January 15, 2025 • 24 mins
Book your FREE 15-minute Rapid Nutrition Assessment and get personalized guidance on which metrics to track for your situation.
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--
Your fat loss. Is. Stuck. You're even tracking your food and weight. But something's not working.
What if every plateau, stall, or setback could be prevented by knowing which body signals to monitor and how to interpret them?
Learn how to use the Balanced Scorecard approach to organize critical body feedback into a powerful dashboard for fat loss.
I'm revealing my 6-10 Biofeedback Model that I use with every client to identify issues before they happen to keep fat loss moving.
Main Takeaways:
- The 6 core metrics in your baseline fat loss dashboard to measure essential daily feedback
- The Balanced Scorecard framework to organize metrics in 4 categories
- The 10 advanced metrics that provide deeper insights when strategically tracked
- Using multiple organized data points helps prevent plateaus by revealing early warning signs across all aspects of health
Book your FREE 15-minute Rapid Nutrition Assessment and get personalized guidance on which metrics to track for your situation
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Philip Pape (00:01):
If you track your food, your weight, a few other
things, but you still feel stuckwith fat loss and you wonder is
there something I'm missing?
This episode is for you.
Most people focus just on thescale or a few other metrics
beyond that, but your body iscomplex.
It is constantly sendingfeedback that could speed up
your progress if you know whereto look.
So today I'm sharing mycomplete 610 biofeedback system
(00:24):
that I use with clients to showyou how to learn about those
signals that can unlock fasterprogress, to create sort of a
dashboard for fat loss.
Most importantly, you'll learnhow to stop flying blind and
start making Welcome to Wits andWeights, the show that blends
(00:51):
evidence and engineering to helpyou build smart, efficient
systems to achieve your dreamphysique.
I'm your host, philip Pabe, andtoday we're taking your fat loss
game to a new level.
We're going to harness thepower of biofeedback, not just
the basic tracking although wewill establish that but a
complete system used to organizeand act on crucial data,
(01:12):
especially when you're not quitesure what's going on from that
top level surface feedback.
Picture a pilot with all of hisgauges or her gauges and
instruments flying through thesky.
I actually have a pilot'slicense I haven't flown in years
, but we were taught to look atmultiple instruments.
I think there are at least sixthat we looked at, not just
airspeed or altitude, and we'redoing this because we want to
(01:35):
trust the instruments but alsocorrelate them and ensure a safe
, efficient flight and kind ofunderstand okay, if this
instrument's broken over here,we can trust these other three
to tell us what's going on andyour body is similar, right, the
scale is one of those manyinstruments your food, your
lifting performance just acouple of those instruments.
And when you know how to trackand interpret all the other
(01:59):
signals, especially thebiofeedback during fat loss,
that is how you unlock theknowledge of what's going on,
the confidence of what's goingon with your body, so you can
make faster progress, and thenthat's what allows you to get
through the plateaus and havefewer setbacks.
Now, before we get into it, ifyou want some help implementing
what we talk about today andjust chat about your situation
(02:21):
and what's holding you back andwhere you want to go, book a
free 15 minute rapid nutritionassessment with me.
It is not a sales call.
Anybody you ask and I couldgive you references knows that
all I do is try to help you onthe call, give you some clarity,
send you on your way with someactions, and it's up to you.
If you want to implement or ifyou want to reach out for more
help, that's fine.
Or go to our Facebook group orjoin our Physique University, I
(02:42):
don't care.
As long as I'm helping you gofrom this lack of clarity to a
little bit more clarity andsteps you can take.
So if you book that call it'scalled a rapid nutrition
assessment we can identify whatmetrics from today's episode you
should focus on first and thenhelp you create a clear action
plan.
If that's something you want todo, just click in the show
(03:02):
notes to schedule your call, orgo to witsandweightscom and
click the giant button in thetop right.
All right, that's enoughplugging for today.
Let's get into today's episodeand break it down into three
segments.
First, I want to cover the coresix biofeedback metrics that I
recommend everybody track, nomatter what.
All my clients use this in ourcheck-in forms and it's kind of
(03:26):
that essential minimumfoundational knowledge for fat
loss.
If you're not even trackingthese, that is huge low-hanging
fruit for you.
Second, I'm gonna introduce thewhat's called balanced
scorecard framework, something Ilearned in my engineering
career and show how it helps youorganize your tracking into
some different lanes ordifferent perspectives and make
(03:46):
the data actionable for you.
And then we're going to look atthe 10 advanced metrics that
can accelerate your progresswhen you strategically and that
means you don't need them allyou may not need any of them,
but in some cases, individualcircumstances call for pulling
out the big guns, and that iswhy I'm putting these all
together today six, 10, the sixthat everyone should track and
(04:07):
10 that you may want to considerfor more advanced situations.
All right, so let's talk aboutthe six foundational signals
that everyone should trackduring fat loss, and you, as an
individual, might track otherthings beyond this.
That's totally cool with you.
This is what I want everybodyto track as a start.
(04:31):
Number one stress your overallstress level.
A scale of one to 10 for prettymuch all of these could be
helpful.
Some of these metrics we talkabout will have other ways to
measure them or we'll havemultiple sub measures that you
could potentially use, but notto make it complicated, we're
just going to go through eachone.
So stress high stress is one ofthe biggest saboteurs of fat
loss.
It ramps up your cortisol.
It makes um fat, you know.
It makes you store belly fat.
(04:52):
It slows down recovery.
There are so many reasons.
Stress is the number one thingon this list because high stress
is going to prevent fat loss,no matter how hard you cut your
calories, how how hard you train, how hard you do anything else.
So stress is number one.
Number two is sleep, so almostas if not more important than
stress for a lot of people, boththe quantity and the quality.
(05:13):
And again, for my clients, Iask them to rate on a scale of
one to 10, but I talk about both.
Are you getting enough sleep?
Are you getting enough qualitysleep, restful?
Some clients will go to adeeper level than that and track
their, you know, with an auraring and track REM and deep
sleep and stuff.
But just start at the top.
How is your sleep in general?
Because that impacts yourhunger hormones, that impacts
(05:35):
your recovery, your cognitiveperformance, your muscle
building, everything All right?
Number three is hunger.
So again, you can rate this oneto 10, and when you are not in
a deficit, hunger should berated pretty high, as in you're
not very hungry.
One here is very hungry.
A 10 is not hungry at all andyou can tell if your deficit is
(05:58):
too appropriate or tooaggressive.
Too appropriate is appropriateor too aggressive based on
sometimes based on this alone.
If I see a client's hungertrending downward, it's a
proactive signal that we'reabout ready for a refeed, a diet
break, or to let off the gas alittle bit on the deficit.
And it would behoove you to bevery aware of that as you move
(06:21):
forward, so that you can besuccessful and modify how you
eat, what you eat and thedieting itself, all right.
Number four is energy.
Now, energy is kind of a vagueterm, right, but what I'm
referring to here is your energylevel throughout the day,
especially around workouts.
Now, we all have that 3 pm.
Well, many of us have that 3 pmcrash.
Right, it comes from cortisoland you're tired and you're
(06:43):
working all day.
But we want to distinguish thefluctuations in energy levels
from the baseline and try tounderstand what is causing it to
go up and down.
Right, low energy signals,maybe too large deficit, not
enough carbs, not enough foodaround your workout, you know,
training too hard or too oftenAll of that can be helpful.
Too hard or too often, all ofthat can be helpful.
(07:07):
Number five is recovery.
So I look at this as acorollary to energy, but frankly
it's a corollary to sleep andstress as well.
They're all related right.
Hence my pilot metaphor earlier.
These are all part of system.
So recovery is how well you'rebouncing back from training, how
much or little soreness youhave.
I don't want people to bechasing soreness.
Once you get into a program andyou're consistent with it, you
(07:28):
shouldn't have a lot of sorenessand you should be able to
recover and bounce back to thegym and really go after the next
session.
Poor recovery means somethingwith volume, something with
nutrition.
It could be because of a lackof sleep or too much stress.
So again, it's all tiedtogether.
It could be because of a lackof sleep or too much stress.
So again, it's all tiedtogether.
And then the last one here isdigestion.
Gut health is so crucial fornutrient absorption, for
(07:53):
revealing food intolerances, forwhether you have enough fiber.
Are you eating a diversevariety of foods?
There's a lot of things thatour gut can tell us, and so when
I say digestion, it's at a veryhigh level.
Are you bloated?
Are you gassy?
How are your bowel movementsright, things like that.
And then you can drill downfrom any of those.
So it's pretty simple.
(08:14):
But a lot of you probably aren'teven tracking these at like a
weekly level and all you have todo is, on a scale one to 10,
track these.
That's what I, we want to beable to kind of organize and
interpret all this data.
Because it's one thing to havethe data, that's step one.
(08:34):
It's another thing to know whatthe heck to do with it, right,
and what is important versuswhat is temporary.
Let's say, for example, ifyou've got all your family over
this week and your whole routinehas changed and your whole food
situation is different, it'sgoing to affect all of your
biofeedback measures, and yet itall may be irrelevant because
(08:56):
the context, the environment,has changed for that brief
moment.
But if something becomes morechronic, that is more of an
indicator.
Similarly, something mightdecline, like hunger, might get
worse during a dieting phase,and yet it's perfectly normal,
or it's a trade-off that you'rewilling to make, right.
Or if I'm your coach and I seehunger goes from no hunger at
all 10, to a seven and it staysthere, I'm not that worried,
(09:19):
right.
But if you start getting intosix and five and four territory,
okay, then we have to have theconversation of what needs to
change.
So the engineering framework I'mgoing to bring into this today
is called the balanced scorecard, and it's just a way to track
performance across multipledimensions.
In the aerospace world we hadsomething called the control
tower, right, funny?
You know fancy names, sillynames for these things.
(09:42):
Just imagine pillars or columns.
If you're a spreadsheet person,you could just imagine these as
being different columns ofthings that you measure and then
the rows are the specificmetrics.
Okay, that's all I'm going totalk about spreadsheets today, I
promise.
So why don't we apply thisourselves to fat loss?
(10:02):
And we can use four scores orfour perspectives, four pillars,
let's say.
The first pillar is yourphysical health.
These are your directphysiological markers.
The second is your mental andemotional well-being, that's,
your psychological state,because that is very telling.
The third is your recovery andadaptation.
(10:23):
This is how well your bodyhandles the stress.
It's a little different fromthe physical or the
physiological.
And then the fourth one is yoursustainability and your
progress.
These are factors that affectyour adherence, which so many
programs and people andpodcasters neglect when they
talk about things like weightloss is adherence.
So if we have a framework likethat.
(10:44):
We can not just focus on onething and get obsessed with it
and neglect others.
We think of it as a system andwe can organize our thoughts.
So guess what I'm gonna do foryou?
I'm gonna share with you the 10advanced metrics that I thought
about as the ones that I mostlikely go to with clients beyond
those six that you would findhelpful.
(11:04):
There could be 20 beyond thisthat I might reach to in
advanced situations, but I thinkthese 10 are very important and
I'm going to break them down bythe four pillars that we just
talked about.
So let's start with physical,and I'm going to give you three
advanced metrics here.
The first one is bloating andGI distress, and this is
(11:26):
distinct from the digestion thatwe talked about earlier.
This is actually a moreadvanced tracking of your meal
timing, the combinations of foodthat you eat, and then the
stress responses, all of whichtrigger discomfort.
So you're really creating acorrelational tracking mechanism
to track, potentially, foodintolerances and food
(11:48):
combinations and whatnot.
And I've had clients who haveadvanced conditions where they
can't handle certain types offoods.
They need low FODMAP diets, lowhistamine diets, something like
that, but rather than justrestrict everything or go
through a random eliminationdiet.
We can actually go the otherdirection, so to speak, and
(12:09):
actually start tracking whathappens with your response as
you eat what you eat, to reallydial in on what might be causing
the discomfort.
So that can be helpful.
I know it sounds kind of vague,but it is an advanced metric to
identify hidden intolerances,to optimize your meal
composition, your balance, forwhatever the issue is for you.
(12:31):
It might be nutrient absorption, right.
It might be your gut health, itmight be an intolerance or a
condition that you have, sobloating and GI distress.
Tracked against timing, foodcombinations and stress
responses that trigger them.
All right.
The second one, under physical,is your skin health.
If your skin complexion changesor you have acne patterns or
skin dryness, these can and theycome out of nowhere.
(12:54):
These can reveal some sort ofsystemic inflammation,
autoimmune conditions, nutrientdeficiencies, hormonal shifts,
something like that.
And oftentimes people will goto a band-aid for that, like I'm
just going to have collagenprotein or something.
But we really want tounderstand when something
changes with our body that therecould be something going on.
But we really want tounderstand when something
changes with our body that therecould be something going on.
(13:15):
And the third advanced metrichere is hydration, not just the
you know yes, you should drinksufficient water and monitor
your intake but also look atsigns like the color of your
urine, your thirst patterns,your skin elasticity, and so
that's why I bring this up alongwith skin health back to back,
because your skin can also tellyou a bit about your hydration.
And, of course, hydrationimpacts your other top level
(13:37):
biometrics hunger, energyrecovery.
So if we're having an issuethere and all the other things
are checked off, I'm going tolook at hydration.
And hydration can sometimes bemore complicated than just the
amount of water you eat.
It could be what you drink.
It could be what you're eating,your source of electrolytes
when you're eating and drinkingthis stuff.
Some people they might drink,quote unquote enough, but they
(13:58):
do it all at one time of the day.
There's a lot that goes onthere.
So bloating, ngi, distress, skinhealth and hydration are three
advanced metrics you couldconsider for physical, for
mental and emotional.
The first one here is a big oneand some coaches I know have
this as a top line metric.
I actually have it as aslightly more advanced metric
(14:19):
because and let me just tell youwhat it is it's mood and mental
clarity, and I think a lot oftimes my clients will talk about
this anyway as part of theirwins, their challenges, their
roadblocks, their energy, theirrecovery, and there's no need to
ask yet.
Another separate question aboutmood is what I used to have it
in there and I actually got ridof it because of that reason.
It was kind of redundant.
But for some clients and forsome of you listening, tracking
(14:43):
things like your level of focus,your alertness, your emotional
stability throughout the day youknow that are that aren't
correlated with things like amenstrual cycle or any other
condition.
Sudden mood changes, brain fogcan signal that your nutrition
plan is affecting what's goingon, or your training or what
have you before things stall andyou can do something about it.
(15:05):
And then the next two you'regoing to understand why these
are all part of mental andemotional and some of these can
be interrelated.
The next one, which is the fifthadvanced metric, is body image
perception.
Uh, yeah, you can track that.
You're.
It's.
It's your subjective view ofprogress, like how your clothes
fit and how you look in themirror and your progress photos
and all of that how you feelabout your body.
(15:27):
You can track that.
Now be careful, right this if,if you have, um, an existing
issue with body dysmorphia orsome unhealthy emotional
patterns around body image,that's outside my scope of
practice.
I'm strictly talking about aself-rated perception to kind of
get awareness on that andreveal whether that's tied to
(15:49):
your patterns, like your eatingpatterns, and that's really all
I'm going to say about that, tobe honest.
But it is something worthtracking.
And then the next one, undermental and emotional, is your
cravings.
Now, this is important becauseI just had a back and forth with
a client the other day and wewere talking about hunger and
she kept saying, well, it's nothunger, it's not hunger, it's
cravings.
And I said, okay, I get whatyou're saying.
(16:09):
There is a distinction there,absolutely Thank.
Thank you for clarifying thelanguage we want to use, because
hunger, desire for somethingthat's not necessarily food,
that could be a craving, eventhough it could be food, so
intense desires for foods ortastes for example, salty, sweet
but also a desire for somethingto reduce the stress that you
(16:29):
have, right, whatever thetrigger might be.
And this can indicate anemotional need that needs
attention.
It could also indicate the needfor a strategy, a simple
strategy in place, some level oftracking or pattern, interrupt
or changing up your environmentor having a food swap.
I mean, there are a lot ofdifferent strategies for this.
It's a whole separate topic,and I think I might even do a
(16:52):
upcoming episode that goesthrough my hunger scale and
diary to dive into thedifference between physical and
psychological hunger, whichfalls in this category.
And then we get to the thirdpillar here, which is recovery
and adaptation, and I have threehere as well.
So this brings us to overallnumber seven of the ten heart
rate variability, hrv.
(17:14):
For those of you who wear awatch or a ring, you can measure
your HRV, which is effectivelya measure of your nervous
system's recovery state.
Low HRV can sometimes predictthat you're going to have stress
from overtraining before theperformance actually drops, and
so what it could tell you?
And it's funny because yourring might actually say, hey, we
(17:37):
noticed your HRV is low, youmay not be in a great state to
train Now.
I take those with a big grainof salt, because the last thing
I want you to do is you feelgreat, you've got energy, you're
good to go, and your ring says,man, maybe you shouldn't train
today, and then you don't train.
That's the last thing I want todo it's more of correlating
this with the other indicatorsof potential overtraining or
(17:58):
excessive stress.
And if you know, you've justbeen pounded into the wall by
life stress, by chronic stress.
It's good to be aware of thatproactively, to see if you need
to modify your training in someway to accommodate that, not
necessarily skipping yourtraining session, but modifying
it in some way.
And that's where a good coachcan really help you figure out
(18:18):
what that might look like.
Number eight, which is thesecond one in recovery and
adaptation, is your libido, yoursex drive, your sex function.
And again, I used to have thisas one of my main metrics, but
it's very situational.
Let's just say it's a sensitivetopic, right, and sexual drive
and function are an indicator ofhormonal health, right?
(18:40):
Testosterone, for example.
And your stress load too.
If you have too much stress oryou're excessively dieting,
you're getting burned out.
That's going to affect yourlibido and it's tied to other
things like energy recovery andso on.
So it's a good thing for someof you to track.
Many of you don't even have to.
You know, uh, you know it kindof intuitively, but you can do
it objectively.
(19:00):
And then number nine, which isthe last one under recovery and
adaptation here is yourmenstrual or hormonal symptoms.
So this is men and women.
For women, it's your cycle, youknow, tracking uh, how regular
it is and what symptoms do youhave associated with it, either
on a regular basis, like as yourbaseline, which can be helpful
for you, or if you're workingwith a coach, to understand if
any modifications have to bemade or deviations to that,
(19:23):
which is also really important.
And then for all clients, formen as well, just monitoring any
symptoms that are important toyou that would suggest an
imbalance with your hormones,understanding that during fat
loss you're going to have a downregulation in all your hormones
anyway.
So again, you have to take itas part of the system.
And then the last category here, and also the last metric.
(19:46):
The last category issustainability and progress.
And so the metric that I wantyou to track is lifestyle
flexibility, how well your planadapts to your real life.
Now, I don't actually trackthis as a number with clients.
I don't have clients tell me oh, I was an eight this week on
lifestyle flexibility.
We can tease that out from theother metrics and their
(20:07):
reporting of how their week wentand how we discussed their
check-in.
But when you do this yourself,why don't you create a separate
metric on its own that scoresyou for that week and says based
on following my plan, this ishow easy or difficult it was to
stick to the plan, given my liferight Social events, dining out
(20:29):
without anxiety, travelschedule disruptions, family
meals, celebrations, work,stress, deadlines.
And what's interesting aboutthis is it's kind of flipping it
around, isn't it?
It's saying, okay, I have myplan, I believe it's the best
plan for me, but this week itwas like a three because life
happened.
If your plan was a lot moreflexible than when life happens,
(20:51):
the plan may be rated higherthan that, and so when you get a
three or a four and if you getperiodic or repeated versions of
that low score, it tells youyour plan is simply not flexible
enough for you.
Instead of trying to fit yourlife to your plan, try to fit
your plan to your life.
So that is the last metric.
(21:12):
And what's super fascinatingabout all of this and again, I
hope you don't feel overwhelmedlike you have to use all 16 of
these metrics.
Use the first six to start andthen get inspired by the other
10 and you may have your ownthat you want to use, but the
goal is to reveal a solution toa plateau before you hit the
plateau, like when my clients,when their hunger or cravings
(21:35):
are increasing, or theirrecovery is increasing, or their
recovery is declining or theirenergy is low and by low I just
mean like one or two ticks lowerthan last time.
It gives me a clue.
Now we might not have to changethings, but there's a good
chance.
I'm going to say you know what,let's ease off on the calories
or let's take a refeed or let'stake a diet break.
And oftentimes what happens ismy clients tell me before I tell
(21:57):
them, because they check in andthey say you know what, based
on having you know, you made mescore this stuff and I noticed
that all these numbers haveticked down.
I didn't quite realize thatthat was the case.
Maybe it's time for a littlebit of a break.
And then you come back strongerand you continue losing the fat
while others crash into a walland kind of beat their head into
the wall over and over.
And that's the power of havingmultiple data points that
(22:19):
describe your overall body, yoursystem, organized in a way that
shows you how they connect.
You're proactive instead ofreactive with your fat loss All
right.
So when we talk about physiqueengineering, that is what we
mean Not guesswork, but beingdata driven.
Not hoping what you're doingworks, having concrete, specific
data showing you what's workingand what needs to adjust.
(22:41):
If you're like that's too hard,well, you're just not going to
get the result you want.
There's a little bit of effortinvolved.
You could also reach out forsupport.
You could join a community likeour free Facebook group.
You can reach out for coaching.
You can join our physiqueuniversity, which is a more
budget friendly group version ofcoaching for a lot of you who
may not be able to afford orwant to work with a one-on-one
(23:02):
coach.
And the first place to start isjust reach out for a 15 minute
rapid nutrition assessment,because that is a call.
That is not a sales pitch.
Or we're just going to get onthe phone.
We're going to talk about theweather, and then we're going to
dive in too, because that'swhat you always start with,
right, and then we're going todive into hey, which metrics or
what data or what form oftracking or what kind of
(23:24):
nutrition or training approachmight you be missing?
That will help you makeprogress.
A simple, I'll say, two orthree step action plan.
That's it.
I want you to click the link inthe show notes to schedule that
, or go to witsandweightscom andclick the link in the top right
and we'll have that call andyou'll get some clarity.
All right, until next time,keep using your wits lifting
those weights and remember yourbody is always giving you
(23:47):
feedback.
The key is knowing how tolisten and respond.
All right, I'll talk to younext time here on the Wits and
Weights podcast.
If you track your food, your weight, a few other
things, but you still feel stuckwith fat loss and you wonder is
there something I'm missing?
This episode is for you.
Most people focus just on thescale or a few other metrics
beyond that, but your body iscomplex.
It is constantly sendingfeedback that could speed up
your progress if you know whereto look.
So today I'm sharing mycomplete 610 biofeedback system
(00:24):
that I use with clients to showyou how to learn about those
signals that can unlock fasterprogress, to create sort of a
dashboard for fat loss.
Most importantly, you'll learnhow to stop flying blind and
start making Welcome to Wits andWeights, the show that blends
(00:51):
evidence and engineering to helpyou build smart, efficient
systems to achieve your dreamphysique.
I'm your host, philip Pabe, andtoday we're taking your fat loss
game to a new level.
We're going to harness thepower of biofeedback, not just
the basic tracking although wewill establish that but a
complete system used to organizeand act on crucial data,
(01:12):
especially when you're not quitesure what's going on from that
top level surface feedback.
Picture a pilot with all of hisgauges or her gauges and
instruments flying through thesky.
I actually have a pilot'slicense I haven't flown in years
, but we were taught to look atmultiple instruments.
I think there are at least sixthat we looked at, not just
airspeed or altitude, and we'redoing this because we want to
(01:35):
trust the instruments but alsocorrelate them and ensure a safe
, efficient flight and kind ofunderstand okay, if this
instrument's broken over here,we can trust these other three
to tell us what's going on andyour body is similar, right, the
scale is one of those manyinstruments your food, your
lifting performance just acouple of those instruments.
And when you know how to trackand interpret all the other
(01:59):
signals, especially thebiofeedback during fat loss,
that is how you unlock theknowledge of what's going on,
the confidence of what's goingon with your body, so you can
make faster progress, and thenthat's what allows you to get
through the plateaus and havefewer setbacks.
Now, before we get into it, ifyou want some help implementing
what we talk about today andjust chat about your situation
(02:21):
and what's holding you back andwhere you want to go, book a
free 15 minute rapid nutritionassessment with me.
It is not a sales call.
Anybody you ask and I couldgive you references knows that
all I do is try to help you onthe call, give you some clarity,
send you on your way with someactions, and it's up to you.
If you want to implement or ifyou want to reach out for more
help, that's fine.
Or go to our Facebook group orjoin our Physique University, I
(02:42):
don't care.
As long as I'm helping you gofrom this lack of clarity to a
little bit more clarity andsteps you can take.
So if you book that call it'scalled a rapid nutrition
assessment we can identify whatmetrics from today's episode you
should focus on first and thenhelp you create a clear action
plan.
If that's something you want todo, just click in the show
(03:02):
notes to schedule your call, orgo to witsandweightscom and
click the giant button in thetop right.
All right, that's enoughplugging for today.
Let's get into today's episodeand break it down into three
segments.
First, I want to cover the coresix biofeedback metrics that I
recommend everybody track, nomatter what.
All my clients use this in ourcheck-in forms and it's kind of
(03:26):
that essential minimumfoundational knowledge for fat
loss.
If you're not even trackingthese, that is huge low-hanging
fruit for you.
Second, I'm gonna introduce thewhat's called balanced
scorecard framework, something Ilearned in my engineering
career and show how it helps youorganize your tracking into
some different lanes ordifferent perspectives and make
(03:46):
the data actionable for you.
And then we're going to look atthe 10 advanced metrics that
can accelerate your progresswhen you strategically and that
means you don't need them allyou may not need any of them,
but in some cases, individualcircumstances call for pulling
out the big guns, and that iswhy I'm putting these all
together today six, 10, the sixthat everyone should track and
(04:07):
10 that you may want to considerfor more advanced situations.
All right, so let's talk aboutthe six foundational signals
that everyone should trackduring fat loss, and you, as an
individual, might track otherthings beyond this.
That's totally cool with you.
This is what I want everybodyto track as a start.
(04:31):
Number one stress your overallstress level.
A scale of one to 10 for prettymuch all of these could be
helpful.
Some of these metrics we talkabout will have other ways to
measure them or we'll havemultiple sub measures that you
could potentially use, but notto make it complicated, we're
just going to go through eachone.
So stress high stress is one ofthe biggest saboteurs of fat
loss.
It ramps up your cortisol.
It makes um fat, you know.
It makes you store belly fat.
(04:52):
It slows down recovery.
There are so many reasons.
Stress is the number one thingon this list because high stress
is going to prevent fat loss,no matter how hard you cut your
calories, how how hard you train, how hard you do anything else.
So stress is number one.
Number two is sleep, so almostas if not more important than
stress for a lot of people, boththe quantity and the quality.
(05:13):
And again, for my clients, Iask them to rate on a scale of
one to 10, but I talk about both.
Are you getting enough sleep?
Are you getting enough qualitysleep, restful?
Some clients will go to adeeper level than that and track
their, you know, with an auraring and track REM and deep
sleep and stuff.
But just start at the top.
How is your sleep in general?
Because that impacts yourhunger hormones, that impacts
(05:35):
your recovery, your cognitiveperformance, your muscle
building, everything All right?
Number three is hunger.
So again, you can rate this oneto 10, and when you are not in
a deficit, hunger should berated pretty high, as in you're
not very hungry.
One here is very hungry.
A 10 is not hungry at all andyou can tell if your deficit is
(05:58):
too appropriate or tooaggressive.
Too appropriate is appropriateor too aggressive based on
sometimes based on this alone.
If I see a client's hungertrending downward, it's a
proactive signal that we'reabout ready for a refeed, a diet
break, or to let off the gas alittle bit on the deficit.
And it would behoove you to bevery aware of that as you move
(06:21):
forward, so that you can besuccessful and modify how you
eat, what you eat and thedieting itself, all right.
Number four is energy.
Now, energy is kind of a vagueterm, right, but what I'm
referring to here is your energylevel throughout the day,
especially around workouts.
Now, we all have that 3 pm.
Well, many of us have that 3 pmcrash.
Right, it comes from cortisoland you're tired and you're
(06:43):
working all day.
But we want to distinguish thefluctuations in energy levels
from the baseline and try tounderstand what is causing it to
go up and down.
Right, low energy signals,maybe too large deficit, not
enough carbs, not enough foodaround your workout, you know,
training too hard or too oftenAll of that can be helpful.
Too hard or too often, all ofthat can be helpful.
(07:07):
Number five is recovery.
So I look at this as acorollary to energy, but frankly
it's a corollary to sleep andstress as well.
They're all related right.
Hence my pilot metaphor earlier.
These are all part of system.
So recovery is how well you'rebouncing back from training, how
much or little soreness youhave.
I don't want people to bechasing soreness.
Once you get into a program andyou're consistent with it, you
(07:28):
shouldn't have a lot of sorenessand you should be able to
recover and bounce back to thegym and really go after the next
session.
Poor recovery means somethingwith volume, something with
nutrition.
It could be because of a lackof sleep or too much stress.
So again, it's all tiedtogether.
It could be because of a lackof sleep or too much stress.
So again, it's all tiedtogether.
And then the last one here isdigestion.
Gut health is so crucial fornutrient absorption, for
(07:53):
revealing food intolerances, forwhether you have enough fiber.
Are you eating a diversevariety of foods?
There's a lot of things thatour gut can tell us, and so when
I say digestion, it's at a veryhigh level.
Are you bloated?
Are you gassy?
How are your bowel movementsright, things like that.
And then you can drill downfrom any of those.
So it's pretty simple.
(08:14):
But a lot of you probably aren'teven tracking these at like a
weekly level and all you have todo is, on a scale one to 10,
track these.
That's what I, we want to beable to kind of organize and
interpret all this data.
Because it's one thing to havethe data, that's step one.
(08:34):
It's another thing to know whatthe heck to do with it, right,
and what is important versuswhat is temporary.
Let's say, for example, ifyou've got all your family over
this week and your whole routinehas changed and your whole food
situation is different, it'sgoing to affect all of your
biofeedback measures, and yet itall may be irrelevant because
(08:56):
the context, the environment,has changed for that brief
moment.
But if something becomes morechronic, that is more of an
indicator.
Similarly, something mightdecline, like hunger, might get
worse during a dieting phase,and yet it's perfectly normal,
or it's a trade-off that you'rewilling to make, right.
Or if I'm your coach and I seehunger goes from no hunger at
all 10, to a seven and it staysthere, I'm not that worried,
(09:19):
right.
But if you start getting intosix and five and four territory,
okay, then we have to have theconversation of what needs to
change.
So the engineering framework I'mgoing to bring into this today
is called the balanced scorecard, and it's just a way to track
performance across multipledimensions.
In the aerospace world we hadsomething called the control
tower, right, funny?
You know fancy names, sillynames for these things.
(09:42):
Just imagine pillars or columns.
If you're a spreadsheet person,you could just imagine these as
being different columns ofthings that you measure and then
the rows are the specificmetrics.
Okay, that's all I'm going totalk about spreadsheets today, I
promise.
So why don't we apply thisourselves to fat loss?
(10:02):
And we can use four scores orfour perspectives, four pillars,
let's say.
The first pillar is yourphysical health.
These are your directphysiological markers.
The second is your mental andemotional well-being, that's,
your psychological state,because that is very telling.
The third is your recovery andadaptation.
(10:23):
This is how well your bodyhandles the stress.
It's a little different fromthe physical or the
physiological.
And then the fourth one is yoursustainability and your
progress.
These are factors that affectyour adherence, which so many
programs and people andpodcasters neglect when they
talk about things like weightloss is adherence.
So if we have a framework likethat.
(10:44):
We can not just focus on onething and get obsessed with it
and neglect others.
We think of it as a system andwe can organize our thoughts.
So guess what I'm gonna do foryou?
I'm gonna share with you the 10advanced metrics that I thought
about as the ones that I mostlikely go to with clients beyond
those six that you would findhelpful.
(11:04):
There could be 20 beyond thisthat I might reach to in
advanced situations, but I thinkthese 10 are very important and
I'm going to break them down bythe four pillars that we just
talked about.
So let's start with physical,and I'm going to give you three
advanced metrics here.
The first one is bloating andGI distress, and this is
(11:26):
distinct from the digestion thatwe talked about earlier.
This is actually a moreadvanced tracking of your meal
timing, the combinations of foodthat you eat, and then the
stress responses, all of whichtrigger discomfort.
So you're really creating acorrelational tracking mechanism
to track, potentially, foodintolerances and food
(11:48):
combinations and whatnot.
And I've had clients who haveadvanced conditions where they
can't handle certain types offoods.
They need low FODMAP diets, lowhistamine diets, something like
that, but rather than justrestrict everything or go
through a random eliminationdiet.
We can actually go the otherdirection, so to speak, and
(12:09):
actually start tracking whathappens with your response as
you eat what you eat, to reallydial in on what might be causing
the discomfort.
So that can be helpful.
I know it sounds kind of vague,but it is an advanced metric to
identify hidden intolerances,to optimize your meal
composition, your balance, forwhatever the issue is for you.
(12:31):
It might be nutrient absorption, right.
It might be your gut health, itmight be an intolerance or a
condition that you have, sobloating and GI distress.
Tracked against timing, foodcombinations and stress
responses that trigger them.
All right.
The second one, under physical,is your skin health.
If your skin complexion changesor you have acne patterns or
skin dryness, these can and theycome out of nowhere.
(12:54):
These can reveal some sort ofsystemic inflammation,
autoimmune conditions, nutrientdeficiencies, hormonal shifts,
something like that.
And oftentimes people will goto a band-aid for that, like I'm
just going to have collagenprotein or something.
But we really want tounderstand when something
changes with our body that therecould be something going on.
But we really want tounderstand when something
changes with our body that therecould be something going on.
(13:15):
And the third advanced metrichere is hydration, not just the
you know yes, you should drinksufficient water and monitor
your intake but also look atsigns like the color of your
urine, your thirst patterns,your skin elasticity, and so
that's why I bring this up alongwith skin health back to back,
because your skin can also tellyou a bit about your hydration.
And, of course, hydrationimpacts your other top level
(13:37):
biometrics hunger, energyrecovery.
So if we're having an issuethere and all the other things
are checked off, I'm going tolook at hydration.
And hydration can sometimes bemore complicated than just the
amount of water you eat.
It could be what you drink.
It could be what you're eating,your source of electrolytes
when you're eating and drinkingthis stuff.
Some people they might drink,quote unquote enough, but they
(13:58):
do it all at one time of the day.
There's a lot that goes onthere.
So bloating, ngi, distress, skinhealth and hydration are three
advanced metrics you couldconsider for physical, for
mental and emotional.
The first one here is a big oneand some coaches I know have
this as a top line metric.
I actually have it as aslightly more advanced metric
(14:19):
because and let me just tell youwhat it is it's mood and mental
clarity, and I think a lot oftimes my clients will talk about
this anyway as part of theirwins, their challenges, their
roadblocks, their energy, theirrecovery, and there's no need to
ask yet.
Another separate question aboutmood is what I used to have it
in there and I actually got ridof it because of that reason.
It was kind of redundant.
But for some clients and forsome of you listening, tracking
(14:43):
things like your level of focus,your alertness, your emotional
stability throughout the day youknow that are that aren't
correlated with things like amenstrual cycle or any other
condition.
Sudden mood changes, brain fogcan signal that your nutrition
plan is affecting what's goingon, or your training or what
have you before things stall andyou can do something about it.
(15:05):
And then the next two you'regoing to understand why these
are all part of mental andemotional and some of these can
be interrelated.
The next one, which is the fifthadvanced metric, is body image
perception.
Uh, yeah, you can track that.
You're.
It's.
It's your subjective view ofprogress, like how your clothes
fit and how you look in themirror and your progress photos
and all of that how you feelabout your body.
(15:27):
You can track that.
Now be careful, right this if,if you have, um, an existing
issue with body dysmorphia orsome unhealthy emotional
patterns around body image,that's outside my scope of
practice.
I'm strictly talking about aself-rated perception to kind of
get awareness on that andreveal whether that's tied to
(15:49):
your patterns, like your eatingpatterns, and that's really all
I'm going to say about that, tobe honest.
But it is something worthtracking.
And then the next one, undermental and emotional, is your
cravings.
Now, this is important becauseI just had a back and forth with
a client the other day and wewere talking about hunger and
she kept saying, well, it's nothunger, it's not hunger, it's
cravings.
And I said, okay, I get whatyou're saying.
(16:09):
There is a distinction there,absolutely Thank.
Thank you for clarifying thelanguage we want to use, because
hunger, desire for somethingthat's not necessarily food,
that could be a craving, eventhough it could be food, so
intense desires for foods ortastes for example, salty, sweet
but also a desire for somethingto reduce the stress that you
(16:29):
have, right, whatever thetrigger might be.
And this can indicate anemotional need that needs
attention.
It could also indicate the needfor a strategy, a simple
strategy in place, some level oftracking or pattern, interrupt
or changing up your environmentor having a food swap.
I mean, there are a lot ofdifferent strategies for this.
It's a whole separate topic,and I think I might even do a
(16:52):
upcoming episode that goesthrough my hunger scale and
diary to dive into thedifference between physical and
psychological hunger, whichfalls in this category.
And then we get to the thirdpillar here, which is recovery
and adaptation, and I have threehere as well.
So this brings us to overallnumber seven of the ten heart
rate variability, hrv.
(17:14):
For those of you who wear awatch or a ring, you can measure
your HRV, which is effectivelya measure of your nervous
system's recovery state.
Low HRV can sometimes predictthat you're going to have stress
from overtraining before theperformance actually drops, and
so what it could tell you?
And it's funny because yourring might actually say, hey, we
(17:37):
noticed your HRV is low, youmay not be in a great state to
train Now.
I take those with a big grainof salt, because the last thing
I want you to do is you feelgreat, you've got energy, you're
good to go, and your ring says,man, maybe you shouldn't train
today, and then you don't train.
That's the last thing I want todo it's more of correlating
this with the other indicatorsof potential overtraining or
(17:58):
excessive stress.
And if you know, you've justbeen pounded into the wall by
life stress, by chronic stress.
It's good to be aware of thatproactively, to see if you need
to modify your training in someway to accommodate that, not
necessarily skipping yourtraining session, but modifying
it in some way.
And that's where a good coachcan really help you figure out
(18:18):
what that might look like.
Number eight, which is thesecond one in recovery and
adaptation, is your libido, yoursex drive, your sex function.
And again, I used to have thisas one of my main metrics, but
it's very situational.
Let's just say it's a sensitivetopic, right, and sexual drive
and function are an indicator ofhormonal health, right?
(18:40):
Testosterone, for example.
And your stress load too.
If you have too much stress oryou're excessively dieting,
you're getting burned out.
That's going to affect yourlibido and it's tied to other
things like energy recovery andso on.
So it's a good thing for someof you to track.
Many of you don't even have to.
You know, uh, you know it kindof intuitively, but you can do
it objectively.
(19:00):
And then number nine, which isthe last one under recovery and
adaptation here is yourmenstrual or hormonal symptoms.
So this is men and women.
For women, it's your cycle, youknow, tracking uh, how regular
it is and what symptoms do youhave associated with it, either
on a regular basis, like as yourbaseline, which can be helpful
for you, or if you're workingwith a coach, to understand if
any modifications have to bemade or deviations to that,
(19:23):
which is also really important.
And then for all clients, formen as well, just monitoring any
symptoms that are important toyou that would suggest an
imbalance with your hormones,understanding that during fat
loss you're going to have a downregulation in all your hormones
anyway.
So again, you have to take itas part of the system.
And then the last category here, and also the last metric.
(19:46):
The last category issustainability and progress.
And so the metric that I wantyou to track is lifestyle
flexibility, how well your planadapts to your real life.
Now, I don't actually trackthis as a number with clients.
I don't have clients tell me oh, I was an eight this week on
lifestyle flexibility.
We can tease that out from theother metrics and their
(20:07):
reporting of how their week wentand how we discussed their
check-in.
But when you do this yourself,why don't you create a separate
metric on its own that scoresyou for that week and says based
on following my plan, this ishow easy or difficult it was to
stick to the plan, given my liferight Social events, dining out
(20:29):
without anxiety, travelschedule disruptions, family
meals, celebrations, work,stress, deadlines.
And what's interesting aboutthis is it's kind of flipping it
around, isn't it?
It's saying, okay, I have myplan, I believe it's the best
plan for me, but this week itwas like a three because life
happened.
If your plan was a lot moreflexible than when life happens,
(20:51):
the plan may be rated higherthan that, and so when you get a
three or a four and if you getperiodic or repeated versions of
that low score, it tells youyour plan is simply not flexible
enough for you.
Instead of trying to fit yourlife to your plan, try to fit
your plan to your life.
So that is the last metric.
(21:12):
And what's super fascinatingabout all of this and again, I
hope you don't feel overwhelmedlike you have to use all 16 of
these metrics.
Use the first six to start andthen get inspired by the other
10 and you may have your ownthat you want to use, but the
goal is to reveal a solution toa plateau before you hit the
plateau, like when my clients,when their hunger or cravings
(21:35):
are increasing, or theirrecovery is increasing, or their
recovery is declining or theirenergy is low and by low I just
mean like one or two ticks lowerthan last time.
It gives me a clue.
Now we might not have to changethings, but there's a good
chance.
I'm going to say you know what,let's ease off on the calories
or let's take a refeed or let'stake a diet break.
And oftentimes what happens ismy clients tell me before I tell
(21:57):
them, because they check in andthey say you know what, based
on having you know, you made mescore this stuff and I noticed
that all these numbers haveticked down.
I didn't quite realize thatthat was the case.
Maybe it's time for a littlebit of a break.
And then you come back strongerand you continue losing the fat
while others crash into a walland kind of beat their head into
the wall over and over.
And that's the power of havingmultiple data points that
(22:19):
describe your overall body, yoursystem, organized in a way that
shows you how they connect.
You're proactive instead ofreactive with your fat loss All
right.
So when we talk about physiqueengineering, that is what we
mean Not guesswork, but beingdata driven.
Not hoping what you're doingworks, having concrete, specific
data showing you what's workingand what needs to adjust.
(22:41):
If you're like that's too hard,well, you're just not going to
get the result you want.
There's a little bit of effortinvolved.
You could also reach out forsupport.
You could join a community likeour free Facebook group.
You can reach out for coaching.
You can join our physiqueuniversity, which is a more
budget friendly group version ofcoaching for a lot of you who
may not be able to afford orwant to work with a one-on-one
(23:02):
coach.
And the first place to start isjust reach out for a 15 minute
rapid nutrition assessment,because that is a call.
That is not a sales pitch.
Or we're just going to get onthe phone.
We're going to talk about theweather, and then we're going to
dive in too, because that'swhat you always start with,
right, and then we're going todive into hey, which metrics or
what data or what form oftracking or what kind of
(23:24):
nutrition or training approachmight you be missing?
That will help you makeprogress.
A simple, I'll say, two orthree step action plan.
That's it.
I want you to click the link inthe show notes to schedule that
, or go to witsandweightscom andclick the link in the top right
and we'll have that call andyou'll get some clarity.
All right, until next time,keep using your wits lifting
those weights and remember yourbody is always giving you
(23:47):
feedback.
The key is knowing how tolisten and respond.
All right, I'll talk to younext time here on the Wits and
Weights podcast.
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