, sleep, temperature, mood, let alone your actual movement
, how much you're walking orstanding or doing chores and
parking farther in a parking lot.
So that can change a lot.
(05:12):
Your BMR, your basal metabolicrate, which a lot of people
think of as their metabolism.
It's only the base of yourmetabolism.
It's that two thirds Imentioned.
That actually can shift a lotdue to adaptation during dieting
or during bulking.
It can shift based on how muchlean mass you have.
And so trying to pin down yourmetabolism with a single number
(05:33):
or an equation is like lookingat a river.
Imagine looking at a river andthe river's flowing, and you're
going to measure the flow rateof that river through a single
measurement.
Right now I'm just going tostick an accelerometer I don't
know what measures flow rate,but a flow rate sensor inside a
river and that's the river'sflow rate.
That's the river's metabolismforever.
(05:54):
No, obviously not, because theriver is going to constantly
change the size, the speed, theconditions, the temperature.
Everything's going to change.
It's dynamic and it's allhappening below the surface.
Temperature everything's goingto change.
It's dynamic and it's allhappening below the surface.
That is your metabolism.
Okay, so now that we know that,you might be thinking oh, my God
, you just made it even harderon me.
How do we, how do we evenfigure this out?
Let's talk about the popularmethods people use and why
(06:17):
they're pretty much all useless.
Okay, and I'm sorry, they justare.
They don't work.
They do not work.
They might be a good startingpoint or they might be a good
single flow rate in the river,but that's all they are Okay.
So let's talk about thosemethods.
We're going to start with theonline calculators because for
many people, that is, I'll say,the easiest or most accessible
or the one you hear about mostoften online.
(06:39):
And we have one on our website.
If you go to what's theweightscom slash calculators,
calculators, yeah, you'll findone there.
But I have caveats and fineprints all over it saying that
this is just a snapshot startingpoint and it has a lot of error
.
But and there's a reason thereare times when you might wanna
use it and we'll talk about thatin a second.
(06:59):
But these calculators useequations like the Mifflin-St
Jor or the Harris-Benedictequation that were developed
from population averages, andactually my website has an
updated version of that, whereStronger by Science tweaked it
even further, and it's based onthings like how much you train,
not just this generic activitylevel, but regardless.
(07:21):
Whatever one you use, they willget you, I'll say, in a very
large ballpark and I say it thatway because the ballpark, you
know, think of a baseballdiamond okay, and you've got the
two foul lines.
Imagine a huge park that goesout 450 yards.
You're going to be somewhere inthere, okay, but if I said I'm
(07:42):
going to hit a fly ball and youhave to be in exactly the spot,
I'm gonna hit it, the chances ofyou being right are pretty much
random chance, right.
So these online calculators areabout that level of precision.
They can be offered like 300 to600 calories in either
direction for an individual.
They don't account for A lot ofthings.
(08:02):
They don't account for yourtraining of things.
They don't account for yourtraining history, your genetics,
your current metabolic state,but, most importantly, how your
body adapts and responds andmoves all of it right.
Just adding it all together,it's not going to be able to
accurately state your metabolismbased on that.
So that's the online calculators, and they can be a good, I'll
(08:23):
say, starting point.
And even then, they're not agreat starting point.
In fact, when the method that Iteach we're going to talk about
in a second, you don't evenneed that.
The reason you might use it isbecause you're impatient to have
a number to start from, theproblem with that being that you
then are fixated on that numberas if it means anything, and so
then you start with that numberand then realize, oh my God, I
(08:46):
actually burned 500 caloriesless.
My metabolism just tanked.
No, it didn't, the startingnumber was just not right.
Okay, so that's.
That's why I don't even thinkit's good to have a number to
start with technically, eventhough the app that I use, macro
factor, does have to start witha number.
I'd rather you ignoreeverything until you've gone
through the process that we'regoing to talk about and then use
(09:06):
the real number based on realdata.
Okay, anyway, that's onlinecalculators.
What about fitness trackers?
Okay, what about?
Look, I have an Apple watch, Ihave an aura ring.
Study show that wrist worndevices can have error rates of
27 to 93% when estimating energyexpenditure.
There was a study in JAMAinternal medicine.
It tested seven devices you allknow and love Apple Watch,
(09:30):
fitbit, garmin, all the bignames and it found they were
consistently inaccurate for thecalorie burn estimates, because
they are using your heart rateand motion sensors and they are
just guessing at energyexpenditure based on formulas,
and then heart rate correlatesreally poorly with calorie burn
anyway, especially when you'reresistance training, and then
(09:51):
they can account for things likeyour metabolic state, how your
body compensates for exerciselater in the day when you reduce
your NEAT because you'recompensating for exercising in
the morning, all of that.
So your wearable is useless interms of its fundamental
accuracy to begin with.
And even if it were accurate,it only gives you the piece of
(10:15):
the pie that's represented bythat movement, not all the other
pieces I just mentioned, likeyour arm are and your food, you
know thermic effect of food, allof it.
So that's, that method isflawed and I don't use it at all
, like I just don't.
There's no reason to usecalorie burned on your watch for
any reason whatsoever.
Well, okay, I'll take that back.
(10:35):
The only reason you might useit is to compare different
sessions, if you're trying tocompare their intensity.
That's about it, all right.
The next method that is flawedis, I'll say, metabolic testing,
and this is dangerously flawedbecause it gives you something
that might be reasonablyaccurate but that doesn't help
you.
Let me explain.
(10:55):
These are the when you go to agym or a medical facility and
you get an RMR test right.
Some of them are based onbioimpedance measurements, some
are under controlled conditionswith a cart and a mask.
There's just so many differentways and they might be accurate
in that specific moment, butyour RMR, as we mentioned
earlier, is just abouttwo-thirds of your total
(11:15):
metabolism.
So it doesn't help.
I mean it doesn't help.
It doesn't tell you all theother things that stack on top
of that, and those other thingsare the ones that change a lot
anyway.
So all the other things thatstack on top of that and those
other things are the ones thatchange a lot anyway.
So it's not going to tell youhow your metabolism changes day
to day and it's not even goingto tell you your total energy
burn right now.
You know, even if you had itdone regularly, which would be
expensive, it'd be impracticalYou're still missing the total
energy expenditure.
(11:36):
So those are useless.
So those are the big ones.
Right, and from an engineeringstandpoint, if you can't measure
something directly, what do youdo?
You measure its effects, youmeasure the inputs and outputs,
you measure what we call theblack box.
You think of a control systemor just a closed system, and if
you're able to tell what'scoming in and going out.
(11:56):
You can tell how the system ischanging.
Your metabolism reveals itselfthrough the relationship between
energy intake and body weightchanges over time.
It's very simple and elegant,and this is based on the
fundamental principle of energybalance, which balance calories
in, calories out which, by theway, if it didn't work, we
couldn't do this.
So we know it works, we knowit's accurate, it's physics and
(12:18):
it's simply this If you'reeating at the level of your
total daily energy expenditure,that big pie chart for the day,
if you're eating that exactamount of calories, what's gonna
happen?
Your weight is gonna stay thesame, because you're bringing in
energy that matches the energygoing out.
And so what happens?
Your weight stays the same.
If you're eating more than that, your body has to store that
somewhere in your fat.
(12:39):
You gain weight.
If you're eating less, you loseweight.
Right, you get the idea.
And so this method worksbecause it captures the whole
thing, the whole black box, thewhole pie chart, the whole total
daily energy expenditure.
It's your BMR, your activity,your metabolic adaptation, your
genetics, your current state,what you're eating, how you're
eating, how you're processing,all the crazy stuff that goes
inside your body.
You don't have to worry aboutit.
(13:00):
You don't have to measure it,you just take what's coming in,
see what's going out.
The change is telling you whatyour metabolism is right.
It's like the best version of acontinuous metabolic test
that's practical, that's runningin the background of your life
all the time.
It's always there, it's hidingin plain sight, like I mentioned
before.
Hey, this is Philip, and beforewe continue, I want to talk
(13:25):
about cookware.
We all love to make our ownfood.
I love nonstick pans.
The problem is I've avoidedthem for years because when they
get scratched, when they getheated, they can release
microplastics, pfas smallparticles that can accumulate
over time in the body and somestudies have shown them to be
linked to health issues.
If you're optimizing yournutrition and making lots of
food for you and your family athome, it doesn't make sense to
compromise that withquestionable cookware.
(13:46):
So that's why I was interestedwhen Chef's Foundry, who is
sponsoring this episode, showedme their ceramic cookware.
It's called the P600 and usesSwiss-engineered ceramic coating
which has no Teflon, no PFAS,no plastic components.
It is nonstick, it works on allstovetops, it goes straight
into the oven.
All the things you need ifyou're trying to cook a lot of
(14:09):
your meals at home.
Right now you can get the P600at 50% off by going to
witsandweightscom slash chefsfoundry.
You'll also get a bunch ofaccessories with that.
There's a whole page thatexplains what you'll get for
that discounted 50% off.
Go to witsandweightscom slashchefsfoundry or click the link
in the show notes.
All right, let's get back to theshow.
(14:29):
So how does it work in practice?
Simple you track your calorieintake fairly accurately okay,
and I'm gonna put it that waybecause it doesn't have to be
perfect and then you weighyourself every day.
That's the most precise way todo it and then, over a period of
about three, maybe four weeks,you're gonna have a good trend.
You're gonna have a good movingaverage of your weight and your
(14:51):
calorie intake.
If your average intake, youknow your moving average, we can
get into complicated algorithmsand all that.
We don't need to do that.
If your average intake was2,400 calories and your weight
stayed the same over that threeto four weeks, then 2,400 is
very close to your average TDEEduring that period, right.
But we can get even more precise.
(15:12):
We can, because if you lost onepound over those three weeks
eating 2,400 calories, then yourTDEE is higher, right, it's
higher than what you ate,because you ate less than you
needed.
So your TDE would be like 2,570calories and that's based on
the idea that one pound of fatloss is equal to 3,500 calories,
right?
So we know metabolism isdynamic, so you're going to
(15:34):
change in some way, even if it'ssmall, like usually people
aren't just this exact sameweight day after day after day.
There's going to be some changeor some up and down or some
drift, right?
So you take the duration, youtake how much you ate per day,
you take the fact that a fat, apound of fat, is 3,500 calories,
and take how much you weigh andfrom that you can tell how many
, how much, how many caloriesyou're burning every day,
(15:56):
knowing that that's going tokeep changing every day.
It's going to keep driftingevery day.
I mean, if you look at myexpenditure graph, it goes up
and down kind of ridiculously,and that's why I track it,
because otherwise I would haveno idea.
So the key here is not to usethe daily measurements.
The key is to take dailymeasurements, but use the trend
over time of those measurements.
Don't even take weeklymeasurements for this.
(16:18):
Take daily, because if you takethem once a week you might be
at a high point or a low point.
That's not going to tell youanything either.
Right?
This is simple math.
The more data you have, themore you can smooth out the
average, because your weight canswing by a lot day to day.
Sodium, stress, hormones,glycogen, fluid, gut content.
Right, go up two pounds downtwo pounds up three pounds down
(16:38):
one pound up one pound down fourpounds, and at the end of the
day it might be the same.
Right, the trend over timemight tell you.
You know what?
I'm actually maintaining myweight, even though I have a lot
of fluctuations, especially ifyour eating patterns are not
stable.
Right, if you eat a lot on theweekends and eat less on the
weekdays, for example.
So this approach?
It just destroys everythingelse because of its precision
(17:00):
and accuracy.
Right, it has massiveadvantages over all those other
things that are just junk.
I mean, I'm just being honestLike they don't help in any way.
They actually make it worse,because you end up trusting a
number that is totally far offfrom reality and making choices
based on that is called anuninformed choice.
(17:21):
We want to make personalized,informed choices.
So why is that the case here?
All right, I just mentioned it.
First of all, it's personalized.
It accounts for you what'shappening.
You don't have to know why orall the details, but you have a
unique physiology in that moment, on every given day, unique
activity pattern, uniquemetabolism, unique adaptations,
(17:43):
unique hormones, unique stress,unique everything.
And that makes you differentfrom the average person, but it
also makes you different thanyou yesterday.
So it's highly personalized.
The second thing is it adaptsto you, so kind of segwaying off
of what I just said.
You're changing every day.
You need something that can befairly responsive.
It can't take six monthsPractically.
(18:04):
We know we can't do it in twodays because your weight changes
too quickly, your body doesn'trespond that quickly, so we have
to find a sweet spot that makessense from a practical
perspective.
So agile metabolism changes dueto dieting, training, stress,
life circumstances.
This method is going to capturethose in a reasonable timeframe
.
You know a couple of weeks,maybe a week.
(18:24):
You know we can't over trust oroveremphasize the data, even
though it seems highly precisebecause it's a moving average,
because even a moving averageremember, you're taking, you're
including some of the datapoints from two weeks ago or
three weeks ago.
Things have changed since thenbut you're doing your best to go
with the ebb and flow, right,but you are not stuck with some
(18:47):
fixed flow rate in the riverfrom six months ago, because
that's useless.
The third thing is, this is avery practical approach.
It's just so elegant, in myopinion.
I use the word elegant in theengineering sense in that it's a
very easy design.
It's like E equals MC, squaredright from Einstein.
It's a very elegant formula and, at the same time, it
(19:08):
represents somethingmind-blowingly complex, right,
the theory of relativity.
But it's elegant because youcan express it so simply,
express it so simply.
Well, this is elegant in termsof how practical it is.
You don't need equipment, right,I mean, other than a way to log
your food, which we have appsfor that, or to weigh yourself,
I mean okay, so you don't needspecial equipment.
You don't need expensive tests.
(19:30):
You don't have to pay for stuffother than a subscription to an
app, maybe, and the occasionalbody weight scale when it breaks
.
You don't need complex formulasor calculations.
Now, I say that with thisasterisk depends on how nerdy
you are and how much into mathyou are, but you don't when you
use, for example, macro factor,which is the app that I
recommend.
It does it for you.
If you're so inclined and youwant to make a spreadsheet for
(19:52):
all this, you can, and you canmake it probably pretty good,
but it's not as complex as ifyou had to measure all of the
stuff happening in your body.
That would be just insane,right?
You need a food scale, abathroom scale, and consistent
data collection is all you need,and make it easy on yourself to
do that.
Right.
Use frictionless methods to dothis.
(20:13):
The fourth benefit of this isit's self-correcting.
This is huge.
If you're not trackingaccurately, if you're missing
calories here and there, it'sstill going to work.
You know why?
Because it is based on theoutcomes, not the inputs.
So what's cool with this is ithas a lot of resilience.
You can be off by up to 30%with your calorie tracking as
(20:34):
long as you are tracking, andit's still going to be robust
enough to cover you.
You can skip some weigh-ins andit's still going to be robust
enough to cover you.
You can skip some weigh-ins andit's still going to be robust
enough.
That's pretty cool, right?
I recommend tracking daily anddoing it as precisely as you can
.
But if you skip a weight, ifyou skip a food log, a day of
food logged, or if you're havingto estimate because you're
traveling at a restaurant,whatever, it's going to be good
(20:55):
enough to actually work quitewell anyway.
And I wanted to mention thatbecause that's an excuse for
people who say, well, I can'ttrack every day, or I go to
restaurants, I can't be precise.
You don't have to be Sorry, youdon't have to be.
You can have a lot of flex hereand it's going to be fine.
Right, your weight trend isgoing to reflect your true
average intake over time and theweight trend is resilient to a
(21:16):
few missed weigh-ins.
Your food is resilient to lackof perfection with your logging
right.
And then, finally, when you tiethis all together, what does it
do?
It gives you a thing that youcan actually act on in an
informed way when you know yourreal TDEE the pie chart.
This is how many calories Iburn every day, pretty close to
reality.
Now I can say, okay, I want tolose a pound a week.
(21:39):
That's 500 calories a day.
I burn 2000 calories, so I needto eat 1500 calories.
And then next week, based on mytracking, it turns out that my
TDE dropped a little bit.
Well, I need to drop calories alittle bit or wow, I'm walking
a lot.
My TDE is actually going up.
I need to eat more to stay inthat deficit or surplus or
whatever it is right.
Whatever direction you want togo, you want to do body recomp
(22:06):
as well.
We just talked about bodyrecomp.
We just had a 90-day bodyrecomp workshop in Physique
University.
The day this episode comes out,it was the day after we had the
workshop.
If you want to see the replayand learn how to track not only
track your metabolism, but alsocome up with a 90 day way to use
that information to buildmuscle and lose fat that's what
we did in there.
More importantly, though, youknow what else we do in physique
university.
We deal with scenarios when yourexpenditure goes up or down and
(22:30):
you're not sure why.
We can talk through that.
We have guides on that.
We have coaches who can helpyou understand it.
We can diagnose it.
We could even get on a livecall or hot seat to interpret
your data, to see if it's thedata itself or something that
you've done that you're not evenaware of that could be causing
the change, so that you can takecontrol of the situation and
(22:50):
know what to do next.
Whether you're losing fat,you're hitting a plateau, you're
trying to build muscle right,and that's that engineering
mindset I want us to cultivate.
That this is information, andif we can have accurate data, we
can make good decisions.
So go to witsandweightscomslash physique If you guys want
to join us in there, if you wantto get the replay of the body
recomp workshop, or if you justwant to hit it hard and
(23:11):
implement a fat loss plan that Ibuild for you and be able to
get unstuck when it seems likeyou're stuck, that's where we do
that PhysiqueUniversity,witsandweightscom slash physique
.
Now you could do all thesecalculations manually, like I
said, with a spreadsheet, but Ithink there's a better way.
It's called Macrofactor.
I am such a shill for this appbecause I've used it since
(23:31):
launch.
Yes, I'm an affiliate.
Please support me.
My code is witsandweights allone word.
You'll get two weeks free andyou won't look back.
It's made by the team atStronger by Science, greg
Knuckles and those guys, andit's built specifically on this
methodology.
It is the only app that doesthis.
How does it do it?
I'm just going to quicklyexplain.
When you log your weight everyday, it uses a 20 day
(23:52):
exponential moving average.
You don't have to understand it.
It's just a moving average togive you a trend weight.
Then it looks at how much foodyou've logged every day and it
reverse engineers yourmetabolism based on that.
That's it, and then it updatesyour metabolism every day as you
provide the data and says okay,it is Monday Time to check in.
(24:13):
Your metabolism is up a hundredcalories this week.
Therefore, we're going toincrease your targets by a
hundred calories.
And the protein, fats, carbbreakdown are depending on some
other factors like what kind ofbalance you want, how aggressive
you want to be with protein,whether you're lifting weights,
etc.
By the way, everyone here shouldbe lifting weights, right?
Okay?
So I love Macrofactor.
Again, you can download it fromyour app store.
(24:35):
It's a paid app, but, my God,the the for 72 bucks a year is
going to save you probablythousands of dollars in
frustration and healthcare costsand probably other programs for
the rest of your life.
So it pays for itself instantly.
Wits and weights or no, go togo to macro factor from your app
store and then use my code witsand weights all one word and
(24:55):
that's it.
It's going to remove theguesswork for you If you want an
app, if you want to do ityourself and you're you nerd out
on this stuff.
Do it share, share with me yourexperience, how it's going.
All you need is food and weightright and everything else
calculates for you, and youdon't have to worry about
wearables.
You don't have to worry aboutgetting a cup using a calculator
.
You don't have to worry aboutgoing to use a machine in the
(25:17):
gym right calculator.
You don't have to worry aboutgoing to use a machine in the
gym right.
I've been using it myself, allour clients use it, physique
University clients, all use it.
And I have not found anythingelse that provides anywhere
close to the accuracy of theTDEE estimate than Macrofactor.
So that's why I'm such a shillfor it.
Okay, I'm a fan boy, as theysay.
All right.
So I know some of you arethinking but Philip, what if I
(25:40):
don't log perfectly?
What if I forget a meal?
What if I estimate my portions?
And I've already addressed thisto an extent.
But I want to go a step furtherand say that that is a strength
of this method because of howit's based on the closed system
and the outcome right, it's notbased on all the stuff under the
hood.
So you so let me give you anexample Some people might be
(26:02):
accidentally under logging everyday or over logging every day
because of whatever they'redoing in their life.
As long as the, as long as theunder or over logging is fairly
consistent no, you know what?
It doesn't even have to be thatconsistent.
Again, you can be off by 30% ineither direction.
It's going to be close enough.
When you think of calories,calories are like in the
thousands, right?
So if you're off by a fewhundred calories, when it
(26:24):
smooths it out and then links itup with your weight, it's still
going to be pretty darn closeto reality and you're still
going to be able to nudge yourdiet in the direction you want
to go, with some confidence,with a lot of confidence,
because that's the thing peopleare missing, isn't it?
They're missing the confidenceto know how much do I eat, or
(26:44):
I'm eating this much.
I think it's gonna do this, butit's not what the heck's going
on In my world.
I know how much to eat, and soif I'm eating that much, that's
not the problem.
It's something else, likesomething's happening with my
expenditure.
That's not the problem.
It's something else Like mysomething's happening with my
expenditure that's causing me toeither fall behind or get ahead
of the deficit or the surplus.
(27:06):
It's not that I'm not eatingthe right amount.
I know how much to eat, right?
Obviously, if you're eating waymore way below than the target,
way below the target, that's anindependent issue, right?
And another question to get isokay, what about the fact that
your scale weight changes somuch?
And some people don't realizethis, but it does.
It changes due to water weightfar more than it changes due to
(27:27):
fat changes.
And that's why I like trackingevery day, which, by the way,
has been shown in studies timeand again to be the most
effective means of hitting yourgoals and maintaining them
Weight loss, maintenance, musclegain, whatever is to track
daily.
And that's because you get thistrend that smooths out all of
that noise the noise from thesodium, from the Chinese food
(27:48):
and pizza, from the hormones,from the glycogen, from the hard
training session, from theinflammation, from your
menstrual cycle, all of it.
So that's another question thatcomes up.
Another one is what if mymetabolism is insert adjective
here broken, non-responsive or Ihave a thyroid condition?
Again, the robustness is builtin.
(28:10):
Even if you have metabolicissues, legitimate issues, this
is going to reveal your actualenergy expenditure so that you
understand reality.
You might discover that, yes,your TDE is far lower than you
expected.
And the initial response formany of you is I thought it was
burning, you know, 2000 calories, but I'm only burning 1600.
Now some people will say what'swrong with the app?
(28:32):
It says I only burn 1600.
Others will say, oh, it'sreally good to know that I only
burn 1600.
And, by the way, you can testthis out by eating 1600 for a
while and notice that yourweight stays the same.
But now you have accurate datawork to work with instead of
guessing right that that.
That, to me, is gold.
That's gold because if you havea low metabolism, and it's just
(28:55):
the way you are, you can dosomething about it.
You can add more neat into theequation.
You can use nonlinear dieting.
Maybe everything is suppressedand you're under fueled.
Maybe you have a hormone issue,like it allows you to separate
the variables and figure outwhat's going on.
Or, you know, you just have alower metabolism than the
average person and go listen tomy episode on what to do if you
(29:18):
have a very low metabolism.
Okay.
So the next question I get islike, isn't this too much work?
It sounds like a lot oftracking.
Well, you're already eatingfood, I hope, or else you'd be
dead.
You're probably weighingyourself occasionally anyway.
All I'm asking you to do is logdaily which every time I've
done a poll of my clients orFacebook members and said give
me your screen time for macrofactor.
(29:40):
It's like three minutes a day.
It's like three minutes a dayCause you end up copying and
pasting.
You end up being very quickwith the app.
It's one of the fast.
It is the fastest app on themarket.
It's been tested to be thefastest.
It has a great database, right.
It has AI, it has all thatstuff.
It's fast.
So you're taking three minutesa day to log your food and
you're taking 30 seconds a dayto weigh yourself, and that's it
(30:01):
Right.
And then, but the clarity youget for your expenditure
priceless To steal from themastercard commercial right,
beyond that right, like once youestablish your baseline
expenditure.
Now you have this data pointYou've probably never had in
your entire life and that aloneis going to give you more
clarity than you've had beforeto make decisions with your food
(30:21):
, let alone getting into macrosand all that other stuff.
So you should just start it andtry it, just try.
You know what, get what's inget.
I keep saying that get macrofactor and use the two weeks
free.
In those two weeks, do what wejust talked about Log your food
and weight every day and reachout to me on Instagram and tell
me about your experience.
If it was awful, if it doesn'twork, if you think it's not a
(30:42):
great app, I want to hear it.
I really do, because I want toknow why.
Because a lot of times it hasto do with the learning curve or
other aspects.
Some people may just not likeit, but once you start using it,
what I've found is that yourealize your metabolism is not
mysterious.
It is not uncontrollable.
Which Metabolism is notmysterious?
It is not uncontrollable, whichis what all the marketers want
you to believe.
I want you to come to me,whether you just check out the
(31:04):
podcast or come into ourFacebook group, or you want to
implement this stuff for you inour Physique University or
coaching.
I want you to come to me withmore clarity you've ever had
before, that you can dosomething about your metabolism
and that you can measure it,because then, from that premise,
you're going to start to seepatterns.
You're going to notice how yourmetabolism responds to your
(31:27):
training, different stresslevels, your sleep patterns,
what you eat, when you eat itright, your pre and post
workouts.
You see how your walks, youknow how your vacations versus
work schedule affect yourmetabolism, and then you become
the scientist of your ownphysiology.
That's what I want for people.
That is where the power comesfrom.
(31:48):
I've had clients discover theirmetabolism was way off from what
they thought 400 calorieshigher, 500 calories lower and
explain why they weren't gettingwhat they wanted, why they
weren't, say, losing on whatevercalories that the last person
recommended, or the calculatoror coach or whatever right.
And we see the other direction,people trying to go into a gain
and build muscle, and they findthat in reality, their
(32:11):
metabolism takes off like arocket and that's why they can't
keep up and they can't eatenough to gain the muscle, and
so they're always kind offalling behind and it holds them
back from building lean mass.
And so it's not just aboutgetting a number, it's getting
an understanding of how yourbody works, and then that is the
foundation for all thenutrition decisions you can make
(32:31):
.
I love that there are peopleout there that want you to just
eat intuitively and monitor yourblood sugar, and based on
satiety.
But we need precision, folks,we need some awareness, we need
some numbers Like I'm just,that's just me, I'm sorry,
that's me, I'm a numbers guy.
If you're not a numbers person,then maybe this approach doesn't
(32:53):
work for you.
If you like to track numbers,because you notice it helps you
manage your income and expensesso you can be set for retirement
and for your family, then thatsame principle applies to
everything else, especiallyfitness and nutrition, where it
is very numerically measurablein many senses.
And so you're not guessing,you're not hoping.
(33:13):
You're operating from a placeof confidence based on your own
data.
So again, your metabolism isnot mysterious.
It is not an unchangeablegenetic lottery that dooms you
to struggle with your weight.
It's dynamic, it responds toyou, your lifestyle, and you can
measure it very simply and veryaccurately.
And every day you wait to startcollecting this is another day
you're just flying blind right.
(33:33):
Every meal you eat, you don'tknow your TDE.
You just can't make informeddecisions.
If your goal is physique andhealth, all right.
So let's do this together.
Let's understand our numbersand use that to make smarter
choices.
So you stop hoping and youstart engineering your results.
That is it All right.
This episode opened your eyes tohow metabolism works, and I
(33:57):
should say that the metabolismitself.
I didn't really get into thescience of that too much.
I really wanted to talk abouthow you measure it with this
episode.
So if you do that, the nextquestion might be okay how can I
change it?
And so I have an episode calledfour ways to increase your
metabolism by 500 to 1000calories per day.
Episode two, three, six, two,36.
(34:19):
I'm going to link it in theshow notes.
It's called four ways toincrease your metabolism 500 to
a thousand calories per day,which gives you strategies to
boost your TDEE once you knowwhat, what it actually is.
Sorry, I'm losing my voicetoday.
So combining today's trackingmethod with those strategies,
that is what's really powerful.
All right, until next time,keep using your wits, lifting
(34:40):
those weights and remember yourmetabolism is not a mystery.
It's data to be collected.
I'll talk to you next time hereon the Wits and Weights Podcast
.
Your Fitbit says you burn 3,200 calories.
The online calculator tells youto eat 2,400 for maintenance.
Your metabolic test results sayyour RMR is 1,850.
So which one is your actualmetabolism?
Here's the truth.
They're all probably wrong, andrelying on these methods to
guide your nutrition is likeusing a broken compass to
navigate.
(00:21):
The fitness industry hasconvinced you that estimating
your metabolism requiresexpensive tests, fancy gadgets
or complex formulas, but there'sone method that cuts through
(00:49):
all the noise and helps youbuild a strong, healthy physique
, using evidence, engineeringand efficiency.
I'm your host certifiednutrition coach, philip Pape,
and today we are going to exposewhy almost every method you've
been told to use for estimatingyour metabolism has some
fundamental flaw and ispreventing you from getting the
result you want.
Most people are walking aroundwith just lots of wrong
(01:12):
assumptions about how manycalories they burn each day.
It's one of the biggestquestions I get, one of the
biggest sources of confusion andthe lack of clarity and
confidence, because they areusing tools that are simply
inaccurate.
They are off by hundreds,sometimes even a thousand
calories, and then they wonderwhy their nutrition isn't
working.
I hear statements like I'm in acalorie deficit, but I can't
(01:35):
lose weight.
That is a fundamentally untruestatement.
If you're in a calorie deficit,you will lose weight.
The problem is, you are not ina calorie deficit, but think you
are, and this isn't aboutgaslighting.
This is a problem that I hadfor a long time and a problem
that many of you come to me with, and we can quickly solve it,
and that's what I'm intending todo today.
So by the end of this episode,you are going to know the one
(01:58):
method that works, why it's theonly practical, practical way
right outside of a scientificlab, to get accurate data and
then how to implement ityourself, starting today.
And the reason we care aboutthis is we want to know how many
calories we burn every day,because that is our maintenance
calories.
That is where we can then startfrom to build muscle or lose
(02:18):
fat and know how much we need toeat on a daily basis, and that
fluctuates every day.
So you're going to get someclarity by the end of today's
episode, but you have to listenall the way through to
understand how it works Beforewe get into it if you want to
understand not just this, notjust how to track your
metabolism.
That is the premise and that isthe foundation, but then we
have to optimize your metabolismto build muscle, to lose fat
(02:41):
and also understand how yourmetabolism changes over time.
Download my free Nutrition 101for Body Composition Guide.
It breaks down the fundamentalsof energy balance, macros, meal
timing the best tool for thejob to calculate your
expenditure and then change yourtargets weekly so that you can
hit your goal.
So if your goal is fat loss,you wanna download this guide
(03:04):
because it's gonna walk youthrough the exact steps to set
it up, to start running and goand start implementing the
information you hear today.
Go to witsandweightscom, slashfree or click the link in the
show notes for the nutritionone-on-one guide.
All right, so what is yourmetabolism and why is there so
much confusion over this?
Let us start with what we'retalking about when I say
(03:27):
metabolism on this show most ofthe time, and definitely today,
and that is your total dailyenergy expenditure, tdee, the
total number of calories yourbody burns in a 24-hour period,
and it's made up of fourcomponents and I'm sorry if
you've heard this before, butit's worth repeating.
Your BMR basal metabolic ratethat's about two-thirds of what
(03:48):
you burn every day keeps yourorgans functioning, your heart
beating, your brain thinking.
Number two is a thermic effectof food.
Tef, that's another 10%.
That is the cost of digestingand processing what you eat.
Then you have the two activitycomponents that can vary a lot
from person to person.
First we have exercise activitythermogenesis EAT, and that is
(04:09):
your planned, deliberateworkouts, and that can be
anywhere from 5 to maybe 10 or15% of your calorie burn, and
that is anywhere from 15 to 50%depending on how much you move
throughout the day, how activeof a person you are.
So when you add them all up andnotice, that's a lot of things
(04:30):
if you try to track themindividually, which spoiler
alert we're not gonna do.
Okay, spoiler alert because,for example, your wearable
tracks a tiny fraction of this.
It tracks how much you move andeven then it's not even
accurate, so it's useless.
Fraction of this it tracks howmuch you move and even then it's
not even accurate, so it'suseless.
So from an engineeringperspective, these components,
we have to think about them asnot just different from person
(04:51):
to person but fluctuatingconstantly within yourself.
Your NEAT alone, yournon-exercise activity
thermogenesis, can swing byhundreds of calories based on
stress, sleep, temperature, mood, let alone your actual movement
, how much you're walking orstanding or doing chores and
parking farther in a parking lot.
So that can change a lot.
(05:12):
Your BMR, your basal metabolicrate, which a lot of people
think of as their metabolism.
It's only the base of yourmetabolism.
It's that two thirds Imentioned.
That actually can shift a lotdue to adaptation during dieting
or during bulking.
It can shift based on how muchlean mass you have.
And so trying to pin down yourmetabolism with a single number
(05:33):
or an equation is like lookingat a river.
Imagine looking at a river andthe river's flowing, and you're
going to measure the flow rateof that river through a single
measurement.
Right now I'm just going tostick an accelerometer I don't
know what measures flow rate,but a flow rate sensor inside a
river and that's the river'sflow rate.
That's the river's metabolismforever.
(05:54):
No, obviously not, because theriver is going to constantly
change the size, the speed, theconditions, the temperature.
Everything's going to change.
It's dynamic and it's allhappening below the surface.
Temperature everything's goingto change.
It's dynamic and it's allhappening below the surface.
That is your metabolism.
Okay, so now that we know that,you might be thinking oh, my God
, you just made it even harderon me.
How do we, how do we evenfigure this out?
Let's talk about the popularmethods people use and why
(06:17):
they're pretty much all useless.
Okay, and I'm sorry, they justare.
They don't work.
They do not work.
They might be a good startingpoint or they might be a good
single flow rate in the river,but that's all they are Okay.
So let's talk about thosemethods.
We're going to start with theonline calculators because for
many people, that is, I'll say,the easiest or most accessible
or the one you hear about mostoften online.
(06:39):
And we have one on our website.
If you go to what's theweightscom slash calculators,
calculators, yeah, you'll findone there.
But I have caveats and fineprints all over it saying that
this is just a snapshot startingpoint and it has a lot of error
.
But and there's a reason thereare times when you might wanna
use it and we'll talk about thatin a second.
(06:59):
But these calculators useequations like the Mifflin-St
Jor or the Harris-Benedictequation that were developed
from population averages, andactually my website has an
updated version of that, whereStronger by Science tweaked it
even further, and it's based onthings like how much you train,
not just this generic activitylevel, but regardless.
(07:21):
Whatever one you use, they willget you, I'll say, in a very
large ballpark and I say it thatway because the ballpark, you
know, think of a baseballdiamond okay, and you've got the
two foul lines.
Imagine a huge park that goesout 450 yards.
You're going to be somewhere inthere, okay, but if I said I'm
(07:42):
going to hit a fly ball and youhave to be in exactly the spot,
I'm gonna hit it, the chances ofyou being right are pretty much
random chance, right.
So these online calculators areabout that level of precision.
They can be offered like 300 to600 calories in either
direction for an individual.
They don't account for A lot ofthings.
(08:02):
They don't account for yourtraining of things.
They don't account for yourtraining history, your genetics,
your current metabolic state,but, most importantly, how your
body adapts and responds andmoves all of it right.
Just adding it all together,it's not going to be able to
accurately state your metabolismbased on that.
So that's the online calculators, and they can be a good, I'll
(08:23):
say, starting point.
And even then, they're not agreat starting point.
In fact, when the method that Iteach we're going to talk about
in a second, you don't evenneed that.
The reason you might use it isbecause you're impatient to have
a number to start from, theproblem with that being that you
then are fixated on that numberas if it means anything, and so
then you start with that numberand then realize, oh my God, I
(08:46):
actually burned 500 caloriesless.
My metabolism just tanked.
No, it didn't, the startingnumber was just not right.
Okay, so that's.
That's why I don't even thinkit's good to have a number to
start with technically, eventhough the app that I use, macro
factor, does have to start witha number.
I'd rather you ignoreeverything until you've gone
through the process that we'regoing to talk about and then use
(09:06):
the real number based on realdata.
Okay, anyway, that's onlinecalculators.
What about fitness trackers?
Okay, what about?
Look, I have an Apple watch, Ihave an aura ring.
Study show that wrist worndevices can have error rates of
27 to 93% when estimating energyexpenditure.
There was a study in JAMAinternal medicine.
It tested seven devices you allknow and love Apple Watch,
(09:30):
fitbit, garmin, all the bignames and it found they were
consistently inaccurate for thecalorie burn estimates, because
they are using your heart rateand motion sensors and they are
just guessing at energyexpenditure based on formulas,
and then heart rate correlatesreally poorly with calorie burn
anyway, especially when you'reresistance training, and then
(09:51):
they can account for things likeyour metabolic state, how your
body compensates for exerciselater in the day when you reduce
your NEAT because you'recompensating for exercising in
the morning, all of that.
So your wearable is useless interms of its fundamental
accuracy to begin with.
And even if it were accurate,it only gives you the piece of
(10:15):
the pie that's represented bythat movement, not all the other
pieces I just mentioned, likeyour arm are and your food, you
know thermic effect of food, allof it.
So that's, that method isflawed and I don't use it at all
, like I just don't.
There's no reason to usecalorie burned on your watch for
any reason whatsoever.
Well, okay, I'll take that back.
(10:35):
The only reason you might useit is to compare different
sessions, if you're trying tocompare their intensity.
That's about it, all right.
The next method that is flawedis, I'll say, metabolic testing,
and this is dangerously flawedbecause it gives you something
that might be reasonablyaccurate but that doesn't help
you.
Let me explain.
(10:55):
These are the when you go to agym or a medical facility and
you get an RMR test right.
Some of them are based onbioimpedance measurements, some
are under controlled conditionswith a cart and a mask.
There's just so many differentways and they might be accurate
in that specific moment, butyour RMR, as we mentioned
earlier, is just abouttwo-thirds of your total
(11:15):
metabolism.
So it doesn't help.
I mean it doesn't help.
It doesn't tell you all theother things that stack on top
of that, and those other thingsare the ones that change a lot
anyway.
So all the other things thatstack on top of that and those
other things are the ones thatchange a lot anyway.
So it's not going to tell youhow your metabolism changes day
to day and it's not even goingto tell you your total energy
burn right now.
You know, even if you had itdone regularly, which would be
expensive, it'd be impracticalYou're still missing the total
energy expenditure.
(11:36):
So those are useless.
So those are the big ones.
Right, and from an engineeringstandpoint, if you can't measure
something directly, what do youdo?
You measure its effects, youmeasure the inputs and outputs,
you measure what we call theblack box.
You think of a control systemor just a closed system, and if
you're able to tell what'scoming in and going out.
(11:56):
You can tell how the system ischanging.
Your metabolism reveals itselfthrough the relationship between
energy intake and body weightchanges over time.
It's very simple and elegant,and this is based on the
fundamental principle of energybalance, which balance calories
in, calories out which, by theway, if it didn't work, we
couldn't do this.
So we know it works, we knowit's accurate, it's physics and
(12:18):
it's simply this If you'reeating at the level of your
total daily energy expenditure,that big pie chart for the day,
if you're eating that exactamount of calories, what's gonna
happen?
Your weight is gonna stay thesame, because you're bringing in
energy that matches the energygoing out.
And so what happens?
Your weight stays the same.
If you're eating more than that, your body has to store that
somewhere in your fat.
(12:39):
You gain weight.
If you're eating less, you loseweight.
Right, you get the idea.
And so this method worksbecause it captures the whole
thing, the whole black box, thewhole pie chart, the whole total
daily energy expenditure.
It's your BMR, your activity,your metabolic adaptation, your
genetics, your current state,what you're eating, how you're
eating, how you're processing,all the crazy stuff that goes
inside your body.
You don't have to worry aboutit.
(13:00):
You don't have to measure it,you just take what's coming in,
see what's going out.
The change is telling you whatyour metabolism is right.
It's like the best version of acontinuous metabolic test
that's practical, that's runningin the background of your life
all the time.
It's always there, it's hidingin plain sight, like I mentioned
before.
Hey, this is Philip, and beforewe continue, I want to talk
(13:25):
about cookware.
We all love to make our ownfood.
I love nonstick pans.
The problem is I've avoidedthem for years because when they
get scratched, when they getheated, they can release
microplastics, pfas smallparticles that can accumulate
over time in the body and somestudies have shown them to be
linked to health issues.
If you're optimizing yournutrition and making lots of
food for you and your family athome, it doesn't make sense to
compromise that withquestionable cookware.
(13:46):
So that's why I was interestedwhen Chef's Foundry, who is
sponsoring this episode, showedme their ceramic cookware.
It's called the P600 and usesSwiss-engineered ceramic coating
which has no Teflon, no PFAS,no plastic components.
It is nonstick, it works on allstovetops, it goes straight
into the oven.
All the things you need ifyou're trying to cook a lot of
(14:09):
your meals at home.
Right now you can get the P600at 50% off by going to
witsandweightscom slash chefsfoundry.
You'll also get a bunch ofaccessories with that.
There's a whole page thatexplains what you'll get for
that discounted 50% off.
Go to witsandweightscom slashchefsfoundry or click the link
in the show notes.
All right, let's get back to theshow.
(14:29):
So how does it work in practice?
Simple you track your calorieintake fairly accurately okay,
and I'm gonna put it that waybecause it doesn't have to be
perfect and then you weighyourself every day.
That's the most precise way todo it and then, over a period of
about three, maybe four weeks,you're gonna have a good trend.
You're gonna have a good movingaverage of your weight and your
(14:51):
calorie intake.
If your average intake, youknow your moving average, we can
get into complicated algorithmsand all that.
We don't need to do that.
If your average intake was2,400 calories and your weight
stayed the same over that threeto four weeks, then 2,400 is
very close to your average TDEEduring that period, right.
But we can get even more precise.
(15:12):
We can, because if you lost onepound over those three weeks
eating 2,400 calories, then yourTDEE is higher, right, it's
higher than what you ate,because you ate less than you
needed.
So your TDE would be like 2,570calories and that's based on
the idea that one pound of fatloss is equal to 3,500 calories,
right?
So we know metabolism isdynamic, so you're going to
(15:34):
change in some way, even if it'ssmall, like usually people
aren't just this exact sameweight day after day after day.
There's going to be some changeor some up and down or some
drift, right?
So you take the duration, youtake how much you ate per day,
you take the fact that a fat, apound of fat, is 3,500 calories,
and take how much you weigh andfrom that you can tell how many
, how much, how many caloriesyou're burning every day,
(15:56):
knowing that that's going tokeep changing every day.
It's going to keep driftingevery day.
I mean, if you look at myexpenditure graph, it goes up
and down kind of ridiculously,and that's why I track it,
because otherwise I would haveno idea.
So the key here is not to usethe daily measurements.
The key is to take dailymeasurements, but use the trend
over time of those measurements.
Don't even take weeklymeasurements for this.
(16:18):
Take daily, because if you takethem once a week you might be
at a high point or a low point.
That's not going to tell youanything either.
Right?
This is simple math.
The more data you have, themore you can smooth out the
average, because your weight canswing by a lot day to day.
Sodium, stress, hormones,glycogen, fluid, gut content.
Right, go up two pounds downtwo pounds up three pounds down
(16:38):
one pound up one pound down fourpounds, and at the end of the
day it might be the same.
Right, the trend over timemight tell you.
You know what?
I'm actually maintaining myweight, even though I have a lot
of fluctuations, especially ifyour eating patterns are not
stable.
Right, if you eat a lot on theweekends and eat less on the
weekdays, for example.
So this approach?
It just destroys everythingelse because of its precision
(17:00):
and accuracy.
Right, it has massiveadvantages over all those other
things that are just junk.
I mean, I'm just being honestLike they don't help in any way.
They actually make it worse,because you end up trusting a
number that is totally far offfrom reality and making choices
based on that is called anuninformed choice.
(17:21):
We want to make personalized,informed choices.
So why is that the case here?
All right, I just mentioned it.
First of all, it's personalized.
It accounts for you what'shappening.
You don't have to know why orall the details, but you have a
unique physiology in that moment, on every given day, unique
activity pattern, uniquemetabolism, unique adaptations,
(17:43):
unique hormones, unique stress,unique everything.
And that makes you differentfrom the average person, but it
also makes you different thanyou yesterday.
So it's highly personalized.
The second thing is it adaptsto you, so kind of segwaying off
of what I just said.
You're changing every day.
You need something that can befairly responsive.
It can't take six monthsPractically.
(18:04):
We know we can't do it in twodays because your weight changes
too quickly, your body doesn'trespond that quickly, so we have
to find a sweet spot that makessense from a practical
perspective.
So agile metabolism changes dueto dieting, training, stress,
life circumstances.
This method is going to capturethose in a reasonable timeframe
.
You know a couple of weeks,maybe a week.
(18:24):
You know we can't over trust oroveremphasize the data, even
though it seems highly precisebecause it's a moving average,
because even a moving averageremember, you're taking, you're
including some of the datapoints from two weeks ago or
three weeks ago.
Things have changed since thenbut you're doing your best to go
with the ebb and flow, right,but you are not stuck with some
(18:47):
fixed flow rate in the riverfrom six months ago, because
that's useless.
The third thing is, this is avery practical approach.
It's just so elegant, in myopinion.
I use the word elegant in theengineering sense in that it's a
very easy design.
It's like E equals MC, squaredright from Einstein.
It's a very elegant formula and, at the same time, it
(19:08):
represents somethingmind-blowingly complex, right,
the theory of relativity.
But it's elegant because youcan express it so simply,
express it so simply.
Well, this is elegant in termsof how practical it is.
You don't need equipment, right,I mean, other than a way to log
your food, which we have appsfor that, or to weigh yourself,
I mean okay, so you don't needspecial equipment.
You don't need expensive tests.
(19:30):
You don't have to pay for stuffother than a subscription to an
app, maybe, and the occasionalbody weight scale when it breaks
.
You don't need complex formulasor calculations.
Now, I say that with thisasterisk depends on how nerdy
you are and how much into mathyou are, but you don't when you
use, for example, macro factor,which is the app that I
recommend.
It does it for you.
If you're so inclined and youwant to make a spreadsheet for
(19:52):
all this, you can, and you canmake it probably pretty good,
but it's not as complex as ifyou had to measure all of the
stuff happening in your body.
That would be just insane,right?
You need a food scale, abathroom scale, and consistent
data collection is all you need,and make it easy on yourself to
do that.
Right.
Use frictionless methods to dothis.
(20:13):
The fourth benefit of this isit's self-correcting.
This is huge.
If you're not trackingaccurately, if you're missing
calories here and there, it'sstill going to work.
You know why?
Because it is based on theoutcomes, not the inputs.
So what's cool with this is ithas a lot of resilience.
You can be off by up to 30%with your calorie tracking as
(20:34):
long as you are tracking, andit's still going to be robust
enough to cover you.
You can skip some weigh-ins andit's still going to be robust
enough to cover you.
You can skip some weigh-ins andit's still going to be robust
enough.
That's pretty cool, right?
I recommend tracking daily anddoing it as precisely as you can
.
But if you skip a weight, ifyou skip a food log, a day of
food logged, or if you're havingto estimate because you're
traveling at a restaurant,whatever, it's going to be good
(20:55):
enough to actually work quitewell anyway.
And I wanted to mention thatbecause that's an excuse for
people who say, well, I can'ttrack every day, or I go to
restaurants, I can't be precise.
You don't have to be Sorry, youdon't have to be.
You can have a lot of flex hereand it's going to be fine.
Right, your weight trend isgoing to reflect your true
average intake over time and theweight trend is resilient to a
(21:16):
few missed weigh-ins.
Your food is resilient to lackof perfection with your logging
right.
And then, finally, when you tiethis all together, what does it
do?
It gives you a thing that youcan actually act on in an
informed way when you know yourreal TDEE the pie chart.
This is how many calories Iburn every day, pretty close to
reality.
Now I can say, okay, I want tolose a pound a week.
(21:39):
That's 500 calories a day.
I burn 2000 calories, so I needto eat 1500 calories.
And then next week, based on mytracking, it turns out that my
TDE dropped a little bit.
Well, I need to drop calories alittle bit or wow, I'm walking
a lot.
My TDE is actually going up.
I need to eat more to stay inthat deficit or surplus or
whatever it is right.
Whatever direction you want togo, you want to do body recomp
(22:06):
as well.
We just talked about bodyrecomp.
We just had a 90-day bodyrecomp workshop in Physique
University.
The day this episode comes out,it was the day after we had the
workshop.
If you want to see the replayand learn how to track not only
track your metabolism, but alsocome up with a 90 day way to use
that information to buildmuscle and lose fat that's what
we did in there.
More importantly, though, youknow what else we do in physique
university.
We deal with scenarios when yourexpenditure goes up or down and
(22:30):
you're not sure why.
We can talk through that.
We have guides on that.
We have coaches who can helpyou understand it.
We can diagnose it.
We could even get on a livecall or hot seat to interpret
your data, to see if it's thedata itself or something that
you've done that you're not evenaware of that could be causing
the change, so that you can takecontrol of the situation and
(22:50):
know what to do next.
Whether you're losing fat,you're hitting a plateau, you're
trying to build muscle right,and that's that engineering
mindset I want us to cultivate.
That this is information, andif we can have accurate data, we
can make good decisions.
So go to witsandweightscomslash physique If you guys want
to join us in there, if you wantto get the replay of the body
recomp workshop, or if you justwant to hit it hard and
(23:11):
implement a fat loss plan that Ibuild for you and be able to
get unstuck when it seems likeyou're stuck, that's where we do
that PhysiqueUniversity,witsandweightscom slash physique
.
Now you could do all thesecalculations manually, like I
said, with a spreadsheet, but Ithink there's a better way.
It's called Macrofactor.
I am such a shill for this appbecause I've used it since
(23:31):
launch.
Yes, I'm an affiliate.
Please support me.
My code is witsandweights allone word.
You'll get two weeks free andyou won't look back.
It's made by the team atStronger by Science, greg
Knuckles and those guys, andit's built specifically on this
methodology.
It is the only app that doesthis.
How does it do it?
I'm just going to quicklyexplain.
When you log your weight everyday, it uses a 20 day
(23:52):
exponential moving average.
You don't have to understand it.
It's just a moving average togive you a trend weight.
Then it looks at how much foodyou've logged every day and it
reverse engineers yourmetabolism based on that.
That's it, and then it updatesyour metabolism every day as you
provide the data and says okay,it is Monday Time to check in.
(24:13):
Your metabolism is up a hundredcalories this week.
Therefore, we're going toincrease your targets by a
hundred calories.
And the protein, fats, carbbreakdown are depending on some
other factors like what kind ofbalance you want, how aggressive
you want to be with protein,whether you're lifting weights,
etc.
By the way, everyone here shouldbe lifting weights, right?
Okay?
So I love Macrofactor.
Again, you can download it fromyour app store.
(24:35):
It's a paid app, but, my God,the the for 72 bucks a year is
going to save you probablythousands of dollars in
frustration and healthcare costsand probably other programs for
the rest of your life.
So it pays for itself instantly.
Wits and weights or no, go togo to macro factor from your app
store and then use my code witsand weights all one word and
(24:55):
that's it.
It's going to remove theguesswork for you If you want an
app, if you want to do ityourself and you're you nerd out
on this stuff.
Do it share, share with me yourexperience, how it's going.
All you need is food and weightright and everything else
calculates for you, and youdon't have to worry about
wearables.
You don't have to worry aboutgetting a cup using a calculator
.
You don't have to worry aboutgoing to use a machine in the
(25:17):
gym right calculator.
You don't have to worry aboutgoing to use a machine in the
gym right.
I've been using it myself, allour clients use it, physique
University clients, all use it.
And I have not found anythingelse that provides anywhere
close to the accuracy of theTDEE estimate than Macrofactor.
So that's why I'm such a shillfor it.
Okay, I'm a fan boy, as theysay.
All right.
So I know some of you arethinking but Philip, what if I
(25:40):
don't log perfectly?
What if I forget a meal?
What if I estimate my portions?
And I've already addressed thisto an extent.
But I want to go a step furtherand say that that is a strength
of this method because of howit's based on the closed system
and the outcome right, it's notbased on all the stuff under the
hood.
So you so let me give you anexample Some people might be
(26:02):
accidentally under logging everyday or over logging every day
because of whatever they'redoing in their life.
As long as the, as long as theunder or over logging is fairly
consistent no, you know what?
It doesn't even have to be thatconsistent.
Again, you can be off by 30% ineither direction.
It's going to be close enough.
When you think of calories,calories are like in the
thousands, right?
So if you're off by a fewhundred calories, when it
(26:24):
smooths it out and then links itup with your weight, it's still
going to be pretty darn closeto reality and you're still
going to be able to nudge yourdiet in the direction you want
to go, with some confidence,with a lot of confidence,
because that's the thing peopleare missing, isn't it?
They're missing the confidenceto know how much do I eat, or
(26:44):
I'm eating this much.
I think it's gonna do this, butit's not what the heck's going
on In my world.
I know how much to eat, and soif I'm eating that much, that's
not the problem.
It's something else, likesomething's happening with my
expenditure.
That's not the problem.
It's something else Like mysomething's happening with my
expenditure that's causing me toeither fall behind or get ahead
of the deficit or the surplus.
(27:06):
It's not that I'm not eatingthe right amount.
I know how much to eat, right?
Obviously, if you're eating waymore way below than the target,
way below the target, that's anindependent issue, right?
And another question to get isokay, what about the fact that
your scale weight changes somuch?
And some people don't realizethis, but it does.
It changes due to water weightfar more than it changes due to
(27:27):
fat changes.
And that's why I like trackingevery day, which, by the way,
has been shown in studies timeand again to be the most
effective means of hitting yourgoals and maintaining them
Weight loss, maintenance, musclegain, whatever is to track
daily.
And that's because you get thistrend that smooths out all of
that noise the noise from thesodium, from the Chinese food
(27:48):
and pizza, from the hormones,from the glycogen, from the hard
training session, from theinflammation, from your
menstrual cycle, all of it.
So that's another question thatcomes up.
Another one is what if mymetabolism is insert adjective
here broken, non-responsive or Ihave a thyroid condition?
Again, the robustness is builtin.
(28:10):
Even if you have metabolicissues, legitimate issues, this
is going to reveal your actualenergy expenditure so that you
understand reality.
You might discover that, yes,your TDE is far lower than you
expected.
And the initial response formany of you is I thought it was
burning, you know, 2000 calories, but I'm only burning 1600.
Now some people will say what'swrong with the app?
(28:32):
It says I only burn 1600.
Others will say, oh, it'sreally good to know that I only
burn 1600.
And, by the way, you can testthis out by eating 1600 for a
while and notice that yourweight stays the same.
But now you have accurate datawork to work with instead of
guessing right that that.
That, to me, is gold.
That's gold because if you havea low metabolism, and it's just
(28:55):
the way you are, you can dosomething about it.
You can add more neat into theequation.
You can use nonlinear dieting.
Maybe everything is suppressedand you're under fueled.
Maybe you have a hormone issue,like it allows you to separate
the variables and figure outwhat's going on.
Or, you know, you just have alower metabolism than the
average person and go listen tomy episode on what to do if you
(29:18):
have a very low metabolism.
Okay.
So the next question I get islike, isn't this too much work?
It sounds like a lot oftracking.
Well, you're already eatingfood, I hope, or else you'd be
dead.
You're probably weighingyourself occasionally anyway.
All I'm asking you to do is logdaily which every time I've
done a poll of my clients orFacebook members and said give
me your screen time for macrofactor.
(29:40):
It's like three minutes a day.
It's like three minutes a dayCause you end up copying and
pasting.
You end up being very quickwith the app.
It's one of the fast.
It is the fastest app on themarket.
It's been tested to be thefastest.
It has a great database, right.
It has AI, it has all thatstuff.
It's fast.
So you're taking three minutesa day to log your food and
you're taking 30 seconds a dayto weigh yourself, and that's it
(30:01):
Right.
And then, but the clarity youget for your expenditure
priceless To steal from themastercard commercial right,
beyond that right, like once youestablish your baseline
expenditure.
Now you have this data pointYou've probably never had in
your entire life and that aloneis going to give you more
clarity than you've had beforeto make decisions with your food
(30:21):
, let alone getting into macrosand all that other stuff.
So you should just start it andtry it, just try.
You know what, get what's inget.
I keep saying that get macrofactor and use the two weeks
free.
In those two weeks, do what wejust talked about Log your food
and weight every day and reachout to me on Instagram and tell
me about your experience.
If it was awful, if it doesn'twork, if you think it's not a
(30:42):
great app, I want to hear it.
I really do, because I want toknow why.
Because a lot of times it hasto do with the learning curve or
other aspects.
Some people may just not likeit, but once you start using it,
what I've found is that yourealize your metabolism is not
mysterious.
It is not uncontrollable.
Which Metabolism is notmysterious?
It is not uncontrollable, whichis what all the marketers want
you to believe.
I want you to come to me,whether you just check out the
(31:04):
podcast or come into ourFacebook group, or you want to
implement this stuff for you inour Physique University or
coaching.
I want you to come to me withmore clarity you've ever had
before, that you can dosomething about your metabolism
and that you can measure it,because then, from that premise,
you're going to start to seepatterns.
You're going to notice how yourmetabolism responds to your
(31:27):
training, different stresslevels, your sleep patterns,
what you eat, when you eat itright, your pre and post
workouts.
You see how your walks, youknow how your vacations versus
work schedule affect yourmetabolism, and then you become
the scientist of your ownphysiology.
That's what I want for people.
That is where the power comesfrom.
(31:48):
I've had clients discover theirmetabolism was way off from what
they thought 400 calorieshigher, 500 calories lower and
explain why they weren't gettingwhat they wanted, why they
weren't, say, losing on whatevercalories that the last person
recommended, or the calculatoror coach or whatever right.
And we see the other direction,people trying to go into a gain
and build muscle, and they findthat in reality, their
(32:11):
metabolism takes off like arocket and that's why they can't
keep up and they can't eatenough to gain the muscle, and
so they're always kind offalling behind and it holds them
back from building lean mass.
And so it's not just aboutgetting a number, it's getting
an understanding of how yourbody works, and then that is the
foundation for all thenutrition decisions you can make
(32:31):
.
I love that there are peopleout there that want you to just
eat intuitively and monitor yourblood sugar, and based on
satiety.
But we need precision, folks,we need some awareness, we need
some numbers Like I'm just,that's just me, I'm sorry,
that's me, I'm a numbers guy.
If you're not a numbers person,then maybe this approach doesn't
(32:53):
work for you.
If you like to track numbers,because you notice it helps you
manage your income and expensesso you can be set for retirement
and for your family, then thatsame principle applies to
everything else, especiallyfitness and nutrition, where it
is very numerically measurablein many senses.
And so you're not guessing,you're not hoping.
(33:13):
You're operating from a placeof confidence based on your own
data.
So again, your metabolism isnot mysterious.
It is not an unchangeablegenetic lottery that dooms you
to struggle with your weight.
It's dynamic, it responds toyou, your lifestyle, and you can
measure it very simply and veryaccurately.
And every day you wait to startcollecting this is another day
you're just flying blind right.
(33:33):
Every meal you eat, you don'tknow your TDE.
You just can't make informeddecisions.
If your goal is physique andhealth, all right.
So let's do this together.
Let's understand our numbersand use that to make smarter
choices.
So you stop hoping and youstart engineering your results.
That is it All right.
This episode opened your eyes tohow metabolism works, and I
(33:57):
should say that the metabolismitself.
I didn't really get into thescience of that too much.
I really wanted to talk abouthow you measure it with this
episode.
So if you do that, the nextquestion might be okay how can I
change it?
And so I have an episode calledfour ways to increase your
metabolism by 500 to 1000calories per day.
Episode two, three, six, two,36.
(34:19):
I'm going to link it in theshow notes.
It's called four ways toincrease your metabolism 500 to
a thousand calories per day,which gives you strategies to
boost your TDEE once you knowwhat, what it actually is.
Sorry, I'm losing my voicetoday.
So combining today's trackingmethod with those strategies,
that is what's really powerful.
All right, until next time,keep using your wits, lifting
(34:40):
those weights and remember yourmetabolism is not a mystery.
It's data to be collected.
I'll talk to you next time hereon the Wits and Weights Podcast
.
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
My Favorite Murder with Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark
My Favorite Murder is a true crime comedy podcast hosted by Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark. Each week, Karen and Georgia share compelling true crimes and hometown stories from friends and listeners. Since MFM launched in January of 2016, Karen and Georgia have shared their lifelong interest in true crime and have covered stories of infamous serial killers like the Night Stalker, mysterious cold cases, captivating cults, incredible survivor stories and important events from history like the Tulsa race massacre of 1921. My Favorite Murder is part of the Exactly Right podcast network that provides a platform for bold, creative voices to bring to life provocative, entertaining and relatable stories for audiences everywhere. The Exactly Right roster of podcasts covers a variety of topics including historic true crime, comedic interviews and news, science, pop culture and more. Podcasts on the network include Buried Bones with Kate Winkler Dawson and Paul Holes, That's Messed Up: An SVU Podcast, This Podcast Will Kill You, Bananas and more.
The Joe Rogan Experience
The official podcast of comedian Joe Rogan.